This is of course absurd. There are tens of millions of scientists, and dozens of them are really excellent communicators!

One of the leading science communicators of the day is cognitive scientist John Cook. John is at George Mason University. He is so tightly linked to the founding and development of the Skeptical Science project that “Skeptical Science” is the name of his Wikipedia entry. This binds John and his mission to a lot of us. Where we once might have said, “I am Spartacus,” we now say, “I am Skeptical. Science!” For John, it is just “I am SkepticalScience.”

Cook is likely known to you for the Consensus project. There were two main projects, a few years back, in which scientist attempted to measure the degree of consensus over the idea that anthropocentric climate change is real. (It is real, and the consensus is near 100% in both peer reviewed literature and the conclusions of actual scientists.) John and his colleagues did one of those, and beyond that, widely promoted the results so that everyone knows about it.

“Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers” is a crowdsourced book (and an app). There will be a book launch on March 4th in Arlington. This book gives us the whole ball of wax that is the science of climate science denial in a very funny, really well produced, and compelling wrapping. It will amuse you, and it will advise you. Your cranky uncle is done for.

I don’t have a cranky uncle anymore (he died). But I do have a lot of neighbors who like to write in ALL CAPS. They show up when I give a talk on climate change, and they bring their conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, cherry picked “facts”, absurd expectations, and references to fake research done by fake experts. It is a lot to deal with. But now, I can use the Lewis Black technique for dealing with evolution deniers, but instead of pulling out a trilobite, holding it up and saying “Fossil!” I can pull out a copy of Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change and say “Oh yeah? Imma look up what you just said in this BOOK!” or words to that effect.

Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers is the book now. Pre-order it!

For completeness, here is Lewis Black demonstrating the fossil technique:

But there is one thing that is found common to most scientific endeavors, and without this thing science would not progress very quickly or very far:

The honest conversation.

Scientist talk to each other about their work. You see it best in lab meetings or seminars. Perhaps a visitor comes to a lab and presents on his or her research, research of interest to the lab group hosting the talk. Everybody listens. Everybody hears the scientists questions and concerns, and maybe finds problems of their own in the research being presented. Then they sit down for a meeting and talk. Turns out the magnetics expert has something to say about the sampling procedure, the the isotope person has some as yet unpublished insight on fractionation, the taphonomist knows of an old and nearly forgotten study of pollen rain dynamics in the tundra. Next think you know, the visiting scientist has a list of things to do with their lake cores that will help make sense of the as yet enigmatic results showing an increase in salinity as the lake level goes up (it should decrease) or some other thing.

A lot of these conversations happen by email these days. That is why email exists. The Internet was invented to extend the conversation among scientists across time and space, to fill in the gaps between visits and conferences. Email emerged as one of the better ways to use that resource. A great deal of science advances at the leading edge of wave after wave of emails.

Several years ago, nefarious science deniers intent on stopping action on climate change, presumably funded by the Koch Brothers or the likes, got their hands on a bunch of emails sent back and forth among climate scientists. They took lines out of the emails, and thus out of context, and made up fake stories about what the scientists were actually communicating about. You can read about that event and all that accompanied it in Michael Mann’s book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Professor Mann was one of the victims of that attack on science. (See also: The Serengeti Strategy.)

More recently, David Schnare, a science denier who gets paid to do this sort of thing, running a fossil fuel funded anti-science group, attempted to get even more emails out of Michael Mann, but lost in that effort in the Virginia Supreme Court. After losing that battle, Schnare went after other emails, in Arizona. According to scientist and anti-science victim Michael Mann, he

…targeted two other prominent climate scientists at the University of Arizona, Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes (the latter being one of my longtime co-authors), seeking a total of 13 years of emails from them, including correspondence with or about me or my research.

…

I have spent much effort in the years since “Climategate” explaining why scientists’ research correspondence needs to be protected from legal bullying. Anyone who truly cares about the research can and should review the published papers and underlying data, directly evaluating a study’s methodologies, analyses, and conclusions. But seeking thousands of emails serves only to stifle collaboration and discourage the frank, creative exchange of ideas, and chill the candor needed during the confidential peer review process.

…

E&E Legal will no doubt post the Arizona emails once they receive them, distributing them online with a series of misleading and disingenuous mischaracterizations, choosing a few phrases here and there to misrepresent me and other scientists and to falsely accuse us of all manner of misdeeds.

Consequently, I am sharing my emails here (enter “mail_guest” for both username and password). Moreover, a group of independent climate science experts have gone through the emails providing context for interpreting the exchanges and discussions contained within.

So, at least some of the emails currently under attack are now available. Some of these emails, released by Michael Mann preemptively, have notes added to them to provide context. Some time later today (Friday) Schnare is expected to do his own release of all of the Arizona emails.

Do read his biographical notes at DeSmogBlog. And stay tuned.

See also: “But their emails!” by David Kirtley.

I’m just going to give you a little bit of the story, and then send you to Tamino’s excellent post.

First, here is Goddard’s graphic attempting to show that global warming is not real.

See how temperatures are going down? How can that be? Note that this is average maximum temperature over time, 1918-present, in the US.

Why 1918 (the data set goes back farther)? Why the US? Also, why is he using absolute temperatures instead of the usually used anomalies? Maybe he knows something we don’t know. Or, maybe he is counting on his audience not knowing some stuff that all the experts know.

Now look at this graph, produced by climate scientist Tamino.

That’s a silly graph, isn’t it. It appears to show the mean latitude of something over time. Of what? Of the stations used to estimate temperatures. How is this relevant to the present discussion?

To learn more about climate change, see this.

House panel agrees to prioritize climate change

From The Hill:

The Republican-led House Natural Resources Committee agreed to put climate change on its agenda over the next two years.

The panel, led by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), voted unanimously Wednesday to include climate change and its impacts on natural resources as a subject in its oversight plan.

Thanks to an amendment sponsored by ranking member Rep. Raul Grijalva (R-Ariz.), the committee said it will “conduct oversight of global climate change and impacts on federal lands and resources and the strategies for using federal lands, oceans and other resources to mitigate harmful effects.”
In introducing the amendment, Grijalva said that many members of the panel, not just Democrats, are concerned with climate change and “the committee’s ability to deal with that issue in a way that provides real information and begins to look at possible solutions for public lands, oceans and other resources that fall under the jurisdiction of this committee.”

STUDY: How Broadcast Networks Covered Climate Change In 2014

From Media Matters:

The total coverage of climate change on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox continued to increase for the third consecutive year, according to a Media Matters analysis, yet still remained below the level seen in 2009. Coverage on the networks’ Sunday shows reached a six-year high after a group of senators demanded they provide more coverage of the issue, but the Sunday shows still infrequently interviewed scientists.

And they have this video:

Who is Willie Soon?”

(ADDED: Since there have been so many wonderful questions about the controversial research and related issues, let me point you to this post, which is essentially a link farm to myriad resources for you to read and enjoy.)

According to DeSmogBlog, Willie Wei Hock “Soon is a prominent climate change skeptic who has received much of his research funding from the oil and gas industry.” He thinks the sun causes the climate change we’ve been observing over the last few decades:

“The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic … It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of ‘preventing catastrophic climate change’.

Apparently, his research is paid by the fossil fuel industry.

