Mathew Nisbet, Beneath Contempt

Clue that he's incompetent: he's in comm arts.

I actually have called him names, and I never got a reply.

My comment there - and I was really fast last night - is still stuck in moderation. Perhaps because I called him names....

Actually, I posted a comment that pointed out once again he was making a straw man argument, that I used to support him, but that he lost me through his behavior. I also called him out on his hypocrisy. Let's see if he'll let my comment through.

The Communications Experts⢠on The Other Side⢠(i.e. the deniers of stuff) are slightly more interesting to read, actually.

A while back (if anyone still remembers it) I wrote about a speech by the "International Climate Science Coalition". A few days ago I also looked at a piece from the "Frontier Centre for Public Policy".

At least after reading them I can get to know our 'enemies' better. Reading Nisbet just makes me more stupid.

When this whole thing began two Aprils ago, I was bemused and a little confused. Advice like "get on somebody's emotional good side when you're bringing bad news" is not exactly shocking. When people who said they supported "framing" explained what they thought "framing" was about, what they said sounded largely like Carl Sagan's advice in The Demon-Haunted World: understand the human frailties which lead to belief in woo.

"OK," thought I, "what else? What makes 'framing' so remarkable and innovative?"

Some of us suspected that the original contribution which "framism" brought to the table would be the preference of ideology over data, intolerance of any diversity of viewpoints, and sleaze.

Think if I whine loudly enough he'll let me call myself an expert?

I'll say please and everything.

I wrote a reply from the perspective of an undergraduate student...and I've got to say, if I had instructors like him I'd have no problem getting a 4 point GPA while drinking every night.

Katherine -

Why the slam on communications? Not everyone who studies communications is like Matt Nisbet. Indeed, there are some very able communication experts out there. On the flip side, the majority of people are piss poor communicators.

I recently (finally) got enrolled as a college student and will start this winter semester, studying psychology. About five, maybe ten percent of clinical psychology is actually about the human mind. The rest is all about communication.

I can honestly say that while I have always been a fairly effective communicator, things have vastly improved since I made a study of it (while I have lacked a formal education, I have always been one for self-education). Just because there are a few assholes out there, who in spite of (and sometimes because of) having studied it in school, turn out to be very ineffectual communicators, doesn't mean that as a course of study it has no value. Most of the time, when you see communications "experts" who are obviously anything but, it is not because of their education, but a result of their personal bias and cognitive dissonance.

In Matt's case, I would argue that because he is turned off by strong language, he is ineffective as a communicator. And it's not just the distaste for strong language. He seems to have a pathological need to avoid confrontation - not exactly a rare trait these days, but one that interferes with the ability to effectively communicate. People like him (and when I was younger, me) cannot handle confrontation and end up in a position where they can't even deal with it's occasional necessity in interpersonal interactions with loved ones.

The unfortunate result of this very common tendency, is that things that should be said and could be said without malice, end up bottled up, until there is an explosion and it all comes out with a great deal of malice. The problem is, that people with this tendency, rarely recognize that they have it. It's especially sad when they (like Matt) should damn well know better. I can almost guarantee that Matt is aware of this problem, from an academic standpoint, but fails to recognize that it clouds his judgment in a big way.

I would argue that this makes Matt a denialist of the second type described in his PRI interview.

Because I'm fascinated by the fact that two people can draw completely different conclusions from the same facts and issues, I used to use the word "framing", but referring to perception rather than expression. Nisbett ruined the word and now it smells bad.

Maybe the difference between Sagan and Nisbett is the difference between understanding human frailties, and using them to manipulate people.

Nisbet is framing scientists as the bad guys, ignoring the blatant name-calling by the denialists, with terms like "true believers" or "brainwashed." These insults, and especially the idea that there's a conspiracy to defraud the public over AGW (climate scientists creating alarm solely to get more grant money), seem to have a lot of traction with the common man, who (in my experience) enjoys rooting for the underdog who seems to be fighting against an unreasonable and evil authority.

He thinks that eliminating the term "denier" will somehow be important in turning opinions away from those sorts of mythic figures, never pointing out that their name-calling is at least as frequent and as evil, and more importantly effectively communicated?

If all he wants to do is claim the "moral high ground" in the alleged "debate" (by not name-calling while the denialists continue to), he should have just said so.

