How Do You Separate the Information From the Disinformation?
October 13, 2011
A healthy dose of skepticism is always beneficial. From Scienceblogs.com comes a post by Orac entitled, “The architects of a ‘disinformation campaign’ against homeopathy are revealed.”
In this entry, Orac critiques a recently published Huffington Post article, “Dana Ullman: Disinformation on Homeopathy.” His main problem lies in the author’s reliance on ad hominem fallacies to take the place of a logical argument.
Orac goes back and forth quoting Ullman’s article and throwing jabs at it in addition to homeopathy:
[S]cientific experiments are designed primarily to falsify, not to prove, hypotheses. That’s where Ullman gets it wrong. He wants an experiment to “prove” homeopathy…If homeopathy can stand up to such hypothesis testing, then that’s an indication that the hypotheses that represent the central concepts of homeopathy might have some validity. They didn’t.
Our position is to remain cynical of anything without empirical evidence. A disinformation campaign seems like it would fall under the category of things I’d question.
The problem with searching for definitive answers on topics such as this, especially in the arena of science, is that non-biased research and reports are hard to come by.
Megan Feil, October 13, 2011
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