Any of these readers would have been willing to believe that Bill O’Reilly had written a bad book, if they did not believe that Bill O’Reilly was strongly biased.
Are you possibly confusing what these readers said with what they believe? I suspect many of these people had no well-founded opinion on the book, or may have privately thought it was a bad book, rather they were seeking to defend the author for political reasons.
So in this book review example, it’s just that people who have a strong affiliation with a well known political figure will seek to defend him regardless. When we read messages like this, they tell us practically nothing about what the defenders really think about the book ( probably in this case they haven’t even read it, there is nothing to tell ).
[ My first comment on this site, so be gentle—I’m just getting acquainted with the furniture, so I may well be wide of the mark. Reading further down, it seems others are thinking on similar lines (TheOtherDave), this was my reaction before I read that. ]
Hi, I’m 53 years old, from Gloucester, UK.
I work from home over the internet running IT systems.
I studied Maths for 2 years at Cambridge, then Computer Science in my 3rd year.
I came across this site after becoming interested in the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito ( just subsequent to their acquittal in October 2011 ).
I made an analysis of the Massei report ( http://massei-report-analysis.wikispaces.com/ ) and concluded that the defence case was much more probable than the prosecution case.
I’m interested in a rational basis for assessing guilt in criminal cases. My idea ( as above ) is to compare the relative likelihood of each part of the defence and prosecution case, but this was perhaps not a good example, as I found that there was no credible, objective evidence against the defendants after looking closely at the evidence.
Maybe we could look at the recent conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris. I would start from the position that they are probably guilty, but this is before examining in any detail the evidence against them, so this is based mainly on a general belief that UK courts do a fairly good job. The questions to be raised there would be whether we can really trust the forensic evidence, given that the police have powerful incentives to convict. And how do we eliminate prejudice against these unpleasant people ( both were clearly vile racists whether or not they committed the murder ).