I just read his latest reply to your (and Orac's) original piece, and he seems to be saying, I answered your points / read my book. He even ends a comment in reply to Orac with "Time to move on!". Pretty lame. Plus, if this is true:

And when one attempts to address his arguments on his own site, he doesn't publish critical comments (or no more than one in three).

... then I tend to agree with Mark - he's not worth debating.

I haven't followed this as closely as I perhaps should have (in particular, I've only wasted time reading Nisbet's stuff once or twice), but my impression had been that Nisbet's point and message were transparently about Nisbet, not about communicating science, for quite some time now.

The sad thing is he points people to his own opinions instead of the research.

There _is_ some good scientific work done on what convinces people, and what simply reinforces opinion and makes it harder for people to tell good from bad information.

This summed the recent work up nicely:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR20070…

Lesson there -- repeating falsehoods even to rebut them makes them easier to remember. What we hear often, we find more credible at a deep level, and it's easy to forget that it started from an unreliable source.

This is just like pattern recognition -- we see more tigers than there are in the shrubbery, because the fitness cost of missing just one tiger can be total (no grandchildren). It's built in.

Instead, point to good information, and rephrase.

It's good research. And I do find that cautionary.

I thought the PRI program quite good:
http://www.theworld.org/audio/1121088.mp3

If Nisbet were pointing to the scientific research instead of to his own opinion pieces .... but that's the problem.

Just because he's wrong, though, doesn't mean we too should be ignoring good scientific work that tells us our impulsive responses to nitwittery are not the most useful approach.

We have to give up some simple, quick, impulsive answers if we're going to believe the research about what people hear and remember -- think twice and craft a response that

-- doesn't repeat the bogosity
-- does point to good information (for the NEXT reader)
-- doesn't give victim trolls what they desire (again, for the readers who come along later)

From the scienceblogs homepage;

Mathew Nisbet, Beneath Contempt
denialism blog

Well, Nisbet has replied to Mike, Orac and I (not to mention PAL). However his reply leaves something...

Fox News is Hiring
Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Found this ad on Craigslist: Wanted: Single white network seeks spineless, simpering "liberal" to sit on the set...

Can it be a coincidence?...

Consider this an open thread to publish the comments Nisbet refuses to let through.

You know what this reminds me of? During the recent Prop 8 debate in California, many supporters complained that they were being called bigots for exercising their support. They didn't try to argue that the accusation was unfair, they just complained about it. So, we have to ask the questions:

What's wrong with calling a bigot a bigot?

What's wrong with calling a denier a denier?

If a murderer complained about being called a murderer, would you give this any thought, or would you just laugh him off? Why should we make an exception for lesser offenses?

Well, Matt has let my critical comments through, so I can't complain too much. But I never really get what Matt has concluded should be done, only what shouldn't be done, unless he refers to a book he is writing or a talk he will be giving somewhere. Whether it has to do with atheists talking about science, or using terms like "deniers" he seems to be mostly about telling people to shut up and let him do the talking.

He's a professional at it, you know.

OK, so blake stacey has called him names (but not really). Yet, blake stacey was not mentioned in Nisbet's response.

So what we have here is Nisbet is willing to distort the positions of fellow bloggers by mischaracterizing the behavior of commenters as the behavior of the bloggers in their own posts, who did not call names in the comments. That's more than intellectual dishonesty. That's just lying. That's low. Fuck you running, Nisbet.

Hey, what the heck? I signed into typepad, yet above I'm "anonymous." And my sign-in didn't stick afterwards. But it links to my blog...

something is funky with type pad since they changed to their new system the other day.

Figures.

So anyhow, is Nisbet's comment moderation a new thing as of today, or has he been doing it for a while?

Mark, if you don't mind, I'd like to plug my own blog with the following response I wrote about Nisbet:

http://smalltimetv.blogspot.com/2008/11/where-matt-nisbet-fails.html

I posted a response, and said "shit" somewhere (like, "holy shit, if you can't recognize that strawman, then you need to take a logic class.") so I doubt it will get through. Seriously though, how is his strawman not completely obvious to him? Orac responded perfectly, and was met with yet another stupid response.

Ugh.

-Consider this an open thread to publish the comments Nisbet refuses to let through.-

But now i've forgotten what i wrote...and it was really witty too...damn.

Matt honey, can you post my comment here for me please...it was the one about spade-like objects and pedophiles.

I find it funny, actually, that Matt is doing a major denialist tactic. Suppressing dissent about what he has written. No wonder he got his knickers in a twist about calling people deniers.

So anyhow, is Nisbet's comment moderation a new thing as of today, or has he been doing it for a while?

Since the get-go. Which, coincidentally, is about when I began wondering what the arrogant appeaser was doing here.

he seems to be mostly about telling people to shut up and let him do the talking.

More like telling people to shut up, buy his book and come to his talks.

If calling people names is such an ineffective strategy and "turns off the broad middle", how come it seems to be working so well for the denialists? That's about all the strategy they've got. If anything, the whole AGW business shows that name-calling is a far more effective strategy than careful, factual debate.

Aerik - he's been doing it for a good long while now.

Nisbet is all about communication, where communication is defined as everyone sitting down, shutting up and focusing admiration towards him whilst going to his lectures and buying his books.

Sort of similar to how Answers in Genesis is all about scientific endeavour. :p

Matt Nisbet is a poopy-head. Like Joe the Plumber, he needs to realize that his 15 minutes are well over.

Aerik:

Hey, what the heck? I signed into typepad, yet above I'm "anonymous." And my sign-in didn't stick afterwards. But it links to my blog...

TypeKey has always been funky in these parts; I recall suffering similar malfunctions a couple years ago.

I came across Nisbet's (or KneesBite as I refer to him) little whine-- it exceeded his usual sophistry. I was tempted to comment directly, but realize that as you point out, he has no interest in legitimate debate on the issue.

And that, Mr. KneesBite, is "name calling!"

At first I thought you were being harsh,

then I read the exchanges, listened to the radio bit, and tried to comment, quite politely, on his blog.

Over twenty-four hours later, my comment still has not appeared.

In fact the latest comment is from about 5:30pm on the 26th and, not coincidently, takes his side.

Officially, it's due to "spam", but PZ, for example, seems to get by just fine with close to zero moderation; no vacuum or viagara salesmen in sight.

Top-down proclamations, lack of consultation with working scientists, no apparent methodology at all, and severe moderation of comments:

Science Communication, you're doing it wrong.

Moderating comments is one of those red flags, a signpost that reads; "this author not to be taken seriously".

My latest comment still hasn't made it out of moderation there. It's like carrying on a radio conversation with someone out in the Kuiper belt.

Weird. An internecine war without my name being waved about? It's kind of gratifying.

As for spam: I do have lots of filter entries to keep them out. It isn't bad; spammers can tell when a site is actively policed, and invest less effort in hammering them. I get about half a dozen spam messages a day, almost all of them are automatically caught by the filters, and maybe one a day leaks through and needs my personal attention.

On-topic comment: I have no idea what Nisbet's game is, but he seems incredibly tin-eared and delicate, at the same time. Denialist is an effective and useful term that accurately categorizes a mind-set, and it should be used more.

Hey PZ,

I liked that picture of you posted by Nisbet as the "face of atheism".

You look kinda like a fat troll, scaring billy goats off the bridge!

But I never really get what Matt has concluded should be done, only what shouldn't be done, unless he refers to a book he is writing or a talk he will be giving somewhere. Whether it has to do with atheists talking about science, or using terms like "deniers" he seems to be mostly about telling people to shut up and let him do the talking.

So far as I can tell, what he thinks should be done begins and ends with "shut up and pay attention to ME!"

I posted a comment on nisbet's blog ages ago that never made it through. Its probably the only harsh comment (which is not to say it was rude, undeserved, offensive or inaccurate) I've ever left on a blog but, hey, he deserved it.

Matt Nisbett: Concern troll.

Or "The Joe Lieberman of Science."

"It's all explained in my book" is a fairly common theme of math-and-physics cranks.

Nisbet, the tyrannical and clueless polite-nik is still around? Ugh.

I may just have an undergraduate degree in Communications (a very interesting field, despite Nisbet single handedly discrediting it), but I can see clearly that Nisbet is missing the boat entirely in his 'understanding' of Communications.

A year or so ago, I visited his blog and was repelled by his inanity, ignorance, and arrogance. What a supreme dipshit--he was even unable to respond adequately to polite comments. Yes, his crap is crap and is worth no consideration at all. He is a fraud.

What's with this idiot? Does he think we should call denialists something else, like, say, "marshmallows"? I mean seriously, does he think we need to ENGAGE the denialists??? Or that the public cares if we're "mean" to them?

Well, I'd sure like to get a gig like he's got. Seems like he gets a lot of attention for non-production.

I don't even bother trying to comment at Nisbet's site anymore.

I like how he says that you "overlook that the key audience in these rhetorical fist-a -cuffs is not the small group of so-called 'denialists' but rather the wider spectator public," when that's pretty much the very criticism you levied at him.

Also, it's spelled "fisticuffs," darn it. But pointing that out would be petty.

I like how he says that you "overlook that the key audience in these rhetorical fist-a -cuffs is not the small group of so-called 'denialists' but rather the wider spectator public," when that's pretty much the very criticism you levied at him.

So how exactly does he figure that being deferential to the denialists and treating their intellectually and morally bankrupt impostures like legitimate debate is going to help us win that audience over?

Perhaps once he's done here he can go on to support a motion in the United Nations granting Al Qaeda a representative seat.

PZ Myers: "Weird. An internecine war without my name being waved about? It's kind of gratifying."

Your name was taken in vain a few times in the comments Orac's thread on Nisbet. :p

But seriously ...

PZ Myers: "I have no idea what Nisbet's game is"

I think a big part of it is that Nisbet is simply stuck in "counterintuitive mode," where, as (of all people) Chris Mooney pointed out, "journalists, who are trying to find something novel or clever or surprising to say, try to turn conventional wisdom on its head, or to attack their own presumed allies." (See the link behind my name.)

Blake:

Oddly enough, I did notice that. Although I got the impression the "book" in question was a free download, it still had that "I'm too busy to defend my idiocy. Go bore yourself to death and inflate my hit count" feel to it.

I like how calling denialist a denialist isn't considered fair in Nisbet's playbook but posting an unflattering photo of your opponent is. Also, censoring their comments on your blog seems to be okay as well.

IN THE FIRST SENTENCE IT SHOULD READ: ....HAS REPLIED TO MIKE, ORAC
AND ME [NOT I]. IT'S 5TH GRADE GRAMMAR.

WELL, IF YOUR GONNA BE PICKY ABOUT GRAMMAR, MAYBE YOU SHOULD CONSIDER USING CORRECT CAPITALIZATION (AND PARENTHESES RATHER THAN BRACKETS).

TAKE IT EASY ON DAN, PALMD. HE MAY BE RESTRICTED TO DIALING IN FROM A DEC120 TERMINAL THROUGH A 1200 BAUD MODEM.

HE MAY BE RESTRICTED TO DIALING IN FROM A DEC120 TERMINAL THROUGH A 1200 BAUD MODEM

Ouch. Been there, done that, got the carpal tunnel and ADHD to prove it! <grin>

IN THE FIRST SENTENCE IT SHOULD READ: ....HAS REPLIED TO MIKE, ORAC
AND ME [NOT I]. IT'S 5TH GRADE GRAMMAR.

As opposed to 2nd grade keyboard operation?

As Blake says, I think Nisbet is simply working his way through the more popular scienceblogs. I have long concluded that his main shtick is envy combined with 'look at me, I'm better and more important than them over there'. Not exactly the best advocate for framing.

The next step of his blog censorship is to copy the practise of many creationist and denialist sites. I.e. allow unflattering comments through, but to first 'edit' them to make them appear supportive. When he does that, we will know for sure that he has jumped the shark, assuming there was any doubt in the first place.

Nisbet's use of the "I don't have time to respond to your arguments" retort is right out of the troll playbook. If he doesn't have time to engage commenters, then what is he doing here?

Nisbet does not hesitate to refer to his detractors as "screechy monkeys" while blocking all their comments. Likewise he was quick to label the dirty, uncivil "far-left bloggers" who did such nasty things to poor poor Joe Lieberman.

Does he even have a science background? Has he ever performed any communications other than giving lectures on it to silent, respectful, non-confrontational audiences who specifically sought him out to lecture at them? My impression of ScienceBlogs is that nearly everybody has a background in education or at least public report presentations. Nobody needed this self-appointed ombudsman and diction coach, and I for one find his "theories" to be insultingly redundant. I call deniers "deniers," of course I don't call MY STUDENTS "deniers." His advice is about as pertinent as the Monty Python Theory of the Brontosaurus (being that it was long and skinny at the front end, then much fatter in the middle, then long and skinny again at the rear).

For someone who spends so much time saying that nobody should upset anyone, Nisbet has annoyed a large number of people.

IN REPLY TO PALMD, WHEN DID POINTING OUT INCORRECT GRAMMAR BECOME
PICKY? ADDITIONALLY, THERE IS NO INCORRECT CAPITALIZATION; IT'S ALL CAPS AND IT APPARENTLY GOT YOUR ATTENTION.

AS FOR USING BRACKETS INSTEAD OF PARENTHESES, SQUARE BRACKETS ENCLOSE
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS THAT WERE NOT IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO LOOK IT UP. I HOPE THIS ISN'T TOO PICKY, PALMD, BUT IN YOUR POST, IT SHOULD BE YOU'RE, NOT YOUR. I'M SORRY.

AS FOR AZKYROTH, IF I CAN'T USE ALL CAPS, THEN YOU CAN'T USE SENTENCE FRAGMENTS, WHICH MIGHT BE TAUGHT IN YOUR 2ND GRADE COMPUTER CLASS.

DAN MCPEEK -

YOUR BEING PEDANTIC ASSHOLE WITH NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE TO OFFER CONVERSATION WE'RE ALL HAVING HERE. AND YOU APPARENTLY NEED CAPSLOCK TO DO IT RIGHT. IT'S KINDERGARTEN LEVEL SOCIALIZATION.

DUWAYNE-

IT'S TRUE I HAVE NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE TO OFFER THE CONVERSATION.

YOU SAY YOU LACK A FORMAL EDUCATION. I GUESS SO. YOUR FIRST SENTENCE IS CONFIRMATION.

AS FAR AS ME BEING A PEDANT (A PRETENDER TO SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE), IT'S ELEMENTARY GRAMMAR...ASSHOLE. YOU'RE RIGHT, USING THE WORD ASSHOLE, THAT DOES FEEL GOOD.

Dan McPeek,

You appear unaware of the internet convention that using all caps is the equivalent of shouting.

DAN MCPEEK -

Oh dear, in mocking you, I gave you the impression that I am somehow lacking grammatical ability. Sorry, but if reading my previous comments didn't disabuse you of that, you truly are a moron.

But my point about your social skills stands firm. If my six year old son decided to invade any conversation with pedantic bullshit like that which you are spewing here, he would get a time out for being an asshole. Nothing substantive to add, you come in and like a complete idiot use all caps and criticize a minor grammatical error and in so doing also make a slight on the writers intelligence.

And by the way, the sentence as written is not grammatically incorrect. In modern Engish, both Mark's version and your own, are generally considered acceptable. Whether you like it or not, both forms are used by professional writers and both forms are taught in elementary schools as being acceptable, not to mention college English classes.

Now I happen to find this topic very interesting as well as rather important. So if you have nothing more to contribute, than showing what a pedantic asshole you are - mistaken pedantic asshole to boot, I for one would love to see you go have a time out and let the adults continue with their adult conversation.

Unless of course, you want me to spank you again.

DUWANE- OH DEAR, DUWANE, YOU IGNORAMUS. YOU DIDN'T SPANK ANYBODY. AND YOUR SELF EDUCATION NEEDS SOME FINE TUNING. YOU'RE NOT GETTING YOUR GRAMMAR INFO FROM A COLLEGE CLASS; IT MUST BE COMING FROM YOUR KID. THE SENTENCE AS WRITTEN IS GRAMATICALLY INCORRECT, GENERALLY OR OTHERWISE. AND, YES, ITS USE IS UNINTELLIGENT. AND WHAT'S YOUR ANAL OBSESSION WITH CAPS? IF I'M SHOUTING, I'M SHOUTING. GET OVER IT. AND ARE YOU LACKING GRAMATICAL ABILITY? YES, RETARD, YOU ARE! SO PLACE A COMMA AFTER IDIOT, YOU IDIOT, AND WRITER'S IS POSSESSIVE, YOU MORON, AND THAT IS A SLIGHT ON YOUR INTELLIGENCE YOU PRETENTIOUS DICK. NOW, GO SPANK SOMETHING ELSE. AND SINCE YOU LOVE THE WORD PEDANTIC, GO LOOK IT IT UP BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A CLUE. NOW, LIGHTEN UP AND GO HAVE A BEER.

I honestly don't understand why Nisbet is still on Sb.

For someone who spends so much time saying that nobody should upset anyone, Nisbet has annoyed a large number of people.

Michael, that's a really good point. What the heck is he doing? Didn't anyone ever tell him "show, don't tell"?

Dan - Personally I read all-caps writing as a sort of blank-verse lolspeak, not shouting. Either way it's annoying. Do you have anything to say that isn't criticizing other posters' grammar? No? Then what's the fucking point?

Yeah, it's "you're". I hereby declare Dan a good punctuator. Really. Why he needs to shout about it when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand is beyond me, but never mind. *shrug*

I've been missing in action from the scienceblogosphere for a while. So ... I come back to have a look around, only to find this wrangle with Nisbet still going on, albeit metamorphosed somewhat. I guess it's hard to ignore him when he keeps dissing people unnecessarily and counterproductively - but it'd be good to try. You won't convert him or his small number of admirers, and I doubt that the effect of what Nisbet is doing is that great; in fact, I doubt that many people in the larger world really care. I mean, I do find the whole thing vaguely amusing (and at the same time slightly unsettling), but even I don't care all that much.

Jeeze, I hope I didn't make any punctuation errors in the above.

Have you no sense of irony, sir? At long last, have you no sense of irony? "Your" and "gonna" were thrown in for IRONY!!!111!!

Below is the post I attempted at Matt's blog. Never did show up. I'm sure you're all surprised, laced with namecalling and profanity as it is. (not)

Post attempted (9:42 est 27 Nov) at Matt's blog (original thread)
Jeremy, maybe you, if not Matt, will answer: What is Matt's framing except a matter of providing a set of neat little boxes to put things in? He argues for the necessity of a simplified structure, a 'framework', rather than the fully detailed one he complains of scientists mistakenly trying to provide.

If you and Matt and others dislike 'denialist' as a frame for those who are actively denying the science in an area, fine. But in telling others not to use it, but that we should still be 'framing', tell us what term you want to be used instead. Because there really are people who are actively denying the science, senators whose climate 'experts' run to science fiction author MDs, micrometeorologists who've never published on anything larger than a few square meters of forest, and the like. You don't like 'denialist', fine. What term do you want instead?

Note that while you and Matt advocate studiously avoiding an appropriate label, the denialists are actively trying to apply a different one to themselves for public consumption -- labels like 'honest', 'scientist'. If framing works at all, letting their self-framing go unchallenged is a suicidal tactic. What is your counter?

In reading the preceding (oops, I buried a helpful part of framing), it's true that I have, for my own reasons, advised commentators on my blog not to use labels like this or others. And that one of my articles (August) is titled 'Labelling instead of thinking'.

Quoth Russell Blackford:

I've been missing in action from the scienceblogosphere for a while. So ... I come back to have a look around, only to find this wrangle with Nisbet still going on, albeit metamorphosed somewhat.

I LONG AGO GAVE UP THINKING THAT ANYWUN WOUDL AKSHULY LIEK 2 TOK ABOUT TEH HYPOTHESEES OF COGNITIV SCIUNHS IMPLISIT IN NISBET'S HARANGUES. NOW, ON TEH INFREKWENT OCASHUNS I AKSHULY CARE, I JUST CALL HIM SILLY NAMES INSTED. OFTUN IN BLANK VURSE.

Dan... seven-sixteenths of an inch is all you have to move your left pinky finger to avoid looking like a moron. Full documentation at the link.

I fixed the bad grammar. Apologies. Crap! Sentence fragment! And another! And another!

You know, out of sheer morbid curiosity, I clicked a bunch of the links he refers to that supposedly explain his position better, and searched on "denialist" in those that were searchable. The results pretty much confirmed Mike the Mad's point that the only people who have a stick up their arses about the word, are the denialists themselves. Does Mr Nisbet even read the stuff to which he links?

In the original NPR clip he posted, his colleague Dr Sandman gives various reasons why people might deny a reality; and I can see holding hands and singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing" would work in the case where someone was using a faulty heuristic/worldview, where there was a chance they could actually be persuaded by presenting the facts in a way that would fit their worldview. But in the other cases his learned colleague describes--lying through one's teeth, being too panicked by consequences to think straight--that ain't gonna work. So.

One thing I learned in my wonderful mandatory liberal arts communication courses: Know your audience. Presumably a normal communication expert would think, aha, these are scientists, I can simply cite a bunch of social science/group psych papers demonstrating that Method XYZ is the most successful way to overcome propaganda and disinformation, and I shall have won their minds, right? So why does Mr Nisbet not have this thought? I dug up a bunch of student comments on his teaching skills (I luv teh intarwebs), and they indicate that his lectures at AU are the same type of communication: blind assertions to be memorized without comment or interaction. Apparently he figures that blogging is just like droning at your bored undergrads using teh intartubes.

First, I don't think the terms "denier" and "denialist" are nearly as inflammatory as people seem to think they are.

"Denier" is just a straightforward description. However, we don't call everyone who denies anything a denier. We only bother to label them when it seems like there's something noteworthy, or problematic about their denial.

"Denialist" implies bad faith and ulterior motives. The denizens of Exxon-funded think tanks against global warming are denialists. They are sophists in the classic sense of the word: People who make cleverly specious arguments for money.

My neighbor who wonders whether the world is really warming up is not a denialist. He's just an intelligent layperson who isn't that well informed on the issue.

Sometimes, you need to call out bad faith when you see it. We can't just pretend that oil company think tanks are legitimate and disinterested players in this battle of ideas.

A lot of people are receptive to the argument that industry is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. We've seen this phenomenon countless times before.

Calling real denialism when you see it won't alienate the intelligent middle ground. Denialism provides an easily understood explanation for why this controversy won't die, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus.

The denialists have narratives to explain their permanent ultra-minority status: Hidebound academia punishing mavericks. Our counter-narrative is that their ideas don't catch on with real experts because they're trash, but they don't die out because people with vested interests are subsidizing them.

LULZ TO THE MAX:

SO boring. He repeated the same concepts and stories over and over and over again. And when he'd ask a question that nobody was interested in answering, he'd just stand there until somebody finally broke the awkward silence.

Teh awsum.

Dear Dan McPeek: FUCK OFF

You can come back when you are ready to stop shouting.

The trouble is that, although I wish I could join in the general pile-on on Nisbet, who, Zeus knows, has often done much to deserve it ... well, y'know, I think there's a grain of truth there this time. Some of us do - perhaps because of our particular backgrounds, or whatever - find it hard to hear or see the word "denialist" and its cognates without it having a suggestion of Holocaust denial specifically, of David Irving more specifically, and of a tinge of something rather Nazi-like. The fact that it does have that connotation for some (many?) people is a reason to think twice before using it, and not a reason to grab it with both hands in order to exploit the emotional associations, which I suspect sometimes happens. I'm NOT suggesting it happens around here; nor am I, ahem, denying that this sort of terminology might be readily applicable to people who are just as cranky as Holocaust denialists, and maybe more socially dangerous, if less offensive or malevolent; but I'd be dishonest if I kept silent about this concern, or if I said that the sort of point Nisbet is making on this particular occasion has no resonance for me at all.

I'd rather just call these people "irrationalists" - which is, in fact, what I usually call people who are being irrational. "Wingnut", "crackpot", and so on are also good, as is "deluded", but I guess "irrationalist" is not very catchy, and there's also the problem with some of these that's already been mentioned: people who are irrational/nutty/cracked on some topic can (sometimes) be fairly rational on others.

I'd be dishonest if I kept silent about this concern

Thank you. Your concern has been noted, and rejected.

Well, thanks for your thoughtful reply. Pity you had to plagiarise it from a creationist video that attempts to satirise Richard Dawkins.

Concern trolls are useless. We have noted your concern. We reject it. What part of that is hard for you to understand. You offer nothing of substance to the conversation other than mealy-mouthed platitudes. This is the same problem we have with Nisbet. What on earth made you think that you would get any better treatment on a blog post titled "Mathew Nisbet, Beneath Contempt"? Seriously. We have heard your "concerns" before. Thank you for playing.

