BH endorsed by Skeptical Science
Dec 15, 2014
Bishop Hill in Climate: HSI

Barry Woods points me to this Skeptical Science thread (reproduced at Brandon's site), in which yours truly is discussed.

Dana: The Bishop Hill crowd is interesting. A few reasonably intelligent commenters. Several who attack John, SkS, and myself. Bishop Hill has now twice asked people to stay on topic.

John Cook: Thanks Dana for stepping in - deflected some of the hate :-)

I don't read the site (apart from posts where he criticises SkS) but my impression is he's a pretty reasonable, civil guy. His critiques of SkS were all civil and some of the criticisms were reasonable. What's his story?

Dana Nuccitelli: Don't know his story, other than he wrote The Hockey Stick Illusion, which I hear is quite inaccurate. That's all I know about him though. Compared to other 'skeptics' he seems okay.

I didn't so much deflect the hate as absorb it though :-)

This made me laugh, because a year earlier Dana had written a review of The Hockey Stick Illusion on Amazon.com. It has since been deleted, but the text was recorded for posterity by BH readers:

If you're looking for a work of science fiction detailing a vast conspiracy similar to Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear', this may be the book for you.

The only problem is that this book claims to be non-fiction. Montford weaves a crazy tale of data manipulation and vast conspiracies which have very little semblance to what actually happened with regards to the infamous 'hockey stick'. A good summary of fact vs. fiction can be found here:
[...]

As long as you don't take the book seriously it makes for an entertaining read. Just think of the book as another Crichton story, sit back, and enjoy a fun conspiracy theory. The only problem is that the story claims to be true, but is filled with misinformation, lies, and nonsense. And for that, I can only give it 1 star.

So twelve months after telling people in print that the book was "filled with misinformation, lies, and nonsense" he was glibly discussing with the rest of his Skeptical Science colleagues that he had "heard" it was "quite inaccurate".

And that, gentle readers, is why you should treat everything on Skeptical Science as being false until evidence emerges to the contrary.

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