NYT bestseller list omits COVID disinformation books

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bunny hugger

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This article is hardly an example of great journalism but the topic is interesting. My thoughts would be:

1) I am not sure I believe they blocked certain books from the best seller list. But if they did, the role of media in growing dangerous conspiracies is not limited to Facebook. So NYT would have some justification for omitting that kind of content. But I would expect it to be done transparently and according to some published objective criteria.

2) Skyhorse just keeps getting weirder.
 
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It may depend on where NYT gets their sales figures. Books purchased by distributors and placed in bookstores may not be the same as total books sold by the publisher, if a single private group (say, the RNC) buys a quarter of a million copies directly from the publisher to toss to their supporters.
 

lorna_w

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They block romances and ebooks, and their best seller list is based on a handful of stores in New York, and the Big Four know which stores there are. This is why you can see some political book at #6 on NYT, and yet ranked a good 50,000 below my best book on Amazon. I'm selling books; that "best selling author" really isn't. Amazon has such a market share now, if you aren't ranked there? Your placement on any other best seller list, in most of the countries we live in, is tantamount to a political favor.

So it has never been accurate (for accurate by ISBN, look at USA Today's). They've always manipulated based on their economic interests and aesthetic judgment. It won't take you much Googling to verify that is so.
 

paqart

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A tad late, but the books in question should have been, more properly, categorized as fiction.
I disagree. Have you read RFK jr.'s huge tome, "The Real Anthony Fauci"? You can disagree with its conclusions but it would be very hard to make a credible argument it is fiction. The reason is that it is so well-researched. The citation list can be easily checked to determine that the sources are real. In many cases, he refers to publicly available documents that have been around for decades.
When I read books I like, I have a hard time stopping until I'm done. RFK's book was different. It was so fascinating that in normal circumstances, I would have read it straight through in a night. However, the content was so uniquely disturbing that I read it a chapter at a time over a period of about three weeks.
 

Jean P. R. Dubois

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All it takes to get on the best seller list is 10k-ish presales, be traditionally published, and have Mainstream press validate your book. If you have "friends" with deep pockets its a measly $250k to get those presales and then all you need is someone like Fox to start promoting your book. I also dont put any stock in "popularity", crocks are popular and they are the dumbest looking piece of footware I've ever seen...
 
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Meg

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Have you read RFK jr.'s huge tome, "The Real Anthony Fauci"? You can disagree with its conclusions but it would be very hard to make a credible argument it is fiction. The reason is that it is so well-researched. The citation list can be easily checked to determine that the sources are real.
This puts the burden of proof in the wrong place. We are not obliged to endlessly play whack-a-mole with known unreliable sources.

I'm sure he did cite real sources. But did he cherry-pick from them? Did he misrepresent them? Did he draw unwarranted conclusions from them? Are those sources themselves a load of tosh? These are all errors that we are justified in thinking RFK likely made.

We already know RFK is not a reliable source. There's no obligation to go through his "huge tome" to prove it all over again.
 

paqart

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This puts the burden of proof in the wrong place. We are not obliged to endlessly play whack-a-mole with known unreliable sources.

I'm sure he did cite real sources. But did he cherry-pick from them? Did he misrepresent them? Did he draw unwarranted conclusions from them? Are those sources themselves a load of tosh? These are all errors that we are justified in thinking RFK likely made.

We already know RFK is not a reliable source. There's no obligation to go through his "huge tome" to prove it all over again.
Your comment, had I made it as a doctoral student at King's College, would have earned a rebuke from my supervisors. When researching any subject, it is in some ways more important to study and understand the perspective of your detractors than those who agree with you. That, by the way, is one of the primary faults I have seen in some masking and vaccine-related studies. They strangely leave out representation of contrary research, thus leaving no opportunity to explain why their conclusions are superior. This leaves doubt about study conclusions because we haven't seen how it fares against opposition.

I did read the Fauci book and can say that at the very least, he makes a compelling and well-researched case. The idea of "cherry-picking" has become a cliche in research. The term is used to imply that selection of material to include, and thus what to exclude, creates a false impression of the available data. This is possible and is the origin of the term "cherry-picking", but today, it is often used to describe simple editing. All data is edited. It has to be. Otherwise, there would be too much to report, and reports would be converted back into raw data with likely unintelligible commentary.

The problem is when the material is edited with a bias that conceals important information. In RFK's case, as a writer, he doesn't have to meet the same standard as an academic publishing in a journal but he does meet a high standard. Unlike writers on the other side of the subject, he does discuss research by others who disagree with him and makes an effort to present their material fairly. This characteristic is notably absent from material on the other side, and even in your pithy statement here.

EDIT: Wikipedia is not a reliable source. The New York Times is a reliable source for discovering what was printed in the New York Times, but is less reliable regarding specific content. For the type of topics covered in the New York Times, I prefer to see unedited videos of the event, court transcripts, or transcripts of videotaped interviews. The Times is a good source for investigative leads, but not as definitive proof or as evidence.
 
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Maryn

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We are not here to discuss RFK's book specifically, and we'll stop doing that right now.

The topic of this thread is in the first post. If no one has anything new to say on the thread's topic, then we'll wipe off the tables and bar, put the chairs up, sweep, and close up.

Maryn, skipping mopping since none of you spilled
 
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mrsmig

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Not only that, but the original post is from 2022 and deals with the 2022 bestseller list. The thread died for lack of interest, was resurrected briefly four months ago, died again, but has now been zombiefied once more.

