here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Part of the problem is the obsession in the media with ‘balance’. It’s the feeling that they must appear to be neutral in all things, so as to be a trusted source of news. That works fine when you are talking about opinion pieces, moderate political parties and the like, but it fails when you are talking about the scientific consensus or the extreme fringes. In these situations, news organisations need to be prepared to make a judgement call. It’s actively harmful to present global warming as if there’s a meaningful scientific debate surrounding it. It’s harmful to reduce herd immunity by publishing scare stories around MMR based on one tiny study group. It’s one thing to debate a controversy, it’s another to create a controversy to debate.<\/p>\n
Simply being ridiculed and having their theories drawn into doubt by the majority of experts does not make that person an innovative genius.<\/p>\n
“They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Absolutely spot on piece in the Irish Times by John Gibbons. There’s no more need to give credence to someone who denies global warming or MMR without evidence, than to someone who denies the moon landings or Elvis’s death. Commentators thus feel free to \u201cpick a result from anywhere you like, and if it suits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAkBY-2Q","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":281,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=281","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":0},"title":"Daily links: 7th August 2009","author":"MattWPBS","date":"August 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Round up of short links from the last day. Glenn Feron - The Art Of Retouching - portfolio of before and after shots from his retouching. Or, as it appears you could call it - make-the-tits-biggering. Via this post at PhotoshopDisasters, which has an amazing example that appears to have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=141"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":559,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=559","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":1},"title":"Mix CD track listing","author":"MattWPBS","date":"October 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My friend Lucy organised a mix CD swap, and I figured I'd put the track listing on here, along with a bit about each song. Surfaris - Wipe-Out. Right, so this track's used in a chase scene in the film The Wanderers. It's kind of like a more cartoony version\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Records"","block_context":{"text":"Records","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=20"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":533,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=533","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":2},"title":"Cornered and Ironclad tour – Jonkoping to Stockholm","author":"MattWPBS","date":"September 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Day 5, J\u00f6nk\u00f6ping to Stockholm. Van fixing, night swimming. 74026740477421374217 So I was the first one up, woken up by the breakdown truck driver calling me from outside. Head off on my own, load the van onto the truck, and head to Skeppsbrons van garage in J\u00f6nk\u00f6ping itself. They don't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bands"","block_context":{"text":"Bands","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}