Whale.to
Whale.to is a website run by Herefordshire pig farmer John Scudamore. Scudamore has a long history of trying to insert links to his website on Wikipedia under the username Whaleto, but a few years ago this was put to an end when someone added whale.to to a spam block list. This means no one can link to it in any Wikipedia article, which led to Scudamore whining about being suppressed (obviously) by the "Church of Satan".[1] It is a notorious dumping ground for all things pseudoscientific... as well as a few other things. Like the complete text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, documentations of Illuminati mind control plots, and articles about the Catholic world conspiracy.[2] It contains every (and we do mean every) half-baked pseudoscientific theory ever concocted.
Shockingly, it was used as a source by the plaintiffs in the Autism omnibus trial, and it has seen increasing use as a "source" by anti-vaccinationists and propagators of the vaccine-autism connection (which should be a clue right there to the validity of their claims).
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[edit] Scopie's Law
Scopie's Law states:
“”In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately ...and gets you laughed out of the room.
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It was first formulated by Rich Scopie on the Bad Science forum.[3]
[edit] Others not to cite
- Educate-yourself.org
- Using Answers in Genesis to back up a creationist point.
- Any of Alex Jones' websites (Infowars, PrisonPlanet) or "documentaries" as evidence of... anything, really.
- Using Joseph Mercola or NaturalNews in support of alternative medicine or, for that matter, anything else. NaturalNews is itself known to violate Scopie's Law and cite Whale.to on numerous occasions.[4]
- Citing the Family Research Council when trying to argue against homosexuality.
- Weekly World News and ChristWire — although in this case it's not so much that they're full of misinformation, it's more that you're stupid enough to believe it's real.
- Citing Nyhetsspeilet when arguing in Norwegian.
[edit] External links
- Whale.to Warning: Storehouse of extreme pseudoscientific and conspiracy-mongering crap. Enter at your own risk. But good for a laugh, if you have that sense of humour.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Caution: Scopie's Law
- ↑ Seidel, Kathleen. "A Whale of an Expert." Neurodiversity Weblog 13 June 2008. Neurodiversity.com. 23 Jun 2008.
- ↑ See the original post here. This post was cited by Orac of Respectful Insolence as the first mention of the law.
- ↑ Five times in this article alone.
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