UPDATED: see stats below the “read more” line.
Lawrence Solomon at the National Post writes about a topic that WUWT readers have known about for a long time: How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.
We’ve known for some time that Wikipedia can’t be trusted to provide unbiased climate information. Solomon starts off by talking about Climategate emails.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
He then focuses on RealClimate.org co-founder William Connolley, who has “touched” 5,428 Wikipedia articles with his unique brand of RC centric editing:
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
Wikipedia suffers from the same problem that climate science in general suffers from now. A few determined zealots have influenced the vast majority of the published information.
IMHO it is time for Connolley to step aside from Wikipedia, one person should not have so much influence over so many articles. At the same time, the number two person, almost as influential, is Kim Dabelstein Peterson. Here’s a National Review article on the kind of things Petersen has been doing in similar to the work of Connolley.
Additionally, there are many Wikipedia editors and contributors that do so anonymously, and I think that is terribly wrong. There’s no accountability, no quality control, and no recourse to people who falsify information, or mold it to fit a personal agenda. Wikipedia relies upon an honor system, and as we’ve seen from the Climategate emails, there’s no honor in some circles of climate science.
Here is another example:
Posted: May 03, 2008, 2:53 AM by Lawrence Solomon
Connolley is not only a big shot on Wikipedia, he’s a big shot at Wikipedia — an Administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.
One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds — in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley’s supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently put out an appeal for donations here. He writes:
I believe in us. I believe that Wikipedia keeps getting better. That’s the whole idea. One person writes something, somebody improves it a little, and it keeps getting better, over time. If you find it useful today, imagine how much we can achieve together in 5, 10, 20 years.
In a perfect world, maybe. In a perfect world unicorns frolic in the park, free money falls from the sky, and people are honest and without bias 100% of the time. But when you have Wikibullies, such as Connolley and Peterson, your honor system goes up in smoke. Fact is Jimmy, your honor system is as corrupted as the peer review process is for climate science these days. In my view, don’t give Wikipedia another dime until they make some changes to provide for a more responsible information environment.
Making free reference information available to the public shouldn’t be a battle of wills between Wikibullies with an agenda and the rest of society.
Here’s where to write to complain to Wikipedia:
Wikimedia Foundation
Postal address
- Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
- 149 New Montgomery Street, 3rd Floor
- San Francisco, CA 94105
- USA
- Phone: +1-415-839-6885
- Email: info
wikimedia.org - Fax: +1-415-882-0495 (note: we get a large number of calls; email or fax is always a better first option)
UPDATE: I’ve located Solomon’s source of information, an independent Wikipedia author tracker. Here is Connolley’s base statistics:
Click image for full report
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The correct term is chekist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka
Wikipedia in fact is controllable by very small numbers of agenda-driven people. It takes only a handful of editors watching key articles at all hours of the day to simply revert any edits which don’t conform to their agenda. Wikipedia is NOT news and is a pathetic source of information for issues like global warming.
no, no. that one is reserved to Ian “Harry_Read_Me” Harris. 🙂
Nice hair! Most people grow out of their student days. But if the cap fits, wear it. How do such people live their lives as a complete lie? Or are they Jekyll and Hyde characters who can go home and turn off the deception side of their character?
In case your interest I just got done uploading a 12 part documentary titled;
The Lost Tomb of Jesus by James Cameron
Bookmark it for future viewing.
Here’s Part 1:
Here’s my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Michaelwiseguy
@ur momisugly Kevin Kilty :
PETERSEN and SCHULZ are CONNOLLEY watchdogs. I have a personnal experience of PETERSEN censorship in the MANN or hockey stik page.
When you make mention your superior academics and threathen these dogs from wikipedian punishment, they call their master who writes elusive arguments, smart when he has some, most often juste fake or even flawed, in favor of wikipedia content unreasonably and unequitily promoting his personnal views and friends, thus endowing his dogs keep censoring.
Mike Lorrey (22:48:33) :…. There is a conservative group launching their own wiki encyclopedia, btw, which will have better vetting of admins and peer review of contributions.
Ha! at last! competition to the WP monopoly! Please keep us informed Mike, if this is a usable alternative wiki platform for the real climate science, we surely want to bless it and use it. Democracy has been said to be the best of bad options – but at least when there is an opposition party, the worst excesses can be kept in check.
It has been mathematically verified that diverse opinions will finally find the best solution (cf. THE DIFFERENCE: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies(Page, Scott E.)); but, this theorem requires a very important assumption that the participants are sufficiently of high level (in terms of viewpoint and strategy).
