Bishop Hill Lewandowsky teeters on the brink
Sep 3, 2012 Climate: Sceptics In the comments to the earlier Lewandowsky thread, readers note the following comment by Skeptical Science writer, Tom Curtis:
Given the low number of "skeptical" respondents overall; these two scammed responses significantly affect the results regarding conspiracy theory ideation. Indeed, given the dubious interpretation of weakly agreed responses (see previous post), this paper has no data worth interpreting with regard to conspiracy theory ideation. It is my strong opinion that the paper should be have its publication delayed while undergoing a substantial rewrite. The rewrite should indicate explicitly why the responses regarding conspiracy theory ideation are in fact worthless, and concentrate solely on the result regarding free market beliefs (which has a strong enough a response to be salvageable). If this is not possible, it should simply be withdrawn.
It surely cannot be long before this happens.
Reader Comments (69)
Curtis's other comment 35 is pertinent also- summarising the paper as an 'own goal'.
"result regarding free market beliefs"
LATEST - Lewandosky's title for his new paper: "Bears defecate in woods—therefore (climate) alarmism is unpopular among free-market believers: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of codswallop"
Although not an 'icon' like the stick , this paper does offer a comfort blanket to those AGW proponents who simply cannot deal with the reality of why 'the cause ' is failing .
So its to late , this PP 'research' has entered the dogma so now must be defended regardless , we been here time and again , where its the perceived PR value for 'the cause' that matters , not its actual scientific validity.
This approach will only stop once those initial plugging such rubbish for all its worth start to go back and admit publicly it was rubbish in the first place and sadly and its hard to see that happening .
Perhaps Lewandowsky was (or even is) about to find himself in very hot water for research malfeasance at UWA, which should not tolerate having its good standing as an institution dragged through the mud. I have a family connection to two PhD psychologists who taught there, long since retired. I must ask them what they make of this fiasco.
What's with all this "ideation"?? Hadn't come across the word before so I........
Look up ideation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Ideation may refer to:
Ideation (idea generation), the process of creating new ideas
Suicidal ideation, a common medical term for thoughts about suicide
I particularly like the second suggestion in the circumstances..........
I wonder if the Grauniad will withdraw its article on the subject with the same prominance as when they published it? A moment of reflection about the problematic relationship between alarmist hysteria and telling of the truth would also be welcome. But somehow I expect they'll simply delete the archived article and not mention a thing...
[snip]
I like that. The pseudo scientific "proof" of conspiracy "ideation" has been roundly debunked by the actually far more soberly ideated targets of the politically motivated smear paper themselves. But I guess we need to apply the ancient Vulcan proverb that "Only Nixon could go to China" and give old Tom the credit for kicking off the reappraisal ;)
Meanwhile look out for examples of this behaviour - once this comforting bogus scientific "proof" has been removed from the table I predict the believers will pathetically start to impotently splutter something along these lines:
"...but... but... do you honestly think there isn't a higher than normal incidence of paranoid conspiracy theorists amongst deniers?!!!"
Ah bless. ;)
The paranoid conspiracy theory I see most often is the one about a "well-organised oil industry-funded disinformation campaign to denigrate climate 'science'."
Its supporters include Michael Mann, Lewandowsky, and almost everyone prominent who professes to believe that we are heading into the maw of a climate catastrophe
'Skeptical Science' (funny name for a warmist site) seems to have a problem with "References to stolen intellectual property" being posted in the comments. These have all been removed it seems. Do they mean ClimateGate or is it something else? I thinkl we should be told!
Careful now - that counts as a "deranged denier death threat" in Australian academic circles.
Sep 3, 2012 at 12:19 PM | FarleyR
They're references to the leak of the SKS private chat-room emails. I saw a couple, pre delete, where Geoff Chambers mentioned that he saw no references to the relevant Lewandowsky survey in a search of them.
Like a court it is "Inadmissible evidence , the jury will ignore that remark" ;)
When (if?) the authors recognise their 'data issues' I hope that ManicBeanCounter's blog post of 1 September 2012 is given due credit. It pre-dates Tom Curtis' comments about the data on sks (2 and 3 Sept).
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/09/01/lewandowsky-et-al-2012-motivated-rejection-of-science-part-3-data-analysis-of-the-conspiracy-theory-element/
There is one thing that Lewandowsky should be praised for, and that is releasing the survey database prior to publication.
Omnologos:
He'll be in touch within the day for your help as co-author, Maurizio, no doubt.
