On 17 Jan 2009, Christopher D. Green wrote, concerning the TIPS campaign to indict Dr. Gupta for crimes against science:
Only immediately after saying "I saw many people using facilitated communication, or FC, effectively in various ways." And immediately before saying "For sure, it is amazing to hear the thoughts of people..." Doesn't sound very skeptical to me. Instead, it sounds very much like the fake debate junk that we get from the media about creationism, climate change (and everything else that will make more money pitched as a "controversy" than as a long-since settled scientific matter). I say: Well, I've never heard of creationists laying out the criticisms of the evolutionists quite as clearly as Gupta did of the criticisms of FC. The accusations against him are said to be supported by documents at four different urls. In fact, most of this material is irrelevant to the accusation. If what Chris has quoted above is the worst he can come up with, and bearing in mind the qualifying statements I also quoted, I think I'm justified in saying this is pretty mild stuff as advocacy goes. Let's consider what real advocacy might look like. Our evil-twin Gupta (remember, this is fantasy) might have said: "FC is a wonderful advance in therapy for autism, ranking with the discovery of insulin to treat diabetes. I will devote my life to ensuring that no child who needs this remarkably effective treatment goes without it. To that end, I am seeking funds for a foundation to cure autism based on FC, and will host a telethon on NBC for that purpose". But he said a lot less than that. I think it's also fair to note that as bad nominations go, Gupta is pretty small stuff compared to what your departing prez tried (and got) confirmed. \ And actually, I think the office of Surgeon-General sounds a lot like that of our Governor-General (note the hyphenation in the job description, which is typical). Both are mostly ceremonial public relations jobs. And it cannot be denied that Dr. Gupta is very cute, allegedly one of the sexiest men on earth. Perhaps the Americans thought they had to nominate someone to compete with our Governor-General, Michaëlle Jean, who is quite the babe herself (see http://tinyurl.com/956vg5 ) Chris: I wasn't able to include > marks to indicate quotes from you probably because you sent your message in HTML, and turning it off messed up the formatting. Perhaps you [and the rest of you] might consider sending in plain text? Pretty please? And don't blame me if the formatting of this message is screwy. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
