Should Scientists’ Waste Time with Conspiracy Theories?

If there is one good thing to come from the whole stolen CRU email incident, it is the way that the human-induced global warming denialist movement has been overrun with global government conspiracy nuts. “Climategate” is now being referenced on many New World Order conspiricist websites.

So Sahil Kapur was right all along. Those denying anthropogenic climate change are really little different from the 9/11 truthers. Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, had also realised this. Some science bloggers are comparing the quote-mining to swiftboating especially when it comes to the weak defence by the University of East Anglia (cf. Kerry’s campaign in 2004) but a more apt comparison may actually be the birther movement. As with truthers, moon hoaxers and climate change denialists, the birthers reject any evidence contrary to their beliefs. As noted by Phil Plait:

they call themselves skeptics, but they are far from it. Skepticism is a method that includes the demanding of evidence and critical analysis of it. That’s not what Moon hoax believers do; they make stuff up, they don’t look at all the evidence, they ignore evidence that goes against their claims. So they are not Moon landing skeptics, they are Moon landing deniers. They may start off as skeptics, but real skeptics understand the overwhelming evidence supporting the reality of the Moon landings. If, after examining that evidence, you still think Apollo was faked, then congratulations. You’re a denier.

Which is exactly what conspiracy nuts do also. And just as peak oil theory lost credibility when 9/11 truthers and NWO believers used it as a motivation for government involvement in the attack on the World Trade Center, the merging of climate change denial and NWO cults may actually have a detrimental effect on the anti-science lobby.

So how exactly should scientists react to conspiracy nuts and swiftboating. Should they spend their valuable time writing on blogs with detailed replies to deniers? Should limited grant funding be used up to mount an Obama-style PR offensive to counter the mistaken beliefs of the irrational ramblings of conspiracy nutters? Given that these conspiracy theories don’t require facts for peole to believe in them putting up website after website spewing forth facts is not going to do much good.

Perhaps the best thing scientists can do is to continue to do their job. The latest Science podcast has an interview with paleoclimatologist, Michael Mann, and nowhere is there any mention of his role in the Climategate/SwiftHack affair *. And if the conspiricists continue making ridiculous demands of scientists, perhaps another reaction is called for.

* (However, I do expect the conspiricist to yell cover-up when they learn Mann has renamed the Medieval Warm Period to Medieval Climatic Anomaly. That’s correspondent inference theory for ya.)

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Jinchi Says:

30 November, 2009 at 2:58 pm

So how exactly should scientists react to conspiracy nuts and swiftboating. Should they spend their valuable time writing on blogs with detailed replies to deniers?

Don’t knock RealClimate’s work here. They’re never going to convince the denialists, but they provide intelligent and well-reasoned push-back and are likely a source for any journalist or lay person covering the debate.

Otherwise we get nonsense like this (from George Monbiot defending climate science):

One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Here’s how the journalist himself describes one of the papers:

One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief.

Sounds like Jones had a pretty good case for trying to exclude it from the IPCC literature.

But Monbiot’s takeaway is this:

I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.

So denialists hack into a computer system, post emails out of context attacking climate scientists, and Monbiot’s response is that one of the victims should resign for venting in a personal email.

wagdog Says:

1 December, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I have nothing against RC as a source for science bloggers and true fans of the scientific method. But that is the audience they should cater for, and not try to fight a point-scoring culture war with those who are now indistinguishable from 9/11 truthers, birthers, moon hoaxers, and NWO conspiracy theorists. Gavin Schmidt sometimes gets himself caught up in this. AGW denialists should be reframed as conspiricists and dismissed as such without appearing all defensive about it. Otherwise it is a waste of a scientist’s time to fund a PR campaign offensive like some bloggers have been suggesting should have been done.