Science or Science Fiction?
By Tyler Goucher
January 22nd, 2013
The first thing I look for when deciding whether or not a website is legitimate or not, is if there is a clear author and/or publisher printed somewhere on the landing page. For example, there is a publications link on the home page of aip.org that goes over its authors and publications in detail providing a way for readers to verify its legitimacy. The first thing I noticed when entering 13moons.com, was a masquerade of unverified quotes and sayings. After reading every inch of the home page, the only information regarding the owners/publishers of the website was located at the bottom of the page with only two different ways to contact them in order to verify their legitimacy.
Upon clicking on the “Enter Website” hyper-link, I wasn’t surprised to find several more quotes, none of which were quoted by notable scholars of academia. I noticed that they used the 2012 Mayan prophecy and the multiple conspiracy theories that went along with it in order to sell various forms of merchandise. They went from predicting that the end of the world was coming, to claiming we have “crossed the prophetic threshold” and have shifted into the “new age”. This is a classic brainwash technique; get people to believe something really bad is going to happen and then when it doesn’t, use their false sense of security to manipulate them into believing they survived some type of doomsday. In the case of 13moons.com, the “science” backing its authenticity is clearly anecdotal using hearsay testimonials by random “nobodies” that explain their bias, uneducated points of view on the subject.
As far as spotting signs of bogus science in other forms of media, the same rules almost always apply. I often times find myself researching the claims made by both researchers and journalists who don’t come off as being a legitimate source of information. By using these tools in all walks of life, we carry with us the ability to breakdown information, allowing us to tell the difference between fact and fiction.
Resources:
http://www.astronomynotes.com/bogus-science-sevensigns.html
http://www.aip.org/
http://13moon.com/time-is-art.htm
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