Fumento
tlambert | May 27, 2012Triggered by the Heartland Billboard debacle Michael Fumento has written an article explaining why he has broken with the "hysterical right". (Hat tip: hardinr).
John Quiggin comments on the rarity of such moves, while Mark Hoofnagle draws a parallel with Stephen Sumpter leaving the UK Greens over their opposition to scientific experiments on GM crops.
denialism | May 25, 2012Today I read about two individuals who decided on political defections over perceived anti-science amongst their former political allies- one due to climate change, the other for anti-GMO. From the right, we have Michael Fumento, who in Salon describes his break with the right, spurred by Heartland's campaign comparing those who believe in climate change with the Unabomber, as well as a general atmosphere of conspiratorial crankery and incivility. And from the left, we have Stephen Sumpter of Latent Existence leaving the Greens over their support for the misguided anti-scientific campaign of…
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 | July 29, 2007Long time readers will be familiar with the epic that is Michael Fumento's attempt to debunk the first Lancet survey. A summary can't really do it justice, but what basically happened is that Fumento dismissed the 100,000 number because he claimed that they included Falluja when they should have left it out. When I explained that they had left Falluja out, rather than admit to making a mistake, Fumento repeatedly and loudly insisted that the 100,000 number came from including Falluja. Now he's claiming to be vindicated by David Kane's critique. Kane, of course, is arguing that the Lancet…
tlambert | January 22, 2007Michael Fumento has been booted off Winds of Change because he misrepresented a scientific article. As usual he responded with abuse:
I'm off to Ramadi again next month. Put that alongside the chickenhawks and chairborne rangers whose blogs you print.
In short, I was doing you a great favor and you spat in my face. Well, the wind has changed and the spit has gone back into your face. Goodbye and good riddance. ...
As to chicken hawks, that refers to "Armed Liberal," who never got closer to Iraq than watching CNN, and it refers to you personally. I don't see any leash keeping you from going…
tlambert | January 15, 2007Michael Fumento is making even less sense than usual:
Lambert is one of the most obnoxious trolls on the Internet. He produces nothing; he exists to tear down other people to make up for some perceived deficiency on his part. Perhaps it's a deficiency that can be measured with a three-inch ruler; I don't know. Some people buy a flashy sports car in his case, but Troll Lambert uses all his spare time to write fraudulent Wikipedia biographies about people who get more attention than he does (approximately 6.3 billion) and to try to poke fun of them on his blog. In his desperation he often makes…
tlambert | December 30, 2006In response to my post, Michael Fumento has offered a bet: 10 to 1 odds on a pandemic in the next year. That means that Fumento thinks that there is a 10% of a pandemic in the next year. This sits rather oddly with his dismissal of concerns about bird flu. With a 10% chance of a pandemic, surely significant efforts to prepare are justified?
With three pandemics in the last century, you would expect any given year to have a 3% chance of a pandemic, so Fumento's 10% number suggests that he thinks the risk is seriously elevated. The market at the Foresight Exchange estimates that there is a…
tlambert | December 20, 2006Michael Fumento thinks there is nothing to worry about. Revere disagrees:
It isn't that what Fumento says is so outrageous one would have to be stupid or ignorant to believe it. It's that it would be folly (and stupid) to act as if you believed it. Fumento couldn't care less about public health nor does he care that what he writes makes it still more difficult to get government to make a puny investment in keeping us safe from disease at the same time he encourages it to sink more down the rat hole of the War in Iraq.
Fumento, of course, shows up in comments to insult not just Revere, but…
tlambert | July 12, 2006Michael Fumentocomplains about his Wikipedia article:
An Aussie named Tim Lambert has as his raison d'etre attacking anybody who is more intelligent, more successful, and more relevant than he is. That leaves him with 6.3 million targets -- more or less. But I ended up on his radar screen by making fun of him, as I am now. So he attacks me in any way he can, which as it happens is limited to the only two outlets in the whole world that will deign to publish him -- his blog and Wikipedia. (Perhaps at some point his blog will say "Enough is enough!" but probably not.) Nor will Wikipedia reject…
tlambert | June 23, 2006David Appell heard Michael Fumento on the radio:
My God, he is even worse on the radio! You'd think he was the only journalist who ever went to Iraq. I only caught his segment for about two minutes, but during that time he was pompous, combative, egotistical, and simply an all around jerk to his hosts. It was like getting smacked in the face, he was trying so hard to be forceful. It's not easy to make such a strong impression in a mere two minutes, but he succeeded in spades.
Oh yeah, he also has a funny, high voice, kind of like a cartoon character.
