Steve Zwick walked back his comments about letting skeptics’s houses burn down and tries to clarify the point he was trying to make. I have further comments in a new Forbes article here. An excerpt:
Steve Zwick has posted an update to the post I wrote about last week and has decided the house-burning analogy was unproductive. Fine. I have written a lot of dumb stuff on a deadline. In his new post, he has gone so far in the opposite direction of balance and fairness that I am not even sure what his point is any more — the only one I can tease out is that people who intentionally bring bad information to a public debate should be held accountable in some way. Uh, OK. If he wants to lock up the entirety of Congress he won’t get any argument out of this libertarian.
Here is the problem with Mr. Zwick’s point in actual application: Increasingly, many people on both sides of the climate debate have decided that the folks on the other side are not people of goodwill. They are nefarious. They lie. They want to destroy the Earth or the want to promote UN-led world socialism. If you believe your opponents are well-mentioned but wrong, you say “they are grossly underestimating future climate change which could have catastrophic effects on mankind.” You don’t talk about punishments, because we don’t punish people who take the wrong scientific position — did we throw those phlogiston proponents in jail? How about the cold fusion guys?
However, when the debate becomes politicized, we stop believing the other side is well-intentioned. So you get people like Joe Romm describing the people on the two sides of the debate this way:
But the difference is that those who are trying to preserve a livable climate and hence the health and well-being of our children and billions of people this century quickly denounce the few offensive over-reaches of those who claim to share our goals — but those trying to destroy a livable climate [ie skeptics], well, for them lies and hate speech are the modus operandi, so such behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged.
This is where the argument goes downhill. When one group believes the other side is no longer just disagreeing, but “trying to destroy a livable climate” and for whom “lies and hate speech are the modus operandi,” then honest debate is no longer possible. If I honestly thought a group of people really, truly wanted to destroy a livable climate, I might suggest letting their houses burn down too.
***”You have failed to show that their papers cannot support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm.”
They very well might do just that. Why don’t you write up your conclusions and publish them in Nature or Science?
That way, you can show conclusively that your purloined list actually supports your conclusion that human activity is having only a limited effect on the climate.
That’s a very simple solution.
You are making the claim. Now you can back it up!
Weirdo,
“Poptech misappropriated a number of papers which did not support his conclusions”
Lie, all the papers support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
“Several of the scientists have questionable associations.”
None of the scientists have questionable associations.
“Several of the scientists have asked that he pull their papers from his website.”
Asking for your paper to be removed based on a strawman argument is not a valid reason.
“And even if Poptech managed to find 850 papers of any sort, they are insignificant in the larger picture.”
It is 900+ and they are very significant and all are peer-reviewed.
My God you are thick.
Weirdo, prove me wrong. Provide me with the 1001 result for any Google Scholar search you computer illiterate!!!
“Weirdo, The vast majority of papers support AGW.”
This is a pure lie! Try searching for “Anthropogenic Climate Change” <— with quotes.
“I just did a Google Scholar advance search: I clicked “Biology, Life Sciences, and Environmental Science” and “Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science.” I used the term, “climate change.” I came up with over 720K hits.”
ROFLMAO! Those are not all papers and the number is bogus you computer illiterate! What is the 1001 result from that search?”
“I performed the exact same search using “climate skeptic” and came up with 578 hits. Most of these seemed to have used the word “skeptic” somewhere in the text; they were not necessarily skeptic papers. I performed the search again using “climate skepticism” and came up with 3,810; again these used the term “skepticism” somewhere in the text—they were not necessarily “skeptical” papers. Phrases such as “Thus Republicans embrace climate skepticism as a strategy that pays off in polls” and “Hence the skepticism that climate change can reasonably be connected with enduring societal change” caused Google Scholar to pull them up.”
Papers that support skepticism does not have to include the word “skeptic” in them! What sort of insanity is this?
“In other words, there are probably very, very few actual skeptic papers anywhere in Google Scholar or anyplace else.”
You have no idea how to use Google Scholar you computer illiterate!
“All of which substantiates Honeycutt’s original contention that Poptech has only a fraction of the overall wealth of knowledge regarding climate science. His argument, which I pasted into this thread, still stands.”
It doesn’t substantiate anything. Are you MENTALLY DERANGED? All it substantiates is you are a computer illiterate and keep demonstrating it OVER AND OVER AND OVER!
