Characterizing a professional, respected scientist as an unqualified vengeful opinion writer is the same kind of power attack as rape. It’s meant to humiliate and intimidate.

I said this as part of a response to a comment at WUWT late yesterday (copied in full below). The picture above shows Steven Amstrup holding polar bear cubs against their will — not for any scientific purpose, just for a photo that shows he can.

Also yesterday, Tom Fuller at ClimateScepticism wrote a hard-hitting critique of the Bioscience article that similarly noted the sexist nature of this harassment and the fact that this is the way Michael Mann and his colleagues behave toward female scientists who cross them or their supporters. He concludes:

“The purpose of these papers is not to communicate. It is to excommunicate.”

As I said when this paper first came out, this response is all about my reasoned and fully referenced criticisms of Steve Amstrup’s work in particular (although I have taken issue with some of Stirling’s recent work as well).

The evidence that Steve Amstrup is willing to lie in order to publicly degrade me and my work in retribution for not taking everything he says as the gospel truth comes from an article at Motherboard yesterday. In it, Amstrup was quoted as saying:

“You don’t have to read far in her material to see that it is full of unsubstantiated statements and personal attacks on scientists, using names like eco-terrorists, fraudsters, green terrorists and scammers,” Amstrup said.

I wrote Motherboard and asked for clarification that this was indeed what Amstrup said because I know it to be a lie. Check for yourself using the search function on my blog, it’s easy to do. I have never used any of those terms to refer to anyone, let alone a fellow scientist.

Late in the day, I got this response from the writer of the piece:

“Thank you for your note. A clarification has been added to the article. (my emphasis) “You don’t have to read far in her material to see that it is full of unsubstantiated statements and personal attacks on scientists, using names like eco-terrorists, fraudsters, green terrorists and scammers,” Amstrup said. In a follow-up email on Friday, Amstrup clarified that these statements to Motherboard were meant to reflect the climate denier community as a whole, rather than Crockford in particular.

Except Amstrup specificially referred to my work. I insisted further clarification was necessary but rather than noting that I had, in fact, never used those terms on my blog, the author added this statement:

“In an email to Motherboard, Crockford denied using those terms on her blog.”

So, the author of the Motherboard piece was willing to take Amstrup’s word for an egregious accusation and when Amstrup was caught in a lie, was unwilling to make that clear. And the media wonder why they have lost the public’s trust.

However, this is all a day late and a dollar short. The cat’s out of the bag regarding Amstrup’s failed predictions. My critique (Crockford 2017) is a thorough scientific exposé of his unsuccessful model (which used assumptions based on Amstrup’s expert opinion) and people in power are taking it seriously. The Bioscience paper says more about its authors than it says about me.

References

Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3

My full text of my comment on the Bioscience paper at WUWT, 1 December 2017 (11:25 PM PST):

Amstrup is pissed off because I criticized his work. He and Stirling are not used to being challenged. He and his colleagues had the opportunity to formally demolish my PeerJ preprint online for all the world to see but they didn’t. That might have drawn attention to the issues I raised. They decided it would be best to ignore me. Except others who matter (for funding etc) clearly DID read the paper and found merit in my conclusions – that must be true or Amstrup and Stirling would not have concocted this paper. They are trying to demolish me instead of addressing the failed predictions exposed in my paper. Characterizing a professional, respected scientist as an unqualified vengeful opinion writer is the same kind of power attack as rape. It’s meant to humiliate and intimidate. But it’s too late. And your rants about me being unqualified and substandard are as groundless as theirs. Colleagues have read my paper and found it to be fully acceptable as a piece of academic scientific work. If that were not true, this desperately ridiculous Bioscience paper would never have been published. I have exposed Amstrup’s failure and this is the only way he could think of to stop me: he went to Michael Mann for advice, with predictable results. This paper says way more about these co-authors than it does about me. Mark my words, it will come back to haunt them.