The Blackboard

Lucia,
You might find it interesting to take a hard look at DeSmogBlog. It is run by people close to Canadian extreme environmentalist David Suzuki [the blog's owner chairs the David Suzuki Foundation] and its sole purpose is to ridicule and demonize any and all skeptics it can get a bead on, invariably accusing them of being on “big oil’s” payroll [thus the Smog in the name]. The only prize it qualifies for is the “Drive-by Smear” prize.

Tetris– I guess I had been previously aware of their existence. I looked at the blog today. There seem to be quite a few regular writers, few comments. I think one of the writers spend went down to Antarctica and went to the South Pole. The guy must have time and money!

Either they have very light readership, or their readers are of the “fly-by” variety who don’t vote, because they lost their category by a wide margin. If Suzuki is spending money to achieve some goal he values, the money invested in that blog is probably wasted.

Why do I get “Congratulations” and Lubos gets “Congragulations”?

Is that some sort of Czech thing?

Thanks!

[...] http://rankexploits.com [...]

Anthony: Its a Mannian adjustment…….

Truly: Congratulations all of you. Great sites.

Watts is miserably anti-analytical. He is a wish fullfillment skeptic. He makes others look bad. If you bed down with him, you are lowering yourself.

TCO,

Many thanks for deciding on my behalf what Anthony is and what he does to me. Just today I was getting tired of thinking, and hoping someone might come along and volunteer to do it for me, but I held out little hope as I had never met someone with both the ego and bad manners necessary to presume to be up to the job, and feared they may not exist. I was worried over nothing, thank you.

… tossing the sniveling, sore losers a tissue

Peter, TCO is your man then!

Actually he provides some acerbic but largely rational comment on whatever blog he chooses to frequent. He is railing on at the aptly named Open Mind (what is it with these guys – Open Mind, Real Climate, Fair and Balanced!) at the moment.

He is most entertaining when he posts late in the evening. Most of us who have observed him in action respect his intellect and his objectivity. However, he is inclined towards harsh criticism of those who don’t quite meet his expectations. Some of us have suggested that he apply his obvious talents to setting up his own blog, and particularly to write and publish the peer reviewed papers that he is urging others to do.

Remember when Milli Vanilli won a grammy?

Boris–
I think this is more like “The People’s Choice”!

Boris (Comment#8773)

Gee, just how sour were those grapes?

Boris:

I remember when MV won a grammy and were later exposed as frauds.

Hmmmm… someone winning an award on a fraudulent basis…

But aside from MV – that NEVER happens. No current award winner could win an award, but be fraudulent. There’s NOBODY I can think of who would fit that description. There’s not one single person who’s won a large major award, but is really a phoney. No one. Not one single person. Not a chance.

Andrew ♫

Sorry, Andrew, you’ll have to be more specific in your conspiracy theory. There are so many to keep track of nowadays.

Al Franken?

Boris
Currently, all conspiracy theories should include the name “Blagojevich”. (The Illinois Senate has now convened. I should read the news to see whether impeachment hearings have begun!)

Boris:

Who said anything about a conspiracy theory? Please stay focused on the issue. I said there are no frauds to be discovered currently. My position is that every single person is innocent until *proven* guilty. Go ahead and hand out awards. The coast is clear. EVERYONE is not phoney in area of receiving awards until you can show me they are or they admit it.

Andrew ♫

lucia (Comment#8789)

So is that going to become a verb as in “I was Blagojeviched last week by the mayor so he would appoint me to the school board”?

Awards have now been certified. WUWT wins, details here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/200.....announced/

I think Andrew was referring to Al Gore’s Nobel. What do I win?

Watts you win the right to stop silly solar theory crap, that you later are soundly schooled on for stats mistakes. The right to be JohnVed for your leading site examinations which don’t show an actual differential temp trend. To finish your paint exam which you rushed to press with 2 years ago, but still lack a proof of effect.

It totally saddens me to see commenters like Lucia and McI making common cause with you. Just goes to show the whole deniosphere as more intersted in sides than truth. As accepting of stupidity from their brethren. As not fundamentally fair and objective. As having very little to show for hundreds of blog posts over the last few years. As just one big tease..that has not paid off with any real papers other than McI’s one GRL paper (I don’t count EE or comment replies as real papers) of 2005.

This sucks. In the physical sciences someone would just laugh at the complete lack of real production and at all the self-congratulatory fluff on the intertubes,

Re: “I think Andrew was referring to Al Gore’s Nobel. What do I win?”

lol Indeed, sir. I admit to everything. The cat is out of the bag.

You win a batch of Lucia’s brownies.

Andrew ♫

TCO–Why are you so concerned about publication in academic journals? Why are you concerned with whether some hypothetical person living inside your brain might laugh at something?

For someone as self-professedly bright as TCO, he does seem to forget who has the burden of proof and that the veracity of the information is independent of the source.
.
So congrats to Anthony!