There is now a petition to get the venerable Smithsonian to drop Soon from it’s staff. The petition addresses a specific ethical concern, not his research. This pertains to Soon’s failure to disclose his sources of research funding when disclosure would be appropriate. Not disclosing funding sources is not the same as getting funding and disclosing. This is about not disclosing. You are supposed to disclose. This is a point being missed (rather intentionally I suspect) but Soon supporters. Lots of researchers get funding from industries related to their research, and conferences are often funded this way as well. But it is disclosed, like it is supposed to be, generally. The petition is not about his bone-headed ideas about climate change, to which he is entitled (as we all are entitled to view as, well, bone-headed). It is about his failure to disclose, and the specific allegation is that his funding is from oil/energy companies, which would make research (published along side well known petroleum industry funded science denialists, by the way) potentially biased. Which is why disclosure is normal. This is not hard to understand, though you will see a lot of anti-science climate change deniers very willfully misunderstanding.

Dr. Willie Soon — an astrophysicist employed by the Smithsonian — is a go-to “scientist” for climate deniers in Congress, despite his lack of climate credentials. Worse yet, he’s received research grants exclusively from fossil fuel companies and dark money groups since 2002.

Now The Boston Globe is reporting that Soon just published a paper on climate change without disclosing his fossil fuel funding — a violation of the journal’s ethics code and a no-no in the science community.

Tell the Smithsonian: Don’t lend your good name to fossil fuel-funded climate denial. Drop Dr. Willie Soon.

The petition is here, in case you want to sign it. I signed it, but reluctantly. On one hand I don’t thing firing someone is what one would normally do for violating grant-related ethics. Usually other sorts of actions are taken. On the other hand I like the idea of giving deans and other administrators a tool, so they can sit down with Soon (soon, one would hope) and the sentence “Look, Willie, there’s a petition with over 10,000 people calling for your head over this. Hard to ignore!” could be part of the conversation. (Even if they are quite capable of ignoring it). It is all a matter of personal choice. Were it me writing the petition, I’d have it be to ask the administration to look into Soon’s practice of failing to report funding by clear special interests, and take appropriate action.

UPDATE: So far, since this post has been pointed at by various science denying, or denialist defending, web sites, from which I’ve gotten a few dozen (at most) page views and about 25 or so (deleted) obnoxious comments, the petition has garnered well over 20,000 signatures. I really do have my doubts about how much a petition like this will matter, but I do strongly suspect that the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory is getting tires of Soon and his shenanigans. Don’t be surprised if he’s not around by next winter.

This is a graphic made by a major investment firm culling information from dozens or perhaps hundreds of sources into a single graphic. This is the graphic as it was initially provided by the researchers

This is a graph of oxygen concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is culled from a large number of different sources. This is the graphic, based on numerous proxyindicattors, as published in a peer reviewed paper:

This is a compilation from many different sources of stock market values assembled to show waves in stock market behavior over the last few centuries:

This is a set of climate related variables show in relation to human “civilization” over 18,000 years (n.b.: the term “civilization” is reserved in archaeology and prehistory for specific phenomena which did not occur before about 10,000 years ago).

In all these cases complex sources were culled in the peer reviewed literature 0r professional research literature, and turned into summary views of something happening over time. The graph itself is meant to show a derived variable, not the underlying complexity of the data. The graph is the sausage. The making of the sausage is laid out in the original documents, in some case in the peer reviewed paper the graphic appears in.

Here, Judith Curry makes the argument, in an excessively tl;dr blog post, that climate scientist Michael Mann acted inappropriately, perhaps fraudulently, or perhaps as a matter of scientific misconduct, when the IPCC published a version of his famous Hockey Stick Graph that instead of looking like this:

Looked like this:

For the record, here is the original version of that graphic from the peer reviewed paper. Note that it indicates where the data come from but that was back in the late 20th century when in order to have color graphics in your paper you had to hire monks to draw them and there weren’t any monks available.

And here is the same graph in a similar updated paper a year later, looking much better:

And, at the time of the publication, owing to the costs of monks and such, color versions of the graphics were made available. This is what anyone who wanted to could look at at the time:

Mann’s graphic representation of climate change, the Hockey Stick, is not fraudulent. But it is verified, real, and important. There are people in the climate discussion who make up graphs, of course (see this) but Mann is not one of them.

