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Want my idea for what would make Disqus the most popular -- and useful -- Science website on the Internet?

Take a feed from Google Scholar and let members spawn Disqussions from anything Google Scholar serves up.

That way, authors of papers could have public discussions of their works online, could promote interest in their research, could form Topical Working Groups at the drop of a hat, could clean feedback more easily, and of course could recruit help to advance their scholarship.

EDIT:

Of course, under the usual rules of discourse in Science, these threads would need some careful exemption from norms of moderation. Because objections to claims in science must be retained for the discussion to be seen as scientifically valid, ordinary removal would be awkward.

Easily solved if Disqus adopts an optional standard whereby flagged and removed comments are publicly viewable by an option on the user's profile, or some similar mechanism.

Disqus as a side effect would be so much more powerful with such an option, allowing brands to protect themselves, discussions to be kept on track, and the curious to see what malicious irrelevancies have been sliced away from threads the moderator chose to moderate.

A win-win.

Guest • 7 years ago

It's my contention, on plentiful evidence, that such isolationist policy starves the public of much-needed modelling of actual scientific thought.

If only nescients have science comments, then the public learns nescience.

Popular Science is a magazine run by a business for profit; its decisions protect its shareholders, not science nor the public from the sort of propagandists carrying on a war on science.

Comments will happen. The Internet is full of WUWTs and Heartlands and Jo Novas and Idsos and Bishop Hills who cherry pick out the parts of published research and reframe them to political ends. It's unanswered propaganda and comments that undermine policy and research.

EDIT: and then there's https://www.theguardian.com...

CB • 7 years ago
"The Internet is full of WUWTs and Heartlands and Jo Novas and Idsos and Bishop Hills who cherry pick out the parts of published research and reframe them to political ends."

I just noticed Anthony Watts is on the list!

That is not science.

It's propaganda.

The man is paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the dangerous nature of their product. Disqualified!

"Anthony Watts was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). DeSmogBlog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland's ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations."

www.desmogblog.com/anthony-...

Pretty much anyone paid for by https://www.theguardian.com...

WSmith • 7 years ago

Your talking of 'cherry picking'. That's a good one!!!! Is that you Al (Gore)?

Thanks for demonstrating how the war on science is waged.

CB • 7 years ago
"Thanks for demonstrating how the war on science is waged."

lol! More like a Children's Crusade...

Al Gore didn't discover the greenhouse effect. He's old, but he's not that old.

"The key role of the energy balance between short-wave solar absorption and long-wave IR emission was first recognized in 1827 by Joseph Fourier, about a quarter century after IR radiation was discovered by William Herschel. As Fourier also recognized, the rate at which electromagnetic radiation escapes to space is strongly affected by the intervening atmosphere."

geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/p...

PrinceAshitaka • 7 years ago
Talton • 7 years ago

(Whew!)

Iocus • 7 years ago

I voted for Science Daily, personally. But I can appreciate that a Rupert Murdoch owned site, or a Climate Change denial site, didn't win.

9eyedeel • 7 years ago

I was thinking that non-global-warming sites would get their own category...we like them, they exist...it seems on the one hand tendentious to put them in the science category SINCE PEOPLE WILL STAMP AND POUT so let's freely assort ourselves, keep that area pure

.but I think there should be definitely be a CLIMATE CHANGE NO BUENO category as well

I expect it will be demanded, in fact...TO EACH HIS OWN

http://joannenova.com.au/

is my favorite...the comments section there is nice too

Iocus • 7 years ago

Whatever one's personal stance on climate change is (yours seems to be different than mine), we can all agree that the issue is politically loaded. A website that covers a certain subject and posts articles whose goal is to convince me to support a certain policy, is a political website first and foremost, not a science website (even if it includes stats and figures, or people with degrees writing for it). If a site features an article starting with the words "Greedy Green Hubris gone wrong?", it's a political website. That's why I voted for Science Daily, because it covers all of Science, and its main goal is to inform the reader of scientific advances, not to convince me how certain policies or agendas are right or wrong.

CB • 7 years ago

Jo Nova is a prostitute!

She's paid by the fossil fuel industry to lie about the dangerous nature of their product.

To even pretend she deals in science is offensive in the extreme!

