The CBC, Rex Murphy, and Putting Facts in Context
The CBC's Rex Murphy.
Photo Credit: National Speakers Bureau
I returned to my favorite blog-site intending to write about the fortunate stupidity of Iranian Mullahs in further undermining their legitimacy this bloody weekend when I found Brian Gordon, yet again railing against the CBC. To recap on Brian’s views, he wishes that media were fact-checked for scientific accuracy and that only scientifically accurate data and historical truths where such truths are held in consensus are reported. Despite our mutual antagonism Brian and I are not, at heart, ideologically opposed. Still, I felt the need to respond to him, again, because the consequences of his “vision” for Canadian media are ultimately totalitarian. There are traditionally two paths to totalitarianism: informed religiosity, and uninformed naivety. The views of Mr. Gordon represent the latter. Regardless, Brian and I both agree that there is an imminent threat to human survival due to global warming and exponential human growth, we both disdain the CBC and Rex Murphy (though for different reasons), and we don’t think much of the supposed intellectual abilities of professing Christians. On the subject of ontology we also agree that there is “truth” and that such truth must be discernible, replicable, and observable. To us it is clear that our species is going to soon run out of space and food, it is clear that gravity is a force, and it is clear that evolution drives all life on this planet. To any thinking and enlightened person truth does not come from the ridiculous and silly texts of sheep-herders, nor does it come from some “expert’s opinion.” There are truths that people don’t like (for example, that generally speaking, men are stronger than women) and truths that they do (for example men generally live shorter lives than women). Truth is held not by people but by evidence.
Opinion is a different matter. Opinions are held by individuals, are less than truth, and may be held by persons who may or may not be experts. Though not an expert on the subject of climatology, I am of the opinion that if we do not change our carbon behavior we will seriously devastate our planet. My opinion can be said to be “informed” because I have read primary and secondary literature on the subject and have analyzed the type of data collected, the statistical models used, and the legitimacy of the comparisons made between studies. My being able to do so is precisely what allows me to declare that my informed opinion, and the opinions of the thousands of researchers around the world who have come to consensus on the matter, IS TRUTH and not just opinion. Inability to analyze, assess, and respond directly to data relegates one’s opinion outside the domain of truth and into the domain of hearsay – that is the public discourse and the home of media. To dethrone the TRUTH of climate change, which is basically the informed opinion of others supported by data, would take mountains of EQUAL or BETTER contrary evidence. I am confident that Brian Gordon subscribes to the scientific and foundational view of academia that I have described here.
We have had evidence for global warming, as far as I am aware, since the mid-1940’s. This evidence was reported in media at a time when there was no consensus, nor a mountain of supporting data. At the time global warming was a fringe minority view and, by the standards of the time, negated by better evidence. Consensus, at the time, was that the earth is constantly cooling and heating (which is true), but that observed temperature fluctuations were well within the normal range (which in the 1940s they were). The problem was that mathematical models of the old data, when correlated to population-based models of industrial output, predicted warming in excess of normal heating and cooling cycles. This was a prediction and one based on a set of assumptions about human population growth for which consensus had not been reached either, and had it been given the Gordon-treatment of fact-checking, I am confident that global warming would have been struck out of public discourse on the grounds that better data and more consensus indicated that there was no serious climate risk. Minority opinions, no matter how absurd, even if they come from Rex Murphy, MUST be heard. The bothersome, cacophony that others make may just turn out to be useful.
At this juncture Brian Gordon is going to call foul so I must preemptively deal with this. He will say yes to my argument so far but insist on pointing out that I have provided a post-hoc example where an ad-hoc one is required – after all the consensus is in and Rex Murphy is using old and disqualified data to bring climatology into disrepute. To this I must say that my above example is a simple pedagogy to demonstrate only this, that tension exists in data, and also to string poor Brian along. For the Ad hoc there are numerous examples of old, ignored, or discarded data coming out from the woodwork to inform and expound a new theory. Mendel’s famous study of pea-plants which set forth the fundamental theory of genetics and informed Darwinian evolution, despite Mendel most likely fudging his data, (not uncommon for the clergy to insist on being right) resulted in the fusion between genotype and phenotype which has been unshaken since! Mendel’s once neglected “opinion” subsequently informed the entire field of biology despite being once considered merely unimportant and curious at best. We could also discuss the thousands of times when data thought to be completely wrong have turned out to be correct – just like the early data on global warming, like the insistence of the particle-wave duality of light. I could go on and on! The upside to the public burden of allowing people like Rex Murphy to erroneously spout off is that despite the seemingly remote chance such errors will turn out to be correct, that there is a high statistical likelihood, given the sheer number of erroneous opinions people have, that a few of these strange thoughts will inevitably be correct! Fact-checking, as Brian proposes, would squelch this!
