Art Robinson, crazy conservative, insanely attacks Oregon State

I'm sorry that Keith Olbermann isn't on MSNBC any longer, because Art Robinson's newest display of deceptive craziness would make him a great candidate for a "Worst Person in the World!" dishonor.

Robinson, who lost to Peter DeFazio in last year's 4th Congressional District race, is claiming that Oregon State University is retaliating against his three children because of "political payback."

This struck me as ludicrous when I learned about Robinson's attack on OSU's Nuclear Engineering department via a chain email that was forwarded to me. Why would professors risk their careers by unethically (and probably illegally) targeting Robinson's children for expulsion without cause?

So I found a statement from Oregon State that, not surprisingly, calls Robinson's paranoid delusions a bunch of crap -- though, sadly, the University Relations press release wasn't that blunt in its wording. The meaning was the same, though.

Robinson’s material singles out several individual faculty members for criticism. The university has found no factual basis for the accusations made against those faculty members. OSU is proud of its education and research programs and faculty in Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics and of department alumni, many of whom hold leadership positions in government and private sector organizations.

OSU will not comment on other allegations made in the Robinson posts other than to say the claims made therein are baseless and without merit.

If you have a strong stomach for B.S., head over to World Net Daily and read Robinson's screed. It's filled with evidence-less conspiracy theories that have been de-bunked by Oregon State administrators.

Oh, but wait!

OSU higher-ups must be part of the conspiracy also. So every denial by the university that Robinson's children are being attacked by Democrat ideologues in the Nuclear Engineering department actually is additional proof that the accusations are true.

Thus almost certainly worketh the off-center psyche of Art Robinson, who seemingly has never come across a fact that his right-tilted mind can't manufacture into an illusion of his own making.

Such as Robinson's belief that global warming is a crock, putting him at odds with 98% of the world's climate scientists (Robinson is a chemist.) And that it'd be fine to spread radioactive waste in the oceans.

You have to say this for Art Robinson, the GOP candidate running against U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio in southwest Oregon:

He never denies that he said it.

Over the last 15 years or so, Robinson, who runs his own scientific research center and newsletter from a compound outside Cave Junction, has piled up a series of statements that range from jaw-dropping to "Were you running a fever that day?"

But now, he won't deny that he repeatedly seemed to call for abolishing public schools, or for spreading nuclear waste in the oceans, or for a Social Security policy based on a mathematical impossibility that should be clear to a research scientist. He just explains that he said those things a while ago, or that when he said them he didn't know that he'd ever be running for public office, or that he was talking to an excited crowd and got excited himself.

Which makes Art Robinson's latest OSU weirdness 99.9% unlikely to be remotely true. If you watch the first ten minutes or so of Robinson imploding on Rachel Maddow's show last October, I bet you'll want to make that probability 100%.

This guy's credibility is beyond the farthest reaches of believable. Have a look at the past, and probably future, Republican candidate for Congress in DeFazio's district.

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Comments

[Peter Wood]

Im a conservative republican and I have been very embarrassed that people cannot see the true Paranoid whining Robinson they supported as a candidate. (I do/did not support him). I also do not support DeFazio.
Mr Robinson. Have your kids release OSU so they can put out the facts to the public and quit putting baseless accusations out there. If these accusations are true then the facts will show it. T

[Rain]

My husband heard him on Lars Larson while he was driving home and said he nearly drove off the road in his anger at the kind of stuff Robinson was saying with Larson talking as though how brilliant Robinson is.

Robinson home schooled his kids, as I recall, which pretty well explains their problem in any school of higher education. The fact that he got anywhere near being in Congress and had so many people putting up signs favoring him says a lot about the Republican party today. It's all sad.

[Darkwing Duck]

If I were a professor of nuclear engineering and I knew that taking on a doctoral advisee would mean dealing with Art Robinson for the next 5-7 years, I would have second thoughts about agreeing. You can't force a professor to take on an advisee; advising represents a huge investment of a professor's time and effort, to say nothing of taking on responsibility for a young person's professional future. Once in a while, a student cannot get any faculty member to agree to advise, which means the student falls through the cracks. That is what appears to have happened here.

[Blogger Brian]

A Eugene TV station interviewed Robinson, asking him if he had proof of his allegations against OSU.
http://www.kval.com/news/local/117619993.html?

The story says:

“I don’t have definitive proof," Robinson said. "That is what I believe. Basically, I know what happened. I cannot tell you the motives of the people doing it.”

What a jerk. He doesn't have any evidence that global warming isn't happening, but he believes this is true. He doesn't have any evidence that OSU is doing anything wrong, but hie believes this is true.

Robinson needs to learn the difference between the inside of his own deluded head and external reality. Why anyone takes him seriously is a mystery to me ("a sucker is born every minute" is the best explanation, I guess).

[Jim Brigleb]

Ask yourself this, why would Art Robinson jeopardize his children's educational success by making this claim if it were baseless? I spent 30 years in the public educational system; if this type of "antic" were without foundation, 1) his three children would denounce him, and 2) he would be jeopardizing their credibility and success within the university. Let's separate what you happen to think of Art Robinson's knowledge of science and examine the claim at hand. What would be his motivation? What good would come out of this for his three children by doing this at a critical time in their educational journey? And why would this be happening concurrently with all 3 children? Lastly, what would Professor Higginbotham have to gain by blowing the whistle of the actions of the department?

