16 year-old GW skeptic
April 16th, 2008 ecoliFrom Adventures in Science and Ethics
Ultimately, what bugs me about this story is that it seems to boil down to a piece about a teenager who has done something unusual and become a minor celebrity because if it. Yet, there’s no critical examination of the something unusual that she’s done — in particular, of whether she’s done it in a way that holds up to scientific scrutiny — of what sorts of deeper motivations might be behind it, and of what the impacts of this project might be for the rest of us. To the extent that the “something unusual” this particular teenager is doing is presenting herself on the internet as a reliable source of scientific information, it feels to me like the critical analysis missing from this story is very important indeed.
From Respectful Insolence:
Sadly, the one thing that Kirsten could have used is a public smackdown on NPR from a climate science who really knows his or her stuff, someone who could demonstrate in excruciating detail just how thin her knowledge base really is… By doing the piece, though, NPR put itself in a no-win situation. If it criticized Kirsten’s denialist arguments, NPR would have looked as though it was making fun of a teenaged girl who’s clearly smart but not well trained in science or critical thinking. If it didn’t, well, the results are easy to see: A puff piece that portrays the plucky outsider taking on the scientists and apparently beating them at their own game.
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