There are also logistical considerations to Mr. Gordon’s suggestions and I could go on ad nauseam on the constitutional ramifications of these, but ignoring the legal ignorance of his proposition for the purposes of this article, let’s examine a world where all NEWS could be given the “Constitutional Section 1” for the Peace Order and Good Governance of Canada. In my previous article I said to Brian, in short, that the subject matter fit for NEWS cannot be truth because they are only the opinions of others. There can thus be no actual commitment to truth by public media. There is a very good reason for this (and I’ll be blunt as usual) – journalists are generally incapable of discerning the truth and as such would be unqualified as regulators of their industry under the Mr. Gordon style of Media Censorship. The other option, in which members of government and/or persons who work for government, regulate truth in media is equally absurd and also for reasons of incompetence. When speaking of the Canadian government, this statement should be evident to anyone who has ever visited a post office. For those who require a brief explanation, the most educated and senior members of our government are typically Lawyers. The legal trade itself is one which, generally speaking, one will excel to the detriment of one’s own education. Law school itself is little more than three years of looking up rules in publically available, and now online cases or legislation that both anyone with a search engine can find and any semi-literate person can understand. Further, most Lawyers seldom bother to memorize these rules – I mean why would you? One can just look them up and bill one’s clients for their time. It is best to think of lawyers as little more than persons capable of using rather bulky lexicons and encyclopedias, and who maintain archaic but useful traditions and liturgy in the courts. Critical thinking and the classic skills of academia are no longer required in a legal education save for the ability to clearly articulate one’s own stupidity and the liberal and moral plurality to accept the stupidity of others.
On journalists: Journalism is not even a profession. Professions are elite and require specific knowledge and training, and come with a vast body of independent literature and long periods of mentoring and specific training. Nowadays any hack with a modem and the bravery to use a semi-colon in print is typically considered fit for the job (as mere job it is). Worse yet, there are people useless enough attend two-year-long journalism programs (as if they possess any fundamental knowledge within them), and there are now even (snicker, snicker) prestigious Bachelor Degrees in Journalism (with specialties no less) but these, I assure you, do not prepare their degree-milled graduates, in the least, for critical or even intelligent thinking. At present the critical faculties must be innate within the journalist himself, but then again how many intelligent people willingly take a starting salary of twenty-five thousand or less? A journalist, I have no doubt, can report what is the opinion of another individual (as can a person with a frontal lobotomy) but with very rare exception can such a person have any idea about how to go about looking at the data-set of a scientist and actually assess the legitimacy of the methods used to ascertain a reported finding. In my own field of Psychology this is precisely why quacks like Dr. Phil, and people who believe in psychotherapy, music therapy, and Reiki are consistently sought out for their “opinions” – the mathematical and critical incompetence of such people is precisely what makes them attractive to the journalistic mind.
