![Bob-Ward-293x350[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/bob-ward-293x3501.jpg)
Bolt writes:
Nick Cater notes that ABC warmists such as Dr Karl are getting snarky that the world’s atmosphere has not warmed these past 16 years.
A better response might be to apologise to the man who first warned years ago the climate wasn’t warming as the warmists predicted:
It was an Australian scientist, Bob Carter, who first drew attention to the flattening trend in an article in Britain’s The Telegraph in April 2006. Carter reviewed the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia for the years 1998 to 2005 and asked: “Does something not strike you as odd?”
Carter’s reward for identifying the lack of global warming was to have his professional reputation trashed. When Carter repeated his suggestion in the Australian press a year later, the CSIRO felt obliged to respond. Carter had presented “an unethical misrepresentation of the facts”, wrote Andrew Ash, acting director of the CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship. “All scientists welcome honest criticism since it helps to sharpen our analyses and improve our understanding, but scepticism based on half-truths and misrepresentation of facts is not helpful.”
ABC online’s The Drum refused to run his commentary. ABC Radio National’s science broadcaster Robyn Williams gave an open microphone to Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change communications director Bob Ward, who accused Carter of “desperately seeking bits of information to back up a theory”.
Political scientist Robert Manne said the likes of Carter, award-winning geologist Ian Plimer and former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology William Kininmonth “have to be resisted and indeed denounced” along with the “anti-political correctness and anti-collectivist ideologues, the right-wing media and the fossil fuel corporations”.
The vilifying of Bob Carter was simply unforgivable. Those who abused him demonstrated a fear of debate and of facts unbecoming to any discussion of science. That venom demonstrated the sad truth: global warming was instead a faith or ideology that could not be questioned.
Here is a note for Ward. You are losing traction, and you are quickly becoming irrelevant in the face of facts.
WoodForTrees.org – Paul Clark – Click the pic to view at source
My friends in the UK will lift a glass in your honor the day your position is eliminated, because you work against humanity, pushing your own vested interests, in what could be described as a classic textbook case of noble cause corruption.
Well said.
“Andrew Bolt demands an apology from Bob Ward”
That’ll be the f’n day. Might I refer you to Willis’s essay titled “Noble Cause Corruption”.
Well said, Bob Ward and his ilk will deserve their place in the hall of shame
Seconded!!
Hear hear! I try not to let personal feelings colour my opinions in the climate debate…but Bob Ward and Michael Mann make that very difficult. Amusingly, his utter charmlessness makes the impact of anything he actually says in person extremely low. His instant access to the Guardian and their constant referrals to him have also contributed to my complete contempt of their entire environmental section. He will not be forgotten.
And this is very important. So many alarmists seem to count on the public’s ability to send outdated ideologies into blissful oblivion. But these people have done too much harm. Could sceptics have a sort of Scout’s Honor pledge; the “Don’t Forget What The Alarmists Said And Did” pledge?
As much one is deserved, don’t expect one. There is no honour in that group of misbegotten pissants.
Alan.
Thanks – my thoughts – pretty much; although I suggest you are too kindly . . . . . .
Auto
But it’s the hottest year on record … http://bigstory.ap.org/article/079ed0ae0f5049019ea25d8e1897c81e/another-month-another-global-heat-record-broken
I just read that, and this stood out: “Some people, mostly non-scientists, have been claiming that the world has not warmed in 18 years, but “no one’s told the globe that,” Blunden said. She said NOAA records show no pause in warming.”
What datasets show no pause at all?
I’d love to find out. Don’t you love the non science quote? Well, either the data shows warming or not. It’s nothing to “claim” unless Seth B. Is now arguing that we can’t even rely on an objective temperature record? Isn’t that entirely unscientific?
GISS shows the pause, but no record.
Mostly the ones that haven’t been manipulated/corrected.
Oh…wait…
Give them another year or two, and the pause will have been erased, along with the MWP.
NOAA reported on september as record warmest september ever 2014.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/9
I wonder how long they plan on playing this game of upping the ante.
But the globe has not published a single peer-reviewed paper on CAGW. It’s just a blue balloon with baboons. The globe is in a state of self-denial. Someone should tell the globe to act responsibly, and not cheat honest warmists by hiding all that heat we know it has, in inaccessible and unmeasurable places, like heads of climate activists. All that hot air.
