Slashdot Mirror
PR Firm Fakes Online Posters to Stunt Research
revmuddswife writes: "I always suspected that some of the soapbox lunatics I was arguing with online weren't what they made themselves out to be, but now British columnist George Monbiot has raised the issue about how Internet discussions may be undermined by Invented PR People *cue scary organ music*. The article relates to a biotech paper written by two University of Calif., Berkeley scientists, Quist and Chapela, that was retracted in Nature last month, partially on the basis of allegations on a listserver and online discussion. Monbiot looks into the identities of some of the individuals leading the criticism, and finds out that what we all know is true: nobody could be what they seem online. In fact, they might even be slimier than we suspect."
FP!!
Besides, the allegations are true, are they not?
I have no ties to the industry, but see nothing wrong with this. Indeed the author is obviously just anti-capitalist. I want to know how much he is paid by the radical anti-advertising coalition. Really Slashdot should retract this article.
Ian Knott Verity.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
[Quoting from the story]
Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.
Fortunately, here at Slashdot no one is likely to make the mistake of considering posters seriously. I read Slashot and I read the headlines of the Weekly World News, too!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yes PR firms can use internet as a way to anonymously persuade people to believe what their clients want them to believe.
The glorious thing is, you can to!
In the past, all they had to do influence an editor, or buy some adspace. Today, they have to influence everyone.
My opinion is this: it is unethical to try to convince people of things that you yourself believe are untrue, but that you benefit from. Ye old biblical false witness. If you truly believe something, there is nothing wrong with paying a professional writer to make your views clear. So let them spend their money.
All you have to do is hone your own writing skills and reposte vigorously.
All good consu, er, citizens must realize that our freedom of press would always prevent this from happening. My boss, I mean, my FRIEND was telling me the other day how lucky we are to live in a country where compani, er, consumer, I mean CITIZENS are free to argue their opinions, even sleazil, ummmm anonymously.
So, it's clear that fake people would never pretend to argue for a good American company like Monsanto. Every REAL citizen love Monsanto. Therefore, the people arguing for Monsanto are not fake.
or Do you think I am a real person?
Kilroy was here!
Contamination of diversity = more diverity. Adding transgenic corn genes to the mix should equal the strains that already exist pluse the transgenic strains, a gain in diversity. Now if you wiped out the current crops and planted crops that were all the same, there'd be a problem.
Please let me suck you off.
Nature withdrew the article not because of anonymous or pseudonymous rabble-rousing, but because the article itself was flawed. A number of well known and fully identified scientists launched scathing criticisms which convinced the editor of Nature to take this unusual step. The use of PCR alone, which is known to be prone to false positives, means that the results are unconfirmed and highly questionable. Additional tests are needed to check PCR results, and the authors apparently neglected those steps.
In the end, the interests of truth and scientific accuracy were served by the withdrawal of the article based on peer review and scientific criticism. If some secret PR intervention was involved, then the only lesson we can draw from this story is that it is a positive force in the world and should be applauded.
If this is an unpalatable conclusion, then consider the alternative: that this is an attempt by anti-biotech forces to spin the embarrassing withdrawal of their story from Nature by focusing on the sins of the other camp. They are trying to distract attention from the inadequacies of the original paper, frantically pointing to misdeeds by the corporate PR forces. In short this article is nothing but competing PR itself, an attempt to re-spin the spinners. Hopefully we can be clear headed enough to know when we are being manipulated.
Any indication, whatsoever, that the research may not be 100% accurate is proof positive that it is fatally flawed, and should be acted upon as such.
Any claim that their sponsors' work is non-benevolent should not be acted upon until it is proven to the n'th sigma of probability.
That having been said, I note that CIMMYT, which found 12-35% contamination of wild corn, found (near) zero contamination of samples which had been kept isolated for a number of years. this points away from the probability of systemic error in their lab methods.
also: If PCR was so flawed as to regularly give a 30% false positve rate, I expect that it would have been abandoned years ago. That it is still used more than a decade after it had been invented is an indication that it is more reliable than not.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It's presentation to the market was done through similar tacticts.