Fake outrage: Anthony Watts falsely smears while complaining about smears

Who'd a thought it. Anthony Watts, who makes blog pocket money by smearing climate scientists and others, has published an article by Kip Hansen, saying he is "so sickened by this that I really don’t care to discuss it". The "this" being the latest publicity given to Willie Soon and his funding sources. Anthony is painting this as a poor little denier fighting a corrupted climate science. The mainstream media is painting it as a scientist possibly being corrupted by funding sources.

The chicken or the egg?

The issues are being mixed up quite a bit around the few traps I've visited. One of the central issues is funding sources. The implication is that Willie Soon is writing papers that suit the interests of his funders. That he has tailored his results to suit their perceived interests.

You could turn it around the other way, and argue that his funding sources like the general tenor of his research and stance on climate science, and therefore send funds his way.

I've already made some comments in another thread that science is judged by science, not by who pays for it. As I see it, the issue at hand can be summarised as follows:

• Willie Soon is used by some lobby groups in their efforts to dispute AGW.
• Willie Soon has received a lot of research funding from fossil fuel companies, right wing lobby groups and Donors Trust.
• The question is being asked about whether or not Willie Soon has declared all his funding sources when he should have, as required by many scientific journals. This is the conflict of interest question.
• Willie Soon's published research relating to climate is generally not regarded as good science.

This isn't a new issue. It's just resurfaced. As I see it, the current spate of articles are mainly intended to highlight Willie Soon's funding sources. The "smear" being the implication that if one receives substantial research funds from fossil fuel companies or organisations representing right wing interests (Donors Trust), then that research is suspect. 

It has long been known that Willie Soon's funding sources include parties that are keen to deny climate science. The extent of this funding has been revealed by FOI requests.  The point of some of these articles is not so much that he that he received this funding, but whether or not he consistently failed to declare these funding sources when he should have. (Some people argue that his recent paper with Monckton etc should have indicated funding sources. Soon says it was done in his own time. It boils down to "he said" "he said". The paper was so silly there's not much point making a fuss about it.)

Irony indeed: Anthony Watts falsely smears while complaining about smears

What I find ironic, in this case, is that Anthony Watts posted an article by Kip Hansen who sez that he is "sickened" by the "smear" and doesn't "care to discuss it". Anthony Watts wasn't so "sickened" - in an earlier article the same day (archived here), Anthony wrote:

Smear campaign: “His judgment cometh and that right soon”

The title is a quote from the framed embroidery over the Warden’s wall safe in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, which is a story about one man fighting the corruption of the penal system at the hands of the warden, who was using his position to profit, bully, and murder. Since the quote turned out to be wildly ironic, I thought it was appropriate for what’s happening to Dr. Willie Soon at the hand of green activists and the compliant media. I often think of the warden as a figurehead for people like Dr. Lawrence Torricello, who once called for the death of climate skeptics.

"Wildly ironic" indeed. Anthony Watts is trying to paint Willie Soon as the martyr - fighting some mythical "corruption". That's how Anthony Watts is portraying Willie Soon. It won't stand up. Presumably Anthony will acknowledge that Soon's "fight" is against facts, and is being paid for by vested interests, including some fossil fuel companies, right wing lobby groups and the shady Donors Trust.

Since Anthony called on wild irony, let me point out another supreme irony in that paragraph of his. Anthony again "smears" Lawrence Torcello (and doesn't even get his name right) - completely misrepresenting what he wrote in an article at the Conversation - again.

In fact, Anthony and others so successfully lied about and "smeared" Professor Torcello that it resulted in hundreds of emails ("upwards of 700"), including some very nasty threats. Some of these would have been a direct result of a call by Anthony Watts for deniers to write to Professor Torcello's university, as I described here.

Dr Torcello did not call for the "death of climate skeptics". The closest he came was writing: "an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent". How many countries sentence the "criminally negligent" to death? And "climate skeptics" are not necessarily "an organised campaign funding misinformation". They are the target of such a campaign.

Maybe Anthony sees himself as part of "an organised campaign funding misinformation" - although he is more likely to be a recipient of funds than a funder. (Can you imagine Anthony Watts, the cyberpanhandler, giving his hard-begged funds away? He's often putting his hand out, and rarely delivers).

Which leads us back to the funding issue.

The Smithsonian Institution wants to get the facts straight

The Soon matter is reportedly being looked into by the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian doesn't have any requirement for people to declare their funding sources, but it does expect it's affiliates and staff members to comply with the requirements of the journals they publish in.

