Rupert Sheldrake has been whining everywhere, including on the BBC, that his Wikipedia page has been doctored by a group called the Guerrilla Skeptics (or rather, a branch called the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW), once again suggesting there’s a conspiracy to cover up his marvelous findings on morphic resonance and telepathy in dogs.
In a post a few days ago, I gave evidence debunking Sheldrake’s claims: the GSoW has never had anything to do with his page. Rather, Sheldrake’s supporters, who loaded the original page with his loony theories, were simply displaced by more sensible editors following to Wikipedia‘s own policies, which forbid presenting pseudoscience as if it were an equally valid alternative to mainstream science.
This was supported by “Julie,” a member of GSoW, who left this humorous comment after my post on Sheldrake:
I love the “we didn’t touch his page, even with our minds” bit.
The Beeb has promised to give a “balanced” response to Sheldrake’s rant on its airwaves, but I’m not aware that this has yet happened.
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Tedx, responding to criticisms of myself and others that they presented Sheldrake’s woo as “science” in one of their events, pulled the Sheldrake Tedx video off their site and put it in a separate place. They also promised me that they’d keep his Tedx video off of YouTube, as this was Tedx’s property and it was a copyright violation to repost it. They asked me specificially to report any YouTube violations to them. For a while I did report these violations, and finally the people at Tedx started getting angry at me for doing so. Apparently they’ve taken so much flak from Sheldrake supporters (a nasty and vociferous pack, to be sure) that they just decided to let the videos go viral. In other words, Tedx lied to me, failing to do what they promised. If you want to see the banned Sheldrake videos, just go to YouTube and search for “Rupert Sheldrake Science Delusion Tedx.” I’ve lost considerable respect for Tedx after this, as I consider them gutless.
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Meanwhile the “Beeb” has been criticized on another front besides giving undue airtime and credibility to pseudoscientists like Sheldrake. This time it involves climate-change denialism. An Oct. 1 article in the Guardian reports that, despite overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming, the BBC continues to present climate-change skeptics as credible experts. This is one of their misguided efforts (perhaps born of an ignorance of how science is done) to “let a hundred opinions blossom.”
First a bit of background. Two years ago, British geneticist Steve Jones, collaborating with a research group at Imperial College London, produced a comprehensive report on the Beeb’s coverage of science: “BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science” (free pdf at link). The main problems highlighted in the report were these:
1. An at times “over-rigid” (as Professor Jones describes it) application of the Editorial Guidelines on impartiality in relation to science coverage, which fails to take into account what he regards as the “non-contentious” nature of some stories and the need to avoid giving “undue attention to marginal opinion”. Professor Jones cites past coverage of claims about the safety of the MMR vaccine and more recent coverage of claims about the safety of GM crops and the existence of man made climate change as examples on this point. He suggests that achieving “equality of voice” may be resolved by the new 2010 Editorial Guidelines which incorporate consideration of “due weight” in relation to impartiality. A more common-sense approach to “due impartiality” would also help, he believes.
2. Underdeveloped links between science programme makers across the BBC’s divisions. This he recommends might in part be addressed by establishing a regular cross-division science forum and appointing a Science Editor for BBC News to work across a range of output.
3. Too narrow a range of sources for stories and a tendency to be reactive rather than proactive, particularly in news coverage. Professor Jones recommends that this might be remedied by better use of external electronic databases that draw from a wide variety of science publications. He further recommends working to improve – and share – BBC contacts with the science community.
Apparently the BBC took this report seriously and implemented several changes to deal with the report’s criticisms (n.b.: I haven’t read the full report, which is nearly 90 pages long). But, according to the Guardian, the Beeb recently failed when it came to covering the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a consortium of the world’s leading climate scientists. Last week the IPCC published its conclusions:
On Friday the IPCC, which represents the world’s leading climate scientists, produced a landmark report on the state of knowledge of global warming.
The IPCC said it was unequivocal that warming was occurring and that the dominant force behind it was human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.
The report, the first from the UN-convened body since 2007, and only the fifth since 1988, was the starkest warning yet of the dangers of climate change.
Apparently the BBC decided to give undue coverage to the skeptics:
But in the BBC’s coverage of the report’s release in Stockholm, which was attended by several BBC science journalists, the voice of climate-change sceptics, who do not accept the IPCC’s core findings, got considerable airtime.