Wikipedia should explore a way that guarantees the requirement of the above theorem on the diversity. Otherwise similar situation will happen again.
In the section on the MWP I’ve put a section on the talk page ‘Potential Conflict of Interest’ raising my concerns. For all the good that it will do.
Michael (23:17:42) :
They’ve been rewriting history since reading and writing first began.
This is the final solution.
CROWDSOURCING!
If you are going to do that then i suggest you start here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warming
I would start by using other temperature reconstructions besides Mann’s hocky stick that do show a distinct warming period then i would go through Soon’s paper and cite studies he used to show warming outside of Europe and north America. Furthermore i would not cite Soon’s paper. Only the studies he cites.
Anyway have fun. I think the whole Wikipedia experiment is fundamentally flawed. Any attempt to make an encyclopedia that is not biased, especially on controversial issues is a hopeless cause. People will always have a point of view and an agenda. Wikipedia tries to limit content and come to consensus on one point of view which is pointless. A better way would be to allow anyone to post anything.
Of course we already have that and it is called the internet.
I had no idea that it was so bad, I just had a look at Ian Plimmer’s entry. It was horrible, and on the top of the page was a link to the begging bowl.
Never never, if what I saw was an example of their editorial policy. If it were me, I would sue, no ifs no buts.
Dreadful, dreadful dreadful……………. shut it down.
And I’ve now read the fawning article about Connelly on Wiki too.
Wonder who wrote it.
Yuk!
I see the domain wikibullies.com has not been registered – or maybe a name like wikipediaclimatechange.com or wkipediagreenhousegases.com maybe used for putting up the censored articles with explanations about the censorship that has been taking place behind the scenes at wikipedia proper. Maybe anyone looking in google for wikipedia & climate change would get such a site near the top of a list. It might not take a lot of managment if it were simply a list of censored articles?
just a thought
Two Points:
I see the “fraud” reference to Prof Plimer has been changed on Wiki. Just another vandalism edit I presume. I don´t like Plimer´s approach at times but he does raise good points most of the time.
Climategate on Google:
I think the very lack of transparency on how Google estimates or delivers hits makes the results questionable. Also, Wikipedia is often the first link, and Wikipedia is hardly the most reliable resource on the internet.
I find it particularly interesting that the hits on Google for Climategate without the quotes went from 1,000s to 1,000,000s to peak at 32.3 million before coming down again in the next few weeks (only 10.8 million on US version now).
Bing on the other hand peaked at over 50 million hits and now shows a measily 3.96 million. That adjustment happened very abruptly a week or so ago.
Basically I think we can conclude that the “hits” statistic on both search engines is a fairly meaningless statistic. It is perhaps a relative measure at best.
I don´t buy the ClimateGate search delivers results containing either climate and gate argument. To illustrate I give here the estimated hits for a variety of searches on US Google:
Climategate = 10,800,000
Climate = 137,000,000
Gate = 135,000,000
+climate +gate = 16,100,000
All three of the latter are larger than climategate by itself, so it is impossible that a search for climategate includes all hits for climate, gate or climate and gate. The numbers simply don´t stack up.
Other results:
+climategate = 2,640,000
“climategate” = 2,640,000
So climategate delivers more results than the exact search “climategate”, but it is not clear to me why this might be the case.
What is abudently clear, however, is that Climategate used to autosuggest early in the escapade, then disappeared from view, then reappeared after a 2-3 week absence. For a Google employee to wave their hands in the air and say the search engine is a mysterious beast (basically what was said on the Google forums regarding the Climategate disappearance) is less than adequate.
Whether the reappearance of Climategate on autosuggest happened due to numerous “googlegate” articles is anyone´s guess. Only they know, and they certainly aren´t going to admit any tampering within the system if there has been any.
It has certainly raised questions in my mind as to how the search giant operates, especially given their domination of the search market.
(Again a second post – not sure why this system seems to struggle with the WUWT blog software. Delete if redundant.)
David Madsen (21:31:08) :
This is a perfect example of why, when I was a physics TA, I would give no credit for references on papers that were turned in to me that had Wikipedia as a source…
Unfortunately Wiki seems to be considered a good source by lazy students. My husband, who is a technical writer was editing a PhD thesis for a foreign student who wished to publish in English. He found much of the thesis had been cribbed directly from Wiki with no changes. Hubby sent the paper back with some pointed remarks about using reliable sources and plagiarism.
