That was my point. On the other hand, anonymous speech must be allowed when it ISN'T libelous.

Just no. If the statement was made publicly, and the the speaker should reasonably have known it was false, then they must be subject to the law. Damage may already be done! You'd give people a pass to hit-and-run.

I will not endorse such a scheme.

There is plenty of evidence. She said herself, in an interview, she created the dataset for people who believe the earth is young. You seem to think that just because it isn't spoon-fed to you, it doesn't exist. Lazy ass.

That is a statement of fact. Claiming (as you have in the past) that ALL evidence supports evolution is what is delusional denial. The vast preponderance of it does, and it's pretty obvious to most thinking people that the theory of evolution is a realistic statement of truth. But to deny the existence of ANY counter-evidence at all is a very good example of realdenial.

The rest of your comment is more of the same old crap. False accusations without evidence of your own.

And history shows pretty clearly that you are.

Libel laws did not arise out of some lawmaker's whim. They developed over a very long time, and for very good societal reasons.

Knowingly and intentionally (not the same things) making false statements about somebody can do real damage to his or her reputation, livelihood, family life, etc. I mean real damage, in the same sense as a broken leg is damage. Once that's done, maybe they won't have the resources to fight back. Clearly that would be a one-sided situation favoring the "false witness". That's why there are legal remedies.

Of course legal remedies aren't a panacea. It takes money, time, and effort to sue somebody. That's why sometimes even if it really is libel, and really can be proved, and the injured party really does want to sue, he or she may not be reasonably able to at any given time for a number of reasons.

Let's be clear about this: if you want to prove your point, and the relevant information about it is not right in front of everybody or commonly known, yes indeed, you should cite references.

But in the situation you are referring to, I made it very clear that I am not interested in proving it to you at this time. Since I'm not trying to prove it, I don't have any obligation to cite anything.

The two situations are not even remotely similar, and your comment is yet another example of your habitual out-of-context fallacy.

Same old out-of-context bullshit.

Alas, Tennant's writings about baloney also contain their fair share of baloney.

For example, he dismisses the idea that ad hominem includes the case where one party tries to discredit the other party, thereby attempting to undermine the credibility of his argument. It isn't direct ad-hominem, as a direct part of the first party's argument, but it is still an indirect attempt to undermine the second party's argument, and therefore part of the first party's argument.

So since it is part of the first party's argument in debate, and its intent is to weaken the credibility of the second party's argument, it's no less ad-hominem even though it's indirect. Denying that is like saying the car can't have moved when 5 guys pushed it, because they didn't use the engine.

Tennant is also correct, though, that some examples in RationalWiki are so lame as to border on false examples.

I've said what I have to say about this, and your tiresome attempts to goad me won't get you anywhere.

That's a rather huge leap from a couple of separate comments with no context. As per your usual invalid methodology: taking comments separated in time and context, conflating them, and pretending that's proof of your point. Further, the comment about possible misandry wasn't stated as an assertion or "accusation", but only a hypothetical.

So now you endorse her "young Earth" dataset chosen specifically for her creationist audience? I pretty much do call that "no credibility". Noting false about that. Especially as she then went on to make demonstrably false claims about that same data.

Yep. Demonstrated truth.

Apparently humor and satire are beyond your comprehension.

I have no reason to make any apologies for any of those statements. Except for the satire, which was well-deserved, I certainly did make comments about her work but I would not agree that they're "unprovoked insults". On the contrary; the comments were quite thoroughly provoked, and nearly all of them were hypotheticals or legitimate criticisms.

You're just repeating more of the same nonsense. You haven't made your case. Nor are you going to, because as I say again: it's just false.

Yes, he was wrong. Regardless of the ASSUMPTIONS he made, he made public predictions, and they were all rather uproariously wrong.

Concrete example? Citations?

Even if, as you assert, his failed predictions helped, the fact remains that they are failed predictions. Still, I'd be interested to see any of them causally linked to remediating changes.

