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A Foolish Letter from AAAS

[h=1]Ooops! Not all 31 scientific societies actually signed the AAAS ‘consensus’ letter[/h]Recursive Lies and “Scientific Consensus” Letters Guest opinion by Ari Halperin The ”Consensus” Letter on Climate Change (06/28/2016), allegedly signed by leaders of 31 scientific organizations and published on the websites of the AAAS, AGU, AMS, and others, was signed only by some of the participating organizations. This is contrary to the letter itself, the…
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Wow...
 
You loves you some denier blogs, eh?
So this Ari Halperin guy emails the 31 associations, 9 respond to his email confirming that they signed the letter, but based purely on the fact that the others didn't bother to reply to his email (and why should they respond to some random person sending them an email?), he falsely jumps to the conclusion that the others didn't sign the letter?

Looking at the delusional comments by the posters on WUWT, they all must be complete idiots to believe his ridiculous conspiracy claims. Just another example of how WUWT is an anti-science crank magnet blog.
 
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So this Ari Halperin guy emails the 31 associations, 9 respond to his email confirming that they signed the letter, but based purely on the fact that the others didn't bother to reply to his email (and why should they respond to some random person sending them an email?), he falsely jumps to the conclusion that the others didn't sign the letter?

Looking at the delusional comments by the posters on WUWT, they all must be complete idiots to believe his ridiculous conspiracy claims. Just another example of how WUWT is an anti-science crank magnet blog.

'Wow' is right.

LOL
 
So this Ari Halperin guy emails the 31 associations, 9 respond to his email confirming that they signed the letter, but based purely on the fact that the others didn't bother to reply to his email (and why should they respond to some random person sending them an email?), he falsely jumps to the conclusion that the others didn't sign the letter?

Looking at the delusional comments by the posters on WUWT, they all must be complete idiots to believe his ridiculous conspiracy claims. Just another example of how WUWT is an anti-science crank magnet blog.

'Wow' is right.

LOL

It's a shame they did not (or could not?) just answer plainly.
 
It's a shame they did not (or could not?) just answer plainly.

Why should anyone have to respond to what amounts to email spam? It's a shame this Ari Halperin crank had to make up a big lie, WUWT posted it, you repeated it, and others bought in to it.

No doubt this will become yet another one of those false conspiracy claims that will get repeated as 'fact' by science deniers.
 
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Why should anyone have to respond to what amounts to email spam? It's a shame Ari Halperin had to make up a big lie, WUWT posted it, you repeated it, and others bought in to it.
No doubt this will become yet another one of those false conspiracy claims that will get repeated as 'fact' by science deniers.

When they engage in public advocacy it is not out of bounds to ask them public questions. What is a shame is that they are acting like they have something to hide.
 
When they engage in public advocacy it is not out of bounds to ask them public questions. What is a shame is that they are acting like they have something to hide.
Acting like they had something to hide? How? By not responding to a crank email just because some crank emailer wanted them to? Conspiratorial thinking much?

What a shame you repeated such a ridiculous false claim as if it were fact.
 
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Acting like they had something to hide? How? By not responding to every crank email they get? Classic conspiratorial thinking.

What a shame you repeated such an obvious false claim as if it were fact.

They made the choice to engage publicly when they issued a public letter. And I doubt their volume of incoming email was that great. Regardless, they failed in their obligation, and thereby made themselves look guilty.
 
They made the choice to engage publicly when they issued a public letter. And I doubt their volume of incoming email was that great. Regardless, they failed in their obligation, and thereby made themselves look guilty.
Science organizations and scientists are all 'guilty' of something nefarious in the delusional minds of anti-science conspiracy cranks. No matter what they do, or even don't do.
 
Science organizations and scientists are all 'guilty' of something nefarious in the delusional minds of anti-science conspiracy cranks. No matter what they do, or even don't do.

You're only creating a strawman. The organizations themselves opened the public discussion.
 
You're only creating a strawman. The organizations themselves opened the public discussion.
A false accusation by a conspiracy crank that most of the organizations didn't sign the letter just because they didn't respond to his crank email is your idea of 'public discussion'? Okaaaaaay.
 
A false accusation by a conspiracy crank that most of the organizations didn't sign the letter just because they didn't respond to his crank email is your idea of 'public discussion'? Okaaaaaay.

It's only your opinion that it was a "crank" email. It was a perfectly legitimate inquiry regarding public correspondence. Their failure to respond was inappropriate, at least.
 
It's only your opinion that it was a "crank" email. It was a perfectly legitimate inquiry regarding public correspondence. Their failure to respond was inappropriate, at least.

