If it wasn’t enough that John Cook dresses himself up as a Nazi in his SkS uniform on his forum, now we have him caught in what looks to be identity theft of a well known scientist.
A WUWT reader writes via email:
I thought I might ask you for your comment on this before I rush to judge John cook.
The Reference Frame: Identity theft: the thief of Lubos_Motl turns out to be a well-known man
Specifically, I’m curious:
1) Why john would wish to post comments anywhere under any circumstances using another persons name?
2) How many other times has he done this?
3) Does he intend to do this again?
Thanks for your time.
This isn’t a brush away issue that he can ignore, as Dr. Lubos Motl found out yesterday, John Cook has been using the name of Dr. Lubos Motl to post comments that Dr. Motl has NOT written.
Dr. Motl writes:
Today, one hour ago, was the first time when I was seeing these pages but interestingly enough, you may find lots of things over there posted by Lubos_Motl. And this Lubos_Motl happens to use the e-mail address jc@sks… and the same IP addresses as another, less prolific participant of those discussions, John Cook! ;-)In the first thread – including comments about the possible influence of the Sun on the hockey stick and exchanges about a planned alarmists’ letter to Anthony Watts analyzing the meaning of the word “denier” – we read:
John Cook: … If a few more agree with the idea of this blog post (noting it won’t directly engage Watts or even mention him, it’ll be a general discussion post) and the direction I propose we go with the d-word issue, I’ll have a crack at writing it over the next day.
EDIT: sorry, accidentally posted this under my Lubos_Motl username, sorry for any confusion 🙁
…
Tim Curtis: would you please stop posting as Lubos Motl. There is reason to doubt his sanity, so I don’t like seeing his name. Further, it is his name, and therefore one you are not entitled to use.
…
Rob Honeycutt: John… You freak me out every time Lubos Motl’s name pops up!
…
John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook.
For the record, if just one or two of you SkSers jumped over to the Technical Forum and posted some comments to the 4 Experiment Conditions, I’d get my 10 comments and wouldn’t have to log in as Lubos anymore. Only one or two more comments required to get the quota. Just some incentive for you 🙂
EDIT: one of the conditions now has 10 comments, so only 3 more threads (with 2 of them only requiring one more comment). So Lubos very close to being put to bed 🙂
EDIT: only one more thread to go…
Minutes before this September 26th, 2011 commitment, we were reading these comments in the other threads:
Lubos_Motl: Ocean acidification is a strong sign that humans are raising CO2 levels. But it’s also a grave environmental concern as the acidification is causing damage to coral reefs which are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Adding insult to injury, the increased CO2 causes warming which is causing further damage to the coral reefs through bleaching. Corals provide both evidence for man-made global warming and concern over its impacts.
Lubos_Motl: The past tells us much about what our future holds in store for us. In the past, when the Earth was warmer than it is now, sea levels were metres higher than current levels. So just on the sea level front alone, we can expect severe impacts on the vast majority of the human population living on coastlines. The past also describes these concerning feedback events, where warmer temperatures lead to further release of greenhouse gases. We’re already seeing this start to happen in the Arctic, with methane bubbling from the permafrost and methane clathrates. The past paints a vivid picture of our future and it’s a picture of great concern.
Well, you can figure out that these paragraphs were written by a scientifically illiterate imbecile rather than Luboš Motl – because you are a TRF reader – but what about others? In Parts 2–4 of the other thread, the same Lubos_Motl wrote lots of other things:
Lubos_Motl: Cherry picking: What this post fails to mention is other factors also affect climate. Urban heat island also causes nights to warm faster than days. Ozone depletion causes the stratosphere to cool. This supposed evidence is just cherry picking supporting evidence and hiding the rest.
…
The article also cites ocean warming as evidence, and yet ocean warming has stalled since 2003. As more than 90% of global warming is going into the oceans, which means ocean heat is the best measure for global warming, the conclusion is obvious – humans can’t be causing global warming because global warming isn’t happening!
…
Good point re cosmic rays. The simplistic argument that the sun can’t cause global warming only looks at one possible link between sun and climate – total solar irradiance. But the relationship between the sun and our climate is much more complicated than that, as the solar magnetic field modulates the amount of cosmic radiation hitting the earth. This affects cloud formation which also interacts with our climate in complicated ways, with lower clouds causing cooling and higher clouds causing warming. A prettily coloured graphic created for young children doesn’t even begin to capture the complexities of our climate system.
Lubos_Motl: It’s hilarious that this article cites Usoskin 2005. That paper concludes that over the last few decades, the correlation between sun and climate breaks down. Therefore, recent warming must have some other cause. This article’s own sources debunk its assertion that the sun is causing global warming!
…
The full truth about the percentage of CO2 is that over 99% of the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen, both gases which are not greenhouse gases. So the fact that CO2 is a small percentage is irrelevant to the strength of its greenhouse effect. It’s like holding an election in a town of 1000 people where only 10 people vote. They may only be a small number but each individual has a significant effect. It’s the same with CO2. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it – what do measurements find? Both planes and satellites measure heat as it escapes to space and both find a big bite out of the outgoing heat, at precisely the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat. The greenhouse effect is an empirically observed fact.
Lubos_Motl: Good point re the co2 lag. Not only was co2 higher in the past, it also lags temperature, showing temperature drives co2, not the other way around. The ice core record is not kind to the warmist agenda.
…
Good point re the number of scientists. The alarmists like to boast about there being 2500 scientists who wrote the IPCC report. But the number of skeptic scientists is AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE greater than the number of alarmist scientists. Not only there is still a debate, the weight of opinion leans heavily towards the skeptic point of view. This article presents the compelling evidence that explains why.
