5 ms·

There are several reasons why the media is reluctant to cover it. 1) The emails were acquired through an illegal hack, which makes them a highly tainted source

There are several reasons why the media is reluctant to cover it. 1) The emails were acquired through an illegal hack, which makes them a highly tainted source for journalists who aren't pushing an agenda. Naturally journalists who are pushing the opposite agenda will ignore it, as those who who are skeptics will readily jump on them. 2) This leak was initially trumpeted as a the end of AGW theory, and has since turned out to be nothing more than scientists being douchey and unprofessional wrt their critics. Smoke, but no fire. There's an important lesson in marketing here: Make sure you set appropriate consumer expectations. 3) (US only) It's technically foreign news, and the American media generally doesn't do foreign news unless it pertains to our various wars or some 3rd world dictator says something bad about America. Long story short, this would be covered in the MSM if: 1) The emails were acquired through a whistleblower with legal protection 2) it wasn't over-sold in the blogosphere the moment it broke 3) US Media actually gave a crap about what happens outside of America's borders that doesn't involve a military escapade.

gaius 17y ago
In answer to your point 3, hasn't Obama just set energy policy, which will affect the living expenses of every American, on promises he made in Denmark? This is a story of great relevance to the domestic American news consumer.
- davidw 17y ago
  > This is a story of great relevance to the domestic American news consumer. Which means it probably is not hacker news. (Also, consider whether we want to see both sides of this issue posting their stories - if the anti-warming folks post a lot of these, the other guys are sure to want to see their side all over the site as well. I think it belongs elsewhere)
  - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
    I posted this article precisely because I'm not one of "the anti-warming folks". The tribal aspect of this debate somehow manages to be both boring and corrosive, so I ignore it when I can. This article is special because its facts aren't in dispute, and yet still tend to cast doubt on the consensus view that I, at least, thought was the truth. The discussion between "the anti-warming folks" and "the other guys" has been ongoing for some time on this site: http://searchyc.com/submissions/global+warming http://searchyc.com/submissions/global+warming Have you always taken the position that global warming is not hacker news? Or has something changed so that is was hacker news before and isn't any longer?
    - davidw 17y ago
      I flag anything that has anything to do with it, pro or contra.
      - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
        Bravo. HN would be a better site if more people did that. Particularly on Sundays. I have a few bête noir topics I try to moderate away, too, but I tend to draw the line at explicit endorsements of one side over another in a tribal conflict. I can see how it would make sense to just excise tribal issues and have done, though.
      - pg 17y ago
        The fact that a topic is treated by some people as a religious dispute doesn't mean articles about it can't be interesting. By flagging stuff without even reading it, you're behaving as mindlessly as the partisans on each side.
        timr 17y ago
        I agree that the articles are sometimes interesting, but they're frequently just re-hashes, posted as platforms for ranting comment threads by the same handful of people. It would be nice if there was a flag-like mechanism for the community to turn off comments on articles like this one. It seems that if the karma incentive was reduced on political articles, people would have less incentive to post the thoughtless ones.
        mnemonicsloth 17y ago
        It seems that if the karma incentive was reduced on political articles, people would have less incentive to post the thoughtless ones. This is backwards. Usenet had political flamewars despite having no karma. People post to political threads because it makes them feel good to stick up for their particular causes. Emotions that reward us for signaling our allegiances and general loyalty are one of the cognitive adaptations that allow our species to solve the Prisoner's Dilemma to benefit from cooperation, specialization, and trade. Start reading Robin Hanson: http://www.overcomingbias.com http://www.overcomingbias.com or Comeuppance: http://www.amazon.com/Comeuppance-Altruistic-Punishment-Biological-Components/dp/0674026314 http://www.amazon.com/Comeuppance-Altruistic-Punishment-Biol...
mnemonicsloth 17y ago
The emails were acquired through an illegal hack... Yes, a crime was committed, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. There's precedent, too. From Wikipedia: The Pentagon Papers... were a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam... [They] first surfaced on the front page of the New York Times in 1971. ... This leak was initially trumpeted as the end of AGW theory, and has since turned out to be scientists being douchey and unprofessional wrt their critics... But the facts remain: The data are gone. The wingnuts knew it. The media didn't report on it, in large part because the only people talking about it were wingnuts. Doesn't that make you feel a little uneasy?
- cwan 17y ago
  I agree - even if the emails were illegally obtained, one need only look back at all those national security leaks over the past few years to see the glaring double standard. That being said, I think there's a questionable assumption being made that these in fact are hacked illegally obtained emails. From CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/ent... - "It's not clear how the files were leaked. One theory says that a malicious hacker slipped into East Anglia's network and snatched thousands of documents. Another says that the files had already been assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request and, immediately after it was denied, a whistleblower decided to disclose them. (Lending credence to that theory is the fact that no personal e-mail messages unrelated to climate change appear to have been leaked.)"
ironsam 17y ago
It is truly amazing how quickly you are able to assume this is all smoke and no fire.
alan-crowe 17y ago
One reason that the media are reluctant to cover it is that they do not know what is normal in science. I remember data crunches in speech recognition research in the late 80's. We would run out of disk space and have to delete stuff. Usually it would be the value added data. If we wanted it back we would re-run the processing scripts to recreate it from the raw data. Sometimes the raw data would be archived on tape and deleted from the disks. If you needed to regenerate the value added data you had to get one of the system administrators to retrieve the raw data from the tape archive before you could start. Two take home messages. One: we never lost raw data. Two: we never lost the scripts for applying corrections and were always in the position of being able to replicate our work. Shortage of disk space meant that we sometimes had to do this, so it had to work. I suspect that journalists are slow to realise that deleting the raw data is a very odd thing to do. You delete your data when you have no students, have lost faith in your research and are committed to giving up and leaving the field. Do you delete your raw data if you are battling to save the planet? No.