So Judith Curry and the flock of winged monkeys and child molesters that comment on her blog are arguing that Mann carried out scientific misconduct when he did something that is normal to do, and in fact, that he didn’t actually do. This is an “own goal” for Curry because it is a clear cut case of making up a version of reality in order to denigrate a fellow scientist and discredit his research on the basis of color coding rather than the science. Curry has credentialed herself a denialist.

(Related: Curry’s Credibility Crumbles by Climate Hawks.)

That. Is. Science. Denialism. Welcome to the list, Judith.

By the way have a look at this image:

If you ever see an image like this used by a climate science denialist, ACCUSE THEM OF FRAUD AND MISCONDUCT because this graph shows NOTHING about the multiple sources used to create the single black line squiggle therefore it is ILLEGAL.

Sorry… I get carried away sometimes. Anyway, I have a pro tip for those who are following along with the climate change discussion: Individuals who study climate change from any perspective (as a climate change scientist, some other kind of scientist, policy maker, communicator, interested citizen) should realize that some depictions or summaries are underlain by extensive and complex literature. A proper scholarly approach, even by an avocational scholar or journalist, requires keeping that in mind and digging beneath the surface where needed. So if you see a monochromatic hockey stick like curve, or any climate squiggle, hopefully there is a reference to where it comes from and then you can dig around and reconstruct the scholarship, if you are reasonably smart, reasonably diligent, not lazy, and well intentioned.

Or you can be one of Judith Curry’s followers and just whine about it.

Finally, here’s a recent version of the Hockey Stick Graph showing the many ways it has been verified. Checkmate, denialists.

Added: Judith Curry Picks A Cheery…

And while we are on the topic, Carl Sagan, of the original Cosmos, on climate change:

See also this from Chris Mooney at Mother Jones.

And just for the heck of it, here’s my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from 2011.

For reasons that I’ll leave out of this thought experiment (because I can’t think of any) the two of them … Guy A and Guy B … become the sole denizens of a short list of possible keynote speakers at the International Union of Physicists Congress, a major meeting held every five years, and that everybody who is anybody in the field goes to. Both guys spent weeks developing the idea they had at the beginning of this parable and are ready and willing to spend an hour regaling the gathering with their thoughts and conclusions.

You are a tax-paying American Citizen and it turns out that the expenses associated with the keynote speaker for this important gathering of scientists are covered by a grant form the National Science Foundation. Including the speaker’s fee, travel expenses, etc., American Taxpayers are about to spend $15,000 on this talk.

You get to vote for who gives the talk. Guy A vs. Guy B. Which would you pick, given the information provided so far? Obviously, you are not being asked to decide between the two ideas on the basis of their content. You are simply being asked to bet on which is likely more correct, or at least, less wrong, based only on what you are being given here. Some people might call this making a heuristic decision rather than a logical decision. That’s partly true, but a sharp distinction between the two overlooks the fact that within the hard science itself much is heuristic.

There are ways in which I could have formulated this parable, leaving out the fact that it was a talk and making it, say, people making comments on a blog post, and other features where the negatives of a bad decision are reduced. It does not matter that this is a “theory of everything” being discussed, it could be some other set of ideas. Or I could have shifted the nature of the setting from something important-seeming but also esoteric to something more day-to-day, like which guy’s theory gets taught in the AP High School physics class. How would these shifts in context change your decision as to which person’s theory you’d want to hear, if you could only chose one? What if you, an IT manager or English teacher (or some other non-physicist) could choose to hear both, and after you heard both you were not sure which was more likely correct but had to vote in a non-binding poll about it … which would you pick as more likely to be correct? Which would you pick as more valid, or would you say that both are somehow equally valid?

You’ve heard of the arguments about “argument from authority.” Argument from authority is the assertion that a particular idea is valid specifically because an arbitrary label of authority is linked to the person (or institution) making the argument. The arbitrary linkage of authority to a person or thing does not, in fact, validate or improve the rationality or accuracy of an argument put forth by that person or thing. Argument from authority (defined as such) is invalid.

