In several posts in my series on George Will’s misleading claims about global warming in the Washington Post, I have referred to the “Arctic Climate Research Center” at the University of Illinois. It has been brought to my attention that no such center actually exists. Instead, there is a group of scientists at the University of Illinois who conduct research on climate in the Arctic (one of whom, Bill Chapman, I interviewed as part of my research).
The phrase “Arctic Climate Research Center” is apparently the concoction of Michael Asher in a January 1 Daily Tech post. George Will has stated that he based his (erroneous) claims about global sea ice on Asher’s post. I can only assume he also got the fictional center from the same source. In writing my own posts on this controversy, I conducted a Google search on the name and ended up on a page with the banner “Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois.”
As with any error, I regret this oversight. I am now adding clarifications to all the erroneous posts.
Brad Johnson, who noticed this error, sums the situation up nicely:
Despite publishing criticism of factual errors and distortions in “Dark Green Doomsayers” by Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, science journalist Chris Mooney, Secretary General of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization Michel Jarraud, Post blogger Andrew Freeman, and Post reporters Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, the Washington Post has yet to issue a single correction for Will’s column, syndicated in dozens of newspapers nationwide.
Corrections are standard operating procedure at newspapers. It’s fact-checking after the fact, as it were. A few of my science articles for the New York Times have “Correction Appended” branded on them. There’s no shame if the corrections were simple oversights. We all make mistakes, and we ought to live with them. But have we really reached the point now where blogs [shudder] are becoming more conscientious about corrections than the editorial pages of the Washington Post?
April 7th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
[...] [Correction, 4/7/09: Bill Chapman is a member of the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois. Despite George Will’s claims in his column, there is no such thing as the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois. I regret not noticing this error sooner. Details here.] [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
[...] Update, 4/7/09: Alexander’s use of “Arctic Climate Research Center” is incorrect. [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
[...] [Correction, 4/7: It turns out that there is no such thing as the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois. That is a fabricated name. I should have referred to the Polar Research Group. Details here.] [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
[...] Correction: I erroneously called the University of Illinois Polar Research Group the University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center. The latter, used by George Will, is a fabrication. Details here. [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
There are ethical bloggers and unethical bloggers just as their are ethical journalists and unethical journalists. But yes, one would have thought that the Washington Post would generally be on the ethical side of things.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:57 am
If ethics were a criterium in journalism, newspapers would be illegal.
April 8th, 2009 at 8:15 am
[...] catch the error, which apparently originates with one Michael Ascher. Carl Zimmer has already run his own correction. I now join the crowd. Sorry folks, we try to avoid these things…and when something like this [...]
April 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
The Washington Post, as is the norm for most large newspapers, just doesn’t think it’s important to publish corrections. It all about circulation and revenue, not about facts.
[Carl: I think the corrections I mentioned to my own newspaper articles are evidence that this is not true.]
April 8th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Nicely done Carl. You have used the error an opportunity to make the point again – forcefully.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
OK, Carl, I’ll buy that your particular paper did well. I have noticed that when some paper prints an error on page one, the correction is usually on page 21.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Grist had a good post/article on how strange it is that the Post’s newsies (Freeman, Eilperin, and Sheridan, as also mentioned by Think Progress’ Johnson, above) are slagging on their own paper’s editorial page trying to set the record straight: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-07-post-reporter-calls-out-will/
April 9th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] Zimmer, The Loom, Discover, Correction In several posts in my series on George Will’s misleading claims about global warming in the [...]
April 9th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Ha … I just finished “Fooled by Randomness” (ppbk ed.); and Taleb has some funny things to say about WIll, refers to Will as his bete noire, and dismisses him as an entertainer. In a nutshell, I think the problem is when a journalist writes about something you the reader know a lot about, you the reader is forced to realize how much baloney masquerading as thought is published in newspapers generally.