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Old 22-05-2011, 02:50 PM
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ngcles
The Observologist

ngcles is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Billimari, NSW Central West
Posts: 1,664
Good onya Dave!

Hi All,

Without entering the fray on all the peripheral comments on this thread, I agree with Dave Eicher's blog comments wholeheartedly. I don't think it really has anything to do with bashing Australians, but highlighting a badly written story that prima-facie, elevates astrology to a similar level as astronomy as a science. Indeed I made almost the same comments on this ABC story elsewhere.

But to explain, without excusing what we see as the ABC writer's poor item, she probably sought comment from astrologers on the basis that it "balances" the story. Young journalists have been taught for a long, long time that where there might be two angles on a story, that they should put both sides of the story and allow the reader to make up their minds. Rightly or wrongly, this I think is mostly what the writer has attempted here -- with the exception of the "astrologist" clunker

I and most people who are members here will be unhappy that both the beauty and the science here has been obnubilated by the addition of the astrology material because we see it as our duty to promote astronomy as a science and to debunk junk pseudo-science (yes I know that's a tautology).

This is why we (and David Eicher) are (rightly) annoyed by the astrology material in an article that primarily concerns science and specacle. But, the journalist has little or no interest in that as an agenda. She is more interested in "balancing" the story because that is what she was almost certainly taught to do -- particularly when she has little or no real grasp of the branch of knowledge.

Was I happy with how my "8c a day" was spent here? No!


Best,

Les D