Russel -

The problem with that, is that most people don't have any preconceived notion of denialism. Unless they have specifically dealt with holocaust denial, they aren't going to make any connections the holocaust when they hear the term denialism. And honestly, the general public is, at best, vaguely aware that there are those who deny the holocaust ever happened. It's just not that common of a topic.

Unfortunately, there are a great many people who are aware of vaccine denialists, because there are a great number of prominent people who fall into that category. Sure, calling them cranks and irrational helps, but calling them denialists makes clear that there is a lot more to the story than they are letting out. It makes me think; "What exactly are they denying?" Rather than settling for them being mere cranks, which may make me think twice about what they are saying, but doesn't put an onus on me to actually investigate the claims, certainly not the way accusing them of denial does.

In the end, even if the individual is discredited, the idea remains and unless the idea is displaced by evidence based ideas, it can continue to fester long after the discredited crank is forgotten.

The fact that it does have that connotation for some (many?) people is a reason to think twice before using it, and not a reason to grab it with both hands in order to exploit the emotional associations, which I suspect sometimes happens.

I think the salient issue here is that it's difficult to judge how other people will react to terminology (or to anything else, really) based solely on one's personal experiences. It's the danger of anecdotal evidence. Myself, I learned that Holocaust denial existed at about the same time that I learned the history and extent of creationism, back when I was a teenager. The techniques employed by the two seemed so parallel that the term "evolution deniers" just seemed natural, and I didn't have a pre-existing history of seeing and using the label "Holocaust denier" to heap extra connotations on the word "denial". Consequently, while I can appreciate that somebody else, somebody who dealt with Holocaust denial first, might have issues with the jargon, it doesn't have that emotional impact for me.

I must confess I don't really know what the public level of awareness about Holocaust denial is. I suspect that many people, if confronted with a Holocaust denier, would react with astonishment: "What are you, some kind of neo-Nazi? Where do you think all those Jews went, for Christ's sake?" Maybe I'm being foolishly optimistic, but as far as cranky beliefs go, I really do expect this one to be fringe. Certainly, it's less respectable in polite society than, say, climate change denialism.

The irony, then, would be that denialism might be an uncomfortable term for the public intellectuals of the world, as they've been reading about David Irving for years, while it could be just the word we need for explaining the phenomenon to the moderately interested outsider, whose name-recognition of Irving might not even rise to "Oh, that guy" status. I call this ironic, of course, because dealing with the hoi polloi is Nisbet's self-proclaimed speciality.

I certainly don't think of the term "denialist" as having some special connotation of connection to the Nazis, though I openly question whether there's a meaningful moral difference between those who pretend Nazi atrocities never happened and those who pre-emptively pretend that the horrors of resurgent vaccine-preventable diseases, biological (and thus medical) science frozen in its tracks, and massive environmental damage never will have happened.

Just to be clear, he's making it *our* fault that *they* sound and act like neo-Nazis? Sorry ... perhaps I framed that in a poor manner, how about "argue the same way as neo-Nazis." I would think that's their problem, not ours.

Also, as I pointed out in my still-awaiting-moderation comment on his blog, what kind of expert in communication stifles opposing viewpoints? I wonder what sort of obfuscation and bullshit -- I mean, framing -- he would do to make that censorship look like our fault, as well. What a clown this guy turned out to be.

Lindzen alleges conspiracies, cherry-picks data (see TGGWS), misrepresents the state of the scientific consensus etc. He meets criteria for fake expertise. The conspiracy-mongering alone should be enough. Further, we have evidence of crank magnetism with his denial of the health risks of smoking. He has relevant credentials but this is besides the point. There are plenty of MDs who promote quackery. There are PhDs who believe in all sorts of bizarre crankery including HIV/AIDS denial. You may as well argue that Peter Duesberg is a real expert because he is indeed highly trained and published in biological science, a member of NAS etc. It's not the letters after their name it's their actions.

Fighting over funding sources is not a useful endeavor. It's very difficult to establish a quid pro quo since almost everyone has to get paid by someone with an ostensible interest in one side of an argument. And it's not like industry doesn't put out excellent research. Such things may be suspicious, but rarely proof of crankery or denialism (barring internal tobacco company documents of course - Fumento and Milloy look out). The denialism comes from conspiracy theories and selectivity.

Fake expert.

thanks for blog