UPDATE: The error has now been completely eliminated from the article. Details below.
Guest post by James Padgett
As many readers are aware, the culture surrounding the climate change topic area of Wikipedia has been a microcosm of climate science for nearly a full decade.
This is not a compliment.
When you read the Climategate emails and see discussions of finding people to investigate and discredit your ideological opponents – that is Wikipedia. When you read about the IPCC’s usage of the WWF and students in composing their Climate Bible (KJV) – that is Wikipedia. When you read about “climate scientists” conspiring to get other scientists fired for challenging the orthodoxy – that is Wikipedia.
In short, Wikipedia does not care about truth, and certainly not doubts, it cares about message.
And that’s what this article is about, how the truth, when made plainly clear, is suppressed in favor of misinformation that is on message.
Early last month I was browsing the Wikipedia article on the Soon-Baliunas controversy. The “mainstream” view on the topic is that the paper was so horrible that several editors resigned from Climate Research in protest. Those following the Climategate emails know that there was a strong and shady behind-the-scenes effort to both discredit the paper and show journals what happens to their reputations and hairlines when you dare to publish research contradictory to the “settled science.”
Part of this public relations process, of which Wikipedia is an integral component, involves rewriting facts, refocusing views and never ever giving in to rationality or reality.
How was this done in the Soon-Baliunas article? I don’t have the time or inclination to point out all the bias and opinion-herding in the article, but I’ll show you the sentence that initially caught my eye back in early December:
“The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, all of whom recommended rejecting it.” (1)
Now isn’t that interesting? Why would they publish the paper if all of the reviewers recommended rejecting it? It certainly would be quite the scandal if that villainous Chris de Freitas pushed to publish it under such conditions.
A little digging shows that Wikipedia used to have the correct sentence – that none of the reviewers recommended rejecting it. In fact, an anonymous user tried to revert the article back to this correct version. The response was typical – change it back and then have one of the administrator gatekeepers, “MastCell,” protect the article from anonymous users. After all, the only people who could ever be correct are the Champions of the Earth.
But that wasn’t the end of it. That wouldn’t be a good demonstration of the obstinacy of the keeper of climate truth.
The few non-anonymous users who cared about the article being accurate pointed this out. Pages and pages of argument resulted, with the typical gatekeepers like Dave Souza and Stephan Schulz relying on a single source to make their claim, while ignoring numerous other sources, not to mention common sense, which contradicted their assertion regarding the reviewers.
What was their source?
An article in the Guardian by Fred Pearce.
What sources contradicted this?
Chris de Freitas himself publically showed this email (also here from Climategate), which would support my view – and he privately made it crystal clear to me that everyone recommended publication.
Of course, de Freitas would be biased….
But Clare Goodess, of the ever-reputable University of East Anglia, an editor who resigned over the incident, ambiguously intoned in a manner subject to much interpretation:
“The publisher eventually asked to see the documentation associated with the review of the paper – which had apparently gone to four reviewers none of whom had recommended rejection. Otto Kinne concluded that the review process had been properly conducted.” (2)
So instead of relying on common sense, original documents, and the statement, at the time, of an involved scientist certainly not supportive of the Soon-Baliunas paper, weight was given to Fred Pearce’s article which was written seven years after the fact.
Naturally, I was curious as to where Mr. Pearce received his information. He was friendly and helpful, despite his busy schedule with the holidays and Durban, and attempted to find the original source for the claim in his article. Unfortunately, he could not find the original source in his records. He does agree that the statement was, in his words, “almost certainly wrong” and theorizes that he may have misread Clare Goodess’ statement on the matter.
So that should settle it right? This article itself could be a “reliable source” to remove the error from Wikipedia. After all, Real Climate is quoted extensively throughout the climate change articles. Perhaps, but not when you have obsessive-compulsive activists who care more about their cause than their integrity.
However, this incident does bring some other questions to mind.
Andrew Montford, author of the Hockey Stick Illusion, was inquiring with Pearce about his source as well and was curious if Michael Mann had been the one to mislead Pearce. This is an interesting theory, and I had been wondering if this was the case myself both due to Mann’s behavior regarding this incident, his well-known inclination towards manipulating journalists, as well as the original wording in Pearce’s article, which was:
“But many on the 10-man editorial board agreed with Mann. They concluded that their colleague de Freitas had ignored the anonymous advice of four reviewers to reject the paper.”
