Two Top Climate Scientists Accuse Daily Mail of Misquoting Them and Misrepresenting Their Work

......via Climate Progress

Posted By Joe On February 15, 2010 @ 1:02 pm In Media | 10 Comments

Readers should assume that everything they see in the Daily Mail is untrue and unverified. Scientists should refuse to grant interviews to the paper without a third-party present or an agreement to allow a review of any quotes used.

One of the British newspapers leading the charge to undermine the credibility of climate science has had its own credibility rocked. Two leading scientists, Murari Lal and Mojib Latif, have accused the Daily Mail of misquoting and misrepresenting them. And the National Snow and Ice Data Center has accused the paper of printing “nonsense” and of “very lazy journalism.”

Lending further credibility to the scientists’ charges are a pattern of false and misleading statements in the paper (and by DM reporter David Rose in comments on this very blog).

The latest self-inflicted body blow to the Daily Mail is this outrageously false headline <1> (and subhed) echoing through the right-wing blogosphere:


Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
… There has been no global warming since 1995

Not. Here’s the BBC interview <2> with Phil Jones that DM is twisting:BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming.Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Jones ain’t great at answering questions, something I’ll return to in a later post. For instance, he should point out the recent Met Office reanalysis of their data (see Finally, the truth about the Hadley/CRU data: “The global temperature rise calculated by the Met Office’s HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming” <3>).

Even so, no scientist should have to put up with that kind of gross misrepresentation. And no, the fact that the story itself is (a tad) better on this one point does not excuse the headlines, which is as far as many people read.

Sadly, pushing disinformation has become standard operating procedure for the paper.

.......much more........

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/15/rosegate-dailymail-error-riddled-articles-misquote-credibility-science/#more-18120

Scroll down to see a nice list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail

it appears that the questions were carefully designed to result in answers that appeared to question global warming even though in actuality they did not such thing. As a scientist, Jones gave the responses he had to give to be scientifically accurate.

Here's a reply I gave to another poster who seemed to be gloating over the article. The 'admissions' are not what they seem.

Something like "that's too short a period from which to judge" would have been better.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

A little bias should be expected.

"No statistically significant global warming since 1995".

Not significant as in "insignificant": not important, of no consequence, immaterial, inappreciable, inconsequential, inconsiderable, infinitesimal, irrelevant, meager, meaningless, minuscule, minute, negligible, nondescript, nonessential, not worth mentioning, nugatory, paltry, petty, pointless, purportless, scanty, secondary, senseless, small, trifling, trivial, unimportant, unsubstantial.

Wow! I see now how this is a "false headline". No I'm sorry--it's an "OUTRAGEOUSLY false headline" and "GROSS misrepresentation." You've convinced me. I used to be blind, but now I can see. More Kool-Aid anyone?

Kind of has new meaning in the Age of Inverted Totalitarianism, doesn't it?

http://www.twainquotes.com/Lies.html

between science and opinion, otherwise we lose credibility.

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1600.htm

Hence the reason they've been nicknamed the "Daily Outrage". They specialise in pushing "aren't you angry about this?" stories to middle England. The right-wing in the USA often quotes them with regard to their frequent climate-change denial or NHS scandal stories (like any large system, scandals crop up from time-to-time in the NHS but the Mail tends to play them as typical).