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Why is Walter so bitter? (Read 24669 times)
freediver
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #45 - May 22nd, 2010 at 10:22am
 
Blaming your tools now?
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pjb05
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #46 - May 22nd, 2010 at 10:27am
 
freediver wrote on May 22nd, 2010 at 10:22am:
Blaming your tools now?


It's fully referenced and can be verfied without the link - stop arguing about nothing.
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pjb05
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #47 - May 29th, 2010 at 8:53pm
 
It seems others are more intent on attacking the messenger and not the message. Walter Starck has something to say about this:

Serious concerns with report on adaptive management of the GBR.

In a recent article in the Cairns Post on this subject, Dr. Terry Hughes was quoted as stating I am not a marine biologist and have never published anything on the GBR. Although this is provably false on both counts it is also revealing as well as irrelevant. Such ad hominem attacks are invariably resorted to only when there is no effective defence for the real issue. It demeans the attacker more than the target. The real issue here is not a schoolboy pissing contest over credentials. It matters not if I were a garbo. In fact it could well be argued that such might even better qualify me to handle this matter.

This involves a serious matter of scientific impropriety and any attempt to ignore, deny or obfuscate it will only compound the ultimate discredit. I bring it to your attention as Chairman of GBRMPA in the hope and expectation that you will promptly and properly address it.
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freediver
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #48 - May 29th, 2010 at 9:23pm
 
Quote:
In a recent article in the Cairns Post on this subject, Dr. Terry Hughes was quoted as stating I am not a marine biologist and have never published anything on the GBR.


Was this written by Walter? If so where?

Quote:
Although this is provably false on both counts


Did he prove it to be false, or just declare once again that he is the greatest scientist ever to sell DVDs online?

Quote:
it is also revealing as well as irrelevant. Such ad hominem attacks are invariably resorted to only when there is no effective defence for the real issue.


If Walter made yet another appeal to his own authority, then it is relevant. If he doesn't want people talking him down all the time, he should stop talking himself up and making far more absurd attacks on genuine practicing scientists. Or at least stop complaining when they try to bring him back down to earth.
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pjb05
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #49 - May 30th, 2010 at 10:32am
 
freediver wrote on May 29th, 2010 at 9:23pm:
[
If Walter made yet another appeal to his own authority, then it is relevant. If he doesn't want people talking him down all the time, he should stop talking himself up and making far more absurd attacks on genuine practicing scientists. Or at least stop complaining when they try to bring him back down to earth.


Are you really that thick? Walter made an appeal to reason. Do you call him saying it wouldn't matter if he was a garbo an appeal to authority?

Note that you still haven't replied to any of the easily verifyable arguments in his critique. His comments above sum you up rather well.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #50 - Jun 18th, 2010 at 8:50pm
 
Quote:
Do you call him saying it wouldn't matter if he was a garbo an appeal to authority?


I call it an appeal to his own authority when he claimes to be "one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs" and to have "over 40 years worldwide experience in reef studies and his work has encompassed the discovery of much of the basic nature of reef biology". Especially when it is backed up by an aweful lot of hot and and nothing else.

It would matter if he was just a garbo, because people like you would stop trotting out every retarded idea he comes up with and expecting everyone to take him seriously.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #51 - Jun 19th, 2010 at 1:20pm
 
freediver wrote on Jun 18th, 2010 at 8:50pm:
Quote:
Do you call him saying it wouldn't matter if he was a garbo an appeal to authority?


I call it an appeal to his own authority when he claimes to be "one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs" and to have "over 40 years worldwide experience in reef studies and his work has encompassed the discovery of much of the basic nature of reef biology". Especially when it is backed up by an aweful lot of hot and and nothing else.

It would matter if he was just a garbo, because people like you would stop trotting out every retarded idea he comes up with and expecting everyone to take him seriously.


That's just your construct - ie a strawman. If his ideas are 'retarded' then prove they are.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #52 - Jun 19th, 2010 at 6:59pm
 
I already have, on several occasions. But you insisted that because he is a bigshot scientist, his ideas must have merit. Then you claimed that his status as a scientist has nothing to do with the veracity of his claims.

I tell you what, if you can prove he is the scientist he claims to be, I will start taking him seriously again and disprove a few more of his claims for you.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #53 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 2:44pm
 
freediver wrote on Jun 19th, 2010 at 6:59pm:
I already have, on several occasions. But you insisted that because he is a bigshot scientist, his ideas must have merit. Then you claimed that his status as a scientist has nothing to do with the veracity of his claims.

I tell you what, if you can prove he is the scientist he claims to be, I will start taking him seriously again and disprove a few more of his claims for you.


FD, credibility comes not from authority, but a well made argument. It was you who nagged me to to provide his credentals. I am still waiting for you to justify your claims/ denials on the strength of the relevant arguments.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #54 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 2:46pm
 
Here, you can have a go at this:

FROM: Walter Starck, Ph.D, Australia

TO: Dr Russell Reichelt, Chairman, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Australia

Dear Dr. Reichelt,

Your response is appreciated. However, I am disappointed that it fails to address most of the substantiative concerns which I raised and serves more to obscure than to clarify the few matters which are touched upon.

