Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I thought I’d take a more detailed look at the claims of the recent paper entitled “Discrepancies in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians.”. The paper is discussed here on WUWT. I’m number 148 out of 386 on their list of contrarians, based on how many times I got mentioned in the media. But there are some bizarre oddities in their reckoning of media visibility.
One of their “media mentions” in my list is a hit piece on me over at PopTech. The guy who wrote it obviously hates me. I won’t link to it, it’s ugly and untrue. But this counts on their planet as media visibility. (Fools like PopTech don’t seem to realize that when they write such hit pieces, the reader naturally wants to know what the fuss is about, so they go read my work … but I digress.)
And this, of course, means that their lists are meaningless. People are always rubbishing climate skeptics by name, and since they are counting those as media mentions, their results will be wildly skewed.
Also, it seems that they do not cite most things that anyone has actually written for the web. I’ve written some 700 posts or so here on WUWT. Not one is mentioned. However, they did list three WUWT posts among my mentions … in one because I’m mentioned in the comments. Really? Only once was I ever mentioned by name in the WUWT comments???
For the other two, there’s a WUWT “Categories” aggregation page, which doesn’t mention me at all, and a “Tag” aggregation page where I’m listed as the author of one of the pieces linked to on the page … totally bizarre. I have the same visibility on literally dozens and dozens of WUWT aggregation pages.
However, it seems that if someone is mentioned in a comment to a post, it counts. So for example, Steve McIntyre wrote a post called “Willis Eschenbach on GISS Model E“. That appears on Judith Curry’s list of media referrals, and she’s only mentioned in a comment.
Even more bizarrely, that same post got onto Steve McIntyre’s list of media mentions, but not onto my list … go figure.
And it’s stranger than that. On Steve McIntyre’s list, some 22 posts on his own blog (out of hundreds he’s written) are included, and the rest are not. Say what?
Weirder yet. On Judith Curry’s list of media mentions, there are no less than 83 citations to the Laguna Beach Independent, a local California newspaper, with headlines like “Volleyball Open Returns” and “Student Musical Rolls The Dice”. At least upon a cursory inspection, not one of the eighty-two mentions Dr. Curry. I even looked at the “Source” version of the pages, where text can be there but not visible … but nothing there either.
Next oddity. Judith Curry gets two mentions for the same piece in Reason … and not only that, but she’s not mentioned in the Reason article at all. Nor would we expect her to be mentioned, it’s a piece about Ron Paul and Charlie Hebdo.
And out of all of the posts she’s written for her own blog, they list thirteen of them on her media mentions and not the others. Why not?
Since I was having so much fun, I thought I’d look at Anthony Watt’s “media visibility”. No less than seven of the mentions are by Slandering Sue over at hotwhopper … seriously, guys, that’s hardly “media visibility”. And how come I didn’t get any hotwhopper counts, she’s as vile to me as she is to Anthony …
Anthony also got two mentions over at Climate Audit … I greatly doubt that that is as many times as he is mentioned. Hang on, let me take a look … OK, a Google search for “site:climateaudit.org ‘anthony watts'” brings up no less than 813 hits …
He also gets three and only three hits over at Judith Curry’s blog … why only three? You tell me.
Next, Anthony gets exactly eight hits here at Watts Up With That … why eight? No idea. Why those eight? Not a clue.
(Let me note here that despite Anthony, Dr. Judith, myself, and others not getting credit for mentions on our own blogs … Marc Morano, the #1 “contrarian” by their count, got no less than 3,887 media mentions on their list from his own blog. Say what? With those, he’s at number one on the hit parade … and without them, he’d be down near me on the list.)
Anthony Watts did, however, get eleven hits at Amazon Japan, Italy, Netherlands, UK, Australia, Spain, and France for being listed as the lead author on “Climate Change: The Facts 2017”.
And Anthony got twelve hits at DeSmogBlog … no comment.
Then there are 51 links on Anthony’s list to examiner.com, all of which simply bounce you to axs.com … all the links are dead.
Next, here are the top twenty “contrarians” on their list, along with the number of media mentions that they got:
MARC MORANO: 4171
JAMES INHOFE: 2628
RICK PERRY: 1903
JUDITH CURRY: 1107
ROY SPENCER: 892
RICHARD LINDZEN: 878
CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: 868
LAMAR SMITH: 831
BJORN LOMBORG: 770
JOHN CHRISTY: 723
WILLIE SOON: 711
ANTHONY WATTS: 699
ROGER PIELKE JR: 697
FRED SINGER: 626
PATRICK MICHAELS: 533
REX TILLERSON: 507
BOB CARTER: 505
DAVID ROSE: 437
MICHAEL FOX: 409
STEVE MCINTYRE: 374
MYRON EBELL: 369
A quick scan of the list reveals a fundamental problem with their analysis—many people on this list do no actual scientific research, and some have very little to do with the field … for example:
Mark Morano (#1) aggregates and publishes “contrarian” articles
James Inhofe (#2) is a US Senator
Rick Perry (#3) is the US Secretary of Energy
Lamar Smith (#8) is a US Representative
Rex Tillerson (#16) was the US Secretary of State and before that the head of Exxon
David Rose (#18) is an author and journalist
Michael Fox (#19, deceased) was the science and energy writer/reporter for the HawaiiReport.com
So … just who would you expect to get more mentions in the media, “T. Rex” Tillerson or Andrew Weaver? Who is Andrew Weaver, you may ask? Well, he’s a Canadian who is number 3 on their list of “Climate Change Scientists” … I’m sure you can see the problem with comparing media mentions of T. Rex and Andrew.
And the shabby scholarship knows no end … seeing so many links to stories in the Laguna Beach Independent, with none of them mentioning anything about climate, I thought I’d search the “contrarians” list to see how many links to the Independent there were in total.
There are 66,332 media mentions in total for all of the “contrarians”. Of these, amazingly, no less than 6,279, which is 9.5% of the total media links, are meaningless references to stories in the Laguna Beach Independent … and bizarrely, almost everyone who has any links to the Independent has the same number of links, 83. Other than that, one person has 82 links, one has 37, one has 17, and one has a single lonely link to the Independent.
As you might imagine, with the thousands of claimed media links for the 386 “contrarians”, I’ve only had the time (and the stomach) to look at a few of them … and in that few, the errors and bizarre choices are legion.
My conclusion? Like far too much climate “science”, this is lousy, sloppy, extremely poor scholarship … no wonder they’re trying to silence their scientific opposition.
In closing, let me note two tweets from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. and one from Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. regarding the piece of bumpf in question. In the first one, Dr. P. Jr. objects strongly and reasonably to being lumped in with the “contrarians”
In the second one, he points out that the purpose of the paper is simple censorship:
And in the final one, Senior tells us what happened when he protested to Nature about the matter:
You’ve got to love the irony … in response to a reasonable, professional, valid, and 100% true complaint about the study, rather than deal with the actual issue, they just erase the entire Supplementary Information file, which contains (contained) a host of things showing that they are totally incompetent.
Good thing I downloaded the Supplementary Information file containing the links I referred to above before these latest scientific Stalinists simply disappeared the offending facts …
And so we end with the most outré situation of all—they’re so far into censorship that they’re even censoring themselves …
Ouroboros would be proud. The rest of us … not so much.
Best to all,
w.
[UPDATE] I’ve put the Supplementary Information as a zip file on my Dropbox public folder. It’s 23 megabytes … I think Dropbox will handle it, but let me know if it doesn’t.
Are they suggesting that slanderous Sow is a “climate scientist”???
NO doubt a defamation suit is in order.
No, they’re just counting her abuse of Anthony as a mention in the media …
w.
UC Merced is the newest school in the University of California system. It shows us where the UC system is headed.
No, the UC system is way past the tipping point. Reboot. Money of course corrupted academia (e.g. bloated administration, treating professors as employees to be drained and tossed aside), and the cover it all up with communist claptrap.
Things are not what they seem, even the Anti Christ will hate those people.
They are using “1984” as a guidebook. Really is getting stranger.
‘Big Brother’ was at least marginally competent at propaganda.
The Climate Faithful are becoming a farce. It’s one of the MANY reasons they are losing.
Admittedly, it’s far behind the whole ‘Predictions fail’ and ‘Solutions don’t work’ problems.
~¿~
Scientific papers are the social media of the scientific world and this is a good example of how they’re shifting in value to be little more than scientific click bait driving agenda heavy reference counts and journal profits.
Exactly. One expects to see this kind of thing with kids running a spammy blog, page, etc., but not when it comes to scientific papers, articles, etc.
First they came for the Contrarians…
Where can I find these lists of names?
I looked at the paper and only saw one list with about 100 names of people on it.
Well, they’ve gotten rid of the Supplementary Information, but I sent a copy to Charles the Moderator, and he’s planning to put it up for download.
w.
Willis
In the spirit of Jock McLaren
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_McLaren
When shown the first Japanese reward poster for his capture “he laughed and set out to raise the price”
What an incredible honour to have your name appear on the same list as Freeman Dyson.
Nicholas, the list of ‘contrarians’ is here:
http://climatlas.com/tropical/media_cloud_list.txt
If you’re on a list along with Freeman Dyson, you must’ve been doing something right.
