Talk:The Hockey Stick Illusion

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Nsaa (talk | contribs) at 12:16, 11 April 2010 (→The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael Mann's hockey stick graph: Yes this is the way, not tagging, but do proper sourced adjustments). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 12:16, 11 April 2010 by Nsaa (talk | contribs) (→The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael Mann's hockey stick graph: Yes this is the way, not tagging, but do proper sourced adjustments)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Template:Community article probation

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Books

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate in the project, please visit its page, where you can join the project and discuss matters related to book articles. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the relevant guideline for the type of work.BooksWikipedia:WikiProject BooksTemplate:WikiProject BooksBook

England

	England portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnglandWikipedia:WikiProject EnglandTemplate:WikiProject EnglandEngland-related
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Blogging (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Blogging, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.BloggingWikipedia:WikiProject BloggingTemplate:WikiProject BloggingBlogging

Internet culture

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Internet culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of internet culture on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Internet cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Internet cultureTemplate:WikiProject Internet cultureInternet culture

???

This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Internet culture To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : View all requested internet culture articles
Expand : Pick an article from here or here
Photo : Category:Internet culture articles needing images
Stubs : All stubs are located here
Other : Category:Internet self-classification codes (!?); Try to get YouTube to FA; Tag all articles you find with {{WikiProject Internet culture}}
- See also Category:Internet culture articles needing attention

Science

	Science portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Science on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject ScienceTemplate:WikiProject Sciencescience
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Environment

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Misplaced Pages:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Tidy up

I've done an intial tidy up. Does anyone have a hard copy of the book? One will no doubt be needed to expand the synopsis and add a few refs. Also, there don't seem to be many crit refs, so those need to be found to give the crit section some balance. This definitely has potential though. Jprw (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I have the book, refs are in it can be seen on amazon on the back flap of the book. Try as i did i could find no crit`s of the book at all, Cla looked in infotrac and found none either mark nutley (talk) 16:55, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I've looked through the first few pages of Google and also drew a blank. Where's George Monbiot when you need him? Nowtin The Guardian Jprw (talk) 07:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The references need to be formatted better, with author, publication, publisher, and date published, if available. If its from the web, the retrieval date needs to be noted. Cla68 (talk) 07:54, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The ref`s have publisher, date retrieved, and publisher. I dunno how to have the author and publication show as well? mark nutley (talk) 08:51, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Use the citation templates. They will put the information into a standardized format. Cla68 (talk) 11:22, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I've just done the one for Matt Ridley -- that can serve as a template. Jprw (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

There`s a template? mark nutley (talk) 15:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Take your pick or just copy the one I used. Jprw (talk) 16:32, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I have asked a few people from the peer review thingy to look over this article in the hopes of getting it up to FA status :-) mark nutley (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Major problems would include (a) Amazon reviews are pretty meaningless and shouldn't be used in articles, and (b) dust-jacket blurbs are, by their very nature, promotional. The only sources independent of the book are the Ridley and Gilder reviews. And the Gilder review is basically a blog post from a source that has a history of being unreliable. Guettarda (talk) 05:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Andrew Bolt ref

Andrew e-mailed me and let me know the Andrew Bolt ref is actually about "Caspar and the Jesus Paper" not the book, so i have removed it mark nutley (talk) 19:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Amazon refs

I think we need to get rid of the Amazon refs and reference the book directly. Jprw (talk) 07:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You mean the refs from the back flap? mark nutley (talk) 10:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

All of them -- if you've got the book, use the book. If they're from the back flap, try to use the original sources. Jprw (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Although I cannot find where this originally appeared. Jprw (talk) 11:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing the book was sent to him for review and that was his response. I could always e-mail Andrew to ask if needed mark nutley (talk) 12:37, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's an interesting question -- if you're in touch with him why not ask. Jprw (talk) 13:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It is as i suspected, it was a pre-publication preview, why did you want to know btw? mark nutley (talk) 18:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, not used to those -- was just interested in the source. Jprw (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Amazon reviews

Please don't post the results of Amazon reviews unless they are pointed out by some secondary sources as being worth of notice. They are a) anonymous b) not from recognized authors c) easily manipulable (*).

