Idiotic libel from the 'Skeptical Science' crowd

From the “Collin Maessen is a now a fair game legal target” department and the “SkS double secret publicly browsable Tree-hut archives”, comes this unsupportable claim of ‘criminal hacking’ by Brandon Shollenberger.

My Hidden Information

by Brandon Shollenberger.

Some Skeptical Science members have been publicly accusing me of criminal hacking. None of them say just what it is I did that would be considered hacking. This is strange as I’ve explained just what I did. It should be easy for them to point to the illegal aspect. Instead, one of them (Collin Maessen) recently said:

I know exactly what you did and what you didn’t share about what you did. The details that you didn’t share would make it rather obvious that it was hacking. Even though it was at the script kiddie level.

If we’re to believe Maessen, I’m not just a criminal, I’m a liar too. Of course, Maessen refused to say what I “didn’t share.” If I held back information like he claims, it would be easy to prove. Why won’t he? Why won’t anyone from Skeptical Science? They claim it is obvious I lied and hacked. They just won’t give anyone the information which shows such. They’re doing so even when it requires violating their own moderation policies:

When making any claim provide references (links if possible). Failure to do so can result in the comment not going through moderation….

When asked to clarify an argument or point please respond; this isn’t optional.

Claims that are factually incorrect will not be allowed.

I don’t get that. Maessen accused me of a criminal offense, and he refuses to provide the slightest shred of evidence or information for his accusation. He apparently expects people to just take his word for it, even while he’s being completely hypocritical. Très bizarre.

Oh well. Since the Skeptical Science crowd doesn’t care to provide any information or evidence, I will. I’ve uploaded a list of every link I collected from the Skeptical Science forum. I collected these links by using URLs in the form of: http://sksforum.org/thread.php?p=X where X was a number.

You can see the numbers I used in the list (1-18633) along with the page I was redirected to. This is a list of links posted on the secret-secret Skeptical Science forum. You could have gotten any of these links by plugging their number into the URL I gave above.

You’ll note, many of the entries are given for a domain “secretdomain.org.” This isn’t the actual domain. I’ve replaced the domain of their secret-secret-secret forum with that because of certain concerns. It doesn’t matter because you wouldn’t be able to access anything on the site anyway. If you could though, this would be the link to look for:

2929	http://secretdomain.org/tcp_results.php

If you plugged that in, you’d have direct access to a page that looked like:

5-16-tcp_page

I don’t know what information I’m supposedly hiding, but I’ll provide some more. Here are a couple links showing what sorts of things I tried to access:

3031	http://secretdomain.org/thread.php?t=6738&r=15#61211

3513	http://secretdomain.org/members.php

7280	http://secretdomain.org/docs/coming-out-of-ice-age-volcanoes.pdf

8572	http://secretdomain.org/docs/rebuttal_status/18.details.htm

The first two of those required logging in to access. The third and fourth did not. That’s hardly surprising as many sites make documents and images directories publicly accessible so the material in them can be shared. Given some things were blocked and others were not, it is reasonable for a person to try various links to see what they’re allowed to see. Apparently, the Skeptical Science crowd thinks that’s hacking.

Interestingly, two other links in the list are:

10099	http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/tcp_raters2.gif

10100	http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/tcp_raters3.gif

While those links no longer work, they are the images I discussed in this post. They provide the identities of 12 of the raters for the Cook et al consensus paper. In that post I said:

This one also identifies nearly a dozen individual participants. It’s true we only found out about these images because of a hack, but that hack happened nearly two years ago. Surely the authors of the paper shouldn’t leave confidential information in a publicly accessible location for two years, even if people have already seen it.

But it’s worse than that. Not only were the images publicly accessible for nearly two years after being discovered, John Cook continued to make it possible for anyone to find links to them. Plus, the links I collected only begin after the original forum was hacked. Who knows if we could have found the same links via the original forum?