Complaints focused on the World at One programme on Radio 4 on Friday, which featured the Australian sceptic Bob Carter. A retired geologist, he leads a group called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and is funded by US libertarians. His words also dominated several subsequent news bulletins.
Criticism immediately came from John Aston (the former top official on climate change in Britain’s Foreign Office), who said that the BBC’s coverage of the IPCC report was “a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC’s reputation has been built over generations.” He added: “The BBC should now explain how its decision to give a platform to Carter serves the public interest. Otherwise, it will be undermining its friends when it needs them most and throwing the scavengers a piece of its own flesh.”
Jones also chimed in:
The biologist Steve Jones, who reviewed the BBC’s science output in 2011, told the Guardian he was concerned that the BBC was still wedded to an idea of “false balance” in presenting climate sceptics alongside reputable scientists.
He said: “This goes to the heart of science reporting – you wouldn’t have a homeopath speaking alongside a brain surgeon for balance, as that would be absurd. It’s just as absurd to have a climate sceptic for balance against the work of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.”
And in this case, the BBC disregarded Jones’s recommendations. David Jordan, head of editorial standards of the BBC, told members of Parliament that Jones “made one recommendation that we did not take on board. He said we should regard climate change as settled. . . .we should not hear from dissenting voices on the science.” Jones denies this:
Jones told the Guardian that this was misquoting him; rather, he had recommended to the BBC not to show “false balance” by presenting climate sceptics as having equal scientific weight as mainstream climate researchers.
He said: “Science turns on evidence. Balance in science is not the same as balance in politics where politicians can have a voice however barmy their ideas are. They’re not taking this on board. Why, I don’t know.”
In response, the BBC defended its coverage:
The BBC responded: “[We] covered the IPCC report on climate change and its conclusions very fully on all outlets with analysis from our specialist journalists. The bulk of interviews on the subject were with climate scientists, many of whom had contributed to the IPCC report. We reject the suggestion that global warming sceptics were given too much time in our overall coverage of the IPCC report.
“As part of the BBC’s commitment to impartiality a small number of global warming sceptics were also interviewed. This is consistent with our response to the Jones report in which we said we would take care to reflect all viewpoints in the debate about the science and policy.”
But what does it mean to be “impartial”—to “reflect all viewpoints”—with respect to an overwhelming scientific consensus? When there’s a report on evolution, should the BBC present “a small number of creationists” to “reflect all viewpoints”? The consensus on anthropogenic global warming is now so strong that it is no longer “impartiality” to pretend that they have credible alternative views. When the BBC presents an article on medical advances, should they allow homeopaths to weigh in? What about astrologers when there are programs on psychology? After all, astrologers and their followers are numerous, and have an alternative theory of human behavior—it’s guided by the configuration of stars and planets when you were born.
I didn’t hear the BBC show, so I can’t weigh in personally. But there are so many critics of their coverage that one wonders if the Beeb (taking into account its sympathetic and erroneous portrayal of Rupert Sheldrake) has simply decided that the scientific issues are too hard for them to fathom.
But climate-change denialism is a far greater danger to our planet than is creationism. After all, creationism threatens science education in the U.S. and some countries in the Middle East. Global warming threatens the whole planet and all its species. Here the BBC has extra responsibility to get it right. The consequences of getting it wrong, and giving people false ideas about science, are extremely serious here.
The Beeb apparently didn’t get it right. As Ashton noted,
“In particular, the World At One on Friday provided a stunning display of false balance when it devoted less airtime to IPCC scientists than it did to Bob Carter, a sceptic who is funded by a free-market lobby group in the US, the Heartland Institute. Carter was allowed to make a number of inaccurate and misleading statements unchallenged.”
“In science, those viewpoints that are supported by robust reasoning and evidence are accorded greater weight, but the BBC does not always reflect this.
“Listeners to the World At One on Friday would not have gathered that there is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is driven by greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. More than 99% of journal papers and all major scientific organisations around the world are part of this consensus.”
As a scientist, 99% is good enough for me. Our ancestors probably developed extra wariness about weird noises and sounds in their environment, because the cost of getting it wrong, and thinking a predator was merely rustling leaves, was too high. The situation is identical with global warming. While the critics stall progress with their quibbling and pseudoscience, the earth is warming beyond repair. The global fitness will, like that of too complacent hominins, drop to zero.
