“Copner” alerts us in comments to this public document:
Testimony of Dr. Peter Gleick, February 7, 2007 Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Table 1
Categories of Deceitful Tactics and Abuse of the Scientific Process
(source: P.H. Gleick, Pacific Institute, 2007)
There are many tactics used to argue for or against scientific conclusions that are inappropriate, involve deceit, or directly abuse the scientific process.
Personal (“Ad Hominem”) Attacks
This approach uses attacks against the character, circumstances, or motives of a person in order to discredit their argument or claim, independent of the scientific evidence.
Demonization
Guilt by Association
Challenge to Motive (such as greed or funding)
You can read it here:
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/categories_of_deceitful_tactics_and_abuse.pdf
The only evidence this genius didn’t leave on the forged Heartland document was his name. Oh, wait a minute, actually he did didn’t he!
Ken Harvey says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:47 am
A PhD is an academic designation and is in no way comparable to a professional designation such as a PEng or MD. Once achieved by honest means, an academic degree can not be taken away.
Professional designations exclusively license their holders to offer essential services to the public and the bodies granting the professional designations are independent of academic institutions. Professional designations can be withdrawn by the granting bodies for unprofessional behavior in order to protect the public.
“Robert Austin says:
February 26, 2012 at 8:09 am
Ken Harvey says:
February 26, 2012 at 1:47 am
A PhD is an academic designation and is in no way comparable to a professional designation such as a PEng or MD. Once achieved by honest means, an academic degree can not be taken away. ”
I can accept that, but of course that means that a PhD has all the scientific credibility of a Heisman Trophy, or a ‘participants award’.
Real Climate
Open Mind
Skeptical Science
Integrity of Science Initiative
Gleickenspiel is a good name for this brand of behaviour, and this whole document.
* Claim the moral high ground,
* demonstrate expert understanding of the principles involved to maintain that high ground…
* pre-emptively accuse one’s enemies of expert intricacies of corruption…
* which everyone believes because they are so plausible…
* BEFORE the other side can point out…
* that the Gleickenspiel player is talking about himself.
Mark Twain / Winston Churchill had a relevant saying:
“A lie gets halfway round the world before truth can get its pants on”.
I can just imagine Dr Evil’s consensus meeting to discuss forging the Heartland document to discredit them:
Dr Evil: “Two words Peter, ‘plausible deniability’, if you put your name on the document we….. (evil chuckle) er,… I mean ‘you’, can plausibly deny you had anything to do with it. If they do rumble you we just get desmogblog and our journalist activist friends to justify deceitful, unethical and criminal behaviour on the grounds that we had to stop Heartland from pointing out that the science isn’t settled”.
Gleick: “Thanks ……….(name self snip) great plan”.
Dr Evil: “Don’t forget to delete the email evidence, that mistake has cost us dearly before”.
(Gleick leaves)
Dr Evil: “Fool, there’s only room for one evil genius in this organisation”. Now let’s get on with our peer review of this skeptics work, how are we getting on with our complaint letter to the editor”…
(scene fades with evil chuckle).
Some people are too smart for their own good or so they think.
@Copner, I did watch that video, and Gleick was flat-out dishonest in it about our blog post (15:42) in a way that was not apparent from his PDF notes. He went on for a bit about our post, the thesis of which was, quote, “…the former VP isn’t exactly acting as though he believes the dire warnings in his movies, slide shows and public appearances…” in a way that led the audience to believe we were attacking the underlying science, which we never addressed. He also falsely implied his summary of our piece, which had a different slant than our piece did, was a direct quote from us. More interesting, though, is that Gleick then went on to attack Gore himself “he does live an energy intensive lifestyle” and “he may be hypocritical.” Not an especially harsh attack, but I think he wanted to criticize Gore in a safe way, considering his audience was probably sympathetic to Gore, so he hid behind one of the nasty “deniers” (us) to do so.
I really am only wildly speculating here, but I wonder if he is/was a bit jealous of Gore, because he went out of his way to tell people he wouldn’t want to be Al Gore “for lots of reasons.” Gore was at the top of his glory back then. Why go out of your way to say that, when no one asked?
A news item this morning, from a notoriously biased program on global warming (Today) in the notoriously biased BBC: people no long have confidence of the UK government’s support.
… then they went on to talk about jobs which we were never going to get, which we have been promised for a decade were just around the corner, which I said we were never going to get a decade ago and the BBC said: “who cares”.
So, it looks like we are on the verge of winner over wind. But that doesn’t mean we are anywhere near winning on climate science … climate “science” will still be corrupt to its core, lacking in integrity and will still be jumping on whatever is the latest bandwagon climate scare to come along.
It’s like having a weather forecast each day that goes on about the risk of hurricanes, tornadoes, severe winds, etc. for the next day And all we really wanted to know was whether it was going to rain.
@Amy Ridenour:
There’s an interesting bit of colorful omission in the letter. The letter published by Science signed by 255 scientists, that the WSJ didn’t publish (he doesn’t mention that WSJ didn’t publish). He talks about the letter. He reads a snippet from it. He offers to handout copies. He says it’s a “great letter”. He doesn’t mention that he was the organizer (?), lead contact, one of the signers, and most likely the main author of the letter.
So in one bit, in my opinion, he’s both a little deceitful and shows that he’s immensely proud of the letter.
And we know that he was intensely annoyed about the snub of the WSJ not publishing his letter, but publishing the skeptic letter on the very day the phishing began…