Pseudoskeptics Are Not Skeptics was inspired by last year’s SalbyStorm,  which highlighted the stark divide between scientific skeptics and most (pseudoskeptic) climate dismissives, who reject the mainstream consensus.

Murry Salby’s unsupported, internally-inconsistent story of dismissal by Macquarie University was broadcast via blogs, to excited discussion.  Contrary evidence mounted over the next few days, including here.  Reactions differed strongly.
Update 03/09/16: Judge rejected every Salby claim against Macquarie, which is owed apologies by many.

Scientific skeptics
About 30 commenters accepted mainstream climate science and rejected Salby’s wrong ideas from his lectures and 2012 book (see review). Given a one-sided employment dispute story, real skeptics were cautious or knowledgable enough to be more dubious.  In the hostile territory of these blogs, they were often insulted, sometimes for merely expressing caution. 

Real skeptics knew the science, weighed evidence, and avoided leaping to premature conclusions on Salby’s story.  Some searched and found relevant history that cast doubt on Salby’s credibility, but were ignored or insulted for providing unwanted facts.

Climate dismissives, pseudoskeptic behavior
By contrast, of the 400+ dismissive commenters (who reject mainstream consensus), about 40% explicitly supported Salby’s erroneous CO2 ideas, seemingly desperate to believe the current rise in CO2 was natural.  That idea was rejected by a mere handful, of whom one apologized and said he expected to be downvoted for doing so, and indeed he was.
Dismissives reacted to Salby’s Macquarie story in varying ways:

~5% were consistently cautious or dubious from the start, commendably able to think skeptically on Salby’s story, if not on climate science or his CO2 ideas.

~5% accepted Salby’s story at first, but were able to change their minds, at least to being cautious about Salby’s story.

~10% said nothing about Salby’s story.

However, most dismissives displayed strong pseudoskeptic behavior:

~80% rapidly accepted Salby’s story without question and persisted. They either ignored contrary evidence, insulted its bringers, invented ill-informed counter-arguments or just stopped commenting when strong evidence appeared.   Graham Readfearn’s story revealed Salby’s mis-use of an old associate who had trusted him. Despite strong participation by Australians and 3 relevant pieces in The Australian, that story was ignored.  Even later, hundreds of comments were written in support of Salby’s CO2 ideas, ignoring science-based counter-arguments and strong evidence of Salby’s past deception.  As a whole, the blog network rapidly propagated ideas it liked, but not contrary data.

Salby’s story confirmed their beliefs and 45% of this group amplified it into conspiracy ideas. For instance, although Salby was hired in 2008 and his odd ideas only appeared in 2011, at least 20 commenters seemed to think he had been “lured” to Australia to purposefullly harass him and sabotage his research, perhaps orchestrated by US or UK scientists.  Even ignoring the time machine required, this seems an unusual hiring practice. 

Macquarie University was pervasively vilified and sometimes sent insulting messages, for which no apologies were ever expressed.

A detailed analysis of nearly 2000 comments is nearly done, but interesting phrases are sampled below, the most popular emboldened. Commenters must be thanked for offering so much public data for a well-constrained, if inadvertent, experiment.  A  2-page, 4-column version shows phrases with rough occurence counts and may be easier to read, at front of the 380-page PDF of collected posts and comments (the “corpus”)  Readers can search for phrases and authors in context.  Quality of discourse should be clear, given background of Salby’s deceptions versus Macquarie’s appropriate actions.

Dismissive pseudoskeptic phrases

Salby & science
Einstein of climate science hero or fine science hero;   landmark work;   maverick  like Nobel winner one of the world’s most brilliant climate scientists;   outstanding scientist;  profoundly original thinker;