The basic problem is that the BBC is run by and staffed by non-scientists. Most of them simply don’t understand science and so can’t make the right decisions on such issues, even if they try to.
The paradigm they are most used to is politics, where by game theory you tend to get two main political parties, each slightly to one side of the centre-ground of the electorate. Thus it makes sense to give both parties roughly equal time.
BBC presenters and journalists carry this over into their attitude towards science.
You’re right, the BBC is actually required to give balanced reporting of politics (correctly). The problem is non specialist editors carry this training into other areas. They probably know that the deniers are talking bollocks but they are so used to politicians not making any sense that feel they have to give them airtime.
They probably also believe that having a contrary view also makes for a more ‘interesting’ programme.
That last para is the core of their thinking. To a programme producer being interesting and successful is far more important than factual correctness. This behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated by a profit making concern, it is indefensible in a non profit making public organisation.
Yes, a ‘political mindset’ is one where you seek compromise, a happy middle point between the “extremes.” This is also the mindset of a Therapist: the focus isn’t on truth but utility. What works for one person may not work for another. Thus, all viewpoints should be presented so that people may pick and choose among them, discovering the one which fits their own needs.
My guess is that TV producers also have a tendency to think like Therapists, satisfying their audiences.
We wish.
I’m afraid the beeb situation is much worse. It’s getting more and more vulnerable to all sorts of criticism, and as a result it seems to be happy to accommodate views based solely on their own perception of how much damage they may suffer if they get criticised for not airing these views.
This is my perception based on what I’ve seen since before the financial crisis (when I moved to the UK), however, the evidence seem to back me up. See another BBC-trust funded report (by K. Wahl-Jorgensen et al) here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/breadth_opinion/content_analysis.pdf
and a digested version (M Berry, a co-author) here:
http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-biased-is-the-bbc-17028
A very depressing picture.
as a result it seems to be happy to accommodate views based solely on their own perception of how much damage they may suffer if they get criticised for not airing these views.
Which leads to serious problems, as the nut jobs are always better organized, and for whatever reason seem to have more free time. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”
The first paragraph in my post just above was supposed to be a block quote; apparently I used the wrong tags.
Another point of information for non-Brits is that nowadays the UK media and electorate are all focused on energy prices, and the effect of “hard-working families” being forced into “fuel poverty” by the recession and the greedy energy companies.
Thus the politicians are rapidly ditching any green agenda and concern for climate change, in favour of lower energy prices. And that seems to give license for the BBC to start questioning and doubting the science. [No, that doesn’t logically follow, but it’s how it works.]
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
That’s appalling behaviour by the Beeb. Their website used to display this idiotic false “balance” on the subject, and I used regularly to send them rants protesting about how misleading their coverage was: that by giving a false impression that there was significant scientific dissent on the subject they were essentially lying rather then engaging in honest journalism.
I was under the impression that it was because of me and thousands like me that they’d cleaned up their act in recent years. More likely, I now learn, it was because of those “new 2010 Editorial Guidelines” mentioned above. Whatever the case, clean up their act they did. It’s sad to learn of them slipping back into the old, dishonest ways.
Okay, I’m going to make an objection to this particular rhetorical device(once again.) I mean using alternative medicine as an easy and unproblematic example of an bit of nonsense which nobody would or does allow into a serious discussion on science or medicine — bringing it up as analogous to “believing in fairies.” We can always use something like homeopathy as a comparison without controversy because ‘everybody’ knows it is absurd.
No they don’t. It’s a freaking serious problem right now — in the media, in academics, in hospitals, and even in medical schools. CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) is routinely the subject of “balanced” stories which usually aren’t even balanced but heavily skewed towards the side of the believer. And the Integrative Medicine folks are making more and more inroads into integrating their views into mainstream science reporting.
I have no objection to comparing climate change denial to alternative medicine per se, of course. It’s actually a fair analogy on several fronts. But the rejection of CAM simply can’t be used as the success story where science-won-out. Those who do so are minimizing the current battle which is still being waged — and which on all too many fronts is being lost.
Agree. David Colquhoun (among others) has a lot to say about this issue in the UK. See, e.g.: http://www.dcscience.net/?p=6271
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Very true, although I am hard-pressed to think of any area where science has won out against the pseudoscience, nutters & conspiracy theorists sufficiently; and yet the erstwhile “controversy” is still one recognized or recollected by the average viewer / reader for the analogy to be understood.