Well, those non-scientists at the Met Office in the Uk do only say it’s been 15 years, but they do confirem the pause in warming
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming
“July 2013 – Global mean surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s, but have been relatively flat over the most recent 15 years to 2013.”
And from their 2014-18 decadal forecast, again
“Since the forecast is initialised from the current state of the climate system,
unlike the climate change projections used in the IPCC AR5, the forecast
reflects the slightly cooler conditions…”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/1/8/decadal_forecast_2014-2018_jan2014.pdf
Oddly. Mr. Ward has not criticised this…
What datasets show no pause? That’s easy. Take any temperature dataset from say 1979 or earlier to today. Plot the data, and plot the linear trend. See? The trend just keeps going up all the way to today. Don’t laugh, there are people doing it, seriously.
And when their alarmist charts show a vertical line for temps up to 100C (they’re so confident they can get away with it), then I bet someone’s gonna demand an explanation.
Blunden is not wrong. Wrong implies the possibility of error.
Blunden is lying.
“…in what could be described as a classic textbook case of noble cause corruption.”
Anthony, I don’t understand how you could consider Bob Ward’s actions to protect his income and position is a noble cause.
/sarc
@ mikerestin: why the “/sarc” tag?
As always, Gaia will have the last laugh.
This has to be satire: “anti-political correctness and anti-collectivist ideologues, the right-wing media and the fossil fuel corporations.” Please tell me he didn’t say this in sincerity. No one could be that prone to inadvertent self-parody.
I would love to be anti-politically correct. Sounds very refreshing. Not sure it can be done, though.
Robert Jeremy Grantham has sponsored way to many defamatory loons. Stern, comes to mind. He should either apologize or monitor their behavior better.
With respect to the graph above, for 1997 to 2014 I come up with an acceleration of -0.0001 C°/yr²
Holy Carp!…it’s once again worse than we thought! 😉
History will be kind to Bob Carter and it’ll be at the expense of people like Ward.
Pointman
Make that -0.001 C°/yr²
I hate it when that happens
-0.0001 or -0.001, what does it matter? It’s worse than we thought.
Its worst that we thought, warming has gone up 0.009 degrees in a few moments. /sarc
Damn it, warming has gone up 0.0009 degrees, it happens quite a lot, doesn’t it?
That’s better wouldn’t want to exaggerate.
Don’t know why you raise his profile to anything of meaning, he is an idiot with media friends, has never been worthy of anything but contempt.
Those pesky facts.
I was looking at a discussion about NASA’s 6 hottest months and rcina was kicking ass. I’d like to know who that is and shake his hand. He did the best job against Publicola (who I believe is the paid troll he accuses everyone else of being) I’ve seen. He had quick responses with peer reviewed science to back up his statements and used data from alarmist websites to back up his claims. A worthwhile read for anyone who takes the time to comment on errors in the alarmist media.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/10/13/nasa_earth_just_experienced_the_warmest_six_month_stretch_ever.html?utm_content=bufferac518&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&wp_login_redirect=0
Wow, that was a marathon. I thought it was pretty funny that rcina was constantly accused of not having peer reviewed science to back up his claims…yet he literally flooded his comments with reference back to published papers.
rip
I just spent a ton of time reading the exchange. I learned a great deal from the cogent, well-documented posts of “rcina” and found “Publicola” to be an immature adolescent, if not chronologically, then intellectually, emotionally and socially. He/she, along with a number of others in the thread, gives nearly absolute proof of the religious ardor with which they support their beliefs and reject anything that disagrees with them. These are, indeed, dangerous people.
Publicola has been at this seemingly nonstop spouting the same drivel for at least 5 years. I used to spar with him on the Huff Post but they started not posting my comments when they were too cogent and couldn’t be refuted so I gave up. The amount of hate I’ve received from these kinds of people for simply pointing out empirical facts is disturbing. I see myself as being completely insignificant compared to nature but to these people I am a threat to the survival of the planet.
I did see that rcina is Kenneth Richard who you will find posting around. I don’t recall him posting here but really appreciate his efforts.
Definitely a smackdown. It reveals two styles of argumentation. One side with facts and figures, the other side with appeal to authority, red herrings, ad hominem and so on. No substance. No beef.
