Day 745: Reading Between the Lines

The bad cat explains how to read between the Lysenkoist lines to the Darwinist truth of today's scientific papers. His example involves the possible negative efficacy of vaccines after six months, but it's the pattern that disturbs:

in the age of the internet, this sets up a bizarre and deeply frustrating conflict: those who can and do really read studies are constantly having to pick them apart and explain to the “google and spam” crowd who just selectively confirm their biases and skim the lead paragraph of a study why the study they just cited does not, in fact, say what they are claiming it does.

and, of course, trying to convince someone that the authors deliberately misstated the facts in the summary is like trying to teach a new trick to the very oldest of dogs. they are just not having it.