Perhaps we all agree that the planet is more or less spherical now that The Flat Earthers have dwindled to a few cranks that nobody takes any notice of any more.
That’s about it. Almost everything else has its vocal band of crackpots denying reality with loud and joyful abandon.
Blood letting. I think that has died down too.
Well, in Poland (after all, a European country with a good education system) the practice of cupping remains rather popular, sometimes involving limited blood letting. Even many people who do not use it, because it’s messy and painful, still believe in its effectiveness. And I don’t mean just simple country folk, but urban dwellers with university degrees.
I agree with Grania that we should limit our examples of discredited pseudoscience to the flat Earth theory. The other day, while discussing nonsensical beliefs with a journalist (!), I tried invoking astrology and boy, did that misfire (“well, but you do believe that people born under different Zodiac signs exhibit specific psychological traits, don’t you?”).
I guess that’s why I phrased it as “died down”. It used to be accepted universally and applied in hospitals where now it is relegated to the fringes, even though people hold incorrect views that it works.
Another example in addition to flat earth is homunculi. I don’t think anyone holds to things concerning those little men, especially that they can be seen in sperm.
You have to be joking Diana. Belief in homunculi is one of the most widespread beliefs there is. It is just not recognised as such by the believers.
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Another, more widely relevant:
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I used the example of “fairies.” Yes, I do have friends who DO believe in fairies (or want to so much it’s rather indistinguishable) — but even they recognize that this one is pretty fringe.
Problem is, it’s so fringe the believers are invariably insulted by the comparison, as if we are calling them stupid. No. My friends are not stupid. But as far as the average viewer/reader is concerned, they are not right.
It is difficult to find crazy stuff that ‘everyone’ agrees is crazy that will be suitable for making comparisons with climate denial, for instance. One could take an alternative approach and emphasize the faultiness of the method being used in reporting science. My own favorite: Surely we can agree that conducting man-on-the-street interviews and reporting the “average view” is not the way to report on the population of Philadelphia.
What are fairies exactly? Ethereal young maidens with butterfly wings that fly around and grant wishes? Are they full human size or smaller?
Yes … and no. To both your questions.
From what I understand from my friends, when it comes to fairies — or, for that matter, any mythical, paranormal, pseudoscientific, mystical, religious, or spiritual statement — there is no right, no wrong, just different. This is nondualism in action.
So your question is ill-formed. You should never ask “what are fairies exactly?” You should instead ask “what are fairies … to you?”
Obviously, I need to learn the art of asking proper post-modernist questions.
For a start, they are faeries to me.
There has been interesting discussions over the last couple of years on CBC radio about the misinformation due to non-scientists reporting science. Cut backs and technology seem to be factors. If one has to mention the “one percent” it should be made clear that that is what they are. The question of what is “balanced” reporting is also a discussed issue here.
Yes, I think climate change reporting brought to light a lot of issues around what is “balanced reporting”. I had seen a turn around on a lot of reporting and had thought we had moved past this notion that there are two sides to every story and each of those sides have equal merit but apparently not.
What is going on with journalism? Are profits and ratings to blame?
Profit is an issue with the decrease in print purchases, which leads to specialist journalists, such as the science types, being laid off – or at least that was part of the discussion I heard. There was an interesting discussion over what is journalism when the first Rob Ford tape came out and it was just the word of the initial viewers saying the tape existed.
“But climate-change denialism is a far greater danger to our planet than is creationism.”
Agreed. As far as a comparative scale of risk, climate change overshadows everything else by quite a large margin. The only thing that might be worse is the discovery of a fairly large asteroid aimed at earth. This weighting is so far not reflected in any mainstream reporting I’ve seen.
I feel like a lot of science reporting is done by journalists who have only a tenuous grasp of the science they cover. So instead of evaluating things like the IPCC report and climate change denialist claims based on “does this make scientific sense”, they tend to rely on the opinions of experts (or those who claim to be). And when they don’t know which expert to believe they basically just repeat what both experts said. That’s how you end up with this kind of shoddy reporting.
This is really a situation that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, knowing what you’re talking about should be one of the first prerequisites for explaining it to someone else. Apparently in journalism it doesn’t work that way though. (Why?)
