We had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Stanton Friedman, and talking about his new book, Science Was Wrong
Download | Open Player in New Window
Social
-
-
Categories
- Daily Rants (587)
- BBC (22)
- Comics (95)
- Literature (74)
- Movies (80)
- Science Fiction/Science Fact (13)
- Technology (3)
- TV (115)
- Websites (28)
- Events (44)
- Fiction Friday (34)
- Podcast (446)
- Sitely News (28)
- Station Illustration (8)
- Trivia Contests (29)
- Daily Rants (587)
This guy is a looooooooooon. I wish I knew he was on, I would have listened live. I’ll be sure to listen to this today, I home Kriana rips him apart.
Actually, I found Mr. Friedman to be highly intelligent, articulate and skeptical based on our conversation. He was as, if not more, disdainful of quacks and frauds as I am.
On what do you base you “loon” assessment?
His UFO work.
I didn’t make it through the whole thing since I was driving around with other people. It’s true that he did do okay in some respects. I still have a problem with his UFO stuff, and now with his thoughts on global warming. He was talking about the “growing consensus” from scientists disagreeing with global warming. The problem being that this is coming from scientists are not climate scientists. The stuff about CO2 was crazy wrong. Yes, plants need CO2 to live, but there’s a balance. Digging up stuff that’s locked away (coal, oil, etc) is causing more CO2 to be let out than plants can take in. I’m sorry, I trust the experts on this. Even the guy that wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist changed his mind.
If ya listen to his interview, you just made his point. Its can become a series of unfortunate events when we “listen” to the “experts”. Not in every case, but in a significant amount of cases. He makes that point in the interview and in his book quite well. I came away from this interview very impressed.
I’ve recently become a huge fan of Massimo Pigliucci after meeting him at TAM8. He mentions what you’re saying briefly, in that people can be “scientistic”. But he also makes the point that specialized is very important to fully understand the research.
One thing that came up in your show was that doctor that figured out having bloody aprons was a bad idea. If the hospital had a clue they would have done experiments and tested the guys hypothesis. I bet you anything to that there’s more to the story. I’m sure that he had his allies, but that it was a business/political reason that the guy was forced out and not a scientific one and you yourself even made this point. It’s not the science that failed, it’s the politics that caused the change to fail.
More than a few people have pointed this out to me with Dawkins and his upcoming children’s book. He’s so locked in to what he thinks that he’s not consulting child psychologists. This is a failure of Dawkins and not science or the scientific method, the fact that scientists are pointing out his flaw is science working the way it should.
Finally, the other problem is false balance. It’s amazing that Stanton gets this when it comes to vaccines, but not when it comes to global warming. How can the fringe 1% of doctors that believe vaccines are not worth it be thrown out, but the fringe 1% of scientists that think global warming isn’t happening be listened to and are right?
It’s not just experts, but the combination of expertise and consensus. See “Project Steve” for an example of this – http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfAzaDyae-k is good
Being articulate and well spoken is no guard against holding ludicrous ideas. Just look at the average megachurch preacher. Totally batshit crazy, yet thousands hang on every word.
Just because something isn’t readily apparent as to what it is, is no reason to assume it’s some extraterrestrial craft inhabited by non-human intelligent beings. Even as a USAF pilot with a Top Secret Yankee White, and Cogint Figure clearance, I have still mistakenly identified objects in the sky. No one is immune from the frailties of the human mind. Some are just more frail and susceptible than others apparently….
Thanks, and you’re absolutely correct. The “U” in UFO stands for unidentified, not extra-terrestrial. It is indeed a lively discussion.
Oh thanks Larian… I was a shoe in to win the book being as the only one not on the show posting..
Doh! That will teach you to share a link with me mate!
And you are absolutely correct about what the U really stands. Too bad most of the population are unable to identify even simple everyday objects in the sky. 😉