How The BBC Quietly Obliterates And Rewrites Science News
By Paul Homewood
h/t stewgreen
David Whitehouse has slammed the BBC for obliterating science news:
How The BBC Quietly Obliterates And Rewrites Science News
- Date: 22/11/18
- Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor
Rewriting science history in the BBC News archive and erasing original content is a dangerous thing to do.
One of the most basic things about journalism, especially BBC journalism, is that anyone should be able to find out what the corporation reported on a particular day about a particular story. Imagine wanting to find out about what Parliament voted for or what was the content of a UN speech, or the conclusions of a report, and not having full confidence that what you are able to look up is what was actually broadcast or written.
The public does not have access to data held in TV and Radio News archives, but they do to the articles published by BBC News Online. Sadly if you want to know what article was published about a certain subject on a particular day you cannot be sure the BBC Online News website is telling you the truth for history might have been rewritten 1984 style if recent antics in its Environment section are anything to go by.
A paper by Resplandy et al. was published in Nature on 31st October. It presented a new method of estimating ocean warming and claimed that oceans were warming 60% faster than had been thought. The new paper, of course, attracted a great deal of international press coverage along the habitual claim that ‘warming is worse than we thought and is getting worse faster.’
The errors in the paper – related to its trend calculations – were obvious almost immediately, despite the paper having been peer-reviewed for nine and a half months. Mathematician Nicholas Lewis looked closely at the data and concluded that the errors in its measurements were significantly underestimated. The authors acknowledged the errors discovered by Lewis and a process of correction is underway between the researchers, Nic Lewis and the journal.
So far, it has been a good natured affair and demonstrates the way science should work. At the end of the process everyone will know and have learned more. Science wins, but not all science journalists do.
The first flush of coverage was far to unthinking and in general did not reflect the tentative nature of the debut of a new ocean temperature measuring proxy – i.e. the changing components of the atmosphere above it. Too much was simply copied from the press release and not enough questions were asked.
As so often with climate research papers, there was no critical assessment of the paper and no questions about its extraordinary claims. Rewriting much of the press release was the usual technique that passed for journalism.
The BBC’s news story on 1 November was remarkably sensationalist:
The world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years, researchers say” (although it did say right at the end): “The uncertainty in the ocean heat content change estimate is still large, even when using this new independent method, which also has uncertainties,” said Thomas Froelicher from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
By November 7th it became obvious that the paper’s conclusions were wrong, as the GWPF highlighted in its press release. Two days later, Ralph Keeling, co-author of the flawed ocean paper, acknowledged the errors and a few days later thanked Nic Lewis for “bringing an apparent anomaly in the trend calculation to our attention.” Shortly afterwards the Washington Post and numerous media outlets in the U.S. published about these new developments reflecting that.
But not the BBC. They did not address the issue until November 20th a day after the GWPF put out a press release suggesting that they should get round to it. The way they did it, however, raises serious concerns.
Rather than writing a new story about these major developments they eradicated the original story and simply overwrote it with a new text, using the same URL. They left it in the archive there with no mention that they had removed the old one, meaning that the original report no longer exists except via the wayback archive.
The original BBC article started:
The world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years, researchers say. Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.They say it means the Earth is more sensitive to fossil fuel emissions than estimated. This could make it much more difficult to keep global warming within safe levels this century.
The article’s headline was: Climate change: Oceans ‘soaking up more heat than estimated’
The “corrected” article now starts:
Errors have been found in a recent study suggesting the oceans were soaking up more heat than previously estimated. The initial report suggested that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought. But a re-examination by a mathematician showed that the margin of error was larger than in the published study. The authors have acknowledged the problem and have submitted a correction to the journal.
The headline is now: Climate change: Concerns over report on ocean heating.
The article makes no sense without the original. At its end it contains an unnecessary self-serving, “UPDATE: The original version of this story was published before the errors in the study came to light.” The comment about the large uncertainties in the data by Thomas Froelicher that was present in the original article has been removed.
The original story led the science news page. The “corrected” version, however, is hidden in the archive and not on the BBC’s live page, so few will see it and those that do will not get a chance to read the original article. It’s gone.
