Science or dogma at the National Geographic Society?

Watts Up with That? ^ | March 13, 2015 | By Michel de Rougemont

[Brad from Tennessee]

I just finished reading the article « The age of disbelief » in the March edition of the National Geographic.

It is one of the most a-scientific articles about science that I ever could read.

Joel Achenbach, the author, pretends that sceptics have no place in the scientific debates because of their incompetence, their prejudices, their doubts in science, and, last but not least, their alienation to powerful lobbies, as for example the fossil fuel industry in climate matters.

First he makes a nice amalgam between deniers, as for example opponents to vaccine or flat earth believers, and sceptics. He may not have ever tried to learn what a sceptic is looking for, what are the motives of not being satisfied with generally accepted beliefs.

Then he looks for an authority, which we should all obey, that settles the scientific truth, or at least the correct way toward this truth. Here he demonstrates his inability to conceive that such authority cannot exist. Scientific societies can laugh about such pretension, well knowing how chaotic their progresses are. Only IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not a scientific but a governmental institution created in 1988) and its followers have that arrogance. . .

[Kenny Bunk]

Spell-Check is your friend, Tex. it's

Turd World

[MeshugeMikey]

AND THEN THERES THE NEW HILLARY MOVIE! NO TITLE YET!

[left that other site]

LOL!

I’m a woman, but as a little girl i was still fascinated by those (ahem) pictures!

I found the ones from Borneo and New Guinea particularly fascinating! LOL!

[sasquatch]

About 20 yrs back I had the opportunity to ‘help’ one of the premier (sp?) underwater photographers for Nat’l Geo.
He arrived in Monterey, CA and had forgotten his dive mask which had optical corrections ground into the faceplate.
He derided me since I couldn’t produce a replacement source within hours. Probably the most arrogant person I’ve ever met. His initials are Emory Kristof.

[Kenny Bunk]

but as a little girl i was still fascinated by those (ahem) pictures!

Another of life's little mysteries solved. I always wondered what my 3 sisters were always giggling about every time the old NG showed up.

[MeshugeMikey]

DID HE THINK YOU WERE an Underwater Optometrist???

some people.

I just took a brief look at some of his photographs. and was left pretty unimpressed.

an accquaintance...was a few years ago bragging about knowing somebody who had a photo published by N.G....

I wasnt that impressed with his stuff either.

[Darksheare]

“The postman always texts twice”

[MeshugeMikey]

“Email Pigs in Space”?

[left that other site]

girls are different than guys, but we are not quite dead! We’re just restin’. Pining for the fiords, as it were.

[Colinsky]

I dumped my subscription to [Formerly] Scientific American

I was quite sad about SciAm descending into propagandism after growing up reading it since elementary school, beginning around the time Martin Gardner started his "Mathematical Games" column in 1956.

But by the mid-90s it was just too painful to try to not only have to skip the propaganda but also to see that it was suppressing items that were being covered on the Internet. If the Internet evidence did not meet SciAm's bias, it didn't get covered.

[TXnMA]

KB, I was deliberately being subtly ambiguous...

(BTW, are you familiar wih the editing term, "[stet]"?)

[Darksheare]

“Escherades”

[MeshugeMikey]

Very “EDGEY”!

[Darksheare]

The fractal files.
A detective noir tale similar to Rockford Files, only featuring the never ending cesspit of hillarydom.
Looks the same at all magnifications.

[PeteB570]

I got the National Geographic Magazine for over thirty years.

The few years every article of every issue had “Global Warming” in it somewhere.

Stopped renewing and have been NatGeo free for about 5 years now.

[Elsie]

I’d taken Scientific American for 30 years; until it, too; slipped into the Liberal morass.

[Elsie]

GMTA!

[Elsie]

You'd think that whoever has their money tied up in that rag would look back to the successful days when it genuinely fostered scientific curiosity and endeavor -- as in its "Amateur Scientist" column.

AMEN!

[bkopto]

Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and National Geographic. Told me all I needed to know.

Are you sure that he didn't have, also, a copy of Scientific American hiding in there, somewhere?

[Elsie]

About the time this guys smarmy smirk started appearing on the once noble pages...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rennie_(editor)

http://storycollider.org/podcast/2014-09-26