“Scientific American’s interview with Dr. Richard Muller“ (May 23, 2011). Anthony Watts has long resented Scientific American’s general scientific rationality. Just a few months ago they labelled his blog as a “well-known climate denier site” after-all. However, as we have seen across the popular press, the pretense of “balance” sometimes enables sloppy reporting of controversial topics to allow anti-scientific positions to gather support. Popular support fpr the disproven claim that the MMR vaccine triggers autism offers an excellent example.

Here we find Anthony practically wriggling like a puppy over his mention in Michael Lemonick’s lazy Sci Am interview of physicist Dr. Richard Muller about climate change science.

Both Steve McIntyre and I are mentioned prominently in the article, and once again Dr. Muller thanks us for our contributions to the debate.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress covers the Scientific American article at length, exposing Muller’s statements for their lack of both knowledge and integrity.

The otherwise inactive Dr. Muller injected himself into the Global Warming debate when he started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Denialists licked their chops at the thought of a temperature reconstruction that appeared impartial but came from a politically aligned source, but howled of betrayal when Dr. Muller’s first analysis reluctantly confirmed the existing science.

Still, Dr. Muller enthusiastically embraces the irrelevant nitpicking of citizen-scientists such as Steve McIntyre (contradicted in Scientific American itself back in 2009 “Novel Analysis Confirms Climate ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph“) and freely libels both long-standing climate experts such as Dr. Michael Mann and commentators such as Al Gore. Muller acknowledges the existence of “denialists” but fails to name any so it’s hard to know just how crazy you have to be for Muller to step back. You’re safe, Anthony!