There is no way to know for certain; it certainly isn’t clear. All I know is that Mann and his friends, and this is the short list, when confronted with a paper that challenged their own work, threatened to boycott the journal, tried to get the editor fired, tried to get the authors fired, and was even so juvenile as to file a complaint against the New Zealand Herald for not letting him publish his attacks against de Freitas.
Obviously, he is the quintessential climate scientist of our day – and I hope one day that Wikipedia gives him due credit as such.
Cheers,
James Padgett
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UPDATE: Following a conversation on Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales’ talk page the error has been removed despite initial resistance from those who perpetrated the misinformation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Activism_at_Wikipedia.3F
Also, I’d like to thank Nona, who tried to correct the error earlier as an anonymous user.
I am a regular editor of wikipedia myself, usually on non-controversial topics where my edits can persist longer than one hour. As a rule of thumb I check the discussion page of the topic, if it is longer than the article itself I know it’s rowing against the stream. With success however I neutralised the Fred Singer page on the dutch wikipedia.
Climate is not the only subject Wikipedia is pointedly biased about. Wikipedia is quick and easy, but just as dangerous as television for shaping society in a contorted fashion.
Google and Wikipedia are both great starting points when you want to start a search. But to trust any one source of information as factual is the greater problem. Every journal has a bad paper hidden somewhere.
Harry Dale Huffman says: January 10, 2012 at 3:29 am
You are correct. Most engineers who have looked into ITER Fusion have come to the conclusion that the odds of the SYSTEM working (it generates more tritium than it uses) are extremely small. And yet the billions and tens of billions keep flowing into that project. It is a disgrace. A physics community scam. I suppose that if they can keep from drawing any “official” conclusion for another twenty or fifty years they can keep the money rolling.
There are a few occasions where the great and almighty Wikipedia editor Kim Dabelstein Petersen caves into protests about unsupported info used to support an assertion. As I mentioned partway down in my Nov 2010 Breitbart article “Global Warming Nuisance Lawsuits Are Based on a Fatal Flaw” ( http://biggovernment.com/rcook/2010/11/27/global-warming-nuisance-lawsuits-are-based-on-a-fatal-flaw/ ), an accusation phrase against skeptic scientists was attributed to the Global Climate Coalition from 2007 to 2009 at Wikipedia, based on a Vanity Fair article. But, a person with the user name of “Ling.Nut” finally was persuasive enough to get Petersen to allow the deletion of that reference, despite Petersen’s last words at their Talk page being “i fail to see an argument for this”.
daveburton says:
January 10, 2012 at 5:47 am
“Wikipedia is generally reliable only for completely uncontroversial topics”
Yes!! I agree wholeheartedly.
Wikipedia is a system to allow anyone to populate a subject with sourced info. When it is a controversial subject, just forget Wikipedia. For example, just about any article on history is always controversial. Politics? forget it. Climate science? forget it.
I agree with daveburton that when its controversial, the left wingnuts tend to get control.
But do not lump an incredibly convenient wealth of info with the rubbish. Pick anything not controversial. Go ahead, pick something and look it up on Wikipedia. Its usually a very good informative write-up.
Just thinking off the top of my head, I just now looked at “four stroke engines”. Take a look at it. Its great.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-stroke_engine
ThePowerofX says:
January 10, 2012 at 1:57 am
The author of this piece misunderstands the nature of Wikipedia. A ‘reliable source’ isn’t one in which he or I agrees with; it has a very specific meaning.
Clearly only a single source is reliable, and is the best source even if inaccurate. What is “best” defined as? Ahhh. That’s the trick!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources
Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered
…
The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context.
And then,…
Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.
And who decides whether something is poorly sourced? Anyone that has edit access, and they’re implored to remove the material immediately rather than discuss the issue.
So on the one hand they give lip service to wanting multiple good sources to explore all sides of the issue, but on the other they order people to take down “bad” data immediately. Yeah, that works…
I’m not very well at present but I’m planning an article for Tallbloke on establishing a climate skeptics’ wiki, something I’ve been chipping away at for a long time. Keep watching that space.
