Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Bora;
I know, I know, like many people I didn’t think it was possible for Scientific American magazine to sink any lower. I loved Scientific American as a kid, the “Amateur Scientist” column was a godsend on the ranch. But then, slowly your magazine morphed, first into less-science, then non-science, then non-sense, and then finally anti-science. I (like many people) quit reading the magazine years ago. Your hatchet job on Bjorn Lomborg, for example, was disgraceful. For me these days Scientific American is known by its shortened name, ScAm.
But now, it’s even worse. You, Bora Zivkovic, write a blog titled A Blog Around The Clock: Rhythms of Life in Meatspace and Cyberland. And who are you when you are at home? Your mini-bio on ScAm says:
Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web.
There’s more there, you’re not just a blogger, you’re the Blog Editor, and you teach introductory biology, not the advanced kind, at Wesleyan College. Got it.
And on the 28th of January, you took all of us low-lifes to task on your blog. You say some commenters are a problem, and your solution to the problem of inconsiderate people asking scientific questions on a ScAm blog is quite simple:
Automatic Computer-model-based Censorship.
I can only bow my head in awe. I mean, what better way is there to keep you from answering people from WUWT and other sites who might want answers to actual scientific questions, than not allowing them to speak at all? Let me give other readers a glimpse into the future of scientific discussion, your brilliant plan for hands-off blog censorship … here it is, and as you explained, it involves computer models (emphasis mine)
If I write about a wonderful weekend mountain trek, and note I saw some flowers blooming earlier than they used to bloom years ago, then a comment denying climate change is trolling. I am a biologist, so I don’t write specifically about climate science as I do not feel I am expert enough for that. So, I am gradually teaching my spam filter to automatically send to spam any and every comment that contains the words “warmist”, “alarmist”, “Al Gore” or a link to Watts. A comment that contains any of those is, by definition, not posted in good faith. By definition, it does not provide additional information relevant to the post. By definition, it is off-topic. By definition, it contains erroneous information. By definition, it is ideologically motivated, thus not scientific. By definition, it is polarizing to the silent audience. It will go to spam as fast I can make it happen.
See, Bora, the beauty of your plan is, you don’t even have to think about censorship once you do that. The computer does the hard work for you, rooting out and destroying evil thoughtcrimes coming from … from … well, from anyone associated with Watts Up With That, or with Steven McIntyre’s blog Climate Audit, or anyone that you might disagree with, or who is concerned about “alarmists”, you just put them on the list and Presto!
No more inconvenient questions!
The beauty part is, censorship in that manner isn’t personal or based on prejudices, it’s gotta be 100% scientific—because hey, it’s based on a computer model, and the modelers constantly assure us that model-based science is the real deal. For example, a noted advocate of computer models and transparency in science posted this insightful comment in support of your fascinating proposal for secret hidden computer-model-based censorship of unwelcome views …
Astroturf pay-4-trolling outfits? I gotta say, Mann has lost the plot entirely. He’s sounding like one of those goofy ads on the insides of matchbook covers, “DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY—Make Money With Your Computer At Home While You’re Trolling!!! Call 1-800-ASTROTURF now!”
I swear, there’s no way to parody this stuff, Bora. You and Mike, you’ve truly outdone yourselves, your idea of computer-model-based censorship is worthy of the modern ScAm you work for.
The sight of a so called “scientific” magazine advocating for hidden censorship based on where someone might comment or their saying the word “alarmist” or where they might find some particular fact, well, that is an abomination, Bora. It makes me fear for the students at Wesleyan College. Do you turn people away from your classes as well for disagreeing with your revealed wisdom, or because they may have read my biology piece about extinctions on WUWT?
Unlike your pathologically computer-censored blog, here at WUWT we just ignore the jerks, or I metaphorically beat them severely about the head and shoulders for bad behavior … but we don’t censor them for reading or citing your or any other web site, ever.
So how about you have the stones to do the same, my friend, and you stop hiding behind your pathological computer models from folks who read or cite this web site?
Finally, Bora, you are (of course) free to comment below on my open letter and defend your position. Unlike your site, where I could invisibly be made a non-person and my ideas prevented from ever seeing the light, here at WUWT we actually DO preach and practice science of the old-fashioned, transparent kind, where even the advocates of hidden, under-the-table censorship like yourself and Michael Mann are free to comment. And if we do snip someone’s particular comment for being a jerkwagon, we note that fact, we don’t just sweep them under the rug like you do.
I won’t be surprised if you don’t show up to defend the indefensible, however. I’d be a fool to expect that kind of honesty and forthrightness from a man who secretly destroys unwanted questions from his scientific opponents …
But I invite you to surprise me, my friend, I’m always overjoyed to see a man moving to become an actual scientist, one who listens to and answers inconvenient questions from his scientific opponents … heck, who knows, you might just learn something.
