It seems that, no matter how well-established a phenomenon is, you can find someone out there who will deny it. For example, I just ran some search terms through Google: I searched for the phrase “X is a hoax”, and compared the number of hits I got when X is a hoax to when it is some well-established phenomenon. For example, there are apparently about 38,000 people willing to assert that AIDS is a hoax. It’s not a perfect method, but it’s obvious that People On The Internet Are Wrong. A lot.
Search results for the phrase “X is a hoax”, where X is some well-established phenomenon like global warming, or an actual hoax, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The actual hoaxes are a bit behind.
But does it really matter if people on the internet believe weird things? It might nt, but weird beliefs don’t stay on the internet, and can impact public policy debate. Since climate change showed up on the political radar, contrarians have been telling congress that it’s not real, or that it’s not a problem. And now that ocean acidification has appeared, contrarians have appeared in congress to deny and trivialize it as well.
One such person is Dr. John Everett, who this spring appeared before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The testimony he presented dismisses concerns about acidification (HTML PDF). However, though he introduces himself as a scientist, he is only able to make the claims he does by systematically distorting and misrepresenting the science of geochemistry.
I encourage you to read his testimony. Over the next few posts, I’m going to be taking a critical look at what Everett has to say. Does it actually stand up to scrutiny?
Via Facebook:
Lee: Interesting that the Protocols — an actual hoax — are such an outlier. Did you try it with 9/11?
Lee: Also I wonder what the ratii are, i.e. “X is a hoax”/”X”.
Me: yeah, it may have been that the phrase was so long and specific that there are few people saying those exact words – but then again it might also be that people don’t bother stating things that are accepted as true. The ratios would also be interesting though I was looking for absolute numbers more.
Me: 9/11 gives 12.9k
I got curious and plotted the ratios:
http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h428/csoeder/acidification/weirdbeliefs.png
red are actual hoaxes (Protocols, ClimateGate, Piltdown, Cottington fairies, Feejee mermaid). Blue are real (aids, evolution, global warming, holocaust, moon landing, bp spill, 9/11)
The axis is a negative log. Bigger numbers mean smaller ratios between “X is a hoax” and “X”.
It does appear that the actual hoaxes are somewhat behind.
Embarassingly, I can not recreate the 10 hits for “ClimateGate is a Hoax”, although my site shows up as hit #3.
control for frequency of those search terms!
As in, compare hits for “X is a hoax” to hits for “X”? That would be a more complete way of doing it, certainly (a friend commented IRL that he was rather impressed with himself for remembering what the Protocols is).
But the point I was illustrating was of volume rather than frequency. And in this situation, we know that, frequency aside, the Weirdness is significant: it’s influencing policy.