I feel like a lot of science reporting is done by journalists who have only a tenuous understanding of the science they cover, so instead of evaluating claims (like those made by climate change denialists) based on the evidence, they rely on experts (or those who claim to be) to do their thinking for them. When there are “experts” who disagree, not knowing who to believe they report what everybody says and say they are just being “balanced”. That’s how you end up with this kind of shoddy reporting.
This whole situation to me is bizarre because one of the first prerequisites for explaining something should be understanding it yourself. But in journalism it doesn’t seem to work that way. (Why?)
oops sub.
Perhaps the BBC is infected with postmodernism and lacks a belief in objective truth. Isn’t that a liberal thing?
Isn’t that a liberal thing?
The BBC isn’t liberal. In most areas it does a pretty damn’ good job of being unbiased.
Hmm, one can have doubts about that. It’s generally accepted that the BBC takes a more “liberal” line on many issues than the populace as a whole.
Critical reporting of government policy is usually from a more-left viewpoint, rather than from a more-right viewpoint (regardless of which party is in power).
For example, given any new government policy, the BBC will immediately seek out examples of people being disadvantaged by it, and turn it into a sympathetic human-interest story about those people, rather than reporting the overall effects of the policy or balancing good effects with bad ones.
Critical reporting of government policy is usually from a more-left viewpoint, rather than from a more-right viewpoint (regardless of which party is in power).
That’s because Blair turned the Labour Party into a party of the right. The last time the UK had a (slightly) left-of-centre government was under Harold Wilson, and the Beeb was witheringly critical of many of his efforts.
It’s generally accepted that the BBC takes a more “liberal” line on many issues than the populace as a whole.
Generally accepted by whom? It usually has a more educated viewpoint than many of the population, but that’s exactly as it should be.
For example, given any new government policy, the BBC will immediately seek out examples of people being disadvantaged by it, and turn it into a sympathetic human-interest story about those people, rather than reporting the overall effects of the policy or balancing good effects with bad ones.
That’s not a “liberal” thing: it’s standard tabloid journalism. I agree with you: the Beeb shouldn’t be doing it . . . unless as a component of its overall coverage.
As J. G. Ballard observed some years ago, tv news isn’t “news” it’s “news entertainment”.
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PS. Nice plug in your Gravatar, “John”. It’s already on my Christmas wish list.
Oh! I didn’t realize the gravatars did this. I’ve just been running my cursor over everyone else’s. What fun!
Stating that the UK has not had a left-of-centre government in the last 37 years is itself a very left-wing view, because it places the “centre line” well to the left of the electorate.
A review by the BBC Trust itself criticised the BBC for this. For example saying the BBC was “slow to give appropriate prominence to the growing weight of opinion opposing UK membership of the EU” and “The BBC was slow to reflect the weight of concern in the wider community about issues arising from immigration”. This is what they themselves are saying about themselves (lots of critics are more blunt).
Stating that the UK has not had a left-of-centre government in the last 37 years is itself a very left-wing view, because it places the “centre line” well to the left of the electorate.
Not at all. Just as in the US, most UK voters generally opt for what they perceive to be the lesser of two evils. Blair essentially gave the country a second conservative party, leaving the left to the supposedly centrist Lib-Dems . . . who enjoyed a substantial revival. (Of course, now the Lib-Dems have hopelessly compromised themselves, but that’s another story.) If the Beeb is generally to the left of right-of-centre governments, that’s hardly surprising.
To get back to the point: Generally speaking, I maintain that the Beeb does a pretty good job of giving an unbiased view of the news. Saying that this places it on the left or right of the political spectrum is to misread the word “unbiased”.
So by your placing of the centre-line, in the 3 Blair elections, 73.9%, 72.4% and 72.4% voted for right-of-centre parties.
Then by the above they are also left of most of the electorate.
So by your placing of the centre-line, in the 3 Blair elections, 73.9%, 72.4% and 72.4% voted for right-of-centre parties.
Yes: because they had little other realistic choice. Even if they voted locally for a lefty, that lefty had no choice but to end up serving under a rightwing administration. It’s not all that dreadfully hard to understand.
Then by the above they are also left of most of the electorate.
No: they’re to the left of many of the politicians who were elected: that’s quite a different thing.
And, to repeat: To relate “unbiased” to a position on the political spectrum is to misread the meaning of the word — to support, in fact, the very faux-balance in journalism that most of us bemoan.