"Joanne Nova holds a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from the University of Western Australia... Nova was a speaker at the Heartland Institute's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change"

www.desmogblog.com/joanne-nova

Iocus • 7 years ago

I wouldn't quite use that word, because I think throwing words like "prostitute" around, makes a post seem unnecessarily emotionally charged and personal rather than calm, reasonable and focusing on facts. But I absolutely agree that Joanne Nova is not a legitimate scientific source or voice and that her reporting is biased and has a clear agenda. As I said, I consider her blog a political website, not a scientific website, and I wasn't the person who linked it.

Perhaps your reply was aimed at the person who actually linked her blog? But if it was directed at me, I definitely do agree that none of her reporting (at least none of the reporting I read from her) is scientifically motivated.

I Am Sorry
I Don't English Speak Language, No Well.

2016-06-13 19:05 GMT+09:00 Disqus <notifications@disqus.net>:

itdoesntaddup • 7 years ago

I appreciate that a climate propaganda site didn't even make the shortlist.

Iocus • 7 years ago

I actually do agree to an extent, in the sense that the issue is politically loaded and websites tend to be on one side of the fence, or the other. So while I consider climate change real and I do think human activity has an influence on it, I wouldn't vote for a site promoting battling climate change either. Science Daily is a well researched website, that updates very often with interesting and accessibly written articles that covers all branches of science, not just one side of one topic, that's why I voted for it.

I larrd • 7 years ago

Actually, the NASA site won.

itdoesntaddup • 7 years ago

climate.nasa.gov did not make it to the list at all. Only nasa.gov

I larrd • 7 years ago

There's plenty of climate propaganda at nasa.gov

Orange_of_Specious • 7 years ago

Why is LoWatts even on the list? It is not a science site.

Best,

D

Mrs. MClen • 7 years ago

Fair winner.

Ron • 7 years ago

I go with the Union of Concerned Scientists and Scientific American personally. But that's just me.

elkor • 7 years ago

Wow, WUWT did a lot better than I thought it would. I hope this vote will help get them
to use Disqus.

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago

WUWT discusses a lot of hard science topics, with very qualified individuals and well-thought out comments. It's more interesting that none of the propagandist websites like SkepticalScience or deSmogBlog even got nominated.

Interesting, but not surprising.

Orange_of_Specious • 7 years ago

Good comedy! I LOLzed!

Best,

D

greenleaf • 7 years ago

WUWT isn't a science site. Its a propaganda site for the science challenged who invite manipulation. They manhandle statistics and analysis and cherry pick and take quotations out of context. Many of their so-called experts are economists, social scientists and other non field appropriate "scientists" who have never conducted climate research. This doesn't prevent them from posting gibberish that will never be peer reviewed, allowing Tony Watts to pan them off as scientific papers to the easily manipulated.

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago

Then you've never delved into the discussion sections.

As if economists, social scientists and other non-field appropriate "scientists" aren't already being employed in climate change papers. Heck, a BA in performance arts and English adjudicated a lawsuit in Minnesota recently to establish limits of the social cost of carbon (SCC):
https://mn.gov/oah/assets/2...

Validity of qualifications doesn't work for only your side of the debate. Either it works for both, or neither.

I've delved into WUWT's discussion sections.

The discussions are moderated to deliver WUWT's dogma, to quelch dissent, and to carry out a war on science.

So while economists are delving the economic harms of fossil waste dumping in scholarly papers as anodyne to the Bjorn Lomborg and Richard Tol propaganda, as rebuttal to the Matt Ridley coal-rolling rhetoric and the Nigel Lawson logical fallacy, and it is useful to have it discussed, many from the traditional Exact Sciences aren't interested in the 'soft' sciences, and that can be respected. But it's hardly proof of a site's Science cred that it pedals propaganda, rhetoric and logical fallacy.

And while social psychologists write scholarly papers on the dynamics of Kubler-Ross, Dunning-Kruger, neuroscience and political leanings seen in those who 'discuss' any science through a lens of groupthink, logical fallacy, ulterior agenda and escalation, and no one can deny that neuroscience and social psychology belong properly in the science continuum while propaganda does not, it hardly strengthens the justification for propaganda sites that they have been studied for their abnormalities.

Re-labeling what actually has happened for the purposes of leveraging an ill-advised and immoral case does not show a lack of fairness among those accused under false labels. It just shows how far some will go, how much is wrong with, those who write to persuade us against all our interests, and against Science.

