However, as Jay observed, this is all beside the point, because none of this makes you a scientist, and the evidence that you are not a scientist is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
Vixen claimed, "I am a scientist," in some other thread. We have expended many kilobytes and collective hours attempting to understand what she meant by that and how it applies to her arguments in this or any thread.
All Vixen's arguments, regardless of subject, contain a high proportion of declarations given under color of relevant knowledge and expertise. That is, they are conclusory statements that presume the speaker has a body of specialized knowledge and counterintuitive lines of reasoning that support the conclusion. They are not expected to be within the ken of an ordinary lay person.
"Fire A is suspicious because it wasn't like Fire B," contains a number of premises. The obvious operative premise is that the fires should be otherwise comparable. That in turn rests upon knowledge of fire science, which tells us that the propagation and ultimate effect of any fire are determined by many phenomena which we model as complex sets of parameters and formulaic behaviors. We know this to be true in general because in our travels we have run across many things that we see are complicated. We know a science exists to study them, even if we ourselves are not masters of the science.
I know that botany is a science. I am not a master of the science, or even a competent commentator on it. But I know it exists, and I surmise correctly that there do exist masters of it, and a body of knowledge kept in their brains and in their various journals that any interested person could go attempt to master if they so chose. Because of that, I would be wary of saying "Flower A is suspicious because it's not like Flower B." I would recognize that the premise that Flower A should be otherwise comparable to Flower B is ignorant of all the many reasons I have yet to discover in the science why it might not hold. I know that
I cannot know whether my premise holds or not.
Not everyone premises their beliefs this way. Conspiracism is often based on the blanket denial of complexity (i.e., "If I require it to be simple, it must be simple"), the blanket denial of expertise (i.e., "It doesn't take an expert to understand it sufficiently"), and/or the blanket assumption of competence (i.e., "Anything I don't know already know about a subject isn't worth considering"). These aspects of the conspiracy mindset can sometimes legitimately blind people to the lack of foundation in their beliefs. We refer to this as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
And that leads to the unspoken premise in all of Vixen's arguments of that form, and the fatal fallacy of most conspiracy theories. The unstated premise is, "Fire A is suspicious because it is not like Fire B,
and I am competent to say so." Now in most cases, Vixen can truthfully disclaim, "I never said I was a _________." That's because the claim is implied in the very act of making a statement in the formula we're looking at.
"The official investigation of _____ is botched,
and I am competent to say so," is what all Vixen's arguments boil down to; but she leaves the italicized part out so that it can be an equivocal point of contention that nets her another page or so of attention.
In almost no case can Vixen demonstrate any credible support for, "...and I am competent to say so." She'll sidestep it by such motte-and-bailey straw men as, "I don't have to be an expert to express interest in a subject." Or when the hidden premise is revealed, as I'm doing now, she'll just retreat to, "I never claimed
explicitly to have expertise," neglecting that you need it in order for the predicate statement to have any evidentiary value, or indeed to merit attention beyond a scoff. And in this well-worn way, she plays the responses to her Vixensplaining out for page after page.
Ultimately one must be able to lay a foundation for any conclusion one draws. The answer to the question, "How do you know that?" must satisfy the person you wish to accept your conclusion. You can point directly to evidence, if it's simple enough. That's the simplest foundation. "Fire A has engulfed Flower B," is a simple enough observation to fall within the lay person's ken. The foundation for that conclusion is one's innate power of observation and one's ability to induce a general understanding of fire from past personal experience, and deduce a specific example of it to cover this new event.
But often—as in fire science—the evidence that affects more complex questions is difficult to obtain and reason about reliably if one has not spent some years learning how to do it and practicing it with others. This is when the answer to, "How do you know that?" takes either form of, "As a consequence of my foundation of relevant training and experience, which I will document," or of, "For these very detailed and complex reasons, which I will lay out to you." That is, either a testament of one's adjudicated training, or (more directly, and often better) a demonstration of the evidence and lines of reasoning. The latter is often tedious and hard for the listener to grasp, which is why the former persists.
We get no such satisfaction from Vixen, meaning she lacks a foundation for her conclusory statements. And we've tried both forms.
If we rephrase the question to say, "What relevant training and experience have you had, that you can offer this conclusion with evidentiary strength?" We get the host of evasive and embellished claims we've been dealing with now for years. "What relevant training and experience lets you claim to be a scientist with the expectation of belief?" Some undergraduate courses and a pair of unrelated vocational certificates—unsatisfactory.
Obviously it doesn't help that "science" and "scientist" are heavily overused terms and can lead to considerable equivocation and weasel-speak. And it doesn't help that there is practically no facet of our lives that is untouched by the effects of scientific inquiry, allowing us to point literally anywhere and say, "See! Science!" But, "I am a scientist," was given specifically to claim a foundation for arguments sounding in specific sciences, implicating specific bodies of knowledge and applying specific reasoning outside the normal ken. The ill-fitting, liberal definitions don't apply.
If we rephrase the question to ask, "What relevant knowledge and discussion can you demonstrate to establish your conclusion with evidentiary strength?" We get simply another layer of Vixensplaining, tales of her childhood, outright evasion, and often quite amusing lines. When others try to provide their own rigor and knowledge in rebutting the conclusion, it's sidestepped as "snobbery." "What relevant knowledge and discussion can you demonstrate to compel us to believe you're a scientist?" As you point out, fumbling, blustery, and ridiculous statements that illustrate beyond any doubt her scientific illiteracy—unsatisfactory, but also arrogant and frequently annoying.
As long as Vixen's arguments continue to rise from the hidden premise, "...and I am competent to say so," it can, should, and must be met with the question, "How do you know that?" Vixen's performance in all her threads revolve around accepting her unfounded claims as true.
