The most famous example is the Lancet paper that suggested that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella vaccine) caused autism: the result was a drop off in the number of children vaccinated, epidemics of measles, and more than a decade of fruitless argument [ 7].
The questions raised ranged from "Why is Annie Black?" to "Why is Annie not a redhead?" This same fruitless argument slithers up to the surface whenever the film industry casts a minority actor in a traditionally White role, or vice versa.
That treaty was to have been signed at Copenhagen, which produced instead a much weaker political agreement after nearly two weeks of bitter and largely fruitless argument.
"Don't feed the trolls" is the popular expression, warning against the wasting of time and energy in fruitless argument.
With Exxon — largest company on Earth, heir to the original oil baron, with tentacles reaching around the world — vouching for the science, there is no way we would have wasted 25 years in fruitless argument.
Thus, it might be the case that people do not want to disclose their minority views for fear of disappointing their friends, getting into fruitless arguments, or losing them entirely.
As sages have recognized since the time of Socrates, democracies are particularly prone to debilitating, fruitless arguments about the meaning of words.
For those of us (and again, I am referring specifically to white people, because it is not the job of people of color to fix racism, it is ours) who want to counter the hate of this administration and its supporters, we cannot simply focus on protests in our cities and article-sharing and fruitless arguments with like-minded people in our own echo chambers.
In the report, Red Alert: Why Labour Lost and What Needs to Change?, Paul Hunter, the institute's head of research, said this argument was a fruitless one.
