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Phil Plait|Bad Astronomy has made a retrospective post about the recent weblog awards business. Go click the link if you want to see what he said, I just want to express my annoyance with some of the commenters visiting from Climate Audit. In response to questions about why that site does not seem to tackle anti-anthropogenic global warming claims, several replied that it is far too easy to debunk those, they have no influence on policy anyway, and it is more important that people question consensus science.
While that is important (though what I have heard suggests their claims that such claims are not guiding policy is, well, untrue, or only recently true), a couple of these commenters inquired likewise how come Phil Plait writes posts debunking such easy and trivial things as Moon landing hoaxes, astrology and UFOlogy, rather than doing something more worthwhile with his time like trying to find errors in published scientific papers.
It seems to me there is quite a good reason for Phil to post on such topics: People still believe those things. Very, very many of them still believe in basically astronomical ideas and Phil Plait spends a lot of time trying to correct this misinformation. There are other people who attempt to find flaws in peer-reviewed astronomy research. We call them astronomers.
There is nothing wrong with someone blogging about astronomical papers in such a way, and I should be very interested to learn of someone who does such a thing, but that is not the motive behind Bad Astronomy and the site is not lacking for focussing on astronomy nearer to public consciousness.
While that is important (though what I have heard suggests their claims that such claims are not guiding policy is, well, untrue, or only recently true), a couple of these commenters inquired likewise how come Phil Plait writes posts debunking such easy and trivial things as Moon landing hoaxes, astrology and UFOlogy, rather than doing something more worthwhile with his time like trying to find errors in published scientific papers.
It seems to me there is quite a good reason for Phil to post on such topics: People still believe those things. Very, very many of them still believe in basically astronomical ideas and Phil Plait spends a lot of time trying to correct this misinformation. There are other people who attempt to find flaws in peer-reviewed astronomy research. We call them astronomers.
There is nothing wrong with someone blogging about astronomical papers in such a way, and I should be very interested to learn of someone who does such a thing, but that is not the motive behind Bad Astronomy and the site is not lacking for focussing on astronomy nearer to public consciousness.
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Date: 2007-11-11 19:58 (UTC)From:A lot of ppl, esp intellectuals and "hardcore fans" see themselves as the sole keepers of the subject/genre and take a "what do we care about the ignorant masses" approach or "they're so dumb that if they believe that/buy it, that's their problem". :\
The problem is left unchallenged, it becomes the de facto norm in our society and ppl start seeing sexism in comics, ignorant conspiracy theories, science as being ebil and tricksy, as stuff that might have merit or stuff that's true b/c if it wasn't it'd be challenged. :\
We need to stop underestimating ppl who aren't like "us", and realize that no matter how important or intelligent or "better" we think we are than the "masses", there are still more of them and ARE the public opinion which DOES affect us.
:]