Pyrometers for the Dummy Researcher

Infrared pyrometer

We admit it: sometimes our staffers get lazy and, instead of a hardcore search for internet dumbassery, they just google the name(s) of self-appointed freelance "journalists" we already know have sacrificed accuracy in the name of cash in their pockets. This happens a lot on weekends... like today, when we just looked for more stupidity in the back catalog of eHowian Mark Fitzpatrick. Here's our introduction to Fitz's sixth DotD, a Sciencing.com post called "Types of Pyrometers."

We find it telling that even Leaf Group has discovered that Fitzpatrick's text can't be trusted: of his five previous award-winning posts, Leaf has deleted four (hence the red listing). He still has, by our reckoning, about a kajillion more possibilities out there, many of them probably as inane as today's. Inane, you say? check out this daffynition:

"A pyrometer measures heat admitted [sic] from an object visibly bright or incandescent."

First, Mark, the word you really wanted was "emitted"; and second, no one around here can parse that sentence (shame on your content editor!). For the record, though, a pyrometer is a "remote thermometer," like the no-touch forehead thermometer in many modern medicine cabinets. Fitzpatrick gets it (sort of) right when he claims that there are two types of pyrometers, optical and infrared. It's when he has to translate scientific lingo into dumbassery that he gets confused. Here's a comparison of "what Fitzpatrick said" compared to "what his source said":

• "Although all pyrometers are optical in the sense they can read an object's heat from a distance, an optical pyrometer allow [sic] a scientist to see heat." – "Optical pyrometers... are designed for measuring thermal radiation in the visible spectrum."
• "A radiation pyrometer measures pure radiation wavelengths. The device has an optical scanner that can see 0.7 to 20 microns on the wavelength range, the general range for radioactive heat." – "Infrared/radiation pyrometers... measure the temperature of an object from the radiation emitted by the object."

Duhh... So here we have a polysci type who commits multiple sins that illustrate his scientific ignorance. Among them are the conflation of heat radiation with radioactivity, a failure to comprehend the meaning of the phrase "visible spectrum," and just plain general failure to understand what he claims to have researched. Do you understand now why Fitzpatrick collects Dumbass of the Day awards like baseball cards?

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