Psamathe wrote: ...
So do I assume that everything your been saying about this case are from 1st hand information and NOT through what people have written about it? (e.g. you attended the trial, you tested the braking on the bike yourself, etc.)
In reality much of the information we receive and opinion we form is necessarily based on "what others have said". We try to select reliable sources, try to sanity check and cross verify but at the end of the day we all (need to) form opinions beyond our direct personal experience and are dependent on indirect sources. ...
That's not the point I was making. Everything we say tends to be influenced by our own perspective, etc., and that's normal. A criminal trial has this at several levels, such as the way witnesses remember and describe events, how that evidence is summarised by the lawyers especially the judge and how it is all selectively reported by the media. Then there's the discussions on social media, down the pub etc.
Now, as the receivers of this partial - in both senses - information we can either do our best to interpret it by looking for supporting information and remembering the context try to reach conclusions, or we just latch on to the bits that confirm our views. Quoting sources doesn't make them true, of course, but it allows others to see the foundation of what's being said. That's why I asked for the source of your assertion. I suppose I assumed there wasn't one but I would have looked at it carefully if you had pointed to something. My urban myth point was a shorthand way of saying that repeating something can soon promote it to unquestioned fact, taken as read, evry fule kno, whatever.
I take some posters on here more seriously than others but as somebody who, like me, posts often and at length, it's a useful practice to differentiate between personal opinion and "fact." And I'm sure that you knew that without being told, but you did ask. I've put "fact" in quotes because it's a controversial word. Quite a lot of my verbiage is intended to make that difference clear.
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PS If there's anything where I've dropped below that standard and anybody sincerely needs more information, I try to give it; with sources.