A 'perfectly legitimate email' from a crank demanding that they confirm they signed a letter that they had signed. Such are the fabulously delusional workings of the anti-science crank conspiratorial mind. :D
 
A 'perfectly legitimate email' from a crank demanding that they confirm they signed a letter that they had signed. Such are the fabulously delusional workings of the anti-science crank conspiratorial mind. :D

It was a simple and legitimate request.
 
"Dear 31 Science Organizations,

I don't like what you are saying, so you must be lying. I don't believe 31 Science organizations would sign a letter that I don't like, so you must be lying that you all signed it. I demand that you respond to my legitimate request questioning if you really did sign a letter I don't like. If you don't reply to my demand, it will be proof that you didn't actually sign the letter. If you do respond to my demand and claim that you signed it, I demand proof that they are really signatures from real people. If I don't receive birth certificates, your full CVs, copies of your driving licenses and the original paper letter with the original signatures from you, you must be lying. Even if you do send me those, you probably faked them anyway. If you all respond to my legitimate request and say that you signed the letter, it's proof that you are all in colluding in a lie. If only some of you respond to my demand for proof that you signed a letter I don't like, then that is proof that there is no consensus in climate science and scientists and Science organizartions who say things I don't like, must be lying.

Yours faithfully and sincerely in an honest legitimate search for The Truth,
WUWT Conspiracy Crank"
 
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"Dear 31 Science Organizations,

I don't like what you are saying, so you must be lying. I don't believe 31 Science organizations would sign a letter that I don't like, so you must be lying that you all signed it. I demand that you respond to my legitimate request questioning if you really did sign a letter I don't like. If you don't reply to my demand, it will be proof that you didn't actually sign the letter. If you do respond to my demand and claim that you signed it, I demand proof that they are really signatures from real people. If I don't receive birth certificates, your full CVs, copies of your driving licenses and the original paper letter with the original signatures from you, you must be lying. Even if you do send me those, you probably faked them anyway. If you all respond to my legitimate request and say that you signed the letter, it's proof that you are all in colluding in a lie. If only some of you respond to my demand for proof that you signed a letter I don't like, then that is proof that there is no consensus in climate science and scientists and Science organizartions who say things I don't like, must be lying.

Yours faithfully and sincerely in an honest legitimate search for The Truth,
WUWT Conspiracy Crank"
"PS: You have 24 hrs to respond to my simple and legitimate request before I expose you all as liars in a peer-reviewed post on WUWT."
 
"Dear 31 Science Organizations,

I don't like what you are saying, so you must be lying. I don't believe 31 Science organizations would sign a letter that I don't like, so you must be lying that you all signed it. I demand that you respond to my legitimate request questioning if you really did sign a letter I don't like. If you don't reply to my demand, it will be proof that you didn't actually sign the letter. If you do respond to my demand and claim that you signed it, I demand proof that they are really signatures from real people. If I don't receive birth certificates, your full CVs, copies of your driving licenses and the original paper letter with the original signatures from you, you must be lying. Even if you do send me those, you probably faked them anyway. If you all respond to my legitimate request and say that you signed the letter, it's proof that you are all in colluding in a lie. If only some of you respond to my demand for proof that you signed a letter I don't like, then that is proof that there is no consensus in climate science and scientists and Science organizartions who say things I don't like, must be lying.

Yours faithfully and sincerely in an honest legitimate search for The Truth,
WUWT Conspiracy Crank"

Here is what actually happened. As the author notes, it was a routine fact checking exercise of the sort public figures and institutions deal with every day.

