UPDATE: Mr. Marriott, perhaps fearful of legal action due to his own stupidity on the matter, has dropped the claim of “doctoring” and has also changed the title to remove the “dishonest” claim. Rather than admit he was wrong and published a defamatory article with malicious intent, he’s now using the “Gleick defense” citing his essay as a joke and a “throwaway” comment. All of this defamation was over what could have been a simple request: “Mr. Watts, would you add the NSIDC graph showing standard deviation (in addition to the one sans STD) to the WUWT Sea Ice page ?” I’m happy to do so and have done so. Instead of a simple request, we get ludicrous claims of doctoring images, dishonesty, and now the fallback position of “cherry picking” and the laughable “incomplete context” claim in order to avoid admission of wrongdoing. I suppose his next complaint will be to NSIDC to claim the “incomplete context” of showing only 2012 and 2013 on the NSIDC graph?
Now he’s modified the original essay, sending it down the memory hole, leaving late coming readers to believe his defamation never happened, but you can see the screenshot of the original below. There’s no clear apology, no admission that his hatred caused him to screw up the simplest issue and use it for the basis of defamation. Clearly his behavior is proof there’s no integrity with Mr. Mike Marriot, which of course is self evident by the title of his blog “Watching the Deniers”. – Anthony
False accusation that Watts “doctored” sea ice graph
Eric Worrall writes:
An Australian alarmist blog, Watching The Deniers, has just accused Anthony Watts of photoshopping one of the Sea Ice Graphs.
Click here (screencap here)to see the ridiculous accusation.
Note the original NSIDC graph, updated daily, which the the Watching the Deniers blog claimed Anthony Watts fabricated:
[ http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png ]
Somehow WTD thinks that Anthony makes the above image by “doctoring” this one:
[ http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png ]
I have of course lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council about this lie. I encourage other Australians to complain through official channels about climate lies propagated by alarmists.
=============================================================
Anthony adds:
This may be the dumbest accusation against me, ever. NSIDC used to put the same graph on their front page, in late 2009, without standard deviation bounds. It is the same one we’ve had since about then on our WUWT Sea Ice page.
By early 2010, NSIDC added one with standard deviation bounds, but keeps updating the original too.
(UPDATE: NSIDC has stopped updating the graph without STD bounds, and replaces any request for it automatically now with one including STD. You can see the NSIDC graph without standard deviation bounds as figure 4 in the Federal register here: http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2008/05/15/E8-11105/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-determination-of-threatened-status-for-the-polar-bear )
It would be quite some feat for me to “doctor” that image with STD bounds everyday and place it in plain view for thousands to see every month and get away with it for three years. Sheesh.
According to the about page for WTD:
Mike Marriott, a 40+ year old living in Melbourne. I work as an information manager for a large professional services firm.
I’ve left a comment explaining Mr. Marriott’s absurd misconception and asked for an apology. We’ll see if it passes moderation, and if he lives up to his “professional services” label.
Here is a screencap of the comment:
In the meantime, you can leave comments here.
The original accusation by Marriott is in the screenshot below:
![wtdscreenshot[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/wtdscreenshot1.gif)
Okay… so WTD are deliberately attacking. If that’s the case of it and this is no mistake, presumably they plan on taking this somewhere. Will their next claim will be that they have “proof” that Anthony spreads disinformation? How? Maybe by pointing at this very accusation, as though stating something makes it “fact”, no? (“Someone said it, it’s in writing, must be true”). Or maybe they’ll claim a consensus after taking a vote from amongst all those who don’t like you.
I’d love to add a sarc tag, but I don’t think I can.
Marriott tries to pull a fast one:
So where’s mine? URL of article previously in moderation and now “binned”.
Marriott blusters further:
Indeed. And indeed he could have tried to mount a defence against the indefensible
Marriott still hasn’t admitted that it was his mistake, brought about by his limited perception fitting the prejudices that he has about “deniers”.
Marriott’s insistence that Anthony should have included standard deviations is a distraction. The implied normal distribution isn’t necessarily valid. Normal distributions are more typical of human activity where the very same thing is attempted (typically measured or manufactured) again and again; not to variations in nature. I bow to the more diligent John Brignell to explain, beginning with Poisson. The distribution of data has first to be determined before factors depending on the type of distribution are calculated.
Marriott may well not care how things are measured and how those measurements can go wrong; and often do. (vis pools of water on ice being assessed as “open water”.)
