The Oil Drum

135 comments on Postscript with Wang and Khosla

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

HongKong Trader on September 3, 2006 - 9:26pm

Personally, I think "sleight of hand" implies that he deceived on purpose... ie he is a liar. I can understand why people might get offended. Having said that it's not exactly a biggy, is it.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Robert Rapier on September 4, 2006 - 12:25am

I can understand why people might get offended.

Which is why I apologized. Some people are offended by things that don't offend others. I have had people accuse me of sleight of hand in a debate, and I didn't take that to mean I was being purposely deceitful. I take it to mean that they felt I made an invalid comparison. But since he was offended, I figured the right thing to do was apologize, regardless of whether I thought it was offensive. We probably all have things that we find personally offensive that others might not. So, I can understand where he is coming from.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

SqueakyRat on September 4, 2006 - 3:19am

"Sleight of hand," literally, is the skill used in conjuring tricks to make things appear other than as they are. Has to be intentional, I think.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Vintermann on September 4, 2006 - 8:02am

What is certain is that his reports, against his will or not, have convinced a lot of people that production of biofuels has better energy efficiency than mineral fuels, and led them completely off the rail on the issue - for instance those who wrote the book "How to make biodiesel", who used this belief to explain why small scale production is more energy efficient than large scale, how transport is extremely inefficient compared to local production, in short the whole range of "hippie" prejudices...

I don't think a scientist can be indifferent to what conclusions the public draws from his work, especially not when it's research intitiated directly to inform decision makers and the public. He's no longer merely a scientist in that context, and he has additional responsibilities associated with communicating his results.