The women who came forward against Harvey Weinstein reacted with fury after the disgraced media mogul’s rape and sexual assault convictions were overturned by a New York appeals court on Thursday.
Weinstein, 72, was found guilty in 2020 of raping and assaulting two women, and is serving his 23-year sentence at a prison in upstate New York.
In a 4-3 decision on Thursday, New York’s highest court ruled the original judge made “egregious errors” in the trial by allowing prosecutors to call witnesses whose allegations were not related to the charges at hand.
Weinstein was once one of Hollywood’s most well-connected and powerful producers who made a series of Oscar-winning films. But behind the glamourous facade, it was a different story. More than 80 women have accused him of abuse ranging from groping to rape. Even with his conviction overturned in New York, he remains convicted of rape in California.
The Weinstein revelations launched the #MeToo movement in 2017, which saw women from all corners of society come forward to talk about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.
That’s not how science works.
Except I’m not doing that at all. That would be the person referring to Francis Galton.
What’s your new position then?
You started by claiming no two fingerprints are unique based on the fact that there is beyond a doubt a set of two identical pairs out there somewhere even though no such pairs have ever been found, a god pair if you will.
I never said it was beyond a doubt.
In fact, I said:
So I don’t know why you’re telling such a ridiculous lie.
Okay so what’s your position? Its a spectrum I’m guessing? So what, you think there’s a 50% chance that fingerprints aren’t unique?
I literally just gave you my position and I will not continue this discussion any further until you acknowledge that you made a false claim about me.
I am acknowledging I made a false claim and I’m asking you to correct me by asking this question. What’s your position? All you have told me is what your position isn’t.
I’m not sure why you need to ask this because I made it very clear. It is a myth because it is not a provable claim and assuming something you can’t show to be valid is true is the antithesis of the scientific method. The burden of proof is on the claimant and so far, no one who has made that claim has been able to back it up. Until they can, it’s a myth.
By being an unprovable claim, the burden of absolute proof cannot be on either side since that would constitute an appeal to ignorance.
This may vary by region but in mine, saying something is a myth means it’s 100% unequivocally false.
So in this context, saying something is false because of some as of yet very very unlikely scenario seems like misrepresentation.
That’s basically what my real issue was with all this.