Tuesday, December 6, 2016

"Life in the post-truth age," Shroud of Turin News, November 2016

Shroud of Turin News - November 2016
© Stephen E. Jones
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[Previous: November 2016, part #1] [Next: December 2016, part #1]

This is part #2 of the November 2016 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. The article's words are bold to distinguish them from mine.

"Life in the post-truth age," The Telegram, Pam Frampton, November 19, 2016. Oxford Dictionaries announced its word of the year for 2016 this week and it wasn't "enlightened," "optimistic" or "visionary." Nope, the Associated Press has reported from

[Above: "‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries," FOX8, November 16, 2016]

London that this year's honour goes to "post-truth," as in "post-truth politics" — a place where fact holds little currency and much more trade is done in lies and embellishment. And, at least some of the time, we know the difference and don't seem to care. ... The Internet is a perfect incubator for post-truth proliferation. In this cut-and-paste online world, lies and myths can propagate easily, both innocently and with intent. ... For editors who spend a lot of time checking facts, it’s getting tougher to distinguish legitimate sources from spin sites. And what is one of this Pam Frampton's prime examples of "post-truth ... where fact holds little currency and much more trade is done in lies and embellishment" where "we know the difference and don't seem to care," where on "The Internet ... lies and myths can propagate easily ... with intent"? Wait for it ...

A blog asserting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has 616,999 page views, even though that piece of cloth has been proven to be a forgery. ... I commented under the article (links added):

Pam, Your: "A blog asserting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has 616,999 page views, even though that piece of cloth has been proven to be a forgery," is presumably referring to my "The Shroud of Turin" blog. If so, then I assure you that one thing I am not is "post-truth"! I am very much pro-truth, i.e. objective truth-truth that is true irrespective of whether it is believed or not. In fact the EVIDENCE is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic, as I document on my blog, including the immense problems of the forgery theory. Even the Director of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, Professor Christopher Ramsey, who was part of Oxford laboratory's dating of the Shroud in 1988 and is a signatory to the 1989 Nature paper which claimed that the Shroud was "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390" has admitted: "There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow ..." Radiocarbon dating is far from absolute and archeologists routinely reject carbon-dates that disagree with other archeological and historical evidence. And in fact there is evidence, which I present on my blog, that the fully computerised AMS radiocarbon dating of the Shroud was the result of a computer hacking! There is an old saying that truth can be stranger than fiction, and that certainly applies to the Turin Shroud! Stephen E. Jones
However, my comment which was published (indeed the above was copy-and-pasted directly from the article's web page), along with 9 other comments (which were not about the Shroud), has now disappeared, and the foot of the web page now falsely says "0 Comment(s)".

It seems that Ms Frampton, "an editor and columnist at The Telegram," is into "post-truth" herself! She certainly is one editor "who [does NOT] spend a lot of time checking facts" on this issue at least, but evidently merely parrots what "The Internet ... a perfect incubator for post-truth proliferation" tells her about the Shroud!

Posted 6 December 2016. Updated 11 October 2023.

3 comments:

Kyle said...

What's funny is that I completely agree with her premise. I find it odd that for an example she chose something she clearly hasn't read much about when there are thousands of examples of false information propagating around the web. It's almost as if she's not a very good journalist.

Stephen E. Jones said...

Kyle

>What's funny is that I completely agree with her premise.

So do I, but does she?

>I find it odd that for an example she chose something she clearly hasn't read much about when there are thousands of examples of false information propagating around the web.

Agreed, I was very surprised to find myself put in the same category as Donald Trump!

>It's almost as if she's not a very good journalist.

She may be a very good journalist, for all I know. But on this topic, the authenticity of the Shroud, she clearly hasn't checked her facts, including my blog.

And what was particularly disturbing is that Ms Frampton, since she is the Editor, deleted not just mine, but all the comments and falsely put in their place "0 Comment(s)". Which is still there-I just checked.

Stephen E. Jones
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MY POLICIES. Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Except that comments under my latest post can be on any one Shroud-related topic. To avoid time-wasting debate I normally allow only one comment per individual under each one of my posts.

Stephen E. Jones said...

According to Google Analytics my pageviews have jumped to all-time highs: pageviews today are 2,852 and yesterday they were 3,809, when my average is in the 600s!

I assume that I have Pam Frampton to thank, because although she didn't mention the name of my blog in her:

"A blog asserting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has 616,999 page views, even though that piece of cloth has been proven to be a forgery."

if anyone Googles "Shroud of Turin blog" without the quotes, mine comes up first (or at least it does for me).

So presumably Ms Framton's readers wanted to check out this `wondrous example of post-truth,' a blog asserting the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin that has 616,999 page views! Now 646,470 partly thanks to Ms Frampton.

And those of her readers who did read my above post would see my comment that Ms Frampton apparently deleted (she being the Editor of The Telegram).

Moreover, not only did my above post show a sudden jump, but also my other posts. My past experience is that out of those who find my blog for the first time when it has been mentioned elsewhere, after the initial jump in pageviews, it settles down at a higher plateau, indicating that some of those new readers become regular readers of my blog.

So my thanks again to Ms Frampton!

Stephen E. Jones
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"By way of guidance as to what I mean by `offensive' and `sub-standard,' I regard comments to my blog as analogous to letters to the Editor of a newspaper. If the Editor of a newspaper would not publish a comment because it is `offensive' and/or `sub-standard' then neither will I. It does not mean that if I disagree with a comment I won't publish it. I have published anti-authenticist comments and other comments that I disagreed with, and I have deleted `offensive' and/or `sub-standard' comments that are pro-authenticist. `Sub-standard' includes attempting to use my blog as a platform to publish a block of text of the commenter's own views, and also bare links to other sites with little or no actual comments. By `off-topic' I mean if a comment has little or nothing to do with the topic(s) in the post it is under (except for the latest post-see above)." [05Jan16]