This tiff started because of this story by Tom Nelson yesterday, followed by this today. This post is my first involvement as all this happened without my involvement or comment until now. I don’t even care that I wasn’t mentioned, but I do care when I’m libeled.
I have just one thing to say to you, Mr. Zivkovic:
Prove your assertion of “gaming” led to an undeserved win, or retract it and issue an apology.
Perhaps it doesn’t occur to Mr. Zivkovic that Scientific American’s readership is on decline, just like those opinion polls that show people thinking AGW is a serious problem. People are getting turned off to SciAm partly because of ridiculous and hateful things like this being said on the part of the current crop of of writers and editors running SciAm.
And they wonder why people don’t like the magazine like they used to.
==============================================================
About Bora Zivkovic
Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Bora was always interested in animals and nature. His studies in veterinary medicine were interrupted by the 1990s war in the Balkans, when he arrived in the USA. He went to graduate school at North Carolina State University where he studied how bird brains measure time of day (circadian rhythms) and time of year (photoperiodism). He started ‘A Blog Around The Clock’ in 2004. He teaches introductory biology to non-traditional students at North Carolina Wesleyan College, organizes the annual ScienceOnline conference, and edits Open Laboratory – the annual anthology of the best writing on science blogs.
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“Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Bora was always interested in animals and nature. He went to graduate school at North Carolina State University where he studied how bird brains measure time of day”
————–
Ah, so he got to know himself well at university. How does he measure the time of day? Does he base the passage of time on the number of slanders he is able to tweet in a given day?
Gail Combs wrote:
“The Team” figured they could, with Fenton Communications money and expertise put together a very popular “Real Science” blog.
Glad to see some people realize the significance of David Fenton’s involvement in the climate “debate”. Fenton is the P.R. guru for the organizations and front groups that channel the money. It’s not Fenton Communications’ money, as such, it comes from individuals like George Soros and foundations like Ford and Pew.
Some background info:
NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
Faculty Profile
Bora Zivkovic
[…]
The Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and Studio 20 co-sponsored this appointment.
http://journalism.nyu.edu/faculty/bora-zivkovic/
In 2010-11 Studio20’s major project was a collaboration with ProPublica, the investigative reporting non-profit. Students experimented with the genre of “the explainer,” a form of journalism that provides essential background knowledge and brings clarity to complex issues in the news. Read more here and see the project site, Explainer.net. Don’t miss The Fracking Song, which came out of that work. Time magazine named it one of the most creative videos of 2011.
http://journalism.nyu.edu/graduate/courses-of-study/studio-20/
The Fracking Song
Has to be seen to be believed.
ProPublica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProPublica
ProPublica is a non-profit corporation based in New York City.
[…]
While the Sandler Foundation provided ProPublica with significant financial support, it has also received funding from the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and others. ProPublica and the Knight Foundation have various connections. For example, Paul Steiger, President of ProPublica, is a trustee of the Knight Foundation.[9] In like manner, Alberto Ibarguen, the President and CEO of the Knight Foundation is on the board of ProPublica.[10] In 2010, it received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Calm down, folks. No need to get out the big guns for a pee-wit. N.C. Wesleyan? Really? If you immolate this guy to the cause of good scientific articles, who will notice? If SA disappears from the earth, who will notice? Warmism is a target-rich environment. Spend the lawyer money scoring hits that count.
>>
chris y says:
July 16, 2012 at 12:24 pm
<<
I canceled my subscription to SciAm for the same reason. Although, I don’t agree with Lomborg as a general rule, at least his book has more facts on one page than SciAm does all year.
Nature and Science are going the same way. I’m about to drop those subscriptions too.
Jim
“I would simply ask for a retraction. I have mixed feelings about asking for apologies because most of the apologies I see in print aren’t sincere. I don’t know what the point of an apology is if they don’t really mean it. ”
Sorry, but this is just dumb. Of course he’s not going to mean it. Sheesh. So what? What is this, the Boy Scouts? You’re missing the point by a wide margin.The point is Anthony was libeled. The apology is by way of making sure the world knows it, and at the same time extracting a painful punishment. No, he won’t be sincere. But it will sure be typed out with gritted teeth.
