By Paul Homewood
Dr Susan Crockford has responded forcefully to the false and malicious paper about her published in the supposedly reputable journal, Bioscience:
Today I sent a letter to the editors of the journal Bioscience requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey et al. (Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy) published online last week.
The letter reveals information about the workings of the polar bear expert inner circle not known before now, so grab your popcorn.
I have copied the letter below, which contains emails obtained via FOIA requests to the US Geological Survey and the US Fish and Wildlife Service by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, E&E Legal, and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (USFWS request; USGS request) and sent to me by lawyer Chris Horner in 2014, unsolicited. I reveal some of them now, with his permission (most of the emails are boring, involving mostly technical topics not relevant to anything, as might be expected).
Susan’s full account can be read here.
But her conclusion in the letter to Bioscience sums it up nicely:
Conclusion
By identifying and discussing the above issues, I do not mean to imply that there aren’t other issues that could be raised about this paper. But these are enough.
You accuse me of having no expertise regarding polar bears, no peer-reviewed papers about polar bears, allege that I support a “scientific uncertainty” frame, and state that I criticize the work of Amstrup and colleagues without supporting evidence.
These allegations are untrue, defamatory and malicious, but in addition, the failure to mention my Ph.D. and my recent scientific critique constitute a falsification of my expertise and work output. In addition, the purported scientific analysis is shoddy and the language used is reprehensible.
I formally request that you retract this paper.
