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Errare humanum est. IMHO, the real problem is the black-and-white thinking where, for example, the specialists in some field are categorized into only two camps: the 100% good trustworthy ones or the totally bad - not some errors here and there in someone's argumentation.

When you write lots and lots of text about complicated matters, it is only natural that some parts of it could be questioned by someone, more or less. That is often the case even with scientific studies. Hopefully the authors notice and correct their errors later, or others will do it for them. If you disagree with someone, you might talk/write to him/her directly and discuss the matter, and you both might learn something in the process.

We should not blindly trust any author and their claims, although some authors can be more trustworthy than some others. But even then, also those more trustworthy authorities may sometimes draw wrong conclusions etc. But that doesn't mean that they couldn't still be relatively competent in what they do. Like I said, it is only human, and nobody's perfect.

In the case of Groklaw, the site can be quite informative, especially as there are not many other sites of its kind, if you just remember to be critical and compare the information to other sources. The same is true with any other source of information.

Edited 2010-01-25 17:03 UTC