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Although I am speaking in a moderator voice here, I am not actually moderating. I am just going to explain something related to the moderation of this thread. There have been some reports that have triggered moderator discussion, and I want to write a short treatise on the topic.
A ScubaBoard Staff Message...
Ethos is a legitimate part of the art of persuasive writing and speaking, going back to its origin in classic Greek rhetoric. It supports the argument by either establishing that the speaker has the expertise to make the argument worthy of belief or showing that the opposing speaker is not worthy of belief. There is nothing wrong with that.Modes of persuasion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaA good example occurs with some frequency in the ScubaBoard in the Diving Medicine forum. People will post questions related to dive medicine, and they will get excellent answers from some of the diving physicians we are blessed to have on staff and from other physicians who are not on staff. Unfortunately, they often get incorrect information from unqualified but well-intentioned participants who are repeating something they heard somewhere. How is the reader to know whom to believe? Well, most people will believe the physicians solely because they are physicians. That is a legitimate use of ethos in persuasion.
Dr. Williams : USC Upstate : English Program / Ethos-Pathos-Logos-The-3-Rhetorical-Appeals
An ad hominem argument is a fallacious cousin to the legitimate use of ethos. It comes when the attack on the credibility of the user does not have a real value to the argument. For a clear example, let's say that someone was arguing about a certain practice in cave diving, and someone countered by pointing out that the writer had been arrested for selling marijuana in his youth. That would be a clear ad hominem argument, since that previous conviction has nothing to do with the issue or the writer's ability to present an authoritative position.
So there are examples when discussing information about the speaker is obviously important and acceptable. There are cases when it is absolutely not appropriate. Unfortunately, there are many cases that are not so clear and could be argued either way.
The issue of speaker credibility has been raised a number of times in this thread. At times it has been done in ways that are clearly appropriate to the topic. At times, it has been well into the gray area. We have deleted some that were still in the gray area but were sliding in the ad hominem direction. This is a very important discussion, and I hope we can all remember to keep things civil and legitimate.
Yes hopefully through time more and more data is collected and sampling sets grow.Thanks for the rapid response Igor.
Hopefully as time goes on we will see bigger sampling sets.I wish my computers and BTs were downloadable.
Correlation of popular diving models with computer profile data and outcomes
Deep stops debate (split from ascent rate thread) - Page 62
In post above BRW (Bruce R. Wienke) was indicating he would be willing to make a statistical validation study of VPM against computer downloaded profiles in LANL Data Bank and in some of my answers I mentioned it is going to happen.
At present time the statistical validation study - correlation to LANL Data Bank is finished and paper released. Same as VPM the USN, ZH-L16 and RGBM models were used in statistical validation study - correlation to LANL Data Bank.
Here is a short quote from document:
"This work provides needed comparisons between global mixed gas diving, specific models, and deep stop data. Our objective is operational diving, not clinical science. The fit of models to data is chi squared significant as follows, using the logarithmic likelihood ratio of null set (actual set) to fit set:
USN – (χ2 = 0.081)
ZHL16 – (χ2 = 0.131)
VPM – (χ2 = 0.717)
RGBM – (χ2 = 0.861)
Submitted – Computers In Biology And Medicine
Pages – 11, Tables – 4, Figures – 0, References – 23
Proofs And Correspondence – B.R. Wienke, LANL MS-D409, Los Alamos, N.M. 87545, (505)
667-1358"
For more info read the paper attached.
Igor P
View attachment 204298