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It's my understanding that it was traced definitively to Taylor Farms, but the only positive test may have been a false positive.

You don't always get a positive test, but this doesn't necessarily prevent you from concluding the cause of food contamination.



> but the only positive test may have been a false positive

Software getting flagged by anti-malware as a false positive is a great way to get an evil corpo tale of woe to the top of HN with 800 points.


Multiple chains of evidence may be used to support a conclusion. One conclusive chain is sufficient, even if others are equivocal.

You're focusing on the weakest part of the argument, which HN guidelines explicitly request you not do: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>.

(Less so if others are exculpatory. Which is not the case here. A known false positive is not conclusive proof, but neither does it explicitly clear a source.)

See for more explanation: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49044401>.


[flagged]


> So it’s a false positive?

They already told you clearly, so it sounds like you're trying to browbeat them with a fallacy of equivocation over the scope of "it".

These things are not equivalent:

1. A biological test for a parasite in a sample of equipment/material from the factory. (Claimed as false-positive.)

2. The analysis of the supply-chain for the food that sickened people which led to that facility as a common factor. (Presumably still accurate.)

___________

To use a criminal-investigation metaphor: Suppose a dead woman is found covered in knife wounds, and the circumstantial evidence leads to one Knifey McStabberson, since he (A) previously dated the woman and (B) sent a death-threat once via text-message, and (C) has a collection of hundreds of suitably-sized knives. Investigators notice one that looks bloody, and test it... It's her blood! Wait, oops, no, false-positive, it was something else.

What is your takeaway from the story so far? Is it that Knifey McStabberson himself is "a false-positive" and obviously totally innocent... or is it that it would be a good idea to check more of the knives scattered around his house and in his car?


Christ, man, hasn’t the McStabberson family been through enough? Do you not have the decency to finally bring this witch hunt to an end?!


Meh, I don't see how I could make anything worse, with how they were featured in Leave it to Cleaver, and recently dissed in that song by the Full-Tang Clan.




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