Let’s put aside climate change and talk about marijuana. This is a safe plant. People should not drive while using it, nor should it be taken by those with psychotic disorders or positive symptoms of schizophrenia. I would advise people to get a psychiatric assessment prior to use, but these caveats lacking, people should be free, and would be safe to smoke as much as they want. There is no observable harmful effect from marijuana save emphysema and you can catch that by sitting around a camp fire! This opinion, truth actually, is general consensus among researchers who look at the effects of cannabis on the brain. There is a lot of opinion out there to the contrary, and while it is up to media to report it, the lesser opinions of conservatives on this matter when they are reported will be without a shred of empirical evidence that would survive a non-governmental peer-review. Should conservative naysayers be silent? Should they be “fact-checked”? If yes, could a mere medical doctor, never trained in research methods fact check fairly? Most doctors (general practitioners) are poorly trained in experimental techniques. Perhaps Mr. Gordon you think that only research-trained neuroscientists with extensive experience in endogenous cannabinoids should comment on the research and check facts? Given the small research community in that field, however, don’t you think such a fact-checker would be either a friend or research-fund-competitor of the scientist submitting “the NEWS”? The potential for bias is enormous! Again, Mr. Gordon, I don’t think that you have thought very far ahead. You offer no viable suggestion as to who should be doing this so called “fact-checking” and rather than thinking this through you point to the inherent post-modernism of NEWS outlets and declare them fraudulent. Well they, for the most part are not fraudulent, they are simply ontologically inferior. The reason for their inferiority stems from the fact that they are unqualified to assess truth, and even if legally obligated to check the truth, neither the government nor the media would be able to perform this task without tremendous threat of bias. You would also have the problem of scientific consensus flipping back and forth as theories get ironed out. How would you propose we report on the tensions between quantum mechanics and string theory? You, I, and most people, would have no idea. Oh we could teach the controversy – if you want to spend a lifetime preparing for a story.
The only solution for your quandary, Mr. Gordon, is if academics became JOURNALISTS, but you seem to have forgotten that they are. You see academics publish in JOURNALS which are fact-checked, peer-reviewed, and publically available. People who possess the intelligence and ability to read them do, but the truth is that most people cannot. Most journalists certainly cannot navigate a scientific journal, and nor can most Canadians – it is not that Journalists and Canadians are all unintelligent, but simply that they lack the 5-9 years of training required to read them properly. Often, even with a proper education, a great deal of academics still cannot (e.g., anyone who calls himself a psychotherapist or a chiropractor). So you see your insistence that one institution (media) act like another (academia) again stems from the fact that you were not thinking about what you were saying. You, Mr. Gordon, blame the media for misinforming the Canadian masses but you rail against the media instead of the public education system which has so stupefied our population. Ask this question instead: If the statistical math used in 95% of all experiments across all sciences is conceptually and procedurally as easy as algebra how come it is not taught, along with logic, problem solving, and the history of academic ontology in high-school instead of mostly in graduate school to pimply opinionated twenty-somethings who have gone through a quarter of their lives forming opinions on subjects that, since lacking these tools they were, unbeknownst to themselves, incapable of actually critically understanding? How does an engineer try to blow himself up for Allah on plane to Detroit? How does a Mormon make it through Med School and become a Pediatrician while preserving his faith? How does a Catholic Chemist actually believe that a stale cookie transubstantiates into the actual body of Christ? I know how – through ignorance. But Brian what you should legitimately fear are not the rantings of individual ignoramuses, but the gullibility of the collective, undisciplined minds, of an entire system of education that, worse than any maternal trailer-park stereotype, produces generation after generation of idiots all the while patting itself on the back for its effective rate of reproduction.
PS. Mr. Gordon you will also find, Sociologically speaking, that White- North-American-Holocaust-Deniers are proportionately small when compared to the vast number of Holocaust deniers in Iran, Iraq, Palestine, North Africa, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Northern India, Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon, Albania, and Indonesia. You are correct, however, to point out the common occurrence of religious fundamentalism and its retarding effect on intellect, as well as its prevalence among those who deny well-known historical facts and data.
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Tags: brian gordon, cbc, climate change, Environment, rex murphy
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January 4th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Hello Travis – I’m honoured.
Seriously, I think many people, including you, are missing some rather key points.
1. I don’t care what opinions Rex Murphy has. He is entitled to his opinion, as are all the deniers.
2. I do care very much that Murphy is spouting those opinions during The National Newshour.
3. Ignoring climate change is dangerous. People are dying and being driven from their land. Canada is at risk of being kicked out of the Commonwealth. Trade sanctions have been suggested.
Canadians expect their news to resemble the truth; this is why news organisations employ people to check facts. Reporters who falsify the truth are fired.
Murphy can talk about what he wants on his own time. On the taxpayer’s dime and during the Newshour, he should not be stating dangerous falsehoods.
