From the “adhere to the consensus or else!” department.
Statement by NAS, NAE, and NAM Presidents on Effort to Counter Online Misinformation
We are pleased to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are exploring ways to mobilize our expertise to counter misinformation on the web related to science, engineering, and health. Part of the mission of the National Academies has always been to help ensure that public discourse is informed by the best available evidence. To that end, we are convening Academy members to discuss ways by which we could help verify the integrity and accuracy of content in these fields in a manner that is consistent with our standards for objective, trustworthy, evidence-based information; this exploratory phase will be supported by a grant from Google. We are excited to pursue an effort that aligns with our fundamental principles and that we believe is critically important at a time when misinformation is a threat to sound decision-making and an informed citizenry.
Marcia McNutt
President, National Academy of Sciences
C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr.
President, National Academy of Engineering
Victor J. Dzau
President, National Academy of Medicine
Source: NAS website
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…..so they say this in a press release
The irony it hurts……….
If it’s choice between choosing to believe Breitbart or Fox News vs academically respected scinetists, I will choose scientists every time. All the major news organizations are power and profit driven, while mosr scientists worry about their a academic standing and reputation…honestly. In the meantime, the Earth groans while we debate.
> …vs academically respected scinetists
So plate tectonics is a tinfoil crazy idea? It took decades but it prevailed.
academically respected scinetists = couldn’t get real jobs
https://youtu.be/RjzC1Dgh17A
Can I have what ever Drugs your taking i have quit believing the so Called Pro’s when they started falsifying the Data from NASA and NOAA
Henry, what have Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, John Christie, Roger Pielke(s) – Jr and Senior, Willie Moon, Sallie Bolinus (just to name a few) have to do with FOX News or Breitbart?!
(We could mention the late Richard Feynman and Michael Crichton to rub it in.)
To be polite, your argument is a classic strawman, comparing disparate entities.
Please do better if you are trying to make a point with this audience.
Earth groaned (and survived) well before “man” was on the planet.
If it’s choice between choosing to believe….CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, NYTimes, NPR, PBS, BBC, CDC, CBS, Washington Post, Economist, Google, USA Today, New Yorker, Slate, Time, News Week, The Atlantic, ……………
…my list is longer
Henry Lewis: You are way off base. You may think that “academically respected scientists” are members of your tribe, and that they have special qualities of knowledge, discernment, and wisdom that others lack, And therefore you should believe their pronunciamientos. And you are foolish to believe such things.
i am here to tell you that “academically respected scientists” are just the same as you and I. They are subject to self delusion, bias, greed, and arrogance as the rest of us. They deceive themselves and the public regularly as is shown by the number of studies on the lack of reproducibility published over the last few years.
Nullius In Verba, baby. That is the only good advice there is.
I can say with certainty that no one here just blindly “believes Fox News”. Fox News is part of the MSM, slave of Big Pharma, promoting prevention drugs, measuring physiological “constants”, medical normalisation, the (almost always useless) flu vaccine, and even pushed the “Russian hacking” nonsense for a long time. (Tucker Carlson brings some sanity and a little healthy skepticism.)
S-t, you can “say with certainly that no one here just ‘blindly believes Fox News…'”, but I can say with equal certainly that this is laughable. A lot of people here are like people I know personally. They buy into every bald-faced conspiracy theory promoted by Sean Hannity and the rest of the Trump hucksters.
Do you really think that “Russian hacking” is nonsense”? Are U.S. Intelligence officials, like the New York Times, simply lying to us? Trump thinks so. We need to try harder to be skeptical about what we hear and read, and to transcend ideology, if we are to be serious about seeking the truth.
Let’s look at the NYT for a minute. At one time they were entitled to credibility because of the depth of their reporting staff, along with other indicia of thoroughness. But their behavior on the climate change issue tells me that they can be as agenda-driven as any other media outfit, and has caused me to question their credibility in other areas. So, I’ve dropped the NYT and am trying the WSJ, who are also agenda-driven but try a bit harder to be fair.
I’ll probably be disappointed, but hey, live and learn.
“Everybody has an agenda, except me.” Michael Crichton
The trolls around here sure are convinced of their own virtue.
It really is amazing how trolls assume that anyone who doesn’t believe as I tell them to is either stupid, evil, or both.
“Are U.S. Intelligence officials, like the New York Times, simply lying to us?”
What about de-funding the NSA, CIA, and the computer forensic department of the FBI?
Apparently, “CrowdStrike” has all the computer analysis skills plus all the geopolitical analysis skills. And they add a nice artistic touch. Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the terrible aesthetics of the NSA PowerPoint graphics, causing a national artistic crisis.
I find it fascinating how trolls actually believe that all scientists only care about science.
There isn’t a single one who cares about money.
