August 14. Antigovernment News Bureau. Two weeks ago, the once-prestigious journal Nature published a peer-reviewed article which strayed far from the journal’s typical range of content.
Nature’s online imprint Nature Communications delved into social science rather than natural science, generating a list of some 386 names of climate “contrarians,” denouncing them generally as unqualified hacks, and then purporting to compare the media visibility of such contrarians with that of ‘true’ expert scientists.
The clear intent was to deplatform, censor and blacklist those on the skeptic list.
In the days following the release of the article, a number of critics have found methodological flaws in the article. Much of the data supporting the ‘study’ is secret, missing or hidden. And the article violates generally-understood rules regarding the study of human subjects. Moreover, even the gist of the study appears to be false: much of the supposedly unearned media footprint of the skeptics is actually negative discussion.
