Greg Laden, liar.

UPDATE: Joe Romm, perhaps fearing he’d be drawn into a defamation lawsuit with Laden for not checking to see if Laden’s claims were true has made a rare update to ClimateProgress in my favor.  See below.

UPDATE2: Reader poll on the question “should I sue the pants off Greg Laden?”

Harsh title – I know, but justified by Mr. Laden’s actions. I could ignore him, but people like him need to be called out when they do things like this.

Here’s a screencap of a “science blogs” post made by Mr. Laden, who is no stranger to shooting his mouth off in non factual ways that get him in trouble, as Roger Tattersall (aka Tallbloke) can testify to from another Laden episode last year where Laden was forced to remove untrue and libelous statements he made. Laden’s original post about Tattersall (with all the angry unedited rhetoric) is here.

You can read the rest of his post here.

Note how Laden frames the screen cap, and of course does not provide a link to the original story (lest his readers are able to get the full story instead of his spin on it).  He then goes on to say:

Heh, he was so raging mad when he wrote that he couldn’t even spell denialist correctly, or even spell the name of this blog correctly even though he has a screen cap to guide him. He claims I “wasn’t equipped to recognize this science as bogus”. Well, I found it odd, but also interesting, and as Willis Eschenbach pointed out in comments:

I don’t agree with those saying it should not be posted. In my experience, there’s no faster way to separate wheat from chaff than to expose it to the unblinking eye of the populi on the web …

Unlike Mr. Laden (who gives the impression he’s an expert in everything), I’ve never claimed to be an expert in meteors or diatoms. So, I put it up for discussion. I also put several caveats in the story clearly showing my doubts, including the possibility that the Earthly diatoms hitched a ride on a tektite, but Mr. Laden won’t show you that, I will.

You see, it’s all part of a purposely orchestrated lie by Mr. Laden. If Mr. Laden hadn’t been so caught up in his hate, and made just an ever so slightly larger screen cap, this is what his readers would have seen from the story:

In case the print is too small, here’s the full paragraph (which Laden cut off):

This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up. I would remind readers that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“. This needs to be confirmed by others in the science community before it can be taken seriously.

I don’t know how I could have made the caveat any clearer. Anyone not blinded by hate can see that in my very first paragraph, in red even.

Of course, Laden cuts off the most important part of the caveat and without an immediate link to the story, the weak minded or members of the his choir of haters have no single click way to check his claim, but that is what he is counting on.

And of course, Joe Romm also picks up the story from Laden, to spread the lie and hate. Romm might have been duped by Laden though and didn’t check, we’ll see.

Laden also says:

It is very fun to read the comments. I provided a comment that will not be printed because Watts never prints my comments, but I’ve screen captured it for you (it is below).

Mr. Laden, your comment appeared, approved well before you wrote this hateful piece, as shown below between two other comments:

A direct link to Laden’s published comment is here, read for yourselves.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/14/claim-meteorite-discovered-with-signs-of-life-in-it/#comment-1199560

As for the “never” part of Laden’s claim about his comments appearing, here they are:

His first two comments were snipped by moderators for not following the WUWT site policy, his others, (which didn’t contain hateful words) were published, including the comment on the meteor story he falsely claims never appeared.

Mr. Laden, you are a liar who published this story knowing full well what you were doing.

What you were doing was being a hater, not a scientist. Being a hater is part of Mr. Laden’s site policy, which incredibly, he spells out for all to see. Scroll down to “commenting policy”.

What Laden did here is a perfect example of why the general public is losing faith in climate science; this mix of condescension, censorship, incomplete presentation, misdirection, and overt hatred on display is exactly why reasonable people recoil and lose faith in the climate claims being made, which in some cases, can be just as dubious as diatoms on meteors.

The difference between myself and Mr. Laden is that WUWT isn’t afraid to have topics for discussion that might be proven wrong, and in the process, people learn something. I’m also not afraid to admit I’m not an expert on meteors or diatoms, and to ask my readers (who might be) what they think while at the same time making it clear that I had serious doubts about the claim.

If people like Laden ruled science, we’d never see any advances from serendipity or other odd moments where the scientist observes something unexpected and says to him/herself “hmmm, that’s odd”, because they’d be shouted down as “bogus” without even a discussion.

UPDATE: Joe Romm, responding to my email to him, has offered the closest thing he can to a walkback on the lie (of which he was also a victim) by Laden. He’s posted this on the Climate progress story by Laden smearing me. He sounds like Fox News “we report, you decide”.

JR UPDATE: Watts feels he was quoted out of context, that he put in appropriate caveats. His response is here. Greg Laden replies here. You decide.

In other news, in his latest childish rant, Mr. Laden wants his readers to think that I’m a child hater (even though I have two grade school aged children of my own).

It is against my blog policy to provide links to science denialist sites. It would be unethical for me to do that on a regular basis because it would enhance the google juice of pseudoscience. I’ve got children. I want them to grow up in a better world, not the world that Anthony Watts wants them to grow up in. So, no.

Another lie by Greg Laden. I never get how extremists like Laden think they somehow can be the only people that care about children’s future. I want a better future for my children to, just not the same one Mr. Laden envisions. As these commenters put it: