From: JCornwall@cox.net   
      
   David Friedman wrote:   
      
   > In article ,   
   >  "J. F. Cornwall"  wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   >>The graphs themselves were interesting, but I certainly would not place   
   >>a great deal of reliance on seeing a small uptick in a downward trend   
   >>when there's such a huge amount of "noise" in the signal.  If an uptick   
   >>continued for several years, that would be of great interest.  One year,   
   >>not so much.   
   >>   
   >>I most certainly would not start calling scientists liars over it.   
   >   
   >   
   > I can't speak to the particular case you are looking at, but I have   
   > recently, in my blog, called whoever produced a public statement on   
   > arctic sea ice for the JPL a liar. The statement:   
      
   That was one of the statements to which I was obliquely referring, yes,   
   though it's happened elsewhere as well.  Far too many people are ready   
   to call a scientist a liar when they have little or no evidence that   
   said scientist even wrote the exact words in question.  I can attest to   
   the fact that the words written by a scientist in a report are often   
   *not* the words that go out in a press release, or a summary of a   
   report, or a popularized report on the original report, or a   
   politician's (whether agreeing or disagreeing) (mis)quoting of the   
   origianl report.   
      
   Please note - I am NOT making any claim as to whether the specific words   
   you looked at are (a) accurate, (b) truthful, (c) biased, (d) anything   
   else.  I am just stating that I despise the practice of calling a   
   scientist a liar without a great deal of evidence proving that a   
   statement is the actual words of the scientist, issued directly by the   
   scientist without any intermediary filtering, and was done with intent   
   to deceive.  Lacking any of that, I give the scientis the benefit of the   
   doubt, even when I disagree with them.   
      
   Obviously, others may choose to disagree.  I cannot control that, I can   
   merely state my case.   
      
   Jim   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)