I note that Amazon doesn't seem to have any meaningful editorial control of review quality, so these reviews should count as self-published sources.

(*) They can even be manipulated inadvertently. For example, when someone posts in a sympathetic mailing list about a new listing, and many people in the list independently decide to make a positive review. This means that there will be more reviews than usual, that there will be a higher proportion of favourable reviews, and that the first few reviews will all be highly favourable. Another case, some people will remember back when all reviews were anonymous, and Amazon accidentally displayed the author names for a few hours, and a lot of the very positive reviews turned out to be written by the editors of the books, or by editorial staff from the book publishers. (I am not saying that this happened in this case, it's just examples of the easy manipulability of Amazon reviews.)

--Enric Naval (talk) 11:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

Not sure what Misplaced Pages style is on this, but I would write the book's name as "Title": "Subtitle" rather than Title (Subtitle). I left it for now... does anyone know the Misplaced Pages style on this?--Jp07 (talk) 17:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Also... who is Phillip Bratby? This is especially important to discuss since there is no article on him. What is the Climategate inquiry? What committee members? What's in Chapter 15? Is this paragraph important enough to be in the introduction? I suggest this be placed in a "Trivia" section at the end of the article if it is not to be omitted.--Jp07 (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

mark nutley (talk) 18:16, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Background

Which political blog was Andrew Montford looking at?--Jp07 (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph One: What does "replication" mean? That is a potentially libelous statement until you clarify that -- it might be interpreted as "plagiarism." That's how I read it because I don't know anything about this. I'm taking it down for now... See the history when you're ready to add it back, clarified. This is kind of important if you don't want to be sued. Also, who is Caspar Ammann, and how do you spell his name? What antics involved in keeping whose paper alive? What science do visitors need to be educated on?

Paragraph Two: What were the first steps in writing his book? --Jp07 (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Caspar Ammann is a climatologist, and that is how you spell his name :), The replication is about Ammann`s paper, which he said reproduced Mann`s work. There was a lot of jigary pokery by the IPCC to ensure the paper could be used by them so they could also continue to use Mann`s hockey stick graph. Thats the short version. His results also failed btw as he used the same proxies as Mann had, ie Bristlecone Pine which are no good for reconstructions. mark nutley (talk) 18:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)(edit conflict)

Speaking of IPCC... who are they? Try to avoid acronyms to enhance clarity.--Jp07 (talk) 00:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Dunno what blog he was looking at, i can ask him if needed Same for paragraph two mark nutley (talk) 18:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Synopsis

My previous comment on potentially libelous statements also applies to "reproduce" here. Distinguish this from "plagiarism," if applicable, please. If you do discuss instances of court determined plagiarism anywhere in this document, you need to cite a court case or you're risking a court case of your own. You cannot discuss plagiarism at all if a court has not called it plagiarism... unless you want to be sued. I'm going to remove this sentence for now as well. --Jp07 (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Same comment applies to "reconstruction." You can fix all of these things by referring to the history, when you get a chance. --Jp07 (talk) 18:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Reception

George Gilder's quote is a bit large and unwieldy for this article. I suggest you paraphrase it or pick out the most important part... especially with all of the jargon. Here's a hint: newspapers are written at the fifth-grade level. I suggest you write for Misplaced Pages in the same manner. Not necessarily because the readers are incapable of understanding, but if it takes too much work to dissect a piece of writing, most people will skip it. You want it to be easy for the average reader to extract the meaning. To be honest, I just skimmed the quote.--Jp07 (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Same thing applies to Booker's quote.--Jp07 (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Booker's quote is probably OK. I suggest that you break it up into two sentences, though. Write it like this:

"Blah blah blah ... pauses," Booker said. "Second half of statement blah blah blah."