…
John Cook: Note re Lubos Motl: I won’t use the name Lubos Motl or any of our names in the final webpage used in the experiment (so the last two comments by Rob and Steve won’t be used, I’m afraid).
Full story: http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/07/identity-theft-thief-of-lubosmotl-turns.html#more
To me, this is the most telling comment:
John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook.
This is just unbelievable; “the UWA experiment”. Think about what this refers to: University of Western Australia. This is where Cook launched his career defaming climate skeptics by helping Stephan Lewandowsky in designing/running a gussied up poll that was never actually posted on climate skeptic websites, that purports to give answers by climate skeptics, to be used in a paper where it is claimed that climate skeptics are believers that “the moon landing was faked“. What sort of “experiment” was John Cook running by stealing the identity of Dr. Lubos Motl, and writing comments under his name?
Cook is a man who has co-authored two papers about how climate skeptics are not to be trusted because in essence, “they are crazy conspiracy theorists”. Yet, John Cook, now of the University of Queensland after leaving his connections at UWA, has so little moral integrity that he’ll post comments on his own website (the SkS forum, see below) as a skeptical scientist, such as Dr. Lubos Motl?
Who else has John Cook impersonated? Has he encouraged his team to do this? These are valid questions that need answers.
This may be actionable, not just to get his latest smear paper retracted, like the first one was, but legally actionable. And maybe it’s time, because quite frankly I’m getting tired of this crap coming from this band of zealots in Australia who seem to have no scruples or integrity. Identity theft of another scientist’s name to post fake comments is just beyond the pale.
This isn’t the first time Cook and crew has done something reprehensible like this. Readers may recall he and his team of moderator zealots have been caught changing user comments after the fact:
On “Skepticalscience” – Rewriting History
This is why Skeptical Science has it’s own special category on the links at WUWT’s sidebar:
Unreliable*
Skeptical Science – John Cook
* Due to (1) deletion, extension
and amending of user comments,
and (2) undated post-publication
revisions of article contents after
significant user commenting.
Then there’s all the questionable tactics Cook used to create a faked 97% consensus: Richard Tol’s Excellent Summary of the Flaws in Cook et al. (2013) – The Infamous 97% Consensus Paper
May I suggest Mr. Cook, that your next fake persona name be: What. A. Slimeball.
UPDATE: Since some commenters have run astray in their thinking, assuming incorrectly that this lab exercise was related to the “moon landing” and “fury” papers, perhaps this addition will help clarify the issue. I sometimes forget readers don’t keep up on the vagaries of the SkS underworld as much as I have.
These comments were from the SkS private “subscribers only” forum, where you had to be on the “inside” to be a part of it. So, these were not public comments like we see on WUWT, but rather a discussion with his network of sycophants helping with his “research”.
The point that needs to be driven home is that rather than getting real comments, he had his buddies (and himself) write faked up comments from their own perspective as “fake skeptics”, and then analyzed those for his research experiment. Whether the results of that experiment made it into any published research is unknown.
Essentially, he and his friends made up pre-biased data, by “assuming” they knew what a skeptic comment might look like, and that’s an issue of integrity. What we see is an attempt to ascertain if a few skeptical comments are influential enough to undo the “good” of an alarmist post. That’s where “noble cause corruption” is at work. It seems he wants to find excuses to explain why everyone should censor skeptics out of the conversation, something he’s actively pushing on CNN right now.
Therefore the important question is: did he get the required ethics approval to make up his own data for that lab exercise?
See:
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-research/approvals
The mendacity of creating commentary from your own group to use it to analyze and then label another group is truly mind boggling.
If readers are going to register complaints, they need to do so in this context, not from the standpoint of this being about public comments faked up by Cook, that remains to be determined, yet given the behavior, we would be correct to look for such instances. Readers should take care not to make complaints to universities that this incident shows that Cook faked public comments, as inaccurate complaints will be ignored and make it more difficult for other complaints to get a hearing. Until further details become available, it is probably best that readers hold off anyway.
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The fact that climate change academia does not take these people to task speaks volumes.
John Cook and his cronies and the media publishing their ‘research’ have proven that mainstream climate change science is a lie and fit only for flushing down the toilet.
I have a question here:
Obviously John Cook is not above deceiving or lying to make (ie. create!) the point he wants to make.
However, the lubos_motl moniker was only used in they (supposedly) secret SkS-Forum and maybe for some faked UWA-experiments.
Which means he would not be above faking ‘responses’ to a supposedly posted polls on SkS (or other places) under faked identities where he (according to his own words) could:
My questions is:
Has he used this ‘identity’ anywhere in a public or official capacity?
Obviously, the guy’s not that smart, but even he must realize that a moniker like: lubos_motl combined with an email like jc@sks .. will arise suspicions.
My question is: Can it be demonstrated that John Cook officially or anywhere publicly tried to impersonate Lubos Motl?
Without that, I’d think, all we have is a proof of a deeply depraved character running SkSc .. (And that, we knew already, didn’t we?)
The point that needs to be driven home is that rather than getting real comments, he had his buddies (and himself) write FAKED UP COMMENTS, and then analyzed those.
Essentially, he and his friends made up pre-biased data, by “assuming” they knew what a skeptic comment might look like.
Therefore the important question is: did he get the required ethics approval to make up his own data for that lab excercise?
See:
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-research/approvals
The mendacity of creating commentary from your own group to use it to analyze and then label another group is truly mind boggling.
As I said to Dr. Tol Cook is only taking hypothesis testing to its next level. Standard hypothesis testing in actual science is creating a strawman hypothesis then tearing it down with real evidence. Cook has simply extended that logic and is tearing down a strawman hypothesis with strawman evidence.
