‘Sceptical’ ‘environmentalist’ * Bjorn Lomborg has been the subject of a complaint to the official Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty of the Danish Research Agency (roughly equivalent to the US & Australian national Academies of Science). From bertramonline here’s a translation of the key findings.

Objectively, publishing the publication in question can be characterized as ‘scientific dishonesty’. When, however, also taking the subjective criteria of intention and gross negligence into consideration, it cannot be said that Bjørn Lomborg’s publication is covered by this characteristic. On the other hand, the publication is found to be contrary to the norms of sound scientific practice.
….
Given the considerably large number of scientific themes the defendant deals with without having any specific scientific expertise, [the Board] did not find — or deems it possible to bring forth — a sufficient foundation to conclude that the defendant wilfully or in gross negligence tried to mislead his readers.

Bertram has more on the Danish reaction to this, which is spiced up by the fact that the Danish government has given Lomborg a generously-funded research institute to run. And there’s a full English translation of the report here.

To summarise drastically, the Board’s finding is that Lomborg has presented a selective and biased statement of the evidence in support of a particular case, but has put it forward as a scientific publication through his statements, and through the use of scientific footnoting conventions. This is certainly true of his treatment of the economic issues, as I point out here

Thanks also to Rob Schaap, who alerted me to English-language coverage of this in the Washington Post.

* As I said in the piece linked above, “Lomborg is free to believe the most optimistic estimates on every environmental issue, and the most pessimistic estimates of the cost of doing anything. But he shouldn’t call himself ‘skeptical’ or an ‘environmentalist’. “