Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
It is one thing to engage in discussion about debatable topics. It is quite another to attempt to discredit consistently
validated scientific research through the professional and personal
defamation of a Nobel prize recipient.
12
[emphasis
added]
Apparently, you're being extra naughty if you defame someone who's won a Nobel.
This is the poisoned fruit that Pachauri's pixie dust summoned into existence. When
he told thousands of people they were Nobel laureates, the poorly socialised adolescents
tookhimseriously.Theystartedtobelievethattheirownresearchhadreceivedthishonour.
Henceforth, anyone challenging their work was an anti-science moron.
After examining Mann's legal document, a journalist contacted a Nobel official in an
attempt to confirm that Mann was, indeed, the recipient of a Peace Prize. The official said
he was not. Presumably, someone from the Nobel organisation then quietly suggested to
the IPCC that it would be a good idea to clarify this matter.
Two weeks after Mann filed his legal papers, the IPCC issued a one page 'Statement
about the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize' that flatly contradicts Pachauri's 'This makes each of
you Nobel Laureates' claim. It reads, in part:
The prize was awarded to the IPCC as an organization, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC. Thus it is
incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize
winner.
13
The IPCC posted the above statement on its website, but it did not send a copy to the same
list of people who received Pachauri's erroneous proclamation five years earlier. Nor did it
issue a press release.
The internet is currently saturated with accounts that falsely describe Pachauri and
other IPCC personnel as Nobel laureates. Numerous academics continue to make
inaccurate claims about their relationship to this prize in their CVs and other biographical
material. But setting the record straight is not an IPCC priority.
Mediaoutletsaren'tknownforbeingoverlyconcernedabouttheirownmistakes.When
The Walrus
magazine realised it had erroneously described Jaccard as a Nobel laureate (on
its cover, in a headline, as well as in its table of contents), did it issue a proper
mea culpa
?
Didittellitsreadersabouttheinternationalscaleofthemisinformationithadinadvertently
helped to promulgate?
I'm afraid not. Jaccard's article appeared in the March 2013 print edition. Three issues
later, in June 2013, the letters-to-the-editor section of
The Walrus
published the remarks of
eleven individuals over two pages. Item twelve, appearing at the very end of that section,
read as follows:
Tusk-Tusk