Mind boggling, indeed.
I just wrote an email to my last year and next year psychology instructor about this. I’m curious what, if anything, he will say.
He might have interest because he and a group of his students were writing up a paper for publication on the psychology of why people don’t change their views on climate change when presented with facts. Or facts as he and the students sees them, anyway. Regardless of their views, surely he and they cannot defend John Cook’s behavior here!
@Tom T
Not exactly.
He is creating a strawman hypothesis and _confirming_ it with strawman “evidence”.
I completely agree with that. However it is something very different from ‘identity theft’ or ‘impersonating’ somebody else publicly, which probably would be actionable ofenses …
I doubt very much that this was a lab “exercise”. I suspect ist could have been some sort of rehearsal for a large-scale deception. What we see here is imo just the camouflage. The fact that the broth-spoiler disgused as a ‘n+azi’ shows not only a considerable lack of understanding of history, but some highly questionable disposition towards megalomania. May be he even thinks he is at war with the skeptical world?
IF he got some sort of (un)ethical approval, this might be considered as aiding and abetting identity theft.
Such an approach would be consider professional malpractice for an acedmic , however its clear his university views such approaches has ‘acceptable’ has long as they results in news grasping headlines .
The sad reality is once Obama stood up in public and give the whole 97% BS validation , Cook became virtual untouchable, becasue it was his ‘work’ that the paper prior to it that Obama was seen to refer too.
Anthony, a question. I don’t know what data WordPress makes available to you, but can you analyze your own archive to see if there was any other psuedonym abuse by this group in general or Cook in specific?
It is a human induced “super strawman”. Just trying to get with the lingo. 😉
How low can you go?
There is always room at the bottom…
No. 2 on the thread
At least it wasn’t my university, QUT……….yet?
I googled ‘skeptical science Lubos Motl’ and the first four entries were:
‘Climate misinformer: Lubos Motl – Skeptical Science’
You really can’t make this stuff up (unless you’re Cook).
Google has hired a group of climate communications fellows — hand picked climate activists whose job is to manipulate search results to promote Google’s view of climate science. http://blog.google.org/2011/02/making-sense-of-science-introducing,HTML
It’s all projection with this charlatan John Cook. I’m not surprised his discipline is psychology as they are more often than not sick people. https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200909/why-shrinks-have-problems
Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences – Robert Louis Stevenson
Not only have alarmists not had to suffer consequences, they are often rewarded for misdeeds. It is past time that the inevitable happens. Perhaps Lubos Motl can start the ball rolling.
I have a different theory to most people commenting here. I don’t think that this guy and his cronies are acting like warmists – I think they are more wicked and less principled than that. I think they are simply out to create mischief, confusion and hatred wherever they can. I think they are deliberately injecting lies and deception into a controversy, and then doubling up the effect if they can, by revealing what they have done, but in a way that points fingers at one side. Oh yes, I realise JC has a history in this which is ‘obviously’ in acting in an unprincipled way for the one side. However, I think this is quite a long-term intervention which deliberately uses the ‘experiment’ motif, and has been through several phases over several years. He and his collaborators are cleverer than we might think. Never underestimate your enemy, and NEVER believe them. There are people acting here who are, above all, antagonistic to the truth. Warmists are more likely to believe they are friends, being more naive and trusting than sceptics, but their own honest but mistaken beliefs are being cruelly and deliberately trashed here.
Someone is attempting to game the whole arena.
It’s Marxism. Destroy the capitalist system, no matter what the cost. And here is the giveaway.
Australia’s original proposal for an Emissions Trading Scheme intended to tax agriculture’s recycled “carbon” emissions on the same basis as fossil carbon emissions. They intended to tax very poorly researched supposed emissions by cattle and sheep, but studiously refused to allow credits for the sequestration side of agriculture’s carbon cycle, the carbon which the grass they eat had removed from the atmosphere.
This would have quickly bankrupted Australia’s livestock grazing industries. In turn this would have rendered the 60% of Australia’s land area which is used for grazing economically valueless, enabling the government to direct that land into “socialised” ownership without compensating the current owners for the loss of their savings.
Agriculture is the last sector of the Australian economy still dominated by small business capitalism. The last sector where the owners make the business decisions and do the work. Half of the people engaged in farming in Australia have already been driven out, and the decline is gathering pace.
This would also very likely cause the collapse of the entire financial system. As I said, no matter the cost.
Ok, I admit it- I’m guilty. I went over to SKS to find out what they have to say about this thread and… spiked their daily visitor count.
I hate Illinois Nazis…not unlike those SKS clowns and John Cook LOL. Keep up the good fight wuwt crew!
It is interesting to note that Steve McIntyre contacted Lubos about this. Since English is not Lubos’ first language the syntax is a bit garbled. But I think there may be a Steve Mc type forensic examination in the works.
A Godwin – really?
Even by WUWT’s low standards, that is low.
[standards haven’t changed, only your opinion of them – if you don’t like what is said here, you have the adios option. this might be better since your sole purpose here seems to be to complain. -mod]
does that apply when one chooses to dress up as a nazi?
davideisenstadt
Not that I can see any evidence that Cook did dress up as a Nazi officer.
But even if he did, what is the relevance?
If you haven’t seen the evidence, i am literally speechless…why dontcha try a google image search for cook? But my guess is you’ve already seen it, after all Cook himself posted the image to the SS website.
As for the relevance of that, its hard to invoke Godwin when the target himself dresses like an SS officer.
When the comparison is made by the individual in question, its not incorrect rhetoric to point it out.
Have you dressed like a nazi recently?
