4 ms·
Pitting a political scientist vs a pro-palestinian writer tells us nothing much at all. Except that they both know what topic to go to to sell copy. What state
by glymor 17y ago
Pitting a political scientist vs a pro-palestinian writer tells us nothing much at all. Except that they both know what topic to go to to sell copy.
What state have we reached where replacing science with the truth finding abilities of partisan politics seems in some way sensible.
- gjm11 17y agoLomborg purports to be approaching the matter scientifically rather than through partisan politics. He's been taken at face value in some quarters. If indeed he's now been shown not to be engaged in honest scholarship, then that seems to me to be "worth much". Why the fact that someone has co-authored a couple of books about newspaper reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict should make it appropriate to describe that person in a totally different context as "a Pro-Palestine writer" is beyond me, by the way. If you happened to know Friel's political allegiance, would you have written "Pitting a political scientist vs a Democrat ..." or "Pitting a political scientist vs a Republican ..." or whatever?
- glymor 17y agoLomborg work was criticized as scientifically dishonest by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Committees_on_Scientific_Dishonesty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Committees_on_Scientific... in 2003 and by others before and after that. Friel is not blazing new ground here. Friel writes wholly one-sidely. I don't know if it's his personal inclination or not (it's generally a good tactic for a niche writer). Pro-Palestinian seemed a short way of characterizing him; perhaps too short but not undeserved.