tlambert | September 7, 2007
A 2003 paper in the British Food Journal by Powell et al described an experiment that found that, given a choice between genetically modified sweet corn and the regular kind, consumers preferred to buy the GM corn by a factor of 3 to 2. However, Stuart Laidlaw reported that the experiment was flawed -- there was a sign above the regular sweet corn saying "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?", while the corresponding sign over the GM corn said "Here's What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn". The experiment shows that consumers prefer GM corn to wormy corn, but they may well prefer regular…
tlambert | September 5, 2007John Lynch has posted Naomi Oreskes response to Schulte and the claims that there is no consensus:
3) The piece misrepresents the results we obtained. In the original AAAS talk on which the paper was based, and in various interviews and conversations after, I repeated pointed out that very few papers analyzed said anything explicit at all about the consensus position.This was actually a very important result, for the following reason. Biologists today never write papers in which they explicitly say "we endorse evolution". Earth scientists never say "we explicitly endorse plate tectonics."…
tlambert | August 30, 2007Via William Connolley I find another attempt to claim that there is no consensus in the scientific literature:
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.
Medical researcher Dr.…
tlambert | August 30, 2007Boosted from comments. Robert Chung writes:
David Kane wrote:
Anyway, it seems clear to me now that you are bluffing
Me, bluffing about knowing how calculate a CMR? Ouch, that hurts.
David, what a fascinating example of hubris. You do not know how to do something, so you conclude that no one else can either. However, that something "seems clear to you" has, once again, led you down the wrong path -- though for you this seems about par for the course.
As you ought to have known long ago, we are clearly not "in the same boat." The reason you ought to have known this long ago is that you have…
tlambert | August 29, 2007Scienceblogs is running a contest where you can win a five-day trip for two to one of the world's greatest science cities. All you have to do to enter is post a comment one of the blogs here. So if you just read my blog without commenting, this post is your chance to delurk and maybe win a pretty nice prize. You can comment using a pseudonym, but you'd better give a real email address or you won't be able to collect the prize if you win.
tlambert | August 28, 2007It's often claimed by DDT advocates that the 1972 ban on the agricultural use of DDT was made in spite of a report that cleared DDT from harm. Jim Easter has found and posted a copy of the report. It turns out that things aren't exactly as DDT advocates present them.
tlambert | August 27, 2007No really! That's the argument. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In January I wrote how for-profit publishers had hired an infamous PR firm to run a campaign against open access publishing. They've now produced an organization called PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine!) which is campaigning against Open Access. Coturnix has a comprehensive roundup of the reaction. I thought I'd look at one of the articles PRISM offers in support of their case. Alan Caruba -- "Open Access" or Covert Propaganda? who writes:
In his book, "State of Fear", author Michael…
tlambert | August 26, 2007Last Tuesday Matthew Warren [reported] in the Australian:
Labor plans to rid Australian homes of off-peak electric hot water systems, in a move it claims will cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 7.5million tonnes each year. ...
Labor will keep existing rebates to encourage take-up of alternatives and believes its plan can save households $300 a year.
Pretty straight forward reporting. But then on Saturday he wrote another story about the Labor plan. This one ended on the front page, under the headline "Garrett's $6.5bn hot water bill":
Households will have to pay up to $6.5…
tlambert | August 24, 2007I really don't know where to begin with this anti-Lancet piece by Michael Fumento. Should I start with the way Fumento describes Kane's paper as "so complex" that it "may cause your head to explode" while being utterly certain that Kane has demolished the Lancet study? Or with his assertion that I've been ignoring criticism of the Lancet study? Or with the way he quote mines me? Or that after again and again arguing that Lancet was wrong because they included Falluja when they should have left it out, he is embracing Kane's argument that they were wrong because they excluded Falluja? Or…
tlambert | August 23, 2007Last month the Australian mounted an over-the-top defence of one of their pundits after blogs criticised him for spinning as favourable to the government an opinion poll that showed the opposition way ahead and no change in its lead. So how do you think they reacted to Media Watch's criticism?
With 4672 words blasting Media Watch, including the entire editorial, stories from Caroline Overington and Matthew Warren and an opinion piece from David Salter.
