UPDATE: Joe Romm, perhaps fearing he’d be drawn into a defamation lawsuit with Laden for not checking to see if Laden’s claims were true has made a rare update to ClimateProgress in my favor. See below.
UPDATE2: Reader poll on the question “should I sue the pants off Greg Laden?”
Harsh title – I know, but justified by Mr. Laden’s actions. I could ignore him, but people like him need to be called out when they do things like this.
Here’s a screencap of a “science blogs” post made by Mr. Laden, who is no stranger to shooting his mouth off in non factual ways that get him in trouble, as Roger Tattersall (aka Tallbloke) can testify to from another Laden episode last year where Laden was forced to remove untrue and libelous statements he made. Laden’s original post about Tattersall (with all the angry unedited rhetoric) is here.
You can read the rest of his post here.
Note how Laden frames the screen cap, and of course does not provide a link to the original story (lest his readers are able to get the full story instead of his spin on it). He then goes on to say:
Heh, he was so raging mad when he wrote that he couldn’t even spell denialist correctly, or even spell the name of this blog correctly even though he has a screen cap to guide him. He claims I “wasn’t equipped to recognize this science as bogus”. Well, I found it odd, but also interesting, and as Willis Eschenbach pointed out in comments:
I don’t agree with those saying it should not be posted. In my experience, there’s no faster way to separate wheat from chaff than to expose it to the unblinking eye of the populi on the web …
Unlike Mr. Laden (who gives the impression he’s an expert in everything), I’ve never claimed to be an expert in meteors or diatoms. So, I put it up for discussion. I also put several caveats in the story clearly showing my doubts, including the possibility that the Earthly diatoms hitched a ride on a tektite, but Mr. Laden won’t show you that, I will.
You see, it’s all part of a purposely orchestrated lie by Mr. Laden. If Mr. Laden hadn’t been so caught up in his hate, and made just an ever so slightly larger screen cap, this is what his readers would have seen from the story:
In case the print is too small, here’s the full paragraph (which Laden cut off):
This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up. I would remind readers that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“. This needs to be confirmed by others in the science community before it can be taken seriously.
I don’t know how I could have made the caveat any clearer. Anyone not blinded by hate can see that in my very first paragraph, in red even.
Of course, Laden cuts off the most important part of the caveat and without an immediate link to the story, the weak minded or members of the his choir of haters have no single click way to check his claim, but that is what he is counting on.
And of course, Joe Romm also picks up the story from Laden, to spread the lie and hate. Romm might have been duped by Laden though and didn’t check, we’ll see.
Laden also says:
It is very fun to read the comments. I provided a comment that will not be printed because Watts never prints my comments, but I’ve screen captured it for you (it is below).
Mr. Laden, your comment appeared, approved well before you wrote this hateful piece, as shown below between two other comments:
A direct link to Laden’s published comment is here, read for yourselves.
As for the “never” part of Laden’s claim about his comments appearing, here they are:
His first two comments were snipped by moderators for not following the WUWT site policy, his others, (which didn’t contain hateful words) were published, including the comment on the meteor story he falsely claims never appeared.
Mr. Laden, you are a liar who published this story knowing full well what you were doing.
What you were doing was being a hater, not a scientist. Being a hater is part of Mr. Laden’s site policy, which incredibly, he spells out for all to see. Scroll down to “commenting policy”.
What Laden did here is a perfect example of why the general public is losing faith in climate science; this mix of condescension, censorship, incomplete presentation, misdirection, and overt hatred on display is exactly why reasonable people recoil and lose faith in the climate claims being made, which in some cases, can be just as dubious as diatoms on meteors.
The difference between myself and Mr. Laden is that WUWT isn’t afraid to have topics for discussion that might be proven wrong, and in the process, people learn something. I’m also not afraid to admit I’m not an expert on meteors or diatoms, and to ask my readers (who might be) what they think while at the same time making it clear that I had serious doubts about the claim.
If people like Laden ruled science, we’d never see any advances from serendipity or other odd moments where the scientist observes something unexpected and says to him/herself “hmmm, that’s odd”, because they’d be shouted down as “bogus” without even a discussion.
