At Shub Niggurath Climate blog, he’s done a follow up to his first essay on the ongoing issues with integrity that the oxymoronically named blog “skepticalscience” has. Excerpts are posted below. I’ll point out the John Cook has not responded to my modest proposal yet, and even today, he allows the denigrating word to be used. It appears he has no scruples in the use of language people see as offensive, nor any scruples when it comes to the keeping the integrity of invited commentary intact.
Here’s Shub’s findings:
“…resist the temptation to reply to [trolls].
Instead, do what the troll hates most — simply remove the comment.”
The recent censorship episode at the skepticalscience.com brings an often overlooked aspect to the forefront. The target of deletion Prof Roger Pielke Sr, runs a blog. The actions of Skepticalscience were revealed because he posted them there.
What if a scientist or a lay person, interacted with websites like Skepticalscience and did not have a blog?
Consider what Skepticalscience did in reader Paul and AnthonySG1′s cases. In 2007, the website had an article explaining Antarctica’s cooling —a thorn in the pitch for a clean story about global warming— as an “uniquely” regional phenomenon. It talked of how ‘Antarctica was overall losing ice’, citing a peer-reviewed paper Velicogna et al 2003 for support.
The response in the comments section from Cook’s readers was simple: ‘Antarctic ice is increasing. You cannot take a paper that has three years worth of data and conclude that the continent was losing ice’. They cited references that Skepticalscience neglected – which showed an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice.
The rewriting that John Cook undertook is now recounted at Bishop Hill.
In the first step Cook changed the entire article, taking off from the criticisms. Next, he deleted his original ‘responses’, and added new ones that made it appear as though these commenters did not know what they were talking about.
The rewriting of Skepticalscience history
After this was openly revealed, John Cook offered explanations for his actions. It went something like this: ‘I accidentally mistook my readers to have responded to my updated article. Thinking that was indeed the case, their comments sounded silly to me. So I ended up adding responses to guide new readers’
A closer examination of the threads on Skepticalscience, reveals a different picture. Let us begin by examining a few examples to get a sense of what these might be.
Let us start with the thread “Climate models are unreliable”. As is known, the website portrays skeptical arguments as such simple statements and offers rebuttals. The article was published sometime late 2007.
In July 2008, ’poptech’ left a comment which questioned assertions made in the article. He quoted scientists at the Realclimate consensus blog:
Comment from reader ‘poptech’ – deleted in 2011From mid-2008, Poptech’s comment remained intact on the thread till as recently as Feb 2011 . At some point afterward, the comment was deleted. Another of poptech’s comments upthread, to which three commenters responded (example) was deleted, leaving the responses hanging mid-air.
…
Take the exchange between ‘Adamski’ and ‘chris’ (comments 36, 37, 38, 39 originally):
Comments from ‘Adamski’ and ‘chris’ as they appeared in Sept 2009
Nov 2009 – the Adamski-chris conversation moves up due to bulk deletions! Comment #37 from chris goes missing
Feb 2010 – Comment #37 makes a comeback but chris has lost his name.
Sept 2011 – the comments as they are, in their final positionWhat is more: as can be seen from the screen captures above, Cook goes into the comments and deletes commenters’ references to each others’ posts. This is no computer glitch and it demonstrates he knew what he was doing. Nor does this square with the explanations Cook provided at Bishop Hill. . Again, as before, parts of a conversation are deleted and altered in such a way, the end result looks like something that never happened.
…
Why does John Cook do this?
The deletions carried out by Cook don’t make sense as an exercise in moderation. They seem driven by an ardent need to present a clean and neat view of global warming. Of a need to reassure that no intelligent discussions exist, and all possible questions have (long) been answered.
The structure of Cook’s website appears to push things in his direction. In the beginning, pages are born as undemanding and easy arguments. Cook then seems to realize that the skeptical arguments are more involved and complex than the simplistic picture he presents. He updates the same pages with more detail. But messy comments have accumulated below the line, sticking out like sore thumbs. The ‘broad picture’ that Cook so wants to convey is sullied.
In the meantime fresh readers, oblivious to the confusing mish-mash of claim and counter-claim, arrive in greater numbers on the shores of the global warming debate. Journalists, policy-makers and other influential opinion-makers land up everyday at skepticalscience, looking for a quick grasp on the consensus position in climate issues. How does one protect these newcomers?
Cook’s solution: the inconvenient comments go flying out the window.
One clearly sees that the mission of the website underwent a change ~end of 2009. In the earlier years, Cook seems welcoming to comments. His interest it seemed was to point out findings from scientific papers, that he thought contradicted climate skeptics’ claims. By November 2009, Cook had arrived at a dramatically different viewpoint. He saw ‘global warming skepticism’ as a sort of a mental illness or a psychiatric condition, with the afflicted being beyond any hope. Psychologic diagnoses permeates his thinking from that point on.