Just commented
Philip Tomas (@BadScience) says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 8, 2013 at 8:33 am
You inferred that the image was doctored; you did not imply it. I think you should actually apologise, not say “I’ll apologise..” because saying “I will apologise..” could be interpreted as weaselling out of actually saying it. You inferred a nefarious act and that requires an apology that is unequivocal.
At WTD.
Watching the Deniers says:
July 8, 2013 at 5:44 am
Anthony, your comment has been allowed – as requested I’ve addressed your complaints.
In the interests of fairness I’ve removed that text implying doctoring of the image via “Photoshop”. I’ll apologise for that charge, and withdraw it.
However, I do firmly believe presenting the data with standard deviations is imperative and provides the necessary context.
I’ve also allowed most comments made by followers of your blog through, but not all.
As you can appreciate some of them were very insulting, though I do not hold you personally responsible.
Reply
Anthony, perhaps it’s time to add a new menu item to WUWT, perhaps called “blog hole digging.” There’s an expression which says that when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. The successive inchwise retraction of this libellous piece reminds me of Greg Laden’s piece calling Tallbloke a criminal.
Pointman
[snip – wildly off topic -mod]
Information Manager?
More like Misinformation Manager!
I’ve just posted the following on “Watchingthedeniers”
Given that the North atlantic multidecadal oscillation is approximately a 60 year cycle, any such construction of a standard deviation for Arctic sea ice based on only 30 years of data is just more junk climate science statistical analysis.
An adulterated graphic by Mike Marriott (of WUWT)
http://watchingthedeniers.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/verified.jpg
Mike Marriott is not so funny..
he is behind the anti Semitic smear story about Jo Nova’s husband, that did the rounds amongst the alarmist media a while back (he has since added a pathetic update at the bottom)
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-protocols-of-the-elder-climate-scientists-and-banksters-is-the-media-is-twigging-to-just-how-extreme-some-sceptics-are/
Mike Marriott is a co-author (with John Cook) of the Recursive Fury (Lewandowsky, Marriott, Cook et al) sceptics suffer from conspiracy ideation, NAMING Anthony, Jo Nova, Steve McIntyre and others in the paper.
SOMEHOW the UWA have no problems with Prof Lewandowsky using such very ethically conflicted ‘researchers’ like M Marriott, researching sceptics.. I complained, and got told to get lost
By the way. M Marriott has previous.. labeling WUWT, Athony Watts articles denier, disinformation BS, Dunning Kruger, etc.
and of course he would know about adulterating of graphics..
here is a graphic which he has used on more than one occasion. and adulterated graphic of the WUWT article, stamped Verified B*******t
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/here-we-go-again-watts-up-with-that-pushing-the-no-consensus-myth/
and yes the article in question was about mine,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
John Cook’s Skeptical Science website endorsed Marriott’s article (because it challenged their beloved 97% consensus soundbite) and yes, I got named in Recursive Fury – Lewandowsky et al, paper aswell.
somehow Marriott and Cook are deemed perfectly acceptable, neutral not conflicted ethically psychology researchers!!(the paper has been disappeared for a few months now, see comments under the abstract to see why)
http://www.frontiersin.org/Personality_Science_and_Individual_Differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/abstract
It seems a more serious charge has been leveled against Anthony Watts because this comment implies that he is being “paid” by “some entity” for his work on WUWT.
Clearly, this isn’t referring to website advertising:
Watching the Deniers says:
July 8, 2013 at 6:36 am
Unlike Mr. Watts and other high profile sceptics such as Robert Carter and Andrew Bolt, I receive no salary for my work.
I do not receive money or funding from any organisation, corporation, government body, institute or think tank. I speak at no think tank sponsored events.
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/anthony-watts-dishonest-misrepresentation-of-sea-ice-graphs-no-surprise-there/#comment-43435
“Watching the Deniers says:
July 8, 2013 at 6:36 am
Unlike Mr. Watts and other high profile sceptics such as Robert Carter and Andrew Bolt, I receive no salary for my work.”
Am I wrong or is this response on “Watching the Deniers” a lie, and slander?
In the post he says, “Unlike Mr. Watts and other high profile sceptics such as Robert Carter and Andrew Bolt, I receive no salary for my work.” So, Anthony, where can I sign up for denialist funding? I keep hearing this claim but I never seen any evidence.
