According to this piece in the SMH, sourced from the UK Telegraph and Guardian (admirable balance there) Britain is moving to delay war until the end of year. The analysis in the article confirms almost precisely the one I have been putting forward on this topic.

It’s increasingly clear that a US declaration of war, without a return to the UNSC, runs the risk an embarrassing fiasco, with key allies like Britain, Turkey and perhaps even Australia, suddenly finding they have urgent engagements elsewhere. Even Kuwait and Qatar, generally assumed to be safely in the bag, have not made firm commitments – a British pullout could give them the escape hatch they’ve obviously been looking for.

Another noteworthy development is the US plan for postwar reconstruction which calls for the US military to share power with a civilian, preferably UN, administrator. It’s hard to see how this can work if the UN is bypassed.

The only case for immediate action is the ‘war by timetable’ argument – the US has mobilised for a February war, so February it must be. This kind of thinking led to disaster in 1914, and will do so again.

(Thanks to Jack Strocchi for alerting me to this piece).

Following my item on Ron Brunton’s review of Windschuttle, I got a very nice email from Ron, who turns out to be a reader of this blog, though, not surprisingly, he disagrees with me on a number of issues. He enclosed a complete copy of his article. I’ll quote another passage with which I’m in (almost) complete agreement

For instance, Lyndall Ryan, who receives the heaviest battering in the book, wrote an article for The Australian which could be read as a collective suicide note for her profession. She did not contest Windschuttle’s allegations of fact against her, and even admitted to a few `minor errors’ in her footnotes. But she had her `truth’, Windschuttle had his, and history was a `complex terrain in which multiple stories and interpretations are represented’.

Fine, but if there is no way of deciding between such strikingly different accounts, why do we need university departments of history? Perhaps the public interest would be better served by closing them down and using the money to establish schools of astrology or feng shui.

My main concern with the last suggestion is that one of our ‘enterprising’ Vice-Chancellors will take it seriously. I’m sure there’s a big unmet demand for degrees in feng shui.

And I should note that Ryan seems to have realised the futility of this line – her letter to the Australian attacking Windschuttle’s misquotation of her work didn’t seem to leave any room for ‘multiple truths’. Hopefully she will follow up with a more substantive response giving a clear statement of the basis for the claims criticised by Windschuttle.

Update The passage in Ryan’s article that upset me most was not the one quoted in full by Brunton, but the one he alluded to, which was also pounced on by Miranda Devine
“Two truths are told. Is only one ‘truth’ correct?”
Not to put it too bluntly, Yes. We are always fallible, and can never be certain of knowing the truth, but that doesn’t mean that there can be as many different truths as we like.
More generally, the piece as a whole was aptly described by Rob Corr as a ‘time-buyer’. I think it’s clear that if Ryan had access to her notes and could prove Windschuttle wrong, she wouldn’t have indulged in this kind of thing, which just played into his hands. I’m prepared to wait and see what she has to say – given the inaccuracies and selective presentation already pointed out by Bain Attwood and Henry Reynolds among others, I don’t see any reason to rely on Windschuttle’s assertions.

Further update All the comments threads are lively today, but this is probably the best. Out of a bunch of excellent contributions, pro and con, I’m most grateful to Rob Corr for putting something very close to my own views better than I could myself. For a thoughtful statement of the contrary view, read the thread then visit Gary Sauer-Thompson. And the renewal of the pomo debate has tempted its undefeated champion, Don Arthur, out of retirement, squaring off against the self-explanatory Derrida Derider. Last, but not least, one of the main participants in the debate, Cathie Clements, has offered some useful thoughts on truth and history. She has more to say here.

Quite a few people have made comparisons between the controversies that have been discussed here recently and the exposure of bogus (or at least very unprofessional) research by US historian Michael Bellesiles purporting to show that very few Americans owned guns before the Civil War. Bellesiles has had a major prize revoked and has resigned his position. You can pick your own parallels, but I was struck with this familiar rhetorical trope, quoted in a long and critical piece in the History News Network

In a taped interview published in the Emory Report in 1999, Bellesiles said, “I’m familiar with guns — I used to be in the NRA, as a matter of fact.