January 4th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Brian, you are shockingly persistent in your ignorance. Assuming that you like numbered lists I will respond in kind.
1. Saying that people are entitled to an opinion is neither a statement of fact nor a clarification it is so painfully obvious it can barely be called an observation.
2. I have stated all along that I agree that climate change is important and to ignore so is terribly dangerous.
3. “Trade Sanctions” is a term that you are using inappropriately, though I would expect that you likely heard the term from another person who used it incorrectly. Trade Restrictions would be more likely appropriate, and even if enforced Canada would have no problem selling to other nations. Any claim that Canada could be kicked out the Commonwealth is absurd and spouted by total ignoramuses. Membership to the Commonwealth can not be squelched by internal regulatory polices of respective members and members of the Commonwealth can not vote to include or disclude members on the basis of those members national interests. For this to happen the treaties and ordinances that bind the Commonwealth would have to be amended and that, my friend, would take, in addition to wide consensus across the Commonwealth, about a decade to execute. Note that India is a far greater polluter than we are. Note that India has passed numerous laws and regulations that are overtly offensive to many other nations, and note that India is still a member of the Commonwealth.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Now, for a new list.
I hate tax-supported media, in all its incantations. Still you fail to understand, because you are just terribly ignorant of the regulations governing media in Canada and their relationship to the Constitution and Charter, that what you are proposing is that truth somehow be determined and evaluated by media sources. Media sources, as I have explained ad nasueam, are unqualified and completely incapable of discerning truth be they tax-funded or otherwise. All they can do is report. So…
1. Being completely unqualified and incapable of discerning truth media can only report opinions – not truth. If they were reporting the “truth” under Canadian Tort Laws there would be ample reason to presume them liable when found not reporting the truth – meaning they could be sued. Since new facts and data arise all the time and since the general public is generally ignorant as to how scientific discoveries arise this liability would be tremendous. How many people could sue the CBC for reporting, as it once did and on data that was both supporting and refuting that Ginko Biloba improved memory, for their loss on an ineffective and ultimately fraudulent product. You see the minute you advertise the truth you become liable for it. That is precisely why no media outlet, tax funded or otherwise, would ever consider claiming to know the truth because they would get sued to hell. If they were tax-funded, that means that we the people would all be sued in proxy by members of our own society. Only an completely absurd individual could make such a suggestion. But lets say such a notion goes further…
1a) To make your suggestion work then you would have to remove legislation, and innate human rights, that allow individuals to hold accountable persons claiming to have truth who also offer public services. This would require a constitutional amendment. I suggest you look this up to see all that it entails. Further Tort laws are at time both provincial and federal and most of the ones that would require ammendment would be provincial even though CBC is a federally funded program so you would also need to affect legal change province by province nation-wide. I assure you this can not be done for a mere regulatory suggestion.
1b) You would also have to have an enormous regulatory body of highly trained persons who despite the small numbers in each of the many specialist fields are without bias against their competitors. This also raises the question – who censors the censors? I ad hoc know that you do not have a satisfactory answer to this.
1c) Should you attain all of this, impossible as it is, you would then have the problem of Rex Murphy being able to get a job at CTV and if you wanted to regulate the private sector well see above plus 10x the opposition.
2. Pundit: A person who espouses contrarian and minority viewpoints, often truthfully though occasionally satirically – a devil’s advocate. There are many definitions of pundits. Your suggestion is, ultimately that the CBC do away with Punditry. Punditry, is a well established tradition in English Speaking Newsrooms and is one that you clearly do not understand. Also you fail to understand that pundits often do not believe what they are reporting, they are merely providing a means of adversarial discourse. This, also, is what lawyers do. A key belief in English speaking nations is that by strengthening opposing viewpoints one can hone truthful ones. We see this in our legal system, our parliamentary system (aka Opposition Parties), our media, and in academia. In fact wherever you see educated and informed people you will inevitably encounter some form of punditry. You want to remove a pundit from public discourse? Use the above list of people I have provided to now outline exactly who your opposition would be.