I dropped Scientific American in the mid 70s. It simply lost it’s way and was not worth reading any longer. Sadly, National Geographic followed about 10 years later. Now even Popular Science has lost it’s soul to political correctness with their June issue essentially written by Grist (Roberts).
While I still remain on the fence about global warming (or whatever it’s now called), I recognize partisanship when it takes the place of reason and logic.
Enough of those silly bird brain jokes. Seriously. You are often judged by the jokes you pass.
Better focus on the real issues.
One thing (and about the only one) that annoys me in Christopher Monckton’s talks is that he never fails to ridicule Pachauri’s background as a railroad engineer whenever he mentions the drivel emanating from IPCC. That does not look good. If I were him, I would question Pachauri’s worth as an engineer. Because I suspect he was a lousy one (simply based on what I hear from the guy), and that is the real issue. A lousy, unaccomplished engineer, a worse-than-worthless scientist — that is the real issue.
Similarly, with this Bora guy, nobody notices that the purported subject of “how bird brains measure time of day” indicates a profound biological illiteracy. If that’s your subject of study, it’s a misstudy from the start. Timekeeping on a circadian scale is a metabolic function, and the brain has nothing to do with that (even in those forms of life that do have a brain). Not that such level of illiteracy has ever prevented anybody from teaching biology, but that’s beside the point. So I suspect that besides being a jerk, the fella is a failed biologist and probably also a failed everything. Those jokes just don’t seem funny.
Zivkovic writing under the pseudonym Coturnix:
“When dealing with kids (and adults who have not yet made the change to a rational worldview), the only way is to appear to be 100% sure……You tell it how it is (even if inside you cringe, knowing that what you are saying is only 98% sure).”
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-resistance-of-s/
So if people don’t agree with his world view they are irrational. Such a view is itself irrational and unscientific. To persuade people to his way of thinking he is prepared to say that he is sure of his world view even though he is cringing inside because he knows that what he is saying may not be true. A person who claims he is sure of something when he is not is lying. That is pseudoscience.
I was never a subscriber, but as a kid I was at the library each month to read the magazine. If I had the money, I copied the articles I liked, if I didn’t, I took notes. Back then, had I the cash, I would have subscribed without hesitation, today….not so much.
They’ve turned a once fine science magazine into a political soap box.
Re; science reporting and the media
Unfortunately, the dumbing down of science is now rampant and perhaps irrevocable. While on vacation, I was idling away some time by checking out the History channel. I used to enjoy watching real history on this channel, but hadn’t watched much recently, and my vacation time allowed me the luxury of spending some time flipping channels.
I came across this on “mega tsunamis”
There is a about 10 minutes of content expanded to 1 hour (counting commercials) of vacuous hyberbole and painful repetition.
Sadly, it is what passes as video intellectualism these days, and National Geographic and Scientific American represent the print versions.
Those who lie for money don’t like to be criticized for it. When they are criticized, they lie some more. Pray for their souls.
I have to disagree. The magazine changed immeasurably when a significant number of articles began to come from staff writers in the 1990s maybe (I dropped my nearly twenty-year subscription in the mid 1980s). However, the old pre-1948 Sci. American had a backyard astronomy column that made me cringe with some really bigotted material, and the pre-1920s version was more like a popular mechanics magazine. It has changed so enormously from 1890 to 2012 that you cannot have missed its evolution. The best years were 1950s-1980s.
The only really good thing about Scientific American was Martin Gardner’s ‘Mathematical Games’ column.
It’s been downhill at an accelerating pace ever since.