They had the choice of the Lib Dems. And I disagree with what you say about “unbiased” in relation to the political spectrum.
Science is about factual truth, but politics is about opinion. To me an “unbiased” reporting of politics is indeed one that reports politics in rough proportion to the opinions of the electorate.
They had the choice of the Lib Dems.
Yes, but in most constituencies that was perceived as a wasted vote.
Incidentally, the high percentages you mentioned as voters for the two conservative parties are percentages of those who voted. They look less impressive when stated as percentages of the electorate as a whole.
Science is about factual truth, but politics is about opinion. To me an “unbiased” reporting of politics is indeed one that reports politics in rough proportion to the opinions of the electorate.
There we must agree to differ. (a) The news is far from entirely about politics. (b) Reporting of politics should be fact-based, not spin-based. Do you really think the reporting on a soccer match should reflect the relative sizes of the fan clubs of the two teams?
I agree that there is non-political news, but the suggestion of bias was specifically about political items. Yes, reporting should be fact based, but political reporting is also inevitably about opinions, and which facts to present is also an opinion-based choice.
And, the degree of reporting on a soccer match will quite definitely reflect the sum of the two teams’ fan base.
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Actually, no. The most ardent operational post-modernists these days are on the political right, and in fact the group under discussion, the climate change deniers, are a prime example. “Truth is whatever serves hegemony” should be their slogan.
“”Truth is whatever serves hegemony” should be their slogan.”
That may be what they do, but I don’t think that most of them believe that truth doesn’t exist. They’re just very highly motivated to perceive a particular point of view as truth.
They’re not post-modernists, as a rule.
“Global fitness” as in “average fitness” or as in some fuzzy “fitness of the globe (biosphere)”? Until we spawn another biosphere (on Mars, say), we won’t be at all fit in the latter generalized sense…
The Earth may be warming beyond the glacial era, but it has been there before. Recent news is that the PETM was actually faster! “New research published in 2013 indicates that in only 13 years 3000 gigatons of carbon were released, followed by a much faster rise in temperatures than previously thought.[2]” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum ]
“The PETM is accompanied by a mass extinction of 35-50% of benthic foraminifera (especially in deeper waters) over the course of ~1,000 years – the group suffering more than during the dinosaur-slaying K-T extinction. Contrarily, planktonic foraminifera diversified, and dinoflagellates bloomed. Success was also enjoyed by the mammals, who radiated profusely around this time.”
Beyond safety (check), beyond morality (check – the poor coast situated are already suffering unduly), beyond repair (check – at least within 1000 years and increasing time period), beyond reason (check – see above for a comparable change), but never beyond “repair”.
To be fair, trying to keep copyrighted videos off Youtube is like trying to bail out a boat with a colander during a monsoon. I don’t blame them for giving up on the effort, but I do blame them for complaining about you reporting the videos.
+1 for ea.
& +1 for the metaphor!
* simile (sorry)
A simile is a metaphor too so you were ok the first time.
Ah … not what I was taught. “like” → simile; otherwise “metaphor”.
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& The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms agrees with my teachers! 😉
I was taught that too and I think it’s wrong. A metaphor compares things (it means to carry over) and a simile compares things but it does so using “like” or “as” so it would seem to me that a simile is a subset of a metaphor. This page here references The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992) pp.653–55 & proclaims:
Well, I don’t think that’s right. Hyperbole need not be metaphorical.
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Perhaps but I still think simile is a type of metaphor given the definition of metaphor even though I was taught differently.
I was distracted by this all day & asked Ben Zimmer. Here is what he said:
Here is the link he also sent.
I wonder if I had read this years ago but forgot & it entered my subconscious but was lost from my conscious memory? 🙂
Anyway, glad that obsession has be excised!
Oh! Isn’t it dubious to cite Classical authors to settle the usage of words in modern English‽
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Only as dubious as using a Classical language to explain the English usage. Although, to be fair metaphors must work the same way, especially amongst Indo-European languages.
I’ve always understood that the difference is more substantive than merely noting the presence or absence of a comparison word (like/as) – although the presence or absence of those words serves as a diagnostic.
Similies are straightforward comparisons: this is like that, etc.
Metaphors are more poetic and perhaps more intense, dispensing with “like” to go straight for full-on equivalence.
