{"id":25721,"date":"2010-07-09T00:32:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T00:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/07\/09\/william-fooled-everyone-but-ch\/"},"modified":"2010-07-09T00:32:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T00:32:31","slug":"william-fooled-everyone-but-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/09\/william-fooled-everyone-but-ch\/","title":{"rendered":"William fooled everyone, but Chris Mooney is taking most of the blame."},"content":{"rendered":"

… As promised<\/a> …<\/p>\n

Chris Mooney is about to explain to<\/del> just posted a detailed explanation <\/a> (which I have not read yet) of his interaction with the famous William the Blogger of YNH, posed as “Tom Johnson.” He’s posted Part One of an explanation<\/a> of this infamous maneno, and we await Part II.<\/p>\n


\nEarlier, I had made some comments related to this issue (though prior to the posting of Part I) that people got mad at, and I’d like to clarify and expand on them now, prior to Chris’s second post, although what Chris posts in his anticipated Part II may bear on this.<\/p>\n

An oversimplified version of what happened is this: A commenter known as Tom Johnson noted that he had observed bad behavior among “new atheists” in an unlikely setting, behavior that is very much like what Chris and others in the “middle ground” (sometimes called accommodationists, but that is probably not the correct label) of this whole atheism\/religion\/science\/anti-science discussion might expect. This information would confirm what Chris had been saying all along about how so-called “New Atheists” were ruining it for everyone.<\/p>\n

Chris inspected the source of this information to some degree, and determined that it was valid.<\/p>\n

It turns out that one person was speaking “sockpuppet” on The Intersection Blog while all this was happening, and that one of those “sockpuppets” had an identity that emerged form the comments and became much more real-seeming and detailed Tom Johnson, the purveyor of the aforementioned evidence. Apparently, Chris accepted this person as real, but he wasn’t. Most importantly, the reported bad behavior by atheists was shown to have not happened at all.<\/p>\n

The relevant outcome here is that one of the few documentable cases of badly behaving atheists of this type was falsified. Another one had been earlier falsified when it was shown that commenters from my blog who had acted badly on the YNH blog were also just William’s made up sockpuppets. And it is undeniably true that Chris Mooney was left with egg on his face over this. And, when that happened, commenters moved in for their piece of the pie. And I’m sorry I mixed pie and egg in the same metaphor.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, I suggested that there were two important things going on in the ensuing pile-on:<\/p>\n

1) Some of the pile-on involved demanding of Chris that he attend to the comments on his blog, to weed out sockpuppets and such, in a way that I feel is unreasonable as a standard for any blogger. The fact that Chris is a journalist does not mean that he must be held to “Journalistic standards” in everything he does in life. As a blogger, I would prefer that no one be held to “journalistic standards” in relation to comments on blogs. Even journalists. Indeed, there are no Journalist standards for comments on blogs any more than there are journalistic standards for working out your grocery list.<\/p>\n

2) Chris’s failure during the course of his interaction with the faux commenter was a mistake from the get-go, but a somewhat understandable one. Confirmation bias is certainly a possibility here. Several members of the atheist activist community that is at odds with Mooney, including PZ Myers himself, have insisted that this can’t be confirmation bias because they saw the truth all along and were yelling the truth at Chris so he should have known.<\/p>\n

Sorry, but no. First of all, confirmation bias does not work that way. Confirmation bias is thinking you see a cat because you are looking for cats, but it turns out to be a dog. PZ and his associated in this matter knew it was a dog, but Chris was looking for cats.<\/p>\n

You can’t have concepts like confirmation bias in your skeptical toolkit and then ignore them when it suits you.<\/p>\n

Second, yes, some people today can claim that they were screaming at Chris to look out for this hoax. Maybe, maybe not. But, here’s the thing: There is no good reason why Chris Mooney or anyone else needs to pay much attention to a poorly behaved hoard of screaming banshees. Yes, yes, I know the argument. It’s been shouted at me a zillion times: If you’re right you’re right no matter how you say it. But in fact, while that may be true, it is simply NOT the case that you will be listened to<\/em> just because you scream loudly. One gets listened to by negotiating the process of communication, not by what amounts to a virtual victimization of selected targets.<\/p>\n

How badly was Chris taken? Should he have known better? I don’t know, and I don’t much care. If Chris was fooled by William, than he is one of hundreds who were. I’m glad the story of the evil atheists was shown to be false, and it helps to advance my own position … that we need a full spectrum of voices … to see the assertion of badly behaved atheists put forward then withdrawn. But that is all I need out of this. I don’t really need Mooney’s blood.<\/p>\n

There are several lessons to be learned here. Perhaps Mooney will talk about what he learned when he posts Part Deux. I’ve learned to be even more tenacious in my very firm statement that I will not accept post hoc rule making from obnoxious loud people when it comes to how I run my blog. The people who claim to have been shouting the truth at Mooney should be commended for being right. But they should also take note of the fact that most humans to not respond well to being pounded to get a point across. That may not be rational, but it is true. I would think the truth would matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… As promised … Chris Mooney is about to explain to just posted a detailed explanation (which I have not read yet) of his interaction with the famous William the Blogger of YNH, posed as “Tom Johnson.” He’s posted Part One of an explanation of this infamous maneno, and we await Part II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6GR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}