Schools should not "teach the controversy". But why does Google get a pass?

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1 point·amichail··5 comments

What's wrong with the existence of misinformation? I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to find silly lies on google. There's something more ominous about children being forced to learn this misinformation, as would be the case in a school.

Try this query on Google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=age+of+earth

Some of the highly ranked results mention the possibility of a young earth.

Why is this acceptable?

Note that saying "google is a search engine" is not an answer. With enough complaints, Google may be forced to push down scientifically false information (at least for the most popular queries) down the rankings.

Note that saying "google is a search engine" is not an answer.

Why not? If I type "mickey mouse" in to Google should I get no results from Disney because that isn't scientifically accurate about mice. Google isn't the halls of science, it represents and returns what is currently available on the internet about the query terms entered. The second Google starts deciding scientific truth is the second I stop using it.

Common sense can be used here.

The issue is whether highly ranked search results can mislead the public into believing things that are not true scientifically.

Google can fix up its rankings for the most popular scientific queries.

Common sense can be used here. Yours or Galileo's? Science has been known to be wrong from time to time. Censoring ideas just because you believe them to be incorrect is wrong. Even if the ideas in question are crackpot, stupid wrong.

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