The British Medical Journal has reentered the climate fray, with a leader bemoaning the alleged "false balance" in science journalism. Steve Jones' "report" on the BBC's impartiality (ho, ho) is discussed.
I wrote a response, which hasn't appeared as yet. (Perhaps it would be "false balance" to publish it?) I pointed out that one of the results of denying dissenting voices an airing was that it leaves those promoting the majority view in a position where they no longer have to be honest and can exaggerate and scaremonger without challenge.
Some time ago I spoke to a PR guy at the Met Office who acknowledged that scientists there had been wont to exaggerate in the past. However the rise of the sceptical blogs meant that this kind of behaviour would be seen and criticised, with damaging consequences for the Met Office's reputation. He told me that much of his job now involved trying to make sure that the scientists stayed within reasonable bounds in their public utterances.
Another example of this kind of thing, which I outlined in my comment at the BMJ, were the absurd utterances of Sir Andy Haynes at the BMJ conference. Telling an uninformed audience that the social cost of carbon is $1000/tonne could be construed as grossly dishonest, given that the more normally accepted figures are of the order of $30-50/tonne. In fact though, I think Haynes was actually just as ill-informed as his audience and there was no deliberate attempt to deceive. However, with only right-thinking types in attendance there was nobody to call him on his mistake and a large group of influential people went away entirely misled.
The BMJ, it seems, wants more of this kind of thing.