Weirdo, answer these questions,
1. Is it possible to obtain the 1001 result from any Google Scholar Search?
2. Does Google Scholar only index peer-reviewed papers?
According to the computer illiterate Weirdo, Al Gore has published 300 peer-reviewed papers,
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author%3A“al+gore”
Here is one of the computer illiterate Weirdo’s peer-reviewed papers,
“global warming” “Planet Mutonia and the Young Pop Star Wannabes”
Planet Mutonia and the Young Pop Star Wannabes [Book] (T. Kallison, 2010)
“Can you imagine a world without music? That’s exactly what happened to young Melody Bell and her two friends, Harmon E. Cord and Justin Tyme. These three youngsters share their common aspirations to one day become celebrated pop stars!”
Is this the science you are searching for using Google Scholar you computer illiterate Weirdo?
And in case the computer illiterate Weirdo attempts to challenge this irrefutable evidence of his computer illiteracy. All results on Google Scholar are cumulative that means the results have to include all of the search terms.
****”Your continued smearing of credentialed and honorable scientists is noted.”
Just please, please don’t put it on my permanent record!
And please, spare us the high sentence.
You miss the point of my conversation with Will above, tartlet. Try again. I am as research literate as you are and understand all the ins-and-outs of G.Scholar. I actually think Academic Search Premier or JStore much better search engines for the reasons you innumerate above. And such a discussion is pointless anyway. Honeycutt made a pretty convincing refutation of your little project, and he pretty much handed you your hat. Simply reiterating the limitations of G.Scholar does not invalidate anything he said.
You know, tartlet, I Googled “900+ papers” just to see who or what else has commented on your little pilfered project. There are actually very few people even the slightest bit interested, and those that do take an interest in your “900+ papers” do not seem to be actually using them to evaluate the science or do any sort of serious reading; these are mostly pure denialist bloggers who do essentially the same thing Will did—that is, they simply point and say “See! Here’s 900 peer reviewed papers!”
No matter what, your little project amounts to very little.
I think the fundamental difference here is that PopTech makes specific claims that can be checked and verified. Wacky Waldo posts vague smears that are refuted. Worse, he repeats the smears without adding any new information to the original accusations. When this happens in an exchange, it’s a clear concession to all observers that Wacky lost the argument.
Uh huh.
So what argument do you think you’ve won there, my little cherry tartlet?
You have voluminously made the case that G.Scholar does not have a filter for PR writing…
…that one cannot verify what one has googled after the 1000th hit…
…that the hits may or may not contain information relevant to your particular pilfered list…
…that therefore Honeycut has shown nothing in itself that is relevant…
…and that you think anyone who is not impressed with this line of reasoning is cyber illiterate.
What is more, since I am not impressed with this logical progression, you think I am conceding something (what is it with “concession” on this weird thread?).
But you are correct, I have not “added anything new” to my “arguments.” That is actually because my “arguments” for the dismissal of your silly little list stand pretty solidly:
1. You cherry picked a list of papers
2. You claim to understand the science behind what you posted but there is no real indication of this.
3. If anyone ever is interested enough to look at the papers-in-question (which likewise seems unlikely), it is very likely you’ve mixed a number of papers together which support various aspects of AGW except for papers written by scientist-authors with connections to corporate science.
4. The scientist-authors are either a) working under dubious connections or b) wishing you would leave them alone. Several of the scientists have made statements to the effect that you have misrepresented their work.
5. And even if your piddling little attempt at an agitprop does show what you purport it does, any cursory glance at the amount of material available reduces it to statistical meaninglessness.
Your attempt to deal with these issues is a tiresome obsession with “proving” that G.Scholar is not really a very good search engine (something which has never been in contention) and a semantic morass involving the difference between “alarm” and “skepticism.”
In fact, this is odious. I concede nothing. I pronounce “900+ Papers” lame as NKOTB on a cruise ship.
You know what else, tartlet? Honeycutt’s “9 out of 10” observation is cited repeatedly. Whatever you post, his analysis got a lot of cyber space, actually as much and perhaps more than your little list did. You may have started the battle, but he won the war. You actually gave the ecological blogosphere a great concept to rally behind.
Sorry.