Cook voices his thoughts on the shift in a post in November 2009. It is hard to fathom, why, anybody who ran a website and worked hard at attracting and nurturing an online community, would commit the most fundamental of indiscretions with his readers’ comments – deleting and moulding them at his own whim.
As seen in his response above, Cook viewed the comments section of his website topics as a resource, to be used for ‘educating’ the public.
From there on, editing, deleting and moulding the historical record probably did not seem any wrong to Cook.
More here: Skepticalscience – Rewriting History
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I fail to see the point in trying to engage with messrs cook and co. – in either a respectful or disrespectful manner! – in the same way as one cannot convince a terrorist/suicide bomber that he/she is a murderer – you cannot deal with fanatics – and we must not sink to that level either (though it is very tempting!)
I feel that it is worth someone keeping tabs on them (sks) – but it sure as heck won’t be me volunteering! The best thing is to just ignore them. Indeed, I suggest that any traffic to them from here is merely prolonging the debate and not actually ending it. Leave them to their narcissistic sycophantic selves!
the words, wall, head, banging and pointless – spring readily to mind!
@JSmith
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/11/on-skepticalscience-%e2%80%93-rewriting-history/#comment-765144
That’s just the point, my attempts at responding were moderated away, or so I believe. I wrote two quite comprehensive posts and posted them twice but they never appeared. I also discussed the papers that albatross (I think) posted as I went through them with varying degrees of care. I also acknowledged that the last chart was indeed an annual average but that it was expressed differently from the other two and wondered why that was.
At that stage I was really just genuinely trying to get to the bottom of the issue, trying to engage n order to further my understanding. I have learnt a lot since then, but sadly not from them.
Also, you (and they) made the mistake of believing I was making “claims” or “assertions”. I was doing neither. It appeared to me on the face of it that same sort of cherry-picking they were accusing Monckton of (my very first encounter with his views – I had not heard of him before), was being used by them. So I wanted to investigate. Instead I was linked to a bunch of papers, which I did duly read but were not really relevant to the general thrust of my enquiries.
About the name: it describes the target of his manipulations, not the content of the site. I understood that the first time I opened it. It’s an attack site, pure and simple.
I have been treated farily well on Skeptical Science as long as I correct my posts after the moderator makes a request. But I am not sure how they would treat Anthony Watts. I used Anthony Watts and Joe Bastardi in a post (hopefully I did not misrepresent).
In the thread reviewing James Powell’s ebook titled “Rough Winds”
My post:
“Norman at 22:02 PM on 2 October, 2011
muoncounter @ur momisugly 143
“To question the experts, without the intent of disproving them? And yet you don’t seem to search for understanding the expert opinions; instead, as here, you imply that Jeff Masters is wrong because Bastardi and Watts don’t say the same thing.”
I am not implying he is wrong, I was just making the distinction between an expert opinion and a scientific study.
Here is what you posted by Jeff Masters “the wild roller-coaster ride of incredible weather events during 2010, in my mind, makes that year the planet’s most extraordinary year for extreme weather since reliable global upper-air data began in the late 1940s. Never in my 30 years as a meteorologist have I witnessed a year like 2010–the astonishing number of weather disasters and unprecedented wild swings in Earth’s atmospheric circulation were like nothing I’ve seen.”
He states this without graphs or trend analysis so it is his opinion (expert) and the two other Bastardi and Watts do see the same data (which I do not see on a daily basis and could not offer an opion at all on the matter) but do not form his opinon. I was not saying he is wrong I was just wondering why the others do not see this if it is this obvious.
Also I am researching to understand Masters opinion on the matter by looking into historical extremes of the past to see if he is correct with his opinion.”
One poster replied in this fashion:
“146, Norman,
Bastardi and Watts are first class, agenda driven masters of distortion. They are also absolutely, positively, not scientists, let alone unbiased observers.
Using them as an appeal to authority completely invalidates your argument. It is in fact one of the real definitions of the fallacy of an appeal to authority, that is to appeal to someone who is not actually qualified as an authority on the subject.
(-snip-)
Response:
[DB] Emotion-laden comment snipped.
Some added context for the lay reader: both Bastardi and Watts have a history of making conclusions not only unsupported by science, but also in violation of many laws of physics. Various debunkings of both are readily available throughout the blogosphere. The best are at Open Mind.
The difference between B&W and Dr. Masters is that Dr. Master’s observations and conclusions are supported by physics and the literature in climate science while that of the former duo is not.
There is but one solution to this: A listing in the (your) sidebar (of links) under the heading:
UNRELIABLE*
* Due to (1) deletion, extension and amending of user comments, and (2) undated post-publication revisions of article contents after significant user commenting.
Reply: AWESOME IDEA! ANTHONY? ~ ctm
.
Anthony, I support the UNRELIABLE idea and perhaps a section saying whether discussion is permitted or not. As the latter would be difficult to rate, it could be appended as a % figure for the percentage of posts that are deleted/binned/boreholed. That would give an indication of the worthiness of showing up to talk at all.
WUWT -1%
JC -2%
XX -40%
and so on.
Or the reverse, a + number to show the likelihood that your post will be put up.
WUWT 99%
JC 98%
XX 60%
and so on.
I think they do that for Nature (etc) with 1 submission in 300 being accepted, that sort of thing. Perfectly reasonable and if it was updated every 3 months, it might even induce better behaviour, more open discussion and less censure.
I agree there has always been problems but initially I was at least able to get key comments up as a rebuttal on certain posts (as evidence in the main article) by following the letter of their comment policy. Then by directly dealing with Mr. Cook I was able to resolve some issues. Unfortunately as time went on it simply became absolutely impossible to comment at all if you did not agree with the true believers there and I had no interest in contacting him for each instance. I can only comment on my direct dealings with him and my actual experience commenting there, the later has been horrific.
Splendid idea _Jim and CTM. Done, check the sidebar.
On Shub’s blog, one of the trolls was questioning whether there are standards of practice for editors on a blog:
There are: See this and this. Thanks to “the editor” for those links.
As I pointed out on that blog
I think the latter bold-faced statement absolutely holds for that site. I’ll also note (in support of Anthony Watt’s original comment) that Skeptical Science also routinely engages in ad hominem attacks above the fold. See for example this nasty bit of work by dana:
This is completely disgusting behavior on the part of the blog owner and moderators.
Of course in addition to juvenile attacks on practicing scientists Dana has a credibility problem of his own.
———————-
David,
Thank you for pointing out Dr. Pielke Sr was in a dialog at Skeptical Science.
I usually do no support Skeptical Science with visits, but because of the recent previous issues with uncivil treatment of Pielke Sr there, I decided to check out how the current dialog there with Pielke Sr was going.
Well, it started out civil. Surprisingly soon, however, some uncivil snarking toward Pielke Sr by a regular Skeptical Science commenter caused a rapidly deteriorating discourse.
The overall impression I just got about Skeptical Science dynamics is they are primarily concerned with maintaining on message the IPCC supported alarming AGW by CO2. In this visit there I did not see them being interested in open and cordial scientific debate for the enrichment of science. They are fundamentally IPCC apologists.
John
>>
Big Brother says:
October 11, 2011 at 5:53 am
The Ministry of Truth is responsible for ensuring history is aligned with current requirements.
He who controls the past, controls the present. He who controls the present controls the future.
<<
If you’re going to quote George Orwell, then you should do it correctly. Your quote doesn’t even make sense. It should read: Who controls the past, controls the future; and who controls the present, controls the past.
The exact quote from 1984, chapter 3 is:
“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.”
Jim
I have had plenty of posts deleted on SKS, particularly when I was beginning to make a point. I rarely post there anymore.
Anthony,
Did you just remove the sidebar link to Skeptical Science? Just noticed it is gone. That is how I always get to Cook’s site when I need a good laugh. Although there were some interesting posts there from pielkesr last time I was there, but I can not say I blame you.
From _Jim on October 11, 2011 at 7:49 pm:
Anthony Watts said on October 11, 2011 at 9:34 pm:
Problem being, technically WUWT has done that, in a very small way compared to SkepSci. For 1, there is normal moderation deleting of comments, inline mod comments, even replacing of words albeit in a way distinct from the commenter’s words (well, if only mods used the square brackets). After some days of commenting, it can be mentioned that something objectionable was slipped through much earlier, resulting in belated moderating. Also for some threads that get messed up and off-track, “cleaning” of the thread has been done.
For 2, there have been “live” posts altered along the way, like with hurricanes etc. Offhand I seem to recall one or more “current” posts whose contents warranted a change/note to a previous post to reflect the new info. (As a minor but significant issue I’ve noticed looking at some old posts, there’s been the use of “live” images that have changed enough they no longer work with the words, like this old Goddard post using an Arctic sea ice graph. Although a “dead” post, doesn’t such warrant a note for the benefit of future readers?)
WUWT doesn’t do the historical revisionism as SkepSci does, and moderator changes are limited to recent comments. There’s not the time factor, you’re not changing the “distant” past. But technically, as worded, WUWT is also guilty.
How about a “Propaganda” heading instead? Or a reworking of the “Unreliable” criteria to highlight the time element and the scale of the changes?