Clearly both styles work but only for their usual audiences. The Keith Olbermann style of insulting everyone not only gets tiresome but cannot compete on the playing field of science.
Both appealed to authority, but RCINA appeals to specific papers and research authorities and asks some serious questions whereas Publicola appeals to an admininstrative body such as the National Academy of Sciences and demands repeatedly to know who is paying RCINA, not apparently realizing it doesn’t make the slightest difference — the questions are still on the table. RCINA doesn’t have the answers, the fact is nobody does (for sure), but that denies the claim “the science is settled” on which the left wing has rested its case.
I admired RCINA’s focus on the ball throughout the whole thing ignoring many squirrels (*)
* Squirrels — also known as red herrings — hard-to-resist distractors. Probably comes from the movie “Up!” where the dog, Doug, demonstrates easy distractability by squirrels (that you don’t see and are not likely to be on top of Ayun Tepui anyway).
Woops, Did I say revealing? I meant very revealing 😉
Politicola at one point tries to paint all sceptics with the PSI brush. Funny thing, recently there was an attempt to do the same at the BBC. The PSI game failed, not even hard sceptics like myself bought it, in fact hard sceptics fought hardest. It got absolutely no traction on real sceptic sites. Yet paid alarmist activists like Politicola seem to know way to much about them…
Most interesting.
A painfully long read, but fascinating.
Rcina clearly had Publicola’s measure. Publicola’s responses were both revealing and encouraging (from a sceptic perspective)
Publicola clearly is projecting with the repeated accusations of Rcina being a paid shill. Publicola is obviously being remunerated and cannot accept that Rcina is not. This reveals that alarmists actually believe in the big oil shill “narrative” they created and simply cannot comprehend that they are facing a genuine unpaid grass-roots movement of individuals. There were repeated demands for which sceptic site Rcina was getting source material, when it was clear that just like other individual sceptics, Rcina was accessing many. Politicola’s collectivist mindset was simply unable to cope with the idea of an individual being better versed in the science than someone paid and supported by a activist group.
And the encouraging bit? As the propaganda money dries up, players like Politicola will disappear but the unpaid sceptics will remain. There will be an “extinction explosion” as Big Wind subsidy farming flings millions into last ditch propaganda, but the writing is on the wall.
I hope you are right about the propaganda money drying up but I don’t see that happening. The general public mostly accepts what they are told without question so they see climate change in every weather anomaly and are incapable of seeing behind the reality the media presents for them. It is only the skeptic community speaking out that is preventing total mind control on the subject.
Rcina aka Kenneth Richard is a hero in my book for his skill in battle, The undecideds on the sidelines can see who has truth on their side when commentator’s like him stick to scientific facts and don’t lower themselves to Publicola style troll baiting.
rcina certainly does kick ass, or arse … a highly commendable effort too, considering the downright nasty at times responses that he/she does NOT rise too. If one took the attitude and demeanor of those either for or against the notion of CAGW as the deciding factor (it is certainly, at least, very revealing), it becomes obvious that the CAGW crowd repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot. A worthwhile read indeed.
Amusing to read that “Rationalwiki” considers CAGW to be a “snarl word”, yet obviously does not consider “denier” or “denialist” to be “snarl words”. One would have thought that any site wanting to appear impartial (which, presumably, is a goal that RationalWiki wants to aspire to) would actually endeavour to be, erm… impartial.
To continue: “The Earth doesn’t receive heat from the Sun.” (Gazmik) Who’da thunk that, eh?
With this sort of logic extant, “Rcina” does not have too much trouble being correct, but has his work cut out to be believed. What next? The Ice Ages were pre-emptive reactions due Mann-made global warming?
Oh! What a great read … that fool ‘popsicola’ or ‘publicola’ … whatever … was totally ‘pwned’ by rtcina’! What an embarrassing expose!! rtcina has a mind like a nuclear rat trap.
“Nick Cater notes that ABC warmists such as Dr Karl are getting snarky that the world’s atmosphere has not warmed these past 16 years”
Snarky- Irritable or short-tempered. In any situation this is the reaction of a human when things start going wrong and yet the thing they wish for is happening – static temps .
Definitely a case of global alarmism weirding .
Within climate science where are the criticisms of Bob Ward and his ilk? Just like with Al Gore, there is never any real criticism of the AGW fanatics!