The erroneous conclusions from the Resplandy paper are now “out there” and being repeated as fact. How are they to know the situation has changed if the retraction news is not placed in as prominent position as the original?
Rewriting articles in the BBC News archive, erasing the original content is a dangerous thing to do, especially for a news organization with a reputation to uphold. What happens when you can’t trust the BBC archive, when there is a possibility that you are not reading an article as it was originally published but has been completely changed? It jeopardises BBC News’ standing as a journal of record. Researchers and historians looking into media coverage of climate change will be totally misled by this action. Search the BBC News archive for the Resplandy paper and see what you get.
The BBC should restore the integrity of its archive, recover the eradicated BBC story, and publish the new post on its live science page.
https://www.thegwpf.com/how-the-bbc-quietly-obliterates-and-rewrites-science-news/
We often see the same problem when the BBC are forced to correct fake climate claims. The original story has gone round the world and back. Eventually, usually months later, the original article is “corrected”; but, of course, nobody ever sees the correction.
Contrast this with newspapers, who would be forced to actually publish a correction, often in a prominent position.
More often than not, the same fake claims would have appeared on TV and radio too. Yet viewers would never be made aware later on of the fact that such claims were not true.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Nope, sorry, and I really really cannot believe I’m going to say this.
The BBC are right (it had to happen at some point let’s be honest).
To correct false information as it was when it has been queried is right, otherwise it stays there to mislead those that might come across it. For once in a lifetime they’re correcting their asinine drivel, not leaving it there.
It’s the fact they’d written the usual crap in the first place that ought to be sorted out but as long as you keep paying your licence fee it aint gonna stop.
Now I need a little lay down.
Disagree. The BBC should have placed a prominent note at the head of the original article, saying that the story had proved to be incorrect, with a link to the corrected story. It should also have given equal prominence to the correction as to the original story in all media it was distributed via.
Not how it works. The original story would have popped up on people’s newsfeeds as a new and interesting story if you are interested in Green news. The correction will not as it is an old story rewritten a bit. The millions of young people who only get tailored feeds will never know about this. The BBC are not stupid, they do this for a reason.
I see your point, but then the corrected article needs to be given as much prominence as the premature one had. The BBC have not do e that.
There is a lot in what Adrian says
And I see something I have never seen before
That this is causing an auto correct across Twitter
I’ll explain : Once BBC publish a story people republish it as a kind of PR for their own religion.
Mostly they do that by tweeting the URL
or secondly Facebooking it
or thirdly posting the entire BBC article on their blog so that that BBC narrative gets published 10,000 times over the web. So Google searches don’t pick up skeptical articles.
The typical BBC MO is to come back a few days later and make STEALTH EDITS to the original article, but TOUGH those corrections never make it onto the 3 types of reposting I detailed
BUT this time it’s different, cos the page title has been changed every retweet of that URL has changed
Typical old version :
Now in same tweet a contradiction shows up
It most cases it is clear that the tweeters premise is no longer supported by the new BBC title.
However this doesn’t work for the other 2 types of reposting
Unfortunately Facebook previews do not auto-correct they still feature the old BBC preview title
An example of a failed Facebook auto-correction is the SkepSci post
… can you believe they only get 4 comments these days ? (tho more people repost their posts and I bet SkepSci thought police delete some of comments )
(I took a screenshot just in case they delete that post)
Correcting is fine as long as the original is available.
It’s actually important that
a) Mistakes and factual mistakes are openly corrected provided that:(b) the original statements, articles etc are also left alone so that the serious researcher can monitor progress and appreciate honesty in the source.
c) A link should be provided both to and from the correction and also the original.
The BBC is a media organisation and if anyone thinks they are an authority of truth in this day and age I pity them.
{Sorry Paul, I botched a tag in the first try, and the grammar in the 2nd. Please just delete them. I think this one is finally fixed. Thanks. -Dave}
Another way Leftists in the press skew the climate debate is by burying stories that are inconvenient to the alarmist narrative. Here’s an example from National Geographic.
