Is distortion of evidence a reason to vote?

[scott.robinson]

I have been reading through the distortion of evidence example debated on another thread and it raised a question. If a debater pointed out that through ellipses or other techniques that his or her opponent had fundamentally distorted evidence (deleting a "not" to reverse meaning, or bracketing out the qualifier on the ICC card in the previous example), would you as a judge accept this as a reason to vote unilaterally?

In one case I heard of at the TOC years ago, someone got busted for deleting a meaning reversing "not" and all the judges did was drop the card.

How many people would simply drop someone for such attempts to distort evidence? How many would simply refuse to weigh the card?

[SStrausman]

I think that my response to that situation would very much depend on what the other debater told me to do, I can see theory arguments for why we should punish debaters who distort evidence as being potentially valid, but I would not feel comfortable voting off an argument like that if the other debater didn't make it. I could see that being a very legitimate theory argument to make. Likewise, I could see the debater potentially telling me to a) drop the evidence, or b) Extending the evidence to take out the argument (especially in cases where a "not" is deleted from the card.)

Really, I could see me doing any of these things, but these are things the debater would have to give me the jurisdiction to do.

[timmonsa]

Scott,

If a debater, in the examples you gave, were to take the word “not” out of the card/delete qualifiers and after the opponent showed the evidence read, and the original to the judge(s), and the “evidence” was clearly doctored, the offending debater should immediately lose the debate. If it is a prelim round they should get zero speaker points as well. If it is an elimination round they lose. The coach of the offending debater and tab room, at minimum should be informed of what has happened. Debaters are responsible for what they read in a round whether they or a teammate/coach cut the card or whether it was from a camp file or brief book. This example is egregious. Conversely, if a person accused someone of evidence distortion and they were WRONG about the accusation, the ACCUSER should lose and get zero points. The burden of proof is on the accuser. A debater should have the presumption of innocence.

These examples should be addressed as soon at the person allegedly reading doctored evidence is done speaking. The debate over topic specific issues should no longer be relevant because this “procedural issue” precedes it. This is an “all in” proposition. It has to be to eliminate frivolous accusations.

Allowing the evidence “to be dropped” is NOT enough of a deterrent to cheaters when the stakes are high.

Scott, great questions like always sir.

Aaron

[Andrew C]

This happened to me twice: once at a lay tournament, where I fortunately had the card in a NC (I affirmed) and read it to the judge (it was a study from the 90s on the felons topic). The judge ended up voting for me--although for a different reason--but my opponent did get 10 speaks--granted it was JV lay, so the range was more like 0-30 than 25-30. It also happened to me at Stanford, but I just ran a theory violation similar to an ellipses theory argument, and won off that- in the end, the judge said that he most likely would have voted my opponent down for running the bad evidence anyway, regardless of the theory debate. I think I agree with Aaron, but maybe 0 speaks is a bit extreme, maybe like 20-25 IMO. I would say that loss/low speaks is enough deterrent, 0 speaks seems slightly unnecessary.

I would say 0 speaks might be ok if the majority of the cards (or at least 3 or something) in their case are distorted, but otherwise just give a lot lower than average speaks.

[ankurm]

L and the minimum speaks that tab will allow me to give, presuming the opponent demonstrated that the manipulation was so egregious that the meaning of the card as presented was inconsistent with the original intent (deleting "not," for instance). I disagree here with Andrew - unethical behavior is probably the single worst thing a debater can do, short of committing some kind of felony in round, and ought to thus get a much tougher punishment than simple in-round incompetence does. Along these lines, I'm not totally sure yet but I think I'd vote on this without the opponent pointing it out, if I know for sure that the card is grossly misrepresented. I don't cut a lot of cards, though, so relying on my knowledge isn't very smart...

I like the reciprocity rule that Mr Timmons suggests to check against malicious overuse of this, but see a bit of a dilemma. I want to make the punishment for calling out someone who distorts evidence high enough that people don't abuse the mechanism, yet low enough that the chill effect doesn't allow distorted evidence to continue to get used. If the opponent knows the card is miscut but isn't sure how bad the miscutting is (say a "sometimes" or other qualifier is bracketed out), do we really want her to keep quiet? Is there an alternative way to handle this that better strikes this balance?

[JamesM]

Distorting evidence is strait up cheating. Always drop the debater.

[JonGordon]

Why is distorting evidence cheating but having other people write cases for you is not?

If what would generally be considered "plagiarism" is acceptable (as many people in the activity now seem to think) then why is distorting evidence not acceptable? What is the distinction?

