The dereliction of "common sense”?

A sometimes good pal has rebuked me for buying books from Amazon – mostly because of how badly it treats its employees – but he doesn’t quibble about using Facebook, in his case addictively, I’m afraid. (He’s on all day, posting stuff incessantly.)

We all know that Facebook is under attack by advertisers, now boycotting the place; major advertisers at that, over 1000 of them so far, for the reasons listed in an e-mail I got recently:

“Rich, a recently released independent audit of Facebook found that the behemoth social media company isn't doing enough to combat hate and lies on its platform.

"As I mentioned in the email below, Facebook has had a long history of allowing vitriol and false information to spread unchecked across its platform. The audit found that Facebook's reactive and piecemeal approach to addressing the issues of hate speech, bias, growing polarization, and diversity raises doubts about whether the company even cares about fixing these problems.

"This is especially concerning considering that half of American adults get their "news" from Facebook. Meanwhile, many media outlets have been plagued by layoffs, furloughs and salary cuts -- mainly due to Facebook grabbing an ever-growing piece of the advertising dollars that so many of these media outlets rely on to stay afloat.”

This has me concerned. If a person as well-informed as my buddy thinks Facebook should be enhanced by his omnipresence, how can we, who want to see the platform broken up, or dissolved, hope to see the place go down in flames?

Many UFOers, myself included – I’m a stockholder also – use the place as a forum, not as ubiquitously as my pal however, without acknowledging the social media site as a pariah in society.

This has got to stop, yes? If we have any moral or ethical bearings at all.

RR

Peer reviews: the pros and cons

Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.

An article in the June 29, 2020 New Yorker – Built on Sand by Ruth Margalit – tells readers about the archeologist digs in Israel attempting to prove or disprove the Biblical story of [King] David, a seminal character in Israel’s history and Christianity’s.

The gist of the interesting piece is how interpretations of what various archeologists, particularly noted archeologist Israel Finkel- stein, determine and how other archeologists, such as noted Yossi Garfinkel and William Dever differ with Finkelstein. And how peer reviews among fellow archeologists can get a bit slimy.

For instance, Finkelstein called Dever, in an interview, “a jealous academic parasite” following up with an article claiming Dever’s work was a “debacle.”

And Garfinkel thinks “David was the greatest genius who ever lived between the Mediterranean and Jordan” saying that he “has ‘buried’ Finkelstein’s theory” (which is that David was merely a  nomad adventurer and the Bible is a massive mythology derived from stories that can be attributed to other cultures in the region, in the time frame: 10th century B.C. – 7th century B.C.)

My point is that peer reviews, via articles, lectures, interviews, and academic papers are strewn with back-and-forths just as untidy as the disputes in the UFO community, and skeptic Gilles Fernandez’ assault on José Caravaca’s Distortion Theory for lacking a peer review is all wrong.

José Caravaca’s papers on his interesting theory get “peer reviewed” all the time, by critics and more genial advocates of his (José’s) views.

That an academic fortification hasn’t taken up the cudgel is mean- ingless. UFOs are not grist for academics, generally, nor grist for a collegiate undertaking. Scholars are not about to get into the ufo- logical fray, even as a few have tried to weigh-in, only to be slighted by some. (See Bryan Sentes’ postings on the matter at his Skunkworks blog.)

Peer reviews, without the academic overlay take place, all the time, in the UFO community, often by dolts, but still are “peer reviews,” just a kind that are often imbecilic.

RR