Night of the Living Blog Post
In any event, my little commentary proved to have legs, and it was posted and linked at many other sites, where it sparked a great deal of additional discussion, as well as many e-mail messages sent directly to me. Most of these messages came from scientists in the physical and biological sciences who agreed with my views and often told me stories about their own experiences that confirmed my general statements. Other correspondents wrote to tell me that I was all wet or that I was a fool, as if at this late date I didn't already know. Many such ad hominem dismissals and similarly abusive personal characterizations appeared amid the give-and-take at various blog sites. In venturing onto the blogosphere, one stands to benefit greatly from having a thick skin.
Like those zombies in"The Night of the Living Dead," however, my remarks refuse to die. Their most recent reappearance, poking their ghastly fingers through the boarded-over windows of the House of Science, is at the Peer-to-Peer blog Nature.com. The editor at Nature tells me that this site receives more than 8,000 visits daily, presumably by scientists or persons with a keen interest in science, so perhaps the crème de la crème of the scientific world will now demolish my views once and for all.
Suffice it to say that when I first wrote my little commentary, in response to David Beito's suggestion that, as a contributing editor of Liberty & Power, I ought actually to contribute something, I had no idea how much unhappiness I would add to the already-bloated sum total of misery in the world.