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Discussion > Tax-funded Censorship

Geoff Sherrington has a comment on the Ridley / Geere article which I reproduce here slightly abbreviated;

Good wishes to all here,
There is an Australian blog that is supported by the main Universities and CSIRO and our Met Bureau. It's named "The Conversation". You have to be associated with a University to write lead articles, but you are supposed to be free to make blog comments.
I supposed that until yesterday, when I went to sign in. A brown note on the screen told me "Your account has been locked".
I felt that this was a strange act [...] Here is a suggestion. I'm not allowed to blog in this taxpayer funded place now, but you are.
There is an open invitation to you all to become involved, to blog on The Conversation", perhaps often for a while, as a measure of your personal opposition to censorship. (I am not told why I was censored. The door was shut with no explanation).
I'm very willing to send you samples of my past blogs so you can judge if they should be acceptable or not in a public forum.
Oct 18, 2013 at 2:45 AM | Geoff Sherrington
The Conversation recently became an Anglo-Australian blog, supported by British government money and eleven British universities. (Why the government should be funding a blog at all is a mystery). It’s very keen on climate change, with about ten articles on the IPCC AR5.
Some BH regulars have become keen commenters. Professor Lewandowsky, late of the University of Western Australia, now of Bristol University, is a prolific author, and Bristol University is one of their funding sources.
I once called the Conversation “a blog for the more intelligent type of Guardian reader, the ones with opposable thumbs” but parts of it are actually rather good. However, they are now apparently applying Guardian-style censorship. This should be opposed. Get over there and tell them what you think.

Oct 18, 2013 at 5:39 AM | Registered Commentergeoffchambers

My twitter log in seem to be blocked.
But I have added this, with an email registration:

https://theconversation.com/right-left-wrong-people-reject-science-because-18789

Perhaps, if the Professor Lewandowsky could correct a substantial error in LOG12,

“NASA faked the moon landings - Therefore [Climate ]science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” by Stephan Lewandowsky, Klaus Oberauer, Gilles Gignac – Psychological Science [LOG12]

then the criticism of Professor Lewandowsky and his co authors by th e'sceptics' might not have been so great..

The factual error is:
The LOG12 methodology states that the survey was posted at the SkepticalScience website, when in fact the survey was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.

This has the following implications for LOG12, which will require corrections to the paper:

1) The methodology of LOG12 states that the survey was posted on the website www.SkepticalScience.com (1 of 8 websites) This claim appears to be falsified.

2) The methodology also states that the survey was potential visible to 390,000 visits from readers, including 78,000 sceptical visits at the www.SkepticalScience.com website. This is a key claim of the paper that the survey was potential viewed by a large, broad audience, (with a 20% sceptical audience) representative of the wider general public. As the survey never appeared at the www.SkepticalScience.com website this claim is falsified

3) Additionally, the content analysis of www.SkepticalScience.com is used to assert that there was a diverse representative audience across the other 7 blogs that linked to the survey. As the survey was never show at www.SkepticalScience.com the claim of diverse and wide readership for the whole survey, based on a content analysis of www.SkepticalScience is now unsupported by the evidence in the supplementary material.

New content analysis will be required for the other 7 blogs, including readership traffic volumes as well.

Tom Curtis a Skeptical Science regular author and contributor and most importantly moderator(like yourself) appears to have established beyond doubt that the survey for LOG12 was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.

Tom Curtis wrote to Steve McIntyre (who had made a similar analysis ) publically confirming this in April 2013, following the publication of LOG12 in the Psychological Science journal. To put the importance of Skeptical Science into context, the Skeptical Science website, is by far the most well known, with the highest traffic of the all blogs surveyed.

If you recall, I requested evidence that the survey had been linked at Skeptical Science on July 31st 2012, and at the time you stated to me that you had had the url for it, but had lost it, and perhaps that John Cook had deleted it, (this would also be against UWA policies for data retention I believe)

Between UWA and the LOG12 authors, I hope somebody will just make the appropriate corrections..

before any casual reader thinks this is a partisan issue.