Your reply somewhat muddles together the declaration of no conflict of interest and acknowledgment of funding sources which are two distinctly separate requirements for PNAS authors.   

It is difficult to conceive any meaningful concept of conflict of interest which would find no conflict in 21 employees and beneficiaries of generous funding from an organisation producing a glowing assessment of the management of that organisation. If this study had been produced as an in-house review published by the GBRMPA, the inherent interests would have been apparent and require no caveat.

However, by publishing in a leading international journal, bannering the authors as a who’s who of Australian marine science, explicitly declaring no conflict of interest and not making clear that all of the authors are deeply beholden to GBRMPA, a quite misleading impression has been presented that this is an independent assessment.   

Acknowledgment of support is not the same as disclosing sources of funding for “the work” as required by PNAS. The former is broad and loose in scope. The latter is much more specific.

What is important in this instance is not a listing of organisations which may in some manner have contributed to research used in this review; but, who funded this particular work in itself. It seems unlikely that an effort of this magnitude took place informally as a spare time voluntary effort without any specific funding or approval of resource usage from higher management.

For example, the review itself states that, “Another important observation emerging from this review is the extent of relevant data that are not published or readily accessible. A full picture of the effects and effectiveness of zoning on the GBR has required extensive use of grey literature, previously unpublished data, and collation of separate data sources.”

Surely, the task of assembling and collating this considerable body of diverse and scattered information must have required something more than incidental effort and funding.   

That the lead author and three of the co-authors are GBRMPA employees and only GBRMPA has access to much of the most important unpublished material, make it seem reasonable to assume that the GBRMPA has played a lead role in the production and funding of this report.

While the failure to make this clear might have been unintentional, it is far from unimportant and now that it has been brought to attention, any attempt to ignore or dismiss it can only be seen as deliberate obfuscation.

It should also be noted that not one, but three, of the co-authors of this review have been recipients of Pew fellowships and a fourth is also a co-author of a Pew funded study conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

The key finding of this study was that the most cost effective option for management of a vast new Coral Sea MPA would be make it entirely a no take area managed by GBRMPA.

Although the fact that McCook et al also emphasises the importance of “no take” zones and the cost effectiveness of GBRMPA management might be seen as affirmation of the Pew sponsored findings, it could also be seen as a concerted campaign to that end.   

Limiting disclosure of Pew involvement to the mention that one author has received a Pew fellowship is more than a little misleading in this regard.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #55 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 2:47pm
 
Your reply further states that, “The paper also draws attention to cases of conflicting evidence and does not ignore them.” This is factually incorrect and such can easily be seen in the clear examples I cited in my own review of McCook et al. To briefly mention just four important examples:

1.The extensive long-term coral trout surveys by Ayling, which repeatedly found no statistically significant difference in trout numbers between closed and open reefs, have been ignored.
2.While much was made of a doubling of trout numbers on protected reefs in one of eight reef areas surveyed, the fact that numbers on reefs open to fishing also doubled was ignored, as was the decline in numbers on protected reefs in five of the eight areas.
3.McCook et al. claim that expanded protected zones have resulted in, “major, rapid benefits of no-take areas for targeted fish and sharks”. Yet, this is directly contradicted by Heupel et al., 2010, who found that in reef sharks, "few individuals showed fidelity to an individual reef suggesting that current protective areas have limited utility for this species." Although both studies appear to have been in press at the same time, Heupel was a co-author in both. It is thus difficult to understand how the claim in McCook et al. could be made in good faith and without qualification.
4.McCook et al. state that, “fish abundances in no-entry zones suggest that even “no take” zones may be significantly depleted due to poaching.” However, no discussion or even mention is made of the voluminous evidence which clearly shows the exceptionally low fishing pressure on GBR fisheries.
In your reply to me, you intimate that my concerns have no credibility because they have not been published in a peer reviewed journal. Such a position does not seem to be a very well considered one for several reasons:

•It would appear that you will also need to dismiss the McCook et al. study itself; because, as cited above, they admit making extensive use of “grey literature” and unpublished data.
•It will also require dismissing your own statements on this issue as mere opinion, for they too have not been published in a peer reviewed journal.
•What I have written on this matter is in fact a peer review and what you are suggesting would then be a peer review of a peer review. Presumably this too would be subject to further peer review.
•Recent exposure of the misuse of peer review to censor conflicting evidence as well as using non-peer reviewed status to dismiss such evidence, while at the same time freely citing the latter when it supports a desired agenda, has brought great discredit to climate science and the IPCC. It would be well advised for GBRMPA to drop this failed tactic.
In my first email drawing my concerns to your attention, I noted that PNAS authors must, “make materials, data, and associated protocols available to readers.”   

I then requested that such data be made available for independent examination via download from the internet and asked that it should include all of the numerous unpublished coral trout, crown-of-thorns and coral bleaching survey reports conducted for GBRMPA.

