Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Googlefolk;
Recently, you have decided to take sides in a scientific debate. That in itself is very foolish. Why would Google want to take either side when there is a disagreement between scientists? I thought your motto was “Do No Evil.” For the 900-pound gorilla to take sides in any tempestuous politically charged scientific discussion is an extremely stupid thing to do, and in this case definitely verges on the E-word.
In fact, that’s why up until now I trusted Google, because I always felt that I was being given the unvarnished truth. I always felt that Google could be trusted, because you didn’t have a dog in the fight. I believed you weren’t trying to slant your results, that you were neutral, because you had nothing to prove.
So what did you guys do? You’re now providing money to 21 supporters of the CO2 hypothesis, funding them as “Google Fellows” to go and flog their scientific claims in the marketplace of ideas. Is this the new face of Google, advocating for a partisan idea?
You have chosen to fund policy people as Google Fellows. You have a specialist in “strategic communication in policymaking and public affairs” among them. You have a bunch of scientists whose careers depend on the validity of the CO2 hypothesis. And you are paying them all to push your ideas. In other words, Google has put into place a public relations campaign for the CO2 hypothesis … and people in your organization actually consider this a good idea?
I mean people other than Al Gore, who sits on your Board and who stands to make big money if the CO2 hypothesis can be sold to the public. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. If it can be sold to the public, Al makes big money, even if it’s later shown to be false. So sure, he’s in favor of your cockamamie scheme … but the rest of you guys have truly decided to hitch your wagon to Mr. Gore’s dying star? Really?
Man, Google doing PR work shilling for the CO2 hypothesis. I thought I’d never see the day.
It’s not even disguised as a scientific effort. It’s a sales job, a public relations push from start to finish, no substance, just improved communication. I’m surprised that you haven’t brought in one of the big advertising agencies. Those mad men sell cigarettes, surely they could advise you on how to sell an unpalatable product.
The problem is, now Google has a dog in the fight. You’ve clearly declared that you’re not waiting until the null climate hypothesis gets falsified. You’re not waiting for a climate anomaly to appear, something that’s unlike the historical climate. You have made up your mind and picked your side in the discussion. Here’s what that does. Next time I look up something that is climate science related, I will no longer trust that you are impartial. No way.
Let me make it very clear what I object to in this:
GOOGLE IS TAKING SIDES IN A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR POLITICAL/SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE
Don’t mistake this for a partisan entreaty. This is not because of the side you’ve chosen, despite the fact that I’m on the other side. I don’t care which side Google takes – it’s wrong and stupid for Google to be in any scientific fight at all, on either side. I’d be screaming just as loudly if you had picked scientists who were on my side of the debate. In fact, I’d scream even louder, because I don’t want Google Follows doing a big PR dog-and-pony-show for skeptical science. Unlike you, I think that’s bad tactics. Your presence, and the desperation that it reeks of, can only damage whichever side you support, so I’m glad it’s not my side.
But sides are not the point. Supporting either side in the debate involves Google in a high-stakes, multi-billion dollar, long-festering, dog-ugly political/scientific battle, with passions running high on both sides, accusations thrown, reputations attacked … and putting your head in this buzz-saw, jumping into this decades-old scientific Balkan war, this is a good idea for Google exactly how?
Truly, are you off your collective meds or something? You don’t want the good name of Google involved in this, there is no upside. All it is going to do is get your name abused in many quarters. I’ve read dozens of people already who said they were switching to Bing or Alta Vista. You’ve lost my trust, it’ll be trust but verify from here on out for me.
And all for what? Guys, you are so far out of touch with the issues that you appear to be truly convinced that it is a communications problem. So you’ve hired all these scientist/communicators to fix that problem. Let me put it in real simple terms.
People don’t believe AGW scientists because they have been lied to by some of the leading lights of the CO2 hypothesis. They’ve seen a number of the best, most noted AGW scientists cheat and game the system to advance their own views, and then lie and deny and destroy emails when the sunlight hit them.
That, dear friends, is not a failure to communicate. Your problem is not the lack of getting your message across. You’ve gotten it across, no problem. The message was obvious – many of the best AGW scientists are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to push their personal AGW agenda … the same agenda that your Google Fellows are now pushing. That was the message, and by gosh, we got it loud and clear.
The only cure for that kind of bad science is good science. It will not be cured by communication. We’ve already gotten the message that your side contains a number of crooks among its most admired and respected members. We’ve gotten the message that most of the decent climate scientists won’t protest against anything. They’ll stay quiet no matter what egregious excesses their leaders commit. They’ll pretend that everything is just fine. Indeed, a number of them even find excuses for the malfeasance of their leaders, that it’s just boys will be boys and the like. No recognition of the gravity of the actions, or how they have destroyed the public’s trust in climate scientists.
If you think the cure for that widespread scientific rot is a clearer explanation of how thunderstorms form or how the greenhouse effect works, I fear you are in for a rude shock. Communications will not fix it, no matter how smart your Google Fellows are … and they are wicked smart, I looked at the bios of every single one, very impressive, but that doesn’t matter. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that the side you’ve picked conned the public, and afterwards refused to admit it. Until they and climate science face up to that, your side will not be believed. There’s no reason to concern yourself with hiring scientists to analyze why your message isn’t getting across. It’s because people hate to be conned. They’d rather be wrong than be conned. And once you’ve conned them, and the Climategate emails show beyond question that your side conned the public, that’s it. After that, all the honeyed words and the communications specialists and the Google Fellows with expertise in “strategic communication in policymaking and public affairs” are useless. Clearer scientific explanations won’t cure broken trust.
And yes, perhaps I’m being paranoid about whether you will skew your search results against skeptics … but then I look at what happened in 2009/10 with “Climategate” as a search term, when for a couple weeks Google wouldn’t suggest it in the Auto Suggest feature. People claimed back then that it was deliberate, you did it on purpose, and I accused them of being paranoid, I didn’t believe it. Looks like instead of them being paranoid, I may have been being naïve.
Anyhow, you can be sure that I won’t defend you again.
So I entreat you and implore you, for your own sake and ours, stop taking sides in political/scientific debates. That is a guaranteed way to lose people’s trust. I’m using Bing for climate searches now, and I’m wondering just if and where you’ve got your thumb on the information scales.
Perhaps nowhere … but I’m a long-time Google user and Google advocate and Google defender. For me to be even wondering about that is an indication of just how badly you screwed up on this one.
Since you seem to have forgotten about your “Do No Evil” motto, I have a new one for you:
You are not wanted there. You are not needed there. You have no business there. Get out, and get out now, before the damage worsens.
Because the core issue is this – you can either be gatekeeper of the world’s knowledge, storing gigabytes of private information about me and my interests and likes and dislikes and my secret after-midnight searches for okapi porn and whale-squashing videos … or you can be a political/scientific advocate.
BUT YOU CAN’T BE BOTH.
You can’t both be in politics and be hiring scientific experts to push a trillion-dollar political/scientific agenda, and at the same time be the holder of everyone’s secret searches. That’s so creepy and underhanded and unfair and wrong in so many ways I can’t even start to list them. I can’t even think of a word strong enough to describe how far off the reservation you are except to say that it is truly Gore-worthy.
Your pimping for the CO2 hypothesis is unseemly and unpleasant. Your clumsy attempt to influence the politics of climate science, on the other hand, is very frightening and way out of line. You hold my secrets, and you held my trust. If you want it again, go back to your core business. Your actions in this matter are scary and reprehensible and truly bizarre. It’s as bizarre as if J. Edgar Hoover was hiring shills to flack for the Tea Party … you are the holder of the secrets. As such, you have absolutely no business involving yourself in anything partisan. It is a serious breach of our trust, and you knew it when you started Google. That’s why your motto is Do No Evil. Get back to that, because with this venture into advocacy you have seriously lost the plot.
My best to you all, and seriously, what you are doing is really scary, I implore and beg you to stop it. Your business is information and secrets, and ethically you can’t be anything else. You hold too much dangerous knowledge to be a player in any political/scientific dogfight, or any other fight. You not only need to be neutral. You need to seem to be neutral.
w.
A very good post and I could not agree more with Willis!
This is utter nonsense! Paranoid rant!
Hear Hear!
I don’t think they have been neutral for a long, long time. They’ve just been good at appearing neutral.
I detest all the personal information collection by these big corporation giants anyway. They are all as bad as each other, so I don’t trust Bing (Microsoft) either. For example, Windows live mail which replaces the old free Outlook Express – is now a remote system where your emails are stored not on your computer but at microsoft where presumably they could be read? (as THEY know your password, etc).
Information may be king – but the way they collect this stuff is quite reckless.
But I agree with Willis’ stance on this – it is unaceptable for such a major player to take a political role in any of this kind of stuff – it’s bad enough that the search results can be ‘altered’ to promote the higher paying companies, etc – but if they are going to alter results based on political standing – that’s way of base!
I too WAS a big fan of Google. This “proclamation” is deeply disturbing for all the reasons you cite. Most disturbing is the recognition Google can – and may indeed – skew their “service” to their ideological agenda. This should not be surprising as our media has routinely done exactly this. So now too Google.
Maybe you could start up your own internet company in opposition.
You could call it Giggle.
There’s got to be a project here for someone with a search bot and a training in statistics to identify and demonstrate relative bias between search engines across a range of subjects. Trust is never enough.
Willis,
Maybe they have forgotton that there is a big difference between “Do no Evil” and “Do Good.” Much Evil can be done can be done trying to promote even a true Good. However, the side they are taking sometimes seems bent on the destruction of civilization as we know it.
How far the mighty have fallen.
Excellent post, I totally agree.
I remember very well how Climategate or Hide the decline suddenly stopped auto-filling in Google/Youtube from during the November 2009. Google sux.
http://scroogle.org/
Something to consider.
