Iraq Body Count has published a defence against some of the criticism they have been receiving. The Lancet study implies that there are about five times as many Iraqi deaths as the IBC number. They do not accept this and...
The BBC has a report on the dispute between the IBC and Media Lens about Iraqi casualties. (My previous post on this is here.) IBC's John Sloboda trots out Kaplan's fallacy: Some critics of the Lancet study have said it's...
Here is Colby Cosh's response to the UN foundation's appeal to buy insecticide-treated nets to fight malaria: Africans aren't helpless animals--they know what works against malaria. Unfortunately, what works against malaria is DDT. But any country that proposes a...
Cyclone Monica is heading for Darwin (which was devastated by Cyclone Tracy in 1974. Ken Parish is getting out of town. Fingers crossed for Darwin and Darwinites. Update: It was category 5 at landfall, but fortunately it was down to...
James Annan writes about two programmes on the BBC. First, a good one on overselling climate change. I think that what gave the programme credibility was that they didn't talk to any of the global warming skeptics. RealClimate also...
Alicia Colon has written the usual rubbish about how Rachel Carson killed millions of people (see DDT ban myth bingo for corrections to the stuff she gets wrong). After claiming that DDT is banned she writes: Within two years of...
Remember the letter from the 60 scientists denying that "climate change is real" meant anything? Now 90 scientists have written another letter stating: There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world. There will be...
Via Patterico I find that Howard Kurtz has reported on Hiltzik's use of a sock puppet: The Los Angeles Times suspended the blog of one of its top columnists last night, saying he violated the paper's policy by posting derogatory...
David Glenn's article get discussed by Henry Farrell (lots of comments there), Ted Frank and King. Lott finally mentions the lawsuit on his blog. No comments there, so far....
Patterico catches LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik using a couple of sock puppets. Hiltzik admitted making the posts but denied that they were deceptive. I disagree. It is not deceptive to use a pseudonym, but it is deceitful to have...
More interesting analysis of Lott's lawsuit from Ted Frank. First, after looking at the examples of the use of "replicate" he concludes: I appear to have been too generous to Lott's complaint when I first criticized it. Then Ben Zycher,...
Since everyone else here was putting up banners, I created a banner for my blog. The text and figure come from Chapter 8 (The Deltoid) of EH Lockwood's A Book of Curves (1961). It was on sale for $1 at...
William Ford has two interesting posts analysing the key premise of Lott's lawsuit: that "replicate" can only mean to analyse exactly the same data in exactly the same way. He looks at the scientific literature on the meaning of...
Science has published an article urging more environmental scientists to take up blogging. Nick Anthis has a summary. The article gives examples of "excellent, informative sites": Mark Lynas, RealClimate, Climate Science, James' Empty Blog, DeSmogBlog, Prometheus, Science At Stake, ScienceBlogs,...
Mark Hertsgaard has an excellent article in Vanity Fair exposing the war on climate science. For instance: Call him the $45 million man. That's how much money Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, helped...
About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet: Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all (if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too...
Bob Carter's fraudulent claim that global warming ended in 1998 seems to have been swallowed uncritically by lots of gullible global warming skeptics. Jim at Our Word is our Weapon plays whack a mole with a couple of them, Madsen...
Here's an interesting timeline: 31 March: Lott's abrupt departure from the American enterprise institute. 10 April: Lott files his lawsuit alleging that Levitt has defamed him. 12 April: First Anniversary of Freakonomics publication. I think all three events are...
Ted Frank has your must read blog post on Lott's lawsuit against Levitt. He has a copy of the complaint and an explanation from Lott: When a book sells well over a million copies this goes beyond a mere...
Ever since Lott started at the American Enterprise Institute there have been people there who have wanted to get rid of him. I was forwarded a copy of Lott's final email to AEI staff. It suggests that he was...
The Chicago Tribune reports: A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller "Freakonomics." John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of...
Someone edited John Lott's wikipedia entry to state that he left AEI in 2006. Sure enough, he is no longer included on the AEI's list of scholars and fellows. The person who made the edit was anonymous, but the IP...
Jennifer Marohasy has written a rather self-referential response to my criticism of the sixty scientists' letter. Rather than deal with the substance of my criticism, Marohasy, who works for the Institute of Public Affairs, predictably tried to attack my credibility,...
One of the features of the generally shoddy reporting of Iraqi casualties in the media is the way that if reporters mention the Lancet study they will mention the bogus controversy about it, while the Iraq Body Count number is...
Bob Carter has a piece in the Telegraph where he claims: For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor...
Six Australian business leader reckon that the debate is over and climate change is real: Six business leaders yesterday stepped into the greenhouse debate, and blew the whistle. Game over, they said: climate change is real, it's going to...
Tim Blair grasps at a straw, I mean perfume sprayer: Frank Gaffney is interviewed by the ABC's Tony Jones, who confidently deploys the "Saddam had no WMD" argument: TONY JONES: Except for the fact as it turns out -- I'm...
Steve Milloy has made a special appeal to his supporters: I helped launch the Free Enterprise Action Fund (www.FreeEnterpriseActionFund.com), a pioneering mutual fund designed to accomplish two goals for investors: Earn a market-based financial return from investing in the...
Blogger dav wrote to RTE (Ireland's Public Service Broadcaster) to correct their misleading reporting of Iraqi casualties: Today's Six One news reports that the death toll in Iraq as a result of invasion is estimated at between 34 and...
In 1972 the US banned the agricultural use of DDT, but did not ban its use against malaria. Other countries followed suit. The ban on the agricultural use of DDT has probably saved many lives by slowing the development...
Nicholas Davies has an article Estimating civilian deaths in Iraq - six surveys in Online Journal. Critics often point to the Iraq Body Count and the Iraq living conditions survey as contradicting the Lancet study when they do not. Davies...
There were some ominous black clouds and it was pretty windy and I had to take my youngest to the doctor because he was throwing up all over the place, but I made it to the picnic, even if it...