More bias in The Week

I've commented on articles in The Week before being irresponsible (1, 2) but a recent one (http://www.theweekdaily.com/news_opinion/briefing/41181/briefing_married_to_a_mob.html), particularly the third paragraph, showed blatant bias and/or laziness--take your pick. For this one I didn't bother with posting a comment on the web page; other people had already done that. Here's the message I sent to the editors.

I would like to inquire as to who the anti-Mormon member of your editorial staff is. I have sensed an anti-Mormon bias in articles in the last few months about Romney and other issues, but nothing so blatant as the recent article about polygamy in the May 16 issue.
This article attributes to Joseph Smith instruction that a man must have at least three wives to enter heaven, and gives a date for the revelation. This date, much less this teaching, is not given by any reliable source, but is to be found in anti-Mormon literature. Polygamy was never a requirement in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--the three wives requirement is not to be found in any verified source. In short, the material used in the third paragraph was not drawn from reputable sources, and most likely was taken directly from anti-Mormon literature.
In addition to this rude display of journalistic irresponsibility, your editors have continued to ignore the AP Stylebook direction and the LDS Church's request that the term "Mormon" not be used to refer to any groups besides the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From the Stylebook, "The term Mormon is not properly applied to the other Latter Day Saints churches that resulted from the split after [Joseph] Smith's death."
I recognize that it is the right of "The Week" and its editorial board to hold and express any opinion, however offensive, about Mormons and the LDS Church. Decency, however, would suggest that such editorial bias be saved for the editorial pieces and not the News section, where the readers of your magazine should be able to expect verified fact.

The purpose of physics research

I had a conversation via email with a friend who was inquiring about my current research. I thought I'd post it here (with a couple corrections), since people always ask me what the potential applications for the results of our experiment are.

AH:
wow, what is the experiment?

Me:
Some theorists have suggested that gravity will behave differently at distances less than about one-five-hundredth of an inch. We're trying to test that hypothesis by looking at the gravitational force from a dense 4" diameter metal disk on a small pendulum as we move the pendulum disk towards and away from the disk pendulum.

AH:
wow! what would be the benefits of knowing whether or not gravity does behave differently at that small of a distance?

Me:
The short answer, in terms of practical applications, is we don't know yet--we'll let the engineers figure that out.
The long answer is that it would validate or invalidate proposed hypotheses, giving us a better picture of how the world actually works. Gravity is much weaker than the other forces between particles (electromagnetics and the forces responsible for nucleus cohesion and decay), and no one knows quite why. Our experiment could validate one hypothesis as to why it is. In some sense it would be a cultural achievement. What practical benefit is there from Sir Edmund Hillary reaching the peak of Mt. Everest, or from someone discovering a new species of animal, etc.?
Typically, practical application of scientific discoveries doesn't come for some time. Take Einstein's theory of relativity, for example. It's regarded as one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history, but now, a century after it was developed, the only current practical application I can think of for it is correction to the clocks on GPS satellites. That's pretty helpful, since GPS systems wouldn't work without it, but it's not indicative of the importance of the theory. It has enabled physics to progress and opened the development of other tested theories that have further enlarged our understanding of the world.
(I hope this isn't coming across as a rant. I do get this question just about every time I tell someone about our research, and I'm slowly figuring out better ways to answer it. Thanks for the interest!)

I can't take credit for the "cultural achievement" bit--I think I heard that from someone who'd heard Wolfgang Ketterle answer a question about what the benefit is to creating a Bose-Einstein condensate.

WASHINGTON POST, ON FAITH - Michael Otterson: Polygamists Are Not Mormons

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/michael_otterson/2008/04/polygamists_are_not_mormons.html
The Church's media relation director, Michael Otterson, has a blog on the the Washington Post's On Faith site. His post today reiterates the proper use of the term Mormon, and includes a link to a Reuters article and his own video statement. Backtracking to the Church's Newsroom site (http://newsroom.lds.org), you can find this video along with a video of President Hinckley, the president of the Church who passed away earlier this year, "speaking about the clear distinction between the Church and polygmagous sects."
On a related note, I've noticed that many journalists are referring to the polygamist groups as fundamentalist Mormons. Despite the F in FLDS standing for fundamentalist, these groups are not fundamentalist in the sense of following the fundamental tenets of Mormonism. Just because they've named themselves that doesn't mean that they are.

Proper use of the term "Mormon," take 2

I haven't posted anything for a while mainly because there hasn't been much to post about. In the last few days, however, there have been events in Texas involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (commonly referred to as FLDS). I'm not going to go into explaining what this church is, as I'm not qualified to do so, but suffice it to say that it is not connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). A number of media sources have used the term "Mormon" to refer to the FLDS church, but this is incorrect, as I've explained previously. The Associated Press Stylebook explains, “The term Mormon is not properly applied to the other Latter Day Saints churches that resulted from the split after [Joseph] Smith’s death.”
I have covered this topic before, but it really irks me to see a picture of the Salt Lake Temple, a recognized symbol of our church, associated with an article about an unrelated group (such as here). Sure, this group may be a breakaway sect from the LDS Church, but calling them Mormon, especially in the headlines, gives people the impression that these events involve the LDS Church, which they don't.
In case any of this is unclear, let me reiterate. Any group that endorses polygamy is not connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS Church or Mormon church. The term "Mormon" should not be used to label these groups, both by request of the LDS Church and according to the Associated Press Stylebook, the standard for journalism language style and usage. Improper use of the label "Mormon" is misleading, irresponsible, and disrespectful to members of the LDS Church. If anyone has questions about the proper use of the term, feel free to post a comment with your question.

Offer to journalists

So I've done some complaining about a lack of fact and style-guide checking in news about the Church. One of my friends has the saying that you can complain as much as you want, as long as you have a solution. Here's my solution: I'm offering to fact-check articles about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for any journalist who happens across this offer (for free). Checking my visitor logs, I don't think I'm going to get swamped by requests anytime soon, but the offer stands.

Name of the Church, pt. 2

I already wrote a post about the real name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but there's a couple other things I want to bring up. I failed to mention in my last post that the Church's style guide for journalists specifically requests that the Church not be called the "Mormon Church." It also asks that "LDS Church" and "Church of the Latter-day Saints" not be used. While I can understand use of "LDS Church," since the acronym is so prevalent, I'm been surprised in my recent news searches to see articles calling the Church the "Church of Latter-day Saints." Doing this presents it as the official name of the church, which it is not, and, by removing the name of the Savior, seems to reinforce the bias that we aren't Christians. I'd like to know why this happens--are the journalists just trying to save some space? I understand that mistakes happen, but with the Church being the fourth-largest denomination in the U.S., you'd think that writers and editors could put more effort into doing some background research and getting things right.

VENTURA COUNTY STAR - With a Mormon candidate on the ballot . . .

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/jan/12/latter-day-politics/
This was a well-written article that I didn't find any factual errors in. Kudos to them.