As well as the New York Times and the Guardian writing about the story, Jeff Tollefson has an article about this in Nature. He reports about the Smithsonian Institution:

The institution has no explicit policy requiring its researchers to disclose funding sources when they publish, says CfA director Charles Alcock, but they are expected to comply with journal rules, which typically require that authors report potential conflicts of interest.

“We want to get the facts straight,” says Alcock. “If there is evidence of failure to disclose, yes, we have a problem.”

Declaration of funding sources and questionable research

On the matter of questionable research, the Nature article refers to the infamous paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. Some editors of the journal that published that paper, Climate Research, resigned over the fiasco. Incidentally, the declaration on that disputed paper reads:

Acknowledgements. This work was supported by funds from the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-0194) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG5-7635). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are independent of the sponsoring agencies. We have benefitted greatly from the true and kind spirit of research communications (including a preview of their thoughts) with the late Jean Grove (who passed away on January 18, 2001), Dave Evans, Shaopeng Huang, Jim Kennett,
Yoshio Tagami and Referee #3. We thank John Daly, Diane Douglas-Dalziel, Craig and Keith Idso for their unselfish contributions to the references. We also thank the Editor, Chris de Freitas, for very helpful editorial changes that improved the manuscript. We are very grateful to Maria McEachern, Melissa Hilbert, Barbara Palmer and Will Graves for invaluable library help, and both Philip Gonzalez and Lisa Linarte for crucial all-around help.

I also see that Willie Soon has declared his funding sources on some other papers, too. For example, in this paper published in GRL, he writes:

I thank Igor Polyakov for kind access to his Arctic SAT data, Peter Frick for sharing his insights and programs on wavelet transform, and Gene Avrett and David R. Legates for comments. I further thank Julia Pham and Benjamin Soon for motivation. Both referees offered helpful suggestions for significant improvements. This scientific research was supported by generous grants from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are independent of sources providing support.

On the other hand, there is no declaration of funding sources in this 2013 paper in the (low impact factor) Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. (The paper is mainly cited by various contrarians and science deniers, so it got no traction.) That journal does require disclosure as follows:

Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest. Further information and an example of a Conflict of Interest form can be found at: http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/286/p/7923.

The extent to which there is a "failure to disclose" on the part of Willie Soon has yet to be determined. Regardless, the publicity has once again brought his funding sources to light. The "by association" may well influence people who otherwise aren't in a position to assess the scientific merits or otherwise of Willie Soon's work.

To my way of thinking, the implied argument that Willie Soon's research was made to order for the funding bodies is too much like the denier argument that scientists only say what the government wants to hear. (Which is nonsense - there isn't a government in the world that wouldn't want global warming to go away). I doubt anyone will be able to categorically determine motivation. It requires mind-reading. His climate research is questionable at best and much of it has been shown to be flawed. (Which came first - the flawed science or the funding?)

Other scientists have received funding from some of the same sources. Think the Berkeley Earth temperature reconstruction, which received a fair whack from Koch. If that research had found something different would it have been because of the funding source? Or would scientists have decided its merits or otherwise on the strength of the work itself?

The real issue

To my mind, the problem is not so much Willie Soon's published papers, but any influence he might have in the deniosphere. (Many of the few climate papers he's had published are in journals that are not highly regarded. Many of his citations are by himself or other "contrarians".) Even in relation to his talks, I'd question whether anyone takes any notice, except for the denialati. Yes, he's called on by the deniers in the Republican Party - but so is Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, John Christy and others who the deniers among the Republicans probably think are willing to distort scientific facts.

This latest attempt to taint Willie Soon's name may be effective, or not. It will depend on whether or how often he has not declared interest when he should have. If he has declared interest in most of the cases he should have, then that particular line of argument will have gone nowhere. If he hasn't, maybe the Smithsonian will take action.

At the end of the day, it's the flaws in Willie Soon's utterances at his speaking engagements and his research publications that need to be highlighted if one is to show that he's not anyone worth listening to.

As Gavin Schmidt wrote at RealClimate.org almost four years ago:

... the real issue is not how he gets paid, but the quality of his science

Climate disinformer Judith Curry, "pragmatic ethicist" despicably perpetuates a lie....

Update: After this article which I tweeted to @curryja at the time, comments from Kevin O'Neill and Izen and two days after writing it, Judith has finally commented that she has changed her article (compare original to revised). She now refers to the headline but does not clarify what Professor Torcello actually wrote or the context or that she grossly misrepresented him and his views. She left the word "outrageous" to refer to Lawrence Torcello's "thinking about climate ethics", suggesting she views the organised funding of misinformation campaigns as more than perfectly okay. Does it fit with her "pragmatic ethics"?

Curry as amended... Torcello famously wrote an essay entitled Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent? More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics ...

