A poisoned-well "argument" has the following form:
1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented by another. (e.g. "Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail")
2. Therefore, the claims made by person A will be false.
I didn't make any assumptions on the veracity of their data or claims. Think tanks are politically motivated groups whose work entirely revolves around shifting the public's and decision makers opinions. I don't think it hurts to add a disclaimer.
Do you post on liberal sources "Disclaimer: this comes from a liberal source" too? If you're not doing it uniformly, regardless of bias, then yes, you are poisoning the well.
There is far, far more reason to be worried about sources on the right than there is sources on the left. Right-aligned sources are much more likely to deny science, to skew information in a way that benefits corporate benefactors, and to contain bias against marginalized groups such as LGBTQ and even women.
Not sure I agree about the right being more likely to deny science, considering the way discussion around gender seems to work. I'm still trying to find out just how many there are, but nobody knows. Of course, we're not allowed to really discuss that though. Not sure that's very scientific..
Gender is a social construct[0], it is not defined by biological sex, although due to societal norms it often correlates, and can be influenced, by biological sex.
What isn't scientific (as is, no longer valid in scientific consensus[0]) is the premise that gender and biological sex are synonymous, and that, as your comment implies, transgender or nonbinary identity is a denial of science.
Just in case you're going to jump on to the title of the third article i posted below, note that it says gender is not just a social construct, rather than that it isn't such at all. I'll quote an excerpt from that article:
Evidence that gender has some basis in biology, though, in no way implies a strict gender binary, nor negates the existence of transgender and non-binary identities. Many biology-based gender differences originate from the hormonal environment within the womb, which is very different on average for boys compared to girls. But there’s a huge variation in these environments, says Alice Eagly, psychology professor at Northwestern University. “Within boys there will be a range and within girls there will be a range. To say it’s biological doesn’t mean it’s perfectly binary,” she says.
Some people are trying to restrict the word "gender" for political purposes, but it also continues to be used as a synonym of biological sex, a meaning that it has had for centuries.
> In the 15th century gender expanded from its use as a term for a grammatical subclass to join sex in referring to either of the two primary biological forms of a species, a meaning sex has had since the 14th century
This doesn't even read like an answer to my comment. I am genuinely curious, how many genders are there? And what are they, and who determines what constitutes a gender?
No, I think if there is a clear bias from the source, you can also acknowledge that _and_ evaluate the piece itself. The source in this case has a clear conservative bias.
selection bias is omnipresent which is why everyone is welcome to add facts to the discussion, as in the case in courts and the scientific method, so that scientists and juries can come to their own independent judgments rather than relying on an Ordained Authority. In science, if there is not consensus, we loop and add more facts until there is.
You're being intellectually dishonest if you think "Disclaimer: this comes from a conservative organization" to the HN audience doesn't have a clear well-poisoning effect. Maybe you should stop and consider who you're really trying to convince by arguing otherwise.
I didn't make any assumptions on the veracity of their data or claims. Think tanks are politically motivated groups whose work entirely revolves around shifting the public's and decision makers opinions. I don't think it hurts to add a disclaimer.