re: #232 WindUpBird

Sorry, I am not a fan of this false equivalency. One side has no science, the other does. If you hate Ludwig, fine, but it has nothing to do with the science. There is zero equivalency. There are scientists on one side, and craven charlatans on the other. That scientists don’t always use best practices doesn’t mean the science is wrong. Bad code doesn’t mean bad science. I could walk down the aisles of a Gamestop and point out all the games ont he shelf that are riddled with awful, broken code that are selling like hotcakes.

If we’re waiting for all scientists to be perfect people with perfect practices before accepting their conclusions, it won’t ever happen.

Yes, and I’ve made that point explicitly many times, in response to folks who took my criticism of coding style and data management practices as support for the position that the information produced was, somehow, wrong. Despite being extremely careful to state that it’s impossible to tell from the limited sample of code I’ve looked at exactly what it does, let alone whether it’s correct. And I’ve provide a reasonable - and completely speculative - explanation for the code that’s caused so much consternation with it’s comments about “fudge factors” and other remarks: it looks to me like a piece of plotting code, with the data scaled by three-quarters to make it fit in the graphing window.

Finally, I would not call the flaming twits on the side of AGW scientists. I would call them flaming twits. Ludwig is an excellent example, who claimed just a couple days ago that science can never be questioned in any way, that it is beyond examination or investigation - about the most unscientific attitude it is possible for me to imagine.