I don't believe it! (Bear with me; it is my first posting to this forum.)

I appreciate that free websites need advertising to survive. But is it possible to request Google ads that do not promote the very things you oppose. Does an ad for a hoax gain credibility by positioning at Bad Astronomy, or does it merely show that it IS bad astronomy?

As I write this, the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum homepage shows the following ads:

The Final Theory
The bestselling book our scientists hope you never read. Find out why.

Aether Theories
Relativity is a nonsense Provides a revolution in physics

Quantum Aether Theory
Discrete Rotating Magnetic Fields. Founded upon empirical data!

Follow the links if you like -- they lead to complete rubbish. For example, the Final Theory seeks to overturn both Newton and Einstein with popular pseudo-science aimed at the ignorant and undiscerning. But he does not provide a proper abstract on his website -- you have to buy the book (his real purpose) to learn The Secret.

The Bad Astronomy homepage has an ad for mysearchisover.com, a government-conspiracy-nut site with links to a moon hoax site, a 9/11 hoax site, and various other crap.

Poor ol' Phil Plait could not possibly have time to address all the crap out there that gets ad placement on popular sites like CNN.com (e.g., thesurfaceofthesun.com, by some wack job that believes the sun has a solid metal surface, just below the photosphere). Maybe the earth is hollow? (Or is that the sound of my own head?)

What do you think? Should bad astronomy be sponsored by bad science? Why are bad theories multiplying like cockroaches? Are we experiencing the postmodern democracy of ideas? I would love to "hear" (read) your thoughts.

Cranky Customer had a rant about inappropriately targeted ads a while back. I imagine the situation here is similar.

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"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
S. Baldrick

Website owners are allowed to block specific ads (although I think there's a limit to how many of them they can block), but they cannot say 'no ads from category x', simply because Google ads works by reading the site and trying to figure out what category of ads would work best. As you can see, it isn't always perfect.

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Actually, there's something rather ironic about ads for pseudo-science sites helping to pay for a site that debunks them.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Actually, there's something rather ironic about ads for pseudo-science sites helping to pay for a site that debunks them.

Ha! That's an excellent observation. Bring on the conspiracist and pseudoscientific ads!

Also, everyone be sure to visit all the sites and observe how silly they are--they get charged for every click through. You might even want to visit several times, to make sure you get the full effect.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

But would you expect as much click-through for inappropriate ads? That's the downside. No ad revenue from the informed person viewing the site, who won't be tempted by the ad.

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"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
S. Baldrick

It's difficult to keep up with all the nonsense ads. I can filter them out, but it's tedious-- I've talked to Google about this, and they have plans for making it easier, but I haven't heard back from them in months. I'll filter those out as I see them. Thanks!

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Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Sometimes I click to see if it's really as bad as I think it is. I'm seldom disappointed!

Of course I wait until I'm at home where I can use Mozilla and not be bothered with pop-ups and other annoyances before clicking on the ads. An ounce of prevention . . .

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

So, if I click on 'em, Google gets richer, and the nuts have to pay! Cool!

BTW, I have Mozilla (on a Mac) at home too. But you can disable pop-ups even in Explorer.

The IE popup blocker is somewhat inferior to the Mozilla one, the IE one doesn't let any popups open, even ones I want, Mozilla tends to be very good about knowing what popus I want and which ones don't.

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