I really do think that people should be careful about what they say in public and measure their words. And further, I think that the author of that book ought to be silent on that particular subject.
On one hand, I think that people should check before publication and not publish shit. That goes for posting on the internet, and also about publishing books.
Separately and orthogonally, I think that someone who doesn't check before publication and publishes shit should refrain from complaining about other people's shit, even though other people's shit really is shit.
That's what I mean by unbalanced scrutiny.
She made several mistakes, of which I'll describe two. One (modestly serious) was to confuse units and compute the wrong number. The second (against my religion) was to publish without sanity-checking. You and I both know she didn't check, because her estimate for the average water use of one building was 20% of the water use of the continent. Any sort of check would uncover that mistake.
We in the rational camp are supposed to behave differently from Alex Jones, and part of that is to check before we publish.
She's "making arrangements with her editor to rectify the situation". If she fixes every reported error, not just one of them, I'll have a lot of respect for her.
Post a story about him to HN and I'll either comment or miss the thread, both are possible.
Why would you ever want to demand that someone "stay silent" about anything. Taking away somebody's voice is the lowest of the low. You do not have to read it or interact with it if you don't like it. And how would you want to be treated when you make a mistake? Can't you see how that leads straight to a world of zero progress, where people are afraid to do anything because it could turn out to be a mistake and they will be shunned for it by those that happen to have the most power? Are you not aware of the research into how bad punishment is for learning and advancement of society?
Williams, K. D., & Nida, S. A. (2022). Ostracism and social exclusion: Implications for separation, social isolation, and loss. Current opinion in psychology, 47, 101353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101353
Knapton, H. M. (2014). The Recruitment and Radicalisation of Western Citizens: Does Ostracism Have a Role in Homegrown Terrorism?. Journal of European Psychology Students, 5(1), 38-48. https://doi.org/10.5334/jeps.bo