Word: culted
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What’s scarier than sects that worship space aliens and obsess over cloning humans? Perhaps it’s that a well-known science journalist took them seriously and blew the wild claims of a minor cult into the pages of the nation’s best newspapers...
Former ABC News science editor Michael A. Guillen late last month offered to test the claims of the Clonaid corporation that it had cloned a human baby. The company is associated with the “Raelians,” a cult whose leader believes he has communicated with extraterrestrials. Guillen offered to hire outside scientists to test whether the baby was, indeed, a clone. His very involvement, including an appearance with Clonaid’s chief Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, helped give the claims credence. Indeed, his imprimatur as an outside “expert” suddenly made...
...Guillen turn the claims of a cult into a spectacle? It could have been greed. Or ambition. Or maybe he just wanted to get his name in the newspaper. Regardless, his antics have overturned the assumption that science journalists avoid pseudo-science and wild, unsubstantiated claims. If journalism has room for ethical rules besides “getting the story,” the second should be “intervene only in matters of life and death” and the third “remain skeptical of nutcases.” Unfortunately, the gullible Mr. Guillen fails...
After a media frenzy greeted the announcement, the scientific community dismissed the cloning as a publicity stunt to draw attention to a religious cult associated with Clonaid...
...cult, called the Raelians, whose spiritual leader founded Clonaid and whose members run the company, believes that the human race was cloned from a race of four-foot-tall aliens...