But, we often see the “argument from authority” argument used to squash arguments that are not really arguments from authority. In the scenario given above, there is a difference between Guy A and Guy B that strongly indicates that Guy A’s ideas are potentially worth listening to, while Guy B’s are not. If we needed to pick between the two, especially at some cost, we’d pick A. Also, if we could, with little cost, hear both but still wanted to pick between the two (just for the fun of it) we’d be better off going with Guy A. It is possible that you don’t agree with what I just said. If you don’t, please indicate in the comments why I’m wrong. Just remember, though. I went to Harvard.

Now, please consider an entirely different issue (and when I say “entirely different” I mean “connected in a way that may not be immediately clear”). consider how decisions are made about how to do things in education. Like what to teach in an American classroom about evolution, or how to manage field trips or how to schedule lunches and classrooms. Whatever. How should such decisions be made? By a single authority in Washington DC? By the state that the school is in? By the district, or the individual school? Or the teacher?

There is a strong feeling in US civics as well as among those interested in education that the more local the decision is made, the better the decision will be. This is probably true in many areas. I remember years back when my father was involved in fights over regulation and public housing, and he showed me a project in Arizona and a project he was doing in New York … each adapted to local conditions of climate, urban setting, etc. to optimize the use of resources for heating and cooling, and each project disallowed by Federal Housing Authority regulations written by people who apparently lived in Virginia and had no clue as to how to build a building in a cold climate or a hot climate. Local conditions were not accounted for by those regulations, but local conditions mattered a lot.

On the other hand, is it really the case that there is a local way to teach evolution? Well, yes…. I have a colleague who is totally into everybody teaching evolution by using, in part, studies of diversity of ants in the school yard. Which is great and I love that program. But I know of schools that have no dirt in the yard, and if they do, it is considered unsafe to dig in. I know of schools in habitats where the real diversity is not in ants but in some other organism. So evolution + looking for stuff outside + diversity = good pedagogy, but not necessarily with ants. So, a combination of nationally or internationally conceived and executed programs and local adaptation works.

There are people who argue that the decision of whether evolution is a valid set of theories or should be taught along side creationism, etc, should be a local one. Why? The “logical” reason to think this is that the more local the decision the better it is. Which, I am trying to point out here, is a fallacy. The “real” reason people try to push that idea is that it is politically easier to intimidate, cajole, convince, and trick people into doing what you want them to do if you get secretly organized first, then appear on the scene unexpectedly in a small group or polity, then push for what you want and get it in place before anyone at a larger geographical scale knows what you are up to. And this approach exploits the widespread (but incorrect) belief that “local control” is better.

So what do Guy A and Guy B and local control have to do with each other? Well for one thing, with respect to any issue, as you go from cosmopolitan to local, the number of Guy A’s available goes down, but you don’t run out of Guy B’s until you get to a very small number. Every week in the United states numerous local level actions or ordinances are invalidated by courts because they are unconstitutional. Only a small percentage of state and an even smaller percentage of national laws are struck down by courts. Scale matters in different ways for different things. A thousand committees may come up with a hundred good ideas while one committee may be useless. But there is no need for the forty thousand public high schools in the US to come up with their own list of key facts in teaching evolution, especially when the process of doing so leaves open the possibility of a political fight each time.

I see a version of local empowerment and the demand that each individual’s opinion … a kind of democratization of point of view … in denialist movements. When Pat Buchanan insisted to Andrea Mitchel the other day on MSNBC that “We don’t happen to accept this evidence … global warming is not proven to us” he meant, by “us,” not some group of climate scientists but rather members of a political movement that claims popularism (even though it is owned by the financial elite) known as the Republican Party. He was referring to the Teabaggers. I think if you asked the average Teabagger, “Is your opinion on global warming as valid as some MIT professor of climate studies?” the Teabagger would say “Yes it is, dammit!” and if you asked why you would hear a populist strum and draw of one kind or another. But the Teabagger would be wrong.

