Topic: Accuracy in Media
Allie Duzett, in a Nov. 25 Accuracy in Media post, is annoyed that people are complaining that the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit are being taken out of context by critics -- like Duzett. She defends taking the emails out of context because, in her view she's not:
When Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia admitted in the emails that he had used a “trick” of falsifying the data to get the results he wanted, the context was clear: Jones was writing privately to someone who agreed with the concept of promoting fake data for personal gain.
Duzett is ignoring, yes, context: Jones has said that "trick" does not mean what Duzett thinks it means -- which appears nowhere in her post, presumably because she, as someone who is outside the scientific community reading the stolen work of others, has decided that what Jones says he intended is not important.
Indeed, Duzett goes on to sneer:
What more context do we need? The context is: some unscrupulous scientists sent some private emails to each other as they worked together to falsify data and squelch dissenting opinions—and then those private emails went public. That’s the context here. Some “scientists” in question claim that certain incriminating words—like “trick”—mean something different in scientific jargon and that once again, the terms are taken out of context, but the truth is, the context is all right here. We have all the context we need, and some people are guilty.
Duzett doesn't Jones' context, apparently. It would interfere with her pitchfork-gathering.