Hahaha! This is your "proof"??? I almost gave up after the first one. THIS is supposed to be an "unprovoked insult"??? That's how you labeled it:

You somehow have a problem with that? Explain.

Then...

CONTEXT??? You've shown no context. What was the conversation? Where is the surrounding context? You haven't shown that the comment there was either incorrect or unprovoked. But from here it looks like a hypothetical. Possibly even a question. How would I know?

Then... this is a real hoot.

And? That is a plain statement of fact. *IF* there is no evidence, claims "might" be labeled...

Please explain where you disagree with the logic there. More:

and...

and...

Well, what of those things? You made the claim. You are obligated to show where any of those tweets were falsehoods or "unprovoked insults". There is LOTS of evidence that Keyhoe's statements were scientific falsehoods. But you haven't shown where I met any of the criteria you need to make your point.

I particularly like this one:

Please explain where that statement is false. Or for that matter, "unprovoked". You haven't done any of that.

Another good one:

Another solid matter of statistics. "Change" has not been shown to kill people. Cold weather does. And it does so at many times the rate that hot weather kills people.

I like this one too. What's the matter? You don't like satire?

This is actually satire. She wonders why political ideology (she is quite clearly referring to the political Right) "determines" whether we agree blah blah...

The satire part comes in because (A) it's a correlation, not a determination, and if she doesn't understand the difference she should turn in her scientist badge, and (B) she doesn't realize that as a staunch Leftist, she contributes as much of that "political divide" as anyone else. And that lack of understanding on her part is just plain knee-slappingly hilarious! But insult? Really? I insulted her less than she did all by herself.

Yep. All people who, to use the words I borrowed earlier, "serially debunked". All (except perhaps Kayhoe) debunked in peer-reviewed professional journals. And Kayhoe? She doesn't need to be debunked by professionals. She recently claimed temperatures and temperature variations were dramatically greater today that at any time in the last 6000 years! (She chose 6000, by the way, for the young-earthers in her audience. She said so herself.) Now, that claim just doesn't fit the data. And the fact that by her own admission she cherry-picked her temporal range to please Young-Earthers speaks for itself.

You might call that "unprovoked insult", but if so, it's over standards of professionalism that YOU insisted on long ago. How many more "Young-Earth" apologists do you plan to let into your group of "colleagues"? This is the kind of person you used to refer to as pretty much beneath your notice, or even an enemy of science. Hmm... let's see... I'll have to go back and see exactly what comments you made about the Young-Earthers. I do recall you made some.

Really? Saying I think she's confused rather than a dyed-in-the-wool Young Earther? How is that an insult? Hell, I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. The next link is more of the QUOTE of somebody else. Then:

So claiming "I have no idea" whether she is evil or not is an insult? In whose rulebook? "Killett's Self-Revised English Dictionary"??? I suppose I should apologize for mis-spelling her name, but that's the greatest of my transgressions.

This is all absolutely HILARIOUS. I asked you for evidence I did what you accused me of doing, and if anything, you've given here lots of evidence of THE OPPOSITE. Until now, I hadn't even made much of an issue of Hayhoe's band of creationists. So it appears to me that you've actually done more damage than what you call my "unprovoked insults" ever did.

Thanks!

I think I can leave this exchange now. I've had my belly-laugh.

Oops... I almost missed your link. Sorry, a collection of comments by me is not an example. Be specific. WHO did I do these things to? When? In what context?

If you want to prove your accusation, you will have to actually show me doing one of those things to one of those people, unprovoked. In context. You have included no context to show provocation or lack thereof. You have presented no contest to show my comments were "wrong" or "lecturing wrongly". So far, you've shown us nothing but a collection of words out of context, as has been your usual approach.

I won't apologize to you or anybody if I did in fact do any of those things, if the other people involved did them first. Turnabout is fair play. I will not apologize for defending myself or others I know.

