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COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS                       Quotes
                       

 

"Lomborg is/was a professor at Aarhus University"

This is a misunderstanding. Lomborg used to have a position at Aarhus University as a "lecturer", which is also called "associate professor". This is certainly not the same as "professor". He was on leave from the university since February 2002, because he was appointed as the director of the Institute of Environmental Assessment, which was established on Lomborg´s initiative. He returned to position as "lecturer" at Aarhus University from August 2004 to January 2005.
    From June 2005, he has held a part-time position as a kind of "attached professor" at Copenhagen Business School. This title has been given also to other people such as a former prime minister, an editor in-chief of a large Danish newspaper, and an actress, i.e. it does not imply scientific merit. From January 2006, Lomborg´s position at the Copenhagen Business School has become the position as director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

"Lomborg is a statistician"

This is a misunderstanding. He was educated and employed at the department of political science at Aarhus University, where he taught statistics to the students. But he has not been educated as a statistician, and his books witness a strange lack of respect for ordinary statistical concepts. For instance, he uses the concept of significance only in a few cases when it is an advantage to him. He demonstrates no understanding for the concept of a power function for a test, i.e. the probability of rejecting a false hypothesis, and when he finds that his hypothesis is "plausible", he does not discuss if the alternative hypothesis might be just as "plausible".

"Lomborg was a greenpeace activist"

This is a misunderstanding. Lomborg has - allegedly - paid contributions to Greenpeace, but he has never been a member of Greenpeace, and he has never worked actively in the organization.

"Lomborg was not allowed to defend himself vis-a-vis Scientific American"

This is a misunderstanding. When Lomborg defends himself, he often does this at a great length, quoting long pieces of text. It is quite unrealistic that Scientific American should print such a defense. However, his defense, which encompasses 32 pages, was placed on the S.A. web site in February 2002 and may be read there, together with the responses by John P. Holdren and S. A. editor John Rennie. 

"The plaintiffs sent hundreds of pages to the DCSD that I was not allowed to reply to"
(Quote: Lomborg in "Politiken", 4th June 2005)
This is not true. He was given fair opportunities to defend himself, and he used them. His defenses may be read at the Documents page. It is true that he was up against rather short deadlines, but so were the plaintiffs.

"Lomborg was cleared of all charges by the Danish ministry of Research in December 2003"

This is a misunderstanding. The ministry decided that the Danish committees on scientific dishonesty (DCSD) had made a number of formal errors when they issued their verdict, and that the verdict is therefore not valid. The ministry did not, however, comment upon wether Lomborg was dishonest or not; they were not warranted to comment on this.

"300 Danish professors have signed a petition supporting Lomborg´s work"

This is a misunderstanding. The petition was a criticism that the Danish committees on scientific dishonesty (DCSD) had not treated the complaint against Lomborg satisfactorily. It stated that DCSD had not properly treated any single item of complaint against Lomborg (which is correct) and had omitted Lomborg´s response on the raised criticism (which is not correct). The signed declaration did not comment on Lomborg´s views and thus did not express agreement with Lomborg. It was signed by 287 scientists, mostly social scientists, of which about 111 were professors. It was published on 18./1. 2003.

As a counterbalance to this declaration, another declaration in support of DCSD was signed by more than 600 scientists, mainly in the fields of medical and natural scientists. Out of these 600, more than half were professors.

"The expert panel at the Copenhagen Consensus conference ranked projects according to their benefit/cost ratio"

This is the impression that we are given, but it is not quite true. The expert panel themselves did not list the benefit/cost ratios. If one makes an overview of the ratios, it appears that the ranking was not based on these. Instead, the ranking was subjective, based on the panel experts´ own opinions on the world´s problems. Read more about this in a paper by Thorkil Casse.

"The European Environmental Agency (EEA) has asked Lomborg to participate actively in the ranking of projects in the EU environmental policy"

This is a misunderstanding. In the spring of 2005, the EEA launched a project to develop tools for the  prioritisation of expenditures on the environment. The tools will include economic as well as social assessments. In the preparatory phase, the EEA contacted many organisations in order to receive useful input. Among the many persons contacted were Lomborg as well as opponents of Lomborg. Lomborg has not subsequently been engaged in any way by the EEA.

"The United Nations Development Programme is making plans to hire Lomborg in a project where UN ambassadors will be ranking projects along lines similar to those of Copenhagen consensus"

This is an overstatement. In June 2005, Lomborg talked informally with policy director Mark Suzman of the UNDP about the possibility for such a project.