Then you'll be good. --Jp07 (talk) 00:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

General thoughts

OK -- so my copy edit is pretty much complete. I took care of all the minor fixes and did a little bit of restructuring and so forth to make it read better. I tried to identify all of the areas of confusion and omission; you want to try to answer as many of your readers questions as possible. As you proofread your writing, think: What questions could I ask here? Who, what, when, where, why and so what (a.k.a. who cares)? If any of this information is missing, do your best to work it in.

Also... what was the result of the findings? I'm not completely sure. I believe you're indicating that they found that popular opinion on climate change is incorrect and that it isn't that bad. I suggest you explicitly write this out, if that is the case. Try to eliminate any ambiguity there since the findings are arguably the most important part of this article. Honestly, you might ought to consider placing the findings in the first paragraph. See the inverted pyramid for guidance.

And my final note: I didn't check the spellings and capitalization of organizations, technical terms, names, etc. Make sure you look at this; if you get any of this wrong, it damages your credibility. The best way to determine this is to look at how the organization or person spells their own name. If you can't determine this with a reasonable amount of research, just try to make sure you stay consistent with your spelling and capitalization throughout the article.

Nice job, overall! I think you identified an article that was in need of writing and that was not being picked up. If you look at it from a marketing standpoint, that's great. You want to serve those underserved markets! Keep it up.--Jp07 (talk) 00:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

And by the way... I'll probably forget to come back and fix all of these things that I'm leaving you questions about, so you might want to address those on your own :). If you want another copy edit later, feel free to ask again, but I'm taking 17 hours this semester and I do plenty of research on my own... so I'll probably opt out on that portion, haha.--Jp07 (talk) 00:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Problems?

This has the usual problems, but to begin: Criticisms of Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre, as well as the ensuing hockey stick controversy, are also included in the book. - is that of supposed to be by? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Your edit was blatant vandalism, refrain from doing such things again mark nutley (talk) 20:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I disagree. I've reverted you, of course. Also, please clearly mark your reverts as such William M. Connolley (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

It is vandalism and if you do not self revert i will do it for you. I have also left a warning on your talkpage. You have not ref`s for what you added, it is pure POV revert or i will and then file a request against you for your wp:disruptive editing mark nutley (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Last chance: calling good faith edits vandalism is, at least in my view, incivil. Please redact your comments William M. Connolley (talk) 21:07, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing good faith about your edit, it is vandalism to insert junk like that into an article. It is painfully obvious what you are doing here, you wish to make the article unstable s oit can`t go up for GA status mark nutley (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

You appear to be displaying a battleground mentality, and you've already been told that the edits are not vandalism. Your continued incivility makes a mockery of your civility parole. To pretend that this book has nothing negative at all to be said about it; and to evade the biases of all the positive reviews; clearly makes this article POV; I've tagged it as such William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

And you are still being disruptive, i have looked at all the reviews and there is not one which is a bad review, stop being disruptive mark nutley (talk) 21:32, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

