One of the world’s most prominent climate scientists is suing a right wing author and a policy analyst for defamation, a case with big stakes for attacks on scientists.
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The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine.
In an online post, Simberg compared Mann to former Penn State Football coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted child sex abuser.
Mann also sued the publishers of the posts, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but in 2021, the court ruled they couldn’t be held liable.
“No matter how offensive or distasteful or heated it is,” Weatherford tells NPR, “that speech is absolutely protected under the First Amendment when it’s said against a public figure, if the person saying it believed that what they said was true.”
But while climate researchers were early targets of people rejecting peer-reviewed science, now those attacks have spread to biomedical scientists, supercharged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Imran Ahmed, chief executive at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says any response has to include social media companies as that’s where attacks on scientists happen every day.
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