People seem concerned about the integrity of science yet
this writer (Kirby) demonstrates a more chilling
indictment of journalistic integrity.

Again, if the facts are misrepresented Huffington
editor Roy Sekoff ain’t much of a Editor either.

Note when you search Kirby on Huffington Post, Vacuum bags
come up. Coincidence?

After this behavior was made known to the people who run Huffpost, Kirby apparently was compelled to issue the following apology:

Dear List members

I have been informed by the editors of the Huffington Post that it is against the rules to reveal the identity of people who post comments on the blog.

I was not aware of that rule.

I apologize to Huffpost and, particularly, to Dr. Grinker, for the violation. Please do not attempt to contact him directly. He made his comment in the full belief that his identity would not be revealed, and we all need to respect that decision.

Again, my apologies to everyone.

David

(Autism Diva has a good account of the full episode at http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2007/07/california-autism-epidemic-gold-rush.html )

Leaving aside the questionable assertion that Kirby had NO IDEA it was wrong to reveal anonymous commenters’ identities, that little kerfuffle would seem to make it clear there’s lots of opportunity for comment monitoring and control over at Arianna’s site.

A friend e-mailed me that comments containing any mention of “Epi Wonk” are banned from the above-mentioned HuffPost article’s comment area. I find this hard to believe.

I don’t.

I don’t know whether to be flattered or angry.

Absolutely flattered. When you retired, did you have any expectation that you would become so very potent and dangerous a force that even mention of your name would be forbidden? And to do that from such a recent start in the blogosphere. Goodness, you will be one of the shiniest stars in the med blogging firmament if this continues.

Seriously, you write about such matters so persuasively that I am looking to fill an obvious gap in my education. I confess to browsing various courses to see if feasible for me to investigate epidemiology and to brush up and refresh my knowledge of statistics (which is sadly out of date).

My own views are that its perfectly fine to remove people that are clearly spamming or posting inflammatory or offensive material and the like, as many blogs clearly do, but it seems a mite inconsistent to react to a particular person (or people) as David obviously has, then ban references to them! (In this, I mean not just reacting to you, but others too.)