Lott on the hockey stick

Posted by Tim Lambert on August 3, 2005
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Under the title “Academics drag feet on giving out data” Lott quotes extensively from an article about the hockey stick by Steve Milloy. One part Lott doesn’t quote is this:

Well, a scientist’s refusal to provide colleagues with his data and methodology is suspicious.

Now, Milloy is being deceitful by implying that Mann, Bradley and Hughes hadn’t published their data and methodology when they had already done so, but it is true that refusing to provide data and methodology is suspicious. As done by, to pick a name at random, John Lott. I guess that if Mann had claimed to have lost the data in a disk crash Milloy would not have breathed a word about the matter.

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Comments

  1. #1 ÐanØ
    August 3, 2005

    Most Western societies think it is rude behavior for, say, an amateur homeowner to pester the plumber with lots of questions while the plumber is working.

    Or an amateur car owner to look over the mechanic’s shoulder and pester him with a million questions about his every move.

    Yet here, for this one issue, it’s OK for an amateur to waste a professional’s time.

    What happened? When did the rules change and why weren’t we notified of the change?

    Does this now mean mechanics should expect to be pestered with questions from annoying amateurs, and if the mechanic says GFY then character assassination is the next step?

    Crikey.

    an

  2. #2 Tim Lambert
    August 3, 2005

    an, you might be interested in my “discussion” with McIntyre in this thread.

  3. #3 ÐanØ
    August 3, 2005

    Let me guess…Mann wasn’t uncooperative with M&M because they acted like a-holes, but because he is part of an alarmist conspiracy and doesn’t want anyone to find out that what he did wasn’t actually science.

    I feel your pain, Tim. You’re a stronger man than I am.

    Best,

    D

  4. #4 kevin
    August 5, 2005

    You have to love Milloy. He’s an A-1 basketcase. Kinda like Novak without the brains.

  5. #5 TonyB
    August 13, 2005

    Perhaps we’re wrong to hold John Lott to the standards we expect of scientists. He is, after all, simply a shill for the GOP. I was kind enough to offer him a small correction for an item on his blog (which is a rather slapdash affair). He had written “Democrat leadership council”. I helpfully pointed out:

    Your citation is a bit off, John. I’m fairly certain that the organization is titled “Democratic Leadership Council”. That is, it begins with an adjective, not a noun, and as a proper name it requires capitalization throughout.

    I got a thank-you message in response, so I visited his blog again. The entry now read “Democrat Leadership Council”. Lott has adopted the Republican insistence of substituting “Democrat” for all occurences of “Democratic” in Democratic Party organizations, a practice that goes back at least as far as Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

    By the way, he corrected the capitalization only on the entry I specifically cited. He left the name in lowercase elsewhere. A scientist would be more careful, don’t you think?

  6. #6 Chris Jarrett
    August 14, 2005

    Have you seen the “Real Name ™” customer review feature on Amazon.com? I would suspect that Lott’s activities there had something do to with their decision to create that feature.