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

[Becky McEllistrem]

--- On Fri, 9/5/08, Gina Shelley <paintedwheel at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Gina Shelley <paintedwheel at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [MR] re;   please advise re: on-line abuse
> To: atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
> Date: Friday, September 5, 2008, 9:15 AM
> 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.
>  

  
> 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. 


I don't agree about the entire scientific community but I believe that there are some people who will just not see evidence because of some issue of their own.  There's a difference between a subjective comment like "you're too loud" and a factual comment like "this isn't knitting".  When they're still not listening to a factual comment that can be easily proven I discuss it once and then leave it alone.

Not sure what that is but it happens in the modern soapmaking community too.  People will be dead certain they're right about their process is the only right way when it's already been shown that there's more than one prcess.  I remind my customers that the internet is nice but in elists especially there can be as much misinformation as information.  They should always check their facts with first hand experience instead of depending on one person's opinion.  This is a logical approach for most of my customers who take it well.

Hopefully students reading misinformation on a web site will do their own research and find out for themselves what is fact and what is fiction but since talking directly to the speaker isn't working there isn't a whole lot we can do. 

Rebecca