Dangers of disinformation
Pseudoscience, misinformation and selective use of data: sadly all too common within the mainstream media, the blogosphere and also refereed journals. As this short article by Paul Reiter points out, "Scientists ask questions, formulate hypotheses, design experiments, look at the evidence, modify the hypotheses and probe further. Then activists, news media and politics take over."
One of the abiding challenges in evaluating ecomyths is the necessity for the individual to have both the knowledge and the confidence to resist the marketing push behind much of contemporary science. Within this challenge, the biggest obstacle is the refusal to admit that science is subject to marketing manipulation. Just because its printed, just because its published, just because a lot of experts say its so, doesn't make it so: doesn't automatically mean we should reject everything either -- but it does mean we should evaluate what we are being sold against our own experience and the existence of views to the contrary.
