Anthony Watts: “When You Resort To Name Calling, You’ve Lost The Argument”
By Collin Maessen on comment
It’s not often that I fully agree with something that Anthony Watts says, but sometimes it does happen. This time it’s about how you approach those that you are critical about.
One of the things people notice about me is that I focus on the arguments that someone presents and not the person; also known as playing the ball not the man. Of course I’m not perfect but I do make an effort to stay civil in what I write and I expect the same from visitors on my website who leave a comment.
Experience has taught me that not being civil almost always derails any rational exchanges. It can easily result in polarizing both sides more, and can have real negative consequences for readers of your website accepting valid science. When communicating science language matters more than you think.
That’s why I fully agree with Watts saying “when you resort to name calling, you’ve lost the argument” (archived here):
However, though I might agree with this statement it doesn’t mean I don’t have an issue with Watts saying this.
He’s often extremely uncivil in his language towards opponents and can be very nasty towards them. I talked about a few mild examples of this type of behaviour in my blog post ‘The 97% Climate Science Consensus Reality‘. The worst behaviour he displayed there was making a false accusation and dragging in something that was completely irrelevant in an attempt to make John Cook look bad.
Same goes for the guest blog posts he allows on Watts Up With That (WUWT), one of the more egregious examples I talked about in my blog post ‘97% Climate consensus ‘denial’: the debunkers again not debunked‘. In it I talk about a guest blog post written by Christopher Monckton where he constantly calls everyone that worked on the Cook et al. paper “zit-faces”, “tiddlers”, “teenies”, and “tiny tots”, basically calling them children at every opportunity. Or changing the names of scientists to call them “Doorstop” (Doran), Zimmerframe (Zimmerman), and Scrambledegg (Anderegg).
The comment sections on WUWT are also not a very pleasant place to spend your time. The comments you see there can get very nasty, and moderation isn’t exactly fair towards those that are critical about content on WUWT (there’s a very obvious double standard on how civil you need to be).
This is why Watts has no right to demand that others be civil towards him when he doesn’t take the effort to keep the discourse on his blog civil.
Collin Maessen is the founder and editor of Real Skeptic and a proponent of scientific skepticism. For his content he uses the most up to date and best research as possible. Where necessary consulting or collaborating with scientists.
I’ve read some insulting comments at WUWT. Dumb Scientist linked to a thread in which commentators decided he should be referred to as “it” instead of “he”. It does seem quite hypocritical to demand civility from one side but then not enforce it on your own side.
It is quite hypocritical. At least Watts should keep the language in what he writes civil. As long as he doesn’t do that I can’t take him serious with his requests that others stay civil towards him.
The other option he has is to allow the same language towards himself if he does this. But considering the rather irked responses from him when this does happen I doubt he’ll do this.
There are some crackers on his Wikiquote page:
“Name calling and labeling does nothing but lower your own level of discourse, when you have no other facts to present, which is why alarmists often resort to name calling and labeling.” — Anthony Watts
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts
That’s indeed a big self awareness fail. It’s also quite telling that its a quote from 2009 and he still hasn’t applied it to himself.
Mom always gave us kids the Golden Rule message. I was once told at work to be nice to everyone whether they deserve it or not because some day you may need a favor or the other guy could become your boss. Dad said several times… Always use tact and diplomacy – it’s usually appreciated, and the incredibly thick won’t realize they’ve been had until several days later… and maybe not even then. It’s a real shame that those who think so highly of themselves and their intelligence are often the biggest abusers of everyone else’s feelings and often are clueless to their own inadequacies by considering their obnoxious insults and sarcasm to be their rapier wit.