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago
But it's hardly proof of a site's Science cred that it pedals propaganda, rhetoric and logical fallacy.

Do you honestly believe that there isn't the same problem inherent to websites that are promulgating climate change? Do you believe that scientists themselves aren't fallible or have ulterior motives when their funding is at stake?

Why is it that environmentalists are so dead-set against increasing nuclear power generation? Why is burying nuclear waste in a facility like Yucca Mountain thousands of feet below the water table seen as inherently risky when natural radioactive materials at significantly higher levels to human health are leached from the surrounding environment as the Colorado River runs through the Southwest?

Everyone—and I mean everyone—has an agenda, scientists included.

Websites that are 'promulgating' climate change, like nine of ten websites nominated above?
The websites of the academy of science of pretty much every nation on the planet?
The websites of just about every university Physical Science department on Earth?
Like Google Scholar?
Like Enron.. Oh, wait, no, Enron covered that up for a quarter century, but now admits to it.

And of course scientists make mistakes. But science has a philosophy that helps us judge when that has happened: "Hold exact claims inferred from all we note assuming least, excepting least and linking by logic like parts of like things most possible (but no further than possible*) until new note need amended or new claim -- Isaac Newton, Philosophia 1714, *amended Albert Einstein 1914."

And scientific institutions are aware of ulterior motives, which is why Willie Soon was taken to task for not disclosing his financial interests in the outcomes of his work, and Phil Jones was reduced in duties for not honoring FOI rules.

And when did environmentalists or nuclear power become part of this discussion? Seems a bit of a red herring.

Ulterior agenda is when you hide a motivation for saying what you say from an audience.

My motivation is Newton's Philosophy. What is yours?

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago

The scientific method.

Bzzzt.

You don't appear familiar with the scientific method.

Try again.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

I challenge you to find a legitimate science site where an economist or social scientist is performing climate research and posting it in a journal! You are too funny!

As for your link, I'm not going to search 30 pages of materials to see what you are talking about. Even if true, it relates to policy not science. He wouldn't be qualified to rule on the science. That is unless he is some darling of the local GOP.

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago

How convenient. You won't even do a five-second Google search of the judge to look at her—not his— credentials, refuse to read the docket, then summarily dismiss multiple examples of glaring bias and double standards favoring the Agencies and MLIG as plaintiffs because .... why? The science said so, or because she has an agenda to cover up her lack of qualifications?

If you want to put all your faith in science, then why are non-science educated individuals allowed to adjudicate science-intensive cases? Why not instead put scientists on the law bench or in Congress? Surely if science is absolute and infallible then there could be no dissent amongst scientists, right? Right?

greenleaf • 7 years ago

There actually is very little dissent among scientists in the matter of AGW.

It would have been helpful if you had simply said you were referring to the judge in the first place. You had me thinking that somewhere, deep in the documents, I would find some little undereducated policy wonk working for the state who, somehow, determined the state's position on AGW.

When it comes to court cases, we don't have "science judges". The "judges" in the universal world of science are the scientists themselves, through the peer review process.

It is only when matters of a state or the countries policies are challenged judges with little or no science background make rulings. That's because they aren't ruling on science, they are ruling on policy and how it fits or violates state and federal laws under the respective constitutions.

You do understand the difference don't you between science and policy? For the sake of this discussion, it would have made it easier to understand your point if you hadn't lumped the two together as you did.

Vindaloo Bugaboo • 7 years ago

Of course there's little dissent among scientists in the matter of AGW, but wholly vast differences in the scope of its influence and possible consequences. To that end, the dismissal of high probability/low-cost scenarios in strong favor of low-probability/high-cost ones infers bias and/or lack of scientific understanding when the science is used to set policy as in this case.

I strongly encourage you to read that docket from Minnesota to see for yourself how inclusion of the DICE model (not a cost-damage analysis) was allowed, despite the MN Commission mandating a formula for the social cost of carbon (SCC) use only cost-damage models, as well as a myriad of other double standards that favored the plaintiffs over the defendants. Your position between science and policy will be undermined because policy for the state of Minnesota was ruled to be the result of global emissions, not their own. Scope of cost was not limited, despite policy affecting the state's scope of action being severely limited. It made no sense why the ruling was handed down as it was without questioning whether or not it was appropriate for this judge to be adjudicating the case.

