A few weeks ago, I was attracted to an article turned up by one of my Google Alerts. This article link has been sitting in my “Things to Write About” folder. That is until today.
On March 8, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle posted an article titled “Anti-corporate vs. Anti-government Anger: Who to Trust?,” written by Dr. Jim Taylor, a psychologist and author. The first line of this article reads: “This post is not a partisan polemic intended to attack those who hold different views than I.” I smiled when I read that line because when someone prefaces an article in this manner, a polemic is often what that article turns out to be. Polemic it is. And Dr. Jim puts forth his opinion. That’s fine. I don’t happen to agree with his opinion, to which he is most certainly entitled. But his opinion is not to what I object. What I object to in this particular article is the way he constructs the argument and presents the information that expresses his opinion. He constructs his argument and presents information in a way that not only contradicts his own views, but also in a way that generates and propagates unsupported meme, which can damage the “reality” that we must all share. Let me explain.
In a recent Guardian article entitled “The Trouble with Trusting Complex Science,” an apparently self-avowed anti-corporatist writer (“despite my iconoclastic, anti-corporate instincts . . .” (a quote from the 10th paragraph of the article cited)) George Monbiot, discusses the frustration of dealing in facts when debating the climate change controversy. He describes how efforts to convince climate change disbelievers are often frustrated in spite of the facts presented. As a fan of facts, I can feel George’s frustration, although he and I may be on opposite sides of the climate change issue.
But the issue of climate change aside, what I want to comment on is his belief in truth and facts to make an argument. He and I are in sync on that and if you read this blog regularly you will understand what I mean.
From the theme of his article, it appears that George is very interested in the proper portrayal of reality, but yet he lets that reality take a bit of a walk in the third paragraph of an article that discusses journalistic integrity. In referring to journalistic castigations of climate scientists as an “attack on climate scientists” and as a “widening to an all-out war on science,” George makes a bit of an attack himself. Not on climate scientists, mind you, but he makes an attack on reality. He says in the third paragraph:
Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world.
Just so you know and I understand, I had to look up “anoraks.” We here in the U.S. would call that a parka. But that, of course, isn’t what troubles me.
What troubles me is that for an apparent champion of the truth, George makes a blanket, unsupported statement about the paucity of science degrees held by journalists and does so without reference to a source. He pins his argument, that climate change science is being “poo-pooed” by unqualified persons, on a statement that is itself unqualified, and without demonstrating that those opponents themselves are unqualified. And this is a key point in his overall argument. Sure, if it was just a passing comment, I would understand the passage not being sourced. But it’s not a passing comment. His article turns on this passage.
How do I know? How do I know if there is or isn’t a paucity of science degrees in major media companies and/or in their news rooms? Is the reader to take as true, and on trust, what George says about the lack of science degrees in the news room?
The proliferation of science degrees in the news room isn’t what’s important here in this post. What’s important is the proper representation of reality and the integrity of a valid argument. As a reader, if
Continue reading How About Some Facts to Support Some Facts?
While recently reviewing the Friends of the Earth US (FOE) website, I saw that they introduced a new genetic engineering policy campaigner named Eric Hoffman. Congratulations to Mr. Hoffman. Perhaps at a future time, he and I can have some interesting discussions on issues of mutual concern. But I hope that those future discussions would be based upon better writing than that which I found in connection with Mr. Hoffman’s employment announcement.
As part of the FOE US introduction of Mr. Hoffman, FOE used the following lead-in passage:
Friends of the Earth is a fierce advocate of scientific progress, but corporations often seek profit from scientific developments with little regard for human health. We must take precaution (sic) to ensure new technologies don’t do more harm than good.
Now, I’ll put aside the minor spelling error in their second sentence. I’ll also put aside the fact that there was no date on this post, which is really just a “bush league” error when it comes to Website writing and management. Instead of those small errors, I’ll just concentrate on the meaning of the passage itself.
This approach of playing the “anti-corporate card” gets a bit wearisome, and is plainly just bad argumentation. The anti-corporate card to which I refer is the phrase, “corporations often seek profit from scientific development with little regard for human health.” Let’s take this phrase apart to see how it represents poor argumentation on the part of FOE and only weakens any argument that they are trying to make.
“Corporations often seek profit.” Yes. Okay, I can go along with that part. That is the function of a corporation, to seek a profit in its activities, many of which are directed at scientific developments. Thankfully they do that. Without profits, no one would ever get a merit raise in pay. And without scientific developments, people would be dropping dead from what are now, as compared to the past, “easily-cured” illnesses or from complications arising out of minor injuries. Now, let’s move on to the next part of the phrase and talk about “with little regard for human health.”
This part of the phrase conjures up a picture of research & development departments operated by zany, madcap scientists who indiscriminately toss new products out the door without adequately testing them, or at least without testing them to the satisfaction of government regulators within the jurisdictions in which their corporations do business. In my career, I’ve known many R&D personnel, and have found them to be painfully cautious and responsible personalities, almost to the point, perhaps, of being too cautious. I’ve yet to meet one who I would consider as either a businessperson or scientist with “little regard for human health.” If, indeed, these individuals, and the corporations for which they worked, “often” acted as portrayed by this phrase, their mad scientist-like lack of “regard for human health” would produce deadly products quickly killing thousands, drawing the ire of the marketplace, causing the corporation to lose revenue quickly, putting the
Continue reading FOE Plays Anti-Corporate Card
Here’s a link to a really great resource about guarding against what I call sociological hacking. Others call it social engineering, not the kind that the government tries to foist upon us, but the kind that hackers employ to get through the weakest defense of a computer network, the human mind.
The European Network & Information Security Agency has produced a great overview of the problem that presents itself in social networks: people masquerading as others to get into your friend or professional network. Well, you may be thinking, “So what? What harm could that do to me?” Probably nothing if you kept your virtual mouth shut. But that’s not what social networks are about, are they? SNs are about opening up and advising your friends and co-workers on you status, latest thoughts, latest activities, future activities, business trips, interactions with that guy or gal in the next cube, etc.
If there is someone in your network who’s not really who they claim to be, you might just be giving them juicy tidbits that they might be able to leverage against you. Like what? Well, like your birthdate for one. Put that little tidbit together with other personal info that’s even easier to surf and voila you might just have yourself a nasty case of identity theft. Or perhaps you like to update all on your travel status, taking a business trip here or there, or some personal time at some other location. In certain circumstances, giving us that TMI is like putting a sign on your house saying, “Hey all you Nasties out there, there’s no one home here.” A little, or perhaps a lot, of discretion should be practiced.
Well, anyway, check out the link and you’ll get a better picture of what I mean.
Is it possible to be too connected.
Absolutely.
A recent article entitled “The Twitter Pandemic” played on the current news about the swine flu being so popular. In the article, the author talks about how sometime (or maybe much of the time) sensationalism is used by tweeters to gain attention for their tweet and for any connected blog post or web site. Sensationalism? How about the title of the article that discusses that? The article is titled the “Twitter Pandemic,” written about two days after the mainstream news hyped the heck out of the swine flu.
This kind of writing, or tweeting because when you come down to it tweeting really isn’t writing, sensationalism that is, is nothing new. It’s been around since the days of “yellow journalism” perfected in the late 19th century. But now this writing style is in the hands of people using it without supervision. Not necessarily children, they often are, but folks who write and, by extension of this writing style, act like children. People writing with no fear of liability or recrimination. And as their connectedness increases, our sense of reality fades, leaving us to cut through the sensationalism to find reality.
All for the sake of being “connected.”
I recently completed my first month of no TV news. And I’m still feeling great.
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