Reader Mail: Academic fraud
Ed Darrell, who I thought had dismissed this blog as “not the place to carry on a discussion,” returns to…ah…carry on the discussion.
No, not just looking to see whether the citation goes anywhere – you really are not paying attention — check the citations to see that they verify the point Milloy is trying to make.
For example, he argues that eagles were never harmed frmo DDT. Discover Magazine noted last November that there are more than 1200 studies on the issue, all verifying Carson’s side of the story.
Are there citations in Milloy’s piece? Yes. Do any of them check out? No.
You could look at my blog to see.
Your passive-aggressive refusal to engage the material is most irritating.
I’m not engaging the material, O Reader, as much as I am engaging Ed Darrell who, I have noted, has been caught in a lie. Yes, there are studies — which he links to and discusses in some detail — that support Rachel Carson’s thesis. There are also studies, which folks like Steven Milloy have remarked upon, that argue against it. Some studies show that DDT is a carcinogen in animals; other studies show no correlation between DDT concentration and cancer development in humans.
In truth, I wasn’t just looking to see if a citation was “going anywhere,” nor was I necessarily looking to see if the point Milloy was making by citing the article was valid (in that the content of the article cited matched the point being made, although that is in fact what I found anyhow). I was looking to catch Ed in a lie, and did just that.
And just for reference, Ed has just told another lie — he states, above, that none of Milloy’s citations check out. And yet I found eight citations from Milloy that do check out; not only are they legitimate sources, from reasonably well-known publications, but they actually support Milloy’s assertions (for example: that there appears to be no correlation between DDT concentration in human beings and the onset of various cancers).
Steven Milloy may still be a liar as well; I don’t really know (although I’ve no doubt that Milloy has told a lie — he is human, after all, and we’re all sinners). Ed Darrell would seem to make a convincing case, but I cannot trust that Ed himself is unbiased; in fact, he seems, to me, to be heavily biased against DDT and those who advocate for its use. Since in the article of his that I link to, he dismisses one DDT advocate as a corporate stooge, it would be fair turnabout to dismiss Ed himself as an activist.
Interestingly, for all his complaining about citations, Ed himself sees no need to provide links to articles and studies when attempting to refute Milloy’s claims about, say, bald eagles and peregrine falcons. He quotes Milloy’s remarks on the matter, all of which are accompanied by citations in the online DDT FAQ that Milloy maintains, and then follows up the quotation by saying, in essence, “actually, it was like this.” Which is all well and good…but it’s rather disappointing to see that even the venerable Ed Darrell isn’t providing sources for his statements.
In other words, reading his article and stacking it against Milloy’s collected notes on the same issue, I’m left wondering: why should I be convinced by Ed’s unsourced statements rather than Milloy’s sourced statements? It’s a rather bold (read: stupid) move to make to accuse another person of academic fraud and suggest that the pudding with the proof in it is an article that turns out to have even fewer sources and citations than are present in the article being dismissed as fraudulent. Basically, having read both Ed’s article and Milloy’s article, I’m more inclined to believe that the bald eagle population was already in decline prior to the widespread use of DDT, because while I might have to go digging through microfiche to find the source for Milloy’s claim, I’ve got a better chance of finding Milloy’s source than I do Ed’s, since Ed didn’t even link to, or otherwise provide, a source.
And yet he has the temerity to accuse someone else of dishonest academic practices. Interesting. One would think a genuinely unbiased person would be more…cautious. So perhaps I will dismiss Ed as an activist after all — the tactics he employs would seem consistent with the tactics of others of that designation.
It’s a pity that Ed thinks me passive-aggressive, just as surely as it’s a pity that I think him a liar. But notice the shift that has happened, O Reader — faced with someone who will not simply cave in and accept his odd barrage of facts and rhetoric, Ed — as is often the case with far too many of a biased, activist bent — has shifted his tactics to include slander and name-calling.
That makes me doubt the veracity of his statements all the more, in addition to the doubt I already feel as a result of having caught him in a lie. And yet I must wonder at one thing: if all I am to him is a source of frustration, why does he continue to return? Who, I wonder, is really passive-aggressive here?
is it Lent in here, or is it just me? » Reader Mail: Milloy’s junck science (Time Immortal) (March 19, 2008, 9:23 am).
[...] And maybe Steven Milloy had no other intent in quoting the NAS source than to suggest exactly that. Or maybe he had very malicious reasons. Ed certainly attributes malice to Milloy’s actions. But then, Ed is himself biased. [...]
is it Lent in here, or is it just me? » Reader Mail: Links (Time Immortal) (March 20, 2008, 10:03 am).
[...] a statement which he made is false. Predictably, in keeping with the general modus operandi of a biased activist, Ed has not yet retracted his erroneous statement — a crime he accuses Steven Milloy of being [...]
is it Lent in here, or is it just me? » Reader Mail: DDT (Time Immortal) (April 2, 2008, 9:15 am).
[...] is, of course, bending the truth again, as is befitting a biased activist. But because I’m in a very good, and somewhat charitable, mood, I’ll entertain him for [...]