About.com: Promoting Ignorance Over Facts
(Update): I’ve had some feedback regarding how I format my updates. Usually I place them on top of the article, but I can see how this would be confusing. For now on I will post updates at the end of an article with a short notice at the top to let you know they are there, like so:
Updates as of 4/28/09 added to bottom of article.
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As many of you know, I love keeping a TwitterFall window open to keep track of hashtags that interest me. Usually this helps me find new friends or efficiently retweet information to my followers, etc.
Sometimes, like tonight, however, I see a post/link that leads me to write an article. Here is that post:
Twitter message from @ParentingWithD
The formatting made it a bit difficult to understand what exactly I was about to click, but I decided to go for it and followed through to the article, How does marijuana use affect physical health? (article has been removed)
I wish I could say this was an appreciative post thanking both Denise Witmer and About.com for a wonderful exhibition of journalistic integrity, research, and factual information. Instead, the article is not only highly questionable, it made it pretty hard to find where she got her information since no sources were posted (other than a tip of the hat to the NIDA at the end). It honestly appears as if the author re-packaged NIDA-talking-points in the form of an article.
I will be responding to her article on a point-for-point basis. Ms. Witmer, I invite you to e-mail me with your responses, as I–and my readers–would love to hear them.