So do your due diligence, and SHOW us actual examples of what you accused me of. Real examples. Explanation. Demonstration that it wasn't provoked. Go ahead... as you have shown, you have access to all my tweets. So show us.

I don't think you can. I think if you could, you would have done so already. Your maliciousness toward me is well-known and often demonstrated. So I highly doubt YOU are being "coy", as you so egregiously misuse the word. I think you're just incapable.

I told you: you can continue insisting on this here all you like. I don't much care.

If Jane/Lonny is honest, he'd have to retract his accusation after doing a few seconds of due diligence through his records from way back when.

I have some pretty strong evidence that I have kept some records you haven't. I don't care to say any more about it.

Simple: you made a point of claiming that Cook et al. 2013 was not produced fraudulently. There seems to be more than enough evidence to convince a jury (if, of course, there were ever call for a jury to decide it) that it was, indeed, produced fraudulently.

As I've told you before: I'm not immune from mistakes, but I do go by evidence. And the evidence is against you in regard to Cook et al. 2013. By a long way.

Considering that you haven't shown us even a glimpse at a single example yet, maybe you can decide. But in all honesty, I just expect more amusement. I may come back here to see what you have to offer (if anything), maybe not. It depends in part on how much of a glutton for punishment you want to be.

Second.

BUT... I agree with GP that it isn't the government's place to do this.

Seriously? You base this on a prediction from Paul Erlich, the guy who is famous for always being wrong about his pronouncements of gloom and doom?

Nope. You lose again. Saying that the "97%" claim has been debunked and is in fact junk science, is not the same as saying I know what the actual percentage is. Nor have I tried to tell people what it is. But I have very good reasons to believe it's far smaller than that... like for example other surveys that were not fraudulent.

It's like you just put whatever old spin you want on my comments and call them something else... another bad habit you have that I've pointed out before.

Why do you say that ANY of my comments were "baseless"? Please demonstrate that. It's a bald (and quite false) claim.

That was one, sure. But there have been others. Going back years. Apparently I kept some records that you did not, from way back when. But that's okay. As I said before, I don't much feel like bothering to prove that to you, and it's hardly much of an "accusation", so I wonder why you care. So go ahead and claim it doesn't exist. I won't agree with you, but I'm not going to bother to argue with you much about it, either.

By the way, since you brought it up: is John Cook a "colleague" of yours? I find it very interesting that you would choose to call someone who has been -- to use someone else's words -- "serially debunked", a colleague of yours. But then it shouldn't surprise me, I suppose.

Oh... now you're expanding your claim to harassment, too? Before you've ever come up with an example of any of the other things yet?

Well, I'll put the same conditions on it that I put on your other claims (because I can): show us all where I have "harassed" any of those people when they didn't harass me or someone else first. Show us all where I have "attacked" any of those people when they did not attack me or someone else first. Show us all where I have "insulted" any of those people when they did not insult me or someone else first. Show us all where I was "wrongly lecturing" any of those people -- at all. But you have to demonstrate that it was somehow wrong.

You haven't done any of those things. Except for Cook et al., I don't recall ever naming any of them as "frauds". And I won't apologize for calling the Cook 2013 paper a fraud because from the evidence it has very clearly been shown to be, beyond reasonable doubt. I don't expect you to be reasonable, but you should at least recognize what is reasonable and what is not, no matter how much you want to be a "reality denier".

I'm still not sure what you mean by "lecturing scientists about what scientists think". Example?

But as for a Twitter search... I can do that easily. I find it interesting that you use such a crude tool to do it. Why is that? Oh... wait. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you got blocked on Twitter about 3 minutes after you were discovered to be stalking people there?

Do you think that was done for no reason?

Regardless, that comment you made to me which I referenced earlier, wasn't on Twitter.

All and all, it just seems that you have an objection to my own stated objections about weak science. Which is okay, as far as that goes. You can harbor personal objections to my speech all you like. You can indulge in red-faced rage all you like.

What you don't get to do, without eventual consequences, is harass people and make false public accusations.