gaius 17y ago

In answer to your point 3, hasn't Obama just set energy policy, which will affect the living expenses of every American, on promises he made in Denmark? This is a story of great relevance to the domestic American news consumer.

davidw 17y ago
> This is a story of great relevance to the domestic American news consumer. Which means it probably is not hacker news. (Also, consider whether we want to see both sides of this issue posting their stories - if the anti-warming folks post a lot of these, the other guys are sure to want to see their side all over the site as well. I think it belongs elsewhere)
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  I posted this article precisely because I'm not one of "the anti-warming folks". The tribal aspect of this debate somehow manages to be both boring and corrosive, so I ignore it when I can. This article is special because its facts aren't in dispute, and yet still tend to cast doubt on the consensus view that I, at least, thought was the truth. The discussion between "the anti-warming folks" and "the other guys" has been ongoing for some time on this site: http://searchyc.com/submissions/global+warming http://searchyc.com/submissions/global+warming Have you always taken the position that global warming is not hacker news? Or has something changed so that is was hacker news before and isn't any longer?
  - davidw 17y ago
    I flag anything that has anything to do with it, pro or contra.
    - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
      Bravo. HN would be a better site if more people did that. Particularly on Sundays. I have a few bête noir topics I try to moderate away, too, but I tend to draw the line at explicit endorsements of one side over another in a tribal conflict. I can see how it would make sense to just excise tribal issues and have done, though.
    - pg 17y ago
      The fact that a topic is treated by some people as a religious dispute doesn't mean articles about it can't be interesting. By flagging stuff without even reading it, you're behaving as mindlessly as the partisans on each side.
      - timr 17y ago
        I agree that the articles are sometimes interesting, but they're frequently just re-hashes, posted as platforms for ranting comment threads by the same handful of people. It would be nice if there was a flag-like mechanism for the community to turn off comments on articles like this one. It seems that if the karma incentive was reduced on political articles, people would have less incentive to post the thoughtless ones.
        mnemonicsloth 17y ago
        It seems that if the karma incentive was reduced on political articles, people would have less incentive to post the thoughtless ones. This is backwards. Usenet had political flamewars despite having no karma. People post to political threads because it makes them feel good to stick up for their particular causes. Emotions that reward us for signaling our allegiances and general loyalty are one of the cognitive adaptations that allow our species to solve the Prisoner's Dilemma to benefit from cooperation, specialization, and trade. Start reading Robin Hanson: http://www.overcomingbias.com http://www.overcomingbias.com or Comeuppance: http://www.amazon.com/Comeuppance-Altruistic-Punishment-Biological-Components/dp/0674026314 http://www.amazon.com/Comeuppance-Altruistic-Punishment-Biol...

mnemonicsloth 17y ago

The emails were acquired through an illegal hack... Yes, a crime was committed, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. There's precedent, too. From Wikipedia: The Pentagon Papers... were a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' involvement in Vietnam... [They] first surfaced on the front page of the New York Times in 1971. ... This leak was initially trumpeted as the end of AGW theory, and has since turned out to be scientists being douchey and unprofessional wrt their critics... But the facts remain: The data are gone. The wingnuts knew it. The media didn't report on it, in large part because the only people talking about it were wingnuts. Doesn't that make you feel a little uneasy?

cwan 17y ago
I agree - even if the emails were illegally obtained, one need only look back at all those national security leaks over the past few years to see the glaring double standard. That being said, I think there's a questionable assumption being made that these in fact are hacked illegally obtained emails. From CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/ent... - "It's not clear how the files were leaked. One theory says that a malicious hacker slipped into East Anglia's network and snatched thousands of documents. Another says that the files had already been assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request and, immediately after it was denied, a whistleblower decided to disclose them. (Lending credence to that theory is the fact that no personal e-mail messages unrelated to climate change appear to have been leaked.)"

ironsam 17y ago

It is truly amazing how quickly you are able to assume this is all smoke and no fire.

alan-crowe 17y ago

One reason that the media are reluctant to cover it is that they do not know what is normal in science. I remember data crunches in speech recognition research in the late 80's. We would run out of disk space and have to delete stuff. Usually it would be the value added data. If we wanted it back we would re-run the processing scripts to recreate it from the raw data. Sometimes the raw data would be archived on tape and deleted from the disks. If you needed to regenerate the value added data you had to get one of the system administrators to retrieve the raw data from the tape archive before you could start. Two take home messages. One: we never lost raw data. Two: we never lost the scripts for applying corrections and were always in the position of being able to replicate our work. Shortage of disk space meant that we sometimes had to do this, so it had to work. I suspect that journalists are slow to realise that deleting the raw data is a very odd thing to do. You delete your data when you have no students, have lost faith in your research and are committed to giving up and leaving the field. Do you delete your raw data if you are battling to save the planet? No.