[WikiEN-l] Re: William Connelley no longer neutral contributor

Tue Nov 25 18:48:09 UTC 2003

Mark / Delirium wrote:

>Well, perhaps "comparatively few", but certainly not "none" or "almost
>none".  They've declined in number recently, but there are still a good
>number of "sceptical" papers being published.  There was one in Climate
>Research pushed just a few months ago (January 2003) by Soon and
>Baliunus that raised somewhat of a ruckus (abstract at
>http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/cr/v23/n2/p89-110.html, among other
>places).  Whether this paper or any others are accurate or not is
>another matter, but it is true that they're being published in
>mainstream peer-reviewed journals, by researchers at fairly prestigious
>institutions.

Although, it should be noted, the Soon and Baliunus paper suffered 
from such "severe methodological flaws," according to the editor in 
chief of Climate Research, that he resigned to protest its 
publication, as did four other CR editors. See, for example, the 
following URL:

http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm

In any case, there are two issues here. The first is what constitutes 
a "scientific consensus." Some people point to the existence of 
people like Soon and Baliunus as evidence that there isn't yet a 
"consensus" on global warming, which is true if you define consensus 
to mean that "absolutely no one anywhere disagrees." By that 
standard, though, you'd also have to say that there is no consensus 
that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer or that the Nazis 
exterminated Jews.

The question in a case like this has to be, "How much unanimity must 
exist before you should call it a 'consensus'?"

Personally I would favor resolving the issue with some language 
formulation that avoids the word "consensus" and instead says 
something such as "overwhelming majority of scientists active in the 
field of climate research." The problem is, Ed in the past has 
blocked those sorts of formulations as well.

Allan Cross wrote:

>Hold on, hold on. We're not talking about excluding Theory X from the
>encyclopedia - Theory X in this case only appears on the article
>about [[SEPP]], as one of the claims SEPP makes or made. What we're
>talking about is how we phrase our description of the fact that
>scientists mostly reject Theory X. I'm happy to agree with Jimbo that
>we should be a bit more sympathetic, but the reader should be left in
>no doubt that scientists do indeed reject Singer's claim.

The problem here is that the stuff about Singer and SEPP _doesn't_ 
just appear on the SEPP and Singer article pages. Ed keeps pushing it 
prominently into the global warming article and the ozone hole 
article, accompanied by declarations that "environmentalists" are 
"attempting to discredit" Singer while refusing to "answer his 
scientific arguments." To judge from his edits, you'd think that 
Singer (who hasn't published any original research since 1971) was 
one of the leading scientists in the field.

Finally, Gareth Owen wrote:

>I don't care that you find it unpalatable.
>Your representation of those figures is flagrantly dishonest.

As someone who has clashed with Ed on this stuff in the past, I 
understand Gareth's frustration. However, I don't think it's correct 
to say that Ed is "dishonest." I think that with regard to the topic 
of global warming, Ed is (1) strongly opinionated, and (2) lacks 
competency, which robs him of the ability to recognize the absurdity 
of some of his statements. I don't mean to disrespect Ed by saying he 
"lacks competency." None of us is competent in all areas of 
knowledge, and lacking competency in a specific field is not a sign 
of poor character or low intelligence.

I've posted comments here previously giving examples of fairly gross 
errors that Ed has made with regard to the topic of global warming. I 
could summarize those and give other examples to illustrate my point 
about his lack of competency, but that would probably spark another 
flame war. My main point here is that I think we should avoid the 
charge of "dishonesty." When someone makes an error due to lack of 
competence, they're not really being "dishonest."
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
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