There’s a sense in which Bjorn Lomborg is entitled to feel aggrieved about the finding of scientific dishonesty made against him. His book is no more or less dishonest than the average book on this topic coming out of the thinktanks on both sides. Indeed given his heavy reliance on works like Kahn and Simon’s Resourceful Earth (Hudson Institute) and Ronald Bailey’s The True State of the Planet* (Competitive Enterprise Institute) it could scarcely be otherwise. And as Lomborg’s book shows, there’s plenty of bias on the other side – he makes some pretty effective criticisms of Lester Brown’s Worldwatch Institute and flogs the corpse of the Club of Rome mercilessly.

Viewed as a polemic, the book is very effective – rather than defending Simon and other anti-environmentalists on the points where they are indefensible (the harmlessless of lead, the decline in fish catches, global warming) he adopts a safer position without mentioning the errors of his friends. Similarly, Lomborg is clever in taking a left-sounding line (instead of fixing global warming, give the money to poor countries) when convenient, while dropping it when it isn’t (carbon emissions trading isn’t politically feasible, because we would have to give a lot of money to poor countries). All par for the course in this kind of debate, and no more biased than Brown or Simon.

Why, then, has Lomborg copped so much more flak than others (including from me)? There are several reasons. First, there’s Newton’s Third Law – having been given glowing reviews by The Economist, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Lomborg was bound to attract a stronger adverse response.

Second, Lomborg displayed more hubris than most, skating over a wide range of disciplines where he was clearly unqualified, and attacking lots of very prominent scientists on the basis of tendentious presentations of their views.

Third, there was his self-presentation as a deep-green environmentalist, who was converted to the truth by his failed attempts to refute Julian Simon. This kind of Sunday school story is very effective in the short run, but it raises the bar in terms of the standards of honesty you are expected to satisfy. No one is surprised when, say, TechCentralStation, touts Julian Simon’s well-known successes while ignoring his failures, but one would expect Lomborg to pay more attention to the failures, given his supposed starting point.

Finally, and most damagingly, Lomborg has tried to have his cake and eat it as regards the scientific status of his book. On the one hand, it’s published by the most prominent of the University Presses, has the usual scientific apparatus of footnotes and references, and touts Lomborg’s academic credentials. On the other hand, he’s avoided the usual processes of peer review, given a biased and selective summary of the evidence, and generally used the tactics of a polemical debater rather than a research scientist. It’s this that’s got him into trouble with the Danish Committee.

(*Corrected – see comments thread).

Update The Economist takes the line that Lomborg’s book is not scientific research and should not be treated as such

Why, in the first place, is a panel with a name such as this investigating complaints against a book which makes no claim to be a scientific treatise?

Fair enough, but as I’ve said, Lomborg has tried to have his cake and eat it on this issue. Some of his defenders are still taking the exact opposite line, that Lomborg’s book is a sound scientific contribution to knowledge. And, after invoking Orwell, the Economist describes Lomborg’s data as “largely uncontested” (emphasis added), an Orwellian turn of phrase indeed.