16.02.07
Misrepresented
I hate it when I’m misrepresented. Andrew Collins has a blog which I read avidly as I like his writing. Recently he put a post up that has attracted lots of comment. Basically he was slagging Ben Goldacre off for slagging Gillian McKeith off.
Cue lots of people disagreeing and stating why they think it’s important that charlatans shouldn’t be allowed to get away with charlatanism. Where you lie with this argument is neither here nor there as far as this post is concerned.
Someone posted a comment that seemed perfectly rational talking about how people should look for the evidence for themselves and make their own minds up.
This is where I commented. My point was that you should do this but you mustn’t assume that all opinions are equally valid. I harked back to a post I’ve written before re MMR and decision making re whether to take it or not.
Andrew’s response to my comment was to say that I was disagreeing with the comment that people should take a look at the evidence and then make their minds up. I really wasn’t at all so wrote back and explained a little further.
Take flight for instance. You want to build a flying machine you consult someone who’s spent time learning and researching what works and what doesn’t and ask them. You don’t seek out and listen to those people who think flying machines can’t work because they’re “unnatural”. In other words their points of view are not equally valid. That’s the point I was making. You can’t dismiss science because “they don’t know everything”. “They” do know a hell of a lot though. And plenty more re nutrition and medicine than homeopaths, and magic potion salesmen.
More to the point these charlatans can be dangerous. Note John Diamond’s notes when he was dying of cancer that these creeps crawl out of the woodwork to sell miracle cures for cancer just when you’re at your lowest with the chemo. So not simply deluded.
He hasn’t printed my response (although to be fair he’s had a lot of response so I’m not overly surprised). So that leaves me apparently “disagreeing” with a perfectly sensible and innocuous statement.
OOOeeeerrrr! I hate being misrepresented. ’sprobably my own fault for not being clearer but that’s my problem as writer.
Have fun.