I was actually responding to Will who, since it is early in the morning in Australia, is fairly sober.
HOW’S THE ARTICLE COMING, WILL?
CAN YOU STILL TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “GOOD” AND “JUNK” SCIENCE?
Wacky this is a long list of your opinions, and all of these claims of yours have been repeatedly debunked now. Rather than repeat smears and innuendoes, can you offer any evidence to support your claims, as we have offered to you?
I.e., I’m not talking about political blogs expressing unsupportable opinions and drivel of that sort. I mean something credible? Like we did, such as the list of 900+ peer reviewed scientific papers written by real scientists (that you continue to attack in the best traditions of a crank).
This is not hard to do, just list a half dozen papers from the 900+ that are not in fact sceptical of particular alarmist claim. A few facts like this will always trump thousands of words of flaky opinion, such as what continue to post here.
Weirdo,
“I am as research literate as you are and understand all the ins-and-outs of G.Scholar. I actually think Academic Search Premier or JStore much better search engines for the reasons you innumerate above.”
No you are not. You are not remotely competent. You have demonstrated your computer illiteracy for the world to see here. Google Scholar CANNOT be used for determining how many peer-reviewed papers exist on a subject. This is an irrefutable fact that you ignorantly keep attempting to use it for.
“And such a discussion is pointless anyway. Honeycutt made a pretty convincing refutation of your little project, and he pretty much handed you your hat. Simply reiterating the limitations of G.Scholar does not invalidate anything he said.”
Rob did nothing but embarrass himself in epic proportions for being Google Scholar illiterate. I also caught him outright lying. If I can find a single non-peer-reviewed source in his search, it invalidates his entire argument and I did this in spades.
“You know, poptech, I Googled “900+ papers” just to see who or what else has commented on your little pilfered project. There are actually very few people even the slightest bit interested… No matter what, your little project amounts to very little.”
Too bad the site traffic to the page says differently. It is used extensively and all the time by those doing research. Stay in denial about the 900+ papers but they do exist and there is nothing you can do about it.
WILL, YOU ARE ONCE AGAIN AVOIDING THE QUESTION. THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT 900+ PAPERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED, IF NOT ON THIS BOARD, THEN IN THE LINKS I HAVE PROVIDED. YOU ARE SIMPLY TOO SCARED TO ACTUALLY ANSWER THE CHALLENGE:
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
YOU ARE AVOIDING THIS BECAUSE YOU KNOW I’VE GOT YOU ON THIS ONE.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO READ OR DO THE SCIENCE NECESSARY TO JUDGE AGW. YOU KNOW THAT. THEREFORE YOU ARE AVOIDING A SIMPLE AND DIRECT QUESTION.
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
QUIT AVOIDING THE QUESTION, WILL.
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
“You have voluminously made the case that G.Scholar does not have a filter for PR writing…
…that one cannot verify what one has googled after the 1000th hit…
…that the hits may or may not contain information relevant to your particular pilfered list…
…that therefore Honeycut has shown nothing in itself that is relevant…
…and that you think anyone who is not impressed with this line of reasoning is cyber illiterate.”
Anyone in denial of the irrefutable facts about the limitations of Google Scholar and ignorantly keeps attempting to use Rob Honeycut’s skeptical science propaganda piece to attack the list of 900+ peer-reviewed papers suppporting skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW is, YES – COMPUTER ILLITERATE
You have to be the most incompetent person on this issue as everyone else gets it the first time and concedes because my argument is IRREFUTABLE.
IRREFUTABLE FACTS:
1. Google Scholar does not index only peer-reviewed papers
2. You cannot verify results past number 1000.
WILL, YOU ARE ONCE AGAIN AVOIDING THE QUESTION. THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT 900+ PAPERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED, IF NOT ON THIS BOARD, THEN IN THE LINKS I HAVE PROVIDED. YOU ARE SIMPLY TOO SCARED TO ACTUALLY ANSWER THE CHALLENGE:
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
YOU ARE AVOIDING THIS BECAUSE YOU KNOW I’VE GOT YOU ON THIS ONE.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO READ OR DO THE SCIENCE NECESSARY TO JUDGE AGW. YOU KNOW THAT. THEREFORE YOU ARE AVOIDING A SIMPLE AND DIRECT QUESTION.
