[meteorite-list] PELISSON SLIMEBALLS STRICKS METEORITE COMMUNITY AGAIN

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:06:43 -0500
Message-ID: <pccbq4plnonk515m615lrekn3rk14sepkm_at_4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:16:28 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

>I had somebody in my shop about two months ago who is a new meteorite customer and he also found this site doing research and he said (To Quote) "All NWA meteorites are found by terrorists - there are no legitimate finds".
>I realize that anybody can put up a website and spew out garbage (Look at all the anti sematic, pedophile and other sites out there) and the Pelisson website in my opinion falls into this catagory with the garbage. Anybody involved in meteorites is being damaged by new collectors reading this garbage and not knowing the difference.
>I dont have solutions because I cant force that website down but anything possible the meteorite community should do

The sad truth is that the majority of people never develop strong critical
thinking skills, and are thus always suckers to conspiracy theories. The best
that you probably can do is give people URLs like these, and hope that they will
actually read and study them (but will probably not):

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection by Carl Sagan:
 
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/W/Jonathan.D.Wren-1/The%20Fine%20Art%20of%20
Baloney%20Detection.htm
 
Baloney Detection Kit, by Michael Shermer:
 
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/baloney.html
 
A Field Guide to Critical Thinking, by James Lett
 
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html
 

But don't send 'em this one:

http://xkcd.com/258/
Received on Wed 25 Feb 2009 04:06:43 PM PST