Marriot now thinks that Watts gets a salary for running WUWT. None of my comments at that site has made it past moderation yet so I expect my comment about that falsehood won’t make it either.
Not all us Aussies are brain dead yet. Well I could be wrong I suppose.
Watching the Deniers says “If you remove that pesky piece of information that indicates that sea-ice decline is below average you remove the problem!”
The only problem with his claim is that even without the standard deviation(SD) shown WUWT’s graph still shows the 1981-2010 average line, so unless you are an idiot you can plainly see that the sea ice extent is below average.
In fact I contend that showing the SD like WTD wants WUWT to do actually makes things look better. With the SD shown you can see that the current extent is within +/-2 SD meaning it is still essentially the average within a 95.45% confidence. While if you don’t have the SD shown you have no reference as to how deviant the current level is.
So Anthony may want to show the SD graph and let eevryone know things aren’t as bad as we thought.
Steve C says:
July 8, 2013 at 12:58 am
For his employers’ sake, let’s hope his information management is better than his disinformation management.
***************************************************************************************************
The problem with stupid people (not you) is that they don’t know they are stupid and therefore stay stupid. So I doubt if he has any value to his employers.
Marriott now thinks he is the victim in today’s proceedings:
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/wuwt-attacks-wtd-i-learn-the-only-thing-to-fear-from-the-sceptics-is-your-own-fear/
Anthony, with all due respect, I will not assist his metrics by commenting on his site. I suspect that part of his motivation was to bolster his anemic site visitations. And you have supplied him with a bountiful bonanza in that regard.
Skunks do not change odors just because you call them kitty cats. He will not change. The title of his blog shows all anyone needs to know about both his competence and integrity.
I’m an Aussie – we’re not all alarmists ;-).
There is a followup to this debacle – Watching the Deniers Mike Marriot thinks his compliance with Anthony’s demand puts him on a par with the Thin Red Line, the 93rd Highland Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava (1854).
Delusional – well draw your own conclusion.
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/wuwt-attacks-wtd-i-learn-the-only-thing-to-fear-from-the-sceptics-is-your-own-fear/
And apparently I am to suffer the punishment of a further 3 month ban, for alerting the target of a lie to the publication of the lie. This is to teach me about taking the consequences for my decisions.
You couldn’t make it up. How did we ever allow these losers to have any influence over our lives?
The guy running that blog is a legend in his own mind and laugh out loud as his “mini me” that is being humiliated there trying to justify it all…. so funny… so brightened up my day…. clowns they are ( in my best yoda voice )
I had a close encounter of the Orwellian kind with WTD back in the days when he was just plain “Mike”.
It was on the heels of the 10:10 “No Pressure” boomerang. At that time, his “About” page (as you can read on my post) was reasonably honest – albeit misguided and very emotional, which may be why I now see that at some point in the intervening years, he’s changed it!
His non-responsive rant (which may or may not have been in lieu of a reply to some questions I’d asked) included the following:
Which led me to conclude my report of this encounter:
The name of the web site just confirms to me it is not worth a minute of my time having a look – what a bunch of cretins.
There is a followup – apparently Mike Mariot thinks that his compliance with Anthony Watts’ demands is comparable to being a member of The Thin Red Line – the 93rd Highland Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava (1854)
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/wuwt-attacks-wtd-i-learn-the-only-thing-to-fear-from-the-sceptics-is-your-own-fear/
Apparently I am also to be punished for my crime of alerting the target of a falsehood to the publication of the lie – obviously a serious misdemeanour in communities of climate alarmists, at least when the target of the lie is a “denier”.
Did he just compare himself to those who were against slavery? I am gobsmacked by such a thing.
Yes. And apparently I am to be punished for alerting the target of a falsehood to the publication of that falsehood. Perhaps Lewandowsky could explain why.
Tell us Anthony….how many times do you have to tell them you are not a paid for misinformer?
John Byatt:
how can one have respect for a paid for misinformer like watts?
This John Byatt chap is now accusing you of not updating your graphs;
I have noticed that sometimes watts does not update the graphs, for what reason i do not know, but sometimes they are left way out of date especially if he has a blog post about how the arctic ice is recovering for the umpteemth time
Who is this John Byatt chap anyway?
If you ask me, it’s not us that has a problem with ‘conspiracy theories’, it’s them! Especially this JB twit.