Saturday, January 27, 2007

CORRECTION RECOMMENDED

For an academic Tim Lambert has produced little scholarly writing -- the dearth of output resulting in the deletion of his Wikipedia page. He is, however, a prolific blogger. He probably prefers blogging because he can write whatever he likes without being subjected to the rigours of peer review.

Not only that, a blog can be set-up so as to limit, or even eliminate, criticism and conflicting views. Academic writing is difficult, rigid and potentially disheartening (if writing is criticized or rejected, for example), whereas blogging is easy and the blogging environment totally controllable.

Blogging has another advantage for an academic like Lambert: he can pretty much attack anyone he wants and make up whatever stories he wants yet suffer no real consequences, ever. Blogging is perfect for the guy.

His latest attack on those he sees as his opponents is a classic Lambert post. In it he expresses concern that those linking to the questionable Khilyuk and Chilingar study have "discredited themselves by citing them" and recommends credibility restoring corrections be posted immediately.

Lambert himself does not do corrections. Well he does, but not honest corrections. He'll happily make a big deal out of correcting some trivial error but steadfastly refuses to correct untruths and major blunders. His refusal to correct the erroneous claim that the Washington Post buried the latest Lancet study is a classic example.

Earlier this year he did post a correction when caught providing misleading information about the fight against malaria. The thing is, he didn't post the correction on the front page of his blog, he hid it in the original, over-one-year-old post at his old blog (to get around link bouncing, copy and paste http://timlambert.org/2005/01/ddt ). The vague correction fails to mention his obvious manipulation of the information. Very tricky.

He also refuses to acknowledge a fabrication in his Best Blog Posts of 2006 contribution, "Andrew Bolt gets a perfect score on global warming": contrary to his claim, there is no evidence that rising sea level is forcing Tuvaluans to flee to New Zealand.

Anyway, his latest post is simply Lambert trying to feel better about himself through the attempted embarrassment of others. The thing is, he's trying to embarrass people who linked to a peer reviewed article by scientists in a recognized journal whereas Lambert excerpted and linked to an overtly silly Indymedia article written by a guy off the street.

Here's Lambert's suggested strategy for handling conflicting points of view:
Beck is a troll. He doesn’t actually believe the things he writes — the point is to get a rise out of the people he attacks. He’s been spectacularly successful with this latest effort. You should ignore his comments and his posts and never link to him. There is also a handy plugin for WordPress that bounces any links he makes to you. This seems to really annoy him.
Imagine trying to get that attitude past peer review.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Wylie Wilde said...

What do you expect from Lefties? They are dominated by ideology- not by rational thought. If Marx had said the world was flat- they'd claim that global photos of the Earth were a Capitalistic Fabrication. Lambert et al would sooner suck Stalin's dick than admit he's wrong.

11:26 PM  

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