When I point out to Monty that Garvey said nothing of the sort Monty retreats to note that Garvey actually said 'it depends'
Well if Monty cannot see the difference between the two positions I'm really not sure he is cut out for ethical punditry. Of course the self styled Bishop is a newbie to ethical questions . Despite squeezing the word 'climategate' onto the subtitle of his book nowhere in the Hockey Stick Illusion did Andrew Montford examine the ethics of drawing conclusions from hacked material nor criticize the hacker.
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Misrepresenting quotes like that is almost the house style over there. There's "OK to lie" (where a plainer summary would be "sometimes OK to lie" ). There's another one where "This was a tactical move (a white lie even?) " becomes "tactical lie" - and so the suggestion becomes a statement. Needless to say both of these break the irony meter, appearing rather 'tactical' and machievellian themselves. And there are plenty of others, including this on Houghton: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/2/16/no-he-did-say-it.html
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it is dishonest, though it increasingly looks that way. I think it's down to a chronic tendency to report his (mis)interpretation as if it were what somebody actually said. Basically, a tragic combination of mind reading together with a crippling inability to read for comprehension due to preconceptions and bias, and a routine assumption of bad faith.
Still - anytime you see a partial quote there or an ellipsis, you know that something important has likely been left out. Lack of a link to the source is another indicator. It is amusing that almost none of the 'sceptics' ever seem to check any of it.