Do you remember when they tried to pretend they were the “Little guys” up against the mightiest industrial/commercial enterprises in the world cynically distorting the argument to fit with some political agenda?
All that google will do by becoming part of the climategate team is to undermine its own dubious claims to be an impartial provider of information.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. You can’t be trusted as impartial and also have a political agenda, and if Google are stupid enough to undermine their reputation like this then they deserve the consequences.
Whew Willis, you got your blood pressure up on that one! You got a little long winded because I thought you got your point accross pretty quickly. Personally I don’t trust very many people and I don’t trust any organizations, because life has taught me well.
Google search
[thought this image was worth embedding ~jove, mod]
Hugh Pepper says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:44 am
This is utter nonsense! Paranoid rant!
_________
This is not that to which I responded Hear Hear! My response was to what Willis wrote. The comment above wasn’t there when I wrote mine. I should have added Willis’s name to it. I just want there to be no misunderstanding of my meaning.
Let Google know we are not happy..
Search anywhere.. but Google..
http://duckduckgo.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://startpage.com/
Willis: “You need to seem to be neutral.”
Is there a typo there? Perhaps: “You need to be seen to be neutral.”?
Then again you can always use a Metasearch engine (one that searches the search engines) like Dogpile
Metasearch 101 – Or What Makes Dogpile Better Than the Rest!
For all Willis has said he is yet only skirting around the edges.
The implications of this foolishness by Google are huge.
Google helped in the present uprisings in the Arab world; and earned the gratitude and respect (even awe) of thousands — maybe even millions.
Google fought the good fight, putting its reputation on the line for the sake of humanity.
Google did things (for good) even kings, presidents and prime ministers could not do.
Imagine the results if Google really does go rogue.
Although a touch long and repetitive, I can’t fault the logic or the intensity of the emotion. I switched to Bing last year because of Google’s clear “fudging” the climategate search. They showed themselves to be hypocrits to their fundamental raison d’etre: Do no evil.
I live in Silicon Valley and virtually all of my friends have advanced degrees — so they’re not uneducated. And yet I don’t have words to explain to those who not familiar with the SF Bay Area how truly confused people here are about many things, climate being only one. Folks here do not understand political history or economics. A horrible combination.
They are driven by what seems to me are two deeply rooted impulses: (1) repressed guilt from the wealth they have amassed and (2) a belief that their “humanistic” values are truly redemptive and all must acknowledge that.
What they do not and cannot understand are:
— (2) will not expiate the sins of (1)
— (2) is fascist at its core and so self-contradictory as to be morally bankupt
— (1) can be remedied if it is only acknowledged (but it cannot be acknowledged because they cannot face the existential ramification)
It’s so sad a whole generation has grown up (mine) with so much potential to do so much good, and in its misguided efforts to do so is wreaking such havoc on our civilization.
Some would argue this consition is the inevitable consequences of secularism. I would argue that is only half-true. There are secular value systems that can make our lives whole and our civilizations good. Trouble is, my generation utterly failed to produce philosophers who could put together a thoughtful understanding of man in society, without metaphysical religion at its core, that affirm individualism and altruism as our foundational to freedom and justice.
The result? Environment, or rather “Gaia,” as religion. Talk about anomie! It’s sad, so sad.
Hardly surprising. There’s something about our age that seems to flush out the Left. It’s like suddenly they discovered that Conway Twitty’s “It’s only make believe” isn’t working as well as it once did.
Since the narrative isn’t working and people turn to actual facts, the Left has become desperate to the point where they’ve deluded themselves that they need to “get their message” out in a stronger, more asserted way. Imho, it just won’t work and will further diminish them. For example, there are still some that watch Oprah but all that do now know her agenda. Once aware of folks that deceive and mislead one never, ever goes back to believing whole heartedly.
All in all, this explains why the Left oriented media has experienced such rapid decline since it’s easy to do your own fact checking. Folks that are nor drooling partisans become disillusioned in their honesty. Once that’s lost, it can’t be regained without a lot of effort because it’s just too much effort to fact check them each time.
Google has lost some trust due to their pushing their advertizers. Now they will lose the trust of large groups.
100% with you, Willis.
Google, you have just done hari kari.
As Answers.com. notes, “Obligatory hara-kiri was abolished in 1868, but its voluntary form has persisted”
Yep, it’s a voluntary ritual where you self-disembowel, as in stick your knife in your guts, then die.
This is indeed a very frightening move. You will never be sure anymore that the search-results are based on neutral criteria. Their algorithm may get contaminated with a bias towards pro-AGW.
Anthony,
I already mentioned in a comment half a year ago that when searching for ‘wattsup’ you ended up on page two of the results. That was a test apparently. But that’s what may happen soon to all skeptical websites.
If I notice one more of such an ‘accident’ or see the bias at work in another way, I will stop using Google and there services forever.
Good work Willis.
I presume that you have snail mailed a copy to the top guys at Giggle.