In your current reply you state that the situation, in respect to relevant data that are not published or not readily accessible, “refers to the situation prior to publication of this paper and the release of the data sources in this paper was a very positive step forward.”   

Perhaps it is my error; but, I can find no such data in either the McCook et al. review itself or in the online supplementary material and I cannot see any indication of where it may be found elsewhere.   

If you could please advise where the released data to which you refer can be accessed it would be appreciated.

For GBRMPA to find nothing to support any concern regarding scientific integrity in any of the above plus the multiple other, specific, well documented and easily verified matters to which I have drawn notice, is unacceptable.

Research integrity is not an optional extra which may be exercised at the discretion of GBRMPA. As the Chairman of an important Australian research institution, you have an obligation under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research to properly investigate any credible allegations of research misconduct.   

Clearly, there is no requirement that such concerns be presented as a formal scientific report in a peer reviewed journal. Your one-page letter of dismissal, which fails to satisfactorily address any of the over 18 specific concerns I have documented, falls well short of properly meeting this obligation.   

The immediate response from James Cook University affirming that they take such allegations seriously and will properly investigate them with regard to the reef ARC stands in marked contrast to this belated and dissembling response from the GBRMPA.

So often in matters of propriety, the most serious malfeasance resides not in the original offence, but in the attempt to deny it. I hope that this issue does not have to be pursued down such an unnecessarily unpleasant path.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #56 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 3:44pm
 
Quote:
FD, credibility comes not from authority, but a well made argument. It was you who nagged me to to provide his credentals.


If you hadn't been spruiking his 'credentials' I wouldn't have asked you to provide them. You are the one who put them on the table. Now you are backpedalling. Are you now saying that Walter's claims have no more authority than some bloke down the pub who can put together a well made argument?

Here is an example of you spruiking his credentials, in the opening paragraph of your reefgate thread:

pjb05 wrote on Apr 1st, 2010 at 7:17am:
Following is a letter from Walter Starck [wstarck@gmail.com] to an academic journal about a recent article they published which violates many canons of science. Walter Starck is one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #57 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 3:56pm
 
] Quote:
FD, credibility comes not from authority, but a well made argument. It was you who nagged me to to provide his credentals.


If you hadn't been spruiking his 'credentials' I wouldn't have asked you to provide them. You are the one who put them on the table. Now you are backpedalling. Are you now saying that Walter's claims have no more authority than some bloke down the pub who can put together a well made argument?

I didn't base my argument on a pissing contest regarding credentials - as you must very well know. And yes it doesn't really matter who makes the argument.

Here is an example of you spruiking his credentials, in the opening paragraph of your reefgate thread:

pjb05 wrote on Apr 1st, 2010 at 7:17am:
Following is a letter from Walter Starck [wstarck@gmail.com] to an academic journal about a recent article they published which violates many canons of science. Walter Starck is one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs.


Duh FD, that quote is an introduction from the site the article was copied from. It is hardly an example of me 'spruiking' his qualifications or relying on an appeal to authority argument.

PS: I am happy to leave the issue of credentials aside and discuss the issue of the relevant arguments - why is this so hard for you?

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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #58 - Jul 17th, 2010 at 10:00pm
 
Quote:
I didn't base my argument on a pissing contest regarding credentials


You seem to change what you 'base' it on to avoid whatever point I respond to. When I tried responding to the technical bits, you insisted his argument was sound becuase he is a bigshot scientist.

The point is, you brought it up, not me. If you withdraw your claim that he has any scientific authority I will hapilly drop the topic.

Quote:
PS: I am happy to leave the issue of credentials aside and discuss the issue of the relevant arguments - why is this so hard for you?


You want me to just ignore the bits of your argument that you don't feel like backing up? If you concede that he has no credibility after all I will leave it too.

I think you'll find that Walter's credentials are a big part of your belief system and you will have a hard time admitting he is a phoney, which is why you can't actually leave this thread.
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Re: Why is Walter so bitter?
Reply #59 - Jul 19th, 2010 at 7:56pm
 
[3] Quote:
I didn't base my argument on a pissing contest regarding credentials


You seem to change what you 'base' it on to avoid whatever point I respond to. When I tried responding to the technical bits, you insisted his argument was sound becuase he is a bigshot scientist.

Crap. You haven't responded to the 'technical bits' at all - and you have admitted this.

The point is, you brought it up, not me. If you withdraw your claim that he has any scientific authority I will hapilly drop the topic.

Not wanting to base the argument on scientific authority does not mean I have to make a declaration that he hasn't any scientific authority - duh!

Quote:
PS: I am happy to leave the issue of credentials aside and discuss the issue of the relevant arguments - why is this so hard for you?


You want me to just ignore the bits of your argument that you don't feel like backing up? If you concede that he has no credibility after all I will leave it too.

As above. Also the point is that you have ignored the substantive parts of my argument and raised one red herring after another.

I think you'll find that Walter's credentials are a big part of your belief system and you will have a hard time admitting he is a phoney, which is why you can't actually leave this thread.

If he is a phoney then it wouldn't be hard to demolish his arguments.
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