The Dysology Hypothesis

Letting scholars get away with publishing fallacies and myths signals to others the existence of topics where guardians of good scholarship might be less capable than elsewhere. Such dysology then serves as an allurement to poor scholars to disseminate existing myths and fallacies and to create and publish their own in these topic areas, which leads to a downward spiral of diminishing veracity on particular topics.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Moral Panic Myth

 If you've read and believed the myth-bust that it was actually Jock Young and not Stan Cohen who coined the phrase 'moral panic' then you've been mislead. If you are one of the few who have read that it was in fact Marshal McLuhan who coined the term and so invented the concept in 1964 you have also been mislead. Because  Young did publish on moral panic before Cohen and McLuhan did publish on it before either Cohen or Young. But the term has been used many times before in the literature, To date, the earliest time I have found in which moral panic was used in a publication is 1830, Read the myth busting here: and see if your research skills can find an earlier date when the phrase was used.

The Moral Panic Myth

Despite 45 years of claims made by British criminologists that they invented both the phrase and the concept of moral panic in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new research of the literature reveals that both have in fact been in use throughout the last 183 years in the USA and Europe.


Click here to see how I bust this criminology myth

Friday 4 January 2013

Another pre-supermyth busted: The Channel 5 25 a Day Fallacy

Dysology.org



On new year's day 2013 - to have maximum impact on those making new year healthy eating resolutions - the British TV Channel 5 broadcast  a pile of dreadful bullony on prime time television to mislead people that the recommended 5 a day of fruit and vegetables is wrong due to a depletion of  minerals caused by poor soil quality. You can read about the 25 a day fallacy over at Best Thinking here