Plenty of criticism about, just not reported in MSM
Perhaps more exposure of Grantham and his pecuniary interests would be more productive than trying to score off Ward.
Perhaps more exposure of Grantham’s pecuniary interests would have more effect than engagement with Ward
Or in Mann’s case: “Nobel Cause Corruption”
Global Pausing.
I’m not all that sure about the “noble cause” bit, to be perfectly honest.
I think Ward and his Organ Grjnder employer, as well as the other warmists mentioned here and elsewhere, are long beyond the stage of doing this for any higher cause. They are simply continuing to line their pockets, not only at the expense of the taxpayer but at the probable expense of the well-being of mankind.
“an unethical misrepresentation of the facts”… describes climate science perfectly.
I was an academic in Australia for some years… and did make an important discovery in Animal Science. Honestly Australia would be better off concentrating on Tourism and Mining. Since the 60’s when the REAL CSIRO produced awesome science, nothing of any significance has come out Australia (with few exceptions ie Prof Carter, Evans ect.)
“with few exceptions ie Prof Carter, Evans ect.”
You really should get that looked at, could be contagious, cancerous, etc.
@ Lord Beaverbrook; Agreed, Ward is an idiot but it his having media friends that is the problem.
For years it has been known that Bob Ward is a paid character assassin and paid apologist for the climate change cause, yawn.
He is irrelevant now because his cause is irrelevant. It is irrelevant in the face of the failed theory that said there was significant risk of climate change from using fossil fuels.
John
I think it’s time for contacting the individuals at CSIRO and the others in the climate science community who did the trashing and ask them what they think now. It would be interesting to see if there are any honest people at all in this business.
Good idea
My comment above a bit over the top… If Abbott can get school kids to learn the 3R’s there is a future for Aussie science…
The 3R’s in the United States I think are in the last stages of a terminal disease.
Reading? My teenager is an astonishing reader, but the only one among all of her peers that actually reads books for enjoyment or learning.
Writing is kaput. Keyboarding is mandatory but composing thoughts greater than will fit in a “tweet” is a dying art.
Arithmetic — Common Core killed whatever is left of this dead. Procedure math is “ol skool”.
Example: Teenager cannot multiply 6 times 9. To approach it, she writes six 9’s, then groups them into 3 pairs of 9’s. Then she adds each pair of 9’s to make three 18’s. Since she cannot add a column of three 18’s, she adds two of them to get 36, then adds 18 to 36 to get the answer that I memorized in third grade and could repeat on command any time thereafter. The basic multiplication table is no longer taught and that’s a killer since nearly all algorithms assume you can add, subtract, multiply and divide any pair of single digit integers.
Question for anyone: Today’s (10-21-14) USAToday, p. B3, states that (according to NOAA) September 2014 was the hottest September on record. Same claim is made for May, June, and August 2014.
Did NOAA “say” that, or does their data say that?
Is there a problem with the NOAA temperature measurement method, or is it accepted as accurate? Is it outdated or does it have compromised or insufficient measurement sites?
Which agencies or respected institutions agree, and which disagree? And why is there disagreement?
I apologise for what may be a very basic misunderstanding; I am not familiar with the universe of data sites available. But if the report is false, or if NOAA’s data is considered unreliable, I would like to have some counter-references to cite.
ED
See:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
So GISS agrees with May and August and September being the hottest. But June is tied for third. Their format makes things easiest to see. But despite these high months, GISS still has a flat slope for 10 years. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2004.75/plot/gistemp/from:2004.75/trend
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/10/why-2014-wont-be-the-warmest-year-on-record/
The thermometer ‘data’ is so tortured and hacked by the various ‘expert’ institutions that it bares no resemblance to reality.
I use the degree of venom a person throws at others as a measure of their character, and how wrong they likely are. I also use it as a rough first gauge of likely veracity. Yes, honest folks can get angry ( I do some times), but dishonest folks will often use faux anger to cover real fear of discovery and lying. Science is not about anger.
Similarly, insults “to the person” do not make a strong case…,
Do I detect a faint beginning of a trend in the strategy of critics being used on the climate change cause’s activists who are found in the media and in the climate focused science community?
Is using hints of threats of lawsuits and making demands for public apology the developing new strategy becoming popular with critics for countering CAGW advocates / activists like Oreskes and Bob Ward?
