Thursday, December 28, 2006

Top Ten Websites for Informed Skeptics

Everyone likes a good top 10 list to reflect on the past year: here, courtesy of the excellent junkscience website, are the "Top 10 Junk Science Moments for 2006".

Steven Milloy runs the junkscience website and people either appreciate what he does or seriously dislike him: it all depends on their ideology. What I like about the site is that it stays current, has links that allow you to read original source material for yourself, he adds some interpretive commentary and he scans information from a wide range of locations.

For this reason, junkscience tops the inaugural ecomyths list of "Top Ten Websites for Informed Skeptics".

The Top Ten are:
  1. Junkscience: as described above, daily updates, comments, extensive coverage and an excellent index.
  2. Climate Audit: precise focus but very instrumental in the dismantling of the hockey stick and its role in the promotion of global warming; good list of frequent posters, some pointed debates and, above all, an emphasis on good science.
  3. Tech Central: good commentary, extensive coverage, well indexed and with excellent writing; all posts refer you to original source materials and extended reading; well researched.
  4. Spiked: topical, provocative and timely with an excellent slew of regular contributors. Well written.
  5. Prometheus: the best science policy blog out there; good site for policy debates and to drop in on invective between contrasting posters from different perspective. Why doesn't science always make for good policy? This blog gives a glimpse of the complexities faced in transferring what we know (and don't know) into what we think (and don't think) that we want.
  6. Ferraris for All: Daniel Ben-Ami's blog that focuses on the economics of environmentalism
  7. The Commons Blog: extensive listing of dynamist websites, extensive index and recent articles; very comprehensive.
  8. Cafe Hayek: site that views contemporary issues from a free market perspective in the tradition of Hayek
  9. EnviroSpin Watch: excellent writing and framing of environmental issues from the perspective of political ecology; posts a less frequent than they used to be but Phillip Stott is always worth reading and quoting.
  10. Reason: the online version of the magazine for free minds and free markets which seeks to avoid simplistic left and right political polarization by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice in all areas of human activity, including many issues that incorporate ecomyths.