Until this summer you could have read on National Geographic‘s web site about how climate change is bringing life back to the Sahel (southern Sahara). Unfortunately, NatGeo has removed that perfectly accurate article:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Archives:
Part 1: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Part 2: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara_2.html
Printable (whole article) — unavailable, because they blocked archive dot org from archiving it: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/30639457/
I also a saved copy, here:
Click to access nationalgeographic_news_2009_07_090731-green-sahara.pdf
Here’s an excerpt:
Read that last sentence again: “IT IS INDISPUTABLE.”
Indisputable… but not undeletable!
I emailed National Geographic, complaining about the deletion:
They replied:
I tried again:
They did not reply, so I tried again:
They still did not reply.
Here’s a long excerpt from that inconveniently truthful article:
Blogs such as this one are the best (and possible only) defense against the ruling class of Big Brother journalists and faux scientists that rewrite history. They are not going to stop—it’s lucrative, they get all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings from spreading the lies and they think they’re gods anyway and don’t need to listen to mere mortals. The internet is forever and these things really don’t ever go away—someone saved them, screen-printed them or scanned them and it’s out there. True believers won’t care, but those who actually are interested in the truth will find it preserved by others who cared.
I think it’s great you contacted National Geographic, even if they did basically ignore you. You have further documentation on the rewriting of history this way.
This conversation prompted me to tidy up a cleaner copy of that NatGeo article, and put it on my site, here:
https://www.sealevel.info/Owen2009_Sahara_Desert_Greening-atGeo30639457.html
Indeed, Sheri.
Joan Gibson’s recent link to Angelo Codevilla’s work is a handy insight.
Some excerpts:
‘When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.’
[…]
‘Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.’
Equivalent UK speak in real terms – tho’ that might be a bit mild.
UK’s referendum process typically demonstrates establishment dogma. It is increasingly not a representation.
https://spectator.org/39326_americas-ruling-class-and-perils-revolution/
I’ve given up on the BBC and tend to listen to LBC for a better coverage of topics. Even if I don’t always agree with the opinions of the presenter (except for the odious Jame O’Brien – I have my limits), they usually tolerate a wide range of callers’ views. Today, however, there was a piece on the London (and Sheffield – how did it go?) climate protests. They interviewed a member of the climate gravy train, who made the usual claims, followed by Peter Tatchell, otherwise a respected campaigner, who’s latched on to this movement. He made, unchallenged, several really outrageous claims in support of the poor dears who’re causing traffic chaos. I hope that’s not taste of things to come.
Good man. I hope giving up includes not paying them.
The LBC business model is controversy, hence it only takes a few hundred nutters making fools of themselves to get what they crave: publicity.
Anyone else up for an anti wind-farm demo?
The saga of the little baby Swedish Fishes comes to mind – those little fishes that gorge on plastic like human teenagers eat McDonalds ….. by the same author Matt McGrath is still sat on the BBC’s web site with no mention of the fact that the paper concerned has been completely retracted as deliberately fraudulent rather than a straightforward mistake as in the Resplandy et al. case above.
I have heard the “baby fish eat plastic” thing cited on the BBC several times in the last year – well after the paper itself was toast. Predictably Greenpeace also haven’t taken down coverage of the Lönnsted and Eklöv paper either
As Will Smith said in the movie “Focus”,
“Never drop a con, die with the lie.”
If you are part of an organisation that has ‘eco’ in it then your focus will be to prove not to disclaim. We end up with the Nuremberg Defence, ‘they made me do it’. The organisations that are burgeoning are those that are most compliant and not the most trustworthy. These committees and organisations are finding more ways to attract funding by being more attached to policy rather than truth. This problem permeates the whole area of public debates and modern mores allowing small incidents, minor problems and identity politics to flourish, where the actions of the incoherent are blown-up in a way that afflicts us all.
