Climate deniers 49 percent more visible to audiences than climate change scientists

[Cetacea]

Results of a recent research project into media coverage:

"Media outlets reporting on climate change will bring in deniers in an effort to "balance" coverage and present an alternative view. However, to viewers, this then places them—often a person with no scientific background—on the same level as someone who is an expert in the field..."

"It's not just false balance; the numbers show that the media are 'balancing' experts—who represent the overwhelming majority of reputable scientists—with the views of a relative handful of non-experts," study author Professor LeRoy Westerling said in a statement. "Most of the contrarians are not scientists, and the ones who are have very thin credentials. They are not in the same league with top scientists. They aren't even in the league of the average career climate scientist."

Full report:
https://www.newsweek.com/media-air-time-climate-change-deniers-scientists-1454498

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. They're nowhere in the league of the scientists

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4

They started with 386 deniers ("contrarians" or "CCC" in the paper, since the snowflake deniers hate being called 'deniers'). They then found that only 224 had any publications, so they had to cut it down to that; they found the 224 most prominent climate change scientists ("CCS" ) to compare them to.

Proceeding at the group level, we tallied the total number of unique publications (i.e., counting a publication coauthored by two or more members of a given group only once). Figure 3a shows the disparity in scientific productivity, with the 224CCC subset publishing 3367 scientific articles (on average 15 articles per individual). Conversely, the 224CCS subset published 12,665 scientific articles, roughly 3.8 times more than the 224CCC.

Likewise, we tallied the total citations received by each publication set. Figure 3b shows an even larger disparity in citation impact, with 224CCS collecting roughly 7.6 times as many citations (992,206) as the 224CCC (130,833).
...
Tallying across all media sources, we count 26,072 articles for CCCs, roughly 49% more than the 17,530 articles associated with CCSs (see Fig. 3c). Tallying across just the select-30 sources, we obtain nearly equal counts: 2482 articles for CCCs and 2463 articles for CCSs, corresponding to just a 0.77% excess for CCCs (see Fig. 3d). Upon further inspection, we found that these count differences also strongly depend on the underlying group composition—in addition to the composition of the underlying media sources.

Repeating the comparison using just the subsets of 224 academically oriented individuals, we obtain a negligible difference of just 1% (16,670 articles for 224CCC and 15,896 for 224CCS). Thus conditioning on either visibility in the mainstream media or on visibility by academically oriented individuals yields parity. However, proceeding with the comparison conditioned simultaneously on select-30 sources and academically oriented individuals reveals a 38% media visibility advantage in favor of the elite scientists (1619 articles for 224CCC and 2235 for 224CCS). These results highlight the nuances associated with comparing groups comprised of individuals with fundamentally different professional orientations. Yet even in this latter and most relevant case, where we compare 224CCC and 224CCS in the mainstream media, there still remains a remarkable discrepancy in the scientific authority and media visibility between these more academically oriented scientists and contrarians.

So 'all media' quotes deniers more than scientists - especially when expanded to the 384 group which contains non-published people in the denier group (not, of course, in the scientist group). This is the crap, bot-driven right wing blog network sticking its oar in. Even in the 30 "mainstream media" group, the deniers get equal time for the 384 group, despite their pathetic publishing record. When restricted to the 224 "actually published" groups, the mainstream media finally gives the scientists a bit more prominence - but only 1.38 times, when they are cited in science papers 7.6 times as much.



Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility—group level. a Total number of publications by the climate change contrarian (CCC; red) and climate change scientist (CCS; blue) groups. 224CCC indicates the subset of 224 CCCs comprised of just the individuals with at least one Web of Science publication; 224CCS indicates the 224 most-cited CCSs. b Total number of citations from the publications in a. Total number of unique media articles from c all media sources and d 30 select mainstream media sources

[Cetacea]

2. Thank you

It's pathetic.

[Wounded Bear]

3. It's frustrating...nt

[ck4829]

4. K&R