Sandwalk: Boycott Science.org

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Boycott Science.org

We all get spam in our mail box and usually there's nothing you can do about it. This time there is. I got this message today.

Subject: Award Acknowledgment for sharing great PHYSICS information to the public

Dear Blog Owner,

Our website Science.org is a informational databases and online news publication for anything and everything related to science and technology. We recently ran a poll asking our website users regarding what online informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. It seems many of our users have labeled your blog as an excellent source of Space information. We have reviewed your blog and must say, we absolutely love the information you have made available to the public and would love to make your blog a part of our top science blogs. After browsing your blog, our research team has decided to award you a Top science Blogs award banner.

It is a distinction we offer to the blogs that our team feels is ahead of the curve in terms of content.

Thanks again for the great information and we look forward to the great responses your blog will receive from our site. Your blog presence will be very effective for our users (top science blogs).

We have put great efforts in making this decision to give deserving with award acknowledgment. For listing please reply to request banner.

Sincerely,
--
William Lee
Research team
Science.org
1 international blvd
Mahwah NJ USA - 07430
201 247 8553
editor.science@gmx.com

It turns out that Science.org is an actual website. Mr. Lee apparently believes that by lying to Blog Owners he can enhance the reputation of his website.

That ain't gonna work. Any website that emails such lies does not even deserve a link.

13 comments :

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...: Wowza. And its odd that if the e-mail was sent on behalf of science.org that Mr. Lee lists an e-mail address at a different site.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 11:28:00 AM
SouthernFriedScientist said...: That e-mail seems to be making the science blog rounds.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 11:35:00 AM
Harriet said...: Back when I was an undergraduate I received an "invitation to subscribe" to a science magazine (NOT Scientific American; I was already subscribing to that)

It started: "Dear colleague, we know of your work..."

My friends and I had a huge laugh over this; remember that we were struggling to make decent grades in routine undergraduate courses at that time. :-); Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:20:00 PM
Ian said...: Physics, huh? I was complimented on my Astronomy information. Do they just choose the subjects at random?; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:40:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Sandwalk is definitely about space. It's what astronauts do on the moon, a moon sandwalk.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 1:32:00 PM
Blair said...: I got one of those emails too. It was odd enough to make me suspicious. Like, where's the banner? How sad?; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 4:06:00 PM
Daniel Mosquin said...: Thanks for the write-up -- saved me from having to do the research when my BS-meter started ringing.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:25:00 PM
Cuttlefish said...: Once again, Groucho Marx has come to my rescue. Any group that would award me must necessarily deserve suspicion.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:49:00 PM
Bjørn Østman said...: I just got it too, and I couldn't get over the grammar:

We have put great efforts in making this decision to give deserving with award acknowledgment.

Sounds like one of those Nigerian email.; Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:56:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Willam Lee editor.science@gmx.com is getting more harmless ... The new text is:

"Great information on science. I have my website science.org, I need your blog involvement in promoting my website through giving us little acknowledgment on your blog http://www.gps-camera.eu. And your are most welcome to post any science related article on my website. Thank you for spreading great science related information to the public. Best way to reach me is through email (editor.science@gmx.com) I am looking forward for your reply."

I can not tell that we are much scientiffic. Even if we try to keep the level high :o) So this is still unwanted mailing and some kind of SPAM.

Cheers
Sebastian; Monday, November 16, 2009 3:30:00 AM
Lara Rostov said...: I just got it too,Mr. Lee apparently believes in "Imagination is more important than knowledge"-
in the wrong sense.....
Your blod is very nice!; Monday, November 16, 2009 11:41:00 AM
Darlene said...: oh my friends, it goes much deeper than science.org. James Whitfield (the real name of the guy behind it all) is encroaching on my own business, and this person owns DOZENS of domains. Here is the list that I've obtained so far: go ahead and browse them, most of them look the same.

Jimbo is relentless in his pursuit of spamming site owners to link to his "free publications". My belief is he first gets the links for SEO, then will turn them all commercial.

www.nycounseling.org
http://www.anxiety.net/
www.disorder.org
www.disease.com
http://MedicalSchool.org
http://www.newlawyer.com/
www.hospital.com
http://therapycounseling.com
http://www.gynecology.net/
http://www.physician.com/
www.preventsuicide.net
http://www.americachess.com/
chessboss.com
www.lawschool.org
http://www.science.org/
www.attorney.org
www.laws.com
www.newdoctor.com; Wednesday, March 31, 2010 5:09:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear Colleagues,

My message for all scientists is the same. Science is under threat because science is being peddled. See my more detailed comments at:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/thousands-of-scientists-vow-to-b.html

Leave your feedback there!; Thursday, March 29, 2012 4:26:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Boycott Science.org

13 comments :