"Clinically proven" oxymorons and misnomers

[Odude]

Scientific law. There's no such thing people. Science does not deal in absolutes, only in evidence for or against a theory.

Agreed! Though it is funny to think of what might happen if you do somehow find a way to break one of the laws. Will you be fined, or arrested by nerds in lab coats, or...?

Haha you guys aren't engineers, then. We deal in many absolutes--absolute certainties that our facade of not letting liberal arts majors know the tricks of our trade.

My favorite oxymoron:
Black Light. If the light were actually black, it would be dark. Black is nowhere on the spectrum, so how is there black light?

Actually, I'm an aerospace engineering student. Math deals in absolutes, but science doesn't. Engineers deal with things in "acceptable terms."
Q: It the tension in that cable too high?
A: No, it's within acceptable tolerance.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

"Dead inside" If you were dead inside you'd be dead overall wouldn't you?

 

[TotallyFake]

Right, counter-nitpicking.
"Dead inside" is a metaphor, it means dead emotionally.
"Counter-productive" opposed to production, rather than just unproductive. I'd say roughly synonomous with hampering.
"black light" emits mostly in ultraviolet, with very little visible, so to us it appears black.
"War on Drugs" I guess comes under "hate the sin, love the sinner". You don't want to victimise users, you want to get them clean

Using gay pejoritively - Yes, there's a derogatory definition in your list. But you said the derogatory meaning came FIRST, and you haven't backed that up. I'm fairly certain gay as in carefree came first, then homosexual, and "that's bad" only in the last decade or so.

"Communist dictator" - A dicatotor holding communist ideals. You can't have a dictator in a communist state by definition, but most places don't progress past socialism.

"Clinically proven" - Performed with a clinical trial, with significant (p<0.05) results. It's close enough to proven, it's a reasonable simplification for the layman,

"New and Improved" - It's a new version, improved on the last version.

"Play fighting" - Fighting in jest. There's no oxymoron here at all.

"High as a kite"/"look up high" etc. - You're being overly picky and belligerant. Stop it.

"Scientific law" - Perfectly acceptable. For example: Newton's Laws of Motion. The First Law of Thermodynamics. Lenz's Law.

 

[Squarez]

Communist dictator....just no

Why? Communism has always had dictators, however conflicting with its political ideas it may be. Chairman Mao, Lenin, Stalin.... you get the idea.

Would you care to name a leader from an actual communist state or are you happy to assume that the names they gave themselves were not propoganda?
I can't think of a single 'communist' party that has had remotely communist ideals after they rose to power (Fuck the United states is a better example of a communist state than the USSR). You wouldn't call the peoples Democratic Republic of Korea a democracy, so why would you call the USSR or China communist? If they directly oppose communist ideals in what sense are the communists?

I think it's fairly safe to say that the USSR was Communist. It's Government nationalized all productive property, put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced bourgeois management of industry.

OK, so the leaders might conflict with the Communist ideal, but the nation of the USSR, and most of its people, was most certainly Communist.

In terms of Russia at least the collectivization/nationalization/grain requisitioning ect. was part of a plan from the "War Communism" introduced by Lenin (who wasn't a dictator by the way - that was Stalin, Lenin was just the one that took power at first) during WWI in order to keep Russia afloat and to keep the people who thought they were supporting a communist party happy, when they left WWI due to Lenin's promises to end the war, they switched to something called the NEP (New Economic Plan) after War Communism wasn't working. NEP which was essentially capitalism, and Russia because richer than it had ever been in comparison to the rest of Europe. So by the time Stalin took over they had kept the NEP plan but kept their Socialist values (minus the fact that Stalin "purged" half the population), they were never a true communist state as they still had a person "in charge". Communism on the other hand calls for a classless society, so in true communism they would be no supreme leader in order to become a dictator.

/essay

 

[Joshimodo]

I hate it when people use the word "fit" to describe anybody physically attractive. It means healthy and good endurance, dammit!

In fact, I basically hate any word that has been adapted by morons to mean something completely irrelivant.

Agreed.

 

[minarri]

(snippity snip)
"Clinically proven" - Performed with a clinical trial, with significant (p<0.05) results. It's close enough to proven, it's a reasonable simplification for the layman,
(snip)

What it comes down to is that you cannot clinically prove anything: clinical trials (is experimentation to assess the effectiveness of a new product) are an example of scientific experimentation, and because of this they test collected data against a null hypothesis. Yay for inferential statistics!

