Things I don’t understand ||

PZ Myers comes unglued when Climate Audit wins a straw poll for Best Science Blog (the one PZ won last year):

Hi, Stan. You’re new here, like a whole lot of people. You’ve just shown up, and here’s your very first comment.

I noticed that this blog is in the running for a Best Science Blog award.

I’ve looked over the site. Cna someone point out where the science is on it. I have looked but I can’t find any.

Let me introduce myself. My name is PZ Myers. I’m an associate professor of biology at a small liberal arts university in the upper midwest. I make no grand claims for myself, but I have been exceptionally busy lately, with lots of travel and lectures, and it’s all on top of teaching two courses, one of which is both new to me and a new course in our discipline, so I’m writing lectures at a frantic pace and trying to keep up with 80 students. I’m also working on a book and have a magazine column to write, in addition to other irregular writing jobs. I’m stretched very, very thin right now, I’m a bit frustrated myself that I haven’t had much spare time for the blog, and I’m feeling extremely cranky.

Welcome, Stan Palmer, I’m going to unload on you as a proxy for all your fellow denialist idiots!

First, though, I’ll help you out. Look on the left sidebard, for A Taste of Pharyngula. If that’s not enough, there’s an archive of my Seed columns. You didn’t seem to look very hard before leaping to your rather clueless indictment; I suspect you were directed here by one of those right-wing sites and came here with preconceptions. I daresay you probably didn’t look at all, but instead simply scampered over here to toss off your petty, ignorant comment.

And then, of course, what’s bringing you and your fellow naive whiners here is the need to defend the climate change denialist, McIntyre — so many of you, after carping that I’m not meeting your demands, are protesting that he’s not a denialist, and you aren’t denialists, and you’re all here in the cause of good science.

Bullshit.

My expertise is not in climate, but in biology, and I’m familiar with his type — it’s a common strategy among creationists, who do dearly love to collect complaints. There are people who put together a coherent picture of a scientific issue, who review lots of evidence and assemble a rational synthesis. They’re called scientists. Then there are the myopic little nitpickers, people who scurry about seeking little bits of garbage in the fabric of science (and of course, there are such flaws everywhere), and when they find some scrap of rot, they squeak triumphantly and hold it high and declare that the science everywhere is similarly corrupt. They lack perspective. They ignore everything that doesn’t fit their search criterion, and of course, they’re focused only on putrescence. They aren’t scientists, they’re more like rats.

And the worst of the rats are the sanctimonious ones that declare that they’re just ‘policing’ science. They aren’t. They’re just providing fodder for their fellow denialists, and like them all, have nothing of value to contribute to advance the conversation. You can quit whining that you and McIntyre are finding valid errors; it doesn’t matter, since you’re simultaneously spreading a plague of lies and ignorance as you go.

So bugger off, denialists. I am not impressed.

Everyone else, please do vote for Bad Astronomy. Real scientists can see the big picture and understand that the real power of science lies in the explanations, not the pettifoggery with statistics — not that I expect the right-wing gomers at the Weblog Awards who nominated the purveyors of junk science for their award to to know that, or for the swarms of freepers and limbots to care.

Oh, and the next clueless ass to whine at me that they can’t find any science here will be disemvoweled. I’m feeling peevish, so it’s not a good time to prod.

And later in the comments:

More rats. Rats with their moldy flecks of rotting garbage. You guys don’t get it, do you?

Something tells me PZ needs a hug.