The Telegraph is hanging on to its lead over the Australian. After publishing a story by Richard Alleyne that misrepresented the work of Ian Fairchild, they have not corrected the story and not published Fairchild's letter of correction. But that's not all. Ben Goldacre reports:
Worse than that, Prof Fairchild has tried to post comments on the article which flatly misrepresents his own research, twice, but his comments have been rejected by the Telegraph's online comment moderators, while 23 other comments have appeared.
It's quite hard to understand both the intellectual and moral reasoning behind this kind of behaviour. ...
To my mind this is poor quality journalism followed, more importantly, by cowardly editorial decision-making. This article could very easily be retracted or corrected, clearly and unambiguously, in the newspaper. I honestly don't understand why they wouldn't do this. People make mistakes. What distinguishes you from the morons is what you do when the mistakes get pointed out.
To be fair, the Telegraph is not as bad as Quadrant, and did publish some critical comments, but obviously these don't have the same force as a correction from Fairchild.
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Not allowing a misrepresented primary source the right of reply and correction is indeed getting pretty despicable and gutless. Next they will be accusing the professor of something or other to distract from their own grubby behaviour.
Thanks goodness there are now alternative means for public communication and debate, such as the Intertubes.
Hopefully Professor Fairchild will take them to task via the Press Complaints Commission(http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/process.html).
So the Telegraph refuses to publish Prof. Fairchild's comments. By the climate inactivists' own standards, this would ordinarily mean that the Telegraph is a Communist-Nazi Inquisition.
But I just remembered that Prof. Fairchild is the Heinrich Kramer of Liberal Fascism.
Therefore the real Nazi is Prof. Fairchild himself. Yippee!
Tim, please re-read the first paragraph of this post. sentence 2 is all over the shop. *[Thanks, I fixed it. Tim]*
"Why all these attack articles on a minor gas CO2 which is 0,038% of volume. Water vapour is the major component of "greenhouse" gases at some 98% of volume - try controlling that! Who has died because someone says there is too much CO2?"
I'm sure Fairchild's contributions were less worthy than that.
Babblebabble minor gas CO2 ... 0,038% of volume. Water vapour ...too much CO2?" yadaetc.
Sigh.
Iain, since you, Galileo-like, disparage trace amounts so much, surely you won't mind upping your Ritalin dose by 34%. Let us know how that works out for you.
In case anyone is wondering how many times this long-ago refuted "argument" has been recycled and repeated,
the Magic Denialist Drivel Counter indicates as of Iain's comment, the count currently is 5,861,442. Indications are that there is a recent cooling trend for using this talking point, starting in 2002. Or is it 1998?
Best,
D
Dano: The talking points were in quote marks...
They were in quotes. It's a snip from one of the comments accepted underneath the Telegraph article. Accepted where Fairchild has apparently been rejected.
My html isn't up too much I agree.
The Australian has just published a largely unhelpful story about childhood obesity rates levelling off as if this means there is no longer a problem.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24889986-601,00.html
I wonder if my comment will get through their science-out filter? Some how I doubt it.
I must be missing something here. Do I need to apologize to somebody?
Best,
D
Another bad thing is happening, too -- in the 2008 Weblog Awards, "Watt's Up With That" is currently winning "Best Science Blog"!
There are a lot of people here interested in accurate climate change info -- go vote, dammit!
I tried to post a comment at the 'Telegraph' asking if it's true that Fairchild's comments had been blocked. Nothing has appeared...
11, Luna
Last year all the GWSceptics piled in behind Climate Audit and the result was a draw with Pharyngula. This year they've gone for Watts. Again Pharygula is the main competitor.
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog/
Watts is a *science* blog? Only in the deniosphere!
The new media are just as bad if not worse.
I've contacted Pajamas Media over this claim by Timothy Birdnow;
... for either a retraction or a corroborating source statement.
December 21st. Sent an [email](http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/rumors-of-the-death-of-arctic-sea-ice-grea… ) to Pajamas Media editorial department via the contact form.
December 31st. Sent another email.
January 2nd. Dropped a comment addressed to Pajamas Media staff in the article's moderated thread.
January 3rd. Dropped another comment.
January 6th. Sent an email to the email addresses for Pajamas Media editors; Glenn Reynolds, Stephen Green, and David Russin. January 6th. Dropped a comment in Timothy Birdnow's blog and another in the blog of Pajamas Media editor Roger L. Simon.
Three weeks later. Still waiting for a response. The comment in Timothy Birnow's blog was deleted, same for my most recent comments on Pajamas Media. The only acknowledgment I've received is from Stephen Green who replied that he wasnât the editor of the article and doesnât know who is. They are still printing a false claim maligning NASA GISS.
Compare and contrast with the accountability of NASA GISS.
Steve McIntyre notified GISS of an error on Saturday or Sunday August 5th or 6th of 2007. By August 7th, GISS had corrected the error, updating a *massive* global temperature analysis, posted notification on their homepage and their 'Updates to Analysis' page, and sent an email to Steve McIntyre aknowledging the error and thanking him for pointing it out.
All Pajamas media have to do is correct one English sentence or provide a relevant quotation. Three weeks later and they are yet to even acknowledge the issue.
Pajamas Media are frequently and unfairly (ignorantly) critical of NASA GISS. I wonder why?
pdate! The Torygraph has finally posted a comment by Prof. Ian Fairchild on 12 January, and edited the article title on the page and the article summary.
However, they left the HTML title (Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists - Telegraph) and the silly paragraphlinking glaciation to a failure to curb global warming unchanged.