Professional Training

Recenty, in my Making Children Cry post, a reader of this blog (1 of 3!) challenged my credibility, and the legitimicy of this blog:

You are obviously not that intelligent, or trained in a profession that would qualify you to even make such a statement. Having a blog does not mean that your opinion is based on fact. Typing crap on a computer screen (especially worthless drivel like you have said about this matter) just proves that the world is full of people with worthless opinions who will spread them around like they really mean something. When in fact, they don‘t.
--Ralphyboy

I'm sorry he doesn't think I'm intelligent (I try very hard to be - so I'm kind of sad that I've failed at something very important to me), but in this post I'm mostly worried about the rest of what he wrote.

Does one have to be "trained in a profession" to comment on something in a blog? Chris Garret over at Perfomancing.com doesn't seem to think so in his recent post Expertise; Is it Necessary? (I would hope he knows what he's talking about - he's working for a site dedicated to promoting blogs!). Among the blogs he mentions where the author does not talk about his expertise, or where the author talks about something he is clearly not an expert in: The Dilbert blog, BoingBoing, and Digital Photography School blog.

This sort of makes me wonder - if I wasn't intelligent, but was trained in a profession related to my comment, would it make my comment valid?

I can think of several examples where people who are supposedly experts are dead wrong.

It is not the first time that [Senator Bill] Frist [MD] has created a stir in medical and political circles. In December, on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he repeatedly declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat. A much-disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested that such transmissions occur.

After numerous challenges by Stephanopoulos, Frist said that "it would be very hard" for someone to contract AIDS via tears or sweat. The Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says: "Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV." (from The Washington Post)

Another, this time from published "non-fiction":

An international bestseller upon its release, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" spurred interest in a number of ideas related to its central thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however, was nearly universally negative. Professional historians argued that the bulk of the claims, ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories presented as fact, are pseudohistorical. (from Wikipedia: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail)

So it seems clear to me that the old maxim "Don't believe everything you read" is true - I don't know why my critic didn't remember that and move on. Instead he confused fact with opinion, and apparently doesn't understand that a) only 5% of blogs reference actual facts (reference required) and b) blogs are, by definition, commentary. I'm not sure I've ever claimed anything on here was fact - but I am mostly concerned with finding fact (which is hard to do - because anyone can write anything and call it a "blog").

If you find a fact that disagrees with something I've written here - I'd love to see it. But I'll write what I want.