Lucia:

Advantages of publication:

1. Archived
1.1: does not disappear like for example Chefen’s skeptic arguments
1.2: fixed in format-not subject to editing (NO I don’t trust the Wayback machine or think that individuals should have to personally archive all the blog posts). Note, I don’t think there is routine malevolent editing. But I have actually responded to posts on CA and seen the head post change later without a note of it.

2. Written quality: the process of preparing an article to go into a “real journal” means that citations are in a format, that axes are labelled, grammar and syntax and written flow are improved, etc. Note, do not underestimate the benefit of this. Concepts are already difficult enough and there are plenty of ideas up for sound debate. Having a quality presentation is a good place to start. The enforced clarity is not solely a benefit to readers…it even helps the authors better understand their own area.

3. Synthesis and disaggregation: professional pulbication cleans out distracting ad hominems, meandering asides, repetition (a huge problem on CA) and wordiness.

——

Note, that if people put up real quality white papers instead, I’m fine with that. For instance on Arxive. However, my experience of scientist human nature is that without a forcing mechanism, that they will not produce clear communications. Blog posts are quite a bit below white papers and white papers are quite a bit below real publications.

FYI: My point of view is the true religion Roman Catholic point of view. You can read things like E. Bright Wilson’s “An Introduction to Scientific Research” for a very classic defense of the importance of publication.

———–

Clear writing is clear thinking. And neither is easy. Let’s take a strain and do more here, people. If you don’t, I judge that you have little to offer. That instead you have little cliques of self-reinforcing discussion.

“Why are you concerned with whether some hypothetical person living inside your brain might laugh at something?”

I have a developed critical faculty.

TCO–
I think in most cases posting at Archive X is nearly pointless.

I didn’t mean to ask you to list the advantages of publishing in the archival literature. I know those. I don’t understand why you are concerned with it generally. I don’t think anything and everything needs to end up in a journal archive. There are big disadvantages spending the time to put some things in archives– it slows on going conversations.

This is why, for example, poster sessions, informal seminars etc. exist. It’s also why people discuss ideas over beers.

Sure, if you only discuss over beers, the connection between you personally and your ideas may be forgotten. Historians may fail to attach. your name to an idea, proof etc. But so what?

Of cousre, on your point 3: If you want to save yourself time, you could chose to avoid reading blogs and focus on published papers. But I see no reason why that decision should be binding on any blogger.

TCO

“Why are you concerned with whether some hypothetical person living inside your brain might laugh at something?”

I suspect you have assumed the role of the “anti-Feynman”. See What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Lucia:

1. I expected that you knew the advantages of real publication, but felt that I had to reiterate them. In the past, I have found that if I did not clearly establish predicates with you, you would feign (or have) a lack of knowledge. But glad that you acknowledge sophistication here.

2. I agree that there are advantages to casual conversation (even for explication, but also in the social value). I am a big proponent and fully blooded beer-napkin writer on. And I generally prefer posters to talks. however, the issue here is one, not of “and” but of “or”. McI and you and Watts combined have one real paper. This suggests that the salon has displaced the published paper. I also get concerned over the hoi polloi and media who assume that all of this kerfuiffle is more than what it really is. So I speak out against it.

3. Yes, I agree that scientists can and should ignore the in progress, difficult to read blogiation by the McI deniosphere. Of course, we’ve had Steve say that people writing papers ought to do Google searches to see if he has written about a topic and then credit him! (You can’t have it both ways.)

4. I readily acknowledge that I am the master of my time…and reading or commenting on a blog is my bed that I chose to lie in. Also that bloggers can do what they want. Also that I can STILL comment on the silliness as it exists and point out to hoi polloi (and the bloggers themselves) the clear difference between quality analysis and communication and the games going on in their blogs.

I think Arxive sucks as well, Lucia. But the reason I made that point was to pre-emptively deal with the chimera of peer review and teh evil gate keepers. If McI put up clear, penetrating well-written papers on Arxive or even on his own site or even on CPD, it would be easy to see if he had real quality contributions but was being blocked by the cabal. Actually, I have seen his draft papers and presentations and they WERE MISERABLE.

Lucia:

“I suspect you have assumed the role of the “anti-Feynman”. See What Do You Care What Other People Think?”

You suspect wrong. When I criticize blogging versus publication it’s NOT because of social strictures of conventional position but because of actually believing the difference. The benefit of any social pressure would just be some icing on the cake. And in the commentosphere of a skeptic blog, I’m actually sticking out for going against the grain.

I think I’m closer to a Feynman attitude than either the self-supporting deniosphere or the lefty AGWosphere. I don’t think that Mann should cherry pick proxies. Or that Watts/McI should cherry pick criticisms. Guys like Burger, Zorita, Von Storch, Huybers are the type who I think look for truth and will publish it whichever way their finding goes. I don’t trust Mann or McI to do so.

TCO–
I asked you why you care if someone, somewhere might laugh about people posting at blogs, and you responded.

In so far as you seem to care that some people might laugh, I consider you to take on the role of the anti-Feynman. I recognize you may see yourself as positively Feynmanesque. That just means our perceptions of you differ.

Lucia: Understood. You’re wrong. But understood.