I think the way most people mean it is like the contrast I noticed between Binet and Goddard’s research into mental deficiency.

Binet was trying to figure out what intelligence was. To that end, he’d grab all these theories from various places, figure out a way to test them, and then run the test. Reading his work I got the sense that he was a true scientist, looking for the facts and doing his best to avoid letting his biases cloud his view. (Not to say he was perfect, since he badly missed the point in some behaviors that I suspect were due to institutionalization, and probably also missed a pile of class dynamics and such when he co-opted low-level staff as his control group.)

Goddard was trying to push eugenics. To that end, he made sure to ask questions in a way that would give him the answer he wanted. He’d review the families of mentally deficient patients and look for evidence of inherited problems, and his way of deciding whether various relatives (many of whom he never met) were mentally deficient was unclear and highly subjective. It’s easy to judge people from the past for not knowing stuff that modern people know, but some of his research sounds seriously screwy, in a way that Binet’s stuff did not. (For example, when he did the stats to see if alcoholism in parents caused mental deficiency, he lumped both fathers and mothers together, despite how different the reproductive roles of the two genders are in producing a child. I find it hard to believe that he honestly didn’t see that pregnancy made a difference given that other researchers earlier on suggested prenatal exposure to various things as a potential cause of disability.)

I think when most people say someone who is presenting facts ‘has an agenda’, they mean more like Goddard than Binet. Goddard’s facts aren’t trustworthy because he’s tailoring them to show what he wants to show. Whereas Binet is just trying to find facts without making an effort to prove anything with those facts.

Can I translate this text in french and publish it in the website where I often post:
(Asperansa.org)?
It would be great for me to use it to explain them why I can be disturbed by some text even when they seems to be positives

Games People Play (off and on the court)

I do indeed need to learn ever more about what others can tolerate by way of communication and interchange.

In retrospect, I’m not sure if symbols are the right word. I think that was the first thing to come to mind after reading the passage where Clay was in the water of politics, Evonne was a butterfly with a hyperspeed metabolism, and Amanda was King Kong. But that doesn’t seem to be the main matter.

What I’ve noticed is you tend to develop labels and descriptions of people here at this blog, and display them as if the people you’re talking about weren’t right here, reading and communicating along with everyone else.

In your remarks about epilepsy, for instance, you take a few facts about Amanda, Clay, and Clay’s daughter (Both Amanda and Clay write blogs with strong but different political perspectives, Amanda has a history of caretaker abuse, both Clay’s daughter’s and Amanda have seizures) and attach them to highly speculative inferences to explain epilepsy. And when the people you’re describing rejected parts of your description as inconsistent with their own knowledge and esperiences, your responses were (paraphrased, “I don’t think you understand,” and “We’ll have to agree to disagree.

It doesn’t look like your interested in communicating with people, so much as theorizing at them, or about them. This isn’t harmful in the same fashor or degree that much of the abuse Amanda describes and attempts to prevent or change is, but it has a certain connection. A lot of people have theorized at and about the people under their control, and disregarded communications to the contrary, with bad results.

Like I said, I have trouble with your communication style so I won’t presume that you’re trying to send the message I’m percieving. But that’s the impression I got, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Hope that helps.