WMC: If you know of anything negative to be said about the book that can be properly sourced, feel free to add that. But you can't reasonably claim the book "has been ignored by everyone else " simply on the basis of your assumption that this book *must* be wrong because of the kind of people who like it and/or the kind of things it seems to be saying. It is not POV to summarize the reviews that *are* available. Yes, the people who first chose to read and review the book do tend to be the sort of people who like that sort of book. That will be the case for most books, on most topics. --Blogjack (talk) 07:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right on the "of." My bad. What exactly are the "usual problems," though? And also, I do agree that some sourced negative reception needs to be recognized, but considering that this was only just published in March 2010, I think we will need to wait for a reputable critic to compose a negative reaction. I checked several databases and couldn't find anything ... negative or positive. Give it some time and address it when you can.--Jp07 (talk) 02:30, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The two additions by William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) here by inserting: "he book has been enthusiastically and uncritically reviewed by the skeptics, and ignored by everyone else." and again "The book has been enthusiastically and uncritically reviewed by the skeptics, and ignored by everyone else." is disruptive. He knows very well that such claims needs very sound and reliable sources to claim. Nsaa (talk) 14:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It may be disruptive - i'll give no opinion on that. But it is correct, and even skeptics should have realized that by now. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 14:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually almost nothing in this article is based on "sound and reliable sources", as I pointed out days ago. "True but unsourced" is certainly better than "dubious and unsourced", which is the current state of much of the article. Guettarda (talk) 14:39, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:WEIGHT, "it should always be clear which parts of the text describe the minority view, and that it is in fact a minority view. The majority view should be explained in sufficient detail that the reader may understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding parts of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained." This article presents an in-universe climate change denial position, it may be difficult finding sources specifically referring to it and showing the mainstream views of its claims, but it's necessary for NPOV. Carry on. . . dave souza, talk 23:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Agree. In-universe is the correct description. (thank you for that one). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Souza is wrong on his point, the article presents an AGW skeptic (not climate change) position, AGW and climate change are not the same, many (even most) skeptics believe climate change is quite natural, in fact the book suggests there has been more climate change (historically) than the AGW camp believes. Template:Unsigned-unk

That's beside the point. It's written from an "in-universe" perspective which ignores the mainstream. And that's contrary to policy. Guettarda (talk) 16:16, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

What Guettarda said... As a pointer to this please check WP:UNDUE specifically the paragraph starting with "In articles specifically about a minority viewpoint..." --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

This is not an article about a minority viewpoint; it's an article about a book which takes a minority viewpoint. The article should be about the book, not the viewpoint. Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 20:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Um, yeah. I already answered this question of yours in the next section: We don't - or shouldn't - write articles which can leave readers with the impression that Hogwarts is a real place, even if we are writing an article about "the book". The same applies here. It would be nice if you read the answer to your question before repeating it. Guettarda (talk) 20:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I was about to say much the same, but you've said it better. Much as we begin the article about Hogwarts by saying it is fictional, we could solve the POV problems of this article by a disclaimer at the beginning. Fictional (or better: propaganda) would do, but I don't suppose Lar's team would go for that. Has anyone got a better suggestion? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:38, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The analogy is false; this article is analogous to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, not to Hogwarts. It's about a book. Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 20:43, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Um, yeah... Since I already addressed just that issue, I can only conclude that you're just being intentionally obtuse. I will treat your future comments accordingly. Guettarda (talk) 03:34, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

POV

I see that the {{POV}} tag has been added by William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) without any explanation. As far as I can see the article is well referenced and balanced. I removed the POV tag, and if someone can add a rationale for inclusion please do it here at the discussion page. Nsaa (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

without any explanation - were you to bother reading the section just above you'd have seen where I bothered to give an explanation William M. Connolley (talk) 14:19, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I didn't understand your explanation. Could you possibly explain succinctly exactly what your complaint is? Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 17:48, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right, you are. See the section above, entitled "Problems?". See my comments there? Read them William M. Connolley (talk) 18:10, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I've restored the tag, per the section above. Hopefully Nsaa will find the time to read that section sometime William M. Connolley (talk) 22:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

William, I'm afraid I can't even understand your grammar, never mind your supposed explanation. The POV tag was simply nonsense. Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:00, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks like plain English to me. As for the POV tag, read Dave's comment. He takes the time to lay it out quite clearly for those unfamiliar with policy. Guettarda (talk) 16:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm still trying to work out how "You're right, you are" can be a reply to "I'm afraid I didn't understand your explanation", unless William is suggesting I'm afraid of something? He clearly thinks he's saying something, but I really have no idea what it is. Re Dave Souza, I guess you mean the "in universe" critique? This is interesting, but this article is about the book, not about the underlying issue. Regards, Jonathan A Jones (talk) 18:17, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