Foxgoose to Geoff Chambers (on the earlier thread):
Seconded. A cracking result. As someone else says the half-life of such gibberish is reducing.
And we should go back to Pointman:
In other words, to those who now try, high-mindedly, to close the post-mortem down, we should simply ask "What were you thinking? Are you aware of the historical parallels?" As I said on the previous thread the smear machine must be shut down for good.
FairleyR
(Sep 3, 2012 at 12:19 PM)
The “references to stolen property” which caused my comments to be snipped refer to my references to internal emails between Cook and his colleagues at SkS. Fair enough in the circumstances, though it does mean I can’t say all I know there, which probably frustrates them more than it does me, since they don’t know what I know and must fear I’ll say it somewhere else.
(Sep 3, 2012 at 12:01 PM)
I don’t think the Guardian will delete the article. Their moderation policy seems scrupulously fair, within the limits of their own rules. They’ll delete your sceptical comments if some obsessive warmist troll asks them to, but once comments are closed, they stay up for ever. There’s still a comment up from a couple of years ago by a Guardian writer and prominent Skeptical Science author which makes unflattering reflections about the size of my member. Odd, and worth a footnote perhaps when the definitive study of the psychology of climate hysteria comes to be written.
I have posted this comment, currently awaiting moderation, on Adam Corner's Talking Climate blog:-
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/#comment-374
DR
An address for obtaining the raw data was given by Lewandowsky in the preprint paper, which was linked by Adam Corner in his Guardian article back in July
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists
so Lewandowsky was doing no more than he was obliged to.
Katabasis deserves credit for being the first to announce that he had the data at JoanneNova’s; manicbeancounter for doing the basic analysis and getting it up fast, and identifying the two outliers (shades of Yamal larches) which prove that the moon landng never happened (given that it’s not getting any warmer); and A.Scott at the Blackboard for discovering the tragic data loss at Kwiksurveys.
This whole saga shows internet cooperation between sceptics at it’s best, I think. A cheque from Exxon would only spoil the fun.
Incidentally, there’s 1300+ comments on the original Guardian article, 25 on the reprint at talkingclimate. Itwould be interesting to go back one day and compare the two threads...
Am not finding many blogs enthusiastically in favor of Lew's original manufactured results. Has anybody got a list by any chance?
Maurizio
I found this one,
http://www.greenreport.it/_new/index.php?page=default&id=17541
in which Lewandowsky is quoted as claiming that responses came from all over - USA, Australia, and GB. This indicates that he has demographic data which is not in the data released. (We know he has data on the age of respondents as well). He also claims this is the first time a link has been found between denial of the link between Hiv and AIDS and political views. Surely that can’t be right?
Sep 3, 2012 at 1:13 PM | omnologos
The contemporaneous blog activity does seem sparse now you mention it. I guess getting it into two broadsheets ain't bad though ;)
Two approving blog reports I find are:
Daily Kos
and:
Hufflepuff
(this last article was also reprinted on the Psychological Science site which I take as a tacit endorsement of it passing peer review )
geoff:
Ha. So true :)
Ah, the mythical cheque from Exxon - how we longed for it in days of yore. But you're right, we're past all that now. If Steve Mc was a little down on blogs at his brilliant talk at the GWPF the other day this episode this once again gives the other side. What fun.
Hi Geoff
Have you thought to make a summary of the issues, Curtis response, etc, and sent it to UEA ethics committee and the journal
Unless someone formally does this, there mat never be a formal response
Perhaps with a question or 3 about the obvious quality of the peer reviewers, or was it pal review.
We've spent over a month on this now.
I think I was first to get the list if blogs surveyed, which I teasered at Bishop Hill
Paul Matthews got them about the sane time, and he posted them on the original No Trucks Zone article, all from the Guardian article back in July
I would like to know Adam Corners thoughts now, on the paper he championed and 'commented' on in the national media. Perhaps it is time for psychologists like Adamant, Cardiff, Nottingham to consider their own motivated reasoning and personal ideologies, that allowed their uncritical views on this paper.
Typed on a smartphone. In brightsunlight
Maurizio:
Leopard:
Interesting. One thing this shows is what a disastrous editorial choice it was for the Telegraph last Tuesday to re-heat a story already passed over by so many (to their credit, presumably). Especially given what it's led on to. Yep, an own goal of spectacular proportions.
