Jury finds Rolling Stone responsible for defamation with gang rape story
The story I read from this is that:<p>1. It&#x27;s very easy to be fooled by someone who is bent on fooling you, especially where they&#x27;ve got strong motive to do so.<p>2. It&#x27;s very easy to fool <i>yourself</i> when you decide on a narrative and start looking for facts to support it.<p>I&#x27;ve long maintained, and I&#x27;m finding some good sources (skeptics-based work) that it&#x27;s only in <i>specifically seeking to uncover truth</i> that you will do so.  If you instead presume some previously-determined proposition, you&#x27;re simply going to make a case for that argument.  Most insidious is when you don&#x27;t realise you&#x27;re pursuing the second avenue.  As Richard Feynman said, you&#x27;re the easiest person to fool.<p>Susan Haack, in &quot;Science, Scientism, &amp; Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism&quot;, <i>Skeptical Inquirer</i> Nov&#x2F;Dec 1997 wrote:<p><i>A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the color of that truth.  This is a taugology (Websters: &quot;inquiry: search for truth...&quot;).  A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for some proposition(s) determined in advance.</i><p>Question your evidence, question your sources, question yourself, question your premises and propositions.  Question them again.  And then have someone else do the same, independently.<p>To draw another recent online element to this -- a week or so back a video clip circulated of the South African university student &quot;fallist&quot; movement claiming that science was a western imposition, and that it needed to be &quot;decolonised&quot;.  First, that neglects the long history of non-western science -- from the Middle East, Africa, Persia, India, and China.  Second, it is contradicted by the motto of the Royal Society, from which the modern tradition of scientific inquiry <i>did</i> arise:  &quot;Nullius in verba&quot; -- &quot;On the word of no one&quot;.  That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn&#x27;t arise on the authority of any one person&#x27;s voice, but on the fundamental testability and verifiability of facts.<p>A lesson <i>Rolling Stone</i> and Ms. Ruben-Erdely might take to heart.