Teddy Roosevelt makes important points about accepting the theory of evolution and how that does not impact religious faith.

Summaries of important points and comments made by the speakers and audience for this session:

Chris Mooney

·         How do we correct misinformation?

·         “How I Started Worrying and Learned to Doubt the Blog”

·         Internet is second only to TVF as source of information about Science and Technology

·         Brendan Nyhan – people did not change their minds when presented with corrections that challenge their ideological point of view

·         Cultural Cognition of Scientific Facts (Kahan et al): conservative libertarians were more likely to accept an article on reducing pollution when it included headline about nuclear power.

·         “What Happened on Delibaration Day” Case _____

·         Correcting George Will: “no global warming for more than a decade” bloggers tar and feathered him, Washington Post recognized the outrage and WMO wrote letter correcting him, but Will did not apologize or correct himself.

·         Message First, Facts Second

Joshua Rosenau

·         Blogs can’t correct Texas Textbooks.

·         School Board science standards  1998 review “strengths and weaknesses” but they only wanted to review weaknesses of evolution.

·         Texas Freedom Network, texasteachers.org, Teach them Science, NCSE

·         Reach people with documentaries about Kansas, and convince them to speak at meetings.

·         Audience Research: talk about medical advances from evolution, compatibility of faith and evolution

·         Start Online, Move Offline.

·         Make it hard to be dismissed: state why your opinion matters (member of the community, scientific background)

·         If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a big enough coalition. – Bernice Johnson Reagon

Val Jones

·         Science Based Medicine blog.

·         80% of Americans go online for health information, but only 20% consider the source.

·         Case Study of Two Patients going to two different online sources for health information.

·         True story: colon cancer survivor who found oncologist online, breast cancer who tried alternative medicines and died in six months

·         Getbetterhealth.com

Comments:

·         November 1963: Malcom X Black Revolution

·         Margaret Sangers: planned parenthood

·         Meam Goldman: talked about birth control when it was illegal

·         George Will is into Toaster oven science, not real science. (look up article where George Will says he loves science)

·         Van: academic centers need to set up social media centers. Shout down crazy people.

·         Create peer-to-peer references that people can link to in response to people being wrong in comments sections.

·         Van: Health Blogger Code of Ethics

·         Astrology News: Astrologers said It’s true, but it doesn’t change any of the results. There’s a reason it doesn’t change any of the results.

·         Mooney: quick heuristics to determine whether to engage someone, politely say, “I don’t want to have this conversation.”