Or at least that’s been my understanding.
“…full-on equivalence” is perhaps even better phrased as “full-on identity”.
Oops. Nested reply mishap.
Well, a metaphor is a lot like a similie.
(So is what I’ve written a metasimilie?)
Seeing as you can’t even spell the word, I hope you don’ mind if I ignore your contribution. 😀
D’oh.
That is how the French term indicating “continue to play what follows in the same manner” is spelled. I have been playing a lot of French music lately.
Good of you to point it out, Mr. Muphry.
Props for “metasimile,” though.
And I don’t imagine they’ve had much of a copyright concern before have they? They’re focus is on getting videos seen by the public for free.
They may not even have had staff or procedures in place for doing this.
So, I understand Jerry’s concern, but there’s a significant amount of work he’s asking them to do that they may see as fruitless and not having much value compared to other things they could be doing.
In related news, Deepak Chopra has been embarrassed by being personally involved in a frivolous claim against Wikipedia.
A user on Wikipedia had filed a conflict-of-interest complaint against another user who edits Chopra’s page. The claim had no substance and seemed intended only to harass.
Well it turns out the claimant was Chopra’s own researcher and copyeditor for 15 years, as shown by an email correspondence Chopra mistakenly posted on his website but quickly took down. So the only conflict of interest here was with the person accusing someone else of a conflict of interest.
Links:
Complaint at Wikipedia.
Deleted letter from Chopra showing the connection to his researcher and copyeditor, George Brown.
George Brown’s connection to Chopra.
That weaselly little turd.
When trying to figure out the motives of the journalists at the BBC, I think it helps to stretch the imagination beyond dichotomies like climate change/climate denialism; medicine/quackery; psychology/astrology.
Take the example of evolutionary theory. If the BBC had a biologist on a news broadcast talking about some aspect of evolution, they might decide out of ‘balance’ to include a creationist. What kind of creationist? A Christian creationist. Would they invite a Shintoist to talk about the deistic creation of the Japanese islands as a paradise for their people? Would they invite some neopagans to talk about the creation myth of the Poetic Edda? No.
We can be sure that the motivation for ‘balance’ is not driven by a desire to have a multiplicity of diverse opinions represented because the BBC will only give air-time to opinions it supposes meet a certain minimum level of currency in their mainly English-speaking audiences. From this, we can also conclude that their commitment is not to finding the truth through the pursuit of all lines of inquiry, or they would not exhibit such an obvious cultural bias.
It is my own supposition that this devotion to ‘balance’ is not a devotion to impartiality, but a devotion to antagonism. The set-up of climate scientist against climate denialist is not Alternative 1 versus Alternative 2, it is science versus anti-science. If you watch the news, or political broadcasts, or pretty much any non-fiction media besides documentary, if you count the times that someone seems to learn something or change their mind, you’re not likely to get past 0, and that’s because corporations like these work to stir up attention in their audiences by *avoiding* rational discourse, because that leads to resolution. What they want is the complete avoidance of resolution through ideological mud-slinging, because they can then ensure that the same stories can be covered in the same way again and again and again, and they can be sure that the same people will watch these same stories because they love their ritualistic affirmations of bias and complaints against people who disagree with them.
I don’t deny that the people who work at the BBC are also incompetent and do not sufficiently understand the scientific process in order to be able to cater for it differently than they do political debate, but the façade of balance hides an ulterior motive which is fundamentally anti-rationalism.
Incidentally, in the midst of all this Beeb-bashing I went to the BBC site and opened up the first two climate-change stories I found there. I found them both quite unexceptionable — in fact, both were good bits of science journalism. Maybe the furor over their coverage of the IPCC report has focused the attention a bit.
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I find the BBC, if anything, biased towards the theory of increased CO2 causing serious global warming – if that’s what’s meant by Climate Change.
“I’ve lost considerable respect for Tedx after this, as I consider them gutless.”
I don’t consider them gutless, so much as simply incompetent and greedy, allowing their brand to be diluted and hijacked, multiple times.
The gutless one is YouTube, for building in means to delete videos, as if history can be rewritten. Deletion is lying.
Just testing something. Please ignore me.
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It’d be a cat if you could get the lines to centre?
Try wrapping it in code or tt tags.
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Ur using &38;nbs;
Oops. I hope you get my drift.