You're simply ignorant of the basis of judgments in courtrooms in the USA regarding science.

The Daubert Trilogy, or Daubert Tripod and Frye Standard ("underlying scientific principles have gained general acceptance within the relevant scientific community"), form the precedent for issues of science.

Daubert is whether the theory or technique:

1. can be and has been tested;
2. has been subjected to peer-review and publication;
3. has a known or potential error rate;
4. has general acceptance within a relevant scientific community.

Any judge can follow Frye or Daubert, regardless of how much or how little science the judge is personally trained in, so long as the judge is sufficiently versed in the law.

Which is how we can tell you're no judge.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

I have never believed this should be considered as anything but a national policy matter. Cities like Boulder and states, such as MN, shouldn't determine their commitment based upon what the world is or isn't doing. We should have a federal government plan to reduce emissions and involving a combination of incentives and regulations. Cost benefit would certainly be part of that, but from where I'm sitting, the cost of not doing something or putting it off for future generations is far greater than common sense steps taken now.

For me, the science is clear. Science is my background, not policy. Unfortunately, policy determination involves politicians and career bureaucrats. That is where I see a never ending logjam as we fiddle while the Earth burns.

Chr1st1an • 7 years ago

If you believe it's a given that global warming is a scientific fact, then you hold this belief as a religion and not science. It doesn't even meet the basic scientific definition of a "theory", 51% of our scientists disagree, and 60-90% of Americans don't believe their own government is being honest about the "problem".
Ironically, on the other hand, by the current English definition of "science", the Holy Bible IS science (not religion)--and it's much better science than this new religion called global warming.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

I see! Exactly how should we scientists define "Theory"(with a capital not lower case, as in "Theory of Evolution"? You apparently know more than the experts so please enlighten and dazzle us!

I'd love to see you prove your assertions of 51%( what a convenient number!), 60-90% of Americans...really? according to what poll?

And, I'm sorry, I'm sure you are sincere in your science/religion confusion, but you really need to get out more and talk to different people!

Chr1st1an • 7 years ago

You don't need to know more than any putative experts to simply read the English language to understand what a theory is. And thanks for bringing up the "theory" of evolution, because you now have a chance to prove what part of the English definition of "theory" that "evolution" meets. If you ARE a scientist, you would not approach global warming as if though your religion is being challenged. It too will never rise to the level of "theory" no matter how much the global warming industry tries.
As far as getting out more often, I'm on a first name basis with the top scientist of every company in my industry all around the world, and thus have a first hand understanding of how they are oppressed for even questioning this so-called "theory".
The polling organization which "discovered" that 91% of Americans [and 51% of our scientists] do NOT accept evolution as a "theory" is the same one which "discovered" that we have an equally low opinion of global warming.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

I see, you are of the "I don't need to prove it because its so, because I believe it" school of debate. I love the anecdotal "I'm on a first name basis..." argument too. I'll give you credit for being the first I've heard in years who uses the "some of my best friends are......." gambit. Has this ever worked for you in the past?

Before having any level of discussion on science you need to learn the difference between "Theory" as used in science and "theory" as its used by laymen. Start there, but I warn you, you have a long, long ways to go!

Chr1st1an • 7 years ago

Your assignment is to look up the definition of "theory", find out which part of the "theory of evolution" matches, and throw out the rest.
Don't come back with your religious belief that global warming cannot be questioned, until AFTER you've done that.
And stop claiming to be a scientist, because to you, this is a RELIGION.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

Ah, so you are a troll of sorts. You engage and then deflect, then deflect once more. The burden of proof is upon he who made the assertions in the first place. We both know you can't support your arguments and your goal in this is to waste others time. Consider trolling elsewhere, you might find a shallow, unsuspecting playmate if you take your game on the road.

Chr1st1an • 7 years ago

Well now, you have exposed yourself as a feminazi, as no scientist would need to resort to name calling like this.

greenleaf • 7 years ago

Ah yes, I called it! A troll and not a very good one at that!

Chr1st1an • 7 years ago

Not only have you proven that you don't even know what a theory is, nor what science is, but now you have a trifecta--you don't even know what a troll is.