How does the “Rbutr” Find rebuttals and promote critical thinking with rbutr thing work? I tried to get a sceptical replay on this article but it does not seems to be user friendly or maybe I am too daft. http://truththeory.com/2013/04/19/30-is-the-new-45-todays-adults-getting-diseases-15-years-faster-than-their-grandparents/
Ok looks like you have to install the chrome plug in, register.
Then on the page where you at, you can look up a rebuttal or link to one if you know of one.
Do you know of one, then I will link it for you.
I’ve done all that but on this article there are no rebuttals so how do I submit it for one?
Hi tweefo,
Founder of rbutr here. Since we are still a very young startup, we don’t have rebuttals for most pages. The page you have linked to does not have a rebuttal to it yet. If you want someone to add a rebuttal to it, click on the plugin and click on ‘request’. This will ask the community to find a rebuttal to that page.
There are no promises that one will be found, but at this stage it is the best we can do.
Thanks.
There are so many wrong things here (GM foods changing you DNA)I would not know where or how to start writing a rebut. Maybe one of our greats (Mefiante hint, hint) can have a go.
The first thing to do is to use the ‘Request’ button in rbutr, and select a few tags which are related to it (GMO, Vaccines, Health being the obvious ones in this case). When you do that it will generate an email to all of our users who are subscribed to those tags - this usually means they know a lot about those areas, and can either link it to rebuttals they already know of, or will be happy to write one themselves.
The other thing you can do, is do a search on our Browse page : http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=browse and see what rebuttals we already have in our system. Because the GMO’s changing DNA sounds familiar to me, so by just clicking on the GMO tag I can find this rebuttal: rbutr - A rbutl of GM Wheat May Damage Human Genetics Permanently | GreenMedInfo | Blog
Now you could link that rebuttal page as a General Rebuttal to the page you have found, but it isn’t ideal of course, since it is only addressing one of the many claims made on your page. But it is better to address at least one claim, than to not rebut anything! 
Thanks Aegist, I think this is a very great idea. I’ve got my plug in installed, Have you got plans for other browsers?
Definitely going to expand to other browsers. At the moment we are implementing some design and function changes to the plugin - as soon as they are completed, we will work on converting the plugin to Firefox.
After that we will see how things are going and figure out what matters most!
Tweefo, unfortunately owing to work and family pressures, I don’t have the time or inclination at the moment to put together a proper rebuttal.
For what it’s worth, I think it would be a largely wasted effort anyway because there already is a wealth of credible debunking sites concerning medical matters and also because the article is so far off the mark on so many accounts that anyone who buys into that stuff as stated is simply not open to reason — and those who are open to reason won’t buy into that stuff to begin with. The title itself is already very obviously rubbish if you contrast it against how drastically average life expectancies in First World countries have increased and continue to increase. The purveyors of such counterfactual and antiscientific baloney are in an essential way just like religious fundamentalists: There is no conceivable evidence or reasoning you can present them with that would make them re-evaluate their claims, and any conflicting evidence is either ignored, or twisted (e.g., it’s all a Big Pharma + World Leader conspiracy against the bulk of humanity), or contrivedly dodged (e.g., now that Andrew Wakefield’s fraud re the thoroughly discredited MMR vaccine/autism link has been exposed for the umpteenth time, vaccines are still disdained by these people, only now the reason has changed to the claimed harmfulness done by trace amounts of mercury in the thiomersal used as a preservative in vaccine preparations). That just leaves the casual reader, and I suspect that most of them are savvy enough not to rely on just one source for such important information.
In short, you’ll find only fanatically unswayable dupes taking such nonsense seriously.
'Luthon64
I definitely agree that there would be other resources out there already which can debunk this article. It is simply a matter of finding them. I direct rebuttal will always be best, but general rebuttals should be sufficient too.
As for the unswayable dupes Mefiante - while I completely understand that feeling, I think it is an error for us to think that way. No doubt the unswayable exist, but how did people become unswayable in the first place? Surely there was some slow progression of thinking, of exposure to arguments, and of repeated exposure to claims that eventually led them to reaching their final conclusion which is no longer open to debate…? I think it is this process which needs to be interrupted, and it can only be done when people stop assuming everyone has already reached that conclusion. We have to continue to assume that minds aren’t made up, and they can be changed… because most people out there are in that category, and thanks to the internet, their friends are sharing articles like this with them over facebook, and twitter, and they are finding themselves moving down that road to the final conclusion themselves… but they aren’t quite there yet. And they are open to counter-arguments.
It is up to us to help them out.
I agree entirely with the principle. It’s the manner that’s debatable.
I do not make such an assumption as a general rule. If I did, my participation on this forum would be incongruous. However, one must also choose one’s battles with care. The particular case in question is to my mind a lost cause for the reasons stated: It is the stomping ground of fanatics.
'Luthon64
And they are open to counter-arguments.
The trick is not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out, to badly paraphrase Carl Sagan.
This rbutr idea is good if you want to help wipe out kids whose new-agey mothers (who HAVE had measels and polio vaccinations so DON’T know the effects) don’t believe in vaccines because it is ‘not natural’. It is a big pity that the kids get affected and not the moron parents.
The Internet is liberating and dangerous. I would be loathe to host or advertise a website that clusters pseudoscience in a palatable bundle, designed to appeal to popular sentiment, that can cause real damage to uninformed readers.