Incidentally, you may have noticed one of the links I mentioned being able to access had a number in it. As you may have guessed, there were a series of pages in the form of http://secretdomain.org/docs/rebuttal_status/X.details.htm. I scraped a number of them (392?), but they didn’t contain anything interesting. It was just some proofreading information about various posts at Skeptical Science.


That’s it. There’s no more information to disclose. I don’t know what the Skeptical Science crowd thinks I’m hiding, and I suspect it doesn’t exist.

And hey, now you can see ~18,000 pages the Skeptical Science group discussed!

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hunter
June 9, 2014 2:28 pm

Light is the enemy of darkness. Good job on shining the light.
No wonder the SkS gang is whining so much.

noloctd
June 9, 2014 2:30 pm

This isn’t hacking by any definition of the word. It’s people pretending to be all secret squirrel while being essentially clueless abut how web sites work.

Bob
June 9, 2014 2:36 pm

It seems that the Downunder Children are at play. So far, nothing of serious academic interest has appeared from this crew, and it is time for them to put on their big-boy britches and join the adult world. Hack? Hardly!

Cooper
June 9, 2014 2:39 pm

I sense a SkS fundraiser coming….

June 9, 2014 2:40 pm

The “Skeptical Science group” is composed of some of the stupidest people I have ever encountered in my long, long life. And yet, they get vast amounts of funding from our federal government … hmmmmm … perhaps that tells us something about the modern “science” system.
I have long maintained that if the government is paying for it — it has a small chance of being real science.

Shawn from High River
June 9, 2014 2:40 pm

Can you sue?
It should hopefully deter future believers from throwing around libellous accusations

cnxtim
June 9, 2014 2:51 pm

I thought it more than a little humorous you were accused in “I know what you did” comment (too funneee) of “kiddie (level) hacking” surely that is a self deprecating admission of skill deprivation on the part of the complainant?
If you were to place CAGW evangelists and those that are labelled sceptics in two groups on a footy field – “spot the nutter” would be somewhat disproportionately weighted.
“Ethel, have you seen my tinfoil hat?” “I cant find my tinfoil hat”…Nice to start the day with a smile..

Curious George
June 9, 2014 2:52 pm

Carbon pollution .. anti-climate .. These are nice buzzwords. Can we come up with a nice buzzword for the kind of pollution the Skeptical Science generates?

June 9, 2014 2:59 pm

This is the equivalent of clicking on a link that ends in .jpg to look at a picture linked from a blog, then stripping off the address up to the original URL of the blog to get to the blog itself.
That’s not hacking, and Maessen is just blowing smoke.

Harold
June 9, 2014 3:01 pm

Hacking off criminals is not the same thing as criminal hacking.

June 9, 2014 3:04 pm

You caught them with their pants downs and now they want to claim you were the “flasher”.
To funny, even for these clowns!
(PS for the Mods, When I clicked the title, nothing happened. I couldn’t read the post till I hit “read more”.)
[Seems to work properly when tested from WUWT Home Page. .mod]

Richo
June 9, 2014 3:05 pm

Criminal defamation is a crime in Australia and the Queensland Police police should be investigating the false allegations of criminal conduct made by SKS against Brandon. Refer to the exert from the Queensland Criminal Code Act. What’s more I have made trolls pedaling these malicious allegations that they may be committing a crime:
Chapter 35 Criminal defamation
365 Criminal defamation
(1) Any person who, without lawful excuse, publishes matter defamatory of another living person (the relevant person)—
(a) knowing the matter to be false or without having regard to whether the matter is true or false; and
(b) intending to cause serious harm to the relevant person or any other person or without having regard to whether serious harm to the relevant person or any other person
is caused;
commits a misdemeanour.
Maximum penalty—3 years imprisonment.
(2) In a proceeding for an offence defined in this section, the accused person has a lawful excuse for the publication of defamatory matter about the relevant person if, and only if,
subsection (3) applies.
(3) This subsection applies if the accused person would, having regard only to the circumstances happening before or at the time of the publication, have had a relevant defence for the
publication if the relevant person had brought civil proceedings for defamation against the accused person.

