PR Firm Fakes Online Posters to Stunt Research

revmuddswife writes: "I always suspected that some of the soapbox lunatics I was arguing with online weren't what they made themselves out to be, but now British columnist George Monbiot has raised the issue about how Internet discussions may be undermined by Invented PR People *cue scary organ music*. The article relates to a biotech paper written by two University of Calif., Berkeley scientists, Quist and Chapela, that was retracted in Nature last month, partially on the basis of allegations on a listserver and online discussion. Monbiot looks into the identities of some of the individuals leading the criticism, and finds out that what we all know is true: nobody could be what they seem online. In fact, they might even be slimier than we suspect."

Now Now there is nothing to be concerned about.

[yasth]

I have no ties to the industry, but see nothing wrong with this. Indeed the author is obviously just anti-capitalist. I want to know how much he is paid by the radical anti-advertising coalition. Really Slashdot should retract this article.

Ian Knott Verity.

Cmdr Taco Pre-empts Threat!

[4of12]

[Quoting from the story]
Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.

Fortunately, here at Slashdot no one is likely to make the mistake of considering posters seriously. I read Slashot and I read the headlines of the Weekly World News, too!

Yes its slimy, but also empowering..

[rufusdufus]

Yes PR firms can use internet as a way to anonymously persuade people to believe what their clients want them to believe.
The glorious thing is, you can to!
In the past, all they had to do influence an editor, or buy some adspace. Today, they have to influence everyone.

My opinion is this: it is unethical to try to convince people of things that you yourself believe are untrue, but that you benefit from. Ye old biblical false witness. If you truly believe something, there is nothing wrong with paying a professional writer to make your views clear. So let them spend their money.

All you have to do is hone your own writing skills and reposte vigorously.

Re:Yes its slimy, but also empowering..

[astroboscope]

I don't think the problem is with anonymous posters, it's with interested parties claiming to be other people. This is a good reason to GPG sign everything. Seriously, what good is a discussion if it's polluted by lies under false pretenses?

Re:Yes its slimy, but also empowering..

[quintessent]

Hmmm. But what if I've already been misled by a PR company's fake posters. I mean, yeah, it's great to believe I'm somehow immune to deception, but who really is?

Anyone remember the gulf war when stories came out about Iraqi soldiers storming through a Kuwaiti hospital and throwing babies from their incubators? It flooded the media and was even cited by the president himself. It was a big factor in the U.S. Congress vote to declare war. The story was manufactured by a PR firm, who coached a Kuwaiti princess posing as a nurse. [galganov.com]

I have always been in support of the U.S. involvement in the gulf war. But it makes me sick that this sort of deception was engineered by someone on our side. Give the people the truth, and let them make up their minds. Truth is freedom.

Re:Yes its slimy, but also empowering..

[Clansman]

I agree that the internet is a leveller in terms of access but I am not sure I agree that this is the only issue.

The point is 'who do you trust'. Many people have stopped trusting certain corporations or even coroporations from an entire sector. Corps already pay writers to do pr - it doesn't work though because people have got wind of 'motive'. If you like, everyone is now familiar with the thought "well, you would say that" ...

To eliminate some of this suspicion, firms are now inventing fake universities and colleges, think tanks etc in order to be able to say "see - its not just us who think that this is safe - look at this university report".

People *can* read individual repostes as you say but it seems human nature (and the Big Corps know this) to trust info from institutions or organisations more than that of individuals.

¿did you think Jon Katz was a real person?

[kilroy_hau]

or Do you think I am a real person?

How can you contaminate diversity?

[hackwrench]

Contamination of diversity = more diverity. Adding transgenic corn genes to the mix should equal the strains that already exist pluse the transgenic strains, a gain in diversity. Now if you wiped out the current crops and planted crops that were all the same, there'd be a problem.

Re:How can you contaminate diversity?

[quintessent]

Unless a corn strain you creates kills off the others.

Re:How can you contaminate diversity?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same rules that govern evolution, the strong survive. If the modified organism is "stronger" then it's competitors within the enviroment, it may in time completely eradicate the competitors. The real problem comes when some disease appears that only afflicts the modified organism. Whitout boidiversity, the whole population will likely perish.

Article was flawed

[SiliconEntity]

Nature withdrew the article not because of anonymous or pseudonymous rabble-rousing, but because the article itself was flawed. A number of well known and fully identified scientists launched scathing criticisms which convinced the editor of Nature to take this unusual step. The use of PCR alone, which is known to be prone to false positives, means that the results are unconfirmed and highly questionable. Additional tests are needed to check PCR results, and the authors apparently neglected those steps.

In the end, the interests of truth and scientific accuracy were served by the withdrawal of the article based on peer review and scientific criticism. If some secret PR intervention was involved, then the only lesson we can draw from this story is that it is a positive force in the world and should be applauded.

If this is an unpalatable conclusion, then consider the alternative: that this is an attempt by anti-biotech forces to spin the embarrassing withdrawal of their story from Nature by focusing on the sins of the other camp. They are trying to distract attention from the inadequacies of the original paper, frantically pointing to misdeeds by the corporate PR forces. In short this article is nothing but competing PR itself, an attempt to re-spin the spinners. Hopefully we can be clear headed enough to know when we are being manipulated.

Re:Article was flawed

[darkonc]

Hmm... Two relatively new users, about 2000 registrations apart -- both praising the actions of the PR firms.

Now it may just be a complete coincidence, but who's to say that these aren't both shills?

(this is an example of ad-hominum attack.)

strange 'science'

[darkonc]

I note that the people who are berating the research are using two different approaches to the burden of proof:

Any indication, whatsoever, that the research may not be 100% accurate is proof positive that it is fatally flawed, and should be acted upon as such.

Any claim that their sponsors' work is non-benevolent should not be acted upon until it is proven to the n'th sigma of probability.

That having been said, I note that CIMMYT, which found 12-35% contamination of wild corn, found (near) zero contamination of samples which had been kept isolated for a number of years. this points away from the probability of systemic error in their lab methods.

also: If PCR was so flawed as to regularly give a 30% false positve rate, I expect that it would have been abandoned years ago. That it is still used more than a decade after it had been invented is an indication that it is more reliable than not.