Lawrence Solomon

April 26, 2008

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/26...

Fred Singer, one of the world's renowned scientists, believes in
Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his
biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. "Do you really believe
in Martians?" I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington
event. The answer was "No."

Wikipedia's error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that
Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer's biography is
designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by
painting him as a political partisan and someone who "is best known as
president and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy
Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate
change, ozone depletion, and second-hand smoke and is science advisor to
the conservative journal NewsMax."

Innocent Wikipedia readers would be surprised to learn that Dr. Singer
is no conservative kook but the first director of the U.S. National
Weather Satellite Center; the recipient of a White House commendation
for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a
commendation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for
research on particle clouds; and the recipient of a U.S. Department of
Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather
satellites.

He is, in short, a scientist of the highest calibre, with a long list of
major scientific achievements, including the first measurements, with
V-2 and Aerobee rockets, of primary cosmic radiation in space, the
design of the first instruments for measuring ozone, and the authorship
of the first publications predicting the existence of trapped radiation
in the earth's magnetic field to explain the magnetic-storm ring
current.

Honest accounts of Fred Singer and his accomplishments have been
available on Wikipedia, and on hundreds of occasions. Those occasions
don't last long, however - often just minutes - before the honest
accounts are discovered and reverted by Wikipedians who troll the site.
Such trolls continually monitor Wikipedia's 10 million pages to erase
any hint that the science is not settled on climate change. Dissenters
by the dozens have been likewise demeaned - to check for yourself, just
look up Richard Lindzen, Paul Reiter, or any of the other scientists or
organizations that have questioned the orthodoxy on climate change.

In contrast to the high-handed treatment that greet global warming
skeptics, those who support the orthodoxy are puffed up and protected
from criticism, their errors erased and their controversies hushed.

This is the case with Naomi Oreskes, a scientist with a PhD who had
arrived at an absurd finding: That no studies in a major scientific
database questioned the UN view of climate change. To bolster her
standing, those who troll for Wikipedia have done their best to dress up
her CV - they note that she won a National Science Foundation's Young
Investigator Award in 1994, that she has been a consultant for various
government agencies, and that in July she will become provost of an
as-yet unnamed college of the University of California, San Diego. While
these accomplishments are nothing to sneeze at, she is no Fred Singer.

In any event, her Wikipedia page is not really about her but her study,
which has been thoroughly discredited by credible journalists and
scientists. To suppress these critiques, the trollers apply Wikipedia's
bewildering rules as to what can and can't appear, and when the rules
are inadequate, the trollers make up new ones on the fly.

Several weeks ago, as I described in an earlier column, I attempted to
correct passages on the Oreskes page that would lead readers to think
her study had been vindicated and also to think that U.K. scientist
Benny Peiser, one of her critics, had abjectly withdrawn his criticisms.
Wikipedia's rules thwarted me, used to revert my corrections, again and
again. Those who came before me in attempting to make corrections, and,
I would find out, those who came after, were similarly thwarted.

Wikipedia refused to accept Peiser's critique, or his interpretation of
his own views, or an account of his views that he had provided to me, or
an account of his views published in a peer-reviewed journal, or an
account of his views published in The Wall Street Journal, or an account
of his views published by the U.S. Senate committee on environment and
public works.

Instead, the Wikipedia trollers insisted that all of the above sources
were disqualified or irrelevant under Wikipedia rules, and that the
trollers' own understanding of Peiser's views trumped all others.

Just as the trollers insist on characterizing Fred Singer as believing
in Martians. When it is the Wickipedian trollers who are from Mars.
--

Warmest Regards

Bonzo

"America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a
25-year Rise" New York Times, March 27, 1933

Lawrence Solomon

April 26, 2008

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/26...

Fred Singer, one of the world's renowned scientists, believes in
Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his
biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. "Do you really believe
in Martians?" I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington
event. The answer was "No."

Wikipedia's error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that
Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer's biography is
designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by
painting him as a political partisan and someone who "is best known as

Lawrence Solomon

April 26, 2008



http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/26/the-real-climate-martians-solomon.aspx



Fred Singer, one of the world's renowned scientists,

Lawrence Solomon

April 26, 2008

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/26...

Fred Singer, one of the world's renowned scientists, believes in
Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his
biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. "Do you really
believe
in Martians?" I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a
Washington
event. The answer was "No."
Wikipedia's error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that
Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer's biography is
designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by
painting him as a political partisan and someone who "is best known as
Now, an encyclopedia is biased?

Lawrence Solomon
April 26, 2008
http://network.nationalpost.com

Fred Singer, one of the world's renowned scientists

Now, an encyclopedia is biased?
What's next, the telephone book?

An "encyclopaedia" "edited" by loony, leftie, socialist, AGW zealots is
not biassed????