I began to suspect that SciAm had become politicized when I read this feature article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=y2k-so-many-bugs—so-lit
Abstract: “With just 12 months until the year 2000 computer problem erupts, only automated fixes can begin to head off trouble. This Y2K expert describes why a simple date adjustment is so devilishly hard to accomplish and realistically assess how much chaos this glitch will bring in the next millenium.”
Published in Jan 1999; and I knew for sure SciAm had drunk the Kool Aid 12 months later.
I can’t access the original article (you have to pay for access, and our university library doesn’t have it on-line), but this (from http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/y2k2.htm) sums up how I recall the end of the article:
‘Concluding his January, 1999, Scientific American article, “Y2K: So Many Bugs So Little Time,” technology consultant Peter de Jager believes “severe disruptions will occur and that they will last perhaps a month.” He describes this prediction as “optimistic” since it assumes that “people will have done what is necessary to minimize the number of single points of failure that could occur.” ‘
Zivkovic used the same ridiculous “anti-science” term to describe his political opponents as did Peter Gleick. May they both find the same level of success.
Another science orientated old timer and a former avid and regular reader of both Sci Am and New Scientist from the early 1960’s who gave away both the Sci Am in the 1980’s and New Scientist in the early 90’s when they both just deteriorated into politically motivated junk science and little green men from Mars pop magazine status and often badly written at that!
No gaming going on. Just sour grapes from Bora Zivkovic. If Scientific American had more readers they’d have more votes. People that read WUWT voted for WUWT? Of course they did. Readers of Scientific American voted for Scientific American? Of course they did. WUWT won.
Bora Zivkovic,
If you want to have more votes you have to have more readers. Don’t blame your losing on the winner. The person you blame is in the mirror. But don’t worry, maybe you can get one of those “participation trophies”.
Scientific American ceased being “scientific” a long time ago and I ceased reading it. Just a “junk” publication.
He’s not a warmist. He’s an alchemist.
“He went to graduate school at North Carolina State University where he studied how bird brains measure time of day (circadian rhythms) and time of year (photoperiodism)”
I see. And now he’s studying how bird brains claim to be measuring the change of climate. Figures.
His studies in veterinary medicine were interrupted by the 1990s war in the Balkans, when he
arrived infled to the USA to avoid military service.Serbia follows the former Sov military model — every male who reaches the age of 18 reports for induction. In peacetime, if he’s a student, or if daddy is a Party official, he invariably gets an an exemption. In wartime, said student’s exemption is revoked unless he’s enrolled in the hard sciences, such as physics.
I was given a gift subscription to Scientific American by my grandparents when I was 10 years old in 1955, The magazine influenced me to become a design engineer. I hold 10 patent for a variety of devices ranging from portable Hemodialysis Systems to Electroptics. I lament the passing of a great magazine that could have inspired many more generation to scientific achievement! The departure from objectivity started with dishonest diatribes against the SDI program in 1985 and has devolved ever since. Very sad almost as sad as Carl Sagan selling his scientific credibility to the Nuclear Winter hoax. We live in interesting times in the Chinese sense!
Regards
David Ross says:
July 16, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Gail Combs wrote: “The Team” figured they could, with Fenton Communications money and expertise put together a very popular “Real Science” blog.
Glad to see some people realize the significance of David Fenton’s involvement in the climate “debate”. Fenton is the P.R. guru for the organizations and front groups that channel the money.
David Fenton’s specialty is tailoring a particular publicity campaign to appeal to the people who are already involved — reinforcing the beliefs of those who are already convinced. Which isn’t a *bad* strategy, but it’s one unlikely to win any new converts.
Speaking of David Fenton’s campaigns, how’s Code Pink doing on the political scene these days?
On behalf of all the Slavs, I apologize for this out-of-control Southern Slav. Sometimes, it may actually be a good idea to send a few NATO aircrafts to his homeland. 😉
Dermonster says
Back it up or take it back!
Seriously, in America 99% of the “poets” holding academic positions have never written a line that good.
Eugene WR Gallun