[Jane Orient]

To Darkwing Duck: Up until the time the powerful clique that recently took control of the department decided to kick out the Robinson children, despite their excellent work, nobody had to deal with Art Robinson. Obviously, you have never met any of those young people. Any honest person who had a serious job to do would be highly privileged to have any one of these talented, gracious, extremely hard-working young people on his team. How can you say such mean-spirited things about people you have never met who are having their young lives destroyed through no fault of their own!

[Kennon Ledbetter]

Ha, ha, ha,

Do you seriously believe that university departments are immune to politics, power, and corruption? You're crazier than you claim Art Robinson is.

Where do you get the number that 98% of all climate scientists believe in AGW? Oh, that's right, if you don't believe in it, then you can't be a real scientist.

I've read at least two different articles in which the reporter pointed out to OSU that one of the Robinson kids had provided a formal waiver and OSU still refused to answer questions.

[Blogger Brian]

Kennon, here's a link where you can read about the study which found that 98% of scientists who publish research on the subject of climate change accept that human activity is warming our planet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10370955

Of course, some non-scientists, or scientists who haven't done reputable research, have a different opinion. But I'm going to believe experts in climate science, not Internet wackos.

It's a fact: the consensus that humans are causing potentially catastrophic climate change is almost universal among the genuine scientific community. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

[Nanoo Visotor]

Ignoring the AGW digression ...

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Oregon State seemed to have more room for differing viewpoints. In those days, one might hear protestors against the Vietnam War one day, ROTC candidates singing the memorable ditty "We want to go to Vietnam, We want to kill a Viet Cong", and later someone on a guitar might be singing Little Bunny Fru Fru (or Foo Foo, depending on variant -- which had the punny moral "Hare Today, Goon Tomorrow".

Back to the AGW digression ... could political correctness, backed by government funding be a unifying thread between AGW and whatever is befalling the Robinson PhD candidates?

[Sad Nerd]

I graduated from from OSU's Radiation Health Physics Department (part of the Nuclear Engineering Department) and had a few classes with the Robinsons...

@Rain - Saying that the Robinson kids are probably struggling because they were homeschooled is absolutely absurd. They are brilliant students and do well in all of their classes. I know... I was in those classes with them. There is no reason they would be dismissed for academic reasons. The Nuclear Engineering Department at OSU is a very small one. And all of the professors work very hard with their students to ensure their success, so students very rarely (I actually didn't see it at all, but I assume it happens) get dismissed. And the Robinsons would not be the ones struggling... I'm pretty sure I saw them at the Radiation Center more than any other students. I wished I had that kind of dedication to my studies.

@Darkwing Duck - Once again, it's a very small department and students don't just 'fall through the cracks'. When I was thinking about getting my Master's, I had lots of professors in the department offering advice and doing all they could to get me in, and I was not a particularly stellar student. Oh, and they never asked me who my dad is in the application process.

Hearing about this has really disappointed me. I know what great students the Robinsons are. And I know how interested the professors of that department are in the success of their students. How disappointing that politics are getting in the way of great students' success and professors doing their job. Dr. Higginbotham happened to be my advisor and hearing that he is being attacked infuriates me. He doesn't deserve it. And neither do the Robinson students.

[Darkwing Duck]

I'm an academic and teach at an Oregon university (not OSU). I can tell you that if Pete DeFazio (or any other politician) came to my university demanding that we punish his opponent's children, he would be laughed out of the building. We don't do that, and neither does OSU.

An editorial in the Register-Guard summed it up pretty well:

"To accept [Robinson's claims] requires believing that a chain of malice and corruption reaches from DeFazio to the president of OSU, from the president to the administration and from the administration to the university’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics, where two of Robinson’s children are pursuing doctorates and a third is working toward a master’s degree.

At every link along that chain, one person would have said to the next that OSU must punish its own students for their father’s political activities. Everyone along the chain had a professional, ethical and legal obligation to tell the person making such a demand to go to hell. Yet Robinson would have Oregonians believe that orders for a political hit are transmitted smoothly from Washington, D.C., to Corvallis, never encountering so much as a speed bump of principle, integrity or academic independence."

[Darkwing Duck]

@Jane Orient: I did not impugn the character of Art Robinson's children. So far I've read about nothing to suggest they are not decent people. As a member of the faculty at Art Robinson's Institute of Science and Medicine, you would have a far greater familiarity with them than most.

[Y. B. Gerbil]

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes' corollary to Bayes' Theorem

I can think of three explanations for this spectacle, of varying improbability:

1) Peter DeFazio and other powers-that-be, for the purpose of punishing Art Robinson through his children, inveighed upon OSU administrators and professors to SIMULTANEOUSLY drive out all three Robinsons and whomever dared to defend them (Professor Higginbotham) -- exceedingly unlikely.

2) The hitherto talented, assiduous, and ethical Higginbotham and Robinsons ALL misbehaved so as to deserve expulsion from OSU -- very unlikely.

3) Art Robinson is over-reacting to a perceived slight toward one or more of his kids, or, disgruntled after his electoral defeat, is pursuing a vendetta against his enemies, or both; and his dutiful children cannot bring themselves to gainsay their father by setting the record straight -- merely unlikely.

My vote's for 3).

[Mac]

Art Robinson has a long history of paranoid behavior. This is just the most recent. Send this wacko back to his cave in 2012.

[Pat Rorden]

In Dr Art Robinsons very own book "Common Sense in 2012",he makes many claims of his scientific background and yet states "there are very few children concieved thru rape".Another wingnut we don't need.