snopes.com's David Mikkelson Interviewed

pipingguy writes "Online Journalism Review interviews David Mikkelson of the Urban Legends Reference Pages. While the Internet has taken its share of knocks for helping scammers perpetrate e-mail and Web hoaxes (the Bambi hunt reportedly was staged to sell videos on the proprietor's Web site), not enough credit is given to the folks who are using the Internet to debunk them. Snopes.com is the work of the husband-and-wife team of David and Barbara Mikkelson, who have taken their passion for urban myths to the Web since 1995."

Comments

One Drawback

[Anonymous Coward]

The only bad thing about that site is that Barbara uses it as a political tool every time that elections are near. If I have to read one more article on snopes about how hillary clinton has never lied, I am going to vomit.

Re:James Randy debunking paranormal claims

[KiahZero]

But again, trying to argue about the scientific method with someone from SurvivalScience.org is probably futile, as I'm sure you're convinced that your brand of science is much more valid than anything that is done by the folks associated with the JREF.

Wow, that was an amazing assumption. I haven't looked into their actual science. I've merely perused the "Debunking the Debunkers" section.

It is a logical fallacy to attach the truth of an argument to its source. The criticisms of "skeptical" arguments are valid, despite that they come from "belivers".

I can't claim today that he doesn't follow the scientific method in testing claimaints to his million dollar prize, because it's been a while since I read the specifics of his tests. However, as he assumes that all "paranormal" events are false and looks for evidence to change his mind is contradictory to the scientific method.

It doesn't bother me if you still trust Randi after reading some of the criticisms (that isn't the best one I've seen, simply one I stumbled across recently), but I felt that people would be interested some of the criticisms of his work. No harm in seeing both sides of the story.