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Wednesday 12 September 2012

Mad or bad?

Byron 

Steve McIntyre has been shredding a paper by psychologist Lewandowskyet al called

“NASA faked the moon landing, Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”

The paper, which seems to be as McIntyre says, a scam aimed at manipulating opinion rather than a scientific paper, purports to show pretty much what the title suggests. McIntyre’s demolition of the scam can be found here, here and here.

Now I know I’m guilty of mildly abusing climate scientists in general and the BBC in particular, but I cannot imagine writing a scientific paper claiming that my abusive comments are scientifically true, however much I wished to mould the debate to my own views. I just wouldn’t do it.

Okay it’s no worse than calling sceptics deniers with the aim of linking them in the public mind with holocaust deniers, but I do tend to wonder if those who promote mainstream climate alarm are mad or bad.

I mean mad in the sense of incompetent, not insane, and this has tended to be my view for some time I generally see climate alarm as propaganda based on incompetent science. There is a political element, but I tend to view that as a separate issue. Now though I begin to wonder. I wonder if I should see the scientists as bad rather than mad - or some of them at least.

Because this paper is evil by any debating standard. The predictions of climate science are supposedly subject to the normal rules of scientific debate, but it isn’t so is it? The normal rules are being broken all over the place, quite deliberately. 

So – mad or bad?

4 comments:

Demetrius said...

All the problems arise from the denial that the world is flat. That is up to a point.

A K Haart said...

Demetrius - up to a point? Surely it's flat all the way to the edge?

Anonymous said...

I ran surveys at one time and if I had turned out this piece of 'work' I would have been sacked on the spot.

Poor methodology, unbalanced question design, misconceived data gathering and to top it all what appears to be jiggery-pokery with the data analysis.

Climate change skeptics surely come in all shapes and sizes, from raving loons to those who have seen fashions come and go, to those who see a boondoggle and so on. To dish up this sort of report does no-one any good - except to demonstrate how it should not be done.

A K Haart said...

Roger - I don't think it will do them any good either and I'm surprised they didn't foresee that.