People, you’ve got to read this. Remember this huge scandal around the Nobel – winning scientist who was accused of denigrating female scientists? It was all completely manufactured by scuzzy journalists poised to exploit the public ‘ s love of Twitter outrage. It’s absolutely shocking. The guy was vilified, and now the world has moved to another fake outrage and nobody cares that this was all just a setup.
Professor Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s bestseller, Antifragile, contains at its start a note on ethics:
If you see fraud, and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.
When I read this quote, it jumped out at me; I remember gasping with surprise. This was exactly the concept I had been looking for to sum up the “reporting” of the leaders of the ‘World Conference of Science Journalists” on Sir Tim Hunt’s brief toast in Seoul.
After he’d finished, there was this deathly, deathly silence.
Very clearly, nobody was laughing – everybody was stony-faced. – Connie St. Louis, lecturer in journalism, City University, London
Professor Taleb, who became famous for his development of Black Swan theory and the resulting global bestseller, had been one of the earliest, strongest defenders of Sir Tim Hunt, announcing his contempt for the actions of UCL without due process, and boycotting the university under its present leadership…
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