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
QUIT AVOIDING THE QUESTION, WILL.
CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ON WHY CHAOTIC WEATHER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARTH’S CLIMATE CHANGE?
“1. You cherry picked a list of papers
So a list of papers that support skeptic arguments for ACC/AGW Alarm would be cherry picked?
“2. You claim to understand the science behind what you posted but there is no real indication of this.”
I understand the science very well and have been researching it extensively for many years.
“3. If anyone ever is interested enough to look at the papers-in-question (which likewise seems unlikely), it is very likely you’ve mixed a number of papers together which support various aspects of AGW except for papers written by scientist-authors with connections to corporate science.”
None of the papers on the list support AGW through their research. Some acknowledge the existence of AGW but can still be used to support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm. None of the authors on the list have any connections to “corporate science”.
“4. The scientist-authors are either a) working under dubious connections or b) wishing you would leave them alone. Several of the scientists have made statements to the effect that you have misrepresented their work.”
The list has nothing to do with any scientist as it is a list of papers not scientists. Your repeated strawman arguments for why their papers were listed are not valid.
“5. And even if your piddling little attempt at an agitprop does show what you purport it does, any cursory glance at the amount of material available reduces it to statistical meaninglessness.”
The total amount of material available is not the numerical lies you claim.
***”Google Scholar CANNOT be used for determining how many peer-reviewed papers exist on a subject.”
Duh. Try reading the posts above, including the one you quoted.
****”IRREFUTABLE FACTS:
1. Google Scholar does not index only peer-reviewed papers
2. You cannot verify results past number 1000.”
You realize I said almost exactly this in the exact same post you quoted?
So? Let me relieve your mind: Honeycut simply pointed out a simple truth; regardless of the method or search engine, your 900+ papers are too small a sampling to be worth anything. This actually has nothing to do with G.Scholar—he could have used any search engine. The engine does not change the basic fact. There are thousands of other papers in the world. Some are on G.Scholar; some are elsewhere.
You really should let this go.
But this—
***”they do exist and there is nothing you can do about it.”
—is somehow hilarious. “Nothing I can do about it?” Did you cackle like an mad scientist when you posted that?
Bwahahahaha! That’s funny.
You nerd.
Wacky, you don’t escape from the requirement to provide evidence by writing:
“THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT 900+ PAPERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED”
Because you haven’t answered the specific claim I queried you about. You provided a bunch of opinions. Worse, the opinions have all been debunked. So right now your score is zero. Repeating debunked claims makes you look foolish.
Now, I’m not making an unreasonable request. I even suggested a simple way in which you could provide some evidence. To repeat:
*This is not hard to do, just list a half dozen papers from the 900+ that are not in fact sceptical of particular alarmist claim. A few facts like this will always trump thousands of words of flaky opinion…*
Is it unreasonable that you cite even a single piece of credible evidence to back up your accusations?
And BTW, nobody has to write a paper in a particular field in order to be qualified to debunk it. I have refuted this point a dozen times before. I can debunk Big Foot by looking at the evidence. I don’t have to train as a qualified Big Foot hunter. Likewise, I can debunk specific claims about aromatherapy without having to do any academic training in aromatherapy. So of course, you’ve just confused yourself on this point.
(And typing in uppercase and bold and doing other frothing at the mouth just suggests to readers you are loosing your grip on reality. Yelling doesn’t make you look smarter. 😉 )
Weirdo,
“Your attempt to deal with these issues is a tiresome obsession with “proving” that G.Scholar is not really a very good search engine (something which has never been in contention”
The facts I have stated about Google Scholar are not debatable, they are irrefutable. Google Scholar is a very useful “tool” for “locating” scholarly work, it is absolutely useless for determining the “amount” of peer-reviewed papers on a subject.
“…and a semantic morass involving the difference between “alarm” and “skepticism.””
There is no “semantic morass” as your perpetual distortion of the context and purpose of my list is a strawman argument.
“In fact, this is odious. I concede nothing.”
You are too ignorant to concede, none of which changes the truth.
“You know what else, poptech? Honeycutt’s “9 out of 10″ observation is cited repeatedly. Whatever you post, his analysis got a lot of cyber space, actually as much and perhaps more than your little list did. You may have started the battle, but he won the war.”
