Science, standards, and the corruption of the press

Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) writes a love letter to the WaPo.

Juliet Eilperin's Dec. 2 news story on climate change, "Humans May Double the Risk of Heat Waves," is the latest example of the media's "he said, she said" treatment of what reputable scientists say is one of the greatest threats to the human race. Even worse, the article countered the findings of the world's top climate scientists by quoting an oil industry-funded economist. Such reporting is not credible, nor does it illuminate a subject of significant importance.
The article began by citing a peer-reviewed study published in the revered scientific journal Nature, which reported that the risk has more than doubled for the type of lethal heat wave responsible for 35,000 deaths in Europe last year. But the last half of the article is squandered on the views of Myron Ebell, an economist -- not a climate scientist -- whose "studies" at the American Enterprise Institute are funded by Exxon Mobil. The article fails to mention this shameless conflict of interest.

The problem with this type of reporting was highlighted at a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Robert Correll, senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, warned, "The trouble with a debate of this nature is you put 2,600 [scientists] against two or three or four [scientists who disagree]." Ebell is not in the same league as the qualified climate scientists who report that the climate is changing before our eyes; only the intensity and the speed of those changes are unknown. Your newspaper does an injustice to its readers by giving Ebell's caterwauling equal weight with the widely accepted views of reputable and unbiased scientists.

This, regrettably, sets the Poor Man into a fine rage. And I do mean fine.