Had photos taken of you playing dress up?
Posted those images on your website?
Anyway, I did your google search for you…7.7 million results, .19 seconds.
here, check for yourself.
https://www.google.com/search?q=John+Cook+nazi&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1825&bih=896&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAGoVChMIk_229qDzxgIVRPWACh3IQwsB&dpr=1
lazy troll.
davideisenstadt.
I still haven’t seen any evidence Cook dressed up like an SS officer. And I have not seen any evidence that Cook posted the photo on the SkS website.
And what does a photoshopped photo of Cook have to do with the accusation of identity theft? Kind of ironic when the photo was probably stolen ie it was a theft.
It is a Godwin.
[here you go, from the Sks forum via this WUWT post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/skeptcial-science-takes-creepy-to-a-whole-new-level/ – mod]
harrytwinotter,
Its not some randome SS officer. Its a Photoshop of Heinrich Himmler himself.
Harry, you are being nonsensical now. making up claims that well documented things didn’t happen, and self contradictory as well. He didn’t do it, it must be fake and if it wasn’t then it was stolen
Harry you really are a sick puppy, I have had some experience with the twinotter a simple basic plane, not built as tough as the old single otter but an OK plane. That said to have the name of a plane in your posting name could possibly indicate a similar confused standard of thought processes as aforementioned Mr Cook.
That would suggest to me that you may benefit from some counselling and a huge amount of education, then get back to us.
Name-calling.
heres a few names for you…I think that they are apt.
apologist, shill, liar, fool.
The Twin Otter is a fantastic plane. Harry, meehh. Not so much. (The Beaver was the most fun STOL though.)
davideisenstadt
More name-calling. Give it a rest.
See, this is why I can’t even take climate trolls like Harry seriously. Am I really supposed to believe he doesn’t know about Cook’s Nazi roleplaying? Or that Climate Nazi wannabes have in the past quoted mein kampf, called for skeptics to be rounded up and place in concentration camps, made propaganda films full of false depictions of their enemies or even showing their children being killed for daring to disagree, or any of the many other Nazi like behavior they have got up to? Really?
Harry, it is very well accepted that Godwin’s Law does NOT apply in cases where people have actually been photographed dressed as Nazis.
In that particular case Quatermain’s Law applies, and it is open season on them: Give them as much flak as possible.
Markx
“Harry, it is very well accepted that Godwin’s Law does NOT apply in cases where people have actually been photographed dressed as Nazis.”
Reference?
“In that particular case Quatermain’s Law applies…”
I have never heard of Quatermain’s Law before, do you have a reference to that one also?
Yes Harry: references here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+gullible&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
And here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+nitwit&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
😉
harrytwinotter, if You photoshop yourself as a SS Officer then I will call You out as a bad person who is offensive to those who suffered in the Holocaust.
You don’t get to claim “Godwin” or “It’s just a laugh” or that “My freedom of speech means I can support the SS”.
You do have that freedom, but you will be condemned.
That’s what Cook did. I condemn him for it.
You support him for it.
Be ashamed.
M Courtney.
Well I did, so too bad. You do not get to tell me to feel ashamed.
They appear to be a lark.
As to your other accusations – bizarre. You might as well accuse WUWT of the same as they are promoting the photos to a wide audience. Not to mention other satire I have seen this website.
PS nice of you to comment on my comment that is still under moderation, moderator’s privilege I guess.
[mcourtney is not a moderator here, and has no access to the system of any kind -mod]
Harry, a “lark”? Let’s just say he had a lapse of judgement. Fine. One of my friends dressed as Hitler for Halloween in High School. His explanation, “it was the scariest costume I could think of”. However, it was still considered offensive and he was forced to go home and change.
However, Cook isn’t a child in school. He made those pictures as an adult and posted several of them himself. It shows his lack of character and judgement.
To compare, When SkS was first launched, Watts and the mod group cracked down on anyone who used the “SS” acronym for the site, citing it as poor taste and name caling.
Personally, I would not continue to post them. However, using them as examples of the quality of this man’s reasoning while discussing his poor judgement on another matter? That is certainly fair game in the realm of debate.
“[mcourtney is not a moderator here, and has no access to the system of any kind -mod]”
Fair enough, I made a mistake. My comment was flagged as “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”, so I assumed only moderators could see it, other than me.
benofhouston.
Indications are the photos were downloaded from the SkS server without consent. A photo intended for a private audience. And a satirical photo at that. It may well have been done in response to the SS slur posted by some of the commenters on this forum.
“poor judgement on another matter?”
Well that is an accusation only, and a serious one. Identity Theft is considered a crime under many legal jurisdictions. Personally, I do not see any relation to the Godwin, other than to perhaps discredit Cook.
That’s what Osama Bin laden said too. You got the denial down pat.
hey hoary:
you should be ashamed.
your mom should be ashamed…9 months of work for less than nothing.
You are really going to try and claim that these pictures were private? If you post pictures on a public web server, then they are public. If we had gone into his e-mail account, hacked into his PC, or broke into his iCloud, then that would be something else entirely.
As for Identity Theft being serious accusation. Yes it is. However, the evidence is unambigious, actions were clearly done by Cook, and he admitted to it in his own words with the explicit statement that desired effect and (from responses) the actual effect was to make people think that Motyl was writting comments. Unless you somehow are saying that someone else posted as Coook pretending to have been posting as Motyl, a defense that surely would have surfaced by now, trying to say.that he didn’t do it is invalid and commenting about the seriousness of the charge. You can make the case that this isn’t Identity theft in a legal sense, but that’s an entirely different discussion.