3. You claim that Rex Murphy is performing a public dis-service. This is where you and I differ. Though I find the man terribly irritating and inflammatory, and also a media whore (in his own way), I think that he performs a valuable public service. Think, for example, how many people he has pissed off, and through their collective irritation, inspired to learn more about global warming? Now, being predicable and dull, as you are I suspect your under-stimulated cortex is, you have already piqued up about the people he has misinformed. To that I say this: they have the disadvantage of not knowing what is reported in academic journals and possess an inferior knowledge. The burden now rests on us who know the truth about global warming to be able to dissect the lower heretical arguments of Rex Murphy on this subject and expound on the correctness of our own. This is precisely what makes or breaks a society. Societies who can engage in this are enlightened, societies who do not are either totalitarian or theocratic. Your suggestion ultimately is an attack on the enlightenment values that have literally built the society that you live in and created the science that you now want to defend. If asked to choose between loss of millions of people in Asia, the Middle East, and the African Continent to starvation and human habitat loss, or the loss of the enlightenment values that have literally lifted our species out of crude tribalism and religious fervor to a plateau of learning and development, I would prefer to loose the former because if we lost the latter – everything would be lost in no time soon. This is precisely why I say that your proposition is more dangerous than global warming. Global Warming in the short term only threatens about half our species in the immediate future. Your suggestion threatens our species entire system of growth and development, a system that, not perfect, is more valuable than Billions of human lives BECAUSE it is the culmination of the shared experiences and learning of Billions.
January 7th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Travis – I am not the ignoramus here.
Ok, lists:
1. Booting Canada out of the Commonwealth has been put forward by other Commonwealth nations. Google it; it was mentioned by Monbiot and others.
2. You may have heard that G77 nations have walked out of climate discussions when Canada speaks.
3. Trade sanctions or restrictions or limitation or import taxes – whatever form they take – has been suggested by the Prime Minister and President of France. Sure we could sell to other nations – after we’re cut out of the entire EU, that leaves…the US!
January 7th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Oh, and one more thing. Yes, I do expect reporters to dig for the truth, and the news to report it. That is what they used to do.
I don’t think you understand the distinction between facts (truth) and opinion. You can hold whatever opinion you want, on any topic. You can be of the opinion that the Earth is the centre of the universe and the sun revolves around it. You would be wrong, because that is untrue; the facts do not support your opinion.
This is Rex Murphy’s case: the facts (i.e., truth) contradict his opinion, but he is too deluded to see it. If Murphy were blathering on about non-harmful stuff, who cares? But when he states untruths that will lead us to harm, then I don’t think he should be on the news or on taxpayer-funded media at all.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Kamalesh Sharma, secretary general of the Commonwealth of Nations, said this week: ‘I would like to think that our definition of serious violations could embrace much more than it does now.” She said this of course in reference to including meeting greenhouse gas emission targets. So you see the media has turned its ears to activists and others who have been protesting (with good cause I may add) Canada for years. But what you fail to understand is that a Secretary General is in no position to even propose policy. Neither is anyone else who was cited in the media e.g. Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary according to the Guardian, or Saleemul Huq, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change according to the newspaper. So while guys like Monbiet, who at times is somewhat of a charlatan himself, like to get into the fray the truth is that there is no serious consideration of withdrawing Canadian membership. The truth is that membership has only been withdrawn on cases of gross human rights abuses where one action or series of actions directly affects other people. So while there are people in the employment of the Common Wealth, but who are themselves decfacto powerless, who would like to see a treaty change of this sort they are in no position to enact it. Even then, if such a proposal were tabled, it would have to voted on by all members blah blah blah – I recall already explaining to you how this body works and that its resolutions are not in the least binding on our Parliament or Provincial Legislatures, and that it would take up to a decade to enact. I find myself sounding like a broken record but you are so persistent in thinking you know things that you clearly do not and are quick to idealize political end games without even the vaguest understanding of what is required to get from a very real and scary point A to your fairy tale point B. You are not alone, on this matter I could say the exact same of Mr. Monbiot. While he usually has a noble cause, his total ignorance of British civics makes him, occasionally, the laughing stock of pubs and backrooms frequented by members of the House of Lords. If you are going to propose change my god man at least figure out how it has to come about legally, otherwise your only other two options are to stockpile weapons and raise a revolutionary militia of the co-ignorant, or, more realistically, you could just admit that how little you know about your own government and the international treaties and commitments we have, put the activist literature aside and actually learn to read law and legislation. That would at least make you an informed contributor to the climate solution and not some spoiled, spoon-fed student with easy answers and jackasses opinion. Just suggestion. You might want to be in the position of being able to distinguish who is able to propose changes and who just simply wants them.