Rob did not write the Carbon Brief’s propaganda. Just because lies and strawman arguments are repeated online does not make them valid. Rob has won nothing as EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER LITERATE person I show my rebuttal to IMMEDIATELY stops using Rob’s Google Scholar illiterate post in their argument and concedes his numbers are invalid and not verifiable.
IRREFUTABLE FACTS:
1. Google Scholar does not index only peer-reviewed papers
2. You cannot verify results past number 1000.”
“You realize I said almost exactly this in the exact same post you quoted?
So? Let me relieve your mind: Honeycut simply pointed out a simple truth; regardless of the method or search engine, your 900+ papers are too small a sampling to be worth anything.”
You said no such thing and perpetually stay in denial. You either read none of the links that are presented to you or when you do, you cannot comprehend them. Rob demonstrated nothing other then he does not know how to use Google Scholar nor how Google Scholar works.
“This actually has nothing to do with G.Scholar—he could have used any search engine. The engine does not change the basic fact. There are thousands of other papers in the world. Some are on G.Scholar; some are elsewhere.”
This lie has been claimed many times and it has not been shown to be a basic fact. Please make sure to search those other search engines for the phrase, “anthropogenic global warming”, the amount of papers explicitly endorsing AGW is very small.
“You really should let this go.”
I never let liars like you get away with your propaganda, get used to it.
““Nothing I can do about it?” Did you cackle like an mad scientist when you posted that?
Bwahahahaha! That’s funny.”
No I am telling you a truth (you are apparently in denial of) – that there is nothing you can do about the list. Skeptics are referencing it all the time to support their arguments with the peer-reviewed literature. I am very happy to be able to help them do so.
“Weirdo, WILL, YOU ARE ONCE AGAIN AVOIDING THE QUESTION. THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT 900+ PAPERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED, IF NOT ON THIS BOARD, THEN IN THE LINKS I HAVE PROVIDED.”
All of your propaganda links have been refuted in excruciating detail. Your denial of this is amusing.
Weirdo you computer illiterate, did Al Gore publish 300 peer-reviewed papers? Google Scholar says he did!
Weirdo, I am still waiting for the 1001 result from you Google Scholar searches, you claim these imaginary numbers that cannot be verified.
Wacko is exactly like a politician. Ask a direct question and he answers a different question then complains that he already answered question. 🙂
Rather than write:
“THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT 900+ PAPERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED”
If he had in fact answered it, he could just cut and paste his answer, rather than equivocate. He has no problem cutting and pasting his opinions here, but is evasive when asked direct questions and continues to evade, even when you explain a simple and direct way in which he could satisfactorily answer a question posed.
Andrew and Will,
As you have probably ascertained, “Waldo” is actually an avatar for an agent who works for the World Petroleum Council (WPA). His job is to troll the Internet in search of the best and brightest online personas for a WPA National Online Operations Bureau (NOOB) which will represent the WPC, the API, the AGA, the IPAA, the IPIECA, the UKPIA, the SAPIA, and a dozen other acronyms.
Unfortunately, while we admire your tenacity, we are unanimous that you will not be offered a position with NOOB; the inability to take note of arguments which are apparently not working, the dependence on self-contradiction in the pursuit of debate-points, the dependance on emoticons in the pursuit of debate-points, the poor syntactical control, the exhaustive repetition of the same or similar phrases, the dependence on arguments which you find convincing but others do not, the lack of actual science, the ease with which you are agitated and, most importantly, the continuation of threads long after they have served any reasonable purpose all mean that we must continue seeking posters with more online acumen. In addition, the use of juvenile diction and phraseology has been developing at an alarming rate, and we feel that this is unhealthy for everyone.
Nevertheless, your dedication to harboring an ultimately worthless conversation is a laudatory pursuit. Such a fruitless expenditure of energy in the name of a scientific cause you stand nothing to gain from means that you are just the sort of people who might, with development and maturity, one day help the petroleum industry to conquer the world. So for now we can offer you our decoder ring and an honorary designation as “Noobletts.”
Please keep up the good work…or at least do some work of some kind…and we shall return in the future to once again test your abilities as online commentators.
Good luck with the computer programming, office product business, and sobriety.
