Tuesday, October 31, 2006

RAT CUNNING, A REALLY BIG HEAD AND DOESN'T PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS

During the brief time I've been blogging, two Australian lefties -- Antony Loewenstein and Tim Lambert -- have been the subject of numerous posts. I blog these guys as a public service; to make as many people as possible aware of the nonsense they write. Loewenstein, while ignorant, is a "what you see is what you get" sort of guy who seldom resorts to trickery. Lambert on the other hand is a weird and obsessive character with rat cunning and aggression aplenty; and like a rat possesses an uncanny ability to escape through the nearest crack when confronted.

Here's the latest example of Lambert craftiness. He recently challenged Tim Blair's interpretation of Richard Garfield's remarks on the Lancet Iraq study -- misinterpreted by Blair as critical of the 600,000+ figure -- prompting Blair to issue a correction. Despite Blair's correction being posted on the same day as Lambert's challenge, Lambert has not updated his post to reflect the correction, with the post still concluding "Blair is unrepentant." Now we all know that many readers aren't going to bother reading through the post's comments and will be be unaware that Blair did the honourable thing in correcting.

Lambert has also manipulated the thread's comments in an attempt to stifle discussion. He held my first comment in this thread for over nine hours before posting it. As usual he ignores my comment, refusing to address the three cited examples of his past posts requiring correction. Eventually, one of his readers attacks my comment -- employing the typically diversionary Lambert tactic of focussing on but one of my points. My response was intercepted by Lambert and held in moderation for over 26 hours. This ensured that it didn't appear in the recent comments area of the sidebar and is for all practical puposes destined for oblivion. Very sneaky stuff.

Anyway, Lambert is unwilling (or unable) to own up to his mistakes and misrepresentations, even when proven to be wrong. For example, here Lambert refuses to acknowledge that the word "toady" is not abusive -- he used abuse as a pretext for removing one of my comments. He is not offended, however, when one of his frequent commenters uses the word.

Here Lambert makes a complete fool of himself but refuses to admit it. (When pressured he calls a pro-Tim Blair commenter a groupy (toady?) and questions the person's sexual preferences -- to get around Lambert's old blog link-bouncing copy and paste http://timlambert.org/2005/12/dumberer/.

Here Lambert -- away from his blog and the support of his toadies -- scurries off when challenged (scroll down to comments from dave tribe, myself and Lambert).

Here Lambert gets caught telling lies, at which point he flees through a crack -- it's truly amazing how he squeezes that great big head through such small openings.

Here Lambert refuses to discuss the DDT nonsense he continues to spout, diverting attention by accusing me of attention seeking. (Make sure to scroll down to the last few comments.)

Here Lambert erroneously claims Africa Fighting Malaria is "trying to prevent bednets from being used to fight malaria" but refuses to acknowledge that this is wrong.

Lambert is shown to be wrong here, here, here, here, here and here. All of these posts remain uncorrected.

Like emptying septic tanks, exposing Lambert is dirty work that needs to be done.

2 Comments:

Anonymous MK said...

Hows that book of Loewenstein doing?

12:33 PM  
Anonymous TallDave said...

Whenever the wind whistles, I'll think 'Loewenstein,' 'Loewenstein.'"
---Marge Simpson

I've commented on Lambert's site off and on. He's fairly bright, but like most in academia can never admit he might be wrong.

The overall problem with the Lancet study is that it has so many actual and potential flaws and contradicts so much other evidence that any reasonably scientific assessment must reject it as insufficiently convincing to accept its conclusions. But Lambert chooses advocacy over analysis.

He wants to believe.

12:08 AM  

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