On Sun, 26 Apr 2009, William Beaty wrote:
If any CF supporter should ever be even slightly dishonest, it's the most
disgusting thing imaginable, right? It damns the entire CF community! But if
a CF skeptic pulls the sort of dishonest ploy that Garwin does ...it means
that he's "only human."
Also, in the last few months I've noted several instances of people
excusing dishonest tactics with phrases like "scientists are just human."
Beware, since this is new example of a known dishonest tactic: spinning of
near-criminal acts by applying a label which subtly carries forgiveness.
It's very typical of verbal tricks used by the past presidential
administration too, no? To drive home the point, let me go overboard and
label the act of rape as: "boys will be boys." Or I could perhaps change
your opinion of a known murderer by saying "it's just his way?"
:)
If you don't realize that it's happening, the spinning of lies and
coverups is seductive, since we ourselves might be tempted to excuse even
the most dishonest of anti-CF bigotry as "just people people being human."
Hey Steve K, you say in
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/ColdFusionProblem.shtml
that "The cold fusion problem is not a science problem; it was, and
still is, a human problem." This phrase creeped me out when I read it
weeks ago, and only today I realized why.
When scientists try to cover their mistakes with dishonest tricks and spin
tactics, it might be wise to avoid describing the situation as a "human
problem," since it carries the suggestion: "it's OK, since they're only
human."
If the problem is with corrupt experts, with physicists being dishonest,
there must be some way to say just that. For the same reason, we'd never
describe a corrupt government by saying "it's not a government problem,
it's a human problem."
(((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 206-762-3818 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
