“Don’t believe what Wikipedia writes about me,” Professor Ian Plimer emails me when I arrange an interview with him. Of course, the first thing to do in this case is to check the Wikipedia article about him. “Ian Rutherford Plimer (born 12 February 1946) is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterpreting data and spreading misinformation,” are the first sentences of the Wikipedia article about him.
Plimer is indeed an Australian geologist and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he once was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences. During his long academic career, he has also been a professor at the University of Newcastle, University of Adelaide, Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich, Germany, and has work relations with several other universities. He has published more than 130 scientific articles and was one of the editors of the comprehensive five-volume Encyclopedia of Geology. Of course, not all of this information needs to be included in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about a renowned scientist, but the editor’s choice to include a clear accusation that Plimer is somehow linked to ‘spreading misinformation’ is not surprising, to say the least.
Hellbound and Down 