headhunter wrote:
So what you're saying is that you're willing to dismiss any type of scientific study, no matter what the source, because you think you're right anyway?
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What I'm specifically saying is that I don't put great weight in cost benefit studies that don't make a rigorous attempt to capture all the costs, because I know that such studies are inherently flawed (cost benefit analysis was a compulsory topic when I studied undergraduate economics, but I think it's fairly intuitive that if you don't include all costs and benefits then it's going to be flawed). So whenever I see one of these studies my first instinct is to look for any externalities, think of it like checking to see if there's an engine under the bonnet before you buy a car, and I know that these types of cost benefit studies tend to suffer the same problems and I'm not alone in knowing this. My broader point was that "studies" produced by special interest groups are primarily intended to produce PR fodder supporting the agenda of said special interests rather than being serious policy tools and that always needs to be factored in (which goes back to my specific point about checking how rigorous the construction of the study is).
