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SOURCES_CONSIDERED

                                                           ~1993
The rules of thumb that many
people use to judge issues in               On July 7, 2007,
the absence of evidence are                 moved here from
faulty.  The formal principle
may be that the speech should                    THOUGHTSPACE
be judged, not the speaker,
but in practice, when you're            This is a problem that a
short on time (and we almost            global hypertext alone
always are) the rule is                 won't solve.
"consider the source".
                                          (Maybe "science courts" or
And I disagree with the way               "fact forums" would help).
people judge their sources.
For example, it's usually
assumed that you can't trust
a company spokesman.  If a
researcher has been funded by
someone with an interest at
stake, then they must be
corrupt, right?

On the other hand, an
independent, "altruistic"
source like Ralph Nader is             (Funny: in 2000 I
always trusted.  But I would	       voted for Nader for
argue that Ralph Nader is in	       Pres. Desperate times...)
the hysteria business.  The
more he can frighten people
the more money and power his
organization gets (and if you
want to be a little
charitable, the more able he
is to do the things he
believes needs doing).

An interesting detail: RJ
Reynolds is the classic
example of slimy corporate
liars, always citing research
results that "prove" that
cigarettes aren't so bad.  So
these researches must all
have been corrupted by their
source of funding right?  Not
really: I understand that
even Reynolds funded research
comes to the conclusion that       (But still: wouldn't it be
cigarettes are evil, the PR        the duty of the scientists
flacks just lie about the          involved to publicize their
results.                           results, to let everyone know
                                   that RJ Reynolds is
                                   misrepresenting their work?
                                   Why don't they?  There are
                                   degrees of corruption...)


Any way, one might conclude
that a university
Health-Physics department is         (A Samuel Floriman
a good place to find out             suggestion, if I
about nuclear energy, even if        remember correctly.)
both the utility companies
and the naderites are biased.


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