Check out the unbelievable arrogance of their editorial:
When Media Watch demanded we jump to an apology and correction, The Australian was…
tlambert | August 22, 2007Here are the top 5 lists of the top Australian blogs:
Rank
From
Method
1
Janette Toral
Blog Juice
2
Ratified.org
Technorati + Feedburner + Google Rank
3
Craig Harper
Technorati
4
Meg Tsiamis
Technorati + Alexa
5
Australianblogs.com.au
links counted by Yahoo
Ranking of the lists was done by a completely objective criterion -- how highly they ranked Deltoid.
tlambert | August 21, 2007A couple of weeks ago, I wrote how the Australian had misrepresented Rajendra Pachauri (IPCC head), falsely claiming that he supported the Australian government's policy of delay. Media Watch has the latest developments. Pachauri wrote to the Australian:
I am writing to convey my deep disappointment at the news report in your newspaper of August 9 with the headline, "Climate expert backs Canberra". Nothing that I said in my telephone interview with Mr Matthew Warren implied or even remotely conveyed that I supported or opposed the Australian Government's policies on climate change.
I am…
tlambert | August 20, 2007The Washington Post reports:
Long-lasting, insecticide-treated mosquito nets should be distributed free, rapidly and widely in malaria-endemic areas, World Health Organization officials said here Thursday, setting new guidelines for fighting the mosquito-borne disease around the globe.
For years, a policy debate has raged not so much over the effectiveness of mosquito nets in preventing the disease, but over how best to distribute them. ...
Thursday's announcement "ends the debate" over which method is best, said Arata Kochi, director of WHO's global malaria program. "No longer should the…
tlambert | August 19, 2007Four of the six government members on a committee examining geosequestration put out a dissent denying the existence of anthropogenic global warming. I was going to write a post on what they got wrong, but I realised that since they rely on Bob Carter so much, I'd already done it. John Quiggin comments on the affair:
But now that the disinformation machine has been created, it's proving impossible to shut it down. Too many commentators have locked themselves into entrenched positions, from which no dignified retreat is possible. The problem has been reinforced by developments in the media,…
tlambert | August 18, 2007Members of the "we hate Rachel Carson" club have been touting a new study on indoor residual spraying as showing that DDT remains effective against malaria even when the mosquitoes are resistant. For examples, see Angela Logomasini and Ron Bailey. The study found that DDT-resistant mosquitoes were still repelled from huts sprayed with DDT so that occupants would be protected from 73% of mosquitoes. But it also found that there was 92% protection with dieldrin, which mosquitoes were not resistant to. In other words, an insecticide that killed the mosquitoes worked better, as you might…
tlambert | August 17, 2007If I summarized Glenn Reynold's response to my post on his hyping of a small correction to GISS data, you would not believe me, so I'm quoting the whole thing:
Lamberted! But no Instalanche.
Later: In an update: "Matthew Yglesias links to Tim Lambert, obviously deeming him a reputable source. Hey, this is about politics; not accuracy." Yglesias has been off his game lately.
More: Brad Plumer has been fooled, too.
Yes, Reynolds is enough of an egomaniac to think that I wrote my post because I was hoping to get an Instalanche. In fact, I wrote it to correct his hype. The change meant that…
tlambert | August 16, 2007DDT hoax spreader Walter E Williams has a new anti-environmentalist column where he writes:
In one long-term study, volunteers ate 32 ounces of DDT for a year and a half, and 16 years later, they suffered no increased risk of adverse health effects.
You know, two pounds of DDT is a lot of DDT. It's a bit worrying that Williams felt it plausible that volunteers would chow down on 2 pounds of DDT every day for a year and a half.
This 1979 WHO report on DDT toxicity reports that a single dose of 1500 mg of DDT (1/20 of an ounce) had these effects:
Prickling of tongue and around mouth and nose…
tlambert | August 13, 2007In comments to my post on a review of Guy Pearse's High and Dry, JC pointed to a dispute between Andrew Norton and Pearse on whether the CIS had promoted denial and delay on greenhouse gasses. Pearse makes his case here (scroll to 25 July 2007), while Norton responds here. Now I think it is a bit much for Pearse to tag the CIS with Jennifer Marohasy's opinions on global warming when all they did was publish her article on another topic. But it is also a bit much for Norton to argue that the opinions of Roger Bate have nothing to do with the CIS when the CIS list him as one of their…