Sincerely,
Joseph L. Bast
Chief NOOB
Wacko is little the Black Knight in that Monty Python movies. He has his arms and legs chopped off and he keeps yelling out ‘chicken!’ 🙂
You know, you all sound like idiots. Glad I didn’t waste my time on this site.
Ah Joey, LOL. We do have an idiot here and several posters making fun of him for our personal amusement. So your conclusion is exactly correct. However, this is a very good (although not perfect) website. But if you are of a different political persuasion, you will hate it of course. So lots of insults usually means someone is pressing the right buttons. 😉
Are you talking about Pop Tech?
I realise sceptics/heretics/non-believers are deeply hated by Believers. Always was, always will be. Sceptics have never been popular. But it’s not our job to be popular, my friend Joey/Wacko, or whatever name you post under next…
Tee hee.
I wasn’t sure you could figure that out. You are a skeptic, not a scientist, after all.
C’ya.
Hmmm… little Joey, you must have done an awful lot of reading here to pick up on that exchange. 😉
To be honest, I never became a scientist because the pay was too low. But I don’t hold it against others who wish that as a career. I think science is a good career if you are of average intelligence these days. Although, of course, there are absolutely brilliant scientific minds out there. Unfortunately, science is getting harder, but human intelligence is not getting better in proportion to the challenges. A certain segment of the population has lost faith in religion, so look for other sources of belief. So they turn to science and science for them then becomes ‘Scientism.’ Sceptics although rare, provide the valuable service of trying to hose down those who prefer to Believe rather than Think.
Joey, if you did not understand any of the blatantly clear points I made, I will be glad to explain them in more detail for you. My arguments against the misuse of Google Scholar are not debatable, they are based on how it works.
Joey is Wacko’s sock puppet…
Actually, Poptech, could you explain one more time how Google scholar works?
Wacko, I was getting a little worried that you had disappeared tail between your legs…
I’d like to spend a few posts focusing on your claim that only scientists can criticize the work of other scientists. Since you have been screaming about this for 50 posts, I think we should spend a little more time focusing on this idea of yours.
Let’s start off with an example demonstrating why this claim is rather simplistic. The scientist Andrew Wakefield published scientific papers claiming a strong link between autism and vaccines. The paper was essentially fraudulent but the anti-vacc Believer movement seized on it as scientific proof of their claims. The scientific community did little directly about this problem. It took the investigations of a journalist-sceptic to get the paper retracted. This lead to the The Lancet and The American Journal of Gastroenterology formally retracting his papers. None of this would have happened without the work a sceptic.
Now, according to Wacko, Brian Deer who did the investigation, had no right to be critical of this scientist because he did not have the qualifications to do so… In Wacko’s world sceptics should never (apparently) criticize scientists who I (presume) are sort of like ‘high priests’ who us common folk should not question.
Or am I mischaracterising your position?
Google “MMR vaccine controversy” for background info on this.
Okay Will, that’s fair enough I guess.
So…write a piece of journalism that causes the climate scientific community to retract its claims regarding AGW! That’s awesome!
Go ahead. Force the IPCC, NOAA, NASA, NAS, and the Journal of Climate to retract their claims on AGW.
For a good critical thinker like yourself, this should be no problem.
This issue has nothing to do with “rights”—anybody has the “right” to say or publish anything—but just because you have the “right” to say something does not mean you are saying something correct, intelligent, or even worthwhile. Just as with the conversation with Lance above, anyone can have an opinion, but that does not guarantee it’s a very good opinion.
Now, you may have missed this, but Deer’s investigation uncovered a number of conflicts of interest regarding the lead investigator, Wakefield, and a number of litigants who stood to gain from his bogus findings.
“Conflict of interest,” Will—critical thinking challenge: Where else have we run into that phrase in regards to science recently? Who else is doing science for corporate interests? Does it have something to do with charges against tartlet’s 900 papers? Did you not consider this?
In other words, Wakefield was paid a good deal of money to produce the results you note above. Just like Idso, Ball, etc.
Nor do I need to point out, I’m sure, that Deere’s article did not deal with the science per se, but with Wakefield’s involvement with corporate science. Did you consider this?
Likewise, I do not need to point out that, once corporate science is involved, the results can be terrible—as in the results of Wakefield’s paper.
****”‘high priests’ who us common folk should not question”
Please don’t start playing the proletariat or pretend that you don’t worship at the altar of denialism!
