Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

When blogs throw words like “science” and “skeptic” around… (Sharyl Attkisson edition)

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Attkisson is a genuine investigative journalist, harassed by authoritarian government in an age of cosseted government media hacks, poseurs, and vapid cheerleaders for “science.”

Further to kairosfocus’ Sharyl Attkisson (in a TEDx) cautions on Astroturfing and pseudo-consensus: This also seemed worth calling out as astroturf:

A close third is an array of blogs that use words such as “science” and “skeptic” in their titles or propaganda in an attempt to portray an image of neutrality and logic when they are often fighting established science and serving pro-pharmaceutical industry agendas.

Or, we would add, attempting to strangle sciences that seek to move beyond the dead ends in which they themselves comfortably burrow.

For an antidote to that last, see, for example, Time to be skeptical about skeptics, Set science free, and Manifesto for a post-materialist science. Also, anything by Suzan Mazur And Rupert Sheldrake responds to Darwinian naturalist Daniel Dennett (“First of all, I do think that the selfish gene is an exceedingly misleading metaphor.”)

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Comments
News, sadly, the blogosphere is highly vulnerable to astroturfing and the like. So is Wikipedia, which she singled out. KFkairosfocus
March 3, 2015
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