This is the sort of thing that makes me happy we have blogs.If Will actually read these two articles, it's hard to see how he's not being deliberately deceptive by citing them as he did. If, as I suspect, he just got them from some set of climate change denialist talking points and didn't bother to actually check them out for himself, he's being irresponsible. All those people who supposedly fact-checked Will's article as part of the Post's "multi-layer editing process" -- "people [George Will] personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors" -- should be fired, either for not doing their job or for doing it utterly incompetently. These are hard times for newspapers; I wouldn't have thought they could afford more than one layer of an editing process that produces no discernible improvement in quality.
And Andy Alexander? He should read the cites George Will gives him before he sends them out, under his own name, in support of his paper's decision to publish Will's piece, if he doesn't want to be embarrassed like this again.
« George Will and Intellectual Honesty | Main | Battlestar Blogging: Endgame » Hilzoy bumrushes the Post20 Feb 2009 03:16 pm
Sgwhite is right--Hilzoy's take on Will's factual manipulations deserves it's own post. Rarely do you see a blogger pwn someone with the very documents provided as evidence of exoneration. Reading this post was a thrill--like watching a mugger get pistol-whipped with his own gun. Here's a quote, but it doesn't do the piece justice:
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// Reading this post was a thrill--like watching a mugger get pistol-whipped with his own gun. //
Genius.
Many years ago, in DC, along with Chris Matthews, I tapped a pilot for what Chris hoped would become a game show for PBS. One of the other panelists Chris selected for his pilot was an odd but completely charming man who looked and sounded like a character straight out of a Dickens novel--think WC Fields in the film version of "David Copperfield." His real claim to fame, however, was that he was one of George Will's chief researchers and fact checkers. Wonder if the gentleman still toils in that vineyard?
This was my favorite part of her post.
She makes Will analagous to a sorry ass student of hers and to me that was AWESOME.
All ur bowties are belong to hilzoy.
Here's RealClimate catching George Will at the exact same game four years ago. The thing he's claiming is directly contradicted by another sentence in the same paragraph as his quote. They called him on it, there were no consequences at all and he kept on saying the same things.
It's interesting that this is suddenly becoming a problem for the Post now. I guess it's because we have high-profile bloggers suggesting this is an editorial issue rather than just disagreeing with Will.
If Will actually read these two articles, it's hard to see how he's not being deliberately deceptive by citing them as he did.
It's like when Juan blamed the entire Stokely Carmichael thing on you.j
It's interesting that this is suddenly becoming a problem for the Post now. I guess it's because we have high-profile bloggers suggesting this is an editorial issue rather than just disagreeing with Will.
Good distinction. I do think this stuff got more passed over 4 years ago, when online communities and chatter were just reaching critical mass.
For a great laugh read the thread on Matt's blog about this where several lunatics (or more likely the same guy posting under multiple names) basically keeps saying 2 + 2 = 5 and you are liars for denying it.
In the interest of intellectual honesty I should say I misspoke: the part that contradicted Will was in the previous paragraph from the sentence he quoted, not the same one. It wouldn't be worth correcting except that this is the kind of irrelevancy that you usually end up fighting over in these arguments.
Hiatt should be fired just because he's fucking asshole. No more. No less.
*sigh* I went on a tear over there because some commenters I had seen (and I realized too late, afterward, that mostly I had seen them, and most blatantly, on an entirely different blog, so there I was reacting to only a couple and very little!) had been entirely too eager to say that George Will had never been anything but a flack and a liar and had never been worth reading.
But having gotten that out of my system... damn, it's disappointing. Because, as hilzoy lays out so well, it's really hard to see this as merely sloppy rather than intentionally misleading. Which puts Will in the same familiar cruddy whirlpool where I get to wonder about his beliefs and motives for manufacturing what he wrote, since what he presented was evidently manufactured, and round we go... why do it? I would have put him in a different category from a lot of pundits who would be riding that dirty spiral. For crying out loud, if you can do better and do it true, why don't you?
Actually I miswrote; hilzoy does think he might just have been sloppy, picking up someone else's distortions.
The problem is now it's me that wants to have trouble with that. Because I've given him credit for reading things. *sigh*
Fargle.
For a great laugh read the thread on Matt's blog about this where several lunatics (or more likely the same guy posting under multiple names) basically keeps saying 2 + 2 = 5 and you are liars for denying it.
It's pretty damn funny. "But show us the QUOTE that says 2 + 2 = 4! You can't do it, can you?"
A battle of wits fought against the unilaterally disarmed.
George Will has always been a hack. Why it takes the recent column for people to reach that conclusion is beyond me.
I'm really depressed about the idea that ombudsmen can't be trusted.
opinions are one thing; everyone has one
lies are quite another.
you know its a sign of the times when the ESPN ombudsman is great and perfectly willing to call out ESPN on its own bull, but the Washington Post's is apparently useless.
that might be too harsh, but the ESPN ombudsman still owns.
I think in this case we can replace the words "fact checking" with "looking to see if the quoted material appears with the words in the same order."
But here's the thing. Hilzoy wrote a great take-down. But the Washington Post doesn't give a shit. They stand by their guy.
It's interesting that this is suddenly becoming a problem for the Post now. I guess it's because we have high-profile bloggers suggesting this is an editorial issue rather than just disagreeing with Will.
This, to me, is key. It's easy to disregard an editorialist for making factual errors that are consistent with his ideological position. We akk are so inclined. What is indefensible, is when his editors make the same error, too. It's their job to catch this stuff.
One of the most pernicious things to good editorial journalism, in my mind, is when editors ignore factual errors in their writers' work (as opposed to accurate statements that offend their constituents). I want everyone who writes opinion journalism to get called out on their shit. I don't care if you're Coates, Sullivan, Marshall, Kaus, Krikorian, Yglesias, Will, Lopez (LOL), whatever. The editors' job is to sort that shit out and keep you honest.
Agreed, Peter, the ESPN ombusdman is superb. Also note, the WaPo guy says he usually deals with the news pages, not opinion. I'm pretty sure the province of the ESPN ombusdman is EVERYTHING.
Re KevDog's point---this wouldn't happen without technology. When you have to skim/read to find a quotation instead of run a search to find the exact words, these things get flagged before publication. But again, the ombudsman should know better.
This is the sort of thing that makes me happy we have blogs.
I don't know. This whole thing smacks of fascism. A group think assassination of George Will for claiming that there was consensus in the 1970s when there might not have been? A count of the number of articles in the 1970s that suggested global warming instead of cooling doesn't really refute anything. Will is quoting from Science magazine, the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal we have. He's also quoting Newsweek cover stories and the New York Times. To me, that's pretty good sourcing of popular opinion. I'm not convinced otherwise by the greater volume of passing references to the possibility of warming in obscure journals.
It was recently the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin (same day as Lincoln). And reading some history on Darwin, I was surprised to find out that he was the most avid proponent of scientific evidence against his theory of natural selection. Darwin was an incredibly ethical man. He even scooped himself by publishing the work of Allen Russel Wallace along side his own.
The arrogance with which catastrophic global warming proponents throw around the word science is distasteful. Climate science is not a discipline that uses the scientific method. There is no independent replication of Earth. Climate science is a social science like archeology. And even then it is really just computer modeling. And the fact is our models are primitive. We just discovered El Nino like 10 years ago. We still have a limited understanding of the feedback mechanisms involved. Yet, anyone who questions the certainty of the doomsday predictions about the impact of global warming is branded a denialist.
All this is not to argue against global warming. I personally believe that global warming is the result of man's activity. It is simply to point out that it's unethical for scientists to become advocates. The holes in the data should get the attention. The levels of bias and uncertainty should be emphasized. The scientist should never make a value judgment(ie what is good or bad for the Earth). Too many scientists today want to suggest dire consequences for the Earth. It's a great way to get attention and funding. But maybe Will's point is that we should be careful because it's always been that way.
I call Godwin on JustKarl.
Yes, climate science is science. No, it's not a social science, because it's not studying societies (in making predictions, it does use some info about societies' outputs, e.g. quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, but saying that that makes it a social science is like saying that it's actually part of the math department because it uses some mathematical formulas).
Sure, of course there's no "independent replication of earth", but climate scientists still use the scientific method. They examine the data regarding observed phenomena, formulate hypotheses for mechanisms that could be causing those phenomena, generate predictions from those hypotheses (like one Will alludes to: that sea ice cover will diminish), and check those predictions against new observations.
Not sure what you were trying to say with the Darwin reference.
Sure, of course there's no "independent replication of earth", but climate scientists still use the scientific method. They examine the data regarding observed phenomena, formulate hypotheses for mechanisms that could be causing those phenomena, generate predictions from those hypotheses (like one Will alludes to: that sea ice cover will diminish), and check those predictions against new observations.
This is NOT the scientific method. The scientific method requires replication of the results.
"This is NOT the scientific method. The scientific method requires replication of the results."
So, is astrophysics not science? Geology?
Um. No. You don't know what you're talking about.
Jessica had it exactly right. It's textbook grad school work.
There's plenty of replication in climate science. We have the theory that rising CO2 levels will result in higher temperatures, and we have evidence in rising arctic temperatures. We have that replicated in rising Australian temperatures, in shrinking average arctic ice cover, in loss of glacial mass around the world, etc. It doesn't matter that there's just one earth; what matters is the evidence that tests whether this thing is happening on this earth. And the evidence says yes. After all, there's only one universe. Does that mean physics experiments aren't valid because they haven't been replicated in other universes?
By the way, for a beautiful takedown of the "arctic sea ice is the same as 1979" ridiculousness, see http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/cold-hard-facts/
(sorry, I don't know how to imbed links)
Jessica's scientific method:
1.examine the data regarding observed phenomena
I go outside today and see that it's raining.
2.formulate hypotheses for mechanisms that could be causing those phenomena
It's raining because it's Monday
3.generate predictions from those hypotheses
It will rain next Monday
4.check those predictions against new observations.
If it rains next Monday, we have scientific data to support the idea that Mondays cause rain.
Thank you for helping me make my point about the arrogance of people who are basically ignorant of science.
Just Karl- we didn't discover el nino ten years ago. I too did some reading for Darwin's birthday- one of the books I read was 'the beak of the finch', about researchers studying Darwin's finches in the galapagos.
The book was written in the early 90s, and talks about El Nino and La Nina events from the last twenty years. the scientists studying the finches were aware of these at the time.
And the effects have been known for hundreds of years- they were named by spanish speaking fishermen.
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