We know that an article in Wikipedia is written in sand and subject to change at any time but the current article on Fred Singer is pretty balanced and wouldn’t look out of place on the flysheet of his biography.
As a retired teacher I must report a long-term wariness about Wikipedia the veracity of much that appears in it. In its early years, students would hand in papers entirely based on stuff from Wiki and my standard reply was to reject their offering and have them do proper research from reputable hard-copy sources ie text books. Students do have access to libraries for the reason of learning proper study habits. It takes a little practice, maturity and experience to detect BS. Wikipedia can be a good place to begin a search for information but it should never be the only source for any serious seeker of knowledge.
James F. Evans (21:59:17) :
The corrupt practices surrounding AGW run deep….
Sadly, the end justifies the means is normal operating procedure for many in our civilization, today — and this mentality is a threat to our civilization’s very survival, a thousand times more dangerous than alleged AGW.
Boy is that ever the truth. John (20:02:13) : mentioned pharmaceutical research Well our favorite AGW poster boy Al Gore has his fingers in more than one pie. Back when he was VP he had the farming community in an uproar with his statement to a child when handing out FFA awards “There will be no more farming in America” (reference is my Ag extension agent and Billlings Mt Ag Journal) Given Waxman’s “Food Folly” bill he was not kidding.
I was just reading another article by Nicole Johnson The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform that frightened the heck out of me. Thanks to the same sort of censorship we see with AGW and Wiki, the FDA and USDA have been hijacked with impunity because of the silence of our regular news media.
“Had the New York Times’ Michael Moss looked at the history of this USDA/ConAgra cover-up, he would have found information that explained why Taylor’s brand of HACCP makes it inevitable that E. coli-contaminated hamburger will eventually make its way to the public, and why Stephanie Smith will not likely be the last person disabled by her dinner….
The Government Accountability Project’s investigative findings included evidence that the public was being exposed to E. coli O157:H7 for two years before the 2002 ConAgra recall finally happened…FSIS repeatedly discovered that ConAgra had been receiving products returned from its customers as E. coli O157:H7 positive. Each time the agency allowed the tainted beef to be cooked and reentered into commerce, without warning the public or imposing systematic corrective action.”
…The report also found that “The regulatory double standard is a microcosm why the integrity of HACCP is at risk. The ConAgra-USDA cover up sustains a pattern of using HACCP as a vehicle to obstruct its staff from enforcing food safety laws at big business, while bullying small business such as family firms.”…
Though the USDA denies this, Eisnitz points out that “They’ve gotten rid of the task codes that would direct the inspectors to actually monitor the slaughtering areas, and the handling as well, so basically, nobody’s watching what’s happening inside these operations. The USDA meat inspectors are completely powerless when it comes to enforcing their own regulations. They’re virtually prohibited from doing so.”
…Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project has said that “Contempt for federal law has been systematic at these plants….”
Worse the “Food Folly” bill will take away our choice of buying direct from independent farmers, forcing us to eat risky MegaCorp food. Mike Taylor is alleged to be our new “Food Safety Czar” in charge of the “new improved food regulatory bureaucracy”
“These radical changes to the meat and poultry inspection process were spearheaded by none other than Michael Taylor, someone–it could be argued–who has done practically more than anyone to pervert regulatory law and legally permit the poisoning of our food supply. This is the same Michael Taylor who represented Monsanto while a lawyer at King & Spaulding, a law firm that attends to the wishes of the top pharma, chemical, agribusiness and biotech multinational corporations. The same Michael Taylor who had spent nearly a decade working to weaken the Delaney clause, a very good law designed to protect public health by prohibiting cancer-causing chemicals from being added to foods. The same Michael Taylor who had just finished implementing at the FDA the pseudo-scientific policy of “substantial equivalence” so that Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered bovine growth hormone could be unleashed on the market without undergoing any pesky safety tests proving it would not cause harm to human health or the environment – no matter that it sickens cattle and has been linked to human breast, prostrate and colon cancers.[9] And it’s the same Michael Taylor who subsequently went to work for Monsanto as its Vice President of Public Policy where he worked on long-term strategic planning. And now, the same Michael Taylor is the guy the Obama Administration has installed at the FDA to “fix” our food safety problems, no doubt here to put all that long-term strategic planning into action.” http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2009/12/the-festering-fraud-behind-food-safety-reform/index.html?p=2
Sorry for the off topic but as James said this whole thing runs very deep. AGW and Food Security are different heads of the same monster. To kill the monster we need to see the whole body. If we just try to chop off one head all that will happen is it will sprout another we must attack the whole monster.