Of course, I am aware that no one will be able to cite this open letter on your blog, you’ve erased that possibility already … gosh, that’s science at its finest, Bora.
How do you justify this to yourself?
Has noble cause corruption really affected your moral compass to that extent, that you not only invisibly censor people whose scientific views differ from your own, but you actually attempt, not just a pathetic justification of that underhanded action, but an even more pathetic and anti-scientific celebration and and advocacy of such hidden censorship? These questions and more, I invite your answers.
My regards to you, Bora … and I’m totally serious about your sneaky, invisible trashing of people’s comments based on where people post and what they might cite—your kind of cowardly hidden censorship is absolutely antithetical to science, as is conclusively proven by Michael Mann’s approval of your plan.
w.
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Jim says:
March 6, 2013 at 8:53 am
I’ve got a question/observation … how is it *some* comments at YouTube are getting ‘filtered’.so’s only the original poster can see his posted comment, YET, when logging in via another PC (same IP addy BUT not logged into YouTube) the *comment* doesn’t display, but rather shows up tagged as spam!
I read a post on another site [Lucia’s, I think] where some code was posted that did this. The commentator could see his comment, but no one else could. Despicable, if you ask me. Worse than censorship. Dishonest.
” bankers? Bankers!? We son’t need no stinking BANKERS!!! ”
Sorry, could not resist … prompted by the “Keeper Of Odd Knowledge” (K.O.O.K.) society member post going on and on about cartels, con-spiracies involving Tesla et al … for some reason, Tesla sets these person’s minds a-spinning …
This, I think, is one more ‘frontier’ that needs conquering; the idolizing of certain personalities above and way beyond the status of mortal like ourselves (and only partly aside the nutty con-spiracy stuff), a mortal in this case who was in the right place at the right time AND with the right skills (engineering knowledge AND multi-lingual). The access he had to information on the other side of the Atlantic was KEY to his success in the ” AC system ” of power generation and distribution … yes, he *did* read other people’s papers and patents to get where he got …
.
His whole “auto censorship” concept is based on a clearly-defined, but spectacularly miconceived, premise: i.e.
“A comment that contains any of those is, by definition, not posted in good faith. By definition, it does not provide additional information relevant to the post. By definition, it is off-topic. By definition, it contains erroneous information. By definition, it is ideologically motivated, thus not scientific. ”
It is perfectly obvious that none of these things could possibly be the case “by definition”. If you cannot refer to an issue, you can neither support nor rebut it. It is tempting to suggest that anyone who makes such a statement is “by definition” just a little bit stupid.
It is good to see Bora’s statement regarding the use of the words “Al Gore”: “By definition, it contains erroneous information.”
I wonder if that extends to ManBearPig?
Like several on this list, I grew up on ScAm (like that shortening), my father was a professor at a local university and was interested in science. However, even in the 60s I could see the weeds in the garden that would eventually destroy the mag.
By the 90s I had long stopped reading the mag because I had found I could get more science information from other sources with less effort. Further the mag was morphing from a science magazine to a religio-political rant rag with a certain religious orthodoxy, albeit an atheistic religion, it espoused and promulgated. As such, it couldn’t have a member of the “enemy”, G. Forrest Mims III a practicing Christian, as a columnist.
That religious orthodoxy is not only anti-Christian, as mentioned by others here, but thereby also anti-science. The two are connected. It’s a historical fact that science, as a process with a community of people to support it, developed after the Reformation, in Reformation influenced societies, and there’s an article at http://www.wikinfo.org/Multilingual/index.php/Biblical_roots_of_science that gives factors within Reformation theology and practice that led to that development. Cut off the root (Christianity as defined in the Bible), and the branches (among them science) will eventually wither. Is not the whole CAGW scam an example of that withering?
Unless the magazine has a complete change in its editorial staff and outlook, I think it’s too far gone to resurrect. But sometimes I think wistfully back to the days when I learned real science in the pages of Scientific American.
Some of the commenters on this thread seem to think that if Anthony censors anyone at all, ever, for any reason whatsoever, that is somehow morally equivalent to Bora Zivkovic’s blanket censorship of everyone he disagrees with. Isn’t this a blatant illustration of Craig Loehle’s recent post on ‘categorical thinking’?
MangoTree says:
March 6, 2013 at 3:42 am
I don’t see a problem with banning trolls from denying facts.
The problem is enormous. The short of it is that one reader’s “troll denying facts” may very well be another reader’s “rational skeptic reasonably questioning a conclusion.”
You need to consider the distinction between “facts,” and data or evidence. Facts are synthetic, data and evidence (ideally) are not. In a jury trial, the jury is [supposedly] presented with evidence, and then uses that evidence, as presented by both the prosecution and the defense, to arrive a consensus regarding the “facts” of the case. “Reasonable doubt” in a trial hinges on whether it is possible to construe evidence in more than one array of “facts.” If the evidence is in fact ammenable to multiple explanations, then there is reasonable doubt about the actual facts of the case.
The entire climate debate is strongly colored by convictions rather than by rational argumentation and strong evidence. The criticisms directed at most skeptics and “denialists” are founded on the assumption that those convictions are really true. Thus anyone questioning that conviction is denying the truth. It remains perfectly possible that the defenders may be right. What is lacking is strong evidence to support what is being asserted as fact.
Worse, “evidence” as it is being collected or post-processed can be tainted by prior assumptions concering what the “facts” are. “Adjustments” to data are made because the adjustors have already made assumptions regarding the “facts.” The reason for the Surface Stations project was because the “facts” about the local encironmental effects on data from weather stations were in question.
“I loved Scientific American as a kid …” me too. Same with New Scientist. Now I don’t even bother looking at their one eyed rubbish on line.
Noble cause corruption? Et tu Willis? All the signs are there, aren’t they?.
Science is not a teleological philosophy, nor should it be.
As a long time subscriber (since 1950’s) of Scientific American, the disappointment due to their editorial proselytizing has finally done it for me.
I am letting my subscription expire. Skeptic Michael Shermer is also a major disappointment with his silence in the face of what seems obvious.
“The reader is not asked to accept a theory without question. Rather, he is invited to consider for himself whether he is reading a book of fiction or non-fiction” –Immanuuel Velikovsky
Asking the wrong questions about climate is a fast way to destroy an academic or journalist career.Sad.
I come here more for the comments/discussion than just the articles. Censorship is an issue that hits home to me, and one version of comment moderation that I like to see is an option for the reader to view the pre-moderated comment.
Though I am sure Anthony et. al. is aware of this option, and he may very well have good reasons for not doing it this way, written somewhere on this site (that I don’t know where to find). Just pointing it out.
Direct and categorical censorship, like what Bora has chosen, is the purest form of the poor logic of attacking the source, not the argument. It is an easy mistake to fall into this trap of ignorance, we all know the story of the boy who cried “wolf”. Now we have boys who cry “warming”. Of course much of it is garbage, but I really appreciate and respect that this site will sometimes post things that are rather dubious, and let the readership take it to pieces and show why it is wrong.
I know of no place else where such a collection of Dr’s, experts, and decades-of-experience types congregate to discuss the issues that get attention on this website. The fact that anyone who is found in disagreement is welcome to post here, while other websites on the other side of the argument continue to increase their blatant censorship, absolutely and automatically gives WUWT the moral and integrity high ground.
There is a very high level of, if not complete, transparency here. It seems to me that 99 times out of 100, anyone who gets moderated is respected with the reason why, and mods will go out of their way to discuss their choice of moderation and offer a way for the poster to deliver their message while observing site policy and general good manners.
Just to say that I am another who grew up on the science that ‘Scientific American’ used to run, and have given up on the travesty it has become. Yes, the Bjorn Lomborg scandal was the real driver for my dropping the thing, but I lingered on in hope – the joys of youth die hard.
But then, of course, there is its penpal, Nature. About 100 years ago, I was published in Nature, and walked on air for two days. Today I wouldn’t feed them material even if page charges were negative.
Computer-modelled, pathological censorship?
No problem. It’s easy to get around this little booger.
Just use the tactics upon which it is founded AGAINST it. Use the tactics underlying it AGAINST it. You know, a sort
of cyber jujitso — call it “SLAM” (Systematic Lying Anticybercensorship Manuevering)
Heck, those computer models are just poor little bits of code who “don’t know no better”. Why blame them?
Blame their masters.
Here’s what I mean about using their foundational principles AGAINST them:
First, LIE – Never supply your real name.
Second, DECEIVE – Always use a reference to, say, Michael Mann or to the name of any other person from the
“consensus” crowd.
Third, MANIPULATE – Be certain to include phrases like “proven theory”, “settled science”, or “unquestionable fact”
in your commentary. Then slam the “proven theory”, “settled science”, or “proven fact” to smitherenes in the most
dispassionate, mechanical manner possible. Those innocent little computer programs will love the mechanical-manner part of
your manipulation.
For example, you might post an entry such as this:
NAME: (nothing too strange here – nothing Dutch, or anything that sounds like anybody’s name on anybody’s blacklist)
(keep it generic, Anglosaxon, under three sylables for a last name) … something like “Frank Stewart”
COMMENTARY: “The proven science of global warming states blah, blah, blah, … ad infinitum … use lots of words and
figures. (spend at least two hundred words pretending to endorse the “proven science”). Then simply slam it,
pointing coldly (he he) to counterfacts, without calling them “counterfacts” or “refutations” or, God forbid, “non-consensus
views”).
In other words, tactfully and maticulously avoid any manner of word or phrase that a pathological censoring computer program
could use to block you. This will only make you a better writer. The whole idea, in fact, could produce a new, bigger
better, even MORE convincing crop of writers to tell the other side of the one-sided story. Hey, this sort of thing is only
doing civilization a favor in this respect.
Higheeeeyah! [kung fu scream]
Like many others on this list, I grew up on ScAm (clever shortening). But already in the 60s I could see the weeds that would eventually destroy the garden. By the 90s, I’d long stopped reading the rag because I found I could get more science information with less effort elsewhere than through its pages.
What I see is that the mag has morphed from a science magazine to a religio-political rag, albeit promulgating an atheistic religion (yes, atheism is a religion as in strongly held beliefs in something that can’t be proven). That’s why it couldn’t have a member of the “enemy” (a Bible believing Forest M. Mims III) as a columnist. It’s become both anti-Christian and anti-science, the two go together. It’s a historical fact that science as a discipline with a society to support it developed after the Protestant Reformation, concentrated in those countries most affected by the Reformation. There’s an article at http://www.wikinfo.org/Multilingual/index.php/Biblical_roots_of_science that gives some reasons for that historical event. Cut off the root (Biblical teachings) and eventually the branches (including science) will wither, though it may take a few generations. Is not the pushing of CAGW and example of the destruction of science?
Yet I sometimes still think wistfully at the times I could find real science in the pages of Scientific American.
Re R.Ortiz….ScAm may have become anti-Christian, its a common trait nowadays (over 100,000 people a year murdered for being Christian) but the vast bulk of creationist, anti-evolution, anti-science opinion is in Islam and I dont think you will ever see anyone publishing anything opposing that.
Wow. A very long thread, and I can’t read it all, so bear with me if I happen to repeat someone.
My moment of truth with Scientific American came during the SDI years of the early 1980s. They trotted out a number of disapproving analytical articles. I happened to be involved on the contractor classified side of the story, and I could see that these analyses were worthless: key aspects of the problem were glossed over, and implausible engineering implementations were set up as straw horses to knock down. In a word, they were untrustworthy. And once that happens, there is no profit in continuing to trust them.
Edward Teller, a hero of the SDI years, once quipped that “Scientific American is neither scientific, nor American.” So true.
… and note I saw some flowers blooming earlier than they used to bloom years ago …
Spring flowers in England a month behind this year:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254473/Lonely-cloud-Coldest-winter-30-years-puts-daffodil-crop-month-schedule.html
Bethe, Garwin and others’ 1984 Sci Am article on SDI is supposed to be a clear and unbiased analysis of the problem. Many other articles appearing after that have criticized the technical feasibility of SDI and underscored their fundamental conclusions. The basic problems have been analyzed multiple times over, for instance by Postol, Lewis and Garwin and have been found to be the same (simple countermeasures, futility of mid-course deflection). It’s not a question of engineering, it’s one of basic physics.
_Jim says:
March 6, 2013 at 8:53 am
Jim, a word for you:
cookies
Censuring any link to WUWT?
This guy is crazy…. If he thinks that in a normal day anyone from WUWT is remotely interested in visiting or placing any links on his site.
In regards to ScAm and NatGeo losing their (scientific) way….
Anyone remember when Time and Newsweek were about news?
Or when Rolling Stone was about music?
As we all know, I could go on. It seems that most large publications get bored with simply informing their readers and eventually succumb to their own greedy thirst for power and influence. It’s a bummer dude….
Re Wavefunction….nope, wood for trees, SDI, along with its cohort of contemporaneous programmes, was a resounding success: the USSR is no more.
I always get a chuckle at the machinations that alarmists go through to avoid anything having to do with Al Gore, the ManBearPig, whose name must never be spoken. They just get completely apoplectic about it. How dare we say his name???? Heathens!!! LOL.
On second thoughts, maybe there is some merit in his methods… Perhaps we can have a “Bulls… Filter” for some people or even a “Rant Filter” for Mosher haha. 🙂
Within 10 years, maybe less, ScAm is going to go the way of Newsweek – print edition axed, and what’s left will just be a special interest blog that no except partisans and ideologues bother to look at… a lot like the Skeptical Science site is today.