Therapy to swear by

Thanks to the astute reader who spotted this excellent piece 'On swearing versus thuggery: a statistical analysis' on the Scientific Misconduct blog:

I was interested in some of the responses I received. In the words of David Kern:
When you're in an argument with a thug, there are things much more important than civility. I do not like incivility. Yet, I like thugs even less.
My feeling is that our profession cares a great deal more about decorum and a sort of "pseudo-politeness" than we do about actions that are truly immoral, anti-science, and damaging to patients. Patients seem to care rather more about scientific honesty than we imagine. I have written previously of the quotation by the Irish priest Steve Gilhooley about the relation between decorum and thuggery. The quotation was delivered as part of a sermon on El Salvador. Gilhooley spoke passionately from the pulpit:
"I said to them, '70,000 people have been butchered and none of you gave a shit.'"

There was silence. A priest had sworn in the pulpit.

"And the reason I know none of you gave a shit," he continued, "was because none of you fell off your seat when I said '70,000 had been butchered', but nearly all of you fell off your seats when I said 'shit'."

Fucking brilliant.