Thursday, October 04, 2007

Before there was E&E there was JPANDS

The mice have spotted an undated version of the Soon Baliunas, Robinson and Robinson paper the Fred Seitz had mailed to accompany the OISM petition. This treasure appeared in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons under the name of the Robinsons, Art and Zach, father and son. How Idso of them. Sally and Willie are not on the paper, which leaves us with the hope that there was not enough money to pay them this time. If you miss them you can find the original at the Document Hotel a service of VulnerabilityNet.org

Eli has downloaded the paper and is reading the thing (for this you should pay me big time), but here he just wants to point out that before Energy and Environment took over the title of Journal of Denial, JPANDS was there. It is open source, because they have to give the thing away.

JPANDS is the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, an outfit founded in 1943 to fight the evil of socialism and especially anything that threatened the income of US physicians, the older brother of the John Birch Society as it were. The executive director, Jane Orient, is a Clinical Lecturer in Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and (hold on tight) Professor of Medicine for the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. It appears from the description on their site, that like the Robinsons she bats from both sides for the wingnuts that hide in Arthur and Zachary's barn:

Professor Orient serves as medical advisor for the Institute's projects involving human health and disease. She is author of numerous books, including Sapira's Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis, a widely used primary physician's diagnostic reference work.

Dr. Orient is President of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and of Physicians for Civil Defense. In those capacities, she has worked extensively on Institute projects on civil defense. She is also author of two books on grammar and spelling included in the Robinson home school curriculum and of several sections of the curriculum's course of study, especially examinations in reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary.

BTW she pulls down $150,000 per year from the AAPS for 25 hours/week of work according to their tax returns, teaches at the University Medical School and is Professor of Medicine at OISM. Good work if you can get it.

FWIW, the version of the OISM SBRR (Stoat Syndrome warning) at VN appears to actually have been published in an Inter-Research journal called Climate Research. Inter-Research is another odd little group, but at least on its face serious. Have to grep the sucker against the uroriginal.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had occasion to look into DDP before, for some reason I've mercifully forgotten.
See:
Ozone hole, Global warming, and other Environmental Scares
http://www.ddponline.org/envir.htm
No more need be said...

Anonymous said...

In those capacities, she has worked extensively on Institute projects on civil defense."

Like this, presumably.

To some (thinking) people, the most important "nuclear war survival skill" is "avoiding a nuclear war".


Perhaps they should just change the name of their book to "Iraq war survival skills" and send it over to the people of Iraq.

If there is one good thing about the "debate" on global warming, it is that it is exposing all these organizations (thanks to people like Eli) which, up till recently, have been flying under the radar.

Anonymous said...

Ooooh yeah.

The "nuking enemies til they glow forever is good, and abortion is bad" spoke of the political wheel.

Anonymous said...

Now I recall why I remembered DDP:
they give out the prestigious (in some circles) Petr Beckman award, a list of recipients of which is useful:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Petr_Beckmann#Petr_Beckmann_Award

Anonymous said...

Climate Research was the journal that published that article by Soon which they soon had to retract.

John Cross

EliRabett said...

Yes, that was the Soon and Baliunas paper from 2003 which lead to the resignation of von Storch, etc. and was later expanded in Energy and Environment. This one should have been a strong warning.

Anonymous said...

Climate Research was the journal that published that article by Soon which they soon had to retract."


It was bound to happen. If they hadn't retracted Soon, they undoubtedly would have retracted Later.

Anonymous said...

1) I thought Soon was listed in this one as well, not Baliunas.

2) Most fascinating coincidence, I happened to run into a neighbor today at a local climate-change meeting, a retired USGS geoscientist unfamiliar with denialism-land. A day or two ago, he got in the USmail a beautifully-printed reprint of this article. Fortunately, he was knowledgable enough to smell pseudoscience at least, and then chased down a few more details that confirmed it enough to make him nervous about why they had sent him one.

He was very surprised when he gave me a vague description, and I said "Oh, the Robinsons & Soon, the former at OISM" and then explained there was more to this than typical pseudoscience.

Anyway, I'm curious to know if:
a) Anyone else has gotten this?
b) Any idea of what mailing list they might be using?
c) How widespread it might be?

Anonymous said...

There's a recent comment on RealClimate from an engineering professor who received the paper in an email, together with Seitz's request to sign a petition expressing doubt about global warming. He too saw through the ruse.

I wonder if this whole strategy of theirs is backfiring. After all, it was the Soon & Baliunas article about paleotemperature that got me interested in the global warming issue in the first place. Upon hearing that it existed, I read the paper and saw that it was junk. Before then, I hardly paid any attention to global warming at all; now I've joined the blogosphere to spread the word about the danger we face from global warming.

Anonymous said...

Hi Guys,
Just in-case you haven't seen this one, here's an example of a Professor of Botany, who it seems nearly signed the petition.
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/global-warming.html

Perhaps there should be a Nuremburg-style trial for the AGW deniers!

Hank Roberts said...

I have to thank y'all for this link.

The Ten Tests to Determine Whether You Should Be Concerned about Global Warming

Presentation by Anthony Watts of http://wattsupwiththat.com/. From DDP 31st Annual Meeting, July 13, 2014, Houston Texas.