I thought it would be a good idea to establish a thread on this subject.  Others are welcome to share their thoughts.  Here are a few differences to get things going:

 

1.  Scholars ask the simple, obvious, logical questions that others rarely do, while others often possess clear biases that seem to prevent them from asking such questions.  Here's an example: I was watching a cable TV news show, and the "anchor person" interviewed a Christian minister who said he wanted people to stop complaining for 21 days.  What questions does the scholar ask?

 

Some of my questions would be; 1. who decided to allow this person to have the "air time" to make such a demand?  2. who defines what a "complaint" is, as opposed to a need?  3. how could I get this "anchor person" to allow me to make a public demand?  4.  why was this person allowed to make his demand - is there a conflict of interest involved?

 

2.  Scholars address one issue at a time, rather than "going off on tangents," which is often done to confuse the issue.  In the example given above, notice that I did not address whether this demand has merit - that is a different issue.

 

3.  Scholars don't accept responses that are unacceptable, for whatever reason.  Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of PCR testing of genetic material has pointed out that he asked what experiments were done to demonstrate that "HIV" caused "AIDS," and the responses were unacceptable, to a scholar.  Examples of responses to this type of question are: "don't worry, everybody already knows that HIV causes AIDS," "that's ancient history - nobody cares about those old studies now," "they're around somewhere, but it's not worth your time and energy to look for them now," or "just cite any study that seems to suggest that HIV causes AIDS - that is good enough to pass any peer review situation."