The resulting information (e.g. a p-value) demonstrates the probability of receiving the demonstrated results assuming the null hypothesis is true, and while this number can and sometimes is extremely small, it can't really ever actually be zero. Because of this you can't actually prove something false statistically; you can only clinically suggest it.

It's just that marketing likes phrases with more punch than that, I think, so hence we have "clinically proven".

LOL my point is that it's incorrect in that while you can be almost positive of something via clinical trials, you can never say with absolute certainty that it is true. That's the trouble with probabilities--"close enough" still isn't 100%.

 

[SmartIdiot]

Counter-productive. Well, most things with counter as the prefix. When someone's dead you don't say they're counter-alive do you?

No, but there's no good reason why we couldn't. If we all woke up one day and agreed that counter-alive was a word then it would be. Language works by consensus, not consistency.
But in fact there is a good reason we don't say counter-alive. You see, "counter-" as a prefix means "opposed to the process of-". Since we tend to see being alive as a state not a process (notice how you say "being alive") it would be silly. That's what "un-" is for; the opposite of the state "-something". Such as unintelligent - the state of not being intelligent. But then there's "counterintelligence". Intelligence in this sense means a process - the gathering of secret information. Thus, counterintelligence means "opposition to the process of gathering secret intelligence".
But there's another reason: we already have very common words to express the idea of counter-alive: dead; and dying. Dead is the opposite state to life, and dying is the opposite process to living (thus, there's no need for counter-living). While the English language revels in creating more synonyms where none were needed, no language strains itself to create new words for old ideas. This is why we find "counterproductive": there really aren't that many near synonyms for the idea, and those near synonyms aren't near enough.
http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=counterproductive
Discounting the archaic words no one would bother using anymore (when did you last say "malefic"? I've read it once.) and the words in that list that aren't really proper synonyms at all (95% IMO) the rest just don't quite express the idea. Harmful means something slightly different (an implication of actual harm rather than just opposition to the process of being productive) for example.
English fascinates me because it keeps making new words by attaching prefixes and suffixes to old ones (nation->national->nationalise->nationalisation->denationalisation->antidenationalisation...ok, it got ridiculous at denationalisation).

How very informative, cheers.

"Counterproductive" was brought in because there was a word - productive - that might be opposed, and no other word quite expressed that. Or perhaps it did and I'm ignoring that word.

How about lazy? Or pothead?

 

[Abedeus]

But it's okay for a f*g to say f*g.

"You mean you have to be a fag, to say fag?"
"Well, Jimbo, looks like we've learned something new about you, wanna make out?"

I'm not double standarding the word like black people do with "******", you can use it all you want, just not as a general term for gay people. I still use it as a derogatory term.

Gay? Yes, I sometimes use gay as in "fun, silly, interesting".

But f*g has no other meaning. ****** maybe, as it can be a bundle of twigs formed together, as explained in one of the Simpsons episodes. It's also a kind of a meatball or a technique used in smelting and forging steel.

 

[Hazy]

Civil War.
Whats so Civil about War?

 

[darnel64]

About clinically proven, a proof originally was the testing process hence the expression the 'exception proves the rule.' people tend to regard that saying as a definitive as in there you are see proof. However it means that the exception proves (or tests.) the rule thereby meaning it is a false assumption. Also 'the proof is in the pudding' means we'll find out if it's any good when we eat it. (apologies to Bill Bryson who explained that a lot better than I did.)

 

[Shoqiyqa]

I hate it when people use the word "fit" to describe anybody physically attractive. It means healthy and good endurance, dammit!

That would be a lot less of a problem if their idea of physically attractive wasn't so far from athletic.

 

[BlueMage]

I hate it when people use the word "fit" to describe anybody physically attractive. It means healthy and good endurance, dammit!

In fact, I basically hate any word that has been adapted by morons to mean something completely irrelivant.

I sense you hate many, many words.

Don't misunderstand - I share your hatred, it just tends to be more generalised in my case.

 

[vladtehimpaler]

Military intelegence? Or honest politician?

 

[Macgyvercas]

Sonic Unleashed...Werehog

Werewolf is derived from the Old English word "Wer" which means "Man"

Hence "Man-Wolf"

 

[Docta J]

Microsoft Works..... Wait, it does?

 

[philosophicalbastard]

I can't stand it when people say, "I could care less."

The saying is "I couldn't care less." This indicates that you are at the minimum caring level.

The other way makes no sense. Think about it!

I've thought about it before, but I still use that expression so noone gets confused.