Then again, the fool also believes that the earth is groaning, so he’s used to hearing imaginary things.
I just got a cookie on a site that was an AAAS ad soliciting money. A good authority told me when legal profession started this it was a sign of corruption.
From https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
“First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.”
“Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.”
“The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.”
RIP Jerry.
> We are pleased to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are exploring ways to mobilize our expertise to counter misinformation on the web related to science, engineering, and health.
“Engineering” misinformation has a short half-life anywhere. Moreso on the internet. You are never going to be able to get rid of “WTC Building 7” conspiracies because they aren’t engineering. IMHO you don’t want to try from a position of authority as is suggested here. Engineering advances but not by overturning past knowledge unlike medicine and of course climate studies.
“Engineering” misinformation = Prison… at least, that’s the equation in the private sector.
I recall when I was still employed that whenever I got a missive from the “Powers that Be” that started with the phrase “We are pleased to announce”, I needed to plan on a smaller take-home pay.
“we are convening Academy members to discuss ways by which we could help verify the integrity and accuracy of content in these fields in a manner that is consistent with our standards for objective, trustworthy, evidence-based information”
I´m not impressed by the “standards” of National Academy of Sciences. In my view, it is a verbose mess:
Fostering Integrity in Research
Mine is much better:
Principles of science and ethical guidelines for scientific conduct (v9.0)
“From the “adhere to the consensus or else!” department.”
What is the “or else”? It seems to me they are saying, if we think you’re wrong, we’ll explain why. Doesn’t seem like “police mode”.
And if they’re wrong, we remove them from their jobs and deny them a long retirement of pension payments and free health care, okay? Nah, they’ve been wrong on climate science for almost 3 decades, so let’s just skip to that part right now. And the next government bureaucrat pretending to be a scientist, or an academic taking government funding whines about critics in the pay of big oil without the equivalent of a cancelled check in hand, they get the boot, too.
“And if they’re wrong, we remove them from their jobs and deny them a long retirement of pension payments and free health care”
Now that sounds like police mode.
No, just good accounting and accountability practices.
Nick, they are in that mode indeed.
I watched the entire program of the NAS and they are circling the wagons for self-protection.
It’s a racket now, and they must enforce their territory like any other gang, and they are gearing up for it.
They know what’s coming, and they don’t want to admit it – they are afraid.
So the guy who chaired the meeting, Titley, is on record in several Extreme Weather reports published by the NAS, as declaring anything but human caused warming is ‘counter-factual’. The bias is built-in.
Titley discussed forming a ‘rapid’ attribution response team to ‘inform’ and ‘counter’ any alternative explanations for extreme events.
What we have here is the intention to get in the face of Americans everywhere to keep pushing the AGW agenda under the cover of the ‘authority’ of the academies, A L L the T I M E!
People here should understand, whether you’re a lukewarmer or 100% solar, they’re after us, and they’re going to the public. It has all the smell and feel of a Barack Obama community organized democrat party operation intended to win votes in the next election.
They’re going to get aggressive folks. They consider the skeptics a minor constituency at about 10%, and call us skeptics ‘dismissives’. Of course they are projecting. They are the dismissives. So they are going to pull out every trick in the book.
I listened to the NAS keynote speaker Richard Alley, and I was astonished at the virtually communist attitude from him, and many of the others who spoke. The main thing they really care about is no loss of status or income. They are forming an enforcement apparatus to keep themselves in the good money and high esteem.
The amazing thing to me is the absolute disregard for where the American people really are, which is either most don’t think its a big problem, or it’s no problem. Skeptics elected Trump, and they hate it.
Just like any other NY gang, the warmist thugs feel they have to go out now and make sure the neighborhood is “being protected” by them, so everyone has to pay their tribute to the gang, because well, after all, according to the gang, GHGs wag the ocean and everything else, which according to them is everyone’s fault, so everyone has to pay. It’s very simple. It’s a liberal protection racket. They think no one has anything but them, and they expect everyone to cave to their demands.
If I were a paid member of the engineering branch of NAS, knowing what I know about the dominant role of solar influence, I’d be more than irritated my academy was being used by eco-commies, and I’d be working against that.
After seeing all the whining from the self-declared liberals there, the realization came to me that these people need a sharp knock on the head from the American people. There must be thousands of skeptical members in the NAS branches, and the NAS does not speak for them.
Existing skeptical members should be encouraged to pressure the NAS to drop it. The American people are sick and tired of this continual blame game and nonstop propaganda.
This country needs to change, and skeptics are leading the way, and this must continue.
I agree with you, Bob.
