Oldest hominid skull in Australia found near Bega = BUNK

[Realist]

And here's the link.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4502846.stm

[Rokcet Scientist]

[quote="Realist"]And you apparently missed a better story around the same time. A former member of JFK's office was falsely implicated in his murder on Wikipedia and threatened to sue. The Wikipedia owners had to admit the story was false, and the poster virtually untraceable, leading to new rules where you had to actually join with [i]verifiable[/i] information before being allowed to post. The 'Encyclopedia Britannica' dodge was obviously only an attempt at damage-limitation, since it followed on suspiciously close from the original scandal.
Which is why only the gullible rely on "information" from Wikipedia. [/quote]

No, heard, read and saw that too.
But that is apples and pears: the 'JFK implication story' is an incident. Apparently obliterating an objective view of the overall performance. Because that is what "measured" means: statistical relevancy. Nothing to do with highly emotionally charged value judgments over incidental 'scandals' usually indignantly championed by tabloids and echo'd tenmillionfold around bars everywhere.
'Howling with the wolves' is one description I heard on that attitude. 'Mass psychosis', 'fashionable' and 'herd mentality' are three others.
I'm sure the venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica has had its fair share of 'incidents' and even 'scandals' in its long, long history.
But we'll never know unless someone would care to look into it, of course...

Prefering impression judgment over measured objectivity is a new type of realism to me, Realist.

[Guest]

Prefering impression judgment over measured objectivity is a new type of realism to me, Realist.

What-you mean like this?

apparently you missed the news-precisely a month ago-that Wikipedia, measured against the Encyclopedia Britannica proved entirely correct!

let's examine what it actually said in that link, shall we?

"the free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows...but it has been criticised for the correctness of entries, most recently over the biography of prominent US journalist John Siegenthaler".

As I said. And there's more...

"the reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information. Only eight serious errors...were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia, reported Nature.
But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 & 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica respectively"

So these 'reviewers' only checked ONE category of information, and found that although neither source was particularly good-"reviewers found few differences in accuracy"- Wikipedia still managed to be worse! Which rather makes a mockery of this statement...

But that is apples and pears: the 'JFK implication story' is an incident. Apparently obliterating an objective view of the overall performance. Because that is what "measured" means: statistical relevancy

[FreeThinker]

The Aboriginal oral histories are not at issue here. The claim in the article was for 7 million year old fossils, long long before any modern humans even existed. It is true that the Aboriginal oral histories stretch back many thousands of years, even carrying the memories of several tens of thousands of years, though as with all oral histories it is hard to determine what is accurate or not. However, this is not even the issue. The span of time in question is 7000 thousand years, or 7 million. Although truely ancient by modern human standards the archeological record only shows evidence of Aboriginal habitation on Australia for perhaps 70 thousand years, not 7000 thousand years, so the Aboriginal histories don't even come into play.

All that said, Rex Gilroy's story is total bunk. He has a collection of rocks and nothing more from all I can see. They look nothing like real fossil skulls. Further, he has found far too many to be believed. Over a dozen! I find it hard to believe that he has found so many when no other researcher in all of paleo anthropological history has found even even half that number in their entire careers. Extrordinary claims require extrordinary proof and Mr. Gilroy fails by a long shot to deliver.

[Chuck A. Walla]

Mr. Gilroy it turns out runs a webpage ( http://mysteriousaustralia.com ) that shows him to be a 'Yowie' researcher amongst other highly speculative lines of inquiry. He claims to have found over a dozen hominid skulls (that alone would be remarkable for one researcher) but a check of the pictures on his website show only rocks as far as I can tell. The pictures are poor so it is hard to say with certainty but I was very unimpressed. How this story made it into Archaeoligca's new page is beyond me.

Sounds like an Australian version of Ed Conrad.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Cooks and snake oil salesmen are everywhere.

[Guest]

And you apparently missed a better story around the same time. A former member of JFK's office was falsely implicated in his murder on Wikipedia and threatened to sue. The Wikipedia owners had to admit the story was false, and the poster virtually untraceable, leading to new rules where you had to actually join with verifiable information before being allowed to post. The 'Encyclopedia Britannica' dodge was obviously only an attempt at damage-limitation, since it followed on suspiciously close from the original scandal.
Which is why only the gullible rely on "information" from Wikipedia.!

Ah, so true!!!!!!!!! I just love it!

[Guest]

Prefering impression judgment over measured objectivity is a new type of realism to me, Realist.

What-you mean like this?

apparently you missed the news-precisely a month ago-that Wikipedia, measured against the Encyclopedia Britannica proved entirely correct!

let's examine what it actually said in that link, shall we?

"the free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows...but it has been criticised for the correctness of entries, most recently over the biography of prominent US journalist John Siegenthaler".

As I said. And there's more...

"the reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information. Only eight serious errors...were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia, reported Nature.
But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 & 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica respectively"

So these 'reviewers' only checked ONE category of information, and found that although neither source was particularly good-"reviewers found few differences in accuracy"- Wikipedia still managed to be worse! Which rather makes a mockery of this statement...

But that is apples and pears: the 'JFK implication story' is an incident. Apparently obliterating an objective view of the overall performance. Because that is what "measured" means: statistical relevancy

I like you already!