{"id":11,"date":"2011-02-20T22:57:10","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T22:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/_wordpress\/?p=11"},"modified":"2011-02-28T14:15:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T14:15:32","slug":"because-none-of-that-is-even-accurate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/because-none-of-that-is-even-accurate\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8230;because none of that is even accurate.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently setting up a student writing project (more on this soon, I hope). It&#8217;s inspired, in part, by frustration at the sheer <em>badness <\/em>of much of the information that floats around on the public web. I&#8217;m sure you know from personal frustration what I&#8217;m talking about.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chacha.com\/question\/what-was-the-name-of-the-atomic-bomb-not-dropped-on-japan-in-wwii\/\">stone-cold assertion that the Japanese city of Kokura was hit by an atomic bomb<\/a>, for instance, is one I first spotted a year ago (on a different site: clearly it&#8217;s a factoid with legs).\u00a0 This was just about trumped, however, by a <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.answers.yahoo.com\/question\/index?qid=20090927024333AAWwvMY\">Yahoo answers page<\/a> on the old legend of Charles Darwin&#8217;s missing knighthood: the author of the most sensible explanation is deemed, for his pains, to be &#8220;on drugs or something.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A bit of digging, though, reavealed that taking the question seriously gives us a useful window into debates on the status of nineteenth-century science. Last week I blogged the results at <a href=\"http:\/\/whewellsghost.wordpress.com\/\">Whewell&#8217;s Ghost<\/a>, under the title &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/whewellsghost.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/12\/what-more-do-you-want-a-knighthood\/\">What more do you want? A knighthood?<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently setting up a student writing project (more on this soon, I hope). It&#8217;s inspired, in part, by frustration at the sheer badness of much of the information that floats around on the public web. I&#8217;m sure you know &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/because-none-of-that-is-even-accurate\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jbsumner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}