Why you should always check Snopes

[torquill]

I was skimming through other peoples' Friends pages and ran across this link to the "Triangle of Life" article by Doug Copp. I was impressed by the theory -- that there is a better alternative to Duck and Cover when you're caught in an earthquake -- but I ran Doug Copp's name through Google out of habit. It's always good to get confirmation that people really are "leading experts".

One of the first five hits I got led to Snopes.

Okay, what does the urban legends site say about the Triangle of Life? "Status: Multiple — see below." They don't say it's total BS, nor do they refute specific things... but they have a bunch of links to legitimate disaster relief orgs which take their own shots at Doug Copp. So.... while not a total fraud, this probably isn't the great solution to earthquake preparation that people would like it to be.

Grain of salt time. And I'm glad I have that habit of checking peoples' credentials when I haven't heard of them before.

Comments

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Have you googled for that guy who cited himself in his own letter to the editor? I'm just curious what comes up.

-M

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, I was going to bounce that to you. I'll do that in a moment.

The guy's name was Dr. H. J. Roberts... I'm sure you'll get a lot of links to anti-aspartame groups, but it might be fun to see whether he shows up anywhere else.

In case anyone else is curious -- this was a letter to the editor with about 25 references cited. All but one were citing the author himself in other works. The last one was a letter to the Wall Street Journal's letters section. :)