Tom Curtis, a co Skeptical Science moderator contributor and like Professor Lewandowsky, a regular author at Skeptical Science, has written on his own blog about the fact the survey was not shown at Skeptical Science.

Tom Curtis makes this statement:

Given this evidence, I must conclude, as did McIntyre that,

"In my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that SkS never published a link to the Lewandowsky survey. In my opinion, both Cook’s claim to have published a link and Lewandowsky’s claim to have seen it are untrue."

--------------
perhaps the authors could simply correct the paper.

Tom Curtis blogs at:
http://bybrisbanewaters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/skeptical-science-and-lewandowsky-survey.html

Oct 18, 2013 at 12:18 PM | Unregistered CommenterBarry Woods

Interesting, but not altogether surprising. You can see that Geoff S has been banned because if you go to the thread
https://theconversation.com/right-left-wrong-people-reject-science-because-18789
everyone's name is in blue with a link to their profile but he is in black.
One other person has also been blocked - Geoffrey Henley, of course another sceptic. Or maybe they have something against Geoffs.

I just drew attention to Geoff's banning on this thread
https://theconversation.com/why-dont-australians-see-nuclear-as-a-climate-change-solution-19099#comment_237199


I have only commented there a few times, but I see the following response to my comment:

"Ian Alexander
Reader
In reply to Paul Matthews
Anyone who quotes McIntyre immediately loses the argument.

He is nothing more than a denialist shill, rolled out by the wilfully ignorant and the paid deniers when they want an oil industry view.

Quoting a retired mining industry executive...well done champ.

(god help your maths students)"

I have objected to that - it will be interesting to see if the moderators take any action.

Oct 18, 2013 at 1:13 PM | Registered CommenterPaul Matthews

Oct 18, 2013 at 1:13 PM | Registered Commenter Paul Matthews

Ah yes, Mr Ian Alexander, one of the bright spark commenters at the taxpayer funded The Conversation. A legend in his own lunchbox – here are some of his cutting witticisms from just one post. There are many others from the site that proclaims, “Academic rigour, journalistic flair”: Link

Another moronic old white male denier comment from the crazy IPA uncle.
He obviously doesn't bother (or can't) read the article written above.
Old age and prejudice will do that...

More Rennie Lies.
Not even first level denier trolling

Two time loser with more references to anti-science websites. Use your own brain rather than the oil industry funded crap.

Old, white, male climate denier.
Ignore this joker.

How are those little brain bleeds Grant? Under control yet?
From the quality of the gibberish you continue to post, I'd say there is a lot of rehab still required. (That's ignoring the obvious senile dementia)


<gasp> that’s me he’s referring to in the last one. I’m shattered.</gasp>. I haven't bothered objecting. It's much more fun to leave this sort of drivel on the site.
Presumably Geoff Sherrington has posted much worse than that and has therefore been banned. I managed to login today (under Grant Burfield) but it can only be a matter of time. It would seem that although The Conversation is funded by all taxpayers, there is only a certain strain of taxpayer that may comment there. If Geoff Sherrington is still banned after a period, I might ask why on a suitable thread. Will probably get me banned as well but such is life in the world of taxpayer funded Australian climate change journalism.

Oct 19, 2013 at 6:31 AM | Registered CommenterGrantB

Geoff Sherrington is a perfectly reasonable sceptical commenter, not rude at all. His crime was probably persistence.

The Conversation doesn’t have premoderation, so comments go up straight away, and a certain amount of irreverence is permitted, as you can see from my exchange with Foxgoose at the end of this thread
https://theconversation.com/right-left-wrong-people-reject-science-because-18789

One can have a civilised conversation at the Conversation if you bring along someone to talk to.

Oct 21, 2013 at 8:49 AM | Registered Commentergeoffchambers