Another example of a sinner seeing the light!

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.

I’ve previously made the point that in his discussion of Tasmanian Aborigines and their supposed cultural incapacity for things like “guerilla war” and even “compassion”. Keith Windschuttle is guilty of an extreme form of the cultural relativism he denounced in The Killing of History. I’m pleased to see, via Rob Corr, that conservative anthropologist, Ron Brunton agrees, saying

Windschuttle rightfully criticises the one-dimensional view of white settler attitudes that emerges from some historians’ accounts. But he holds an equally crude view of Aboriginal motivations and capacities.
He derides the suggestion that Tasmanian Aborigines might act with “humanity and compassion” because such notions were “literally unthinkable” to them.
This baseless claim not only displays the cultural relativism that Windschuttle otherwise scorns, it also goes against significant evidence that was available to him. (emphasis added)

Brunton’s intro says he also “finds a lot to admire”. Unfortunately, I missed this piece when it came out, and I’ll have to head off the library to check the whole piece (or pay Rupert Murdoch for access to his archives).

At this stage, I think it’s clear that Windschuttle’s critique of Lyndall Ryan, while weakened by his own misleading quotation of her work, has raised important, and so far unanswered questions. In addition, he has debunked some popular massacre stories. On the other hand, his quibbles about minor misquotations in the work of Henry Reynolds are looking increasingly petty as the weaknesses in his own work are exposed.

‘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’. “

According to the NYT, the U.S., in a Shift, Is Willing to Talk With North Korea About A-Arms. This is good news, in the sense that it marks a step forward from the incoherent response we’ve seen so far from the Administration. On the other hand, the fact that there seems to be no alternative to buying these guys off is bad news. Coming back to the good news, only a government that’s already driven its population into destitution by a lunatic policy of autarky* and maintains absolutely closed borders would be as invulnerable to pressure as North Korea, so perhaps there won’t be too much of a precedent.

What this all means for Iraq is anybody’s guess.

* I had “autarchy” which is also correct for the DPRK, but not what I meant. Thanks to PM Lawrence for picking this up. Another entry for the “modern thought” blog, perhaps?

Visit Rob Schaap’s blogorrhoea for a fascinating, if a bit abstract, debate about the strengths and weaknesses of the neoclassical economic model, bouncing off the Gittins piece I linked to late last year. Be sure to read the comments thread, where many of this blog’s regulars, notably including derrida derider, have already weighed in.

I should really write something about this, but I’m still struggling with the best way to handle long posts on abstract issues. I’ve had a bit of success with the modern thought blog, and I may go this way. Comments anyone?

A year or two ago, selling education over the Internet was going to be the wave of the future. As yet another university pulls out of the market, it is clear that (outside the kind of low-grade technical training offered by the ‘University’ of Phoenix), this is an illusion. The best hope is for non-commercial ventures like MIT OpenCourseWare.

Now I’m at the University of Queensland, that I’m distantly affiliated with one of these ventures, Universitas 21 Global. It was established a couple of years ago with a lot of fanfare and a claimed budget of $US50 million. So far, an online MBA has been announced – mountains and mice come to mind.

Like Jason Soon my deadly sin is Pride, according to yet another on-line quiz.

When you think about it this is pretty much a no-brainer for bloggers, with the exception of some really angry warbloggers. Sloth is out by definition, and anyone who uses the Internet for blogging fails badly on Lust. In a social and economic order based primarily on Avarice, Envy and Gluttony, it’s hard for an individual to stand out on these qualities. By contrast, Pride (or self-esteem as we now call it) is an essential precondition for proclaiming your opinions to an audience of billions (OK, hundreds, but billions might read it one day).

Update My beliefs about the sins of bloggers have been refuted by the sample in the comments thread, including anger, gluttony, lust and even sloth (Scott Wickstein, who tends to swear off blogging for a while, then return like a moth to the flame – sloth or workaholic?).