By J. H. Saltzer, February 6, 2002
How do we decide whether or not a paper is credible? This is a question that one should ask about every paper we read, not just the reports from a supermarket tabloid.
(The Weekly World News regularly carries front-page reports of UFO's, alien abductions, sightings of Bigfoot, Elvis, or Jesus, propecies of Nostradamus that just came true, and related phenomena.)
(Greg Morrison. No information.)
(Computer expert Gary Purmon. Here we find something suspicious. The name of this "computer expert" does not show up in the World-Wide Web. Lycos Directory assistance reports no telephone listing in the United States with that surname.)
(There are no formal citations. In several places the paper cites unnamed "experts" and it claims that the CDC has been studying the problem. Unfortunately, the CDC website does not confirm this study.)
(This one seems pretty clean.)
It says that 168 people have died, all over the world. One would expect to have heard of this large a problem from multiple sources, especially if so many computer experts and officials are actually aware of it.
The only review that an article like this gets is from the editor of the paper.
Saltzer@mit.edu