[williamsmj]

Yes I know. They are irrelevant to the point of Gelman’s blog post, which is why he doesn’t mention them. I assume they’re being brought up here out of some kind of guilt by association thing, or to make the self-link seem more on topic.

[seydor]

50% of TFA is quotations fromt he TR article

[williamsmj]

Yes. To provide the context necessary to understand the "this is why we can't have nice things" quote, you have to say what "this" is. That's how pronouns work.