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Have to say, writ large, of the ‘traditional print’ outlets in the United States, the Christian Science Monitor has traditionally rated quite high with me. While it isn’t part of my every day reading, I have valued it when I’ve gotten my hands dirty reading it. In other words, it really was a bit of a shocker to see that the CSM chose to jump the shark with the distribution of climate denier nonsense from Anthony Watts and his putting of Harold Lewis on a pedestal as some sort of 21st century Martin Luther.

Sadly, before publishing Watts‘ drivel, the CSM editorial staff didn’t bother to actual look into the facts and see what the scientific community reaction was to Lewis’ resignation. They might have, if they’d tried using the Google tubes for a moment or two, bumped into Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society which was part of the 2009 response to a climate denier petition from a few APS members seeking to get the APS statement on climate change science revised to, well, reject science.

Perhaps the editors should have taken a look at the APS response to Lewis’ resignation which includes (supported) statements like “There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion …” and “Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false.” Perhaps the CSM might have spent a moment to determine whether there was a basis for the APS response before publishing something that continued to perpetuate Harold Lewis’ fraud (promoted by Anthony Watts).

The editors might have valued a moment reading Joe Romm’s dissection of Harold “Martin Luther” Lewis. Words like the following might have given them pause in putting Lewis on a pedestal:

the Inhofe-esque statement “this is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist,” accuses the scientific community broadly defined of conspiring in deliberate fraud – and not just the community of climate scientists, but the leading National Academies of Science around the world (including ours) and the American Geophysical Union, an organization of geophysicists that consists of more than 45,000 members and the American Meteorological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Such a statement accuses all of the member governments of the IPCC, including ours, of participating in that conspiracy, since they all sign off on the Assessment Reports word for word. And it accuses all of the leading scientific journals of being in on this fraud, since the IPCC reports are primarily a review and synthesis of the published scientific literature.

Does the CSM editorial board really stand with those accusing so many scientists, from so many fields, from so many nations of engaging in systematic fraud?

Does the CSM editorial board believe that it is serving any form of public interest by giving voice to anti-science syndrome sufferers, like Watts, who are working so hard to pedal truthiness and deception on such a grand scale?

Rather than Watts’ deceptive drivel, perhaps it would have made sense to publish Climate change and the integrity of science. And, well, if Watts and Lewis ‘earned’ their way into CSM, perhaps the CSM editors should take commentator Medas’ advice:

I would suggest that the CSM run 97 articles on the other side of the story to represent the 97% of climate scientists who support the tenants of global warming. And please, let’s not compare one bitter scientists with a man who changed the course of western civilization. I doubt that Dr. Lewis will be viewed as a hero 50 years from now.

As commented by Eric Grimsrud, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Montana State University,

I suspect that the CSM indulged in the time-honored newspaper inclination to give equal attention of “both sides” of all issues. Unlike politics or economics, however, in science there comes a point when there are no longer equally valid different views of a given topic. Mother Nature tends to do things either one way or the other. Just as we now know that the Earth is not flat, we also know that it is being overheated by the excess CO2 we are putting into its atmosphere.

As Professor Grimsrud highlights, “fair and balanced” does not lead to truthful. We have to wonder whether the CSM would give equal time to the Flat Earth Society in an obituary for an astronaut.

Amid an election period notable for one party’s serial rejection of science, it is sad to see that the CSM has joined an echo chamber in perpetuating anti-science arguments.