Monday, 10 February 2014
A Bombshell Lands in the History of Scientific Discovery
Yesterday I made my first foray into the history of science by announcing the discovery of the World's greatest science fraud. You can read my blog and the comments it received over on the Best Thinking Website: Here
Saturday, 8 February 2014
Discovery of the World's Greatest Science Fraud
After a year of solid research using hi-tech methods to discover the hidden books in the library, I have written a bombshell for the history of science. My forthcoming book
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Wikipedia is underpinned by pernicious self-serving policy of institutional stealth plagirism
Wikipedia is trying to improve its notorious reputation for unreliably
by deliberately plagiarizing my work, and that of other myth busters, under the
officially published Wikipedia 'master editor' policy that "experts are
scum". Read the shocking story here.
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Internet Dating for Academics Produces Some Very Disturbing Mismatches
Twenty First Century Knowledge Flux: The Impact of Internet Dating
as a Research Technique to Determine the Veracity of the Knowledge Claims
Regarding the Provenance of Words, Phrases and Concepts
Over the past few days
I used freely available internet search engine technology to bust two myths
that are credulously disseminated in numerous scholarly articles and books.
Both myths were universally believed to be veracious academic ‘knowledge’. In
effect, I used the internet simply to check whether the respective phrases
“moral panic” and “self fulfilling prophecy” really were coined by the esteemed
sociologists who are credited with coining them. They were not. You can read
the two short essays that prove this beyond doubt (see Sutton 2013a and 2013b).
As a result of this
research and its published results are on the Best Thinking web site, the phrase ‘internet
dating’ now has two meanings, as does its equivalent ‘online dating’ (1) to use
the internet to connect romantically with others - either solely online or else
with an aim to meet potential partners face-to-face or else (2) to use the
internet to check the veracity of claims made regarding the published
provenance of words, phrases and concepts by researching whether others have in
fact published earlier. As can be seen by these two inherent meanings of
‘internet dating’, the phrase is the concept. In this particular case the
concept is either social dating or else dating the age of published words and
phrases.
If the phrase is the
concept, at least the most basic concept, as it is in the case of ‘moral panic’
and ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ then new discoveries that phrases such as these
have an earlier provenance than purported by existing knowledge claims (see
Sutton 2013a; 2013b) will undoubtedly open up new avenues of research into the
work of previously neglected authors, events and themes. In the case of moral
panics, for example, the use of this phrase in 1831 to describe potential
problem escalation in the garrisoning of towns and cities during cholera epidemics
reveals a whole new area for scholars to examine. Given the predicted certainly
for a future flu pandemic this may be an extremely important discovery that
will enable us to learn from the past – or at least to reflect upon what we
have learned from it form a different perspective.
As more historical
documents are scanned and uploaded, the latest knowledge regarding the
provenance of words, phrases, concepts and the variety of concepts associated
with particular words and phrases will be extremely unstable and short-lived.
Interestingly,
internet dating as a veracity checking research method reveals that the phrase
“internet dating” was first coined at least as long ago as 1994 on page 51 of
Mindi Rudan’s book “Men the Handbook”, where it was used to explain the concept
of using networked computers to arrange to meet potential love partners.
Similarly, the internet dating method reveals that the term ‘online dating’ may
have been first published in 1995 by David Fox in the title of his book Love Bytes:
The Online Dating Handbook. However, this finding is
limited to books and documents that have been uploaded onto the Internet and it
may yet prove to be the case that these terms were in fact coined and/or
published earlier and perhaps by different people. Only time will tell.
References
Fox, D. (1995) Love Bytes: The Online Dating
Handbook. Waite Group.
Rudan, M. (1994) Men: the handbook Cool Hand
Communications.
Sutton, M. (2013a) The British Moral Panic
Creation Myth is Bust. Best Thinking.com:http:
Sutton, M (2013) The Merton Myth is Bust. Best
Thinking.com: http:
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
The Moral Panic Myth
Despite 45 years of claims made by British criminologists that they invented both the phrase and the concept of moral panic in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new research of the literature reveals that both have in fact been in use throughout the last 183 years in the USA and Europe.
Click here to see how I bust this criminology myth
Friday, 4 January 2013
Friday, 28 December 2012
On supermyths and the braced myth subtype
Supermyths, of which braced myths are a sub-type - are ironic unintended, or else a deliberate and disingenuous, consequences of fallacy dissemination. Supermyths have three very specific components:
1. the creation of a fallacy, myth or error by an orthodox expert
2. it being used by another expert who in turn promotes it as being ‘true’ and
3. whilst still thinking that it is true, promotes it as a good example of the need to be healthily sceptical of bad scholarship. Moreover, fourthly:
4. Braced myths are supermyths that have been pointedly deployed by orthodox scholars in order to bust another specific myth or fallacy. The braced myth hypothesis is that using one myth as a specific mythbusting device in this way braces the supermyth to make it further entrenched and therefore more difficult to prevent it being credulously disseminated as veracious knowledge.
1. the creation of a fallacy, myth or error by an orthodox expert
2. it being used by another expert who in turn promotes it as being ‘true’ and
3. whilst still thinking that it is true, promotes it as a good example of the need to be healthily sceptical of bad scholarship. Moreover, fourthly:
4. Braced myths are supermyths that have been pointedly deployed by orthodox scholars in order to bust another specific myth or fallacy. The braced myth hypothesis is that using one myth as a specific mythbusting device in this way braces the supermyth to make it further entrenched and therefore more difficult to prevent it being credulously disseminated as veracious knowledge.
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