In early morning of July 6th, I sent fact-checking emails to the CEO of the AAAS and to the top officials and/or media contacts of the 30 other organizations. Appendix B of the paper contains the email exchange with AAAS. The emails asked only about signing the letter, not about its content. Specifically, my email asked whether the letter in question was signed by the listed organizations or their leaders, and asked for an opportunity to see the actual signatures. In its reply, AAAS changed the published allegation that the letter was signed to “reflect the participation of leaders of each of the 31 named scientific societies” (Fact #1). My follow up letter, asking AAAS to confirm that the letter was actually signed, went unanswered.
That same day, a different email (Appendix A) was sent to each of the other 30 organizations. All these emails had substantially the same text, but each organization was contacted separately, usually with copies to multiple recipients within that organization. The organizations were not cc’ed on emails sent to their peers, and were not told that other organizations were contacted, except for the triplet of the Agronomy/Soil Science/Crop Science Societies. 9 out of these 30 organizations answered, and all 9 confirmed that they signed the letter. 5 out of 9 replies flatly denied that there was any pressure to sign, and none indicated otherwise. Some probably thought that the question about the pressure was inappropriate. Thus, all replies and non-replies can be divided into two categories: “yes” and “no answer.” If the respondents acted independently, the 9 positive replies would be a valid statistical sample, confirming the null hypothesis that the letter was properly signed by all participants.
But the respondents did not reply independently, as one might expect from any organization simply asked to confirm its signature on a published document. “Leading scientific societies” might also be expected to think independently, but that’s another matter. Instead, the respondents colluded and coordinated their responses or non-responses in an unthinkable manner. This is evidence of foul play by itself (Fact #2). Honest people do not need to coordinate their answers. This lack of independence also makes it impossible to use statistical methods to infer what answers would be given by the 21 organizations that did not reply.
This routine fact-checking exercise suddenly evolved into an experiment, and its timeline is as important as the questions and answers. The replies started pouring immediately after I sent the questions. In fact, 6 out of 10 replies (including the one from AAAS) arrived within eight hours. Then, an email from the Ecological Society of America arrived, and it was as if a silence spell was cast on the “leading nonpartisan scientific societies.” This is the email:
 
Here is what actually happened. As the author notes, it was a routine fact checking exercise of the sort public figures and institutions deal with every day.

In early morning of July 6th, I sent fact-checking emails to the CEO of the AAAS and to the top officials and/or media contacts of the 30 other organizations. Appendix B of the paper contains the email exchange with AAAS. The emails asked only about signing the letter, not about its content. Specifically, my email asked whether the letter in question was signed by the listed organizations or their leaders, and asked for an opportunity to see the actual signatures. In its reply, AAAS changed the published allegation that the letter was signed to “reflect the participation of leaders of each of the 31 named scientific societies” (Fact #1). My follow up letter, asking AAAS to confirm that the letter was actually signed, went unanswered.
That same day, a different email (Appendix A) was sent to each of the other 30 organizations. All these emails had substantially the same text, but each organization was contacted separately, usually with copies to multiple recipients within that organization. The organizations were not cc’ed on emails sent to their peers, and were not told that other organizations were contacted, except for the triplet of the Agronomy/Soil Science/Crop Science Societies. 9 out of these 30 organizations answered, and all 9 confirmed that they signed the letter. 5 out of 9 replies flatly denied that there was any pressure to sign, and none indicated otherwise. Some probably thought that the question about the pressure was inappropriate. Thus, all replies and non-replies can be divided into two categories: “yes” and “no answer.” If the respondents acted independently, the 9 positive replies would be a valid statistical sample, confirming the null hypothesis that the letter was properly signed by all participants.
But the respondents did not reply independently, as one might expect from any organization simply asked to confirm its signature on a published document. “Leading scientific societies” might also be expected to think independently, but that’s another matter. Instead, the respondents colluded and coordinated their responses or non-responses in an unthinkable manner. This is evidence of foul play by itself (Fact #2). Honest people do not need to coordinate their answers. This lack of independence also makes it impossible to use statistical methods to infer what answers would be given by the 21 organizations that did not reply.
This routine fact-checking exercise suddenly evolved into an experiment, and its timeline is as important as the questions and answers. The replies started pouring immediately after I sent the questions. In fact, 6 out of 10 replies (including the one from AAAS) arrived within eight hours. Then, an email from the Ecological Society of America arrived, and it was as if a silence spell was cast on the “leading nonpartisan scientific societies.” This is the email:

Just another example of a cleverly devised doubt inducing plot to confuse the public. It's a reactionary attack on science and nothing more. Scientists know it, the organizations know it. The best policy is to ignore the manufacturers of doubt. Scientists learned long ago not to play the game. Of course then they are accused of hiding information and refusing to share with the 'other side' as if there is another scientific based side.
 
Just another example of a cleverly devised doubt inducing plot to confuse the public. It's a reactionary attack on science and nothing more. Scientists know it, the organizations know it. The best policy is to ignore the manufacturers of doubt. Scientists learned long ago not to play the game. Of course then they are accused of hiding information and refusing to share with the 'other side' as if there is another scientific based side.

Their organizations were, in this instance, not acting as scientists, but as public policy advocates. In that context, they are solely responsible for whatever conclusions people draw from their lack of transparency.
 
Their organizations were, in this instance, not acting as scientists, but as public policy advocates. In that context, they are solely responsible for whatever conclusions people draw from their lack of transparency.

So, scientific organizations of experts, which exist as a collective voice concerning the state of their scientific fields, should not be listened to when considering public policy directly related to their area of expertise. Got it.
 
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