This guy is a neo-conservative punk with all his doublespeak and backwards linguistic politiking. I can’t even describe the level of nonsense in his article but suffice it to say that Mr. McAllister’s opinion here might as well carry on to this new article also. He is a false journalist, I believe it’s called “Yellow Journalism” and I’d like nothing more than to put his fingers in a nutcracker and keep them off his keyboard.

I’ve wanted to clarify something about this piece for a while, because I’m sure it reads a little strangely. Like… why all the references to Stephen Jay Gould?

Well, aside from the fact that he’s one of our best science writers, Gould was the topic of an assignment I had for a class some months ago. We were supposed to analyze what Gould considered good science writing, then find an example from a magazine or a newspaper and compare that article to Gould’s standards. Lucky me, I stumbled across “Dying for some peace and quiet.”

So that explains the Gould references, and also why the style is a little more overworked than I might usually use for my commercial writing. It’s not really tailor-made for public consumption… but after I finished writing the essay, I had read and re-read Andy Coghlan’s article so many times and had become so annoyed by it that I felt I should post the essay here and let the feathers fly.

I don’t know for certain whether anyone from New Scientist has read it, but I hope they do. You never know. I get a decent number of hits from Google searches, and believe it or not, every month a few of them reference the title of Coghlan’s article. So at the very least, he hasn’t entirely gotten away with such shoddy faux-journalism.

Best regards and my condolences on your loss.

I have only just seen this post (even though I pop in here more often than never) and wish not only that I had seen it before today but also that I had written it myself. “Dying For Some Peace and Quiet” is a disgusting, inflammatory, irresponsible article…even worse as its sensational lede is (emphatically) untrue.

Frank Parduski was my grandfather, and he was most certainly not a victim of noise pollution. He lived across the street from a park with playgrounds and ballfields. A life-long lover of baseball as well a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather, he was concerned when speeding motorcyclists overtook the mild stretch of road that bordered his lawn and turned it into a raceway - picturing a child running into the street after an errant ball, picturing the ensuing tragedy. He did not step into the road that day because he had tender ears; he stepped into the road to tell a 19-year-old to slow down.

I (am no longer but) was a frequent reader of New Scientist, and wrote a rebuttal to Mr. Coghlan’s article shortly after it posted; unfortunately, this was so soon after the death of my grandfather that I couldn’t find the proper words (as you did so very well) and the letter remains in draft form. His death broke the hearts (and temporarily the voices) of all who knew him.

I cannot begin to describe to you what it was like to read Mr. Coghlan’s bodice-ripping, pulpish article. Not only did he succumb to the fantastical side of pseudo-science that is obscuring proper research and scientific method, he used my grandfather to do it. It was unbelievable to see. It is immoral even now.

Should you be interested, this is all I could muster at the time (see August 30th): http://www.gtsav.gatech.edu/students/studentcenter/archive/bbarchive/august07.html

Again, thank you for saying what I wish I could, what I wish I had. Especially in the name of science.

Sincerely,
Jillison Parks