I think the silence of many is all part of the half-life of such rubbish reducing. All the more reason to hit this hard now, through all means. A cleanup of the climate debate is long overdue. Let's have prominent names like Monbiot not staying silent but publicly disowning this.
GeoffChambers at 1.01pm
Absolutely! But at least he's setting a good example to his colleagues, who, er, sometimes take a different view of their obligations :-)
Barry, I have recently sent Adam the following sincere tweet:
"What do you think of the paper now @AJCorner ? The opinion of a professional expert in the field such as yourself would be useful."
Foxgoose has tweeted him too, about his questions posted above.
Someone has already made a conduct complaint to UWA.
ACM have sent UWA an FOI for the alleged emails.
It's hard to keep up...
From Psychological Science 'Observer' July/August 2012 "Why Misinformation Sticks"
You said it, Stephan.
FarleyR, the "stolen intellectual property" is what John Cook now refers to the contents of their secret forum which was leaked to public domain earlier in this year.
The secret forum was where the SkS team hashed out the details of their climate PR sausage machine and other astroturfing operations. For example, Micheal Mann's "Climate Wars" got high ratings and reviews on Amazon, for no other reason than the SkS astroturfing. John Cook even congratulates his team for closing the passage to 'hordes of WUWTians' the way King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans blocked the way of Persians, and doing so without rippling abdominal muscles.
The SkS files was discussed extensively here in Behind the scenes at Skeptical Science and Opengate - Josh 158. Get lots of popcorn ready; you're in for a ride with those two threads.
Curiously, Lewandowsky's name and his collaboration with the SkS mob doesn't pop up until the very end of the second thread. See, Apr 2, 2012 at 7:05 AM | David. By then, after a week of entertainment, the local interest in SkS's shenanigans had waned. So Lewandosky and his crooked experiments with the SkS mob fell below the radar.
And I just discovered I'd said this at the time (April 2, 9:13PM): "Maybe someone ought to tweet the good Prof and let him know that the fraudulent experiment he carried out with the help of the SkS is now exposed and that he'd better withdraw the paper before the matter gets worse."
Tom Curtis's comments to be welcomed on the conspiracy theory aspects. Nice to see that he correctly identified the two scam results among the strongest skeptics >30 hours after I did. :)
However, he is still maintaining that the correlation between climate skepticism and "free markets" is valid, despite multiple reasons to believe the result is not representative of the true skeptic population.
After an intensive review of the papers purporting to analyze the motives and actions of global warming sceptics by various academic phsychologist practising in academia in the Anglosphere I am able to announce that it is very likely that said academia is infested with crackpot second rate psychologists.
So is the new paper's proposed title "People who understand economics disagree with predictions of climate catastrophe"?
Thank you guys...it appears I had forgotten the second W in Lew's name.
I still wonder what saved the usual suspects (Romm, Tamino, Mooney) from falling for the scam?
Thanks to sHx for bringing up the thread to Josh’s splendid Treehouse cartoon, and to David at Apr 2, 7.05am
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html?currentPage=4#comments
for first noticing Skeptical Science’s involvement in PsyOps. I later posted a best of compilation of John Cook’s references to Stephan in a comment to Adam Corner’s article at
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/
Adam Corner has conducted a similar experiment with psychology students, exposing them to pro and anti global warming articles, all of which he had written himself. The amusing thing was, his sceptical articles proved more convincing than his warmist ones. This article was discussed at length at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/03/shrinking-the-sceptics.html
Omno/Maurizio: Isn't it possible that some decided to wait until the paper was fully published? A wise choice, as it turned out. But until prominent warmists publicly reject the smearing of their opponents, a long-term habit of which Lewandowsky is only the most recent pseudo-scientific example, I for one fail to be impressed. Conspiracy theorist-mocker, heal thyself and thy fellow travellers.
"I don’t think the Guardian will delete the article. Their moderation policy seems scrupulously fair, within the limits of their own rules. They’ll delete your sceptical comments if some obsessive warmist troll asks them to, but once comments are closed, they stay up for ever.
Sep 3, 2012 at 12:42 PM | Registered Commentergeoffchambers"
That is not true. The Guardian removes comments from threads after closure. They also (eventually) set the recommend counters to zero.
Take this post by Kemp,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/jackie-kemp-batsheva-dance-group-shamesful-barracking
at 10:54 in the morning, Houston 3 Sept, thread now has 250 posts.
About 3 hours ago it was 251.
In a weeks time about 25 will have disappeared.
