Who needs a fair hearing? Have the Skeptics had enough of a hearing?

Published December 15, 2009

by dbazely

I started writing this blog post in June 2009, which was long before I found out that Lomborg was back on the public stage. In retropect, it's interesting to see how my thinking was evolving. I was very cool with giving skeptics a fair hearing, and the tone is quite light. However, 6 months on, I am definitely feeling much less patient than I was back in the summer. How times change...

My blog about animal rights activists' tendency to be as biased in their use of the peer-reviewed literature as climate change deniers got me thinking that I'd better pay some attention to both groups' claims that the majority of scientists are actually biased against them.

In the case of animal rights activists, a recent court case about cormorants, upheld Parks Canada's culling of cormorants on Middle Island to reduce mortality of the trees, plants and other animals.  Birders have striven to make the case that cormorant numbers were always really high, and that they should not be managed.  But there's actually not a lot of evidence to support their position.

In the case of climate change deniers, the website Skeptical Science examines the science of global warming scepticism, and is well worth reading.  There's also a great, detailed BBC News article that investigated the claims of these skeptics that their work is being ignored (hint: there wasn't much evidence to support their allegations).

Of course, the most famous ecological skeptic is probably Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote the controversial, The Skeptical Environmentalist. He got into trouble with a whole lot of ecology and evolution biology professors.  Back in 2003, I actually ran a graduate course which examined his various claims in detail.  The students had lots of fun investigating and locating the bits of various chapters where Lomborg was quoting research completely out of context."

OK - so that blog was back in mid 2009. My current position on all of these skeptics, who keep on trying to challenge the basic science, is: "If you wanna debate this with me, you need to earn the right to do so and to take up my time - so, first you need to submit a 10 page, referenced essay (with peer-reviewed literature - not these rubbish blogs - and I include my blogs in the latter category) to me, explaining who Karl Popper is, who Thomas Kuhn is, and what the scientific method is. We can talk after that." Interestingly, the Globe Columnist, Leah McLaren wrote a great column on December 19 2009, called "Why are we calling on an ex-call girl for relationship tips?" that aims to explain why people cannot differentiate good (or informed) advice from bad (uninformed). Check it out.

Dawn R. Bazely

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