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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you what you are saying, but at least in the WSJ article, he doesn't claim it was "proven false" so the fallacy doesn't apply.

He is being fair, and quotes the report which simply says "insufficient evidence". But that is enough to exclude from positive claims, even though it doesn't disprove it.

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The second paragraph of the quotation begins: 'When his research was eventually published in 2008, well after the IPCC report, it concluded the opposite:'

So he does claim that these are opposites. That is my problem with his argument as presented.

"There is statistically strong evidence of X" and "there isn't" are opposites. I think you're perhaps reading it over-pedantically.

OK, I see where you are coming from, and it is a fair interpretation. I just don't read opposite as equal to false. I read it the opposite of a proven claim is an unproven claim, not a false claim. But I think this is a distraction - even if he meant it as proven false, and fell into fallacious thinking, he should simply be corrected, not vilified, not investigated by the government, and not hounded out of a job by a billionaire activist.

That I agree with, if true. On a broader level OTOH, having now read the articles debunking his 538 writing, it seems this is not a reliable witness. See other links in this and other subthreads here

>So he does claim that these are opposites.

Opposites as "does not prove" (vs proves). Not opposites as in "disproves".

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