Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Via this rather informative Bloggerheads post, I see that Nadine Dorries is at it again. Having read this top secret information available exclusively to those with access to the interwebs, I then used that access to find yet more interesting top secret public domain information. (Keep this to yourself though).

Using my dastardly covert methods, I clicked through to the Iain Dale post linked in the above and noticed that several people had commented with a link to a Ben Goldacre response to Nad’s report.

Furtively, I copied and pasted the code for the link to the Bad Science post into my browser and read on only to discover that I’d stumbled into the lair of an evil genius.

In the Minority Report, Nad complains that a previous Bad Science column written by Dr Goldacre contained detailed information from the evidence presented to the committee and demands that there should be “an enquiry about how this information got into the public doman”.

Ben explains how he came to be in possession of this top secret evidence:

Seriously, it’s next level investigative journalism, this stuff. It’s like Watergate. It’s like those guys who got shot at in South America in the 1970s exposing CIA involvement in coups. This is the real deal. I totally downloaded the PDF. But I turned on the taps and put the radio on full blast first, just in case they’d bugged my flat.

Yes, the evidence in question was *already in the public domain*. It had been been published by scheming devious pro-abortion activists on a little known website called www.parliament.uk.

Good grief! Is there no end to these dirty tricks?

Interestingly, Nad has a blog and at least one person over at Iain’s has explicitly stated that they’ve submitted a comment to that blog asking her to address Goldacre’s post and withdraw the accusation that he had done anything untoward.

At the moment there are ten comments on Nad’s post. All are variations on the “you’re great Nad, we love you” theme. Will she allow others to challenge her position openly? Or will she stifle the debate on a post complaining about the stifling of the debate? If we’re really sneaky about it, I think we might be able to come up with a cunning and devious way to find out…

Regular readers might notice a certain similarity here with recent experiences I’ve had with another high profile Tory blogger who prefers not to participate in genuine debate. At the moment, it appears that Nad may deal with this issue by simply not publishing comments which expose her nonsense. This is, admittedly, rather quicker than Iain’s more time consuming method of deploying false claims, subject changes, instant memory loss and insults. Or maybe she’ll surprise us all and admit she’s made a ridiculous unsupportable accusation, withdraw it and offer a sincere and genuine apology.

By using the covert leftist method of reading the contents of her public blog (shh), it might just be possible to find out.

Update

To avoid any doubt, I submitted the following polite comment to Nad’s blog at 3.55pm today:

I wonder if you would like to respond to Ben Goldacre’s reply to the accusation you have levelled against him in your report?

http://www.badscience.net/2007/10/oooooh-im-in-the-minority-report/

Update 2 - 18.50pm

No sign of any critical comments appearing on Nad’s blog yet.

A new post written by Nad’s researcher, “Night Owl”, has appeared in the intervening period however. I’d have called it “Hiding in the Long Grass” but maybe that’s just me. Anyway, two comments have recently appeared under that post so someone is moderating some comments this afternoon.

Interestingly, if you have a look at the two comments on the “Night Owl” post, the second is clearly a reaction to the first. It is somewhat strange that this could happen so quickly given the apparent delay in moderation in the other thread.