Lawrence Solomon Versus the “Wicked Pedians”

Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe has an extremely whiney column in the National Post complaining about the refusal of Wikipedians (which he refers to as Wicked Pedia. Ho. Ho.) to let him edit articles based on his personal experience.

The article in question was Wikipedia’s entry for Naomi Oreskes, whose very informative lecture on the history of Climate Change skepticism understandably has skeptics like Solomon’s ears burning.

Solomon claims that he found an error in Naomi Oreskes wikipedia entry stating fellow skeptic Benny Peiser had admitted error in his one of his criticisms of Orsekes. Solomon called Peiser, who denied making the admission of error. So Solomon edited the Wikipedia entry, removing the reference to Peiser’s admission, and claiming himself as the source.

A Wikipedian named “Tabletop” zeroed in on the change instantly and removed it, which confused and offended Solomon:

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop’s undid and protested: “Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him.”

Tabletop parried: “We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant.”

Poor, befuddled dittoheads like Solomon don’t understand the basic principle of citation. Tabletop did not “speak for Peiser,” she referenced him. Specifically, ehe Wikipedia entry referenced this post on Deltoid, which references this post on the PostNormalTimes, which references this article written by Benny Peiser himself, and where he makes the following admission in the comments section:

I accept that it was a mistake to include the abstract you mentioned (and some other rather ambiguous ones) in my critique of the Oreskes essay. It certainly deflected attention from my main criticism, i.e. that her claim of a unanimous consensus on AGW (as opposed to a majority consensus) is tenuous.

So in summary: Solomon believes it is unfair that Tabletop’s reference to Peiser’s own words posted to the Internet is unfair, because Solomon spoke with Peiser, who gave him permission to argue that those words, which everyone can see for themselves, don’t actually exist, and that we should take Solomon’s word for Peiser’s word that Peiser’s words aren’t really there.

References to Benny Peizer have been since removed from Oreskes’ entry, which is probably best, since a post referencing a post referencing a post isn’t the best citation method (neither is using comments posted to a thread), but Solomon’s position, that Wikipedia should simply let him edit its content referencing nothing other than his point-of-view, is pure hubris.

Wikipedia’s strength is it’s transparency, and there’s a great discussion over this issue on the site, something you won’t see in Solomon’s columns. There’s a conversation happening on Wikipedia, and Solomon wants to co-opt it with his make-believe authority.

I recommend he try his luck editing Conservapedia, where the readers are more accustomed to swallowing such tripe.

Note: Solomon’s organization, Energy Probe, claims to promote “alternatives to coal and nuclear power” and while their 10 Principles are sound, what exactly are they doing to promote alternative energies and protect the environment? From reading their multitude of articles posted online, NOTHING. Actions speak louder than words, and an organization claiming environmental principles that does nothing to uphold them is worse than actively working against the environment. Shame. Shame.