“We realized from this process that over the past almost 15 years, we
have basically allowed one person to suggest someone, and we kind of
relied on them to do a bunch of background research,” Tobin said.
“Normally we spend a little bit of time in our committee kind of
discussing and looking at these people, and because this person was
someone who was invited to fill in a gap, we didn’t go through
that.”
pretty good response. "We didn't cancel it because we didn't want to feed the IDW whining factory, but we did make sure to tell all the campus leftists."
> because this person was someone who was invited to fill in a gap, we didn’t go through that.
It's pretty cathartic to see them outright call Winegard a gap-filler too.
I don’t see how this is a failure? Every field is going to contain
some crackpots, and though 99% of the time they aren’t worth listening
to, it’s good to occasionally make the effort to invite a
crackpot to speak, have more serious scientists argue against the
crackpot’s ideas, and let the crackpot make a fool of himself – which is
exactly what happened here. Though of course I can imagine that the
committee feels embarrassed, not having intended to play Designated
Crackpot Debunkers this particular time.
> it's good to occasionally make the effort to invite a crackpot to speak, have more serious scientists argue against the crackpot's ideas, and let the crackpot make a fool of himself
What a stupid thing to think.
Aha the 'let trump run we will defeat him' hubris. Crackpots should be debunked yes imho but dont give them a stage. A lot of people will not think the fool on stage is really a fool.
This looks more like people were objecting in a Q&A session than having it actually structured as "debunking." It's like having a creationist give an hour-long talk and then giving a couple of evolutionary biologists get about 30 seconds response time at the end.
>have more serious scientists argue against the crackpot's ideas, and let the crackpot make a fool of himself --
When has this actually worked? Seriously, name one time this actually worked.
blessed post-mortem
spotted by the estimable @EvoPsychGoogle https://twitter.com/evopsychgoogle/status/1192787953879138305
I don’t see how this is a failure? Every field is going to contain some crackpots, and though 99% of the time they aren’t worth listening to, it’s good to occasionally make the effort to invite a crackpot to speak, have more serious scientists argue against the crackpot’s ideas, and let the crackpot make a fool of himself – which is exactly what happened here. Though of course I can imagine that the committee feels embarrassed, not having intended to play Designated Crackpot Debunkers this particular time.