Radiometric Dating for Dummies

Scientific illiteracy is a plague on American society. Some argue that this decline in basic scientific knowledge results from a sinister plot by religious fundamentalists, anti-science corporate lobbyists and their minions in the government; here at the Antisocial Network, we figure that it's instead a natural outgrowth of laziness and obsession with celebrities instead of knowledge. If only more people were obsessed with Bill Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson...

It's a safe bet that the stupidification of the internet by dumbass freelancers at sites like eHow and HubPages hasn't helped matters much. Take for instance, this question posed on a HubPages discussion forum by Peter X Dunn. Pete wants to know if a nifty Hubble image proves that there's no God and the Biblical creation story is a myth. He's entitled, but where Pete tripped the Antisocial Network's dumbass-detection algorithm is this statement:

Radiochemistry for Dummies

People bitch all the time about how “undependable” Wikipedia is. Bull. If you want to see “undependable,” just look at the kind of rubbish published by people who are writing for content farms. Yeah, you know the ones — sites like eHow that pay random people to write about things after performing perfunctory research at, you guessed it, Wikipedia. Way too many of these are college English and journalism majors who’ve been convinced by half-wit professors that they can become “experts” on anything. 

Well, some freelance writers do become very knowledgeable about their topics, but only after weeks or months of immersion and discussions with real experts. Some stay-at-home mom (or dad) who spends an hour browsing content written by other stay-at-home moms (and dads) doesn’t qualify as knowledgeable by any stretch of the imagination.