Wah!!! I didn’t make the list, even though Slandering Sou has written numerous posts about me, too.
That’ll teach me. I should’ve continued to publish posts here at WUWT, instead of writing short stories and preparing books of graphs of U.S. climate data.
[End Wah!!!]
# # #
Willis, thanks. I enjoyed the post.
Regards,
Bob
Bob, sue they for discrimination
The fact that Freeman Dyson is NOT a well known name is quite sad, and shows a state of idiocracy. He should be interviewing the Democratic nominees. It would be especially comical to have him and AOC have a conversation.
And just to make doubly sure.
Here is the list saved on the Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190814205232/http://climatlas.com/tropical/media_cloud_list.txt
Thanks for archiving it, Philip.
Regards,
Bob
Could not find my name there but then they may not know my actual name. I am listed as a founding member of Clexit with many of these contrarians. Surname starts with B and I am an engineer.
Thousands of scientists and engineers, such as myself, prefer not to be on this kind of list as it’s not good for one’s career. So, we bite our lips and generally keep quiet.
For those on the list, their bravery is inspiring.
Thank you Paul!
Do you have a link to the other list of names also?
Willis Eschenbach is number 146, not 148 on this list:
WILLIS ESCHENBACH,38,0.05263157894736842,146
Don’t hide your light under a bushel, Willis!
Actually, top 50 would certainly be more adequate, maybe even top 20.
When it comes to “whose work I have learned from?”, as Judith Curry asked the other day, I’m sure many people here would have Willis Eschenbach right on top of the list.
Here here, or should that be hear hear?
Don’t you understand? Its a complete outrage that climate scientists only get 96% of the media coverage when they number 97%!
When NOAA gets done with homogenizing the Supplementary Information, the Climate Scientists will be at 197% of media coverage..
Activists keep on about how that one must only believe the pronouncements of ‘trained climate scientists’.
So who trains the climate scientists? Phil Jones? Michael Mann?
I would prefer to have Judith Curry.
Be careful Willis, they’ll include your name on one of their creepy art installations…
Standard operating procedure for alarmists.
Start out with a preconceived idea and torture the data to suit – resort to outright lies when even data torture refuses to confess.
This censorship is entirely predictable given what happened during the first information revolution (printing).
“This situation would change in the sixteenth century, as a result of three main developments: the invention of the printing press, the emergence of overt Protestant challenges to Catholic theology, and the growing institutionalization of early modern inquisitions themselves.
Pope Leo X issued a groundbreaking statement on censorship in 1515 with the bull Inter sollicitudines, prohibiting a wide range of books and insisting that Roman officials should be allowed to examine new works before they were sent for printing. Leo’s initiative bore fruit in practice with broad censorship of Lutheran writings from the 1520s on, and the papacy would continue to insist on its rights to proscribe objectionable texts, but other centers of secular and ecclesiastical power also sought to make their own determinations of which books required censorship in whole or in part. The university of Paris set an important precedent in 1544 when it published the first formal Index of prohibited books, a brief compilation of unacceptable authors and titles. Similar lists would be published by the university of Louvain in Belgium under imperial authority (1546) and by inquisition officials in Portugal (1547) and Venice (1549) as well as by some Italian cities. By 1551 the Spanish inquisition had also assembled and disseminated its own version (printed locally and so varying somewhat from one Tribunal to the next, but for the most part cribbed from Louvain’s 1550 Index), with subsequent editions appearing in 1554 and 1559”
But just as the censorship is a predictable result of the internet information revolution, likewise, the failure of this censorship is also entirely predictable from history, and that those trying to impose the censorship are only doing so because they know they are losing power in society.
I called printing the “first” information revolution. In reality this was preceded by at least two other highly significant changes:
1. The evolution of language
2. The evolution of writing
Whilst we have very little idea how language affected society (as we have no records), we know that soon after the advent of writing in Greece that we saw huge political changes which they called “democracy” (not the same as what is now falsely termed “democracy”). That in turn led to the rise of the Roman republic and the rest is history. So perhaps printing should be the second (3rd) information revolution.
But, I may also have implied that there was no change in information communication between printing and the internet. That is not true, because a lot of changes occurred in printing and mass media communication between printing and the internet. But unlike printing which was a step change, these changes were evolutionary in nature, gradually bringing down the cost of printing and giving the poor means to access books and to read and perhaps more importantly, to publish their views. That undoubtedly steadily moved the power in society away from the old wealthy elites and toward the modern democratic forms (albeit with the press controlling what we public heard and was falsely portrayed to us as “public opinion”).
