Brignell
tlambert | February 21, 2006
Last year I wrote how John Brignell repeatedly tried to add untrue claims to the Sourcewatch article on Brignell because it was critical of him. Now he is complaining about his Wikipedia article:
Anyway, reading hostile critiques of one's efforts is very much like being in that hall of mirrors. All the bits are there, but grossly distorted. We could dismiss overt politically motivated character-assassination sites such as Sourcewatch and the Australian Adhominator, except that they are then quoted by less obviously biased sources.
As usual, Brignell calls me names instead of addressing…
tlambert | November 23, 2005Bob Carroll learns from Chis Mooney about the relative risk scam. He writes
I owe an apology to readers of this newsletter. In April 2004, I wrote the first of several commentaries on Penn & Teller's claim in a Bullshit! episode that the EPA report was bogus that claims that 3,000 people a year die from lung cancer because of secondhand smoke. My initial research into the subject was inadequate and I agreed with P & T. I was wrong to do so. My position was laid out in Newsletters 41, 42, 44, 49, and 50. For the full retraction, see Newsletter 41, though I've posted corrections in…
tlambert | September 30, 2005The Source Watch wiki page on John Brignell quotes extensively from some of my criticisms of Brignell. Rather than address this criticism, Brignell edited the page to add this comment:
What follows is the work of an individual known as The Adhominator. You can recognise his style, as he never attacks the argument, only the arguer. You can identify him, because he is the only authority he quotes. Enjoy!
This is classic Brignell. He can't bring himself to mention my name, he makes blatantly false claims (specifically, I do attack his arguments, and I do cite other authorities) and indulges…
tlambert | June 7, 2005 Our old friend John Brignell has uncovered "The greatest conspiracy in human history". According to Brignell that's what global warming is, and:
It is not that the proponents are simply mistaken---that would be forgivable. They know that they are lying: otherwise there would be no need for all the manufactured and selective evidence, the appeal to a claimed consensus (the like of which has never had a place within the scientific method), the gross attempts to censor any contrary argument, the abandonment of the essential scepticism of science, the vilification of doubters, the direction…
tlambert | April 30, 2005 To mark the centenary of the publication of Einstein's famous equation, Spiked has surveyed
over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators - including 11 Nobel laureates - asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing.
They certainly have surveyed some renowned scientists and their answers are worth reading. But if you look at the complete list, you'll see these renowned scientists (links show where they've have mentioned on this blog): Sallie Baliunas, Timothy Ball, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, John Brignell, Hans…
tlambert | February 16, 2005Anti-environmentalist writers frequently claim that after DDT had all but eliminated malaria from Sri Lanka, environmentalist pressure forced Sri Lanka to ban DDT, leading to a resurgence of malaria:
Roger Bate in Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking writes:
Some developing countries imposed a complete ban on the pesticide, as Sri Lanka did in 1964, when officials believed the malaria problem was solved. By 1969 the number of cases had risen from the low of seventeen (when DDT was used) to over a half million.
Walter Williams in in…
tlambert | February 11, 2005 John Brignell has an odd response (scroll down to "Hit Parade") to some of my criticism. He doesn't link, or dare to even mention my name, so it's probably rather mystifying to his readers what he is responding to. Brignell goes on the Michael Fumento road, boasting about how the 2,488 hits he got on Monday vastly exceeds the 10 hits he got from me. Trouble is, he got those hits from a link in a comment in a two-day old post, so it's hardly a meaningful comparison. For what it's worth, his web counter shows 230k visits in five years, which is less than what I have…
tlambert | November 6, 2004 Yet another person has tried to refute the Lancet article. John Brignell dismisses the study just because:
A relative risk of 1.5 is not acceptable as significant.
Actually the increased risk was statistically significant. You won't find support for Brignell's claim in any conventional statistical text or paper. To support his claim he cites a book called Sorry, wrong number!. Trouble is, that book was written by.... John Brignell. Not only that, it was drafted by... John Brignell. Brignell is a crank who dismisses the entire field of modern…
tlambert | February 19, 2004 There has been quite a bit of reaction to my post on Milloy.
Michael Peckham writes "Milloy's criticism may be right some of the time, but only when it fits his preconceived anti-regulatory agenda. "
John Quiggin, at Crooked Timber and at his own blog observes that the link between Cato and Milloy reflects badly on Cato. Also the comments in the Crooked Timber have some attempts to defend Milloy against the charge that he is boosting creationism. Yes, Milloy offers the Theory of Evolution some faint praise, but he also thinks Creationism should get equal time with…