That phenomenon illustrates a universal principle has been
observed in committee meetings in businesses and governments:
> I find it fascinating that as soon as we find a linguistic
> topic which sparks the interest of everyone here, the
> discussion suddenly makes hardly any reference to corpora.
> Why are suddenly anecdotes, intuitions, folk theories and
> made-up examples preferable to consulting corpora?
On a topic that everybody understands, such as a choice of
sandwiches or pizza for a working lunch, everybody has an
opinion, and the question will be debated endlessly.
But on a highly technical issue, which very few, if any,
of the committee members understand, either the issue will
be ignored or vast sums of money will be approved without
any substantive debate.
John Sowa
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