Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites

[Ian David]

Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites

The Internet is a dangerous place. It's full of resources, both good and bad; full of citations linking one to another, sometimes helpfully, sometimes not. Today we're going to point the skeptical eye at ten of the worst web sites in terms of quality of science information that they promote. To make this list, they not only need to have bad information, they also need to be popular enough to warrant our attention.

Many of these sites promote some particular ideology, but I want to be clear that that's not why they're here. Sites that make this list are only here because of the quality of the science information that they advocate.

As a measure of each site's popularity, I'm giving its ranking on Alexa.com as of this writing. Of course this changes over time, so I'm rounding them off to give a general idea of each site's traffic. Also, I'm giving its US traffic ranking, as these are English language sites and the worldwide rankings are skewed by sites in China, Russia, and the rest of the non-English world. For a starting point of reference, Skeptoid.com's ranking is currently about 40,000, meaning that 40,000 web sites in the United States get more traffic than I do. And, compared to the number of web sites there are, that number is actually not half bad — but note how it compares to some of these sites promoting misinformation.

Let's begin at the bottom of our list of the worst offenders, with a site that nevertheless has staggering amounts of traffic:

More:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

[HopeHoops]

1. If that's supposed to be Todd Palin, it is all wrong.

The package is easily FAR larger than the real thing.

[Ian David]

4. Not the first time that's been said. n/t

[HopeHoops]

5. Yeah, I've wondered who knocked up Sarah. I certainly wouldn't.

Disclaimer: I couldn't anyway - I got the big V 16 years ago.

[Abin Sur]

2. The List:

10. Huffington Post
9. Conservapedia
8. Cryptomundo
7. 9/11 Truth.org
6. Mercola.com
5. Answers in Genesis
4. Australian Vaccination Network
3. Prison Planet / InfoWars
2. Age of Autism
1. Natural News

[Ian David]

3. The list is meaningless without reading the actual article. n/t

[Abin Sur]

6. I didn't think it appropriate to copy & past the entire article.

[Ian David]

9. Well, no. Four paragraphs, and then you give the link. n/t

[DetlefK]

8. Huffington Post's streak for homeopathy always seemed strange to me.

And yes, I am full-hearted anti-homeopathy.

[Posteritatis]

15. Natural News needs to be at least four separate slots on that list, I think. (nt)

[Scuba]

7. This one is much worse than any of those...

http://www.gop.com/index.php

[WhollyHeretic]

10. After reading that I decided to take a look at conservapedia's dinosaur entry

Holy Crap! (literally)

http://conservapedia.com/Dinosaurs

Creation science asserts that the biblical account, that dinosaurs were created on day 6 of creation<3> approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans, thus debunking the Theory of Evolution and the beliefs of evolutionary scientists about the age of the earth.

Creation science shows that dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants<4>; that pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning<5>; that many of the fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood<6>; and that possibly some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark are still around today.<7>

Archaeological, fossil, and documentary evidence supports the logical conclusion that dinosaurs co-existed with mankind until at least relatively recent times.

Because the term only came into use in the 19th century, the Bible does not use the word "dinosaur." However, there are numerous references throughout the biblical account. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are clearly references to dinosaurs,<8> <9> although others have claimed that Behemoth and Leviathan are references to a hippopotamus or elephant and a crocodile respectively. However, the Biblical descriptions do not fit those creatures, note that hippopotamuses and elephants do not have a "tail like a cedar".

[semillama]

11. I disagree with Cryptomundo being on that list

May as well list DU because we have an astrology forum and for some of the stuff that gets posted in Health. I read Cryptomundo regularly (since I find cryptozoology to be a fascinating cultural phenomenon, and I like the concept of Bigfoot), and I would never categorize that site as "anti-science". I think Dunning didn't really do a decent job of critically assessing the site. Sure, there's some whackaloon types that pop up in the comments, but hey, no different than even this very forum.

[jakeXT]

12. I'm glad that nowadays all you need is 1-2 paragraphs for the scientific method

Did they even look at 911truth.org ?

[Odin2005]

13. I knew what the first 2 on the list were before I even say it, LOL!

[G3ND3R_B3ND3R]

14. This isn't so bad as it is hilarious

http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution_introduction.php