Ripper says:
January 10, 2012 at 2:41 am
“What exactly was wrong with the S&B paper?”
It was inconvenient to the CAGW fans at a critical time. Here is a link to a pdf.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
The last sentence of the abstract is:
Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.”
Heresy? Read the paper and decide for yourself.
It seems Connolley and others are still very active.
A n extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming “This is all a waste of time. Stop picking at the scab; there are plenty of articles that actually need improving rather than degrading” William M. Connolley (talk) 21:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
“Good idea. Watch me go through and make some big improvements to a number of articles here. Just to show a lead and get great content on an area we all agree is of vital importance. Ensuring climate scepticism isn’t presented as mainstream, making use of academic research, all that stuff”. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
This is a thread on another forum that takes the stand that energy will be the new global currency taking the form as carbon …The Final Conspiracy – How Everything Fits Together…, http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread795479/pg1 Now we have the wikigod of history to tell us just how and why these things can be …Good post and thanks as well to the great people of WUWT …peace
John Phillips says:
January 10, 2012 at 9:02 am
“Pick anything not controversial. Go ahead, pick something and look it up on Wikipedia. Its usually a very good informative write-up.”
“I just now looked at “four stroke engines”. Take a look at it. Its great.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-stroke_engine
Yes, but think about it. If you google “four stroke engines” you will get lots of hits.
Why is it of importance to have another place for this info, than the sites that is dedicated to 4 stroke engines anyway?
Ask yourselves that question, and you realise that the answer is; It is redundant.
Search engines makes it redundant. IMO.
So maybe the reason was to have a centralised site, so “they” could have gatekeepers watching “the thruth” ? Remember; Leftists love to be gatekeepers of thruth. They love control.
All the way back more than ten years ago, my daughters were in elementary school and were prohibited from using Wikipedia as a source for their homework. The school already knew back then…..
Best,
J.
What are your plans to circumvent the issue of gatekeepers, or editors who just overwrite updates they disagree with?
Thomas Thatcher says: January 10, 2012 at 4:54 am
Wikipedia has a couple of core policies that make sense overall, but which create a structural bias in favor of climate orthodoxy. Wikipedia views itself as a tertiary source — it collects and summarizes secondary sources… Most of the time this is probably a good thing. You probably don’t want articles on autism to be dominated by vaccine conspiracy people…
I have a lot of respect for Jimmy Wales. I think his idea is brilliant, serves a huge need, and produces delightfully clean pages that are generally easy to use. I understand his encyclopedia vision. I use WP constantly, as a primary source.
PRAISE RANT OVER.
People here rightly excoriate Stoat “taking Science by the throat” Connolley. Anyone here tried looking up Tim Ball on WP? Nope, deleted. That way you cannot even see the earlier versions. Deletion. It’s WC’s master stroke.
But WP’s problem is not just Climate Science. My most hated WP article is List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. It’s Wikipedia’s handling of ALL fringe research.
Very often, people who are open to one frontier are ignorant or dismissive of other frontiers, often picking up the “consensus” rudeness and disinformation on the way. Sadly I think of Leif, Matt Ridley, and others. Climate Science is not the only non-orthodox science I’ve investigated at depth. I’ve researched the vaccine stuff – because I’m on the spectrum myself, and because we tend to do our own exhaustive research. There is an autism link – the (former) use of mercury compounds in the preservative. Think Mad Hatter Disease. And there’s disinformation cover-ups. Everything we’ve seen here in Climate Science.
I think those who have responded to my posts have misinterpreted my sentiments. Either that or I have failed to communicate properly! I fully agree that in an age where we have seen net warming for the past 150 years, more recent decades are likely to be warmer than those preceding them. However, what we can not escape is the fact that AGW proponents argue that this warming is accelerating and due to human activity. We may well be at the top of the cycle but to date, there is at least as much evidence to suggest another step change up the way is as likely as the cooling resulting from falling from the crest of the warming cycle. Right or wrong, this IS the orthodox view and will remain so until there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary. I am also well aware that the Hansen et al temp record is a bit suspect but we do have the satellite record telling a similar story. All I’m suggesting is that we don’t bury our heads in the sand because to date the observed warming does more or less fit the theory. This may well be a coincedence but until it proves to be so, we should remain open minded to the possibility that the the theory might at least have some credance.
