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Science Blogger Sued for Unfavorable Book Review
tigerhawkvok writes "Recently, new author Stuart Privar provided Professor PZ Meyers of Pharyngula a copy of his book, Lifecode, for review. Over the course of the review itself and a few follow-ups, it became evident that the content was nonsense (including, among other things, ten-legged spiders and other phenomena strongly at odds with developmental biology). However, the common threat of lawsuits finally became a reality, and now Privar is suing Myers for $15 million. Can calling someone a 'classic crackpot' in the face of such incorrect data have any chance at making it to court, or even winning the suit?"
This may not be true in all cases, but people who actually know what they're talking about don't usually need the law to back up what they say.
The other case of this was "Dr" Gillian McKeith a "nutritionist" who sells a lot of books about how you should eat less chips and more salad. This is all very well, but of course it also includes a bunch of quakery about eating leaves so that their photosynthesis can oxegenate your gut. As the article I link points out, that wouldn't work too well unless you had a torch up your arse.
Naturally, McKeith is mighty litigious at people who point out that she bought her doctorate from the web.
Peter
I really don't want to support Stuart Privar, but didn't Professor PZ Meyers made a mistake by accepting to review that book, apparently at the request of Stuart Privar or its publisher, without the security of a contract?
If a reviewer can be sued for an unfavorable review, can the poor suckers that go to the "Movie of the Year - five stars!" file a class action suit against the lame-o reviewer for their $7.50 + $1M in emotional anguish?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
In true Slashdot fashion, I did not read the review, but I wanted to make the general point that the fact that it's a nutjob filing the lawsuit doesn't mean it's not a valid lawsuit. Libel and other such laws are often valid, and sometimes when discussing a particulary outlandish author's particularly outlandish claims it's easy to slip from lambasting the claims to lambasting the author. If this crosses the line to libel then a lawsuit might, under some circumstances, be warranted.
:)
I doubt that's the case here - but the answer to "Can calling someone a 'classic crackpot' in the face of such incorrect data have any chance at making it to court, or even winning the suit?" is in my opinion, "Yes, and it can sometimes be valid". I mean after all, that's what the court is for, to sort that sort of thing out and determine what's a valid complaint and what's not.
That said, I don't think the reviewer needs to get out his checkbook just yet
It's probably worth noting that he doesn't even call the author a crackpot - he says the book is "flagrant crackpottery." If you called someone's book "insane", you wouldn't necessarily be saying that the author is insane themselves.
I realize we're getting off-topic here, but this is something I've always wondered about. I think it's fair to say that Hubbard was not "into" Scientology - but what about the modern leaders? They weren't founders; they rose to their positions by buying into the whole deal (and buying is exactly the correct word!) and staying prominent within the organization for a long time.
I wonder if when they get together out of the eyes of the cash cows they slap backs and laugh among themselves at the profit they're turning... or whether they run it like a business, closing the doors and examining quarterly earnings and futures with charts and Powerpoint presentations... or whether they actually believe it, having been drawn in like all the "younger" members, and debate Scientology theology among themselves.
Interesting stuff, and rather unique among both organized religions and cults. Of course, the odds of one of these top-level Scientologists leaving the group and revealing the details (and living to tell the tale!) are very unlikely - but that just makes it all the more secretive and interesting.
Though if you look at a picture of a tarantula, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tarantula_020.j pg, it really does look like it has ten legs. I assume the pedipalps do not count as legs because of the way they're attached to the body?
This case obviously has no merit. You don't need to be a lawyer to know that libel in the United States is knowingly making incorrect factual statements. I.e. saying "John raped sue", when you know that not to be the case.
A value judgment like "this guy is a crackpot", or "the food at restaurant X is bad" is not libelous. Read the wikipedia article for a more in depth description.
AccountKiller
This prompted a poster on another blog I read to produce what I think is the best lolcat ever.
As far as I know (I could be very wrong, but this is what I've read) when you start to get into the more rarefied reaches of the Scientologist hierarchy the lessons (they actually have step-ladder type lessons that become increasingly more expensive to purchase) start to tell you that the lower lessons are lies meant to prod a persons mind in THIS direction, or THAT direction, in order to prepare them for the REAL secrets, of course.
From what I've gathered, the end result is a mixture of the second and third scenarios from your second paragraph, with a pinch of the first scenario thrown in for good measure. Actually, the way my mind has gestalted the information I have, seems to me like the Powerpoint presentations of earnings reports and debates of Scientological theology are one and the same, they know it's a control structure, but the lessons they have been taking have eventually taught them that the control structure IS the religion.
At least that's my take on the matter. Remember though, this isn't first hand knowledge, so I might be way off base.
Not the Scientology is unique (it's just the market leader and the most profitable) in it cynical exploitation of the vulnerable but most of the main stream religions are actually trying to improve the lot of humanity no matter how misdirected it my be at times or how damaging the results are when corrupt individuals gain positions of authority.
So even though there may be some terrible failures with the best of intentions, the intention still counts for a lot in the final wash, where as in the case of Scientology people do suffer serious harm as a result of the worst of intentions.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The diagram in the review appears to show both 5 pairs of legs and a single (!) pedipalp, though it's hard to be sure since the diagram is rather unclear - given the angle it's possible that there's another pedipalp hidden behind one of the legs, and/or that what appears to be a single pedipalp is in fact an extension from one of the segments of the pedipalp/"leg" behind it (which can occur both in some modern and some fossil species). So I'm not fully convinced that the diagram is intended to show a "10-legged spider" if by that is meant a spider with 10 legs as well as two pedipalps.
