Er, jc2 - my post at Deltoid from a couple of years back was directly on the topic of Lambert's thread, unlike any of yours with respect to the topic of this thread. Can I suggest that if you want to carry on your endless trolling of Tim Lambert and John Quiggin, that you at least do so at their respective blogs? To persist in doing so in this discussion seems inappropriate, even if Graham seems to have tacitly encouraged you.

Do you have any opinion about the Windschuttle hoax, or is it simply a vehicle for you to pursue your extraneous obsessions with Lambert and Quiggin?

Graham has yet again misrepresented what I wrote in my article and what Peiser told him. Look at what I wrote in my article in response to Bolt's claim that Peiser had shown that 34 of Oreskes' abstracts had rejected or doubted man-made global warming.

"This one is wrong. Even Peiser has admitted his analysis was full of errors."

Young claims that this is "deeply dishonest" because Peiser did not admit to being wrong on Oreskes, but Peiser's email to Young stated
"Yes, I have indeed retracted part of my criticism of the Oreskes study. I made a methodological mistake in my initial analysis of her abstracts and have conceded that much."

Peiser has retracted his claim that 34 of Oreskes' abstracts had rejected or doubted man-made global warming. And you don't even have to rely on his email to oung or his emails to Media Watch to know this. You just have to go to Peiser's web site and read the current version of his criticism.

Young accuses of making a "rhetorical diversion" by discussing Oreskes' study, but I was directly reponding to Bolt's claims about Oreskes. It is Young who keeps trying to divert things from what my article was about.

Young encourages jc2 to abuse me by setting a bad example, with his frequent personal attacks and name calling. jc2 has even copied part of his name-calling from Young.

Given that my piece was in part about tribalism, this thread seems to be pretty much on topic! But even if it wasn't completely on topic, it is pretty disingenuous of CJ to suggest that I somehow authorise "bless" "encourage" the opinions that are added to this thread or any other thread. That would mean I would have to approve of what he and Lambert post, which is hardly likely! But it's all part and parcel of online tribalism to try to lump your opponents together as some sort of cohesive conspiracy against you, rather than people who've independently arrived at similar conclusions.

Interesting that CJ complains about JC's "trolling" of Lambert and Quiggin. If there is any truth in what he says, then it is a case of the stalkers stalked. I have been quite appalled at the way in which Quiggin has repeatedly altered Fred Singer's Wiki entry to try to make him seem a smoking lobbyist, and if I'm not mistaken, Lambert has joined in spreading this smear around the Internet.

If anyone wants to see how Lambert misrepresented Peiser, just read the discussion thread to the original post, not his bowdlerised versions - it is all there.

Graham you wrote an article on OLO and your comments about me were purely abusive, calling me a "tick", a "bully" and saying that I was like a Nazi.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/05/online_abuse.php

This encourages members of your tribe to do the same. jc2 even copied your language, calling me a "tic" (OK, so he can't spell).

And I didn't lump you and jc2 together, you grouped yourself together. He followed your lead in calling me names, and now you have followed his lead by having a go at John Quiggin. Though it's a particularly inept attack. Do you think that everyone who edits a biography on Wikipedia is a stalker?

And I notice that once again you are trying to change the subject after I corrected your misrepresentation of Peiser's email to you. Here again, is what he wrote about his "34 reject or doubt" criticism:

"Yes, I have indeed retracted part of my criticism of the Oreskes study. I made a methodological mistake in my initial analysis of her abstracts and have conceded that much."

Classic Lambert really. I didn't call you a Nazi, nor did I call you a tick. But in the Nazi accusation you appear to be taking your lead from John Quiggin with whom you occasionally collaborate on writing articles. What this claim demonstrates is that both you and Quiggin are pretty desperate to smear others, and either lack basic literacy skills yourself, or assume that your audience does.

For your information Tim, if I call you a "thug" I am not saying you strangle people; if I say you are "hysterical" I am not saying you have a womb; and if I say you are a vandal I am not saying you are a member of a fifth century germanic tribe, although all three can be applied to you. This is what is called "metaphor". If I say you use "brown-shirt" tactics, that also is a metaphor. Metaphor is essentially a strong form of simile.

When I say you "stick like a tick" that is simile. It doesn't mean that you are a tick, but that you exhibit some ticklike characteristics. Same principle applies with metaphor.

Metaphor and simile are higher level intellectual skills which a small group of people of which, if you honestly believe what you have written, appear to be one, never master.

In which case it is no surprise that you have been taken in by a number of Greenhouse hoaxes and propagated them around the net. Hoaxes like the hockey stick graph.

Which is why the open and free debate that OLO represents is so important. We're not a journal of record as CJ seems to suggest, but a market place where intelligent individuals can be exposed to arguments from all sides and come to their own conclusions. The Internet is chock-full of sites like yours that look respectable, but peddle half truths, sometimes using a university as a cloak of respectability. They are a blight on the Internet.

Meanwhile, back to the article on Windschuttle...

Graham Young commented: "Whatever Windschuttle’s flaws (and I think some of them are significant) at least he has done the sort of fact-checking that others should have done. He should not be vilified because he has inadvertently made an error in this instance, particularly as the motive for the vilification is not because it is such a large error, but that he has been so effective in fact-checking the claims of others."

This is putting the most charitable gloss on Windschuttle's work - both generally and in the case of the Quadrant hoax. And it gives him too much credit in the history wars considering how much he was helped by the mean-spirited environment created largely by John Howard and his entourage of black armband wearers.

The success of the Quadrant hoax was due to the fact that it exposed Windschuttle's conservative bias by demonstrating that he would publish a slipshod article and would not check its footnotes if said article met his conservative preconceptions. In other words, the hoax showed that Windschuttle does not follow his own proffered criteria for empirical scholarship.

Looking again at his book, "The Fabrication of Australian History" (2002) and the subsequent public exchanges between him and Australians historians, it's hard to disagree with Tony Taylor's summation that Windschuttle is "an inconsequential Australian polemicist who feels uncomfortable with the idea that the foundation of his modern nation was based on anything other a largely compassionate and progressive intervention by an enlightened European culture." (qu. The Age 17 January 2009)

I note that Windschuttle's long-promised second and third volumes - promised by him for 2003 and 2004 respectively are yet to appear. Perhaps Windschuttle is still checking his footnotes.