The ways in which this is embodied among denialists varies. The “Mommy Instinct” empowers individual women, if they are mommies, to know as much as the AMA about what is medically good for their child. Home schoolers know that they understand both the contents and the pedagogy of all of the subjects taught in school better than anyone else. “Fooled me once, fooled me twice” references to Malthusian arm waving on this very blog appeal to a personal sense of having been put upon as a reason why one might be correct about the complexities of climate modeling. And so on.

Perhaps people tend to trust the members of their own tribes more than they trust outsiders with more evidence. Perhaps denialism is even simpler than that: Perhaps people get some idea at one point in their lives and can’t bear to see it challenged. Perhaps “knowing” (believing, feeling strongly) that something is or is not true can be a matter of trust. The difference between a denialist and a skeptic may end the end be a difference between well placed trust and misplaced trust. How does one know whom to trust?

First, let me catch you up. On Valentine’s Day, there was a release of documents from the Heartland Institute documenting their budget and the status of their fund raising, as well as their strategy for protecting corporate interests in light of overwhelming evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming and other climate change requires us to alter our global energy strategy. Heartland has been involved in science denialsm for some time. They are one of the groups that worked to deny evidence of the negative health effects of smoking, among other things. Heartland, a Libertarian “think” tank is a relatively small player in the overall climate discussion, and the documents indicate that the annual balance of their budget has been diminishing owing to reductions in contributions. Nonetheless, the documents painted a picture of systematic dishonesty. In particular, the documents seemed to indicate that Heartland was launching a bought and paid for effort to interfere with the teaching of good science in our K-12 educational system, replacing honest science with the willful misdirection we know of as science denialism.

One of the documents, a “strategy memo,” was, Sesame Street style, “Different from the others” and seemed not to belong. It was a photocopy or fax, while the others were word processor documents, it seemed to have been written in a different style, and had a different look and feel. This led Heartland-sympathizers to claim that it was faked.

Late yesterday, climate scientist Peter Gleick publicly took responsibly for the release of the documents. Peter is a well respected scientist and spokesperson, MacArthur award winner, and by all accounts an all-round nice guy. He had recently been invited to the board of the National Center for Science Education, and had already embarked on a renewed effort to fold climate science denialism into the broader and troubling movement of science denialims we have known of for years as Creationism.

In his piece in the Huffington Post, Peter told us that he had obtained the “strategy memo” and felt compelled to verify the startling contents of this document. He did so by requesting documents that were being distributed to Heartland board members from the Institute, and they complied by sending them to him. He indicated in his blog post that he had used a false identity to do this, but it is important to note that we know nothing about that identity as of this writing (I’ll get back to that in a moment).

One outcome of this revelation is that the outstanding questions about the authenticity of the strategy memo have now vaporized. It still could be a fake, but there is no specific reason to believe it is. The documents Peter obtained seem to authenticate it at several points.

As you might expect, science denialists and pro-industry shills are now crying foul. Somewhat less expected is that some science writers, bloggers and journalists seem quick to throw Peter under the bus, declaring that what he did was clearly unethical. The incident which served initially to expose the seemingly nefarious workings of an anti-science non-profit has now become a distraction in the important discussion of what we need to do to mitigate against the ill effects of our inefficient and thoughtless energy technology and concomitant policies.

In a recent tweet, Bora Zivkovic notes “… trying to figure out where Gleick fits in the media ecosystem, trying to clarify for myself (and others) his role, ethics.” And that is what I want to talk about for a moment.

Clearly there has been an evolution of the media ecosystem, and it is ongoing. In the old days, there were Journalists and then there was everyone else. Then the blogosphere was born. A couple of years back, I remember being rather annoyed at the prospect that bloggers would automatically be considered “journalists” because, well, we weren’t. Journalists were people who went to journalism school and learned journalism methods, ethics, strategies, and so on. I felt (and I still feel this is true in many cases) that “blogging” was not a thing in and of itself for most people who were blogging. Scientists could blog, but they were still scientists. Who blogged. If a journalist blogged, they were a journalist. Blogging. A cook could blog about recipes, but that did not make him or her a journalist, or even a blogger. And so on.

Underscoring this point was a key difference between scientists (who might be blogging or otherwise writing) and journalists, in how sources were handled. A journalist could use an unnamed source to make a point. A scientist would normally use citations or personal communications, identified. A journalist (according to many journalists that covered my own scientific work) would be wrong to run pre-published copy by a source (who is, say, a scientists whose work is being covered by the journalist) to check for accuracy. This was somehow a violation of journalistic rules, because the journalist is to be independent and is not to share information among sources prior to publication. A scientist writing about some scientific issue would normally cross check statements with the appropriate sources in order to get it all scientifically right. Overall, I saw the role, methods, and ethics of journalists as different from, and sometimes in conflict with, the role, methods and ethics of scientists. At some level, ethics are ethics, but at many other levels, ethics are agreed upon rules of conduct that make sense only in a certain well defined situation. A scientist making a claim by reference to “an unnamed source at a major research laboratory” would be doing something wrong. A journalist reporting a claim by “an unnamed source at a major research laboratory” is protecting a source and may well be doing a great job, as a journalist.

Having said all that, I agree with Bora’s overall theme (developed in much of his writing) that the media ecosystem is not what is used to be, and that it is changing in ways that are mostly positive. So, when Peter Gleick, scientist, starts writing blog posts at HuffPo or elsewhere, it is not at all clear that he is a scientist writing, or a scientist moonlighting as a journalist, or some new thing. Well, actually, it is clear: He is a new thing. But with novelty and evolution of a traditional system comes ambiguity.

Over the last several hours, I’ve had conversations with numerous well respected professional journalists about this, and I learned some interesting things. (Despite being a blogger, I did not osmotically absorb Journalism School!) We all know of famous journalists who obtained secret documents using various methods and in so doing revealed things that needed to be revealed, and thus changed history. From long before the Pentagon Papers through Wikileaks to the present, there have been many moments where someone doing either journalism or whistle-blowing, or something in between, caused the release of secrets that we are now glad to have been apprised of. Wasn’t Peter Gleick also such a laudable conduit of truth? That may well be, and I’m not going to judge him or what he did at this point of time. But it turns out to not be a very simple question to answer.

It turns out that among Journalists, it is not considered ethical to falsify an identity, especially a specific individual’s identity, or an identity of authority over a person who is being fooled, to obtain information. It is, however, considered valid and normal to be thought of as someone one is not. As I understand it, the difference can be exemplified in the following comparison.

Scenario A: The scene is a public lobby of Acme Corporation with a receptionist at a desk. Members of the Acme Board of Directors have been told to stop by at the receptionist desk and pick up the information packet for the upcoming board meeting. Mary Smith, board member, goes up to the receptionist and says “I’m board member Mary, please give me one of those packets” and the receptionist complies. Board member Joe does the same thing. Then, reporter Alice Stravinsky goes up to the receptionist and says “I’m board member Harry’s assistant, he’s in the coffee shop and wants me to bring him his packet for today’s meeting” and the receptionist complies. Reporter Alice absconds with the package and writes up a story about their content.

That was a violation of journalistic ethics. Alice is fired.

Scenario B: Same setting, same circumstances as Scenario A. However, in this case, reporter Alice is simply standing in line behind Mary and Joe. When Alice gets up to the reception desk, she simply puts out her hand, the receptionist figures she’s supposed to get a packet, and hands it to her. Alice takes the package back to the newsroom, writes up a revealing front page story on the nefarious activities of Acme Inc, and eventually gets a Pulitzer Prize for her excellent investigative reporting.

