Mapping the sceptic blogosphere

Readers may remember Amelia Sharman as one of the authors of the "Entrepreneur" paper, about the disreputable shenanigans that led to the EU's biofuels mandate.

Amelia is now in the midst of a PhD looking at global warming sceptics and has just publiished a working paper, describing the results of a social network analysis of sceptic blogs. It can be seen here.

I've only skimmed through it, but it looks reasonable enough. One issue I noticed is that she has based her analysis of BH traffic on the domain bishophill.squarespace.com, which is what I used before I got www.bishop-hill.net, so the figures may not be accurate. But I guess this is why publishing a working paper is a useful approach.

Comments

[Radical Rodent]

Barry Woods (Sep 7, 2013 at 10:39 PM):

…mix science and politics…

Not sure the two mix very well. It should be noted that ALL progress has been the result of the efforts of individuals; NONE has been by government policy. Science is about facts; politics has become about the distortion of facts.

I tried reading the paper, but, while sensing that there were more holes in her argument than in a Swiss cheese, became so bored with it – why can these people not take a leaf from the books of Crichton or Pratchett?

[Soylent Green]

References: John Cook and Naomi Oreskes? No ad hominem arguments there.

[M Courtney]

I read it and thought it was quite good - but limited.

She studied the blogosphere to identify the sceptical community. Then she looked at the links between the blogs to find the most influential.

And then she tried to see what sort of blogs were the heart of the sceptic community. That seems like a good thing to do. It would show what sceptics are really about; politics, loony contrarians or interested in the science.

And she found that the Sceptical Blogosphere is, at heart, a means of discussing the science of climate change.

The limitations of the study is that it didn't look at the comments to see how blogs are accepted or challenged. And she didn't look at the localism or internationalism of the blog comments with respect to their politics or science content.

Also she didn't realise that the creation of the IPCC - with its unique form of 'scientific' authority - is what led to the rise of the Sceptical Blogosphere. Originally on an amateurish cloudy-background in Australia, many years ago..

[Dung]

According to a site called Hypestat, the number of (unique) individuals visiting blogs per day:

Bishop Hill (.net)...............2080
Climate Audit....................5094
JoNova............................4958
No Frakking Consensus.......1448
WUWT............................8643

[Jack Hughes]

Richard Feynman:

There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read -- something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn't make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn't read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of "I'm not adequate," until finally I said to myself, "I'm gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means."

So I stopped -- at random -- and read the next sentence very carefully. I can't remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: "The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels." I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? "People read."
Then I went over the next sentence, and I realized that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind of empty business: "Sometimes people read; sometimes people listen to the radio," and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn't understand it at first, and when I finally deciphered it, there was nothing to it.

The next bit of Feynman is also relevant...

There was only one thing that happened at that meeting that was pleasant or amusing. At this conference, every word that every guy said at the plenary session was so important that they had a stenotypist there, typing every goddamn thing. Somewhere on the second day the stenotypist came up to me and said, "What profession are you? Surely not a professor."

"I am a professor," I said.
"Of what?"
"Of physics -- science."
"Oh! That must be the reason," he said.
"Reason for what?"
He said, "You see, I'm a stenotypist, and I type everything that is said here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I don't understand what they're saying. But every time you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean -- what the question is, and what you're saying -- so I thought you can't be a professor!"

[Jack Hughes]

Amelia - I am trying to be polite but this scribble is a total crock.

It's like trying to learn all about France by studying only a french railway timetable without bothering to learn French or visit France, or even eat French Food while listening to French Pop Music.

[put me down as type=grumpy, education=science degree, carbon footprint=sasquatch]

PS: hope the ponies are all OK

[Greg Cavanagh]

After all this time (Global Warming since 1990 IPCC), many millions if not billions of dollars, and many peer reviewed analysis.

They have never asked us questions like:
Why are you here on this blog?
Why this particular blog?
Do you also read pro-warming blogs?
Do you read other science blogs?

As a point of curiosity. I do wonder how they rate Zed. When they count the blog numbers, is he counted among us conspiracy trapped anti-science, big-oil paid, cigarette smokin' mavens?

[tomdesabla]

"it's unlikely I haven't looked at what you've looked at."

Really? In a world with 6 billion people, each one different, with so many issues to investigate locally, nationally, globally, philosophically, politically, scientifically?

Don't get me wrong Michael Larkin, it doesn't bother me that you're not interested, and you needn't respond. Perhaps, though, you might consider whether the above statement really makes sense. I can't imagine making it myself.

[dfhunter]

maybe relevant,but not sure who but this link up (lost the thread so to speak) - http://www.big-lies.org/global-climate-change/global-warming.html#greenhouse

but worth a read re the sceptic position, move to untheaded Bish if required

[Alexander K]

Amelia's juvenile ponderings remind me of some of the bright but very unworldly teenagers I have heard in my high school classes over the years, making what they considered to be serious statements about matters which they knew so very little; one day, she may become a serious academic, but she needs to do a little more research and probably grow up a tad.
Without any desire to wound her, I feel she is a thoroughly indulged young lady who will be OK when she grows up.

[robotech master]

Lot of general issues with this paper.

"A final point before proceeding is to note that this paper uses the terms “climate
sceptic/ism” for brevity, despite recognising the non-trivial multitude of problems
such a label entails. Along with similar terms such as “denier” or “contrarian”, the
label of climate sceptic is problematic as it can be dismissive or limiting, as well as
inadequately specific. Forthcoming research will address this issue in more detail."

So many things wong with this statement. First being that it argues that skeptic, denier and contrarian are somehow equal terms in this debate. It further goes to argue that denier is somhow legitamite term to be used and that it is "correctly" applied but could be "vague" in meaning. This type of thought process is scary and ignorant at best.

Next would be this

"As well as policy debates, the scientific evidence itself is actively disputed, with, for
example, knowledge claims presented within the climate debate as either “sound” or
“junk” science (McCright and Dunlap 2003). Sound science first emerged as a term
during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy health scare in the USA in the early
2000s when scientific—instead of economic—rationales were employed to defend
policy responses. Evidence that does not fit the desired policy frame is conversely
labeled as “junk science”, although critics using the sound science argument often
refer to incomplete data and scenario modeling (two things inherent to climate
science) as key elements of junk science, rather than engaging in a direct debate about
the quality of the extant data itself. As McGarity (2003-2004: 901) argues, ‘stripped
of their rhetorical flourish, “junk science” means “their science” and “sound science”
means “our science”’."

Now I could be reading this wrong due to it being mostly "fluf" of the brown nose/anus type, but in basic what this section is claiming is that "us" evil deniers only believe info produced by the vast rightwing oil funded conspricy. This goes back to the whole "denier" is legit argument/label as well.

"Hoffman (2011b) argues
that the climate debate may have entered into the realm of what Pielke (2007) coins
“abortion politics”, that is, a situation where no amount of scientific information can
reconcile the different values held on a certain topic. While a speaking truth to power
model would suggest that climate change could resolved by systematically uncovering
factual knowledge, this “rational-instrument” approach whereby science is seen as
providing ‘verifiable facts about reality on which rational policy decisions can be
based’ (Gulbrandsen 2008: 100) is inadequate. The range of potential policy
responses to climate change each hold deeply embedded ideological implications,
with Hoffman providing the example of attendees at a climate sceptics’ conference in
2010 stating that ‘the issue isn’t the issue’; instead, that ‘climate change is just another
attempt to diminish our freedom’ (2011b: 3)."

This statement once again reinforces the above points that denier is not only a proper and legit term but is backed up and supported as correct. This quote also argues and attempts to reinforce the belief that skeptics are both anti-science and will never accept any amount of science to change the skeptic mind aka were nutcases. How many propaganda papers have been pushing this talking point recently...? Alot and this one just sits at the top of a very large pile.

I also have problems with the huge amount of "over citations". You can tell how weak a paper is by how many citations it quotes... and this paper screams weakness.

Hopefully i'll be at my normal comp for the rest of this post but this paper looks to be typical doomsday cult propaganda doing a better job pretending to be science.

[Michael Larkin]

Sep 9, 2013 at 3:55 PM tomdesabla

Now then Tom, don't be like that. Obviously I haven't looked at all the same sources of information you have (and the same could be said about you wrt my sources), but I meant it's unlikely that you have looked at many different *issues* from me.