Debunking Denialism

No, I am not saying this because my comments where removed or not published. In fact, as far as I can tell, all of the comments I made there have been published. I posted a critical comment about this earlier, but I decided to expand it into a blog post.

Today I am going to take on some Swedish allies in the overarching culture war against irrationality and pseudoscience on the issue of rejection and censorship. Not because I disagree with the overall conclusion they put forward. I completely accept that rejection is not the same as censorship (or more precisely that blog administrators have the right to decline publications of any comment they choose) and that people who yell censorship when their comments are not approved (or when they are criticized) are simply wrong. The problem is that I think that the justification they provided is horribly flawed.

I will explain their justification, outline the problems associated with it, and then, at the end of the post, provide a more persuasive justification for the point they are trying to make.

Since the original text is in Swedish, I will translate it myself, but make sure you check an online translating service if you want to check it out yourself. All notes within brackets are my notes to clarify certain things.

The Justification

This post will be examine the justification laid out in Rejection is not Censorship that was posted by the Swedish group called The Uppsala Initiative. It is pretty much the best Swedish resource against climate change denialists and their false arguments and pseudoscientific rhetoric. It resembles Real Climate in many ways, although not all posters at The Uppsala Initiative are climate scientists. Without further ado, let us get started.

Since a number of commentators do not seem to be informed about the difference between getting a text rejected and censorship, we would like to pay attention to the following:

Censorship
The previewing of content in channels of communication such as e. g. newspapers, books, films, radio and television programs. Censorship has usually been carried out by governmental agencies to hinder the spread of facts and views, which according to the rulers should not be made public knowledge. In Europe, censorship had its breakthrough in the 1500s, to be strongly limited in Swedish in connection with the Tryckfrihetsförordningen [A law protecting freedom of the press] of 1766 (Source NE [a popular Swedish encyclopedia]).

Rejection
Rejection is when a publisher chooses not to publish the work of an author, artist or musician. It can, for example, occur in the case of a newspaper or a publishing house declining the publication of an article or a manuscript or a record company declining to publish a musicians music.

Rejection is sometimes mistake for censorship, but the term is misleading because censorship has to do with governmental preview of material that falls under freedom of expression. Since it is not a right to publish in a certain newspaper or at certain publishing house, rejection is not the same as censorship. A rejection can be due to many different things, everything from the political views or topic of a newspaper or the assumption made by a publisher or record company about the marketability of a manuscript or record to the views of a museum regarding the immoral message of painting can be a factor. (Source Wikipedia).

In accordance with our comment policy, comments who assert censorship will, in other words, be rejected.

Again, feel free to use a translation service to see that I have not incorrectly characterized the claims made in the blogpost.

The Problems

There are many problems with the justification they put forward:

Problem 1: It is a definitional argument without any consideration of evidence. These justifications are suspect because they are letting definitions do the work that arguments should be doing. Compare this with the ontological argument for theism.

Problem 2: It may be considered hairsplitting or an argument just based on semantic considerations. Whatever we choose to call it — rejection or censorship — they are preventing some readers from commenting with critical viewpoints. The entire argument from the “stop the censorship!” crowd is that this action is unjustified and attempts to shutdown the conversation. This argument needs to be rebutted in a different manner than appealing to semantics (see under “A More Persuasive Justification” for an attempt at this).

Problem 3: Their encyclopedia source they used do not agree with their conclusion, since it says “Censorship has usually been carried out by governmental agencies to hinder the spread of facts and views, which according to the rulers should not be made public knowledge”. This entails that there are forms of censorship that is not carried out by governmental agencies, thereby undermining the proposed strict dichotomy between censorship and rejection.

Problem 4: Their Wikipedia reference lacks sources.

Problem 5: The authors of the Wikipedia reference is anonymous, so i cannot be excluded that the authors of the blog post contributed to the Wikipedia article, thereby giving the impression that it is an independent source backing up the claims made in the post when it is, in fact, not independent at all. While this seems unlikely, it cannot be ruled out at this point.

So is there any way to salvage this justification?

A More Persuasive Justification

Does a person have the right to stand on the lawn near the windows of your private property and shout that you are a horrible person and all of your arguments are seriously flawed? If you ask him to leave, or make him leave with reasonable methods, are you guilty of censorship? It is clear that the person has no such right; he or she is on your private property. It would not be censorship to turn him away and you have every right to do so because it is your property.

In a similar fashion, declining to publish comments is not censorship, because getting your comments published on another person’s blog is a privilege bestowed upon reasonable comments, not a right extended to all comments regardless of their intellectual content. It is also not an attempt at silencing criticisms, because there is nothing that prevents you from starting your own blog and writing thoughtful posts criticizing them there.

Having a rational comment policy (which The Uppsala Initiative has) is just an added bonus. They are within their right to reject any comment they want, regardless of the content of that comment in the same way you have the right to turn away any person shouting at you, no matter what it is he or is shouting. You do not like it? Too bad, go start your own blog and stop complaining. Alternatively, stop being a pseudoscientific denialist repeating the same tired canards that have been debunked thousands of times before and provide some original arguments or comments. Then you have a better shot at getting published.