Naturally Interesting

It appears climate denier Lawrence Solomon (of the National Post) was trying to do some creative obfuscation editing of science historian Noami Oreskes wikipedia entry when he got caught.

From the comments at Mr. Solomon’s site:

Mr. Solomon writes an excellent article - but unfortunately most of it is significantly biased and subject to interpretation.

Wikipedia cannot take Mr. Solomon’s word that Peiser has communicated with him - or that his interpretation of Peiser is correct. That can only be established via what Wikipedia calls reliable sources. So no matter how much Mr. Solomon complains it wouldn’t matter.

Wikipedia has such a reliable source - a communication from Peiser with the Australian ABC. And we have to rely on that.

Now a bit of background here. Naomi Oreskes paper (the one mentioned here) has been published in the rather prestigious scientific journal Nature. While Peisers critique is unpublished and available on his website.

Normally this would mean that Peiser’s critique wouldn’t be mentioned at all on Wikipedia - since there is a hard rule on not allowing self-published sources. But in this case Peiser has been commented on so much, that it merits a mention on Oreskes biographical article.

Mr. Solomons edits were significantly partisan (as is his article above), and these kinds of edits are routinely reverted, especially when done on a biography of a living person - and doubly so - when the only documentation for the claims is an anonymous editors claim that “he got this from Peiser himself”. (Yes - Mr. Solomon didn’t identify himself).

Seen at DeSmogBlog.