On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Nick May wrote:
> As for the edited version, I suspect that the BBC is used to its readers
> (and audience) being generally sufficiently sophisticated, skeptical and
> alert to pick up on the sledgehammer caveats it entered.
I really doubt it. As I said, that explanation of how it works just reeks
of pseudo-scientific bullshit. If even the reporters (who presumably
are professional skeptics) didn't even take the time to verify things
a bit further, why would the general public be inclined to do so?
> Why do you assume that the reader is not sophisticated enough to have
> worked this out for themselves? And to have read it in the context of the
> other, more skeptical, quotes?
So what's the point in reporting this, then? If you are properly skeptical
of this statement, it's essentially providing no information, except that
someone believes something that may not have any factual support. That's
not news; people do that all the time.
> >Printing someone's statements without any sign of refutation implies to
> >me, and I suspect to most readers, that you have reasonable grounds to
> >believe that the statement is true.
>
> I expect journalists to at least report what people say - not necessarily
> attempt to refute them.
I guess that's the difference between you and me, then. I expect that,
if someone is saying something that looks fairly likely to be misleading
or untrue, the reporter should do additional research to try to determine
the truthfullness of the statement.
> I also expect them to seek expert opinion in
> matters of which they have no expertise and print that as well - which is
> what was done in the (edited) story.
It doesn't take an expert to ask the person making the statement just who
did the testing and where to get copies of the results of the tests. To
take his word for it that it was tested and that the results showed what
he claimed, when he's claiming results like that, is just silly.
I guess what I'm trying to say, in the end, is that this story is of
interest if the claims for the sticker have some reasonable chance of
being true. If there is little or no chance of that, the story is has
no interest at all. And the Beeb, this time around, didn't do the work
to see if this does have some reasonable chance of being true.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 3 5778 0123 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
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Received on Fri Oct 5 11:35:15 2001