Monday, July 07, 2008

No more relying on Snopes

A while back, Snopes ran a badly-researched article on the book & movie versions of The Golden Compass. I wrote to them about it (actually, I sent them a thoughtful and amazing post written at the Lush message board by a poster named Shelby), and while they didn't precisely fix the entire article, they did remove some of the more blatant errors and the proof that they had relied on abstracts as opposed to reading the books.

Today, when I was reading about the Kitty Genovese event, I ran across an article from Snopes about an urban legend about a rape during Scream Session week.

I was surprised and dismayed to find that Snopes reiterates the Kitty Genovese urban legend, and really upset to get an e-mail in response to my comment which basically said, "Look up the references if you don't believe us." Upon taking another look at the article, I note that the only reference is to the scream session legend, they have nothing cited to back up their figure on the Genovese case.

You'd think they'd try to not propagate more urban legends.


3 comments:

Becs said...

Don't understand...Is Snopes saying that the Genovese murder didn't take place?

Jammies said...

No, they're repeating the same old canard about 38 people hearing it happen and not doing anything.

Anonymous said...

It's a fact she was stabbed to death, but the only doubt is about exactly how many saw it happen. And not one of those who did see it, came to her help.