BPSDBPerhaps I give climate change Denier Anthony Watts too little credit for craft and and deceit. His clumsy handling of the Sinclair video incident suggests definite ineptitude, yet I detect a certain cunning in how he handles topics on his web site. He certainly seems to be an avid student of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame when it comes to being dishonest.
One consistent tactic that I have noticed is that of making some outrageous claim in the title of a blog post, and then to say absolutely nothing related to it in the post itself. This is straight out of Appleby’s guide to deception:
‘I explained that we are calling the White Paper Open Government because you always dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does less harm than in the statute books. It is the law of Inverse Relevance: the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it”
