Jun 202008
Prospect Magazine’s annual ranking of public intellectuals generated a long list of 100 names. To establish who was truly who, 20,000 online voters then chose their top 5 and Prospect has now published the final list in rank order.
The list reflects a problem with all but the most carefully-controlled web-based surveys, the influence of fan-sites. Here’s David Herman:
Word spread around the internet very quickly, and at least three of our top 20 (Chomsky, Hitchens and Soroush), or their acolytes, decided to draw attention to their presence on the list by using their personal websites to link to Prospect