By John Ballard
I don't recall how I came across this link.
This is a barebones list. Fuller explanations at the link.
1. Godwin�s Law
The most famous of all the internet laws, formed by Mike Godwin in 1990. As originally stated, it said: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." It has now been expanded to include all web discussions.2. Poe�s Law
Not to be confused with the law of poetry enshrined by Edgar Allen Poe, the internet Poe�s Law states: �Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.�3. Rule 34 States: �If it exists, there is porn of it.� See also Rule 35: �If no such porn exists, it will be made.�***
4. Skitt�s Law
Expressed as "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself" or "the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."
It is an online version of the proofreading truism Muphry�s Law, also known as Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: "any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror".5. Scopie�s Law
States: �In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.� First formulated by Rich Scopie on the badscience.net forum.
This law makes little sense without a background knowledge of Whale.to, a conspiracy theory site which includes such items as the complete text of the anti-Semitic hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as claims that Aids is caused by vaccination programmes, and that Auschwitz never happened.
It has been expanded by posters on rationalwiki.com to include any use of Answers in Genesis in an argument about creationism and evolution.6. Danth�s Law (also known as Parker�s Law)
States: �If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.�7. Pommer�s Law
Proposed by Rob Pommer on rationalwiki.com in 2007, this states: �A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.�8. DeMyer's Laws
Named for Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com. There are four: the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws.
The Second Law states: �Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.�
The Zeroth, First and Third Laws cannot be very generally applied and will be glossed over here.9. Cohen�s Law
Proposed by Brian Cohen in 2007, states that: �Whoever resorts to the argument that �whoever resorts to the argument that... �has automatically lost the debate� has automatically lost the debate.�10. The Law of Exclamation
First recorded in an article by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org in 2008, this states: "The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters."
Each of these items has longer commentary and more links at the source, all of which I was too lazy to copy. (***I have no explanation for Number Three. That "34" and "35" stuff was already there so I copied it faithfully. It may be a typo but might also refer to some obscure Internet insider humor which I am too obtuse to recognize.)
But I was particularly drawn to #5 because of the links provided there.
I was unaware of whale.to or badscience.net forum, both of which offer a wellspring of interesting reading. The Whale site is a veritable playground for conspiracy theorists and others at the fringe of public awareness. Lots of anti-vaccination stuff and criticisms of the "medical-industrial complex." Take your salt shaker as you read.
A recent post at Bad Science is captioned �How to read articles about health� � by Dr Alicia White
Here is another list, this time a string of questions aiming to drill out the truth, separating reality from imagination.
- Does the article support its claims with scientific research?
[...]- Is the article based on a conference abstract?
[...]- Was the research in humans?
[...]- How many people did the research study include? [...]
- Did the study have a control group?
[...]- Did the study actually assess what�s in the headline?
This one is a bit tricky to explain without going into a lot of detail about �proxy outcomes�. To avoid doing that, here is the key thought: the research study needs to have examined what is being talked about in the headline and article. (Somewhat alarmingly, this isn�t always the case.) For example, you might read a headline that claims �Tomatoes reduce the risk of heart attacks�. What you need to look for is evidence that the study actually looked at heart attacks. You might instead see that the study found that tomatoes reduce blood pressure. This means that someone has extrapolated that tomatoes must also impact heart attacks, as high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attacks. Sometimes these extrapolations will prove to be true, but other times they won�t. So if a news story is focusing on a health outcome that was not examined by the research, treat it with a grain of salt.- Who paid for and conducted the study?
[...]- Should you �shoot the messenger�?
[...]- How can I find out more?
It�s not possible to cover all the questions that need to be asked about research studies in a short article, but we�ve covered some of the major ones. For more, go to Behind the Headlines at www.nhs.uk/news for daily breakdowns of healthcare stories in the media.
www.bazian.com
That last link takes us to a provocative site for the curious reader looking into issues related to health care, sub-titled "Evidence-based support for healthcare commissioning" here is yet another list of links.
...from which I found the Center for Evidence Based Medicine. Thanks to my reading about health care, the title jumped off the page at me.
By now we have descended to the depths of trivia heaven (or hell, depending one one's perspective). For the trivia nut this is like going into an out of the way junk store and finding a DaVinci fingerprint on a painting attributed to some lesser artist. I found this at Journal Watch, one of several links in the sidebar.
1448 Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite �em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.
I thought I�d take you on a brief trip to Mali just so I could quote that. It�s actually an idea of Jonathan Swift taken up by the Victorian mathematician Augustus De Morgan, who also ran it the other way:
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
Now the unfortunate villagers of Mali are plagued by three kinds of filariasis, which rejoice in the names of Wuchereria bancrofti, Loa loa, and Mansonia perstans. They all do a number of horrid things and often co-exist. M perstans does not respond to antifilarial drugs, but it has now been found to contain an endosymbiont within its cells, which is essential to its well-being and which is killed by doxycycline. Kill the lesser flea and the greater flea dies. This endosymbiont seems to be without a name, so I suggest we call it Littleflea demorgani.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/361/15/1448
I ask you now. Can life get any better than that?
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