Less than two hours later he got a…
tlambert | June 2, 2006I wrote earlier about how consultants for PG&E published a fraudulent article exonerating chromium-6. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine is now publishing a retraction of the paper. From the EWG press release:
The July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), the official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, will carry a retraction of a 1997 article published under the byline of two Chinese scientists, JianDong Zhang and ShuKun Li.
The article appeared to be a reversal of an earlier study by…
tlambert | March 3, 2006After Fumento had been worked over by yours truly, Chris Mooney and PZ Myers, you'd think there would be nothing left, but Steve Reuland has taken just one paragraph from Fumento's column and found as many mistakes as I found in the whole thing. Fumento's columns aren't just wrong, they're fractals of wrongness!
P.S. Fumento.
tlambert | March 2, 2006
Chris Mooney and PZ Myers complete the demolition of Fumento's article that I started here. Sir Oolius also got stuck in and managed to get one of Fumento's characteristically lame comebacks.
Inspired by my post mentioning co-authorship chains with the "Hockey Team", John Fleck and William Connolley have been looking at such chains. Main discoveries: A four link chain from McIntyre to Mann and a seven link one from Motl to Connolley.
James Annan weighs in on the frog extinction paper I blogged on here. He also has an interesting post on his new paper that gives tighter bounds on…
tlambert | February 28, 2006
In Fumento's latest article he accuses the leading science journals of delivering "Political Science". His examples are a mixture of genuine problems discovered by others (like the Korean stem cell fraud) and bogus problems "discovered" by Fumento. Like this:
Fast forward to September 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina. Activists -- including those in white lab coats -- saw a grand opportunity to tie the exceptionally violent hurricane season to global warming. A study in Science declared, "A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5…
tlambert | February 23, 2006
Cathy Young disagrees with the Iain Murray/Tom Giovenetti line on cash for comment:
Sadly, some conservatives are now defending the practice of opinion writers serving as hired guns (hired quills?) for business and lobbying interests. Among others, Iain Murray in The American Spectator and Giovanetti in National Review Online (which, to its credit, has published strong critiques of payola in punditry) claim that a witch-hunt against conservative writers is afoot. Liberal pundits, they whine, are subsidized by the media, major foundations, and the publishing industry, while conservatives…
tlambert | February 18, 2006
Good old Mike Fumento has another go at Javers:
In the one instance we know of, the DC firm Patton Boggs and others invited Javers to play on the highly exclusive Bretton Woods golf course. I would guess that the value of this gift would be in excess of $10,000. This could be considered unsavory in itself, but is all the more so in that Javers has made himself Witch Hunter General in digging up dirt (or inventing it, when "necessary") on conservative writers to strip away their jobs, their columns, or at the very least inhibit their think tank employers from accepting corporate support…
tlambert | February 10, 2006We previously encountered Tom Giovenetti, president of the IPI think tank when he told me that IPI keeps its funders secret:
Second, regarding whether we take money from Microsoft, IPI has an absolute policy of protecting our donors' privacy. I'm sure if you donated money to IPI, you would appreciate that policy.
Giovenetti has now weighed in with an NRO column defending pundit payola. I'm linking to the director's cut on his blog. Giovenetti starts with an attack on conservatives who think that journalists should disclose their funding:
But after seeing a smattering of silly columns…
tlambert | February 5, 2006The pro-payola people have launched a lame counter attack on Javers. Before we begin, note that even if they could prove Javers guilty of some wrong-doing, it would not mean that Fumento was not guilty of unethical behaviour. Anyway, Fumento is really excited:
Well, there's now enough evidence to bring Javers to the stake. And I don't mean using the new rules of journalistic ethics he invented on-the-spot, applied specifically to me, and made retroactive. No, these are the tried and true old rules he violated.
Disclosing payments you received from a company when you write about them are…
tlambert | February 4, 2006
Iain Murray, comes out with an article in the American Spectator in favour of pundit payola:
An opinion piece -- whether an individual op-ed or a column -- exists to promote a point of view by argument. It does not seek to establish a fact, but to win people over to a particular viewpoint or opinion. Therefore, the strength of the argument is the key factor in determining the effectiveness of the piece. A sloppily constructed, poorly thought-out argument will convince no one -- while a tightly constructed, coherent, and well-written argument can sway minds. That is why opinion pieces are…
tlambert | February 2, 2006Mike Hudson gets a whole column out of an exchange with Fumento:
I decided to e-mail Fumento and gloat about his descent into ignominy. I told him that, given his positions on Love Canal and Gulf War Syndrome, it wasn't surprising to hear that he was bought and paid for by a chemical company. What sweet irony.
"Time wounds all heels," I reminded him at the end of the brief message.
Imagine my surprise when, nine minutes later, Fumento replied.
He bragged about having "exposed" Hanchette for "lying about a perfectly safe place called Love Canal." The humorless quality of his post was…