June 9, 2014 3:07 pm

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, Rudyard Kipling
Stay strong, Anthony. Everyone here has your back

Harold
June 9, 2014 3:08 pm

For some reason, this whole affair reminds me of this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/google-street-view-handjob_n_2884073.html

June 9, 2014 3:08 pm

This is entirely consistent with everything else.
The objective is not to show facts, proof, truth, science, data and so on, it’s to advance the cause with end justifies the means mentality.
Take advantage of the fact that most people are not experts on climate science and weather. They will trust a source that sounds convincing and wants to save the planet.
Manipulate peoples thoughts by twisting information and spinning it in a way that creates the illusion of something that is not really there………for the cause.
Find unique and creative ways to discredit the “deniers” who have evil intentions and are tying to stop them from accomplishing their mission to save the planet.
There are many such types in society today and those at the top of the food chain that gain power from such unethical tactics are known as “white collar psychopaths”

June 9, 2014 3:12 pm

(PS for the Mods, When I clicked the title, nothing happened. I couldn’t read the post till I hit “read more”.)

==========================================================
OOPS!
Maybe I clicked “My Hidden Information” instead of “Idiotic libel from the ‘Skeptical Science’ crowd“.
Perhaps take the Bold off “My Hidden Information”?

June 9, 2014 3:17 pm

Jesus Christ
That’s not hacking.

LewSkannen
June 9, 2014 3:18 pm

“If we’re to believe Maessen”
Well that is where your premise falls down, of course.
That little [autosnip] booted me off his youtube channel when I dared to contradict him.
They really do live in a paranoid world these people. I imagine he checks under the bed six times each night to make sure there are no ‘deniers’ under there sapping his precious bodily fluids. Purity of Essence and all that…

Latitude
June 9, 2014 3:23 pm

If that’s hacking….I’m guilty of doing it every day…and so are my kids, family, friends…well, just about everyone on the internet…including grandparents….LOL, even bots do it!

June 9, 2014 3:36 pm

hunter, your comment is funny because I much prefer darkness. I’d happily never go outside in the daytime if I could, and I barely use any light in my room.
noloctd, I’m not sure if “essentially clueless” goes far enough.
Cooper, fundraising for what?
Shawn from High River, I certainly have grounds for a libel lawsuit. I have grounds against several people based solely upon their public communication. There is private communication (such as some currently being requested via FOI) that could possibly give grounds against people too. It wouldn’t be worth it though, and I don’t approve of lawsuits for relatively trivial things.
cnxtim, part of me wants to be offended by that “script kiddie level” remark. If I had actually hacked them, I’d like to think I could do better than that.
Gunga Din/mod, the problem might be mixing gup the WUWT title with the title of my post. They both use the same font, so a person might click the bottom one thinking it is a separate post.
Richo. even if that is possible, I wouldn’t support it in the slightest.
Dave, no offense to Anthony, but I think I need the encouragement more. He’s not being libeled here 😛

Eliza
June 9, 2014 3:36 pm

This is what some of these people are like .Should be mandatory viweing for all US Senators/Congressmen and women
http://www.cfact.org/2014/06/08/hollywoods-hydrocarbon-hypocrisy/
They can make up their minds about what kind of people they are dealing with

angech
June 9, 2014 3:42 pm

What have you done Brandon, If I read more of those pages I might never come back.

June 9, 2014 3:49 pm

Steven Mosher, no joke.
Latitude, well, Google did hack Skeptical Science.
angech, and to think, I originally expected collecting those links to be a pointless activity.

Patrick
June 9, 2014 4:02 pm

“Steven Mosher says:
June 9, 2014 at 3:17 pm
That’s not hacking.”
Ah yes. But if you say it often enough to the technically illiterate, they will believe it. Climate Alarmisum (TM) uses the same technique.

Dr Burns
June 9, 2014 4:07 pm

Way off topic [snip – yes it was -mod]

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