[MR] re; please advise re: on-line abuse

[Gina Shelley]

It's a sad fact that the so-called "scientific community" has long been far more interested in being right than being accurate. 
 
Apologies to anyone in that field, but I imagine if you are in the field, then you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. 
 
I'd go so far to say that a large amount of the ignorance of our society about a great many things stems from this fact. The ignorance about, disregard for, and outright suppression of evidence that they might be wrong about something. The closemindedness is breathtaking. And considering what "researchers" and "scientist" are supposed to be about, unbelievably unethical.
 
I got the same thing years ago. And this is a tiny thing, really, but someone wrote to "Ask Marilyn" about an atmospheric phenomenon. Marilyn printed an answer that was vague, nebulous, and was basically a non-answer. She didn't know. So I fired off a quick email indentifying the thing. I was very nice about it. I should mention that I am a naturalist, and it's not like I didn't know what I was talking about. Besides, I'm going to double and triple check myself on something like that so I don't look like an idiot. 
 
She was less than receptive.  So in other words, she didn't know, but clearly wasn't interested in learning. People are like that sometimes. They're so afraid of being wrong they'll hold onto a wrong answer just so they won't have to accept that they don't know everything. Sad, really. I've seen stuff go to print with wrong info on it, just because someone would rather pay to run an error than admit that they made a mistake. 
 
Their loss, not ours. 
 
You do need to keep an eye on that guy. He's clearly got some issues. You want to make sure he's not doing anything with your email address that he ought not be. 
 
Dulcy
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