And I only challenged you to write a science paper for two reasons: 1) you can’t, and I’ve proved this, and 2) you were the one boasting about your ability to define “good” and “junk” science—I just wanted you to prove you really could, which you can’t.
Finally Will, you will never make me run away with my tail between my legs, no matter how much you want this. I do not have enough respect for your intellect to run away from you. If I ever do leave CS because of you it will simply be because I find your obstinate but limited thinking capability too tiresome.
“Actually, Poptech, could you explain one more time how Google scholar works?”
Certainly sock puppet,
Google Scholar is a search engine that attempts to index only “scholarly” material. In this regard it is a very useful tool for assisting in locating this type of material. However, Google Scholar is absolutely worthless for trying to determine the total amount of peer-reviewed papers that exist on a certain subject for two main reasons,
1. Google Scholar does not have a “peer-reviewed” only feature, thus it also extensively indexes; conference papers, theses and dissertations, books (chapters of books show up as separate results), pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports, book reviews, news sections (e.g. 140,000 for the New York Times), editorials, announcements and letters among other things which includes just about any PDF file found on a university server.
2. Verification of search results larger than 1000 is impossible using Google Scholar and thus claims made relating to these results are meaningless as any search will be littered with erroneous results that cannot be filtered out.
This is why computer illiterates like Rob Honeycutt and Wacko got such large but meaningless numbers.
“ Who else is doing science for corporate interests? Does it have something to do with charges against poptech’s 900 papers?”
Please provide evidence of such corruption not your drug induced paranoia.
Wacko,
You specifically made the claim that a sceptic has no right to criticize a qualified scientist. But this is exactly what Brian Deer did. Since Beer was right and Wakefield wrong, this invalidates your argument, no?
Unfortunately, you have the sloppy habit of going off on long rambling digressions not relevant to the argument. A sort of silly Gish Gallop approach. Could you answer the question in a more succinct manner? By adding a huge amount of irrelevant rubbish to your responses you just leave everyone with the impression that you’re ducking the question asked. You’re like a politician who is given a simple question to answer, yet spends 5 minutes rambling on in the hope that it will distract from having to address the issue.
Wacko still has failed to answer all of my questions because he is not capable of answering them.
Poptech,
Of course he can’t. He’s just making it up as he goes along. And doing a poor job of it, even as bullshit artist. I suggested he pick a half dozen papers from the list of 900+ that aren’t sceptical of some aspect of AGW theory as he keeps claiming. He can’t do that either. I suspect he is so scientifically illiterate that he would not even understand the first paragraph. Remember, this is the same guy who asserted that having to pay a subscription to read a scientific paper made him suspicious that the papers were fakes. 🙂
****”You specifically made the claim that a sceptic has no right to criticize a qualified scientist.”
When?
Did I say “skeptic has no right”?
Or have I intimated repeatedly that you, and virtually all of your compatriots here, do not know what you are talking about in regards to the actual science of global warming and therefore are faking it in the blogosphere?
Kind of a big difference there.
****”having to pay a subscription to read a scientific paper made him suspicious that the papers were fakes”
Is that what I posted, Will? Or did I post that the fact we are unable to access said documents makes tartlet’s list questionable as an actual research tool?
My God you post the stoopidest things, and they just keep coming.
****”He’s just making it up as he goes along.”
Hey! That’s my line!
I still don’t get it, Poptech. What difference does it make that Google Scholar only lists peer-reviewed papers? Who cares if they are peer-reviewed or not? The science should stand on its own, right?
****”Please provide evidence of such corruption not your drug induced paranoia.”
Honeycutt already did this.
Hon-nee-cutt
Kicked Your Butt!
And sadly, I gave up drugs a long time ago. Sigh.
****”Could you answer the question in a more succinct manner?”
You know, as soon as I posted above I knew you wouldn’t be able to follow. Sorry.
So:
Deer did not challenge the science (which is what you think you can do).
Deer uncovered the money connections between the scientist and people who stood to make money off his science.
This is essentially the same scenario that Honeycutt alleges exists between Idso and Exxon.
Your post disproves nothing and actually seems to prove that we should be suspicious of any scientist who accepts payola for science.
I hope that is simple enough for you. Again, sorry.