December 17, 2003

major win for Bjorn Lomborg

Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" in which he reevaluates a lot of the raw data used for the doom and gloom environmental projections and comes up with quite a different answer. When the book came out, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) ruled that Bjørn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was "objectively dishonest" or "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice". This charge was followed at length by the Scientific American magazine (some details here) Anyway, today, the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute published a web page overturning the previous DSCD ruling. They said: bq. The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has today repudiated findings by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) that Bjørn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was "objectively dishonest" or "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice". bq. The Ministry, which is responsible for the DSCD, has today released a critical assessment of the Committee's January 6 ruling. The Ministry finds that the DCSD judgment was not backed up by documentation, and was "completely void of argumentation" for the claims of dishonesty and lack of good scientific practice. bq. The Ministry characterizes the DCSD's treatment of the case as "dissatisfactory", "deserving criticism" and "emotional" and points out a number of significant errors. The DSCD's verdict has consequently been remitted. This is a good day for science!!! Posted by DaveH at December 17, 2003 10:21 AM