@paqart, I notice this is not the only old thread you've raised from the dead today. Before responding to a thread, please check both the date it was started and the date of the latest post. If it's more than a year old, and you still want to discuss the topic, you can always start a new thread.
 
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paqart

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Not only that, but the original post is from 2022 and deals with the 2022 bestseller list. The thread died for lack of interest, was resurrected briefly four months ago, died again, but has now been zombiefied once more.

@paqart, I notice this is not the only old thread you've raised from the dead today. Before responding to a thread, please check both the date it was started and the date of the latest post. If it's more than a year old, and you still want to discuss the topic, you can always start a new thread.
No promises but I'll keep it in mind. I do not understand the concept that responding to an interesting post, regardless of its age, is somehow outre. Also, how old is old? Isn't the 2022 bestseller list relevant in early 2023?
 

paqart

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You know, when a moderator requests that a member do or not do a certain thing, "No promises" is not the desired answer.
That sentence isn't particularly interesting to me. Feel free to ignore my response. The reason I write "no promises" is the same reason I don't like to sign papers. Future behavior, even my own, is unpredictable. Even if I was fully convinced of some piece of advice and intended to follow it to the letter, there is no way I can know in advance whether I would still follow it at some point in the future or if I might unintentionally do something else.
 

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That sentence isn't particularly interesting to me.
It should be. This site has rules. Moderators enforce them. I don’t know if you’re under the impression that you have unlimited free speech here? If so, you’re wrong, and Maryn’s reply is a gentle reminder.
 

ChaseJxyz

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The reason I write "no promises" is the same reason I don't like to sign papers. Future behavior, even my own, is unpredictable. Even if I was fully convinced of some piece of advice and intended to follow it to the letter, there is no way I can know in advance whether I would still follow it at some point in the future or if I might unintentionally do something else.

You are aware that you are in control of your own behavior, right? Technically, it is entirely possible for me to post a link to a pirated copy of Morbius on this forum and tell everyone to pirate it. Will I do that? I cannot say, with 100% certainty, if I will or will not do that, as no one can predict the future. However, I can confidently say "in all likelihood, I will not do that" because I know that is not a thing that would go over well here AND I am in control of the things I post online.

People make honest mistakes. Shit happens. What constitutes necroing a thread is fuzzy as there's no hard and fast date that is too far in the past. And some threads are evergreen (like agents and publishers).

When an authority figure tells you you did something wrong, you either say "I'm sorry" and do your best to not repeat that behavior in the future...or you leave and go find a space where you're allowed to do that thing. Arguing with a mod rarely goes well.
 

paqart

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You are aware that you are in control of your own behavior, right? Technically, it is entirely possible for me to post a link to a pirated copy of Morbius on this forum and tell everyone to pirate it. Will I do that? I cannot say, with 100% certainty, if I will or will not do that, as no one can predict the future. However, I can confidently say "in all likelihood, I will not do that" because I know that is not a thing that would go over well here AND I am in control of the things I post online.

People make honest mistakes. Shit happens. What constitutes necroing a thread is fuzzy as there's no hard and fast date that is too far in the past. And some threads are evergreen (like agents and publishers).

When an authority figure tells you you did something wrong, you either say "I'm sorry" and do your best to not repeat that behavior in the future...or you leave and go find a space where you're allowed to do that thing. Arguing with a mod rarely goes well.
Here is a real world example of why I prefer to avoid promises regarding future conduct:

I worked for a comic book store in San Jose, California when I was twelve years old. This was back in 1978. My boss told me that if anyone ever tried to rob the store, he wanted me to let them have whatever they wanted. Under no circumstances was I to interfere. "Above all, I don't want anything to happen to you."

I promised. I sincerely expected to fulfill the bargain. However, there came a day when a group of older teenagers (17-19) came in to rob the store. I was by myself. My promise to the boss never entered my mind. I was outraged that these boys would try and take things that didn't belong to them. I immediately called the police. They came over to me, brandishing switchblades. I ignored them. Instead, I gave the police dispatcher a detailed description of the four perps, their weapons, and the names they had used when talking to each other. As I did this, the entire group stood within one to three feet of me. They were literally breathing into my face as they threatened me. One wanted to stab me but another one talked him out of it. He didn't want to delay while the police were on the way.

Speaking of which, the police weren't on the way. I was bluffing. I had called the police but the officer on the other end of the line didn't understand me when I gave the address. While I rattled off physical descriptions and names for the malefactors, the dispatcher was saying, "what street are you on? How do you spell that? What was the street number? Would you please let me know where you are?" I didn't because I wanted to create the impression of imminent arrest. If I had to sit there for several minutes reeling off the address and checking the spelling, I wouldn't get to the information that was most frightening to the bad guys: their appearance and first names.

I have unintentionally ressurected so many zombie threads on this and other forums that I believe I would break any promise on the subject within 30 days. The possibility remains even without the predilection but with it, there is no way I'm going to guarantee to refrain.

Bad language is a completely different subjecxt. I don't use it and don't like it when others do. Regardless, I'm not going to make any promises on that either, though I don't think I've ever used profanity in a post anywhere. The last time I remember using it out loud was when I slipped on some steps and sprained my ankle in 1998. I did put some swear words into a script for the sake of realism around 1998, but when I heard actors read the lines, took it out.
 
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