This would be topical... sent to another list I'm part of.

Warm regards,
Chirag



http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1522706

Bjorn Lomborg
Thought control
Jan 9th 2003
From The Economist print edition

The scourge of the greens is accused of dishonesty

THE Bjorn Lomborg saga took a decidedly Orwellian turn this week. Readers
will recall that Mr Lomborg, a statistician and director of Denmark's
Environmental Assessment Institute, is the author of “The Skeptical
Environmentalist”, which attacks the environmental lobby for systematically
exaggerated pessimism. Environmentalists have risen as one in furious
condemnation of Mr Lomborg's presumption in challenging their claims, partly
no doubt because he did it so tellingly. This week, to the delight of greens
everywhere, Denmark's Committees on Scientific Dishonesty ruled on the book
as follows: “Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under
consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific
 dishonesty.”
How odd. Why, in the first place, is a panel with a name such as this
investigating complaints against a book which makes no claim to be a
scientific treatise? “The Skeptical Environmentalist” is explicitly not
concerned with conducting scientific research. Rather, it measures the
“litany” of environmental alarm that is constantly fed to the public against
a range of largely uncontested data about the state of the planet. The
litany comes off very badly from the comparison. The environmental movement
was right to find the book a severe embarrassment. But since the book was
not conducting scientific research, what business is it of a panel concerned
with scientific dishonesty?
One might expect to find the answer to this question in the arguments and
data supporting the ruling—but there aren't any. The material assembled by
the panel consists almost entirely of a synopsis of four articles published
by Scientific American last year. (We criticised those articles and the
editorial that ran with them in our issue of February 2nd 2002.) The panel
seems to regard these pieces as disinterested science, rather than
counter-advocacy from committed environmentalists. Incredibly, the
complaints of these self-interested parties are blandly accepted at face
value. Mr Lomborg's line-by-line replies to the criticisms (see
www.lomborg.com) are not reported. On its own behalf, the panel offers not
one instance of inaccuracy or distortion in Mr Lomborg's book: not its job,
it says. On this basis it finds Mr Lomborg guilty of dishonesty.
The panel's ruling—objectively speaking—is incompetent and shameful.