If it is the new popular strategy used by critics of the climate change cause then I think it is weak. The weakness is that it looks reactionary / defensive and could drain energy from the significant ongoing buildup of science dialog that establishes new lines of evidence and mechanisms that is a more objective climate science than the biased IPCC centric approach.
John
It is just “being a mirror”. Look at the strategy “they” use toward us. Same thing. So reflective rules imply it be returned….
I have a general philosophy of “Be The Mirror”. Respond to others as they behave toward you. Usually I lag at least one step back on negative behaviours, and try to lead one step on positive ones. Sometimes I override the rule (due to other issues). But generally it is a very effective POV / strategy / life rule to “Be The Mirror”….
So, Mann sues anything that moves, we ought to point out the places where he could be sued (i.e. [one] step back…)
Agreed. But it depends on the “vocabulary” and intelligence of your opponent.
I had a very unpleasant roommate in the Navy, smoked cigarettes in the barracks room constantly, played his music loud or watched TV any time of night or day. I tried various negotiations to no avail. Turning the other cheek accomplished nothing for me. But it is a good metaphor — how many cheeks do you have? 2 or 4 depending… after that, try something else.
I started listening to opera at any time of night or day. I would clean the room meticulously with strong ammonia cleaner, who can complain about a clean room? The Navy loved it; smelled terrible for a little while.
He would say, “I have a right to listen to music” and I would say, “I have not denied your right; I too have the same right and I am glad that we are agreed we can listen to whatever each wants at any time.” This went on for a couple of weeks when I finally explained it to him: “We can each agree to a negotiation. Its just a temporary arrangement to make both our lives more tranquil. You still have your rights and I have the same ones, but we won’t exercise that right here in this room while we both are here.”
Success! Eye-for-an-eye precedes turning the other cheek. You can *start* with turning the other cheek, the metaphor suggests to absorb the occasional inadvertent offense so that you don’t get into an endless spiral of Hatfield-McCoy style feuding. But just as the author of “turn the other cheek” eventually went on a rampage at the temple, so too can peaceful skeptics occasionally turn the tables without feeling like they’ve violated their morals.
E.M.Smith on October 21, 2014 at 11:13 am
– – – – – – —
E.M.Smith,
The idea of ‘being a mirror’ evokes in me mental images of skeptics (aka critics of the climate change cause) being mere shadowy reflections of people like Oreskes, Mann, Santer, Lewandowsky and Cook, which makes me feel intellectually unclean. I think that I shall not go with on your journey into being a mirror.
My Idea of a stronger strategy: Act like they are irrelevant to observationally based knowledge since they are logically irrelevant and move on to continue to establish an objective science which displaces the myopic biased IPCC centric CAGW myth.
John
It is a strategy to keep in your toolkit.
But it is a risky strategy. I come at you with a plastic water pistol and you “mirror” with the real thing not knowing it was fake — guess who is likely more in deep kim chee?
So those who “mirror” must be scrupulously lawful at all times and nothing the mirroring person does is excused by what the other person did. “If your friend runs off a cliff, does that mean you are also going to run off a cliff?” is the common parental response.
There is no such thing as nobel-cause corruption. Corruption is dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. There is absolutely nothing noble about being dishonest and committing fraud. Even the cause isn’t noble. Abandoning our least expensive energy sources for much more expensive sources is not a noble causes. It’s stupidity that would doom billions of humans to continued abject property. Evil would be a better word to describe that. We should be calling it “evil cause corruption.”
Thomas’s argument above is an equivocation. The discussion is about noble-cause corruption, not noble cause-corruption. Causes may be either noble or evil. The reason we mention “noble cause corruption” is that it would be just silly to speak of “evil cause corruption.” The crux is that any cause, no matter how good, has the potential for evil if it it used as the pretext for evil deeds. This usually comes about when adherents fool themselves into thinking that the end justifies the means. These people often believe that since they support some noble cause, they themselves are noble and thus sanctified. They also conclude that since they are noble, anyone who disagrees with them is evil and can be killed, tortured, punished, etc. I believe this is a form of sociopathic behavior.
Can’t be noble cause corruption for the journalarmists and spinsters because their cause is not about preventing or minimizing disasters. At best it’s selling stories and getting funding. At worst it’s political control. There’s nothing noble anywhere in the spectrum between these two points.
