BAUT bashing stupid reporters.

[Dragon Star]

Yea, I'm too opinionated to be that kind. :)

[Lonewulf]

Well, certainly Phil Plait can have his opinion, but why should he expect people to be any more respectful of his opinion than he is of Katie Couric's?

Never claimed that he should or shouldn't. As I said, I was just commenting on the idea of his opinion being "scientific", whether "bad scientific" or "good scientific". The idea that scientists must be machines that never make mistakes, or have silly opinions.

Well, one reason might be that he could offer good, solid evidence of the correctness of his statements and the falsity of hers. If he can't do that, then I don't see why he should have immunity from criticism of his opinions anymore than Katie Couric should.

Never said he should have immunity. I'm just surprised that people are surprised that he's expressing an opinion on a blog. Never said they shouldn't disagree (or dislike) his opinion, or that he didn't express his opinion in a rather silly way. But I'm a master of that, so why should I criticize?

Out of curiosity, KOS, what's your opinion on the matter of funding? Should NASA have the same amount of funding, more funding, less funding, or no funding from the U.S. Government? (Personally, I have mixed opinion; I'm beginning to become of the opinion that government funding ties up a program more than helping it...)

[Lonewulf]

Haven't been there for a while, have you? Yes, it is exactly his main website. Go ahead and visit http://www.badastronomy.com/ and you will find yourself right smack dab on the main page of his blog. The Katie Couric story has now fallen to Page 2, but on the 18th it would have been front and center.

Okay, so the blog is part of the website. Whoop-de-doo.

Why shouldn't it have any opinions in it, again? By what standards?

Let's put it this way: Did he promise that it would have no opinions in it whatsoever, only logical, objective facts? Did he ever promise to not have any personal influence in any of his posts?

By what standards are we going by that he can have no opinions? I've seen opinions all over his website; for instance, his opinion on astrology is that it's BS. Sure, he logically goes into why it's BS, but then he turns around and, as one of the premises of his argument, claims that it attacks critical thinking. Is there any scientific way you can *prove* that astrology is destructive to critical thinking? And if not, then wouldn't that make the premise more based on his personal opinion?

[Lonewulf]

Is Dr. Plait too fond of his growing popularity?

I'm of the theory that we all have opinions, and statistically, at least one of them will be seen as "sucking" by a large populace. The more popular you are, the more people view the opinions you express. Therefore, the more likely people will be saying that your opinion sucks (whether that large populace is right or not; in this case, it seems that there is a logical reason to claim that it sucks -- or at least, the way he expressed the opinion sucks. Or both).

[Lance]

Okay, so the blog is part of the website. Whoop-de-doo.

Why shouldn't it have any opinions in it, again? By what standards?

By the stated goals of the website that it is an educational resource used by school children. No one here is claiming Phil can't have what ever opinion he wants. But he expressed in a place it shouldn't have been expressed. And get over the fact that it was a blog for christ's sake. It is the root of badastronomy.com. What kind of software it is doesn't matter one little bit.

[Bill_Thompson]

Okay, so the blog is part of the website. Whoop-de-doo.

Why shouldn't it have any opinions in it, again? By what standards?

By the stated goals of the website that it is an educational resource used by school children...

Well, that is bullshit.

Plait is peddling calendars of naked women on his home page to show how sexy skeptics can be.

I think Plait wants to follow in Carl Sagan's footsteps.

In Carl Sagan's time, he (Sagan) got away with a lot of goofs, errors and missteps he made because no one had the popularity or celebrity status to call him on it. Basically, the public attention was not on his detractors. Sagan even resorted to making sure a professor would get fired who questioned the science of the optimistic views Sagan had for finding his extra-terrestrial friends.

We live in an age of blogs and web forums.

I think Plait and his moderators have goofed. He thinks no one has the testicular fortitude to call him on his mistakes.

One upsetting one to me is his bashing of people who think that science is atheistic (thus giving the anti-science nuts fuel for their argument). It is like the Muslims who say, “Behead anyone who says Islam is violent”. The biblical fundamentalists don’t know anything really about science. All they know is that they fear that atheism is being taught in school. Plait's merciless and viscous bashing of them adds fuel to their cause. And that is not good for science.

You attract more ants by honey than by vinegar.

My father and my brother were biblical fundamentalists and against evolution. It took patience and time but I convinced them that science is nothing to fear.

Another thing that bothers me is the politics of science. I was stunned that I had to do double work in the computer science department in college. If a professor was wrong, it wasn’t good enough to show him where he made a mistake (even if a computer program did the trick). I had to push things through the political system of the University. The course load was half the work. The other half was dealing with all the unfair biased politics. Plait is a professor. I sense he is cut from this sort of cloth.

If he and the kids that admire him find themselves loosing respect among their peers, then the internet age is truly advanced.

[Lance]

By the stated goals of the website that it is an educational resource used by school children...

Well, that is bullshit.

Plait is peddling calendars of naked women on his home page to show how sexy skeptics can be.

Yeah, good point. Both Phil and BadAstronomy.com have changed, and not for the better.

[Bill_Thompson]

By the stated goals of the website that it is an educational resource used by school children...

Well, that is bullshit.

Plait is peddling calendars of naked women on his home page to show how sexy skeptics can be.

Yeah, good point. Both Phil and BadAstronomy.com have changed, and not for the better.

I looked into that naked calendar thing. It is all for a good cause. But still, come-on, pretending to be all for kids?

There seems to be a male version with Plait and Randi participating. I am going to have to think about this and get back to you later. It isn't about astronomy anymore. It is about promoting their group of sketpics. That is fine. But it still isn't about astronomy anymore.

[Bill_Thompson]

I joined Randi's web forum.

Let’s see if they are really about logic, and critical thinking, or if underneath it all it really is only a club of buddies and they boot me for no good reason…again.

On his webforum FAQ page, Plait says "I am God, here". He is not god on Randi's site.

[Bill_Thompson]

As a banned member of BAUT it would be very easy for me to rip into Plait here for the hypocracy of posting something like this on his site (nice example to set for the kids who read it) but sometimes people don't think before they compose something .. or don't care. I think the BA would have been better served with making an attempt to address Couric on a more mature level or not at all instead of what went down.

Having said that, I think Thompson's bashing of the BA on this board is just more of the same old sour grapes for being banned over there.

Every time I hear that, I consider it and retrace my steps and concude it is not true. Software Engineers are detail oriented people. I am.

But, even if they had a wonderful and just and perfectly clear reason for doing what they did, they failed in not telling me. Their official resaon was NONE.

So, this is for them.