The pictures were raised in the commentary of his reasoning for how he thought this could be mildly acceptable, which is an opinion piece. Pulling up the fact that he has shown poor judgement in the past is perfectly valid in this context.
benofhouston.
Familiarise yourself with the details before you accuse someone of something.
And always keep in mind: the forum postings were stolen.
Notice: no condemnation of Cook’s deliberate deception, but rather an attack on WUWT.
Just as I said would happen. So predictable.
TonyG.
“deliberate deception”.
You have evidence of a deception? I do not see any myself.
the only evidence here is that youre an asshat.
If one wants to talk about deliberate deception, one might ask who “harrytwinotter” actually is. Given he’s posting from Cook’s neighborhood in Australia, and given his bent here, one might think he’s got some connection to the SkS crowd. How about it “Harry”… care to expound on what I already know?
come on anthiny…let us know who is behind the sock puppet?
I’m surprised that he chose Heinrich Himmler for the Photoshop. Wouldn’t his role model be Joseph Goebbels, surely ?
Whatever, I think I’ll post the description of the end of Herr Goebbels from Wikipedia, as it does give some hope:
“On the evening of 1 May 1945, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths.[225] According to Kunz’s later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler’s personal doctor, who administered the cyanide.[225]
At around 20:30, Goebbels and his wife left the bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they committed suicide.[226] There are several different accounts of this event. According to one account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself. Another account was that they each bit on a cyanide ampule and were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards.[227] Goebbels’ SS adjutant Günther Schwägermann testified in 1948 that the couple walked ahead of him up the stairs and out into the Chancellery garden. He waited in the stairwell and heard the shots sound.[226] Schwägermann then walked up the remaining stairs and once outside he saw the lifeless bodies of the couple. Following Joseph Goebbels’ prior order, Schwägermann had an SS soldier fire several shots into Goebbels’ body, which did not move.[226]
The bodies were then doused with petrol, but the remains were only partially burned and not buried.[227] A few days later, Voss was brought back to the bunker by the Soviets to identify the partly burned bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and the bodies of their children. The remains of the Goebbels’ family, Hitler, Eva Braun, General Krebs, and Hitler’s dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed.[228] The last burial was at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. In 1970, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains.[229] On 4 April 1970, a Soviet KGB team used detailed burial charts to exhume five wooden boxes at the Magdeburg SMERSH facility. The remains from the boxes were burned, crushed, and scattered into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.[230]”
I’m not sure about the wayback machine being tampered with in the future so I thought I’d post this again, before William Connolley changes the Wiki entry to:
“Josef Goebbels’ family lived happily ever after”.
Anthony Watts.
An attempt at a subject change. Very well. If you are indeed “Anthony Watts” (I have no way of telling), you should discuss your accusation of identify theft based on stolen information you received. Not to mention not being able to tell the difference between a photoshopped photo and an actual photo.
Yes visit Australia, have a drive around. Big place hey? They speak English there too. I have heard their weather is better in spring.
So you think you know something (which I doubt because you show aptitude for making stuff up). In that case care to expound of how much care you take with the privacy of your commenters?
[when it comes to disruptive trolls with fake names and throwaway email addresses to hide identity, I don’t much care about your concerns, as stated in our policy page, if you want respect, use your name. I’ve been to Australia, and I know far more about this entire episode that you do, unless of course, you are John Cook or one of his forum buddies posing here as “harrytwinotter” 😉 – Anthony]
I have posted a link to this thread on Andrew Bolt’s forum and on Tim Blair’s forum.
John Cook’s on-again, off-again “Doctorate” was “on” for this revealing presentation at Univ. of Queensland Centre for the Study of Science, Religion and Society
“Dr John Cook, The University of Queensland, “Climate Change and the Weightier Matters: a Christian View on Global Warming”, 3 August 2012”
https://youtu.be/61shBfzGCQw
So now we know (at least one of) the sources of the identity thieves trying to ruin the reputations of skeptics. I myself was the victim of identity fraud right here on WUWT some months back. Some anonymous slimeball using faked IP addresses posted a whole lot of mindless, hate-filled trollbait signed with my name. Most of it was directed at moderators of WUWT, so until the chaos got sorted out, I got temporarily banned from WUWT. My personal and professional reputation took a massive hit. Sales of my sceptical book, Carbon Is Life, fell off a cliff.
I don’t think Cook wrote the fakes posted under my name – the style of Cook’s fakes is much more insidious and understated, whereas the fakes in my name were simply nasty hate-filled drivel. But now we discover that “the Lubos thing. Was … for the UWA experiment…” !
So is Cook teaching researchers to forge identities of innocent people who disagree with them, and trash their names and reputations? Did THIS get ethics approval from already known to be corrupt UWA “ethics” process? Is there a whole class of gullible waifs over there in the deep west obediently trashing reputations far and wide – but always of skeptics?
This is my warning to every skeptic posting honest and thoughtful articles and comments anywhere: there are alarmist scum willing to descend into the dirtiest moral sewers in order to ruin you. Every now and then run a search for your own name appearing on climate forums, and make sure that everything that seems to have been posted by you, really was.
And my warning to Cook: as we close in on the fraudster who stole my good name, I am increasingly confident of an action for defamation against the individual concerned. And if said individual is or was a student or collaborator of yours, expect your name to be included.
Ron,
I’ve just ordered a copy of your book, as a small compensation for the financial harm done to you by these low lifes. I liked the colourful flowers on the cover 🙂
Fellow WUWTers, perhaps more of you could rally round so that Ron can afford to pursue legal redress and nail this scum.
My reply to Phil. is in moderation. Unfortunately, a paragraph I intended to be bolded is presented as being a quotation which it is not. Sorry.