I see the Grantham Research Institute. So what if Bob Ward gets a bob or two from oil and gas profits?
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC has investments in oil, coal, and natural gas exploration and distribution companies. It was set up by the environmentalist and hedge funder Jeremy Grantham.
The recipients of funding from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment (founded by Jeremy Grantham) includes the London School of Economics: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Yet in secret we had this little gem from the leaked / hacked CRU emails…..
Then we had this public gem.
I must admit that even I’m embarrassed for these folks now.
See the MANY temperature standstill quotes from many Warmist scientists. It’s like a hockey stick now.
Jimbo on October 21, 2014 at 11:03 am
– – – – – – – –
Jimbo,
I think your terminology ‘temperature standstill’ is a good neutral way to describe / label what has been going on in GASTA and LTTA datasets in the last ~15 or more year period (period depends on the specific dataset). It does not presume warming is the required behavior of the dataset. I will use that terminology going forward.
John
A ‘plateau’ is even more descriptive of the current climate temperature stall. I hope this isn’t a stall in the way one defines an aircraft stall – which can lead to a nasty fall. Hence plateau is more neutral and preferred.
Ahh, That’s who Owen Paterson was thinking of when he coined the phrase ‘Green Blob’: Blob Ward!
Blob Tard?
Bas Tard?
What is annoying about ward is that as someone who owns his own company I have to pay money to a …… like him. He needs a kick up the arse and to be fired immediately.
[language. .mod]
‘Ward is probably to most spitefully incompetent alarmist out there, and it is actually his paid position to broadcast the smears that he does.’
True but the odd thing is despite being rubbish at it ,Grantham seems more than willing to keep throwing money at this ‘paid shrill’ Of course it helps that the Guardian is willing to hand itself over to old ‘fast fingers ‘ to spout what he likes , but the fact remains when you analysis his work you see how bad it really is.
Can’t face the truth so attack the messenger. Bob Carter has been vilified to the extreme but will have the last laugh!
“Political scientist Robert Manne said the likes of Carter, award-winning geologist Ian Plimer and former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology William Kininmonth “have to be resisted and indeed denounced” along with the “anti-political correctness and anti-collectivist ideologues, the right-wing media and the fossil fuel corporations”.”
Lets read that again – Mr. Manne is saying that you have to resist and denounce ““anti-political correctness and anti-collectivist ideologues,…“? In other words – reversing the double negatives – he is saying you have to support political correctness and collectivist ideologues? That explains a lot.
It’s like Luke Skywalker vs Darth Vader
One is a proper scientist & expert who is the BBC label as a non-scientist & effectively ban him
The other is a non-scientist who seems to have immediate access to the BBC airwaves* and I’ve heard them introduce him as a scientist.
* (Likewise the Guardian ‘newspaper’ which he used this week Oct 17th to ‘monster’ Richard Tol’s IPCC phrase “warming can have some positives”)
You give him way too much credit with “Noble cause corruption.” Bob Ward is simply a paid hack and buffoon.
You have to admire the guy’s cheek – a non scientist who spends his whole life it seems, complaining to whatever authority that they a permitted a non-scientist to air their views.
How does that work, Bob?
What is it about Australian Science? This dreadful story of cover up by the establishment is mirrored elsewhere in Australian Science. Take the story of the discovery that heliocobactor pylori is a cause of peptic ulcers. The poor scientists Barry Marshall and Robin Warren met with intense skepticism about this suggestion and it took several years before other research groups verified the association of H. pylori with gastritis and, to a lesser extent, ulcers. They lost their positions at the University, couldn’t publish and so to demonstrate H. pylori caused gastritis and was not merely a bystander, Marshall drank a beaker of H. pylori culture. Needless to say he became ill and managed to cure himself with antibiotics. He later won the Nobel Prize – but no thanks to the scientific community or for that matter the peer review process.
Wow. But you know, crap like this happens. It happened to Einstein. Hell, it’s even happened to me. More than once. I’ve been raked through the coals for suggesting Lake Tahoe’s water clarity has been increasing since 1992 (yes, it has), and that a new Auto Mall in a particular small city lacking car dealerships would have a positive economic and local government financial impact (it would have, duh). But when reality threatens some folks’ power, they attack mercilessly!