Overview

In an exceptionally sharp J accuse, entitled, Denmark s Ministry of Truth , which was published on January 10th 2003, James Glassman, host at the American website TechCentralStation, compared the case against Bj rn Lomborg with totalitarian practices: ^[1]

In 1984, George Orwell s frightening novel set in a totalitarian state, the hero, Winston Smith, worked in Recdep, the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. His job was to correct mistakes in past newspaper articles.

Denmark has its own Recdep. It is called, in perfect Orwellian syntax, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, an organization described in the U.S. press as similar to our National Academy of Sciences. (But for all the National Academy s faults, it is no propaganda ministry like this one.) For the past year, the Danish Recdep has investigated three complaints against a countryman, a statistician named Bj rn Lomborg, who had the temerity to write a book challenging the conventional Danish wisdom that the world s environment is going to hell.

The result, which found its way into the New York Times and Washington Post this week [ed: 1/8], was predictable. Lomborg was smeared in a vindictive and amateurish fashion by a group that did not even have the grace to lay out coherent charges or conduct its own investigation.

The report is pathetic. It quotes from slanted magazine articles including Time (!) by Lomborg s detractors. It concludes, Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty.