You have to laugh. Having been on the receiving end of some mild GWPF criticism for its eccentric decision to devote a large chunk of one of its issues to global warming, the British Medical Journal has retaliated. Ooh er!
The august journal has wheeled out its investigations editor, one Deborah Cohen, who has doggedly unearthed the truth behind the wicked people who have dared to challenge it. And being a highly skilled investigations editor, she has been able to get to all those hidden facts that normal people would just have missed.
Actually, she seems to have stuck "GWPF" into Google and has found her way to DeSmog.
The GWPF has been accused of secrecy about its funding streams since it was set up in 2009 as an educational charity. But two major donors were “outed” last month on investigative blog, DeSmog UK, and both confirmed their donations to the Guardian. The two funders—Lord Nigel Vinson, a wealthy industrialist, and Neil Record, the founding chairman of a currency management company—have ties to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which has admitted to taking funding from fossil fuel companies and which has also argued against climate change mitigation.
Impressive sleuthing eh? I mean, when it announced the setup of its campaigning arm, the GWPF website said that the new organisation would feature as director the aforementioned Mr Record. This, "outing" says Ms Cohen, was the work of the gumshoes at "investigative blog DeSmog UK". And now Ms Cohen has herself also uncovered the truth! Again! Or something.
She seems find something amiss in the GWPF being funded by people with ties to the IEA, but it's not obvious what her line of reasoning is. Perhaps I just can't understand her super-clever investigatorial logic. You see, after discussing GWPF's funders, she moves on to a discussion of conflicts of interest in the funding of medical experiments. The insinuation seems to be that GWPF has a conflict of interest. However, because she is so canny, Ms Cohen seems to feel that it is entirely unnecesssary to spell out how funding from a currency manager could represent a conflict of interest in the climate debate.
Similarly, I'm slight unclear as to why Ms Cohen is so worked up about people from the IEA appearing on the BBC:
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme featured an interview with the IEA’s Mark Littlewood, who said that there is no evidence that uniform packaging affects the number of people who smoke. The programme failed to point out that the IEA takes money from Philip Morris, among others.
Well I suppose so. So I assume Ms Cohen would similarly like to condemn her editor, Fiona Godlee, whose editorial devoted to the subject of climate change did not reveal that she is involved with the Energy and Climate Change Intelligence Unit, the new green think tank run by Richard Black and funded by a variety of green-tinged industrialists.
We look forward to Ms Cohen's investigation and Dr Godlee's subsequent resignation.