I’m sure many will have problems with this false set of scenarios, others will agree. The point is: If a reporter pretends to be someone she or he is not, that’s bad. If a person thinks the reporter is just some person and says something to the reporter quite innocently, or the reporter without falsifying an identity somehow comes to be in the possession of some document, that’s OK.

Peter Gleick may or may not have followed either of these two scenarios, but it may not matter for two reasons. The first reason, is that even though he blogs, Peter is not a journalist. It is not fair or reasonable to hold him to journalistic standards. As I noted above, journalistic standards are in part situational, and can differ from other perspectives. In addition to that, it is not necessarily fair or appropriate to decide that on Monday, the media ecosystem is evolving and it is not any longer true that the old school is the only school, but on Tuesday, decide that traditional journalistic rules apply as they always have even to people who are not journalist.

The second reason that while the comparison of methods for obtaining information is interesting, it may not apply in this case is the simple fact that Peter Gleick may have decided that falling on his sword for a greater good is what he had to do. Also, putting it a bit differently, he may have thought (as many have) that in an effort to release and publicize the inner workings of an institution that seems to be acting against the interest of all future generations, one does what one has to do. It may be the case that Peter was acting as an inspired and well meaning citizen, rushing past the fire fighters to put out the grease fire, but doing it wrong, because he didn’t know the rules and proscriptions.

We are also seeing, as this drama unfolds, two other Internet-exacerbated phenomena. We are seeing the Watch the Monkey strategy taking hold, both before and after Peter’s revelation, and we are seeing in commentary about Peter’s activities, the Damning and Execution effect.

The first of these is obvious. We have developed, as a species, a technology for doing much of what we do that has the unintended consequence of changing the way the planet’s climate system works. Another outcome of that technology is the rise of a well embedded class of one-percenters who are convinced that they will remain comfortable and in power only if we don’t change that technology, and they have employed all manner of strategy to derail the scientific and political discussion of climate change and energy policy. One method that is used to good (meaning bad) effect is to develop any available means to distract the discussion away from good science and thoughtful policy. It is Johnnie Cochran all over again.

The second and somewhat more disturbing pattern is the all too common human tendency to push our way in the front of the line to throw rotten tomatoes, or worse, stones, at anyone we see as having made a mistake. The reason we have a criminal justice system, and a civil law system, is to thwart this tendency. We have all heard of the not-too-apocryphal societies with vengeance systems. You do something bad to me, so I get to kill you (or a relative). When human reactions are allowed to transform unchecked into social action, hands are cut off for stealing loaves of bread and women who are found in the company of men to whom they are not married are executed. All crimes lead to the maximum punishment. In civilized society, we have learned to mete out punishment in proportion to the crime, and in some cases, maybe a bit less so, to err on the side of reason. But in the blogosphere there is no such regulation of our instincts. If you say or do something wrong you are pounced upon and vilified. Peter is to be vilified for his efforts, no matter what the exact methods he used and no matter what is reasons were. Indeed, we have come to equate as though it was really true appearance with reality when it comes to possible impropriety. This is wrong. Fortunately, it is also often short lived. By next week or next month, the realities of Heartland’s anti-science and anti-education strategies will be an enduring truth while the vilification of specific actors in this drama will have lost its impetus and unsavory luster.

My respect for Peter Gleick is unmoved. He is a great scientist, an excellent communicator, a brave guy and a crappy journalist. Oh well.

“A bill passed last month by the Indiana Senate that would have allowed schools to teach religious stories of creation along with the theory of evolution when discussing the origins of life in science class is dead,” according to the Indianapolis Star’s education blog (February 14, 2012). The bill in question is Senate Bill 89. As originally submitted, SB 89 provided, “The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.” On January 30, 2012, however, it was amended in the Senate to provide instead, “The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.”

… Then it died in the house.

Read the rest here at NCSE