"Reality based community"
Those are words we rightly take seriously, when differentiating ourselves from the political right.
The American right, as we all, know, has descended into a cave of perpetual lies and removal from the pillars of enlightenment thinking, including acceptance of science and evidence-based evaluations and decisions. If the left loses our principles of acceptance of science and evidence-based evaluations and decisions, then nobody will be carrying that mantle, and civilization is not long for this world.
With that in mind, I am here to take the "Community Spotlight" of this prominent and important website to task for their enabling of precisely the opposite, by spotlighting diaries that make a mockery of evidence-based evaluations. I submit that a fix is needed, and propose a modest and easy one.
Are you fracking kidding me?
Like many people, I loaded up the site today to find this diary, Was The August 23rd Earthquake Man-made? at the top of the rec list.
The diary essentially used an outdated USGS estimate of the quake depth combined with some fuzzy Google Map imagery of the epicenter to conclude that illegal fracking caused the quake. This is, of course, in direct conflict with the canonical explanation of a standard earthquake which has been supported by the USGS.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong idle with speculation, necessarily, but the diarist among other things said this
The preponderance of evidence is in. There appears enough to "make an arrest".
which takes it out of the realm of idle speculation and directly into the realm of anti-science nuttery. The diarist has presented no credentials, but has concluded that "preponderance of evidence" supports a hypothesis that is based on interpreted Google Maps views of structures, and would require a cover-up on the part of a number of individuals, and, at a minimum, incompetence on the part of mainstream geologists.
This is disgraceful content for the rec list of one of America's most important liberal websites. But I note that this diary would have scrolled harmlessly off the list except it was "rescued" by the Community Spotlight.
The Learned Elders of Calvinism
This wasn't the Community Spotlight's first such mistake. Several months ago a diary was rescued which was nothing but utterly disproven speculation positing that the Scots-Irish people of America have a large component of Jewish ancestry and that converted Jews played a large role in the Reformation. In the comments the diarist then endorsed a notorious archiological hoax.
I wrote a rebuttal, and the decision to republish to the Community Spotlight was defended on the basis of 'esotericism', essentially that an average person should not be expected to distinguish between two conflicting hypotheses in a specialized area of knowledge.
Proposal
And therein lies a big problem. The Community Spotlight - and of course much of the community - is not applying, or perhaps misapplying, the adage that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
There is not much that can be done about this unfortunate lack of scientific literacy in a large number of general site users, other than persistent attempts at education. However, I think as a semi-official part of the site, the Community Spotlight can and should be held to a higher standard.
I therefore propose that before any diary containing a non-standard scientific or historical claim be rescued to the Community Spotlight, it should be required to be vetted by a practicing scientist or academic on the site. If a particular Community Spotlight volunteer does not have the background to distinguish between extraordinary claims and not in a given field, we have a whole bunch of people who can lend their expertise. We have users who are physicians, surgeons, physicists, chemists, geologists, anthropologists, historians, engineers, and so on, probably hundreds, meaning that at any given time, a number will be online. Why not make use of them?
The procedure would be simple. If a diary containing a non-standard scientific or other academic claim is a candidate for rescue, it should be signed off on by one of a group of users who have volunteered as practicing scientists and other academics.
3:29 PM PT: Update: Just to be clear, the members of Community Spotlight have stated that rescuing the first (Earthquake) diary was a mistake that was handled quickly. Which is good, but I still maintain that my proposal might help eliminate future similar situations, and situations like the second (pseudoarchiology) diary.
11:54 PM PT: Update 2: There are a small number of actual anti-science nutters posting in the comments here, flirting with denying the existence of an objective reality altogether. May I suggest their time would be better spent at this other website: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/...