jc2,

"As I said he poisons every single discussion he ever has at other blogs. A few have banned him and Graham ought to consider this action as well."

It doesn't matter who 'he' is in principle. Why ban him? If you think he's wrong, you can ignore him or - better still - demonstrate that you are better informed and have better arguments to put forward.

Rationality is preferred to censorship in my opinion. Let an irrational person express their mind and expose their irrationality for all the world to see. Censorship merely creates a diversion to another site - as you've already indicated ('A few have banned him') or possibly more damaging creates a martyr.

True Spikey, I wouldn't ordinarily advocate banning anyone. However consider this. There are two libertarian blogs that have an open door policy and both have banned or moderated him as they simply can't be bothered with his dishonest antics any longer.

He doesn't add to any discussion and simply discourages dialogue in every way. His modis is to basically get attention by suggesting the site owner is a liar or is being dishonest and most times everyone reacts to that sort of attack.

I can't think of anyone else who's like that as he personalizes every discussion and introduces venom in every thing he does.

Example:
Online opinion is a pretty moderate site in the sense that you can read opinion from all sorts or people and political philosophies. Lambert suggests that it isn't so, ignoring the fact that he practices Lysenko science on his own site. He's just not worth worrying about, which is a pretty sad indictment for someone calling themselves an academic.

CJ Mark Bahnisch sent me an email pointing out the error. I asked him to post a comment on the thread. It took him a while to do that. I corrected the point in my article. I don't think that I can do more than that. It doesn't substantially affect my argument, and I don't see how someone like you, who is apparently an academic, could honestly think that it did. It only reflects on the quality of it as a hoax, which was a minor part of what I argued.

And no, I don't have a problem with Lambert picking up an error, and instancing him as one of the problems with Internet debate had nothing to do with that. I don't have a problem with people picking me up on errors. What I have a problem with is me perpetuating a mistake when I should know better. I am embarrassed when I am wrong. So embarrassed that I correct my mistake rather than try to cover it up.

But if you actually look at the exchanges, it was Lambert who came onto the thread and started criticising OLO. Am I not allowed to defend our integrity? Am I not allowed to point out the unprofessional conduct of Lambert?

Q&A, you seem to be saying that I claimed the Hockey Stick was a hoax. I didn't. I said it had been discredited, which it has. You seem to tacitly accept that, but you're not prepared to admit it. That reflects on everything else that you post.

Graham, just to be clear – you say:

“Q&A, you seem to be saying that I claimed the Hockey Stick was a hoax. I didn't. I said it had been discredited, which it has. You seem to tacitly accept that, but you're not prepared to admit it. That reflects on everything else that you post.”

Yet in your response to Lambert on Saturday, 17 January 2009 2:04:12 PM, you said:

“Hoaxes like the hockey stick graph.”

What I objected to was your implicit (if not explicit) statement suggesting the so called MBH98 “hockey stick” a hoax. It was not.

It may have been discredited by the tenacious work of M&M – but, it was not a hoax as you have clearly stated.

Therefore, I’ll bounce one back:
You seem not prepared to accept you said the hockey stick was a hoax. To me, that reflects on everything else that you post, articles included.

Just rechecked again, and you're right. I did call it a hoax when by the time it was finished with it should probably have more correctly been called a fraud. I thought I had checked everything that I said, but apparently not. So, do I take it that you now accept the Hockey Stick is wrong?

Might be worth discussing whether in fact it could be classified as a hoax. There was certainly evidence that Mann knew his statistics were wrong. Circumstantial and otherwise. Can a hoax describe something which is submitted just to trick someone, or must the trickery have the aim of exposing something about the person you are hoaxing?

Dictionary definition; Hoax

noun
a humorous or malicious deception.

Was the hockey stick meant to deceive? Yep.

Was it with malicious intent? Yep.

Here's more;

hoax
noun
joke, jest, prank, trick; ruse, deception, fraud, bluff, confidence trick; informal con, spoof, scam, setup.

It's hoax.