swansont

Postings here should be science news items, as the title indicates. Generally, that means including a link to a story, and a summary of some current science event/announcement. "Hello, my name is …" posts by new users that appear here will be deleted as spam, regardless of whether they contain spam links or not, and the user will be banned as a spammer.

http://federalbureauofmiscellaneousinformation.com/node?page=3 You can't just copy/paste the displayed link on SFN. If it has ellipses, it means the displayed link was shortened. Anyway, it's just a site of collected items, that are not sourced. However, there was a study, and it's mentioned here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1143/do-cats-always-land-unharmed-on-their-feet-no-matter-how-far-they-fall along with an objection to how the statistics were collected.

dr.syntax has been banned for incessant rudeness, despite repeated opportunities to improve the civility of his exchanges, reintroduction of closed threads, and being a fountain of misinformation on a number of topics.

infinitesolid2 has been banned for recurrent trolling, including repeatedly reintroducing the topic of a thread after it had been locked.

GF has been suspended for 1 week for repeated rudeness and persistently disregarding moderator feedback.

CTD has been suspended for 1 week for repeated use of logical fallacies and creationist trolling

buddha elämuni has been banned for a repeated and persistent pattern of soapboxing and refusal to engage in discussion, i.e. trolling.

ABV has been suspended for 7 days for twice starting new threads on a topic that had been closed.

sananda has been suspended three days for repeated thread hijacking with his speculation, in violation of rules 2.5 and 2.10. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedGasparri has been banned at his own request

Bishadi has been automatically suspended for three days after repeated rules violations, including refusal to cite sources and trolling.

Schist for brains.

onequestion banned at own request. Quit before being fired.

jsaldea12 has been suspended for three days (automatic suspension for accrual of infraction points). Argument by persistent repeated assertion = trolling.

geistkie has been banned for being a not-so-subtle reincarnation of the previously-banned geistkiesel, and for exhibiting the same traits that got him banned in the first place. Repeatedly posting the same errors, at length, after being shown why they were errors (i.e. trolling/refusal to acknowledge cited information).

north has accumulated enough infraction points for an automatic three-day suspension. Trolling, including but not limited to simple repetition of arguments and refusal to address points brought up, as well as strawman arguments.

insane_alien has taken a one-week sabbatical

the tree has been banished for 30 days by request of the user taken a 30-day sabbatical

People may not check every source. There may not be any indications that the material was misrepresented (whether intentionally or no) or it may jibe with information I already know. As long as the citations check out for things I do check on, I'm willing to trust the poster. If there are no references to check, I am just less prone to give the benefit of the doubt that the material is valid; especially so if there's a history of some information being low in quality. It's an issue of credibility. But when the alarm goes off that there's an issue — and we see a lot of this with "evolution is wrong" or other crackpot posts — it's almost certain I will check up on the sources. They are invariably not credible or have been misrepresented.

If you have the choice, open access is preferable — but there are always libraries. I think it's great if you've gotten to that point in a discussion, because you aren't relying on some science reporter's summary, and if you have that level of motivation you can obtain the material. By providing the reference, you eliminate the problem of figuring out where the material might be located, even if obtaining it still requires some effort. But textbook material is often available from multiple sources, unless it's very specialized information.

I think it boils down to general vs specific knowledge, and areas of proficiency. If someone asks me to cite a reference for F=ma , then my immediate response is going to be "Bite me" because that's general knowledge anyone posting on a science board should have and I have the title of physics expert. In something like that, I am a source. If someone asks me to cite a reference for something I post in, say, a global warming discussion, I should be prepared to provide it: I am not an expert in that area, and there's a decent chance that details of the discussion are not part of general knowledge. And the implication of that is that I read the information somewhere (rather than use it repeatedly) and may not have parsed it properly. So a lot of posters (and I think I'm in this category) will often have already included the citation as part of their post, simply because it's good practice and it saves the effort later, in case it's difficult to find again. And if I've made a claim, the burden is upon me to back it up. If I am indeed wrong — either through misunderstanding or because I've latched on to an unreliable source, I want to correct the situation, and I'm best served by having my sources available to anyone who wants to check them. The problem is that you don't have to be mistaken very often for your credibility to suffer enough that people simply can't trust that you've properly distilled the essence of some article, or are careful about the reliability of the source.

Sione has been suspended for a week for continued rules violations; circumventing a closed thread by posting a response in a new thread (trolling and hijacking)

Sione has been autosuspended for has rapid collection of infractions, including trolling, thread hijacking and ad hominem attacks.

frankcox has been auto-suspended for 3 days for amassing too many infraction points. Thread hijacking, trolling and persistent strawmanning that are the hallmark of that sort of creationist arguments.

Tom Vose has been banned, as a sockpuppet of a previously banned user. (Graviphoton)

Why? Is there an unanswered question here?