[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Patron Saint of Charlatans

[Bill Totten]

How does Christopher Booker get away with it?

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (September 23 2008)


Does Moore's Law now apply to human civilisation? In 1965 Gordon Moore
predicted that the density of transistors on integrated circuits doubles
every two years or so. Similar laws now seem to apply to every aspect of
computing. And, perhaps, to rest of the world. The information
available, the scale of human interactions, the detail involved in
financial deals, trading relationships and political decisions appear to
be growing exponentially. We are drowning in complexity. To be good
citizens we must understand what is done in our name. But how?

We lean ever more heavily on experts. But who can we now trust?
Corporate PR campaigns have become so sophisticated that it's almost
impossible for most people to tell the difference between genuine
science and greenwash, or real grassroots campaigns and the astroturf
lobbies concocted by consultants {1}. Public relations companies set up
institutes with impressive names, which publish what purport to be
scientific papers, sometimes in the font and format of genuine journals
{2}. They accuse real scientists of every charge that could be levelled
at themselves: junk science, hidden funding, undisclosed interests and
inflated credentials.

If journalists have any remaining function, it is to help people
navigate this world: to try to understand the crushingly dull documents
that most people don't have time for, to smoke out the fakes and show
how to recognise the genuine article. But we mess up too. The most we
can promise is to try not to make the same mistake twice.

So what can you say about a man who makes the same mistake 38 times?
Who, when confronted by a mountain of evidence demonstrating that his
informant is a charlatan convicted under the Trade Descriptions Act,
continues to repeat his claims? Who elevates the untested claims of
bloggers above peer-reviewed papers? Who sticks to his path through a
blizzard of facts? What should we deduce about the Sunday Telegraph's
columnist Christopher Booker?

This week Richard Wilson's book Don't Get Fooled Again is published {3}.
It contains a fascinating chapter on Booker's claims about white
asbestos. Since 2002, he has published 38 articles on this topic, and
every one of them is wrong.

He champions the work of a man named John Bridle, who has described
himself as "the worlds foremost authority on asbestos science" {4}.
Bridle has claimed to possess an honorary professorship from the Russian
Academy of Sciences, to be a consultant to an institute at the
University of Glamorgan, the chief asbestos consultant for an asbestos
centre in Lisbon, and a consultant to Vale of Glamorgan trading
standards department {5}. None of these claims is true. Neither the
institute at the University of Glamorgan nor the centre in Lisbon have
ever existed {6}. His only relationship with the Glamorgan trading
standards department is to have been successfully prosecuted by it for
claiming a qualification he does not possess {7, 8}.

None of this deters Mr Booker. Armed with Bridle's claim's, for the past
six years he has waged a campaign against asbestos science. White
asbestos cement, he maintains "poses no measurable risk to health" {9}.
He contends that "not a single case" of mesothelioma - the cancer caused
by exposure to asbestos - "has ever been scientifically linked with
asbestos cement" {10}. A paper commissioned by the UK's Health and
Safety Executive, he says, "concluded that the risk from white asbestos
is "virtually zero" {11}.

Booker tells me he has read this paper. Oh yes? The term he quotes -
"virtually zero" - does not appear in it {12}. It does show that white
asbestos (chrysotile) is less dangerous than brown or blue asbestos.
But, while there is uncertainty about the numbers, it still presents a
risk of mesothelioma, which depends on the level of exposure. People
exposed to a high dose (between 10 and 100 fibres per millilitre per
year) have a risk (around two deaths per 100,000 for each fibre per
millilitre per year) of contracting this cancer. Only when the dose
falls to 0.1 fibres per millilitre per year does it become "probably
insignificant" {13}. But Booker's columns contain no such caveat. He
creates the impression that white asbestos is safe at all doses. The
paper he misquotes also cites five scientific studies of exposure to
asbestos cement, which record "high levels of mesothelioma mortality"
{14, 15, 16, 17, 18}.

Two years ago, John Bridle's misleading CV and dodgy record were exposed
by the BBC's You and Yours programme {19}. So the BBC immediately became
part of the conspiracy: in Booker's words "a concerted move by the
powerful 'anti-asbestos lobby' to silence Bridle" {20}. He suggested
that the broadcasting regulator Ofcom would clear John Bridle's name
{21}. In June this year it threw out Bridle's complaint and published
evidence even more damning than that contained in the programme {22}. So
has Booker changed the way he sees "Britain's leading practical asbestos
expert"? Far from it. He tells me that "my view of Ofcom has plummeted"
{23}: it too has joined the conspiracy.

We are not talking about trivia here. This is a matter of life and
death. How many people might have been exposed to dangerous levels of
asbestos dust as a result of reading and believing Mr Brooker's columns?

