Well considering that they followed with...
I realize that I may sound something like the wackjobs you usually hear on the internet, but I have a fundamentally different position and the seeming kneejerk assumption that I'm a hostile, irrational, unenlightened person seems both a. off the mark to me and b. at this point, honestly disrespectful.
This is the point at which people usually say: "Oh, so you want me to bow down to you?!" No. I want you to look at yourself, and how you respect viewpoints that have Science written on them, and look at my arguments and see how I have a scientific background, and see that I am trying to convince you that having a scientific background does not mean that what you say is true, and see that you are disrespecting what I am saying despite my scientific background, and see that you are exercising my point exactly--except not willing to admit it because what I'm saying doesn't fit with your confirmation bias.
It's kinda relevant if people are trying to explain statistics versus anecdotes to them, and given that their philosophy education focused on the nature of truth that makes them kind of an expert in that field... not merely an unrelated field such as math to politics [/brieffalseequivalencechiding]... it all fits into their argument (at least from my interpretation) that trust in the modern institution of science through credentialed members and the fruits of their knowledge clearly isn't an absolute standard, and rather seems to have leeway of its own in people being free to challenge the body of organized knowledge.
And that is clearly not an appeal to authority, forming a coherent argument independent of a direct claim based on expertise. Your rebuttal even demonstrated the primary mechanism towards the phenomenon they spoke of - attempts to discredit the validity via a claim of logical fallacy, which further rested upon credentials not being a factor in this topic's discussion. Considering that what set this off was an issue with how people pretend that one
requires rigorous data from accredited bodies before anything can be taken seriously points to an underlying issue in the boundaries of our skepticism. With people setting their boundaries for what constitutes extraordinary claims (and corresponding the amount of evidence required to substantiate their validity) based on absurd notions. If we are drawing analogies with anti-scientific movements, such as vaccine deniers and creationists and global warming deniers, and how they create knowledge, we should also draw attention to their own standards of skepticism which are complicating their ability to accept knowledge from the scientific consensus. Overall what is happening, at least mostly in internet communities which have latched onto a very... rough... form of atheism and skepticism, is that they apply this on a blanket level and end up fouling their thinking as they attempt to simplify reality around a few principles that might not even apply to the issue at hand, or at least not be feasible.
As per the examples drawing from very immediate decision making, which I'll further expand upon to contain the human body of knowledge before new standards of scientific rigor entered our collective consciousness (with failures, but also successes), we
can/do not construct knowledge
purely through those methods*, and discounting experiences that you would not have based on it being anecdotal evidence can itself be both damaging to your own intellectual development as well as the social ties between people since we can't speak for ourselves and our own experiences, as well as frustrations/fears/etc, without being challenged as if we're liars or somehow less capable of analyzing our own situations without people
who might have even less actual experience to construct their hypotheses telling us we're correct/wrong -- and even when data is demonstrated we end up right back to these deductive logic tussles between which data is valid and which isn't. At least outside of "hard sciences" which I suspect is largely more due to having less demands on being able to think outside of one's own experience, and thus be able to come up with a solid hypothesis/theory, outside of a few niche conflicts where culture (typically religious though not always) tries to inform reality in a way that can usually be more easily separated from the knowledge-producing venture itself.
*
Briefly rechecking what started the topic, this seems to be a crux of the issue. Something that seemed self-evident had to be structured around a scientific study before it was taken seriously, despite the benefit of framing the argument around quantitative data being questionable.
If you have a problem with people telling you things you find disrespectful on the internet, the problem kinda is on your end.
This is one of those disrespectful things I imagine... At least take responsibility for your behavior rather than cast it off as if it is necessarily another's problem. One can have a problem with the color red, but one can also be offended (or at least annoyed) by being called an idiot by somebody who knows absolutely nothing on the subject, or offended by somebody who steps on your toes and refuses to apologize, or many other things which are readily accepted as reasonable things to raise an issue about
without it suddenly being the aggrieved party's responsibility. But then to argue that we'd have to come to agreement on which posting behavior is patronizing and worthy of disapproval and which is fair game for discourse, and I'm not sure anybody wants to be arsed with that since it tends to open the doors for more of the same rather than open a meaningful dialogue that can satisfy all parties. So this is one of those scenarios where everyone gives the stinkeye and solidifies opinions about other posters. *stinkeyes*