Curry's original and very wrong portrayal... Torcello famously wrote that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”.  More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics

What Lawrence Torcello wrote (my bold italics):

When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent

Of interest may be the comments like this and this and these, especially in light of the fact that Lawrence Torcello's article attracted so much venom on denier blogs and upwards of 700 hate emails and telephone calls.

Following the disinformation on denier blogs earlier this year, Professor Torcello wrote a strongly worded very clear statement  (h/t MikeH in the comments below).

(Note also that in this article I have not discussed the suspect ethics and absurdly impractical suggestions that Judith was promoting to try to justify her push to not reduce CO2 emissions and not mitigate climate change, which could be worth an article in its own right.)

Sou 12:27 pm AEST 27 July 2014 - amended 12:58 pm to compare changed wording and add more for clarification.

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I don't go there too often - it's too awful. However today I visited Judith Curry's blog and I found her perpetuating an old lie (archived here). Since, as a bully herself she gets so upset about people "bullying" (ie calling her out on her disinformation and worse), you'd have thought she'd be more cautious.

No, I won't yawn, Judith, I'm outraged

What was her lie? She was repeating the nonsense about the Laurence Torcello article in The Conversation back in March this year. You know, the one that prompted all the hate mail from deniers, some of whom could well have been part of an "organised campaign funding misinformation".

Judith has to know it's made up baloney. She even linked to the article itself.  So this is just one more piece of evidence to add to her long list of sins.  I can totally believe that Judith would "yawn" at ethics. This is what Judith wrote [now inserted full paragraph for comparison with the update above Sou 12:27 pm AEST 27 July 2014 ]:

My recent post Why scientists should talk to philosophers elicited a comment on twitter (that I can’t find) that recommended Lawrence Torcello as a philosopher that I should be paying attention to.  In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Torcello famously wrote that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”.  More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics is typified by this Nature essay by Stephen Gardiner.My response to most writings on climate ethics that I’ve encountered has ranged from outrage to a yawn..

No, that's not what Lawrence Torcello "famously wrote". He said nothing of the kind. He didn't say that climate scientists should face trial.  Perhaps the philosophers Judith talks to encourage her to be immoral and unethical (Judith's "pragmatic ethics"), although she needs no encouragement.

Compare what Judith wrote with what Lawrence Torcello actually wrote:

The importance of clearly communicating science to the public should not be underestimated. Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.

No mention of climate scientists except to say that the majority agree on global warming. Professor Torcello was talking about "an organised campaign funding misinformation", not climate scientists.

What Lawrence Torcello did say was that he didn't believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised:

I don’t believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised because doing so will likely discourage scientists from engaging with the public at all.

Well, Judith Curry is one of those rare scientists who should most definitely not be engaging with the public. She's not to be trusted.

(I've just had a thought. Maybe Judith, climate scientist, is admitting to being part of "an organised campaign funding misinformation". That could let her off the hook, couldn't it? Maybe - at a Curry-style stretch. Especially with her "pragmatic" ethics. Only to hang her on another hook, of course.)

Justice for deliberate disinformers who are in positions of influence

Let's hope that one day there will be justice for people like Judith Curry. People like Judith Curry, who used to be a Departmental Chair at Georgia Tech professorial chair at a minor university, should be held to higher standards than plebs like the normal denier crowd at WUWT.

[Georgia Tech is a very worthy institution and is not a minor university by any means. I apologise without reservation for the unintended slight to all the current top notch staff, students and alumni. The intended slight was aimed at the single individual who has diminished its reputation somewhat. There are duds in the best universities. Sou 1:16 pm  AEST 26 July 2014]

You know what was the razor blade in the soap? Judith wrote her lie under a headline:

Towards a pragmatic ethics of climate change 

Is it her pragmatic ethics that allows Judith to promote disinformation? Does it allow her to disregard any twinge of conscience or does she have no conscience?

I'd say if the former, she hides it very well, as evidenced by her testimonies to the US Government.

Are Anthony Watts and James Delingpole claiming to be part of an "organised campaign funding misinformation"?

See Update and Update 2 below - WUWT is organising a barrage of mail for RIT.

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Anthony Watts is beginning to make a habit of reposting nonsense written by James Delingpole. Maybe he's feeling sorry for him after he got the boot from his blog on the UK Telegraph.  He's living up to his reputation as a fake sceptic.  Anthony reposted some Delingpole nonsense, apparently without reading the article James was ranting about.

First the article.  It's a piece in The Conversation by Lawrence Torcello who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.  His research interests include ethics and denial of climate science. In his article he writes (my bold italics and underline):

The importance of clearly communicating science to the public should not be underestimated. Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.