UPDATE: Joe Romm, responding to my email to him, has offered the closest thing he can to a walkback on the lie (of which he was also a victim) by Laden. He’s posted this on the Climate progress story by Laden smearing me. He sounds like Fox News “we report, you decide”.
JR UPDATE: Watts feels he was quoted out of context, that he put in appropriate caveats. His response is here. Greg Laden replies here. You decide.
In other news, in his latest childish rant, Mr. Laden wants his readers to think that I’m a child hater (even though I have two grade school aged children of my own).
It is against my blog policy to provide links to science denialist sites. It would be unethical for me to do that on a regular basis because it would enhance the google juice of pseudoscience. I’ve got children. I want them to grow up in a better world, not the world that Anthony Watts wants them to grow up in. So, no.
Another lie by Greg Laden. I never get how extremists like Laden think they somehow can be the only people that care about children’s future. I want a better future for my children to, just not the same one Mr. Laden envisions. As these commenters put it:
Jimmy Haigh says:
January 16, 2013 at 10:33 pm
“Laden clearly has issues…”
Issues? He’s got an entire subscription.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I helpfully commented that he should read the original article again for comprehension. I also suggested that he provide links to the original article if he’s going to criticize it so that his readers can follow through more easily and judge for themselves.
I doubt my comment will pass his gatekeeping. We’ll see.
I went over to Laden’s blog and checked the story myself. Anthony’s write-up is spot on; Laden crops the banner and clips the quotes to make his point in a way that no reasonable person could attribute to accident, haste or negligence. It was deliberate distortion. Whether his motive was hate as Anthony claims or excessive partisan zeal for his cause (a marginally lesser offense) or something else entirely, I cannot say.
The comments on Laden’s blog overwhelmingly condemn the post on these grounds, so even if he censored some critical comments, plenty of effective ones got through. I also note quite some time has passed since the last response by Laden. He certainly has not mustered any effective defense of his reporting, so I call this a loss by forfeit.
While some suggest bottom feeders such as Laden should just be ignored, I applaud Anthony for making an example out of it. This standard of casual lies needs to be called out.
Anthony perhaps you need to take this further..
The issue would be called “False Light” google it.
“I second Ric Werme: “Is he worth adding to the list of “unreliable” blogs? John Cook might like the company.””
– Let me add a third to that proposition…..
Addendum to previous. I just read Laden’s subsequent post defending his original. I stand by my previous assessment: “He certainly has not mustered any effective defense of his reporting”.
How can anyone tell with 100 percent certainty that a meteorite is from Mars?
I have an oosik somebody can use to reset Mr. Laden’s brain, but I doubt it will do any good.
All members of the church of CAGW are lefties. All lefties are socialists. All socialist who are not just delusional, are liars. Its all part of that “End Justify the Means” thing that is necessary in order to justify socialism.
Mindert Eiting says:
January 17, 2013 at 5:41 am
Just read that astronomers have discovered the biggest object of our universe, a collection of 73 quasars, four billion light years across. How come that as an outsider I think that this is not a bogus claim whereas I do with almost all claims of climate science? May have to do with quality, honesty, and not calling your opponent names.”
Maybe because they aren’t trying to sell you something at the same time? It is what it is: Data. No “good vs bad”. No “must act now or we are all doomed”. no threats of denialism. It’s what science is suppossed to be.
gad…. I saw this coming.
Hi Anthony
I think Think Progress are equally culpable. and HAVE a much bigger audience – ie 38,0000 twitter followers saw this, and how many retweets to thousands of followers of the followers
Think Progress could have checked, and found this to be b$$%$%% in 30 seconds..
they did not
“In partnership with National Geographic”
Reason number 4,257 my subscription lapsed in 2007.
By the way, I was surprised to see, from this guy’s moronic commenters, that WUWT is the go to place for Biblical Creationism. Or maybe this guy’s commenters are as big of frauds as Greg Laden himself.
Ha ha! I think Laden is just rejoicing at all the traffic to his site! He has even written a follow up posting on the topic.
Credit to him, though; he is publishing negative comments (though that may be more about what keeps the traffic coming than ethics, I guess).
