Chris Mooney replies to George Will

Posted by Tim Lambert on March 21, 2009
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The Washington Post has published Chris Mooney’s reply to George Will’s misinformation. Mooney corrects some of Will’s false and misleading claims and finishes with:

Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists — following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It’s also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be — now more than ever.

There is also a letter from the WMO correcting Will’s misrepresentation of the WMO data.

I don’t think this excuses the Post from their obligation to publish a correction to Will’s columns.

Mooney rounds up responses on his blog.

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Comments

  1. #1 Bud
    March 21, 2009

    “I don’t think this excuses the Post from their obligation to publish a correction to Will’s columns.”

    No, it doesn’t, and whilst it’s better late than never it is disappointing to see a response published only when the storm has largely blown over. I suppose it does again demonstate the problems with traditional print media in the instamedia internet age.

    Still don’t understand why we couldn’t have seen this earlier though.

  2. #2 El Cid
    March 22, 2009

    The Post always prefers to first fill up its editorial pages with right wing hackery and then later on issue such regrets / incomplete apologies as it feels pressured to have to do before getting back to the all-important task of promoting more right wing hackery.

  3. #3 Sortition
    March 23, 2009

    Mooney’s argument seems to imply that good science and good journalism are the same thing. Why, then, do we have two completely different systems for doing the same thing?

  4. #4 frankis
    March 23, 2009

    Why, Sortition? Because we are merely mortal after all. To know that all is one, to understand the chaos of the daily world around us to be (as it is) mere illusion or maya, is for the giants who stride amongst us. In my own experience it has been only the great polymath Tim Curtin who has seen such things clearly, and look how he is unkindly mocked and sported with by the multitudes of his inferiors. Nature can be cruel, Sortition, my friend.