Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:50AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:50AM (#491122)

    In my opinion something is helping to propagate the spread of misinformation is the decision from mainstream sources to present only the prevalent view and label everything to the contrary as completely and unequivocally false. The reality is of course much more nuanced and there is a variety of evidence supporting even very outlandish claims. The point is instead of presenting this evidence and explaining why it may not be what it seems (or why it's less compelling than alternative views), mainstream sources pretend it does not exist and even go so far as to engage in ad hominem attacks against any who didn't immediately disregard such information - even when it can be quite compelling when presented in a vacuum. That presentation in a vacuum is of course disingenuous and misleading, yet it's exactly what we do with the prevalent and widely accepted views.

    Anyhow, the point of this is that when you present this lopsided view of things and people find evidence that is seemingly omitted entirely, they can perceive such omissions as evidence of conspiracy, malfeasance, or simple insecurity in their espoused views.

    I'm not suggesting we do what some organizations have done whereby you have an equal number of e.g. scientists who go agains the climate change consensus view and an equal number in favor of it, but rather there ought be some explanation for *why* the majority believe the way they do and why the minority feel the way they do - without judgement or prejudice. The evidence should speak for itself. I think this is the reason that "fake news" was one of the biggest PR backfires in recent history. It seems like that media reporting on issues has started to borrow from political rhetoric in that if they don't act like they are 100% certain beyond any doubt correct on a topic, that it will be seen as weakness. And that might be true, but being seen as 100% certain on anything is also a great way to be seen as fake.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:48PM (#491209)

    but rather there ought be some explanation for *why* the majority believe the way they do and why the minority feel the way they do - without judgement or prejudice.

    Ah, you want them to report the controversy! Forget reporting the facts, what matters is the existence of disagreement. All positions are equally valid.

    And that might be true, but being seen as 100% certain on anything is also a great way to be seen as fake.

    Yes, 99.9% of doctors believe smoking is bad for your health, so it is really important to cover why that 0.1% think otherwise. We must constantly spin our wheels relitigating the same debates over and over again because somewhere, someone, isn't convinced.