heh. I like it. It’s probably right. It reminds me of witch-doctory type of goings on.

I usually pick up slang rather quickly and I made a fair guess at the word’s meaning from the context but I’m interested in the derivation.

I think basically, bullshit trying to be presented as proper science.

Just one question though – what does ‘woo’ mean?

I’ve seen it used on sites like Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science but I’ve not seen a proper definition.

And/or perhaps a “summary judgement” section right at the top that lays out the key points either above the fold or in the sidebar. People are hopefully going to use the site as a resource, but only if it’s eeasy to do so. With enough gravitas, journalists themselves will begin to refer to the site, and since you’ve already concluded that they are mostly lazy talentless hacks then making it easy for them to get an unbiased opinion on a topic they don’t understand (science particularly) might help raise the quality of journalism too.

I dunno about the article but its based on a 72 page defence of NOMA which, as usual, fails to address Dawkin’s argument regarding addressing the question of the existence of god in probabilistic terms, so I’d put the report under the Dr Phibes Award for bad science.

Hence the shortlisting and asking for links/evidence rather than just a list of the most popular nominations.

We’ll be looking, first and foremost, for outright lies, errors of material fact, fallacious arguments and the wholesale burning of strawmen as the criteria for shortlisting nominees, so its not going to be enough just to put people up because you disagree with their opinions.

Also, I’m slightly worried that this will descend into a “we don’t like these people’s opinions” exercise. Nobody has a monopoly on truth, even people who are right most of the time get it wrong every so often, and getting righteous about the rightness of one’s own opinions will, by the law of averages, lead to some mistaken crusades every now and then. Just something to bear in mind.

My problem is with the scaremongering reporting. 25% say it’s true, 25% thinks it’s probably true (which probably includes a lot of people who get how science works) and the other 50% includes a bunch of people who “were unsure, often mixing evolution, intelligent design and creationism together”.

In other words, 50% are fine with evolution, 12% think it’s wrong and 38% don’t know enough about it and would probably benefit from watching David’s brilliant explanation on t’telly this evening.

I was thinking as I booted up the PC that some sort of “Bad Surveys” site would be useful, I think it’d fit right in with what you’re planning anyway.

Can I go the whore of babylon…. so many whores…. so many…