Joe Newman
Active Member
What exactly your point is.
Is it: "I think people should avoid using the word "debunked", because the meaning is unclear, and often varies by individual"?
No, but I do think it's bad form to start a post by lableling it "Debunked:____," as that seems presumptuous and misapplied.
I see a post labeled Debunked: Bruce Lipton and the Biology of Belief. That's quite the claim, but 79 posts and I don't recall seeing much of anything even investigated, let alone a person having been "debunked." And now, because the guy's been "debunked" on the basis of little actual investigation, he joins the ever lengthening list of stuff that's suspect and probably not worth investigating. That seems odd to me.
Then there's the People Debunked subgroup. Anyone who lands there is now suspect as a rule, so any time any info comes from that person, it's automatically downgraded because that person has been "debunked."
I've already seen this stuff happening and it seems counterproductive unless the idea is to identify the teams so that folks know who to dismiss out of hand and who is accepted as "one of us."
I saw a post asking about whether something was pseudoscience. The first question [Mick] asked who its proponents were. Someone said X, who worked in a completely different field. That led to someone saying that it was therefore suspect. Someone else then said that after a cursory glance it appeared to be pseudoscience. Which led to someone else saying they were perfectly happy to wait for science to confirm or deny it. Then the thread died.
I thought that was weird, given that the model being asked about would have major ramifications about the way the universe works. Still, because it was tagged as being connected to an unsavory debunkedee and was challenging the orthodox view, the curiosity level was nil.
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