509920
submission
Sara Chan writes:
The Economist has a story about the undersea cables being cut. The story even mentions Slashdot, and quotes a comment by bigdavex—without realizing that the comment was modded Funny and later explicitly stated by bigdavex as being intended that way. The story argues that
the conspiracy theories are all nonsense. But it uses the misconstrued comment of bigdavex as evidence, and moreover was written before the fifth cable disruption. Additionally, the story tells that “Egypt's transport ministry said it had studied video footage of the sea lanes where the [first two cut] cables had been, and no ships had crossed the line of the breakage for 12 hours before and after the accident”; so the official explanation of a ship's anchor cutting those two cables seems impossible.
431722
submission
Sara Chan writes:
A climatologist at the State University of New York, Dr.Wei-Chyung Wang, has been accused of fabricating data in his research on global warming. The full story [1MB pdf] has been published, by Canadian mathematician Douglas Keenan; more here, and some in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Wang has authored over 100 research papers and he was the chief scientist of the Chinese-American Carbon Dioxide Research Program. It is in his work on Chinese station data that fraud allegedly occurred. There is also an article in Neue Zurcher Zeitung.
296577
submission
Sara Chan writes:
The European Science Foundation has just held the first World Conference on Research Integrity. A major conference topic was the fraud allegation against SUNY professor Wei-Chyung Wang. Wang's research has been crucial evidence that urbanization effects are insignificant in global warming studies (and Wang's research was relied upon in the latest report from the IPCC). Now it has been alleged that Wang's research was fabricated. The Daily Tech has the story. The allegation was made by mathematician Douglas Keenan, whose report is clear and disturbing. Wang's university has begun an investigation.
35768
submission
Sara Chan writes:
A recent Slashdot story asked if global warming had been debunked. A short paper to appear in the January issue of Theoretical and Applied Climatology raises a similar question: it harshly critiques some prominent research published in Nature. The paper is technical, but the author of the paper (who is a Knuth check recipient) discusses it bluntly on his site, stating that there is “evidence of scientific fraud”. The author says that he is disinterested in global warming per se, but wanted to illustrate the poor quality of publications that support it. There is also discussion at ClimateAudit.
35507
submission
Sara Chan writes:
How much trust should there be in the science behind global warming? A recent Slashdot story asked if global warming had been debunked. A short paper to appear in the January issue of Theoretical and Applied Climatology emphasizes the question: it critiques some prominent research published in Nature, showing that the work could not have had any checking prior to publication—not even by a non-scientist. The author of the paper (who is a Knuth check recipient) talks about this on his site. It's incredible to see how bad things can be. The author claims that problems like this are common; he says that he is disinterested in global warming per se, but wanted to illustrate the poor quality of publications that support it. There is also discussion at ClimateAudit.