Ron House:
Thankyou for reporting the identity theft of you on WUWT and the ensuing difficulties. That was news to me and I am saddened by it.
I write to warn that your intention to seek legal redress has little hope.
I, too, have suffered from impersonation on the web and also – including on WUWT – trolls claiming I had said other than I had.
The original case I experienced was a long smear campaign by John Hunter against John Daly and me. That campaign concentrated on me when John Daly died. Hunter’s campaign was a response to John Daly providing a journal with evidence – based on documents I obtained from the RS Library in London – that a paper by John Hunter was based on fabricated data. Hunter’s smears were widely quoted on the web as being true, and I could usually tell where they originated because they repeated Hunter’s claim that I lived in a town I have never visited. But all legal advice was for me to ignore the campaign because the costs and difficulties of a legal case against someone in a foreign land would be too great.
Richard
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your kind thoughts. I was sad to hear you had received a similarly disgraceful attack. I think a large part of these attacks is intended to make us distrust each other, never being quite sure what other people really stand for. I probably wouldn’t waste my time and money if the attacker turns out to be a lone loser in the US. But if said loser has attachments to Cook, that’s a different matter entirely. And I’m in the same country as Cook! 😉
The claim that you lived in Epsom appears to have originated with an oufit called SourceWatch, presumably confusion with your employers address?
Phil.
As usual, you are wrong.
The Epsom assertion was first promulgated as one of Hunter’s lies. SourceWatch was one of several smear sites that copied it along with other more serious fabrications from Hunter. In light of a current WUWT thread, it is perhaps worth noting that the site of Greg Foster (aka Tamino) was another which copied and publicised Hunter’s lies.
The only practical response is to ignore the smear campaigns because attempts to refute them encourages mud to stick. But, as your post demonstrates, the malign remember the falsehoods and try to justify them.
Richard
At the EDX web site; one can post reviews.
https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x-0
So I am posting this:
I suspect that the comments go into limbo until approved. When I click ‘post review’, nothing happens to indicate a posting.
Got it; must rate at least one full star on something.
Now wouldn’t it be fun if it could be shown that his fellow course instructors knew about Cook’s identity theft !
Did you take a screen dump to prove that you posted it?
Cook is a participant in the Stonehouse Standing Circle, the strategic planning forum run by PR professional and DeSmog director, James Hoggan with David Suzuki etc. (funded by internet gambling money from launderer, John LeFevre)
Professional mind molding is not known as a field allowing for skepticism and self criticism, add the conviction that all opposition is morally degenerate, the skill to frame and tailor opinion at will and the result should not surprise.
http://stonehousesummit.com/about-stonehouse
[snip – over the top -mod]
If these warmists have to cheat to get their points across than that makes me wonder about the quality of these points, apart from the quality of their consciousness.
Followed up with posting this comment to CNN’s climate denial article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/opinions/cook-techniques-climate-change-denial/
WUWT is at its best when presenting data and analysis and at its worst when engaging in personal attacks of this nature.
Balderdash.
The personal attack is taking someone else’s identity and defaming them by posting comments that they would never have made under the other person’s identity.
I do not doubt that the accusations are accurate nor that they should be made public but only whether WUWT is the right vehicle for their expression. Posts like
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/23/plight-of-the-bumble-bees-how-shabby-climate-analyses-and-lax-peer-review-promote-a-dreadful-remedy/
have set the bar very high for this blog.
Re “Jamal Munshi”:
My analyses have shown that a reliable method of detecting trolling is to look for comments that start with a compliment for the website as a whole, followed by a denunciation. Genuine posters simply state their case, good or bad.
Yep. Standard False Flag concern troll tactics. They know their usual bull won’t work when one of their own has been caught red handed like this. And few if any will want to try to stand behind him because it will just make them look equally corrupt. So expect to see scores of ‘new’ posters who all sing from the same hymn book about how this isn’t really science and can’t we all just get back to discussing what the El Nino is doing or what the real climate sensitivity might be. Nothing to be seen here, move along.
this is a thread concerned with discussing an individuals actions and behavior…this is in no way a “personal” attack…whats being attacked are actions.
Jamal Munshi, I suspect you are John Cook in disguise.
Indeed, I am assuming you are a liar.
That is what John Cook has done by practising deceit. He has poisoned the well of debate.
And you now look like a liar because of it.
[the person Jamal Munshi, is most definitely NOT John Cook, do’t make that assuption – mod]
Regarding Cook’s behavior in using Motl’s name, it appears that Cook faked reality on purpose.
Lying is the process of intentionally faking reality, therefore Cook is a liar.
Lying is fundamentally self-abdication from reality. Cook has.
John
Over the years, I’ve read on this blog about a lot of bizarre and dishonest behavior on the part of climate change alarmists, but this takes the cake. Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but what the f–ck?
:O
A more charitable (although possibly false) explanation is that perhaps they were writing various fake comments to train people how to evaluate and classify comments (although having them all written by AGW proponents undermines the effectiveness of this as a training exercise, arguably). That’s the least damning explanation I can come up with.
Regardless, it’s defamatory to use actual people. They should have used pseudonyms, not real people’s identities—even if it was all a training exercise.
But if they were actually used to produce a paper, holy c-w!
Um, guys. You’re kind of missing a huge element of this story. This post says:
Implying this “experiment” had something to do with the Moon Landing paper, but that’s not the case. This experiment was an entirely different matter. The actual experiment was discussed in the Skeptical Science forum. In fact, that discussion was part of what led to the discovery of John Cook having done this (which I’ve known about for some time now and thought was old news).
Long story short, John Cook wanted to “prove” being exposed to skeptics made people dumber, therefore the best way to handle the global warming debate was to effectively exclude skeptics. This is the fundamental underpinning of the innoculation approach he now advocates in all of his lectures and public relations campaigns. One of the first steps toward this idea was the “experiment” he refers to here. It’s described as:
The entire point of the campaign was to make fake comments, so it is no surprise fake names were used. Using the name of an actual person was stupid, but it’s hardly the serious offense people are making it out to be since it was just in the Skeptical Science forum. If the Skeptical Science group wants to use the names of skeptics within their own little forum, it’s messed up, but… who really cares?
By the way, there’s no need to look at e-mail or IP addresses. John Cook flat-out said he made that account in another thread:
If you ask me, the real story here is that the UWA was involved in an “experiment” this silly. The results of this “experiment” show fake comments intentionally written by people to be terrible mockeries of those they dislike cause confusion in onlookers.
Seriously. That’s what the UWA spends it’s time and money studying?
Brandon writes “If the Skeptical Science group wants to use the names of skeptics within their own little forum, it’s messed up, but… who really cares?”
Well if they used a “Brandon Shollenberger” fake account and posted replies on your behalf, I suspect you’d be pretty upset about it too. Afterall “the public” are going to read them and think you’ve got no clue about whatever “you” posted about.
Whether the public are dumber for that is arguable, but there is little doubt the public perception of you is going to be that you’re dumber…
So I expect to answer your question, you would care.
Huh? Did you read what I said? As I clearly said:
So no, I wouldn’t care. I mean, I’d be confused if John Cook decided to post in his forum under the name Brandon Shollenberger, but why would it matter to me? You say:
But no, they wouldn’t. That was my entire point. Cook only did this within the Skeptical Science forum. If their forum hadn’t been released for public dissemination, something he never wanted to happen, nobody outside their group would have seen him use the fake name.
I repeat, these comments were not posted publicly; they were posted privately.
Brandon writes “If their forum hadn’t been released for public dissemination, something he never wanted to happen, nobody outside their group would have seen him use the fake name.”
But it was released and so Lubos was seen to have posted like that. Besides, what kind of “experiment” has a set number of “internal” postings (no doubt for statistical purposes) and no public interaction at all?
I suspect the original intention was to post them for public interaction. If not, what would you speculate was their intention with this “experiment” ?
Brandon: “John Cook wanted to “prove” being exposed to skeptics made people dumber”. Ok, made which people dumber? I presume the wider public, not the SKS inner core.
Good research by the way.
TimTheToolMan:
So what? If John Cook wants to roleplay Brandon Shollenberger in the bedroom and video tape it, he can. That’s true even if later on somebody breaks into his house, copies the tapes and releases them to the public. I wouldn’t be bothered by it.
(Unless somebody actually forced me to watch the videos. But then I’d be mad at them, not Cook).
None. But this answer goes for AntonyIndia too, if you read the forum, you’ll see Cook tells the Skeptic Science the comments they submit will be anonymized before being used in the experiment. That means all the names, fake or real, would be removed from the comments before they were seen by anyone participating in the experiment. Which is exactly what you’d expect if you thought about how an experiment like this would be done with an unbiased mind as nobody would want to do an experiment like this with identifiable names being used. But you:
Even though the intention of the experiment is explicitly laid out in the forum. Heck, you wouldn’t even have to go to the forum. I quoted the post which laid it all out. Just by reading the comments you responded to, you’d have seen the intention was to use these comments “in the lab at UWA” and “we’ll of course change the names in the lab experiment.”
But no, why would anyone bother to read what they respond to? Why look at what people who’ve researched subjects provide as evidence or consider the possibility there might be a reason they hold the views they hold? It’s not like evidence or critical thought is supposed to matter here or anything.
Brandon writes “Just by reading the comments you responded to, you’d have seen the intention was to use these comments “in the lab at UWA” and “we’ll of course change the names in the lab experiment.”
Fair enough. I expect that will apply to the Lubos name too. You’re right.
Brandon is correct in assessing this as terribly silly ‘experimentation’ … (plainly it in no way ranks as any sort science, in company with some other ‘cognitive psychology’ online surveys).
However that does not mitigate the other issue: The use of someone’s name to make false statements within a group of any size or structure is undoubtedly offensive, and ignorant, and also it was also very naive to assume it would never be leaked or otherwise become public.
It sounds like a simple minded exercise in justifying the excluding dissenting voices from a (the?) debate.
It all raises some serious questions about the intelligence and sanity of the man.
His SS cosplay was leaked. He knew it was going to be leaked.
It was not intended to be private.
It couldn’t be private as the effect of sceptic comments on the experimenters is meaningless. It needed those who weren’t in on the gag to see the fake comments.
MarkX, it actually answers many questions about the intelligence and sanity of the man.
Maybe posting on SkS makes one dumber ….
@ur momisugly Brandon Shollenberger July 23, 2015 at 9:05 pm
As a participant on “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” I noticed many comments under a name of “Brandon Shollenberger”.
Was that commenter you, or, a sockpuppet? How would other course participants know?
That was me. It also wasn’t a forum for the Skeptical Science group, or a little forum. In other words, it wasn’t anything like the forum in question, so your rhetorical point is highly misleading.
Seriously, why do you guys care so much about what name somebody posted under in a small, private forum where people largely knew what he was doing? If you could show me anyone other than maybe a Skeptical Science person was tricked by this, I’d care. But you can’t, because they’re the only ones who saw it.
Brandon Scholl……so you post often at SKS, huh? All the while defending the stupidity from them.
Cook illicits fake responses in order to draw a conclusion denigrating his opposition….WOW!!!….And you defend his madness because….”it was never supposed to be public.” SO F@CKING WHAT!?!?!…..He used the fake comments to “teach” and to “inform” through his experimentation and to what affect?–all it can possibly show is that disengenuous alarmists make really stupid and misleading comments.
gaelansclark:
Yes, clearly that’s it. I post so often at SkS, that’s how I knew what sort of uniforms they like to Photoshop themselves into over there. And I released that information because I thought everybody would think the people there are great for dressing up like that, because everybody loves a good WWII reference.
I mean, obviously all I ever do is defend SkS. Lewandowsky, Cook, Nuccitelli. They’re all my pals. The only person who likes me more is Michael Mann.
Brandon:
Your interest in our concerns is faked.
If you don’t agree, that’s your business. You stated your opinion, that’s it.
All the rest of your comments are diversionary; stunted absurd attempts to demean others here.
Facts:
Cook faked comments.
Cook solicited others to fake comments.
Cook extensively solicited others to fake comments in order to seriously skew comments. Then promised to falsify records and retroactively change data into anonymous records.
Cook used the names of people whose opinions he derided to post false comments under their names.
That last one is identity theft. Damaging a person’s reputation and character, in print, is libel.
Cook is a liar. Cook creates and incites fake data and research. Cook defames others.
And you insist this is a problem for you, Brandon? Other than whining at us, what is your purpose posting all of your complaints about our concerns?
Brandon:
You know, as well as anyone who has any real experience with the internet, that anything posted under a directory with an URL address is public unless specifically restricted or otherwise protected.
That’s the way web crawlers basically work, testing urls and scraping their unprotected contents.
People trying to create their first websites often create directories that are ‘public’, but links are not provided in the main web site’s pages. That does not make the private. It does make them ‘disconnected’ or not ‘linked’.
You know all this Brandon as your web skills are well above the ordinary.
Following up my previous comment;
Cook brilliantly, or not, posted his nefarious intent and actions on the web!
Post under a website address? It is public unless specific restrictions and protections are enabled. Ignorance or lack of intelligence does not make the website or the posts any less public!
Back in 1995, I interviewed a web programmer for a position. Since they mentioned currently working at a company developing web programs; I asked specifically what their working url and subdirectory was. During the interview, I turned and typed the url into my computer and up popped their current work.
Their work was very good and yes, we did hire them. However, their shock at all of their current coding being exposed on the web was immense. After bring stunned and alarmed, they claimed it couldn’t be live… Surely their administrator was putting protections in?…
The candidate willing provided a few more ‘secret’ directories and we quickly discovered that even their ‘secret’ exclusive web coding was easily accessible.
Before we hired that person, they dashed back to their supervisor who raised the issues with their security department and system administrators. Outside of their public business front web pages, all of the sub-directories vanished from public view within a week.
Ignorance, arrogance, stupidity, or all three are not a defense. Coding on the web is equivalent to standing in a crowded mall and shouting to everyone. You want privacy? Take and practice precaution!
I think Brandon needs to increase his legal knowledge. He doesn’t seem to understand libel.
In the cyber age, there is no longer an expectation that one’s comments will remain private. “You can libel someone by writing about them on a personal blog, providing at least one person accesses the defamatory material.”
So John Cook is responsible for his actions whether in a private forum or not, since he has no control over how that information will be used. Is impersonating another individual libelous? Probably.
That being said, the offense has to be significant enough to warrant pursuing it in court, otherwise you’re simply wasting your time and money. Dr. Motl seems to understand that even if some here don’t. He might be better off seeking a retraction or pursuing it through academic channels rather than the courts. At the moment he seems to be having a bit of fun with it, so should everyone.
ATheoK “Cook is a liar. Cook creates and incites fake data and research. Cook defames others.” The fake data and research Cook has created has played an important part in the ongoing fraud and destruction of science which has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, destroyed the careers and reputations of many scientists, caused the adoption of destructive environmental solutions, wasted trillions of dollars, and helped create a global nazi police state while UN NGOs destroyed the environment in third world countries and displace indigenous people.
Anyone involved in this fraud is evil. I don’t want to get complacent about scammers.
Brandon, “Lubos Motl” is not a fake name. Making fake comments by a real person does cross an ethical line; it’s not just stupid.
For an experiment it would be proper to use real threads from real blogs. For real data, not fake posts for fake results.
I’m sure that if someone posted as Brandon under a closed NAMBLA forum, he’d be thrilled.
but brandon there weren’t “fake nam,es” used …there were real names used…real names of real people who deserve some control over just what thoughts and opinions to which their(unusual( names are attached.
They aren’t fake names…they are someone else name.
Hows about I go on some fettish site and start posting about how much you like scat?
sorry for the typo brandon. that word should read “fetish”
As for the ice core record showing that atmospheric CO2 concentration lags temperature: That is true over a good ice core record of close to half a million years. And for around/over 99.95% of that time, the sum of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere was largely constant. Warming caused carbon to move from the hydrosphere to the atmosphere in form of CO2, and this (and its cooling converse) formed a positive feedback.
Nowadays and ever since fairly accurate carbon budget accounting started around 1958, human activity is and has been extracting a lot of carbon from the lithosphere and transferring it to the sum of the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Unlike 99.95-plus % of the past which was before the Industrial Revolution, the warming is accompanied by the atmosphere having carbon being removed from it by the sum of the biosphere and hydrosphere, mostly the hydrosphere.
And please do not get confused away from this fact by citations that improperly equate a ton of carbon with a ton of CO2 – a ton of carbon is the carbon content in 3.664 tons of CO2. Global carbon budget figures are often in terms of gigatons (AKA petagrams) of carbon.