Whilst this is deplorable from the BBC, but not surprising in view of their on-going agenda, one would expect the authors to “fess up” publicly. Whilst one co-author, Ralph Keeling, has behaved responsibly and co-operated with Nic Lewis and now Judith Curry, lead author Laure Resplandy has done nothing to show any errors on her Princeton web page, proudly displaying the media and press coverage for the original paper:
https://environment.princeton.edu/directory/laure-resplandy
Related Media and Press Coverage:
“The oceans, the true keepers of climate change, may meet our grimmest estimates” — Mashable (Nov. 2, 2018)
“The Oceans Are Heating Up Faster Than Expected” – Scientific American (Nov. 1, 2018)
“Climate change: Oceans ‘soaking up more heat than estimated'” — BBC (Nov. 1, 2018)
“Earth’s oceans ‘soak up 60% more heat than thought’ and it could mean the planet is warming FASTER than scientists predicted” — Daily Mail (Nov. 1, 2018)
“Taking the Oceans’ Temperature, Scientists Find Unexpected Heat” — The New York Times (Oct. 31, 2018)
“Earth’s Oceans Have Built up 60% More Heat Than Previously Thought, Researchers Say” — Fortune (Oct. 31, 2018)
“Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming” — The Washington Post (Oct. 31, 2018)
“We’ve warmed up the world’s oceans way more than scientists realized, new research suggests — and time to avoid disaster is running out” — Business Insider (Oct. 31, 2018)
Broadcast
“Oceans rapidly warming” — Deutsche Welle TV (Nov. 1, 2018)
BBC World Service (Nov. 1, 2018) – 45:00
Nature does now point out that the paper has errors. However, rather than retract the paper, they are hoping the authors can still find something scary:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0651-8#change-history
19 November 2018
“Editor’s Note: We would like to alert readers that the authors have informed us of errors in the paper. An implication of the errors is that the uncertainties in ocean heat content are substantially underestimated. We are working with the authors to establish the quantitative impact of the errors on the published results, at which point in time we will provide a further update.”
The tenor of this response suggests that ocean heat could be even higher and certainly doesn’t give the idea that the claim is rubbish. Surely the paper should be withdrawn, not still sitting there in Nature, where it will no doubt be cited by others. As Paul says, it’s the initial headline that counts, the “meme” is implanted and the media, only too willingly, fall in line. Science by Press Release is the order of the day.
This is yet the latest attempt to find Kevin Trenberth’s missing heat, which he first started looking for in the 90’s and has so far been unsuccessful, perhaps because it was never there.
I always revert back to Stevenson when this stuff comes out:
Edits are recorded by newssniffer
which gives a handy side by side comparison
To see a bigger image click this direct link to that graphic
You can view the full mega-changes on Newssniffer
https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1691114/diff/3/4
Good to know.
‘a news organization with a reputation to uphold’
Can’t say I would recognise this as including the BBC. Worryingly, Dr North came up with a stat that over 80% of people still rely on TV news to inform them – or not.
Well yes. Otherwise it is a new story that pops to the top of people’s newsfeeds. This way they can say they have reported it but they havd done it in such a way that then tens of thousands – maybe far more – and in particular the young will never know about it.
My children are now in 19-21 and ALL their news comes from feeds. They never look at the webpage for say the BBC and look through what might be interesting, a socual media app sends then the news as it comes out. You have to understanx how the young consume news now to see how this works and why.
And at the bottom of every BBC propaganda piece it always provides a link which says:
“Why you can trust BBC News”.
When I first saw that footer I spit my tea out and was roundly condemned for the language that I used: they have a lot to answer for!!!
“Contrast this with newspapers, who would be forced to actually publish a correction, often in a prominent position.”
Original article remains at time of posting – not even a health warning added.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6341391/Earths-oceans-soak-60-heat-thought-huge-blow-fight-against-climate-change.html
Fully agree.
But Resplandy et al should not be the only people admitting their errors.
Science is now faced with another major dilemma.
We don’t know who reviewed the study.
We don’t know what their responses to the authors were, prior to publication.
And we need an explanation as why they didn’t observe the errors either.
Their reviews of this study need to be made public in order to limit the damage to the authors of the study.
As it stands, a claim could feasibly be made that Gavin Schmidt was one of the reviewers. We don’t know if this was the case because Gavin is not compelled to tell us, nor is Ralph.
The authors are unfairly carrying the full blame and responsibility for what has happened.
And we don’t know whether the actual reviewers are now actively posting online elsewhere defending the peer review proces or belittling Nic Lewis for making the discovery.
We need to know exactly what’s going on to protect science.
The reviewers now need to be identified in order to assess whether their past reviews (or published work) are of similar poor quality by making it known who they are, and what they have previously reviewed.
