michael ashley
tlambert | August 30, 2011In The Conversation Michael Ashley writes about The Australian's War on Science, with emphasis on Michael Asten's misrepresentations of the science:
When I contacted The Australian's opinion editor late last year to express dismay at their bias, I was given the example of Michael Asten, a part-time professorial fellow in the school of geosciences at Monash University, Melbourne, as someone who was well-qualified to comment. ...
So, Asten, with no expertise in the field, is using a paper published in Nature to argue the opposite of what the paper actually says.
He then spins this as "top…
tlambert | May 9, 2009Harry Clarke
It is not wrong to challenge orthodoxy anywhere but the work of Plimer is unscientific and both irresponsible and dangerous - he has provided a social diservice. The extensive publicity he has received has had an entirely undeserved impact.
Forget Plimer, read the science.
John Quiggin
In the Oz of all places, a demolition of Ian Plimer so scathing, and so convincing, that it's hard to imagine how he can salvage any kind of academic reputation, other than by a full retraction (which would be a pretty impressive move, admittedly). ...
If there are any genuine sceptics left…
tlambert | May 8, 2009One of Ian Plimer's claims is that the IPCC ignores astronomy, so it's interesting to see what an astronomer thinks of his book. In today's Australian, the blue moon continues with a review of Heaven and Earth by Michael Ashley:
Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through…