We don't - or shouldn't - write articles which can leave readers with the impression that Hogwarts is a real place, even if we are writing an article about "the book". The same applies here. Guettarda (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm still trying to work out how "You're right, you are" can be. Sigh. Read your edit comment William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Connolley only says it "has the usual problems" and identifies a typo that has since been fixed, there's no explanation. It looks like vandalism to me, Connolley appears to have a beef with the book itself, he is the one with the POV issue. I would revert the POV tag if I knew how, perhaps someone else would be kind enough. Also is there a way to report Connolleys vandalism, he seems to be all over many 'climate change' related articles, his point of view on this subject might be over-represented on Misplaced Pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.58.243.130 (talk) 23:28, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. There is no need for this POV tag. Bundsche (talk) 05:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

You're scibaby and you're banned William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Having a POV tag on an article is no big deal. Let's work our way through resolving it. WMC, what issues need to be resolved before you'll agree to removing the tag? Cla68 (talk) 01:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael Mann's hockey stick graph

Another POV problem is over The Hockey Stick Illusion relates the story of Michael Mann's hockey stick graph. But this is an error: the graph isn't Mann's. It is however true that the skeptics usually say it is. So either this needs correcting to "MBH" or it needs correcting to "What the author calls M but is actually MBH". I'm not sure which is appropriate William M. Connolley (talk) 20:50, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Both, I think: " the graph...published in...which the author calls..." It's our responsibilty to give adequate context so that readers know what we're talking about without having to click through the link, but without recounting the entire article that lies on the other end of the hyperlink. Guettarda (talk) 23:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes I agree that we should describe the paper by naming all the editors in it as it has been done now by William M. Connolley (talk · contribs). Although it may be propper to only use his name in som circumstances. For example Michael Mann was the lead author on the IPCC Third Assessment Report on the paleoclimate chapter (Montford,p.39 and p.310). Where he was in the position to review his own work (sic) and writing the final chapter promoting his own hockey stick graph. McIntyre has said that this would be entirely illegal outside of a banana republic according to this book.(Montford,p.310). In the Wegman report we have a graph (see figure 5.3 replicated in the book in figure 9.2 (Montford,p.254)) and some discussion about how "independent" the reconstructions are seen from a social network view and how Mann is in the center of this community of paleoclimatists. I.e. Using Mann alone may be appropriate in the context of the Hockey stick graph.

Source

Montford, Andrew (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion; Climategate and the Corruption of Science. Stacey International. p. 482. ISBN 1906768358.

So on this point we do not need to uphold the POV tag. I will suggest that WMC and others that says the article has a WP:NPOV issue keep on with this kind of comments, and not as we have seen in the two discussions above. Nsaa (talk) 12:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Bratby

Who is Phillip Bratby, and why do we care about his opinion? Guettarda (talk) 01:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Yep, Its basically a self-published source, since everyone was invited to comment on the inquiry. And i can't see what his relevance is either. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Gilder quote

The Gilder quote appears to be self-published - it doesn't appear to have had even cursory attention from an editor (Columbo or Colombo? "Hockey Stick" or "hockey stick"?) and I'm not sure what sort of expertise Gilder is supposed to have on the topic. But even more than that, it's basically one long quote that doesn't make sense. "Columbo figure"? Is the average reader supposed to have a clue what that means? And why is that 90-word sentence quoted in entirety? It's almost incomprehensible in the original context. Reproduced here, devoid of context (or critical commentary, in violation of WP:NFCC), it's meaningless. Yeah, it's one of the few comments on the book. But it's self-published, it comes from a source (the DI) known to be unreliable, and Gilder is not an expert on any of this. So, again, what's the point of it? Guettarda (talk) 05:08, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The Glider and Calder quotes probably both need to come out. Calder's quote is from the book itself via Amazon. Cla68 (talk) 10:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Categories: