ビョルン・ロンボルグ

出典: フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』

Bjørn Lomborg

ビョルン・ロンボルグ（Bjørn Lomborg, 1965年 1月6日 - ）は、デンマークの政治学者。現在はコペンハーゲンビジネススクールの助教授、コペンハーゲン環境評価研究所の前所長。

論争を巻き起こした著書『環境危機をあおってはいけない―地球環境のホントの実態』（原題： The Skeptical Environmentalist）で広く知られるようになった。この本の出版は、デンマークの科学コミュニティから科学的欺瞞として批判された。

現在は世界中の大勢の科学者（気候学者の大部分を含む）がロンボルグを批判している。

2002年にロンボルグと環境評価研究所がコペンハーゲン合意を立ち上げた。コペンハーゲン合意とは厚生経済学の理論を基にした方法論を使い、地球規模の厚生福祉に対する優先順位を模索するものである。

[編集] 環境危機をあおってはいけない

In 1998, Lomborg published four articles about the state of the environment in the leading Danish newspaper Politiken, which according to him "resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers."[1]

In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions of environmentalists are exaggerated.

He has in this context claimed to have been a supporter of Greenpeace. When challenged that Greenpeace had no record of him ever being a member or supporter, he stated that he had given money to Greenpeace collectors. Greenpeace has no card carrying membership.

[編集] 科学的欺瞞とする批判

After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was accused of scientific misconduct. Several environmental scientists brought a total of three complaints against Lomborg to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.

[編集] DCSD investigation

On January 6, 2003 the DCSD reached a decision on the complaints. The ruling was a mixed message, deciding the book to be scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg himself not guilty because of lack of expertise in the fields in question^[1]:

Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty. ...In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.

The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:

Fabrication of data;
Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
Plagiarism;
Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.

[編集] MSTI review

On February 13, 2003, Lomborg filed a complaint against the DCSD's decision, with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, which has oversight over the DSCD.

On December 17, 2003, the Ministry found that the DCSD had made a number of procedural errors, including:

The DCSD did not use a precise standard for deciding "good scientific practice" in the social sciences;
The DCSD's definition of "objective scientific dishonesty" was not clear about whether "distortion of statistical data" had to be deliberate or not;
The DCSD had not properly documented that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific publication on which they had the right to intervene in the first place;
The DCSD did not provide specific statements on actual errors.

The Ministry remitted the case to the DCSD. In doing so the Ministry indicated that it regarded the DCSD's previous findings of scientific dishonesty in regard to the book as invalid [1][2]. The Ministry also instructed the DCSD to decide whether to reinvestigate.

[編集] DCSD response

On March 122004, the Committee formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion [3]. Two days later a complaint was issued by Kåre Fog, an ecologist who maintains an anti-Lomborg website; Fog reported that this complaint was rejected on 27th Dec. 2004.^[2]

[編集] Response of the scientific community

The original DCSD decision about Lomborg provoked a petition^[3] among Danish academics. 308 scientists, many of them from the social sciences, criticised the DCSD's methods in the case. A Dutch think tank, Heidelberg Appeal the Netherlands, published a report in which they claimed 25 out of 27 accusations against Lomborg to be unsubstantiated or not to the point.^[4]

Another group of Danish scientists collected signatures in support of the DCSD. The 640 signatures in this second petition came almost exclusively from the medical and natural sciences, and included Jens Christian Skou (a Nobel laureate for chemistry), former university rector Kjeld Møllgård, and professor Poul Harremoës from the Technical University of Denmark.^[5]

[編集] コペンハーゲン合意（コペンハーゲンコンセンサス）

In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, which sought to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. A panel of prominent economists was assembled to evaluate and rank a series of problems. The project was funded largely by the Danish government, and co-sponsored by The Economist. A book summarizing the conclusions, Global Crises, Global Solutions, edited by Lomborg, was published in October 2004 by Cambridge University Press.