Talk:Institute for Energy Research

Neutrality and balance

I'm seriously concerned that this article does not meet Wikipedia's standards of WP:POV and WP:BALANCE in content and tone. I just had to remove the following non-sequitur from a discussion of the Institute's positions and advocacy with respect to the Wind Tax Production Credit:

In February 2015 Cole was forced to resign from the House in disgrace after numerous racist tirades were revealed.

This information is neither balanced nor relevant to the subject. Even without the above, the article's quality is severely lacking, in my view, and needs considerable work to attain Wikipedia's standards. Alkibiades14 (talk) 15:54, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree -- this seems like it was written by the subject institute. As a scientist, having just read some articles on their website which are full of items that are factually incorrect, I'm surprised to see this entry not even mentioning any controversy about the IER to indicate that they are a right wing organization presenting themselves as a "research institute" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/koch-funded-climate-contr_b_3620727.html http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=115 https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/10/24/42790/the-institute-for-energy-research-gets-it-all-wrong-on-regional-energy/ http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-12-institute-energy-research%20

108.179.12.2 (talk) 21:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Strongly agree with the second comment above (which seems to be at cross purposes with the first). IER is well known as a reliable source of scientific misinformation about renewable alternatives to coal and oil such as wind. Normally articles on such organizations have a section about the resulting controversies, so I was therefore quite surprised to see none of that in this article. On reviewing the history of the edits I noticed that editors Kdans3 and Safehaven86 have been hard at work deleting anything referring to either controversies or complaints by scientists about IER's misrepresentation of the science or anything that might tie IER funding to the oil industry, the Koch brothers, etc.

Some of Kdans3's edits removing information that reflected poorly on IER give as the reason that the American Energy Alliance is a completely different organization from IER. This is contradicted by AEA's own website, which describes itself in paragraph 4 as "the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research". Likewise Safehaven86 deletes material on the ground that Greenpeace is not a reliable source; it would interesting to ask the scientific community which of Greenpeace and IER they find more reliable.

Whether or not Greenpeace is WP:RS is an entirely separate question than whether IER is a reliable source. We're not comparing the two, and IER's theoretical reliability as a source has no bearing on Greenpeace's reliability here. The RSN archives show numerous instances of the Wikipedia community finding Greenpeace to be non-RS; that's the consensus position and the one I applied to this article. Safehaven86 (talk) 21:13, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Similarly there is nothing in the article mentioning IER as allegedly commissioning and underwriting a supposedly scientific study in 2009 by the Danish think tank CEPOS contradicting the industry's claim of wind supplying 20% of Denmark's power with data purporting to show it dropping as low as 5%, implying that Obama's plan to get 20% of US electricity on wind by 2030 is unrealistic socialism. (In light of Governor Brown's Executive Order SB-14-08 to radically accelerate California's shift to renewables I'd call Obama's goal conservatively unambitious.) This article picks apart the CEPOS study rather neatly. Since then this 2015 report shows how wind use in Denmark rose dramatically to 40% during the 6 years following that pessimistic CEPOS report, and discusses what new sources of dispatchables will be needed for wind to meet 50% of Denmark's energy by 2020 after retiring local CHP and with central CHP being anticipated to be insufficient as a dispatchable to get wind to 50%.

Rather than try to fix these problems piecemeal, each piece of which would be easily deleted, I suggest that a tightly reasoned article on the controversies about IER be created elsewhere on Wikipedia and only added to this article as a section once there is a sufficiently solid consensus about its relevance and accuracy. The first order of business would be to see what level of enthusiasm there might be for such a project; if insufficient then I suggest continuing with the usual piecemeal editing. Ronz (see MJ below) may have a better idea of the prospects of that eventually getting somewhere. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

References

MJ ref

Note there are two noticeboard discussions open on the Mother Jones [1] reference: at NPOVN and at RSN. --Ronz (talk) 19:32, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

...where the relevance of the Mother Jones article to this article is IER as the 12th member of the article's list.

I'm strongly opposed this sort of guilt-by-association criticism of individual members of that list. The Mother Jones article would make a fine source for the point that climate denial is widespread, but not for the roles played by individual members of that list. So while it may be true that some Wikipedia articles legitimately cite the Mother Jones article, one should not conclude, as I saw some doing, that this grants a carte blanche license for all articles to do so. The references I used in my comment above are all specific to IER. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 20:16, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

There are third-party sources demonstrating that pov of the MJ article is due. Outright removal seems a POV violation, and possibly violating the related ArbCom findings as well. --Ronz (talk) 17:34, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Description as industry front group

I'm explaining this revert at the request of WyoChris. The content added was "The institute is considered a front group for the fossil fuel industry." Here's my reasoning for removing it:

• It was added to the lead of the article when nothing on this subject is included in the body of the article. Per WP:LEAD, the lead section should summarize the most important parts of the article's body. It's WP:UNDUE to stick something in the lead that isn't even covered in the body.

• It is WP:CHERRYPICKING. IER is mentioned once in the given source. The sentence reads: "The filings also revealed funding for the George C. Marshall Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which are seen as industry front groups." It is mentioned incidentally, along with other groups. No explanation is given for why it is seen as an industry front group, and who sees it this way. No other sources are given that corroborate this. It does not appear particularly notable since it is only mentioned once in passing in one article.

• There's is no attribution of this opinion (see WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV). IER is seen by whom as an industry front group? By everyone? By who specifically? It's not neutral to make this claim without detailing who considers it as such, and why.

Those are the main issues I saw with the content. "Industry front group" is not a neutral description, so we'd need to be attributing that opinion and clearly delineating who holds it if this content is going to appear in this article. Safehaven86 (talk) 19:36, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

• "nothing on this subject is included in the body of the article" - This is easy to repair: move the text from the introduction to the body of the article.
• WP:CHERRYPICKING means "selecting information without including contradictory or significant qualifying information from the same source and consequently misrepresenting what the source says". Since IER is, as you noted, mentioned ony once in the source, WP:CHERRYPICKING does not apply.
• WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV Also easy to repair: "According to The Guardian".

You will have to find better reasons if you want to keep up the industry front. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:57, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Re. "You will have to find better reasons if you want to keep up the industry front", are you questioning my motives? It sounds like you're making an accusation. Happy to work with you on improving this article's content, but you're going to need to assume good faith. Safehaven86 (talk) 15:05, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I said "if". But you didn't name any new reasons or revert Ronz, so I guess your motives are OK. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Gee, thanks. I really don't care to be bullied, so I'm unwatching this page. Congratulations, strong-arm tactics and mansplaining work again. Safehaven86 (talk) 16:55, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Mmm, buzzwords.

When user A and user B revert each other, user B is using "strong-arm tactics". When user A exchanges arguments with user C, user C is "mansplaining". And "bullying" thrown in for good measure because it sounds good. What really happened is, of course, that your three bullet-point reasons failed to convince because they were bad reasons. (Mansplaining means that I explained what you already knew - but if you already knew why your reasoning was bad, why did you use it?) --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:43, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I've restored and moved it, along with a bit of the related material that was stripped from the article. Seems due as presented. If past treatment is any indication, it should be expanded. --Ronz (talk) 16:02, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I cleaned up a sentence that was marked as ungrammatical. I have no intent on influencing this use of "front group" one way or the other. I just think the sentence reads better this way, without changing the meaning of the sentence.Ron Foster 13:32, 15 June 2017 (UTC)Ronny8

I've grudgingly renamed the section "Criticism", after restoring more material and removing some soapboxing. I'm not sure how to best title the section, and realize "Criticism" is very problematic. --Ronz (talk) 17:37, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all. I'm learning! WyoChris (talk) 20:16, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Ronz, I agree with "Criticism" as a section title. I think the article's improving, but it looks like the "Criticism" section has been deleted altogether. I'm not sure why this was done, but my impression is that balanced, objectively presented criticism by reliable and notable sources ought to have a place in an article about a controversial organization. Alkibiades14 (talk) 23:22, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I've restored the specific "front group" content again - it might be worded to fit the section context better. I'm not clear why it was removed. I don't have a problem with the primary sources being used in conjunction with the others.

Is there other WP:DUE information that was lost? --Ronz (talk) 16:50, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Rick Perry implementing the agenda

Outrageous that the puff article remains and now that Rick Perry is pushing the agenda at the Dept of Energy, it becomes reality. Some serious attention needs to be put on this organization. http://www.salon.com/2017/06/18/rick-perrys-plan-to-kill-funding-for-wind-and-solar-power/ --Wikipietime (talk) 16:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

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