Which organised misinformation campaign is Anthony Watts a party to?

There are numerous organised (some more some less organised) climate misinformation campaigns as discussed in Naomi Oreskes' book Merchants of Doubt. Which one is Anthony a party to?  The reason I ask is that in response to the article in The Conversation, Anthony Watts wrote an article under a headline (archived here):

Despicable climate ugliness courtesy of Lawrence Torcello – assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology

He obviously doesn't like the suggestion that an organised campaign funding misinformation should be regarded as criminally negligent.  I also fail to see what is "despicable" about the suggestion that it should be so regarded.  Especially as the article makes it quite clear that Lawrence Torcello is talking about an organised campaign that is knowingly funding misinformation.

Is James admitting that he's funded by part of "an organised campaign".  Is Anthony Watts admitting the same.  If not, why would they protest such a suggestion?

Anthony writes:

Via Delingpole at Breitbart:

Scientists who don’t believe in catastrophic man-made global warming should be put in prison, a US philosophy professor argues on a website funded by the UK government.

Now that there is "misinformation" if ever there was misinformation.  It doesn't resemble what Lawrence Torcello wrote even if you were to stretch your imagination as far as it could go.  Let's see how many things are wrong with it:

1. Lawrence Torcello isn't just talking about scientists spreading misinformation (ie scientists acting alone), he's talking about "organised campaigns" - whoever is running them, whether it involve scientists like Fred Singer or political lobby groups like CFACT or denier blogs like Climate Depot.
2. Lawrence Torcello isn't talking about what people "believe", he's talking about organised misinformation campaigns.  Organised campaigns to fund misinformation - the desired result of which is to shape people's "belief" to something false.
3. It is misleading to describe The Conversation as being "funded by the UK government".  The Conversation was started in Australia.  (Lawrence Torcello's article appears on the Australian edition, too so I don't know which office produced it.) The UK edition is funded by all these organisations.  If you track back you'll find UK taxpayer dollars and UK government funding, but it was mainly set up by universities, which are independent of the government of the day.  Not only that, but for people who bemoan at every chance they get, the idea that free speech might be curtailed, it should be irrelevant who is "funding" a website.

Anyway, the article raises some points that have been raised by others before.  At one point he refers to the L'Aquila earthquake and the sentences handed out to six scientists and the defence Minister.  He writes:

The ruling is popularly thought to have convicted scientists for failing to predict an earthquake. On the contrary, as risk assessment expert David Ropeik pointed out, the trial was actually about the failure of scientists to clearly communicate risks to the public. The convicted parties were accused of providing “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information”. As one citizen stated:

We all know that the earthquake could not be predicted, and that evacuation was not an option. All we wanted was clearer information on risks in order to make our choices.

Crucially, the scientists, when consulted about ongoing tremors in the region, did not conclude that a devastating earthquake was impossible in L’Aquila. But, when the Defence Minister held a press conference saying there was no danger, they made no attempt to correct him. I don’t believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised because doing so will likely discourage scientists from engaging with the public at all.

But the tragedy in L’Aquila reminds us how important clear scientific communication is and how much is at stake regarding the public’s understanding of science. I have argued elsewhere that scientists have an ethical obligation to communicate their findings as clearly as possible to the public when such findings are relevant to public policy. Likewise, I believe that scientists have the corollary obligation to correct public misinformation as visibly and unequivocally as possible.

I won't bother with the WUWT comments.  Like Anthony Watts, most of the people making comments don't seem to have read the article in question and are just using Anthony's blog post as an excuse to bash their keyboard.

Update

Now Christopher Monckton of Brenchley has put up his hand to be added to those who misinform (archived here, latest update here).  Is he part of an "organised campaign to fund misinformation" too, one wonders?  If so, he's not the most credible poster boy.  More of a potty peer.  Poor old Christopher confuses freedom of speech with freedom to tell lies.  And he confuses academic freedom with freedom to make up stuff.  He's just an utter nutter.

PS Christopher seems to be organising a hate mail campaign to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.  One thing though - Christopher got a bit confused and placed RIT in New York, New York instead of Rochester New York.  It looks to me that Christopher's letter, indeed the entire thread (archived here), would make a fairly easy lesson in Professor Torcello's Critical Thinking classes (see Update 2 below).

And I wonder if Christopher would finally meet his match if he ever tried to debate Lawrence Torcello?

Update 2

By all accounts, Lawrence Torcello isn't just any philosopher, he's highly regarded by his students as a terrific teacher, respectful, prepared to deal with difficult topics, easy on the eye, awesome - and "hot".  Perhaps James Delingpole, Anthony Watts and Christopher Monckton could learn some critical thinking if they took his classes.