[SStrausman]

Jon, I think you having an axe to grind is making you lose credibility. I agree with you on this particular issue. This is a post I made on VDB:

Also would like to point out that I don’t see a whole heap of difference in terms of “plagiarism” between kids from the same team running a case their team mate wrote, or teams running cases their coaches wrote, and someone copying a case off the case list and running it.

If someone can give me a good definition of plagiarism that includes the latter but doesn’t include the two former, I’d be much more likely to be all up in arms about this. It seems to me like our current norms are causing us to ignore the implications of the word “plagiarize” and I wonder if this discussion is one we really want to have if we intend to keep our norms as they currently are.

Anyway, congrats to all the debaters. Well run tournament to Ernie and Dave.

So you can see I'm not just trying to shut you up because I disagree with you, but the fact that you're continually bringing it up in pretty much every thread that's even tangentially related is doing your legitimate argument injustice. What you're talking is a legitimate point of concern for the debate community, but so is the topic being discussed in this thread, which you didn't even address. What would you do if you were in the back of the room and a debater was caught seriously misrepresenting evidence? By dragging this issue into threads where it doesn't belong, you are causing both it, and the legitimate issues being discussed in the threads you are, for lack of a better term, assaulting, you are doing both topics harm. Why don't you start your own thread on the topic, laying out your views, and encourage discussion on the topic where it will be the central issue? This seems like a much better way to reach your goals, which seem to me to be in the best interests of the debate community.

[Artem]

I don't have any problem with an automatic loss for egregious misrepresentation of evidence, as long as there exist clear community norms / tournament rules / paradigm warnings regarding this offense. As of now, there are several unclear issues, such as what exactly should be the punishment (L/20, L/0, disqualification), and what counts as egregious. If the community/tournament/judge makes a proactive effort to inform both debaters in the round of its exact stance on the issue, a severe punishment is warranted. Absent that, I would have to resort to relying on theory check, as it would be unfair and interventionalist to punish people without a warning.

I disagree with Mr. Timmons' suggestion that theory against evidence misrepresentation should be an all in position. Fine, it's a procedural argument, but so is any other theory, and that doesn't have to be all in, unless someone runs an RVI. I am not very sure what's so terrible about frivolous accusations - if they are factually wrong, they are just a waste of time for the person making them, and the accused should have an easy time refuting them. In addition, this rule discourages people from running legitimate accusations out of fear that they might be wrong.

I think a harder issue to resolve is whether the tournament should be allowed to go back and change the results after the ballot has been cast if the evidence misrepresentation is only discovered after the round (but still prior to breaks being announced).

[Andrew C]

unethical behavior is probably the single worst thing a debater can do, short of committing some kind of felony in round, and ought to thus get a much tougher punishment than simple in-round incompetence does.

Dude, I completely agree with you, but I just don't think that lining down a qualifier justifies L/0. Also, if I did something like "miscut" the resolution at the top of my case (for instance, R: The US ought to submit to an international court designed to prosecute crimes against humanity instead of also saying "to the jurisdiction of") that does not justify auto L/0, at least in my opinion.

I suppose L/0 for cutting out the word not would be ok, granted that it completely changes the meaning of the card.

I think the idea of general community norms is good. But also, I think that auto L/0 is fine as long as you mention it before the round or put it in your paradigm (or both).

Also, I remember reading something about this in a debate rulebook somewhere... possibly the California debate rulebook... but wherever it was, it mentioned a DQ for miscutting evidence- but there were a bunch of time constraints, i.e. it had to be proven 30 min after the round was over, etc.

[JonGordon]

Shane -

I think you're absolutely right. That said, I had the reaction I did because I think it's quite funny that many of the same people who write cases for their kids and/or kids who write cases that others have written for them think that's totally acceptable (and indeed in another thread someone argued that it isn't "plagiarism" or "cheating" because community norms accept the practice) have a visceral reaction to people distorting evidence. I don't understand why there needs to be discussion of whether it is okay for coaches to write cases for kids (rather than what to do to prevent it) but for distorting evidence it is assumed off the bat that it is unacceptable and the only question is how to address the issue. In most academic circles, plagiarism would inspire as visceral or perhaps an even more visceral reaction than distorting evidence/ someone's viewpoint/ a quotation. Therefore, I simply meant to question the assumption underlying some of our views/ community norms.

On the topic at hand though and in response to your question:

I think it's a very interesting question and one that doesn't have an all encompassing solution as there are many shades of gray. If it could be proven that a debater was distorting evidence and was doing so intentionally (very hard to prove) then I would absolutely be willing to intervene and vote against the debater. For example, the issue discussed above in which the debater removed the word "not" and other qualifying terms from the evidence that made the evidence pretty clearly/ obviously/ explicitly say exactly the opposite of what the debater claimed it said.

