| > The notion that olive oil is one of the healthier fat options has abundant coverage in science and health media as well as peer reviewed research. This is widely know to people who are interested in healthy diet and lifestyle stuff. OK. > The claim that it's all propaganda requires a stronger burden of proof IMO. Why? If it's so well known, then it should be trivial for you to prove! The burden of proof is on the claimant, because that's the person who has proof to begin with! --- > If someone shouts "1+1=2 is propaganda!", the burden of proof should be on them even though almost everyone they meet will not have gone through the mathematical proof that 1+1=2 themselves The words "is propaganda" are carrying your entire point. The tricky bit is that there are two distinct things begging for evidence in your example: 1. The claim that 1+1=2 2. The claim that claim #1 is propaganda. Each claim has (or lacks) a separate body of evidence. The burden of proof for each claim is whoever made that claim. Importantly, propaganda itself does not require falsehood. Both the claim that 1+1=2 and the claim that mathematics are propaganda could be correct regardless of the other. Because of that, any evidence that MeImCounting would be able to provide that "[olive oil diet] 'health reasons' are mostly propaganda" would fail to answer the pertinent question, "Are there valid health reasons for an olive oil diet?" |