How to contact the publisher

Maybe Scott know how, but perhaps other form members may also know.
Articles online such as the one below can be very misleading. For anyone new to grafting, the article could lead you to believe that any stone fruit in the Prunus genus is compatible for grafting with most any other stone fruit. Most forum members know that’s not true. So how can I contact the author or publisher of the below article to advise them to edit the article online?
Article website: Compatible Fruit Tree Grafting | Home Guides | SF Gate

“ Fruit trees of the same genus but different varieties are compatible for grafting. Grafting joins a lower rootstock portion of a fruit tree with the scion portion of another variety of fruit tree. Rootstocks of dwarf or semi-dwarf trees are often grafted onto standard growth trees to create manageable trees for the home orchard. Semi-dwarf rootstock is most frequently used as graft material, producing trees 12 to 18 feet in height.”

It would be good if articles like this could refer readers to a more useful website that deals with fruit tree compatibility, or refer readers to this forum to seek advice from experienced grafters!

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Actually it does…down at the bottom way past where you would be looking for it, there’s a link (under “References”) to the Home Orchard Society website that goes to a page with a 404 error, and (under “Resources”) a UC Davis Fruit and Nut website.

But the author bio had me ROFLing…

Joan Norton, M.A., is a licensed psychotherapist and professional writer in the field of women’s spirituality. She blogs and has two published books on the subject of Mary Magdalene: “14 Steps To Awaken The Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene” and "The Mary Magdalene Within."

Yup, must be a grafting expert with a bio like that. :rofl:

Oh, and I don’t know if you noticed, but to add to the list of errors they listed apple as a member of the Prunus genus.

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Yep, really an expert on grafting, I could not find a way to contact the publisher. I may try again

Here you go: Contact SFGATE

Thanks! I will contact the editor

Five in the morning, a wife to her husband:
— Are you going to come to the bed?
The husband, typing on his computer:
— Wait, somebody is wrong on the internet.

I remind myself of this joke every time I want to correct somebody who wrote something stupid somewhere. I have to admit, this doesn’t always stops me. :slight_smile:

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Ok, Stan, I know, it seems academic, and some may feel it’s trite for me to raise this as a new topic, but as I wrote a note to the publisher today, misleading articles can cause a loss of unnecessary confusion. Having read this article two years ago, I convinced myself that I could convert my cherry trees to other stone fruits so I attempted a number of plum grafts only to see a 100% failure rate. This was before I became a member of this forum. So I wasted my time and many resources and a full year of time only to discover this article was 100% wrong! So for me and I hope any others that may be new novice grafters, I hope they realize there is a lot of garbage on the internet. Which is why I wanted to post this subject. Thanks to the expertise on this forum it’s now easy for new grafters to learn how to do things correctly the first time. Simply by consulting those on this who have more experience. So hopefully I will save some time for a few. If so it’s worth my time!

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You are probably wasting even more time by attempting to correct an article on sfgate. The solution to this is maybe to educate people about how to find good information on the internet. There probably is no solution to correcting the bad information on the internet.
The ratio of bad information to good on the internet is probably 10:1 or worse.
I would not waste any more time with a fruitless effort to correct this information.

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Dennis, I have no problem with you trying to correct that article and posting about it here, just wanted to lighten the mood and remind ourselves that internet is full of stupid stuff.

Although i agree with you DennisD.

Bad information should be fixed or removed. But as ribs1 said. On the internet this is never gonna happen to a degree that matters.

To confound this, some bad information on the internet is bad/misleading on purpose. So even if you where to try and correct it. The author would not want to.

The realistic fix: Learn to recognise good sources.

  • loook for university extensions
  • get a good book to start you off with some basic knowladge.
  • look for references where information came from. A good book, should reference to where they got the information from.
  • look up a few of the references. It the reference goes to a blog or wikipedia page. Id trust the source less than if it goes to an established/trusted institution or peer reviewed scientific consensus (meta analasis) paper.
  • look for “strange” clue’s. If you got some basic know-how from a trusted source. And then when looking for more information. You usualy will spot "clue’s that something is fishy. (like apple being member of the prunus family. When i come accros shuch i thing i continue my search elsewhere)
  • look for the results of “the advise”. Plenty of online sources show you “how to do somthing” but most of them never show you the amazing results they predicted.
    That should be a red flag itself!
  • on media that allouw it. Ask questions (proof/more information/explenation of underlying principle)
  • look for supporting evidence. Agreement by multiple sourches from different people/institutions (prefurable institutions).
    The agreement ofcourse is not valid if the compared sources give virtually the same information besides the thing your comparing. A lot of copy pasting going on online.

Most of the points made above, do not exclude the information/sourche being reliable. But on anverage they do help. It is also no garantee. Univerisity’s publish “bad” information to. Although usualy to a lesser degree or less often.

The “bad” shortcut.
if you tried all of the above or care less about the accuracy/validity.
you could take the following “shortcut” with less effort.

-look at who is saying it.
although being a “licensed psychotherapist and professional writer” Does not exclude some one from having good grafting knowladge. It does not compare well to for example a “horticulturist”
However keep in mind that horticulture is a large field. And people without a degree in botany, also calll themself horticulturists. So some-one having a relevant sounding title or discription is not a gasrantee they actualy have expertise in the field. And even if they do. A lot of trained botanists are verry speciliased and might for example know nothing about grafting or fruit tree’s witch in itself are verry specialised things.

There is always an “expert” outlier to.
Im pretty sure somewhere there is a dentist that recoments brushing your teeth with sand. or somthing like that.
However if 90% of other dentists say “don’t brush your teeth with sand”
the better idee might be that of those 90% of dentists.

There is always some one claiming to be an “expert” who is not.

The problem with trusting “a single” expert thus becomes obvious. If there are always outliers and “false” experts. It becomes easy to find an “expert” agreeing with any possible idea.

And if you can find an “expert” that agree’s for any idea you can think of (no matter how bad an idea). Than almost by defenition that “proves” this trusting of a single expert to be an bad idea.

The “good” shortcut.
-Look for consensus / the average of what “experts” are saying.
-this usualy comes in the form of a “peer revieuwed article published by a renouwned journal or institution”
-or institutions themself. It is part of the job of an institution to internaly vet their “eperts” and internaly peer revieuw their results and sources.

The catch
Even if you do all of the above, and you get reliable information/data. You still might interpert it wrong. Or it might not be applicable for you.
A simple example might be growing zones. Advise given that is “good” for zone 4a. Might not be ideal for zone 10B or vise versa. Does not mean the 'advice" is “bad”. But your interperting/using it wrong.

Remain critical :slight_smile:

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also, some of the things mention in this topic i wrote might be helptfull.

I remember back when the world wide web was just becoming a thing, how we all thought it would make everyone better informed. Instead, I’m pretty sure it has contributed to making people more stupid. Not just less informed, but armed with loads of misinformation and the inability to differentiate between what is a reliable source and what is not.

I have a gardening friend who gloms onto any kind of novel bad gardening advice he sees on a website, without checking the provenance of the article. He has years of gardening experience, so you would think that in itself would give him a pretty good BS filter when it comes to gardening stuff, but in addition to that he is a retired teacher. It just makes me shake my head at how little critical thinking is going on out there.

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Wow! Never dreamed I would stir so many thought! Good one though! I thought I was having a slow day (rainy all day here, good time to think and write) but Oscar, you must really have a slow weekend! :heart:

Eating the last 10 pounds of Enterprise apple, 2 a day for covid