Heartland Still Misrepresenting 500 Scientists as "Co-authors" of Denial Paper

onMay 7, 2008 @ 08:52 PDT

The Heartland Institute is still misrepresenting 500 scientists as “co-authors” of a paper that challenges the human role in global warming.

Although Heartland President and CEO Joseph Bast conceded on Monday that his organization had been wrong to present the scientists as people who personally and professionally doubted the proof of humankind’s impact on the climate, he refused to respond to the demands from dozens of those scientists to have their names removed entirely from the web-published “paper.”

Bast said:

They have no right – legally or ethically – to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree. Their names probably appear in hundreds or thousands of bibliographies (My emphasis: RL) accompanying other articles or in books with which they disagree.

But if you click here on the Heartland site, you get to the now-redacted original article by renowned denier Dennis T. Avery, and if you then click on the Download Full Text (pdf) button, you go to a page that DOESN‘T say “bibliography” or even “references.” It says, unapologetically, “Co-authors: Alphabetical List.”

To strain the point, Joe Bast might look up the definition of “co-author.” My Oxford says simply “a joint author,” while TheFreeDictionary goes the extra mile and adds the word “collaborating.”

And if it’s not clear enough yet for Mr. Bast, he might even look up “collaborator,” which would get him to this:

1. To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.

2. To cooperate treasonably, as with an enemy occupation force in one’s country.

We at the DeSmogBlog have received outraged emails from six dozen of Bast’s “co-authors” and we have contacted fewer than 150 out of the 500. They didn’t work on this paper; they didn’t authorize the use of their names; and they object strenuously to the spin that Avery has put on their legitimate scientific research.

In other words, none of these scientists fit the first definition of collaborator, but if you can define science, figuratively, as a “country,” Avery certainly seems to fit the bill as a collaborator in the second, cooperating with fossil-fuel funded think tanks and ideologically driven political campaigners to undermine science.