Also, many may see telephones, radio and TV as “information revolutions”, but whereas the technology changed, the elites who controlled these media did not. So, we got more information – but it was more of the same biased and partial viewpoint from the same elites that controlled the media, not a new group of people expressing their views as occurred after the printing revolution.
But, whilst politically there was evolution, throughout this time, academia in collusion with the press & media, kept a very strict control over the area of “academic knowledge” and through collusion with the press and media, academia ensured that only the views of academics concerning “knowledge” were given any credibility when heard by the public. But there were some exceptions, for example, in the early 20th century it became possible for a small group of people to buy a typewriter and a stencil and produce “blueprints”. This enabled the creation of small societies with their own “journals” which bypassed the academic control over journals – but these publications were very limited as they had extremely limited “reach” until the arrival of the internet.
The internet, completely changed how information was communicated and that in turn (like printing) changed who was able to communicate to who. For us here on WUWT, the key is that it has allowed revolutionary challenges to the old authority of academia. That is why academia is now responding with attempts to produce lists of “acceptable” sites enforced through Google & now this latest list of “acceptable” people.
But the internet revolution is much wider and also includes numerous blogs and small media outlets like “the Rebel” which have allowed diverse views formally repressed by the media to be heard and accepted by the public. As they grew in influence, so has the attempted censorship of the press through attempts like the bogus “factchecker” sites and yet again getting Google, Facebook & Twitter to repress views which the press formally kept out of the public arena.
Unfortunately, this period of attempted censorship – and its very predictable failure – is in historical terms, just a transitional phase as society adjust to the new social, political, scientific, etc. changes as the old elites in the media, academia and politics lose the power and influence they once had … and we see their humiliation as they lose influence and get dragged, kicking and screaming, away from the levers of power.
You’re absolutely right about the introduction of writing. There’s an interface between the time culture was completely oral and the time when writing became widespread. Early stories are written in the manner in which they would have been recited by a bard.
In his book, The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist points out that the people of that age thought of themselves differently. They didn’t have the same concept of the individual that we do. The inner voice which we think of as thinking, they ascribed to something outside themselves like gods and demons.
Writing certainly has a very profound effect – but story telling also continued in use long after the introduction of writing (e.g. the New testament)
But perhaps we weren’t so different in some ways! For example, if we look at the bronze age graffiti at Tanum in Denmark we see that it contains boats, axes, battles with the occasional phallus showing. In essence that is not that dissimilar to modern “pop” art where boats=cars, axes=guns, battles=battles, etc. So, where modern youngsters set out to draw, they produce the same themes.
But what is remarkable if we compare the bronze age graffiti at Tanum in Denmark with that of Pompeii, Norse (Mays how) or modern graffiti, is that Tanum is entirely visual whereas pompeii, Norse and most modern graffiti is largely textual. And that seems to change what people graffiti, because whilst the content of modern, Roman and Norse graffiti has the same common themes (who slept with who), and in the right context the interests of youngsters don’t seem to have changed, I’ve not yet seen anything that would represent the same kind of banter you get in writing graffiti in pre-writing graffiti.
Mike, Thanks for your comments, very interesting. I am intrigued by the emergence of cooperation within the field of scientific peer review. You have prompted me to look at these historical parallels in more detail.
When writing was introduced to Greece, many feared that people’s memories would suffer.
“I’m number 148 out of 386 on their list of contrarians”.
You really should pick up your game a bit mate….
Out of interest, who’s first?
Marc Morano apparently.
Marc Morano.
Here are the top “contrarian” players, along with the number of media mentions …
MARC MORANO: 4171
JAMES INHOFE: 2628
RICK PERRY: 1903
JUDITH CURRY: 1107
ROY SPENCER: 892
RICHARD LINDZEN: 878
CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: 868
LAMAR SMITH: 831
BJORN LOMBORG: 770
JOHN CHRISTY: 723
WILLIE SOON: 711
ANTHONY WATTS: 699
ROGER PIELKE JR: 697
FRED SINGER: 626
PATRICK MICHAELS: 533
REX TILLERSON: 507
BOB CARTER: 505
DAVID ROSE: 437
MICHAEL FOX: 409
STEVE MCINTYRE: 374
MYRON EBELL: 369
A quick scan of the list reveals the problem with their analysis—many people on this list do no actual scientific research, and some have very little to do with the field … for example:
Mark Morano (#1) aggregates and publishes “contrarian” articles
James Inhofe (#2) is a US Senator
Rick Perry (#3) is the US Secretary of Energy
Lamar Smith (#8) is a US Representative
Rex Tillerson (#16) was the US Secretary of State and before that the head of Exxon
David Rose (#18) is an author and journalist
Michael Fox (#19. deceased) was the science and energy writer/reporter for the HawaiiReport.com
So … who would you expect to get more mentions in the media, “T. Rex” Tillerson or some mainstream climate scientist?
The whole basis of their paper is fatally flawed. Good question, I’ll add this to the head post.
w.
And I’m #131 on the list between Sherwood Idso and Paul Chesser. My entire involvement in the AGW has pretty much zip to do with the science. Question is, did the researchers rely on Desmogblog to give them a nice fluffy list of names to inflate the number of “media reports” in which I may have had no significant appearance beyond some comments in online articles’ comment sections regarding the false accusation about skeptics being paid ‘Big Oil’ money?
Bad news, Russell. You have 145 media mentions … but like Judith, no less than 81 of them are to the Laguna Beach Courier, with titles like “Music Festival Holds Suzi-Q Concert” and no mention of your name …
w.
It appears they did a lazy search engine search, and did not bother to check if some of them were pages in which the first and last name appeared in separate sentences, etc.
How could something so sloppily done ever get past review, and how was it published with such glaring errors?
Oh, wait…I already know…it pushes all the left wing virtue signaling buttons and so is taken as gospel.
I think there is a way to do a search that excludes any result in which the searched for term is not in word order on the page.
Is it to put it in quotes?
Or maybe with a + between each word?
This also holds for the CCS list – for example Richard Betts has 83 Laguna Beach Courier mentions.
Apparently I need to spend more time reading the Laguna Beach Courier!
shouldn’t Trump be on there?
Its an interesting question, why the authors left out some people who are listed on desmog. It could depend on who was on the list when the authors downloaded it, but Trump has been listed there for several years, according to the wayback machine. The authors don’t give the date on which they acquired the desmog list, but they say it contained 300 names. Now, however, it contains over 450.
How they selected ‘climate scientists’ is odd too. For some reason, Gavin Schmidt (h-index 65 on Google Scholar) isn’t on the list.
https://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/availability.html
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. A condition of publication in a Nature Research journal is that authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted manuscript.
After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal. In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors’ funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.
ask to see
https://www.nature.com/documents/nr-editorial-policy-checklist.pdf
Submit
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/submit/matters-arising
If the submission serves only to identify an important error or mistake in the published paper, it will usually lead to the publication of a clarification statement (correction or retraction, for example). Please contact naturecommunications@nature.com for these cases. Comments can also be posted on the journal’s website, under the full-text online version of the paper. Online posted comments can make reference to citable materials such as a preprint if necessary.
Time to add a publication to your record Willis
Mosher! Don’t treat us like the gullible fools who follow the climate cult. You know full well that Nature is just a climate cult pushing rag mag and that we sceptics would have as much chance getting them to change their ridiculous non-science as if we asked Mann to admit his hockeystick was wrong.
As a matter of record, it forces the magazine to face, in some fashion, its hypocrisy. And at least you can say you tried.
Come now, Mike, Steve has described the process by which a person can express their concerns about this wholly worthless piece of scholarship. What might happen if all 300+ persons mentioned provided a detailed complaint about their citation? Especially if each and every “matters-arising” was also posted here.
BINGO.
Long ago at climate audit I helped arrinage the filing of about 50 FOIA to get
info from CRU.
Imagine if every person submitted a matters arising.
Best tactic is to use THEIR own process against them
Yay. Nice to see that you’re still in there Mosh.
As we have read on this site and others “the punishment is the process”. I was in that 50 FOIA Mosh, great fun, and got myself interviewed by the Norfolk Police too!
Truth exists regardless if it’s been published.
Free the supplementary information! Free the science!
Thanks, Steven.
“After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal.”
That worked SOOO well for Steve McIntyre over the years. Lonnie Thompson’s serial non-archiving a prime example.
I would start a petition demanding that the editorial board of Nature Communications issues an apology for publishing such a sloppy piece of work.
It is strange that the failure here is not merely a lack of rigour but rather of publishing this tripe in the first place.
The strange part being that that is mistake of communication.
By Nature Communications.
“Communications” is code for propaganda.
“Best to all,
w.“.
They didn’t search for “w”. That’s why the count was low.
The work you are writing about is a religious work and has nothing what so ever to do with any kind of science let alone climate science. It is written by a Mother Nature and hence science contrarian, denyer, and heretic.
What a strange world twould-be
– should there always had-been,
no contrarians
What a familiar world twould-be -should there always had-been no contrarians.
They won’t be happy until you’re all in the gulag.
You did know that, right?
2nd Amendment FTW:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Two points to add, one from Trotsky and one from Solzhenitsyn:
Two of the authors of the paper are at the UC Merced Center for Climate Communication, and were awarded US$ 10,000 for a project titled “Climate Skeptics – who are they and how are they connected” in 2017
https://ucmerced.app.box.com/s/fxwa7eidzc6qkgjygda3w26cunm5ar6o
It appears $10,000 is not enough for these people to run a few decent internet searches. I guess if you are a complete moron UC Merced is the place to be. They’ll give you $10,000 for nothing.
The really amazing thing is that Nature Communications played along with this piece of shit that is so clearly unethical. They truly deserve to have 386 legal problems.
Its perpetrators should withdraw the paper and return the ten grand grant.
I agree Javier.
Everyone on that list should file a suit similar to the one just posted by Christopher Monckton.
As detailed here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/08/16/fraud-breach-of-right-of-privacy-and-libel-by-nature-communications-naturecomms/#comment-2771946
they should not however copy his turgid unreadable prose
Steve Ah but it is most readable (with a bit of Queens English with a smattering of legal education, and the Shorter Oxford dictionary).
Monckton gives nine point by point legal arguments of libel and fraud backed by objective scientific evidence.
To disprove it the defendants would appear to have to rebut each and every point.
I would highly recommend each person listed join Monckton:
His prose is perfectly readable, if a tad on the lengthy side. And he does use punctuation, which always helps.
Indeed. It is quite clear that the results are due to really bad Google-Fu.
Likely a list of prominent names plus some additional qualifier like “climate change” or “AGW”, then filtered by hand for the first 100 pages of results or so.
And likely by a handful of minimum wage students supervised by a professor.
How cool is that!
“We have published your fraudulent paper on embyonic stem cells, but dont worry we have removed the SI”
🙂 🙂
What you see in action is how ‘quality ‘ is not a measure of validity but of ‘impact’ , in other words even if complete rubbish does it get supportive media coverage .
And it is that route by which people like Mann etc have been able to establish their carriers, hence why it is the case they seek to avoid any actual investigation of their work and way so many articles are ‘hit and run ‘ in nature having no legacy and no follow-up.
While Nature handing itself over to ‘climate doom ‘ years ago and really have no status as authority source on this area.
Their data handling mirrors their surface temperature records.
Did you hear about the invisible man who married the invisible woman?
Yeah,their kids aren’t much to look at either.
FWIW, the press release Roger Pielke Jr mentions is at https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2019/media-creates-false-balance-climate-science-study-shows
It doesn’t say much of interest, but at least it has a link to the paper. A lot of university press releases seem to be put out before there’s a URL.
BTW, from the paper:
Footnote 64 goes to https://dash.ucmerced.edu/stash/dataset/doi:10.6071/M3K371 which claims a publication date of 2020 Jan 1 and says:
Oh well.
Nature Communications has “Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians” Trending at 976, by far higher then any other ‘story’.
To me it just means anything that Nature Communications prints is junk, not even worth using for bird cage liner.
Nah, it just means we and 386 miscreants are reading it.
Actually, Nature Communications is especially apropos as bird cage liner.
Was it peer-reviewed? Who did the review? They owe the publisher an explanation.
Did you expect fake science, conducted by antintellectual charlatans, to make sense?
I will mention your name here, Willis Eschenbach, to help raise your profile.
You might have to spell it wrong to get it counted.
Nature Communications shall hereafter be known as Nature Confabulations. Note the Con part.
Here, I’ll give Willis a hand too: Willis Eschenbach is an evil, evil person., … since NATURE seems to gravitate towards negative … “citations”.
You’re welcome, W. (^_^)
I had a look at the file for Marc Morano, because he is allegedly the top ‘contrarian’, with over 4000 media articles about him. It turns out that most of these ‘media articles’ (about 80%) are posts at his own blog, climate depot. So Marc Morano is the most visible climate contrarian, because Marc Morano has written a lot of blog articles about Marc Morano at Marc Morano’s blog.
As also noted in the comments to Dr. Curry’s post in Climate Etc., it is not necessary to be among the living to qualify as a “contrarian”. Several people among the deceased have been mentioned in this list. I noted that the late, great, John Coleman who started his career at a local TV station I watched as a kid and eventually wound up co-founding “The Weather Channel”, who passed in 2018 is listed in the top quartile at #42 right after the very much alive Ross McKitrick (#41). Unless they are referring to another John Coleman? So like CO2 in the atmosphere I guess contrarianism persists long after it is introduced?
I have no hesitation suggesting these authors have demonstrated their imminent qualifications to conduct a comparative study on the voting patterns in Chicago.
You can only laugh when they want to censor the opinions of dead people.
But, as someone mentioned in the previous WUWT article, Stephen Schneider (somebody who loved both global cooling and then global warming) was also on the list. The authors do at least have some measure of consistency in the madness.
Even Zbigniew Jaworowski who died almost ten years ago.
Making a list like the Nature paper has with the legitimization of a ‘prestigious’ journal is a chilling threat, not simply a form of censorship.
Indeed; chilling, psychotic, malevolent and vicious, the standard Alinsky fare (Rules for Radicals):
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
I’m number 148 out of 386 on their list of contrarians
Congratulations! But what a bizarre way to have gained entry.
Seriously, thank you for the essay. I expect the paper to be widely cited. Probably honored with an award.
I don’t have the list; is Mother Nature #1 there?
List, as also noted in some of the above posts, and at Dr Curry’s post on it, is here: http://climatlas.com/tropical/media_cloud_list.txt Judging from the “climatlas.com/tropical/” url root there, it appears Ryan Maue snagged the list out of the paper’s Supplements section before the paper’s authors managed to delete it yesterday.
Let us see if any of Climate sciences exalted warming proponents step up and demand this terribly sinister and ugly paper be retracted! That their has been no attempt at true scholarship in it is an indictment of its true purpose. Crickets anyone?
Thanks for those who provided the list of climate realists. I notice that there are many politicians and journalists on it, in addition to professional scientists. I haven’t been able to access the list of Deniers of Natural Climate Change, but from context in the article I deduce it is all scientists in the climate field. If that is the case, a short summary of the study’s findings would seem to be: Michael Mann has published more climate-related articles in professional journals than John Stossell or Rick Perry. That is not surprising. The other finding is that Perry and Stossel are mentioned in lay media more often than Mann, on all subjects, not just climate. This is probably a close one but still not surprising if true. No doubt there would be different numbers if their “scientist” list include Al Gore, Bill Nye, Greta Thunberg and Occasional Cortex. Classic climate research — decide what narrative you want the rubes to swallow, then structure your study to get that result.
“Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done…This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends.”
“I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.”
– Dr. Michael Crichton, 2004
Willis: Just a small correction. The line:
Rex Tillerson (#16) was the US Secretary of Energy and before that the head of Exxon.
Is not correct, Rex Tillerson was the US Secretary of State.
Willis had it right, with Tillerson at State and Perry at Energy.
Mark Morano (#1) aggregates and publishes “contrarian” articles
James Inhofe (#2) is a US Senator
Rick Perry (#3) is the US Secretary of Energy
Lamar Smith (#8) is a US Representative
Rex Tillerson (#16) was the US Secretary of State and before that the head of Exxon
John,
I copied that right off of the screen, with Ctrl-c, and pasted it in to my post. Apparently, had been corrected.
Thanks for checking my post. Another set of eyes never hurts.
Interesting that Nature would allow the ad hominem fallacy into an accepted peer reviewed article. They’re squandering their prestige.
Their whatnow? 😉
{UPDATE] I’ve put the Supplementary Information as a zip file on my Dropbox public folder. It’s 23 megabytes … I think Dropbox will handle it, but let me know if it doesn’t.
w.
I’ve also added to the head post that despite Anthony, Dr. Judith, myself, and others not getting credit for mentions on our own blogs … Marc Morano, the #1 “contrarian” by their count, got no less than 3,887 media mentions on their list from his own blog.
Say what? With those, he’s at number one on the hit parade … and without them, he’d be down near me on the list.
No end to the oddities …
w.
You should write them, Willis, and demand a correction because you are proud to be on the list and think you deserve to have a much higher score.
Interesting to look up the authors in Google scholar and note they claim no competing interests in the ethics declaration in the paper.
It is an astounding level of deceit.
Willis,
I didn’t know you were a message therapist until the young and upcoming scientist, Trevor Nace, explicitly pointed it out several times. Instead of having a scientific discussion over my reference to your Greenland post, he simply choose to negate the author. The CCC are making the so-called CCS very nervous. Congrats.
https://imgur.com/a/Eyg7dBu
Damn, I’m not on the list.
I’m going to have to try harder.
Well, the fun knows no end. Seeing so many links to the Laguna Beach Independent, with none of them mentioning anything about climate, I thought I’d search the “contrarians” list to see how many there were in total.
There are 66,332 media mentions in total for all of the “contrarians”. Of these, amazingly, no less than 6,279, which is 9.5% of the total media links, are meaningless references to the Laguna Beach Independent …
I’ll add this to the head post, and keep investigating.
w.
The big winner in the Laguna Beach Independent competition is a contrarian named Ken Malloy. Of his 84 listed media mentions, no less than 83 of them (99%) are useless links to random Independent articles. And strangely, almost every one of the 78 people whose media mentions contain links to the Independent has the same number of links, 83 …
w.
Looking at this further, the authors do appear to have filtered out the Laguna Beach references as well as some other spurious hits when they calculate the final media mention totals (perhaps using the filter-list that is among the SI files). In the CCC list, for example, Ken Malloy just has one media mention, not 84.
Thanks, Ruth … but the numbers still don’t add up, and there is still stacks of nonsense in the lists. And if they’ve filtered them out, why are they still listing them in their files?
Also, some of the contrarians are counted as having 0 media mentions. And ClimateDepot, Marc Morano’s blog, is still the source of almost all of his mentions, while WUWT hardly gives Anthony any. And DeSmogBlog is one of the largest sources. See my latest post here.
w.
I agree, still many irrelevant hits in the lists. But there does seem to have been some preliminary filtering.
When one uses a search engine, the results are tailored to the users previous history.
I suspect that may explain this oddity of an obscure local paper getting so heavily weighted.
My guess would be that whoever did the searching spends a lot of time at the website of that paper.
Willis.
I think with a little work, a dozen or so people could write individual matters Arising
and subit to the journal
Publicity seekers shouldn’t complain about how their efforts are measured. After all, it’s a common hazard of show-biz.
Dear heavens, 1sky1, could you possibly find a more trival and meaningless issue to comment on? Are you really someone who is that totally clueless, or do you just play that person here on WUWT?
w.
There’s nothing “trivial or meaningless” in distinguishing between doing competent science out of intellectual curiosity and seeking publicity for reasons narcissistic or political. Clueless is he who thinks that this distinction holds only on one side of the great climate debate.
Dude, you are hilarious. You truly think that you see what’s happening. But keep it up, you do you …
w.
I think this last comment by 1sky1 may actually have merit, except for it is true of the side he seeks to defend, if I understand him correctly.
The warmistas certainly seem to be motivated by something other than an honest search for objective scientific veracity.
Although he left out another of the motivating factors of the climate mafia: Financial gain.
To understand me correctly, note that the third sentence of this follow-on post tells us:
BTW, I’ve never been on the side of junk science for any gain–personal, political or financial.
“…BTW, I’ve never been on the side of junk science for any gain–personal, political or financial…”
We understand you correctly. You’ve just been on the side of junk science for loserdom.
If you claim to have been misunderstood, you might simply declare in plain language who it is you are referring to.
I allowed for the possibility that you were misunderstood.
But there is little point in speaking in riddles.
Most people here take this entire subject very seriously, and so any intimation that people here are engaging in entertainment or mere publicity seeking, whether you meant to say that or not, will not be taken warmly.
Personally, I do not think publicity, to use the term literally, is a strong motivator of the majority on either side.
Perhaps for someone like Leo di Caprio, or Mikey Mann.
But I think people like the authors of the Nature Communications paper are far more interested in power, and to that end seek to shut down discussion.
Fat chance!
In the age of burgeoning social media, the entire notion that, by “tracking their digital footprints,” the relative “visibility” of “prominent contrarians” and “expert scientists” can be meaningfully determined is outlandish on the face of it. As Judith Curry clearly recognized, this is little more than socio-babble, patently put up to stifle contrarian debate.
The wholly undeserved attention given the exact rankings here suggests a preoccupation with matters of publicity more than substantive issues of science. And the immediate resort to ad hominems to counter such a suggestion indicates that it’s not far off. Indeed, what would the world know of those who want to roar like lions were it not for their seeking out a platform on the web.
Who would be on our list of the worthy 400?
The latest from the Editors:
Onwards …
w.
Willis, along the lines of the most sunlight being gotten at the latitude with the least government:. “Figures lie, and Liars figure.” My personal favorite comes from the original climate realist, Sam Clemens: “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics!”
Pointy end forward, dirty side down.
And upwards! A couple of newbies exposed the CliSci scam. The old boys are scrambling in damage control.
Newbies?
Newbies: The authors of the subject “study,” working at a nothing school and using a lousy $10,000 government grant. This might be the event that brings down the whole CliSci scam.
While the supplementary matter has been taken down, the paper still has Figure 2, which displays the names of the top 100 “real” climate scientists, see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4/figures/2
That includes Richard Betts, who is concerned with being named.
It’s amusing that Tony Heller isn’t on the contrarian list, though his pen name, Steven Goddard is.
(Thank you for saving the SI, I created a dropbox account so I could download it. It’s not entirely clear where the CCS list is, but the media list is interesting as is.)