When creating a sci tech blog, it is
very important to be viewed with ethos (or credibility).
Unfortunately, some sci tech bloggers exude ethos which they don't
deserve. In the case of Jonah Lehrer, he was a well-known and
trusted sci tech blogger who was actually plagiarizing the works of
himself and others. Despite his gross misuse of the information
which he was sharing with the public, Lehrer continued duping
audiences into believing what he was writing to be his own original
thoughts based on scientific facts.
Ethos is perceived by the reader
because Lehrer references others that we have learned to trust, he
uses statistics (which usually come across as professional and
trustworthy), and he uses scientific jargon that most people don't
really understand yet are highly impressed by:
“Consider a study by scientists at
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY.”
“According to a new report from the
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, chronic pain costs the U.S. more than
$600 BILLION every year in medical bills and lost
productivity. Back pain alone consumes nearly $90 BILLION in
health-care expenses, roughly equivalent to what’s spent on
cancer.”
“...Subjects reported a 57%
REDUCTION in the “unpleasantness” of their pain ”
“Learning to meditate altered brain
activity in the very same regions, such as the INSULA AND ANTERIOR
CINGULATE CORTEX...”
“RESEARCHERS AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
recently looked at a wide variety of psychological interventions for
chronic lower back pain, including cognitive behavioral therapy,
biofeedback and hypnosis.”
Miller
and Shepherd believe that a genre functions when a discourse acquires
a common name within a community, so they therefore consider blogs to
be a genre. Rettberg says that genres can have sub-genres, which
have certain limitations, but also have certain expectations. Given
that a sci tech blog is a sub-genre of blogging, it has certain
expectations. One of those expectations which the readers of a sci
tech blog has is that the information which is presented is true,
factual, and credited to the rightful creator/owner.
Lehrer betrays his ethos by violating
copyright law. He did so by using work which wasn't his own and
taking credit for it, or not giving credit where it was due.
No comments:
Post a Comment