proposed media vigilante campaign

Post Reply New Topic

has anyone ever thought of running an organized regular wrongplanet media-vigilante campaign against bad research like this:

http://michaelinzlicht.com/news/media/1 ... ay2010.pdf

here's a quote: "Participants in the study -- all white men -- watched videos of white, black, South Asian and East Asian men picking up a glass of water and taking a sip. Scientists found there was less activity in the motor-cortex area of the brain when the white men were watching someone of a different race."

in particular this article has two major errors:
a) we don't have solid proof that mirror neurons exist in humans yet
b) the study was only done on white males, leading to the impression that all white males are racist and lacking empathy.

people with autism are more often than not going to be white males - and often also jewish. and research like this continues to bias the world against us, which means everyone here on wrong planet, including women, because you will also be expected to have the "appropriate empathy", whether you are public with your diagnosis or not.

when we see this kind of research at major universities, its easy to write to the ombudsman's office, the president of the university, their autism research department and other departments to complain. we have some incredible resources here:
a) very smart people who can debunk bad research and put together a smart message everyone can send
b) others who can figure out all the contacts to write to and make them available in a list
c) a large community of people who can attack this kind of research right at the source -- the researcher themselves, their entire lab, their university, their funding sources (if mentioned), and key people at the newspaper which publishes it.

imagine if there was an organized campaign here on WP.. for media activism which was heavily promoted across the site.. and any time research like this gets published, they get 100+ emails from WP users around the world challenging the science behind it. we could seriously make a dent on these ongoing studies against all of us.

any thoughts?

This particular study doesn't have anything to do with autism, does it?

yes it does; this is using autism research. but this type of study is much broader, because it stereotypes society AGAINST the majority of people here. do you walk around telling everyone your diagnosis?

for every 1 bad autism media campaign there are 100 like this one. if we got organized and put a dent in all of these it would make quite a difference.

What is there even to feel empathy about anyway with drinking a glass of water doesn't everyone need water to survive?