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posted by martyb on Saturday April 08 2017, @08:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the highly-illogical dept.

On April 6, William Shatner had a Twitter spat with noted physician Dr. David H. Gorski, founder of Science-Based Medicine, a blog which takes a sceptical and scientific look at controversial medical claims. A few days earlier Shatner made pleas to support Autism Speaks, a controversial group which has has been criticised for an approach which stigmatises autism, and for only recently changing its position from suggesting a link between vaccines and autism to accepting the overwhelming science that such a link does not exist (and they still don't seem to have unequivocally rejected anti-vaccine views). Many people attempted to call Shatner out on this, including Dr. Gorski, and Shatner responded by doubling down and responding with hit pieces on Dr. Gorski from dubious pseudoscience sites critical of him, such as TruthWiki, Newstarget, and NaturalNews. Slate has an article about the incident:

With that, millions of followers were treated to a hit piece about Gorski hosted by TruthWiki. It's hard to overstate the unreliability of TruthWiki, a haphazard collection of conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific nonsense riddled with typos and bizarre assertions. The exercise section, for instance, includes only two entries: "Natural Help for Diabetes" and "Deepak Chopra's Eye Exercises."

When Science-Based Medicine objected to Shatner's tweet, he posted another set of links discrediting Gorski, this time to the websites Newstarget (motto: "Obliterating Your Safe Spaces With Truth Bombs") and NaturalNews, which is run by Mike Adams, aka "the Health Ranger"—who also founded TruthWiki.

"All on Google," he added after them, as if that certified their authenticity.

NaturalNews is like TruthWiki but without the veneer of reliability: It's a cesspool of pseudo-scientific insanity seasoned generously with political vitriol and outlandish conspiracy theories. That's not biased journalism—it's the only way to report accurately on the site.

[...]Shatner is a celebrity, which means that he has outsized influence. That he would use his platform to lend credibility to such sites, spreading them to 2.5 million followers, could have terrible consequences. Shatner has made his support of vaccination very clear, but NaturalNews has tons of "articles" demonizing vaccinations—an example is a video titled "Vaccine Cannibalism Exposed." But there's an upside: The real-time tweeting of his thought process provides a helpful window into the practices of everyday intelligent people trying to figure out the truth. They Google, they find a few articles that confirm their biases, and they're done. No matter that the articles are on websites that spread virulent misinformation. What look like dead giveaways of quackery for some go completely unnoticed. This is instructive, even if it's frustrating.

It's unfortunate that Shatner is now on the receiving end of a lot of outrage because of a few misinformed tweets. At the same time, celebrities wield tremendous power, and to be cliché about it, that comes with some responsibility. I can only hope this will serve as a lesson to him and to others about the importance of applying information literacy before tweeting. Ideally, he would have perhaps recognized his misstep and deleted the problematic tweets instead of doubling down, but human pride is a powerful thing.

As for the rest of us, well, let's just say that a part of information literacy is realizing that just because someone is famous doesn't mean they have it.

Dr. Gorski himself (writing under the pseudonym Orac) has written of the affair from his perspective.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @08:44PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @08:44PM (#490957)

    He's a economist and actor. Not scientist. And well that shows when he tries to be one without doing the homework.. ;)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:19PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:19PM (#490973)

    And he's an 80+ year old man with his own opinion. I'm not going to fault him for supporting positions I may disagree with. I'm surprised that at that age he still wants to put up with mass outrage when a position may currently constitute wrong-think.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:31PM (#490979)

      It may stem from the same reason. He didn't think it through.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:24PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:24PM (#490992) Journal

      And he's an 80+ year old man with his own opinion....I'm surprised that at that age he still wants to put up with mass outrage when a position may currently constitute wrong-think.

      Trolling can be fun, quick and not terrible exhausting when you must fill your large amount of spare time with something.
      Just ask ethanol.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:30PM (#490994)

      His "opinions" just happen to be copy pasta from a bunch of crank websites. Yeah, a real deep thinking guy there. But I guess it's all 50-50, right? He's got an opinion, you've got an opinion. The truth is exactly in the middle.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:56PM (#491003)

        >His "opinions" just happen to be copy pasta from a bunch of crank websites.

        Just like your average Climate Change SJW!

    • (Score: 3, Disagree) by requerdanos on Saturday April 08 2017, @11:11PM (4 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 08 2017, @11:11PM (#491007) Journal

      And he's an 80+ year old man with his own opinion. I'm not going to fault him for supporting positions I may disagree with.

      Well, thing is, opinion isn't a valid reference nor defense here, and it's good to keep in mind that epidemics of almost-eradicated diseases and sick/dead kids arise from the dangerous anti-vaccine crusaders' nonsense.

      Kind of when they ask me at the wings place whether I want "traditional" or "boneless" wings and I explain to them that it is not "tradition" that causes a particular part of the chicken to be the wing. It's because when you kill a chicken and cut it up, lo and behold, that part is the wing.

      Opinion and tradition do not affect nomenclature or other aspects of reality in the way that you, Shatner, and the wings place may believe.

      This is why it is important that decisions be "science based". That's kind of a shorthand for "probably not completely erroneous" or "not just some idiot's opinion." Those who disagree with or oppose this observation may have opinions, sure, but probably not valid ones.

      • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:34AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:34AM (#491049)

        Kind of when they ask me at the wings place whether I want "traditional" or "boneless" wings and I explain to them that it is not "tradition" that causes a particular part of the chicken to be the wing. It's because when you kill a chicken and cut it up, lo and behold, that part is the wing.

        And they knowingly nod their heads at the old man who is too much of a dictionary pedant to realize that "traditional" refers to the preparation of the meat, not the origin of it.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:06PM (2 children)

          by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:06PM (#491161) Journal

          And they knowingly nod their heads at the old man who is too much of a dictionary pedant to realize that "traditional" refers to the preparation of the meat, not the origin of it.

          Yes, except that "boneless wings" [wisegeek.com] are chicken nuggets from the breast or rib of the chicken. You see, the restaurant industry [npr.org] (especially in the U.S.) uses the words "traditional" and "boneless" to refer to the origin of the meat, not its preparation. Saying that ribs and breasts are not wings is simply recognizing objective reality, and hardly pedantry.

          This is another example of what I was talking about above: Your opinion stated here, which contradicts facts, doesn't shape reality any more than those mentioned above do, yet you state it in a manner that seems fairly confident. A vast swath of mankind is affected by this problem--I don't think anyone is totally exempt.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:26PM (#491199)

            . You see, the restaurant industry (especially in the U.S.) uses the words "traditional" and "boneless" to refer to the origin of the meat, not its preparation.

            And buffalo wings aren't made out of buffaloes either.
            Big freaking deal.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:50AM

              by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:50AM (#492139)

              Buffalo wings have nothing to do with bison. They're named after the city of Buffalo, New York, where they were invented in 1964.