Arthur Rörsch's bizarre way of conducting science

Arthur Rörsch

Follow up to the previous blogpost which was dealing with a Labohm/Rörsch text published on three Dutch denier websites simultaniously

A Dutch blog called Sargasso also noticed the clear cherry-picking and demonstrates what happens if you prolongue the graph Labohm/Rörsch (L&R) use : blogger Steeph went to the NASA-GISS data set and instead of using L&R's ten year timespan he randomly added some extra data: 1,5 year at the beginning, one month extra at the end.

The result can be seen in this graph. Suddenly the temperature decline changed into an increase, and a fast one. Steeph correctly concludes that the chosen timespan by L&R strongly influences the result and that the authors carefully selected the data to get a drecreasing trend. Clearly the definition of a cherry-pick.

Steephs criticism resulted in this comment by Rörsch (my translation)

I think Sargasso presents statistical bullshit. Why, i will explain in future publications

I'm anxious to see what his explanation will be, but he already gives a clou in the comments section of his Klimatosoof article :

in my previous comment i already mentioned what i consider to be sherry pikking [presumably this is humor. J] : It's solemly considering a linear trend without considering other [sinusoïdal] curves.

I have the feeling Rörsch is so obsessed with sinusoïdal curves he fails to understand what the cherry-picking citicism he receives actually is about, which makes him both ignore the criticism and makes him adressing a strawman's argument instead. In the comments section of the Klimatosoof i copied Steeph's graph with the extended time span and the effect on the trend.

Rörsch's commented :

The graph presented by Jules clearly shows a linear trend (on the X-axis the years are missing, but we can understand which period is depicted).

What Rörsch said is painfully incorrect : in my comment i clearly mentioned the graph prolongued Labohm's famous graph a little bit. Rörsch must have missed that sentence. Above that I also clearly put a link to the original Sargasso-piece. Rörsch must have missed that link.

The result is Rörsch actually is confronted with a graph of which he doesn't know what timespan it is dealing with.

Which strangely enough doesn't stop him from commenting on it anyway :

I think no-one will deny this linear trend. It is a result of the recovery of the last ice-age, on which was superposed the one of the Little Ice Age in our Golden Age [in Dutch, the sentence is just as weird, i'm translating it as it is. The Dutch Golden Age roughly spans 17th century]

As said, the Sargasso-graph deals with the last 11 years. Rörsch's comment is adressing a totally different period and is ridiculously wrong.


Resumed, this is what you need to do to repeat what Rörsch has done :

1. see something [in casu : a graph] you don't know
2. do not read the explanation given to it
3. Don't let the fact you don't have a clou what the graph is about stop you from fabricating your own theory on it.
4. do not check whether that theory actually is correct [it isn't, we are not just into a recovery of the last ice-age]
5. do not check whether that theory actually adresses the topic in the first place...

Inadvertently, Rörsch has given a brilliant insight in the way he conducts science ...