For several years Booker has been waging a similar war against "warmist
alarmists", by which he means climate scientists. Nine days ago, for
example, he attacked Michael Mann for publishing a paper which shows
(alongside scores of other studies) that global temperatures do indeed
follow the famous hockey-stick pattern: a moderate long-term cooling
trend terminating in a sudden upwards bend. Mann, Booker told his
readers, had been "selective ... in his new data, excluding anything
which confirmed the Mediaeval Warming" {24}. But Mann's paper, published
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses every
uncluttered high-resolution proxy temperature record in the public
domain {25}. How did Booker trip up so badly? By using the claims of
unqualified bloggers to refute peer-reviewed studies.

Under their guidance he routinely mistakes weather for climate and makes
claims about the temperature record which bear no relation to the
studies he cites. My favourite Booker column is the piece he wrote in
February, titled "So it appears that Arctic ice isn't vanishing after
all". In September 2007, he reported, "sea ice cover had shrunk to the
lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less
keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ... Its graph of northern
hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000
million square kilometers to just four million from the start of 2007 to
October, also shows it now almost back to thirteen million square
kilometers" {26}. To reinforce this point, he helpfully republished the
graph, showing that the ice had indeed expanded between September and
January. The Sunday Telegraph continues to employ a man who cannot tell
the difference between summer and winter.

But for the Wikipedia Professor of Gibberish, this patron saint of
charlatans, even the seasons are negotiable. Booker remains right,
whatever the evidence says. It is hard to think of any journalist -
Melanie Phillips included - who has spread more misinformation. The
world becomes even harder to navigate. You cannot trust the people who
tell you whom to trust.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. See Chapter 2 (The Denial Industry) of my book Heat: how to stop the
planet burning. 2007. Penguin, London.

2. See for example Arthur B Robinson, Sallie L Baliunas, Willie Soon,
and Zachary W Robinson, 1998. Environmental Effects of Increased
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and
the George C Marshall Institute.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm. This paper was printed in the
font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

3. Richard Wilson, 2008. Don't Get Fooled Again: a sceptics guide to
life. Icon Books, Cambridge.

4. Ofcom, June 2008. Broadcast Bulletin No 111. Complaint by Professor
John Bridle brought on his behalf by Fisher Scoggins LLP.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/obb111/issue111.pdf

5. You and Yours, BBC Radio 4, 18th October 2006.

6. ibid.

7. ibid.

8. I wrote to John Bridle twice seeking to put questions to him, but
though - according to Christopher Booker - he is aware of my emails, he
has not replied.

9. Christopher Booker, 25th May 2008. Farmers face GBP 6 billion bill
for asbestos clean-up. Sunday Telegraph.

10. Christopher Booker, 31st January 2004. The BBC helps to sex up the
asbestos threat. Sunday Telegraph.

11. Christopher Booker, 12th January 2002. Billions to be spent on
nonexistent risk. Sunday Telegraph.

12. John T Hodgson and Andrew Darnton, 2000. The Quantitative Risks of
Mesothelioma and Lung Cancer in Relation to Asbestos Exposure. Annals of
Occupational Hygiene, Vol 44, No 8, pages 565–601.

13. ibid, Table 11.

14. M Albin, K Jacobson, R Attawell, L Johannson, and H Wellinder, 1990.
Mortality and cancer morbidity in cohorts of asbestos cement workers and
referents. British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Vol 47, 602–610.

15. M. Albin, L Johansson, F D Pooley, K Jakobsson, R Attawell, and R
Mitha, 1990. Mineral fibres, fibrosis and asbestos products in the lungs
from deceased asbestos cement workers. British Journal of Industrial
Medicine. Vol 47, 747–774.

16. M M Finkelstein, 1984. Mortality among employees of an Ontario
asbestos-cement factory. American Review of Respiratory Disease. Vol
129, 750–761.

17. M M Finkelstein and J J Vingilis, 1984. Radiographic abnormalities
among asbestos cement workers: and exposure response study. American
Review of Respiratory Disease. Vol 129, 17–22.

18. M M Finkelstein, 1989. Mortality among employees of an Ontario
factory manufacturing insulation materials from amosite asbestos.
American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Vol 15, 477–481.

19. You and Yours, ibid.

20. Christopher Booker, 14th October 2006. The BBC falls for the
asbestos scam. Sunday Telegraph.

21. Christopher Booker and Richard North, 2007. Scared to Death. From
BSE to global warming: why scares are costing us the earth. Page 319.
Continuum, London.

22. Ofcom, ibid.

23. Christopher Booker, 22nd September 2008. By telephone.

24. Christopher Booker, 14th September 2008. Climate change chicanery.
Sunday Telegraph.

25. Michael E Mann et al, 9th September 2008. Proxy-based
reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations
over the past two millennia. PNAS. Vol 105, No 36, pages 13252–13257.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0805721105.

26. Christopher Booker, 4th February 2008. So it appears that Arctic ice
isn't vanishing after all. Sunday Telegraph.

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/09/23/the-patron-saint-of-charlatans/


TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this
essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/