I wondered a few months ago whether something like this was coming: that the Harvey et al. 2017 BioScience paper was meant to start greasing the skids for search engine censorship. Peer-revieded “evidence” that the people need to be protected against certain online content.
https://polarbearscience.com/2018/01/07/did-harvey-et-al-authors-aim-to-help-google-censor-polar-bear-information/
My guess is the attack on blogs with regard to polar bears was the beginning of more to come, now that Lewandowsky and Harvey have a willing partner with the folks at BioScience.
Brazen moves that say more about them than it does about anything else, let alone science.
Who’s “we”?
“we” is the mouse in Ms. McNut’s pocket.
The new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), has added Traditional Chinese Medicine (a gross misnomer, since TCM is the handiwork of Mao in the 1940s-50s). So now a doctor can code for such things as:
SG26: Bladder meridian pattern
SG29: Triple energizer meridian pattern
SF57: Liver qi stagnation pattern
McNutty needs to have a SWAT team waddle over to the World Health Organization’s mothership, because it’s quacking like a … like a quack.
Orwell’s Directorate of Truth is Born! Hail! Now ye in homage and humility.
Next up, the Office of the Hily Science Inquisition. Heretics can buy your own stakes since no grant money exists for that.
Will this really work? Science is a pretty contentious and vituperative enterprise. Maybe the academies should take Google’s money and laugh up their sleeves.
“We are pleased to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are exploring ways to mobilize our expertise to counter misinformation on the web related to science, engineering, and health.” Science turns evil. Believe us or be destroyed—yep, I see Galilieo all over again.
Oh, guys, would you stop panicking? Google is an American company. They don’t even try to block pron, which I find personally disgusting. I doubt that Ms Mcnut has a clue re: what she’s implying, i.e., trying to block the opinions of other people from the internet.
If Ms. McNut thinks that she and others of her ilk can block free speech such as a different result over which she has no control, or even a differing opinion, they are sadly mistaken. A differing opinion is only a threat to someone who, like Ms. McNut, wants to be the ONLY ONE to have a say in something. And let’s do remember that the datasets that they publish contain altered data, not raw data.
Censorship?: Well, Google, then shut off the pron that you allow to run online and we’ll talk. A major 1st amendment complaint will make them look like fools. At the same time, WUWT can have their own server as some people I know have already done.
The title should say “Though Police Mode”
Talk about misinformation on the web. I suggest the NAS start by demanding the misinformation statement: “CO2 is a heat-trapping gas be removed from the internet.” CO2 gas both absorbs and radiates electromagnetic energy in sub-bands of the IR band. However to elevate the IR absorption behavior of CO2 gas to the level where it can be proclaimed that “CO2 gas traps heat” is (a) at a minimum misinformation, (b) at best misleading and (c) at worst nonsense. Heat cannot be trapped. In the absence of work being performed, there is no substance known to man that will prevent thermal energy from moving from a higher temperature object to a lower temperature object. If you think there is such a substance, please let the heating/refrigeration industry know what it is–they’ll greatly appreciate the information. The only way known to man to prevent the spontaneous transfer of thermal energy between two objects is to bring the two objects to the same temperature. If because CO2 gas absorbs electromagnetic radiation in sub-bands of the IR band, it’s valid to claim “CO2 is a heat trapping gas;” then because CO2 gas radiates electromagnetic radiation in sub-bands of the IR band, it’s equally valid to claim “CO2 is a heat-freeing gas.”
Try convincing the general public that man’s generation of CO2 gas via fossil fuel burning and dispersal of that gas into the atmosphere is going to heat the earth by repeatedly and loudly proclaiming “CO2 is a heat-freeing gas! CO2 is a heat-freeing gas! CO2 is a heat-freeing gas!” Yeah, that’ll work.
NAS – National Academy of Silence
Scientists do not know, they only think they know. This is why the earth is not flat like it used to be.
When was Earth flat?
The NAS had better be careful what they wish for. The SF Judge just called out Dr. Myles Allen for a misleading graphic and possible fraud in the SF Bond issuance.
Tangled Web: San Francisco and Oakland Discounted Climate Risk in Municipal Bond Offerings and Other Blunders
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/tangled-web-san-francisco-and-oakland-discounted-climate-risk-in-municipal-bond-offerings-and-other-blunders/
I didn’t want to bring adult entertainment on WUWT(*), but the Stormy(**) Daniel controversy is predicated on the idea that payments made for PR purpose in an election cycle are covered by election laws regarding financing of electoral propaganda(***).
“Climate science” is a major electoral issue in the US.
Isn’t money spent on science information, or even against science disinformation, also covered by election laws? If so, would the contributions to NAS be under the supervision of the FEC?
(*) as so called “climate science”/”catastrophic global warming” is already a special kind of entertainment for adults
(**) another effect of climate change?
(***) laws that might well be unconstitutional, which is beside the point