Now you keep going on about not having pundits in tax funded media. I clarified for you their historical important, I clarified for you the role of counterargument in strengthening truth and fortifying debate, and I have have gone on at length to explain my reporters, are completely unqualified to ascertain scientific truth BECAUSE THE MATH AND VOCABULARY AND THE YEARS OF LEARNING ARE NOT IN THEIR SKILL set. They can not do this, it is not possible, they don;t have time and if they took it public media would become too expensive for the common purpose because to produce it would cost just as much as it costs to produce academic journals, which is what people who really want a scientific perspective on any subject read anyway. Dumbing these down for people such as yourself and Rex Murphy is not really possible. Without a very strong grasp of statistics, methodology, and long streams of academic debate around a subject it is impossible to declare that one knows a subject or can speak authoritatively on a subject. You strike me as someone who would like to possess such authority but can not – likely due to your own laziness. Your ignorance of how this country works, and how academia works, our legal system, and our media traditions, is nothing more than a public embarrassment to yourself and our education system. You clearly don’t know a thing about EU trade treaties yet you are willing to make stunningly stupid statements about total trade blockades imposed by the EU. God if there was any validity to this it would be reflected in the Stock and Commodities markets the next day! Stupid! Stupid also is it to say that there is a difference between facts and truth (this by the way is a quote from Chairman Mao) so if you want to hold on to quotes without knowing their origins in a demented quasi-literate brain knock yourself out. I have explained in exasperating detail how facts are discerned through the scientific method and have frequently stated my agreement with you on climate change. What you are unable to hear or read or understand is anything that suggests that you are ignorant, illiterate (as I increasingly suspect) and grossly misinformed or delusional in respects to how government and policy works. I have explained to you the Constitutional and Bureaucratic impossibility of the “Brian Green vision for tax-funded media” and really can find little more to say to you on the subject. What is clear, is that instead of sourcing out my information and bothering to educate yourself aka “doing the work” you, like most lazy people (I might add with an unqualified journalistic mind) want everything handed to you easy. Fine the world is full of people like you, but the world also has people like me. People who attended law school on full scholarship, who start their own businesses, have graduated with 2 First-Class Honors Degrees, published scientific papers, who have traveled the world, keep elite inside company and who are well versed in Classic Literature and Modern Scientific Methods. Then there are people like you, dumb, unqualified, spoon fed, partially educated, lazy, and skeptical all the while lacking the tools of skepticism. You sir are one with opinions but not a person with an opinion of value. It is in this manner that you are a form of Irony, you rail against Rex Murphy for attacking something you believe in, (believe because of course you are too illiterate on the subject to critically evaluate the science and thus be able to truly scientifically accept it) but you see you and he are the same – you talk at legnth about things that you know nothing about. He rattles on about global warming, you rattle on about the Commonwealth and how media should be censored for truth as if it is actually a possibility that it could be (and stupider today then last because now you propose that the government determine what is “harmful” untruth and what is not). You are completely unaware of your Machiavellian and Totalitarian tendencies and would easily through away all our enlightenment values and civilization for a Utopia whose realization would be a nightmare at least as dark as anything predicted by global warming (perhaps this is why you quote Chairman Mao – likely without knowing it). Dumb, misinformed and ignorant. The only thing you can communicate clearly is your misinformed opinion and all you do is repeat it back and forth like some fakir’s mantra as if its repetition shall forth bring its manifestation. Symptomatic of narcissism, psychotic delusion, or possibly just plain old fashioned frustration, combined with a lack of available sex partners. I can’t begin to imagine what dumb liberal arts college you are attending in what useless subject and my only hope is that this little slap on the wrist wakes you up to how very little you know about what you speak. Should you have spoken such stupidity in one of my classrooms I would have made a public mockery out of you, or rather demonstrated to my students how you did this for yourself.