However, I would be hesitant to give judges the power to intervene and vote down a debater for several reasons:

1) The distortion may be unintentional. I once faced a very intelligent debater from a very good school at a very prestigious tournament. This particular debater qualified to TOC at least two years and possibly three and I think may have cleared at TOC. I faced her in a round and she had a card in her case from an author (it may even have been a philosopher) and claimed that it said one thing. I had that exact same card in my case on the other side of the resolution and had read the source and thus knew that the author and the card said exactly the opposite of what she claimed it said. However, I don't think that this would have been grounds to vote against her in this particular round because I think that it was a very honest mistake - I think she legitimately thought the card said what she claimed it said (most likely because she hadn't read the source that the card came from and/or misinterpreted the card or the source).

2) Judges may be mistaken. Just as a debater can unintentionally distort evidence as a result of not understanding the card or the source from which the card was cut, so too can judges. A judge may think that a debater is misrepresenting or distorting evidence based on the judge's own background knowledge or perhaps even based on arguments the judge has heard in previous rounds. The judge may however very well be mistaken - how many times have we all had a judge claim to know something with certainty and thought to ourselves that the judge was dead wrong (and in at least some of these instances been correct)? Thus, I would be hesitant to say that a judge can intervene and vote against a debater on the grounds that he/she thinks the debater is misrepresenting evidence. Just because the judge thinks the debater is misrepresenting or distorting evidence does not make it so.

Thus, in summation, if there is clear evidence that a debater is misrepresenting evidence and doing so intentionally I think that is legitimate reason to vote against the debater. There are certain rules that are necessary to preserve the integrity of the activity (for example, speech times) and violating these rules constitutes cheating. Personally, I think that misrepresenting/ distorting evidence intentionally counts as cheating (then again, I also think that having a coach write your cases for you is cheating). However, as with a coach writing cases for a student, I think that proving that a debater is misrepresenting/ distorting evidence intentionally is cheating.

I'd like to throw the ball back into your court and actually more importantly I'd be interested in hearing what Mr. Timmons has to say about this:

Do you think that it has to be egregious and/or intentional? Obviously, removing the word "not" and other qualifying terms qualifies as both egregious and intentional. Are there less egregious or unintentional instances in which you would be willing to intervene and vote against the debater? Also, does the other debater have to point it out?

[JamesM]

@ Jon

I think distortion refers to physically changing the text of the evidence to make it say something different. Its not really a matter of debaters or judges misinterpreting it. In a situation where a debater has changed words and phrases in a card to mean something else, they are cheating. This is different from sharing cases/using the same cases bc cases are written by debaters(whos opinions dont really matter in the first place hence why we have evidence to support our claims) and are technically the intellectual property of no one(whereas text from a publication is intellectual property which must be appropriately cited). Using an authors qualifications as a tool to win a debate while misrepresenting their actual claims is entirely different from sharing cases and is absolutely a form of cheating.

[SStrausman]

It's Shea, but thanks for responding in the way that you did.

Do you think that it has to be egregious and/or intentional? Obviously, removing the word "not" and other qualifying terms qualifies as both egregious and intentional. Are there less egregious or unintentional instances in which you would be willing to intervene and vote against the debater? Also, does the other debater have to point it out?

I think my position pretty clearly is that it's up to the debaters in round to explain to me what to do, and what not to do with the evidence. I think things like intentionality, as well as egregiousness are things which could very easily be discussed through the lens of a theory violation. I don't know that I have a hard or fast line for what is "too egregious," and like you're saying intentionality can be hard to prove, but if the other case can make the link, and win why I should vote off of it, I will. Obviously it gets easier to win the link and voters the more egregious and intentional the distortion.

As for the other responses, I suggested, I wouldn't need any threshold at all in order to extend the evidence to take out the argument, or drop the evidence, so long as it was obvious that it, in the first case, said the exact opposite, or in the latter was not what the author was saying in some way.

James, if you think that a case isn't intellectual property, then you're crazy.

[john lewis]

The issue of evidence distortion to me does not appropriately fit within the category of theory arguments. Evidence distortion involves third parties to either the round or the debate community (the original authors) as well as, in clear cut cases, violations of what I would think are inviolable rules. Running evidence from an author entails an obligation to represent that author's position accurately, or at the very least to not make them say things they didn't actually say (ie, adding nots, other words to evidence). Even if a debater was 100% winning an argument that evidence distortion was permissible, fair, educational, or that their distortion was not serious, I would not feel comfortable letting the infraction (if serious) go unpunished. Otherwise, it seems like we're okay with debaters running distorted evidence against novices and those who aren't very good at theory debate. The bottom line is that evidence distortion affects parties external to the debate--and we have a communal obligation to enforce academic norms.

However, I'm not entirely sold on the idea of judges taking it upon themselves to enforce the norm. If there is no other mechanism of community enforcement, then I think they have no other choice, and I would be comfortable giving the L/0. But it seems to me like a better system is allowing post-round challenges at tournaments, with retroactively forcing a loss as a possible punishment. Such a process would a. be a better forum for airing complaints of distorted evidence because both parties could make their case, the evidence could be reviewed more thoroughly, etc. and b. would standardize the process and prevent judges from erring one way or the other (i.e., if we take academic obligations seriously, then a judge not taking action against distorted evidence would seem problematic, but we also see things go the other way where a judge might incorrectly think the evidence is distorted). Post-round challenges seems like a much better system to me.

[Paul R. Dorasil]

There are four possible scenarios I can think of.

1. An opponent accuses a debater of egregiously misrepresenting evidence in round. I will read the card and evaluate the accuser's argument. If I agree that the evidence has been misrepresented - that is that the accused debater's interpretation is not a possible interpretation - then I vote the accused debater down with minimum speaks and I report the incident to the tab room. Alternatively, if I find that the accused debater's interpretation was one valid interpretation (not necessarily the best interpretation), then I vote down the accuser with min speaks and report the incident to the tab room.

2. A debater egregiously misrepresents evidence, but the opponent does not make an ethical charge. This could happen either by the opponent not catching the misrepresentation or by the debater refuting the card as being misrepresented without choosing to make it an ethical charge. In this situation, I will call for the card after the round. I will read it and confirm that it has been egregiously misrepresented. Then, I will drop the debater with min speaks and report the incident to the tab room. The opponent is not on the hook if I decide that the card was not misrepresented because he or she chose not to make an ethical charge. Keep in mind, I am putting my reputation on the line by making this sort of accusation. So, I would have to be incredibly sure of myself in order to do so.

In either scenario 1 or 2, anyone has the right to question the representation of evidence, even after the round or after the tournament. If a debater is found to have misrepresented evidence, then won rounds should be retroactively reversed and awards should be redistributed.

3. A debater misrepresents evidence, but not in an egregious way and the opponent responds as such. That is, a card is used to say X, when it does not say X but it says something close enough to X. This doesn't include leaving the word "not" out of a card or something like that. In this situation, I will disregard the constructive argument associated with the card and allow the opponent to gain offense if a turn is made based on the valid interpretation of the card. The misrepresenting debater will probably also get low speaks and probably lose.

4. A debater misrepresents evidence, but not in an egregious way and the opponent misses it. I will call for the card after the round. I will evaluate the arguments as they were delivered by the debaters. I will point out in my oral critique that the card doesn't quite say what it was represented as saying, but it is close enough to not be considered an ethical violation. Since the response was not made by the opponent, I don't consider it in the round. If the misrepresenting debater wins, it will be a low point win.


Oh, and I want to point out that I have never had to actually handle a situation like 1 or 2. I have seen 3 and 4 occasionally and I always assumed that misrepresentation was unintentional.

[Chad Dagii Henson]

I'm going to agree with AT & Paul, for the most part. Here's where I (might) disagree:

1. In Mr. Dorasil's first situation: If a debater claims evidence is distorted, the debater making that claim has the right to make it as an evidence take-out (where I disregard the distorted card and there need not be a voter), a theory argument (where all elements of a standard theory argument must be met), or an ethical violation (where I make the decision myself, up/down). Because sometimes claims in speeches are worded where they can be any of those three, I'll ask the debater making the argument if necessary. While an ethical charge is serious, it would be wrong for a debater to be put "all in" on this unintentionally. This has actually happened at least twice that I remember. One time, I resolved the challenge - against the debater who brought it. I had reported it to the tab room, and tab told me to resolve it as I thought best. I gave an L20 on a 20-30 scale. One time, the debater clarified that he did not wish to bring an ethical challenge - just challenge the use of the evidence. The debater won that the evidence should be interpreted differently, then lost the round on other issues. Once, one of my debates had an ethical challenge to their evidence brought. He won that the evidence was cut correctly, but was not awarded the win immediately. The judge then continued the round, which he won. I don't remember speaks.