There’s a most interesting comment by ROM at the end of the previous Lewandowsky thread about a presentation he gave on 23th of September in which the results of the survey are already known. In the paper the fieldwork dates are given as Aug - Oct, 2010, and the six known blog announcements of the survey were on 28-30 August.
Given that his whole argument rests on two rogue outliers, it seems a bit early to be announcing his results in a public presentation on 23rd September.
Excellent last paragraph in the Climate Resistance article mentioned by geoff chambers above:
"When psychologists are recruited into political debates, we can be sure that we are being denied the opportunity to participate in the debate. It is a sure sign that our thoughts are seen as an impediment to somebody else’s political project. That’s not to say that there is something wrong with political projects in general, but that there is something very wrong indeed with attempting to persuade you through any other means than by treating you as a rational agent, capable of making decisions. Such treatment turns individuals into mere instruments. Psychologising dissent — rather than engaging in debate — belittles autonomy. It says that you don’t know what your best interests are, and that either way, what you think is not important. It is the most vile expression of contempt for humanity that is possible within a (nominative) democracy, and is an impulse that is most corrosive to it."
Adam Corner has now posted my question to him at Talking Climate.
I would imagine this means he intends to respond in due course.
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/#comments
@Barry Woods
"Hi Geoff Have you thought to make a summary of the issues, Curtis response, etc, and sent it to UEA ethics committee and the journal"
I'm not sure I understand this. What does UEA have to do with UWA?
(Hector Pascal, West Australian born UEA graduate )
Typo
Actually Android seems to auto corrected UWA into UEA
As I nearly did it again
Thank you sHx and others. I'll be sure to take a look behind the scenes of non-SkS, especially as the first reaction to true sceptics concerning the Lew paper was the typical 'nothing to see here' that one would expect from a rational independent scientist...
This is a small break through but an important one, as is the resignation of Comrade Black at the BBC. Did he jump or was he pushed. I expect the latter.
Hector - to fully understand Barry's posts you need to be in possession of the SEM (Sceptical Enigma Machine).
It's how we sceptics plan our darkest & most secret plots.
Do have a look at the slide presentation unearthed by ROM. It’s at
http://www.monash.edu.au/research/sustainability-institute/assets/documents/seminars/msi-seminar_10-09-23_lewandowsky_presentation.pdf
some extracts:
Slandering Bolt and Nova in a scientific presentation seems a particularly bad idea.
Foxgoose
Now you’ve betrayed our secret, it’s only a matter or time before Hector and the UEA/UWA gang discover that the barking rightwing Foxgoose and the loony lefty GeoffChambers are one and the same person.
Almost suicidal in fact (note - this form of words has been determined by my expensive legal advisers not to constitute a "death threat")
To be fair, I can't find any specific references in the slides to his own research results - he seems to mainly cite the work of various other lamebrain pseudoscientists like Heath & Gifford 2006 or Swami 2009, whose names are meaningless to me - but possibly not to one so practiced in the dark arts of psycho/sociology as yourself.
@Barry
Thanks for the clarification. I have a cellphone: for phonecalls. I use a computer for other stuff.
@Foxgoose
I was at UEA ENV 1980-1982. About 80% of the cohort were studying ecology/policy. I was on the darkside. Geophysics/ geochemistry/ sedimentology/ Quaternary geology (Geoff Boulton, no less) etc. The excellent *Science Education* I received there makes me proud to be an ENV graduate, sedimentologist and sceptic.
Why all the criticisms of Lewandowsky? He may have decided on his conclusions before he did his research but so what? It saves a lot of time to do things that way. After all isn't that how the climate science consensus operates?
Lewandowsky, Gleick, Richard Muller, Hanson, Mann, Obarmy, Sereeze - you kinda begin to feel sorry for them.
Or maybe not,
On Lewandowsky, someone tell him to stop digging.
Slide 29 above appears to show some light on why they cling to the big coal/big oil well-funded trope. It works better for them than trying to contest the truth. Scum.
Slide 10
"–driven by opposition to any form of regulation"
(against) Paedophilia? Murder? Rape?
Really!
Lewandowsky responds (hat tip ) via @leo-hickman
and he seems to be digging a hole, in its tone..
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc1.html
"For example, the website of the British RSPCA also did not post a link to the survey, and neither did the Australian Woolworths website, so how might their non-involvement affect the results? I am keen to hear about potential mechanisms, perhaps we have overlooked something."
It ain't slander. It's written therefore it's libel.