“Climate skeptic instructor fired from Oregon State University“ (2012-06-10). Much like The White Queen, Anthony Watts can swallow any contradiction without a hiccup. Here he does his bit to fan the flames outrage over the persecution “firing” of climate skeptic Nickolas Drapela, an exalted Senior Instructor in chemistry at Oregon State University. It’s dang witch hunt!
First of all, setting aside any question of Nick’s scientific “persecution” (it’s farcical, but we’ll get there), those of us with functioning brains will recall Anthony’s resentful fantasies about how James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies should be fired for their views on climate change (i.e. they describe how it’s happening). He’s even run dumbass polls on the topic, and ‘fire ’em/throw them in jail’ is a steady somnambulistic undercurrent in the comments.
But that’s… different.
OK, let’s turn to the persecution. If we are to believe Nick’s champion Gordon Fulks, OSU is a place where:
“Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.”
Stalin, Lysenko, politically correct, “Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon”, hot button, hot button. The on-going reductions in OSU’s funding has nothing to do with it. Nor does the fact that Nick’s basically wandered from university to university for the last fifteen years. It’s definitely malicious persecution.
Next checkmark: Is Nick a fiercely insightful scientist whose careful analysis has disproven AGW and who must be silenced at any cost? Just look at his publication record! Case closed. Well honestly the case never opened because his entire published scientific output is third author on this metabolic chemistry paper from 2000. Gee, I wonder if that contributed to his termination?
Still, there are plenty of laughs in “Global Warming Cracked Open”, a paranoid cut-and-paste “sociopolitical” slide show rant about AGW. Slide 78 of 80 introduces the only science, a pathetic cherry-picked and debunked chart of solar activity from that bastion of scientific integrity, the deceptive “documentary” The Great Global Warming Swindle. He also assures us that “they regularly read all my email communications.”
Now I get it! Anthony Watts and other denialists look at this delusional no-hope nutter and see… themselves. Is this really the donkey you want to hitch your persecution wagon to, Anthony?
Thanks to Tamino’s post The Light of Day for doing the heavy lifting on this one,
Wott's Up With That? 
Arctic Ice extent collapse.
WUWT post on this alarming development coming in 3-2-1…..
There is a newer post on WUWT about someone being fired from UCLA for opposing certain population standards.. The LA Times has a neutral story on this and the comment by “morganestewart at 11:47 AM June 15, 2012” is intriguing. See Researcher sues UCLA, says his firing was political
Of course there are real cases of political reprisals in academia and we should not lose sight of that. In strictly human terms I wish both of these people the best of luck in finding suitable employment.
[You can always count on a “conservative” lobbying group to declare that the woes of a resentful professor are caused by the liberal conspiracy. Somehow I don’t think John Galt would whine his way to triumph… Still, there could be something to this. It would be nice to screen out the right-wing noise machine and get to the bottom of it. – Ben]
Like with Drapela, the UCLA case does not make sense when they claim it is political. In the UCLA case, the guy had been employed for 35 years already. Why get rid of him now?
In the case of Drapela, why get rid of him now, when he has been pushing his opinion for years already? Or an even harder question to answer: why allow him to maintain several personal webpages on the topic on the university website hierarchy, when they are so horrified by his opinion? Would be rather easy to prevent that (e.g., my university has rather strict rules on what is and what is not allowed).
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I took a look at the Drapela Power Point on climate change. Either Drapela is dishonest or he is content to get his “science” third and fourth hand from “denier” websites. Either of these is enough to get him dismissed from many universities, given that he was not tenured. On the other hand, maybe he was just let go from his temporary position due to buget cuts.
I will repeat: this information has been on his website for years already. The university apparently had, for years, no problem he was using the university homepage to spread his deluded ideas. What changed so suddenly?
More than likely it is a matter of budget. He’s been there 10 years, perhaps they have a standard rule somewhere that says people get a permanent contract after 10 years?