This episode unfortunately involves far more than the Resplandy et al team.
PS, I tried to post my above comment, re peer review etc., at Gavin’s blog, but it wasn’t accepted…..
An example of how climate alarmists pick up the narrative and running with it
(not a link to the BBC post, but rather the original paper)
BBC Science has decided on an editorial stance that is supportive of every environmental alarmist campaign from climate change to plastic waste. There is no point looking for the truth, because they just make stories up! Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth get a free ride.
This exposes some interesting complex things
I’ll attempt an explanation
Each company has a PR dept who try to promote good stories about the company’s AGENDA whilst repressing bad stories.
A religion is similar, they have a sets of dogma/AGENDA’s.
Most MSM/BBC journalists are really PR guys for their groups existing dogma which is generally Guardianland dogma
and that includes #1 Global warming
#2 Stop Trump/Brexit/Tories/Corbyn
#3 Political correctness and signalling-virtue
#4 Labelling-and-dismissing people who challenge the dogma
When they find a global warming skeptic story, they suppress it.
When they find a global warming alarmist story, they run it as quick as possible and give it top billing
As soon as a BBC story is run , 10,000 people repost it on their own webspace/facebook etc.
.. The BBC build the narrative like icing a cake , they stealth edit their pages
If legal size errors are pointed out, the BBC will sometimes correct it
..commonly they wait and sneak in a stealth edit when no one is looking.
Instead of putting the correction where it should go right at the top, you mostly get nothing or a small note at the end of the story saying “this story was updated on June 12th 2018”
So what happens with followers of the BBC dogma when errors are found ?
.. Nothing
Those 10,000 reposts are never corrected
What happens when an original story is proved to be false ?
Mostly these journo/PR people try to suppress it, but if the weight is too much they publish a second update story less prominently
If there were 50,000 tweets of an original headline , they’ll only be 120 tweets of this new update story.
==================================
Those of us on the outside know some things.. like been as open minded as possible don’t jump to retweet a new extraordinary narrative, cos odds on it won’t stand up and will get debunked in a few days.
Only harp on when an extraordinary level of evidence has been reached
eg when a paper has been replicated multiple times.
Most people know the best way to save time is to ignore the main text and look for the debunks, and those debunks mostly come up in open forums like the top comment underneath a newspaper story.
And that if you are on something like the Guardian there is a problem with ThoughtPolice deleting such comments.
So in this case the BBC could have made a brand new story which corrected the problems of the first
BUT the cult that supported the first article will not retweet or publicise hte second article the story would just drop into the mists of time whilst the old narrative gets remembered.
In a logical world corrected pages of articles would have
#1 The same top billing prominance of the original
#2 the same open comments
#3 The same number of retweets/reposts by the cult of alarmism
..In practice none of those 3 things ever happen
… MSM is a PR cult, not a set of truth tellers
==============
Cos they chose to rehash the story on the old page there is something strange.
The page has new text but the 1,200 comments there all refer to the original comments.
Top comments are often skeptical : mentioning poulation rise etc.
.. But lower down there are comments from alarmists and of course their sneering arrogant tone now looks very bad.
Here’s the fifth most popular comment with 158 upvotes
========================
Sitting in the bottom 10 positions are comments from skeptics saying that the story is likely to be another piece of alarmist Fake-News.
Apologies I only meant to post the last tweet but the URL automatically brought up the parent tweet
..the screenshot of the fifth comment, the sneering one is the very last section
Hope you are not too confused.
typo
The page has new text but the 1,200 comments there all refer to the original BBC text
Resplandy et al. Part 4: Further developments
Posted on November 23, 2018 by niclewis | 38 Comments
By Nic Lewis
There have been further interesting developments in this story
This is quite amazing, Lewis is demonstrating that he has a greater understanding than the peer reviewers and Resplandy18 have of their own paper.
And doing so in a professional manner, crediting R Keeling with assisting him in uncovering more details.
Common saying “Just cos a paper was published in Nature that doesn’t mean it’s wrong”
(NatureMag just has a habit of ..)
On Feb 13, 2018: The judge dismissed all charges in the lawsuit brought against Dr Tim Ball by BC Green Party leader Andrew Weaver. It is a great victory for free speech.
‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
“Human Caused Global Warming”, ‘The Biggest Deception in History’.
https://www.technocracy.news/dr-tim-ball-on-climate-lies-wrapped-in-deception-smothered-with-delusion/
http://www.drtimball.com
The only information I trust from The BBC is the football scores!!! Orwell worked for The BBC in 1948 – maybe he had some inside information on their long term planning?
The number of Flat Earthers seems to be on the increase – 20 or 30years ago this wasn’t the case however now the BBC seem to be digging themselves a deeper hole?
As you say, nobody will see the correction. In fact the complaint I raised about the none reportage of Paul Homewood’s complaints has been brushed because apparently it does not deal with a specific broadcast but rather refers to an observation of the corporation’s policy.and the diktat of their head of news. You simply cannot win. Why argue with a customer when you can just fob them off, refer to procedure? This is real independence of the press; being able to claim or disseminate your version of the news and current events.
London is a bit of a pressure cooker and to have any society at all seems to demand vast areas of conformity. Not being right-on could make you a periah, be threatening. Even the guy in London who makes my musical instruments assumed I held the plebeian view and treated me to the BBC sounding diatribe on a range of subjects. This is the level that damage is being done at.
The similarity between the BBC and Big Brother is startling: they trumpet that polar bears are becoming extinct, penguins disappearing, arctic ice vanishing etc. etc. but do not announce that these were all incorrect and that we should in-fact enjoy the slight, possibly temporary, warming of the earth. In a few years time they will be saying “we said so all along, the world is cooling and an ice age is looming, we always said that the coal fired power stations should continue to operate.”
I sent in a formal complaint to the BBC concerning the reporting of Resplandey and Nic Lewis’ findings. They have deferred responding for now. I urged them to contact Nic Lewis for comment and to present his side of the argument. However, note that the updated version still regards the new press release from Resplandey as the reference truth – the updated press release only accepts that the uncertainty range was too small, they have not responded to Lewis’ point that the estimate is too large:
“The ΔAPOClimate trend estimate changes from 1.16 ± 0.15 to 0.89 ± 0.71 per meg per year. That is a 23% reduction in the central estimate and a near quintupling of estimated uncertainty.”
So because the Resplandey press release only talks about the uncertainty being wrong, the BBC still relies on that as the version of the truth. Despite the authors having been caught out by Nic Lewis, the BBC still persists in the position that the press release from the authors must be the most reliable account. That is bias in action. In my view, once the problems with the paper were identified, the BBC should immediately have recognised Nic Lewis’ version as having at least equal credibility as the authors.
Meanwhile, as usual, the lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. Its a bit like the Marcott “hockey stick” still being on a BBC page – I complained, pointed out the author had said it was not valid but the BBC justify its presence on their website with “its in a peer reviewed journal”. I shall be revisiting that one in the light of this recent case.
Correcting is fine as long as the original is available.
It’s actually important that
a) Mistakes and factual mistakes are openly corrected provided that:(b) the original statements, articles etc are also left alone so that the serious researcher can monitor progress and appreciate honesty in the source.
c) A link should be provided both to and from the correction and also the original.
The BBC is a media organisation and if anyone thinks they are an authority of truth in this day and age I pity them.
It’s the equivalent of burning books
BBC = Book Burning Corporation
Well to tell you the truth the models are wrong?
It seems to many people that they are always reading or being told about something, somewhere that is doing something either more or less than previously thought, calculated or estimated. This is like those people who begin by saying… “well to be honest with you”…
Yes, it is “likely” the truth the climate models are wrong. How could they “likely” be right when the data and the models are constantly “adjusted”? With high probability?
To those who complain to the BBC
..remember the b*stard BBC policy is deflect and deflect
so you have to stick with it right to the very end
The best thing is to tweet the journo/producer straight away,
cos you can get corrections that way
(but take screenshots of all their output web and tweets, cos they do often delete stuff)
When the International Investors Group for Climate Change was set up the original Chairman was Peter Dunscombe who was also Head of the BBC pensions investment department. The problem of the BBC’s attitude to climate change is all to do with money -just as is the case with our Universities.