[Reply: Being somewhat of a spelling/punctuation martinet, I probably correct the spelling of twenty or more words a day on average, and I often capitalize the first word in a sentence, and add missing periods [full stops]. But it’s obvious that most comments are posted with misspellings intact; there are only so many hours in the day. However [snips that violate site Policy excepted], I have never deleted part of a comment to change the meaning, or changed any words, or striked out words, or revised archived comments, or added words, and I am not aware of any other mods ever doing those things. That would be dishonest. ~dbs, mod.]
Without notice, without an inline comment on significant matters (esp. involving posters of note e.g. a ‘Mann’, ‘Gavin’, ‘Hansen’ or Joel Shore) from a mod or Anthony?
I don’t recall an instance where there wasn’t a ‘trail’ (an accompanying audit trail, some sign a change was made) indicating where a change (usually termed an “Update” in an article) or a ‘snip’ to user comments (w/reason for the snip).
The point being that wholesale changes are made on Cook’s site, unequivocally on noted occasions quite some time after the ‘fact’, with the result more often than not making previous comments by users seem … out-of-place and uncomprehending of the material _now_ existent on said page …
.
Always willing to help out while accepting no responsibility at zero pay …
.
An artifact of linking to a ‘live’ image one’s own, or on another’s (a different data provider’s) website?
That trouble esp. exists when linking to RADAR or satellite images/imagery providers, and without taking the time to make a ‘static’ copy to tinypic.com (or similar image host) ‘data’ changes with time or can disappear completely! For an image that would be desired to be persistent with time, static copies should always be made on the local host (e.g. wordpress, etc).
Were any of Cook’s documented changes in this category? (Not from what I have seen.)
.
Found in my previous comment:
And that’s the issue. The criteria, while seeming restrictive, still paints with too broad a brush. But a “Climate Propaganda” heading, with the criteria of censoring and historical revisionism of previous posts and comments to promote a particular viewpoint, would be more specific and effective. Hey, if it says “Propaganda” you should know what you’ll find there, right?
Hmmm….personally I don’t correct spelling or punctuation without a request, but I know I have fixed bad links on many occasions. dbs’s words don’t contradict my point. The issue is intent.
From _Jim on October 12, 2011 at 1:15 pm:
Yup, that’s a difference. Although, like I mentioned, sometimes I’ll see something like a “[snip]” using square brackets and wonder if it’s a self-censorship, maybe used as a type of emphasis, or a moderator change.
We’re on the same team on this so I won’t say much, except to note I’ve seen that “previous comments” effect happen with some updates/revisions to posts. Nowhere near the same as on SkepSci, but in broad terms, as you’ve worded it, it happens here too. However, it’d be too much to ask of the mods to go back and remark at all those comments that there was a change in the original post, and it’s rather normal to see a comment added noting the change that breaks the rest of the comments into “before and after” sections, so it’s barely an issue here on WUWT.
Skeptical Science has immediately deleted numerous postings of mine with no stated or even plausible reason. It’s pretty obvious they had no answer. After registering with about six different email addresses, all have now been blocked and it seems they have blocked both my internet services so that I cannot even connect to their site except through public terminals.
You can see a screen capture of one such deleted posting using the link top left of my site http://climate-change-theory.com
What is laugable is that they are critical of my hypothesis relating to temperatures being stabilised by the thermal energy within the Earth and think they have demolished it purely by arguing that the daily heat flow from the core is negligible. Of course it is. My site acknowledges such in great detail and explains why that is not relevant. They write about what they think I am saying without reading what I actually am saying. Typical.
Some of the people on SkepticalScience can carry on an adult conversation. It seems that those who sign in using what appears to be a real name have better people skills than those who sign in using an alias, such as muoncounter. Some of the childish behavior turns people off towards the ideas they are attempting to promote. Seems counterproductive to me.
Does anyone know who muoncounter is? Does he/she have any peer reviewed papers on Climate Science?
Thank you,
Chris Shaker
Skeptical Science has deleted ALL OF MY COMMENTS from their site, including the hundreds in this discussion,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/meet-the-denominator.html
WTF?
I must have embarrassed them too much,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/02/google-scholar-illiteracy-at-skeptical.html
You have obviously never had a real conversation with Ian Forrester,
“WOW Poptart, don’t let on which college. People will stay away in droves if you are an example of what they turn out.” – Ian Forrester.
I have yet to meet an adult over there.
I’m wondering if muoncounter is John Cook’s alter ego? The name seems to fit with his claimed physics and solar physics background?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/team.php
Here is an interview with John Cook about Skeptical Science
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/a-physics-mavens-take-on-skeptical-science/
Whomever muoncounter is, they have been writing comments about AGW, politics, and psychology of denial all over the blogosphere.
We know very little about whatever peer reviewed papers muoncounter may have published, or what degrees he/she has backing up his/her pronouncements.
Chris Shaker