Barry Brook of BraveNewClimate loses all credibility

[bananas]

http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/29/sadly-back-to-josef-oehmen/

Sadly Back to Josef Oehmen

Although… perhaps I shouldn’t be sad. Thanks to Barry Brooks’ rather overwrought description of my posts, readership has once again gotten a bump. After reading Dr Oehmen’s post-within-a-post, I’m left with several possible responses:

1. Everyone involved with the original post and its’ dissemination is both sincere and woefully ignorant about the way social media works. None of them have the slightest idea of how their behavior can plausibly be considered a botched astroturf campaign. They are all defensive to the point of paranoia, and have no understanding that a simple “I was wrong, I’m sorry.” would have made this brouhaha never happen. They all confuse criticism of both ideas and presentation as attacks upon themselves. This entire sequence of events is simply a miniature black swan – a cascade failure of communication mirroring and shadowing the progressing events in Fukushima. It’s an intriguing thought, from a psychological perspective.

2. Their attempts to justify themselves are a strategic response to a failed tactic. This is the more parsimonious reading. As I wrote to the editor-in-chief of the MIT student paper (at his request) it may be sheer coincidence that the specific details of this situation match a classic astroturf scenario. It is, however, somewhat improbable.

For those wondering what heinous charges I made against Dr Brooks that were redacted from my comments on his blog, here they are:

Barry, you could (and should) have clarified Dr Oehmen’s credentials. Even without peer review, such accuracy should be expected from an academic. While it’s understandable that Mr Morgan – who is not a research academic – might understandably imply and assume a greater expertise than Dr Oehmen has, your role as an advocate does require a greater concern for accuracy in sourcing. Sloppy communication of this kind is ambiguous, and leads to serious suspicion. Defending it leads to even more, since you’re clearly not stupid. It’s reasonable to expect someone of your intelligence and writing ability to recognize that. Of course, it is also a truism that it’s hard to understand an issue when your livelihood depends on misunderstanding it.

So – which is it? A tragic level of naivete and ignorance about the ways of the world and written communication in social networking, or a deliberate attempt to mislead?. You can read the pattern either way, and come to the same conclusion – the source is not credible. Neither reading argues for credibility and that, perhaps unfortunately, is an actual fact.

The "post-within-a-post" is here:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/29/would-i-have-believed-myself/

Josef Oehmen and Fukushima – Would I have believed myself?
Posted on 29 March 2011 by Barry Brook

On the 13th of March, I posted an article called “Fukushima Nuclear Accident – A simple and accurate explanation“. ... The post had been written by Dr Josef Oehmen ...

However, the story doesn’t end there. It also created a huge amount of indignation, including a flood of vitriolic ad hominem comments on this blog that, if I’d let through the moderation queue, would have made your gentle eyes water! As the situation at Fukushima worsened, the MIT NSE group provided updates that improved upon the original information a little, and also toned down some of the stronger conclusions that had proven overly optimistic (I was also guilty of not fully appreciating the seriousness of the situation caused by the 14 m tsunami at Daiichi Plant). ...

One of the "stronger conclusions" Oehmen made was "There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity."
Barry should have taken the vitriolic comments by his readers to heart, rather than censoring their posts.

You can read the text of the original article by Oehmen here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4769811&mesg_id=4769877