Inti
Senior Member.
I think that Mick and the others who have contributed have created a superb resource for rational and critical thinking in Metabunk and Contrailscience. It is also a terrific read. And I like the emphasis on politeness and confronting instances of bunk rather than doing combat with the individual purveyor. I think this is both a more effective way to win people – especially lurkers – over and it’s ethically the right way, too. Some of the less constructive would-be skeptic sites often give an impression that many members simply enjoy kicking intellectual sand in the faces of 9-stone weaklings. Not so here.
I’d like to ask Mick and the other regulars whether you believe it might be useful to provide some of the key arguments in another form alongside (not instead of) the existing sites. I’ll talk about chemtrails as an obvious starting point, but other stuff about CTs might follow.
The existing Metabunk format works well for addressing specific claims, but perhaps it would be useful to have parallel resources in a way that’s more quickly accessible to sceptical researcher and newbies in the debate, as I was in the chemtrails area earlier this year.
I’m thinking about two possible forms of presentation;
First, an outline of the key claims, with a brief statement of the key debunking point in summary, linked to levels of increasing detail and replies to chemtrailers’ objections
Second, a taxonomy of common arguments and their debunkings, rather like the lists of climate deniers’ claims at Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
or the index of creationist claims at talk.Origins.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/
I know that there is the left-hand FAQ list at Contrail science, but because it’s evolved over time, I’d say it isn’t really structured according to either the “narrative” of chemtrail debunking or presenting the most basic arguments. in a structured, accessible way.
What do you think? Would it be worth thinking about, and worth the time as a project alongside Metabunk?
I hope I’ve posted this in the best place; please move it if not.
I’d like to ask Mick and the other regulars whether you believe it might be useful to provide some of the key arguments in another form alongside (not instead of) the existing sites. I’ll talk about chemtrails as an obvious starting point, but other stuff about CTs might follow.
The existing Metabunk format works well for addressing specific claims, but perhaps it would be useful to have parallel resources in a way that’s more quickly accessible to sceptical researcher and newbies in the debate, as I was in the chemtrails area earlier this year.
I’m thinking about two possible forms of presentation;
First, an outline of the key claims, with a brief statement of the key debunking point in summary, linked to levels of increasing detail and replies to chemtrailers’ objections
Second, a taxonomy of common arguments and their debunkings, rather like the lists of climate deniers’ claims at Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
or the index of creationist claims at talk.Origins.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/
I know that there is the left-hand FAQ list at Contrail science, but because it’s evolved over time, I’d say it isn’t really structured according to either the “narrative” of chemtrail debunking or presenting the most basic arguments. in a structured, accessible way.
What do you think? Would it be worth thinking about, and worth the time as a project alongside Metabunk?
I hope I’ve posted this in the best place; please move it if not.