Here is Wiki’s take on HACCP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points
On Food Safety: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points
And a neutral take on Codex Alimentarius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius
Peter (22:03:27)
Yet another prediction by George Orwell coming true. History will be rewritten. Memory holes to come on every computer to suck the truth out of the Internet….
The memory holes are a reality. The USDA/FDA uses them to accuse farmers of “disinformation” I have seen a government publication I was quoting disappear off the internet and then reappear with the quoted part missing AND the same date on the publication. What was truly funny is when I pointed this out as an example of the governments dishonesty, the quoted part reappeared!
Ronald Reagan said it best. “Trust but verify.” From now on we will have to take everything we see on Wikipedia with a grain of salt. It’s too bad that we will now have to verify from other sources information that we obtain from Wikipedia. It is no longer the “go to source.”
Collapse of the warming scam:
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/bennington-banner/TGF5KR1IA5IDMEAJB#lastPost
Perhaps OT but over on ICECAP is an article reference to the Cliff Mass Weather Blog.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/12/climategate.html
“Let me start with my bottom line points:
Were some of the climategate emails inappropriate? Yes
Have some scientists exaggerated the implications of human caused global warming? Yes.
Are many global warming deniers unreasonable and expressing opinions that are not based in facts or rational thought? Yes.
Is the basic science of climate change now in question because of the climategate emails? No.
Has the whole business gotten too political? Surely.
Are scientists human and sometimes doing things out based on human emotion or group think? Yes.”
Global warming deniers? Substitute “men who beat their wives” and you get to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
“Is the basic science of climate change now in question ….”?
YES. Science is always “in question” because science is based on data. When experiments uncover new data that conflict with predictions of “our best theories” then those “best theories” change; or at least they are supposed to change. Politics is impervious to data. Remember that back in the nineteenth century Newton’s theory of gravity was as “settled” as science has ever gotten. Then Einstein came along and published his General theory of Relativity. Would today’s AGW “scientist” call Albert a fixed time denier?
The climategate e-mails show the existence of a conspiracy to manufacture the data. It is the data that drives the science. If the data is in question then the science is also in question.
Anthony undertook a project to track down the weather stations used by USHCN (http://www.surfacestations.org/). What has he found? “Unfortunately, the network has fallen into neglect, and the temperature data produced by it is suspect due to microsite biases. See what has been learned so far here in this slide show.
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/UCAR-slides/index.html “.
Moreover, these violations bias the data to the warmside. GISS algorithms average rural weathers stations with urban “heat sink” weather stations. The result? Warmer data.
Do you see a pattern here? The AGW “scientist” are committing fraud and the truth will out.
Mike Ramsey
Wikipedia administration by William Connolley and at Real climate.
I never heard his name before. This is the kind of publicity that needs exposure.
I have known for yearrs that wiki had a biased agenda. Apparently Connelly is attracted to the climate carbon crisis cartel cesspool. Gavin Schmidt would not friend honest people.
Russia and China censored from the top down. These people are not gubment officials but censor and smear with delight.
I am sure William connelly is on a head trip and googles his own name daily to see responses. He will know about this article.
Another example of ‘peer review’ that does not work.
I have seen some shockingly poor Wiki articles written on certain occasions where whole paragraphs are nothing more than published opinion. But this pointed attack must certainly take the cake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
But a look at the discussion is even more interesting:
[quote]
I’ve not paid this article, or subject matter really, any attention for some time. While I do think some sort of article like this is encyclopedic, the ‘scientist’ folks whose views are represented here come across as really misguided. I don’t know how to make the article better, but I will try to think on it. –Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
This is caused by the present, perverse categorisation scheme, intended to tell the public that, none of these scientists agree with each other, which is of course, just false. Alex Harvey (talk) 10:08, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
No, it is caused by the fact that their views really are misguided William M. Connolley (talk) 12:36, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
[/quote]
That there is even an edit war over such an article is ludicrous; with the perjorative title and categories, it should have been deleted long ago. The discussion on this particular article shows that Wikipedia’s above stated policy from email responses of encouraging editorial consensus is flawed in practice when an administrator like Mr Connelly can force his or her own opinions through strongarm tactics.
I agree with fellow posters above that until Wiki weeds out the Wikibullies and reviews and modifies its editorial policies, it cannot be trusted even for casual reference.
@Henry chance (05:52:12) :
“I am sure William connelly is on a head trip and googles his own name daily to see responses. He will know about this article.”
That’s so 2005, he’s probably got a google alert set-up so he probably knew about it long before most commentators did 🙂