Comments on: In praise of chaotic puerile disseminated investigative journalism

By: wayscj

wayscj — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:25:42 +0000

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By: brainduck

brainduck — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:04:14 +0000

Apologies for having to be annoyingly pedantic on that, it’s just that Dore have tried several times to accuse me of having been told to do the blog for coursework / paid, which exposes my lecturers / uni dept to hassle from Dore’s legal flamethrowers

Anyway, apologies for legally-forced annoyingness. At least this is one area where bloggers win over just about any other format. The blog’s all mine, I don’t need anyone’s permission for it. Dore can’t sue me into shutting up, I have no money for them to take, and they can’t stop anything going straight back up

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:46:01 +0000

incidentally how to improve MSM is something i’ve been thinking about a lot, more to follow and hoping to recruit more thinkers in a month or two for a project.

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:44:26 +0000

not your dissertation: noted.

this is a thing with speaking off the cuff, and in the unspoken rules of engagement you’ll note, i hope, that i’ve deliberately (i think) never gone pedantic / anal on anoyone’s spontaneous spoken utterances, unscripted radio appearances etc, as i think it’s ok to flake on details occasionally there. unless it’s not details obviously. in which case fine. anyway thnks for correction.

By: brainduck

brainduck — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:30:17 +0000

To clarify – Dore wasn’t ‘part of my dissertation’, got mentioned in passing during an ‘alternative approaches’ lecture as part of an Ed Psych course. Blog was entirely on my own, the profs didn’t find out ’till Ben wrote it up in the Guardian and put two and two together.

Having been subjected to all sorts of daft ‘miracle cures’ for dyspraxia as a Duckling, I regard knowing how to debunk as basic self-defence. If Dore are daft enough to go after SpLD, they can expect obsessive relentless nitpicking in return (not unrelated to my actual dissertation topic).

For all Reynold’s blustering it was this MSM TV programme rather than bloggers which really did for Dore financially: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1994872.htm – the administrator’s reports showed takings down in Australia by ~50% after that. They even put up full-text research: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1997868.htm
Hooray, MSM are not *all* stupid. Now, how to improve them?
Rather fantastically

By: brainduck

brainduck — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:52:42 +0000

Puerile? Thanks!

Oddly enough, one reason I started looking at Dore was ‘cos they’d tried to sue a few of my lecturers for explaining that the research wasn’t all it was being sold as.
Streisand effect strikes again…

By: benv

benv — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Brilliant, as ever, Ben. It even drew laughs from my Dad, who is particularly hard to amuse.

By: Wikidd

Wikidd — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:07:01 +0000

Ben, you owe me a new monitor. I just spurted vodka all over this one due to taking a swig at the moment you told the story about how people were emailing in to that dore radio show pointing out they were about to go under!

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:53:07 +0000

Ben was at a blogging event, everybody’s got his number (Round The Horne 1965, BBC)

By: Pro-reason

Pro-reason — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:51:13 +0000

It was noticeable that the bald guy was getting all the great body language from Heather until Ben started talking and turned on the wacky charisma. He should get her number.

Some great public speaking from Ben as usual!

By: gimpyblog

gimpyblog — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:09:22 +0000

Thanks for the completely unjustified namecheck. Brainduck did the bulk of the work on Dore. Interesting point about the obsessiveness on detail that other people just don't care about. Since you've outed me as a molecular biologist I suppose I should explain the similarities between my professional work and my blogging hobby. The nature of my work is that I have to become obsessive about the fine details, at the level of molecular interactions, of certain pathways in a biological system that is only of real interest in my field. My research progresses by the accumulation of tiny detail and working out how these details function together in forming pathways of molecular machines. The blogging is orthologous to this process, but perhaps easiser because detail can be found with less effort because of transparency in government and accounting. Nature is often less amenable to scrutiny. Anyway thought you were the most coherent speaker in that clip, although you overstate the power of blogging and understate your role in the Dore story - it's hard to expand your audience without the help of journalists. The silly woman confusing dubious pseudo-bloggers the TaxPayersAlliance manipulating government stats for political means with empirical reasoning represents adangerous strand of investigative journalism though. She neatly encapsulates journalists aims of embaressing people or getting the bold headline through a manipulation of statistics (not that government don't do the same - but two wrongs don't make a right). PS Nice use of Big Quacka.

By: Dr Jim

Dr Jim — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:26:21 +0000

This is absolutely right. The cumulative efforts of numerous obsessively interested parties, aiming to understand, document and get to the bottom of “big quackery” (great term by the way) is possibly the best approach that can be taken. It is a united approach, which gives it added value to the wider public, and by acting in an Ant-like unison, helps keep the information in the public domain and prevent any one person from being bullied by the lawyers of Big Quackery.

In fact, it all sounds like another discipline we all know and love; the way we go about researching science.

p.s. this seemed like a pretty informal gathering; what was with all the walking around in the audience throughout?

By: spititout

spititout — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:55:55 +0000

Egad Ben, when are you going to splash out on a decent tank top?

Excellent piece, though. Shame Jenni B didn’t have enough confidence in her stance to take part.

Loved your book. You really ARE the man! We all owe you a great deal for the stuff you do.

Sorry for the rather “speak your branes” comment.

By: CDavis

CDavis — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:12:00 +0000

That was splendid, BG. Rich, funny and very informative.

You’re getting bloody good at this. I look forward to your TED début.

By: biggerpills

biggerpills — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:04:09 +0000

Interesting points by Phil Booth of NO2ID on “action that gets big numbers… media coverage, and action that has effect”. Followed on nicely from the points on media coverage vs blog posts on DORE.

By: The Biologista

The Biologista — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:51:44 +0000

Good talk and an excellent point. I think we’re living in a time where significant parts of the traditional media are still struggling to understand this vast immortal hivemind that we’re all becoming a part of. Until they do, we’re going to see many more Streisand Effect Events. Which should be tremendous fun.