Looks like two of my comment at Ladens ‘rebuttal’ page has gone.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/17/greg-laden-liar/
All I did was defend my self against someone who accused me of cherry picking the 16 years of global warming standstill. I pointed to:
Anthony , you are far too generous, this time I will NOT go to the source, one visit to Ladens site was all I need, to never give it another view.
These people are reduced to talking to their hands. These sites are fading away, your visitor count keeps rising, the same can not be said of these hater sites.
I think its the new trend, get Watts mention, to generate traffic to pretend your site is relevant.
Is there any way to check the impact on traffic to Scientific America’s blog, from your posting last week?
This is not criticism, I admire a man who can be so kind to persons of Laden’s nature.
Ridicule may be the only way to get his attention.
Anthony was correct to post the original article.
All scientists should be humble and not dismiss ideas out of hand, we have a prime recent example, Daniel Shechtman, who (for real) won the chemistry Nobel for discovering quasicrystals.
Drawde says:
January 17, 2013 at 8:20 am
How can anyone tell with 100 percent certainty that a meteorite is from Mars?”
I believe they analyzed gas trapped in the meteorite and it matched the composition that was measured on Mars. Does this give 100% certainty? Probably no, but it’s a combination of the trapped gas, the type of rock, and the probability that it more likely came from a near neighbor than from further away.
Laden, being the typically negative barometer, I think has actually increased the odds of the meteorite article being correct!
climatebeagle says:
January 17, 2013 at 8:51 am
Anthony was correct to post the original article.
All scientists should be humble and not dismiss ideas out of hand, we have a prime recent example, Daniel Shechtman, who (for real) won the chemistry Nobel for discovering quasicrystals.”
YES! Excellent point!!! Daniel Shechtman’s story of finding quasicrystals against the support of the “learned establishment” is an excellent example of the dangerous of consensus science. At one point I believe Shechtman’s advisor dropped him over it and said hew was an embarassement to his lab. Now who’s the embarassment!!!
On your original post you did rather hold down the test button on the BS detector. It seemed to work adequately there, but it was also supereffective in detecting BS artist spillover on the internet.
I agree with Mosher
Anthony needs I think to take it further.. Ladens article is re posted in full at Think Progress. – No corrections/updates there..
in fact Romm says this (when he says bogus, not talking about Laden)
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/16/1459611/watt039s-up-with-that-denier/#comment-663051
“Even many of Watts’ legion of followers knew this was a bogus story. The trick is not to spread bad information in the first place.
The caveats are meaningless — especially for a post outside of the general realm of his blog.
The fact is Watts routinely posts the most egregious disinformation and misinformation.
——————
38,000 think progress twitter followers saw this,and a lot of people that read it on the blog
if we can’t complain and get blatant lies corrected, we might as well all go home.
Be happy! This is just another indication of how wide a readership you have obtained.
Going on the defensive, confirms that Mr Laden’s unjustified article successfully “got to you”. A victory, in his mind, which could have been easily ignored. Let him send people to this site when he quotes your name. Some will stay as our victory.
No point in returning the favor. There is no chance of changing the opinions, of those dedicated to the religious worship of nature/climate. As you state – the written record is clear and easily understood. GK
Mindert Eiting says:
January 17, 2013 at 5:41 am
Just read that astronomers have discovered the biggest object of our universe, a collection of 73 quasars, four billion light years across. How come that as an outsider I think that this is not a bogus claim whereas I do with almost all claims of climate science? May have to do with quality, honesty, and not calling your opponent names.”
It is interesting how “real” science has more faith in OBSERVATION than in theories. This structure will make them rethink or throw out Einstien’s Cosmological Principle theory… and they freely admit it! Unlike CAGW which holds observations to be incorrect unless they reinforce the theory…
Anthony – When I first read your post it struck me that you already had this kind of misrepresentation in mind.
Your repeated declarations of skepticism: “…if it holds up…”, “…extraordinary claims etc…”, “…but I remain skeptical of the claim.”, “…but I have some doubts…” (regarding the journal) really didn’t leave me in any doubt as to your position, but did leave me thinking that you expected some loon to do exactly what some loon did.
At least we know that the people that actually believe Laden’s mischaracterization of you and your post will believe anything and, like Laden, aren’t destined to make any meaningful contribution to science anyway.