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Thanks @ΑΩ: for your rapid publication of this page but ... is it really anything more than wittily disingenuous to use the word "appears" in the sentence "two Studies published 12 May 2014 may appear to confirm Mercer's assumption", let alone to compound this with the phrase "may appear"? Aren't the facts simply that 1. Mercer said X, and 2. the two papers said X. As X is the same in both cases it seems grammatically incorrect to state that these merely "appear" to be the same, as if somehow at some later point by some means as yet unknown or imagined they will be shown to not be. Unless it can be shown somehow that the X in one and the X in the others are different in some way, which at the moment seems impossible to do, then they must surely be considered to be the same not simply "appearing" the same? I appreciate that the NYT also felt a need for some reason to prevaricate but cannot see any evidence to support this as anything more than a homage to the inevitable naysaying flat Earth society rather than to anything remotely rational from a scientific perspective. Bottom line: the two papers confirmed the work of Mercer. That'ss it isn't it. That is the evidence. That is the science. The rest seems to me to be just political mumbo-jumbo or scientism. The word "appear" and the phrase "may appear" etc etc may justifiably, placing an absurd stress on that word, be used in respect of the absolute quality of the three pieces of work but I suggest cannot reaasonably be applied to their congruence. The words "appear", "apparently", etc can it is true be used to mean "evident", "visible", "existing" etc but only in certain grammatical constructions not used in this case. In others, as in this case, they convey the meaning of "seem" and imply some significant level of doubt which in this case is not apparent. LookingGlass (talk) 09:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Suggesting "some significant level of doubt" was certainly not my intention. I really don't have much doubt, personally, that Mercer's view have been confirmed by those two articles. I'll admit, though, that there may be some general, underlying tendency towards epistemological scepticism influencing my way of thinking and expressing myself. My meaning here was in fact rather more in the direction of "evident", "visible", "existing" etc. I could perhaps mention that English is not my native tongue. And still I do, as this case may show, have some fondness for understatement.. I probably would have expressed myself somewhat more strongly anyway about the confirmation of Mercer's hypothesis, though, if I actually had read the two articles in question and a little bit more about what Mercer actually said back then. ΑΩ (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
