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Caracasus wrote:

Oh god yeah, sometimes I'll see the headline and just skip straight to the juicy drama in the comments. One of the very best I have ever seen was when the Mail (nb to non brits, the mail is a right wing paper that practically runs on outrage) printed a story about left wing people being more intelligent... I mean it doesn't take a sociologist to figure out the basic fundamental problems with a. Making that claim or b. Actually testing that claim but damn the BTL comments were a rollercoaster ride.

Sounds brilliant! Except I must put in my compulsory - Ew, the Daily Mail.

I remember a really good section a while ago on some trashy pop-science website (memory is suggesting it was IFLS) writing some rubbish, and the comment section was a posse of scientists all going in to disprove it.

Problem was, it was one of those things where the experts disagree on a lot of the specifics (even when they agree on the basics, which the article got wrong).

It was fantastic because you see, first it was interesting watching the debunkings, but then it got funny watching them try and one-up themselves to find out who is the biggest, most important and most clever scientist in the room. Because then that would prove the superiority of their favourite theory about that super specific aspect of the thing over all of those other, clearly wrong theories.

Good times.