I’ve been fighting their bias on AGW for over seven years. Wiki is brutal on the subject – at one point Connolley not only banned me, he went back and deliberately erased contrary articles and comments from the previous six months. He is gone now and the person that took up his torch (Kim) is also out.
Wiki’s deliberate bias and out-of-control manipulation of global warming caused me to view ALL Wiki information with a skeptical eye…
Wikipedia has known for decades that William Connolley and other Real Climate Scientists have blatantly manipulated their articles. Their gross negligence in ensuring the accuracy of their climate science articles borders on complicity. As a result, the reputations of Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, and Chris de Freitas’ have been severely damaged and continue to be damaged to this day. They should sue Michael Mann, William Connolley, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales for slander. Please set up a tip jar to pay their legal fees. I’ll gladly donate.
Sad thing is Wikipedia could be THE online place for review. They could setup “theory-evidence-critiques-current standing” type of thing and be a true force for knowledge. Another missed opportunity. Their loss.
John Phillips said:
I agree with daveburton that when its controversial, the left wingnuts tend to get control.
Agreed, but why? The wind must be in their favour in some way. The ‘establishment’ used to be properly sceptical of ‘flavour of the month’ urban myth… now they can’t take up such nonsense quickly enough.
Re weasels and stoats, I never tire of telling this joke:
What’s the difference between weasels and stoats?
Weasels is weaselly distinguishable, whereas stoats is stoatally different.
Hey, TomB, I looked up that guy you mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benvenuto_Cellini#Personal_relationships
Looks like he wasn’t playing gender favourites.
You’re right, TomB. The Wikipedia community is hostile, not only to climate skepticism, but to all things conservative. But there’s nobody they hate more than conservative Christians. So anything related to abortion, or Terri Schiavo, or homosexuality, or the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or the evolution v. intelligent design debate, or any other topic in which conservative Christian doctrine conflicts with leftist dogma, is ruthlessly policed to ensure strict conformance with the Leftist Party Line. Dissenters are blocked or banned.
I speak from personal experience, having tried to correct some of the misinformation in the Terri Schiavo and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed articles.
BTW, w/r/t the later, for those who haven’t see that documentary, I highly recommend it. Although the topic is I.D. rather than climate, the problems it documents will seem all too familiar to those who have waded into the climate debate. Here’s the whole movie, free on YouTube (though at only 360p):
This is the same, but you can switch it to 480p resolution, and it has Polish subtitles added:
I would say the best remedy is sunlight.
1) No anonymous editors, No Pseudonyms on people with power. Anyone with power to alter or control anonymous corrections needs to essentially be a public figure as far as the internet is concerned. That means your full name, your occupation, your C.V., your financial stake are all on the table.
2) Make no attempt at presenting a wholly neutral point of view on controversial topics. It is not possible, everyone has a bias. Instead of presenting a single page that is fought over, present all views on a single page, or have two (or more) different pages where sourced disagreement is presented.
3) Editor/moderator positions must be temporary. Permanent appointments to positions of power over such a storehouse of content simply breeds corruption.
4) Other websites with user-generated/controlled content already have a check/balance on editor/moderator power. In some cases (my favorite ones) users in good standing (meaning they contribute) are given “points” for good behavior every now and then (random times, not predictable by the user). Those “points” are spent on moderating things up or down (essentially a vote). This is quite powerful when done correctly and is an easy way to have an anonymous check on editor power.
At least, those are a few ideas off the top of my head. I have no idea what Lucy intends.
More Soylent Green! asks: What are [my] plans to circumvent the issue of gatekeepers, or editors who just overwrite updates they disagree with?
Big issue. Needs transparent discussion. I’ll go into it in the article.
Everything on Wikipedia ends up being controversial to someone.
A couple of years back, there was an extended argument on one page about a board game. Reasonably popular, sold a lot of copies, won some awards. Pretty obvious that it should have its own page on Wikipedia, right?
Not to one guy. He argued that it should be deleted because it wasn’t “notable.” Every time someone came up with another source mentioning the game, he’d just say THAT source wasn’t notable, either.
Apparently, there are some users on Wikipedia who do nothing but run around and argue for deletion of things they don’t particularly like…