Regardless of all that, the diagram is nonsense - and in fact the review does not make a point about the number of legs on the "spider;" that appears to be entirely commentary from Slashdot. As PZ Myers says, spiders (more properly, chelicerata, since we're presumably looking at Privar's proposed primitive ancestor of the entire subphylum) are not descended in any simple way from the coelenterates (corals, anemones, etc) but rather from the arthropods and so would be much more closely allied with insects and crustaceans.
I have not seen the book, but if these examples are representative then calling the theory 'crackpot' would be entirely justified. Strangely I can't find that word in the review either, although some of the blogger comments on the review page do use terms similar to that - has that word been edited out of the review?
I wouldn't call this libel. I read PZ's blog every day, he harsh on stupidity, while clearly he's still a good guy.
There's a Story about the Hashasshim (The original assassins). New potential assassins were recruited, and were given a strong dose of drugs (probably not just Hashish, but a special formula also incorporating such compounds as Belladonna and Stramonium). While under the influence, they awakened in the presence of beautiful 'houris', and had hours of kinky sex, while eating exotic foods such as ice cream. Eventually, they fell asleep and awakened back in the normal world.
Then they were told that the cult's leader had given them a taste of the paradise that awaited them if they died serving the cause. All this is pretty well documented history, with thanks to Robert Anton Wilson for the claim that the drug mixture used had to be more than just hashish.
Here's where this ties into your remarks about the Scientologists. By some sources, those people who believed the cult leaders uncritically were recruited as assassins. The ones who said, in effect "BS! You just got me stoned and laid, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna believe you have a direct pipeline to Allah." ended up becoming potential cult leaders. So maybe the people running Scientology were recruited from the ones who said "Thetans, eh? Roight, now pull the other one!" .
Who is John Cabal?
There have been other major origin theories competing with Darwin's theories besides Creationism and its relatives, UFO cults, Scientology scames, and pre-Darwin attempts at science. Lysenkoism is one of the best-known - it's important because of the damage it did to Russian science.
But the worst of them tend to come from people who *say* they believe in Evolution but Just Don't Get It. Most of them are either a view of "Evolution" as "Progress", or a view of "Survival of the Fittest" as a moral imperative and an excuse for anything from self-congratulation to racism and sterilizing the UnFit. The "Progress" types are at least friendlier - they're mostly wooly-headed liberals who believe that we're all getting Better and Better, though one technology columnist I like did refer to us evolving into something even cooler. The Social Darwinist types are generally nasty.
And both of these types are teaching in our schools, confusing kids about how evolution works and providing handy strawmen for the Intelligent Design movement. Unlike Creationists, who school boards can generally recognize for what they are, these guys get in without getting caught.
There are milder forms of these errors as well - the "slow, steady gradual evolution" model tends to be popular because it fits our worldviews the way Donuts fit Pivar's, and Gould's punctuated-equilibrium arguments are important counterweights to them. And people tend to mix up Darwinism with things we've learned later, like Mendel's genetics, details embedded in DNA, etc. Darwin's _actual_ work had a lot of big holes in it and occasional wrong assumptions. There's a lot of room for criticizing the Original Darwinism, and because it's a scientific theory, that's just fine. Knee-jerk defenses of Darwinism don't do it any favors - if anything they make it easier for the Creationists.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There is no doubt in my mind that, historically, the papacy has been influenced, and inhabited, by power-seekers. But most of them? Over centuries? Could it really be that most were not believers?
*Of course* it really could be like that. It is a vanishingly small possibility that it could be any other way.
Seriously, think hard about what it is that makes you feel that the possibility is unlikely. Now consider that nowhere did a fact enter into your calculations. That is because damn near *every* fact demonstrates that cynicism, brutality, and siding with power and against the people is the only way to gain power in an institution like the Catholic Church which exists now as it always has throughout its history in order to promote its own power and that of those who run it.
The vast majority of the beliefs and dogma of the Catholic Church as well as the actual texts that comprise the bible (new testament) came to be via political power struggles. You have 2 opposed groups. One declares some obscure assinine point of dogma to be absolute truth and declares their opponents heretics and has them tortured and murdered.
That is the history of the Catholic Church and of the Christian religion as a whole.
What's truly sad and pathetic is that so many people claim to be "believers", yet they can't even be bothered to check into the basis of their faith. All you need to do is study a bit of history to know that what I said is true. In fact, how could it possibly have come about any other way?
I'm sorry if you do not like what the facts are, but you do not have a right to your own facts.
Anti-Catholic bias is at the root of a number of libels, including, for example, the wide-spread belief that people in the middle ages didn't realize the earth was round
No, that's stupid, and deeply dishonest. Anti-Catholic (and anti-Christian) bias exists because of well over a *thousand fucking years* of burning innocent people alive just because they didn't buy into an idiotic fairy tale that a bright child could poke major holes in.
We're talking about the most brutal evil organization that has ever existed.
Cowardly trying to hide behind idiotic lies about "flat earth" just proves absolutely that you are a deeply dishonest person who will defend evil with lies because you don't have the courage to look honestly at reality.
Seriously, Sparky, The organization you are lying to defend is guilty of centuries of torture and murder in order to promote and defend their own power and no other reason.