2. In Mr. Dorasil's second situation: I've wrongly thought evidence was shadily cut enough times to be VERY hesitant to bring the issue up sua sponte. I think this is the best case for tab room challenges, like Mr. Lewis suggests. The judge should call for the card, adjudicate the round without taking the ethical violation into account (but giving the distorted evidence its proper weight given the distortion), then bring the challenge to the tab and suggest that s/he has reason to believe the evidence was distorted in violation of whatever community norm. The tab can let the judge make the decision, or make it themselves. Because the judge is basically the accuser, the judge also making the determination is a little problematic, and the tab room is a neutral party without any stake post-accusation.

3. In Mr. Dorasil's other scenarios: That's what competing arguments and speaker points are for. Obviously, a card that gets taken out because it doesn't say what the tag does gets no weight. Since there's only one constructive, and the argument with the mistagged card was effectively not made, that's sufficient punishment without anything worse than losing a couple speaks for being a big enough idiot to mistag your arguments. If you're lucky enough not to get caught, then disregarding the argument rewards debaters who don't spend time analyzing their opponents' evidence; just the speaker point penalty (and telling everyone in the judge's lounge about the crappy mistag) is sufficient.

[scott.robinson]

I too would be quite reluctant to unilaterally declare that an "ethics violation" displaces all of the other issues in the round. Only in the most egregious cases would this really be an issue - in part because I am quite open to challenges within traditional weighing paradigms to disregard or down-weight poorly cut/interpreted evidence.

Besides the obvious examples of leaving out a "not", I can think of another example that would qualify. Years back, a resolution was something along the lines of "globalization ought to be valued above national interest." One team ran a card wherein they replaced the term "many nations" with the resolutional term "globalization". This fundamentally changed the interpretation of the evidence and would be hard to claim as unintentional. This (along with other less nasty examples) confirmed my general distrust of any word substitutions in evidence.

The case discussed in another thread is a borderline case. Looking at the original source linked in the article would make me lean towards a stern talking to rather than a unilateral loss with low/no speaks.

I am intrigued by the suggestion of having some sort of appeal in tab. I am skeptical that these sorts of appeals are meaningful in most tourneys where the tab is a little busy to deal with this sort of stuff. I expect 90% of the time the answer will be "you figure it out." Is there a precedent for where tabs have acted consistently to resolve ethics accusations?

[ankurm]

unethical behavior is probably the single worst thing a debater can do, short of committing some kind of felony in round, and ought to thus get a much tougher punishment than simple in-round incompetence does.

Dude, I completely agree with you, but I just don't think that lining down a qualifier justifies L/0. Also, if I did something like "miscut" the resolution at the top of my case (for instance, R: The US ought to submit to an international court designed to prosecute crimes against humanity instead of also saying "to the jurisdiction of") that does not justify auto L/0, at least in my opinion.

I suppose L/0 for cutting out the word not would be ok, granted that it completely changes the meaning of the card.

Given that you're quoting from the part regarding egregious violations (like cutting out a "not"), and I later qualify that this is different from lining out a qualifier, we seem in total agreement. Good to know we're on the same page...there's some meta-joke to be made here about you misreading me on a thread about misrepresenting quotations, but I won't bother fleshing it out.

John's argument for why some academic norms ought to be inviolable is 100% correct. I'm not totally sure that tab checking is a smart idea, though - the ridiculous workload in that room already means that this process is unlikely to be as thorough as the judge's review, and I don't really see why anyone other than the judge, the debaters in the room, and the coach of the person committing the violation need to be involved in handling it.

[Jon Cruz]

I don't think the tab room should be responsible for mediating ethics disputes or overturning judge's decisions. I feel that authority rests solely in the hands of the tournament director (who, of course, could consult with the tab staff).

[john lewis]

I'm receptive to the argument that tab rooms (and tournament directors) simply do not have the time to conduct a thorough review. But if a judge failed to call a debater out in a case where the evidence is clearly falsified because they didn't want to be "that judge", would that be the end of it? It just seems to me like the importance we place on honest portrayals of evidence would justify another step or check in the process (especially if we're willing to contemplate a major revision like a caselist to provide accountability). Some judges are either inept or unwilling to perform their roles as educators--the reason why leaving things to the debaters, the coaches, and the judge seems insufficient to me. I also guarantee you that judges are going to be very unwilling to pull the trigger on distorted evidence from the big names from the big schools or their friends. So, my argument is that if people are hoping judges will take the initiative going forward in cases of evidence distortion, don't hold your breath. My suggestion--at tournaments large enough and well-equipped enough to do so, have an ombudsman who can handle issues of evidence distortion, or some other kind of review process. But again, not well versed enough in tab rooms to evaluate the feasibility of a given proposal; I'll leave that to others.