UPDATE: After a cursory look at the percentages in the response to the Lewandowsky survey from the blogs he listed as participating, it seems the outcome doesn’t fit the title. See below.
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From the “free the metadata” department, we have this gem. Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia’s Cognitive Science Department devised some sort of survey where he supposedly contacted skeptical climate blogs to ask we post a link to gather opinions for his survey. He says he contacted five and they all declined. Only one problem with that; none of the mainstream skeptical blogs appear to have any knowledge of being contacted. That includes WUWT and Climate Audit, among others.
I keep all my email, and I see no such contact or invitation. I’ve searched WUWT and found nothing in comments from him inviting to participate either. To be thorough, I also searched for any communications from his co-authors Klaus Oberauer and Gilles Gignac. I’ve found no invitation of any kind, but I did find that a commenter in the USA, PaulW left a note about it on WUWT here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/29/new-wuwt-sstenso-page-now-online/#comment-469869 But, he’s not affiliated with UWA or the authors, and it was purely a comment of curiosity. One of our moderators, D.B. Stealey took the survey (now deleted) after seeing the comment, and noted “Interesting questions.” but he didn’t note any invitation to post it on WUWT, nor did I.
Similar lack of confirmed invitations are being reported in other skeptical blogs, and the list is growing. But, for some reason, Dr. Lewandowsky refuses to divulge which skeptical blogs he contacted.
Jo Nova and Lucia Liljegren are asking some very pointed questions. Given the sheer lunacy on display in the paper…
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E. (in press). NASA faked the moon landing—therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.. Psychological Science.
…I think Jo Nova nailed it with this line:
It’s as if Stephan did not want to know what real skeptics think?
Lucia asked Lewandowsky in a direct email about it and got this response:
Sorry, no, they likely replied to my requests under the presumption of privacy and I am therefore not releasing their names.
The blogs that did post the link (thereby publically identifying themselves, unlike those who declined) are:
%http://www.skepticalscience.com
%http://tamino.wordpress.com
%http://bbickmore.wordpress.com
%http://www.trunity.net/uuuno/blogs/
%http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/
%http://profmandia.wordpress.com/
%http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
%http://hot-topic.co.nz/
“…they likely replied” That seems to me to be pretty weak data for a scientist. Either they replied requesting confidentiality or they didn’t, there’s no “likely” about it when gathering hard data.
Time to fess up, perfessor. Show the list and proof of contact and confirmation that they declined the invitation. You have my full and complete permission to release my name. Other skeptical bloggers have also granted permission on Lucia’s website, so there’s no reason to hold back now.
In comments at Lucia’s, Steve McIntyre notes:
The University of Western Australia has fairly standard academic misconduct policies.
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au…..guidelines
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au…..rch-policy
If Lewandowky’s claim about 5 skeptic blogs was fabricated, it appears to me that it would be misconduct under university policies. The person responsible for investigating complaints appears to be the Pro VIce Chancellor (Research) ,Robyn Owens, dvcr@uwa.edu.au.
She is in a position to get an answer, given Lewandowsky’s refusal to disclose the information.
In other news, the Lewandowsky survey data was put online at Bishop Hill. See it here.
Make of that data what you wish, but it seems to me that if you only ask questions of one side, as shown is the blog list above, you’ll get one-sided answers. That’s hardly science.
UPDATE: After looking at the survey data provided on the Bishop Hill blog here, it is beginning to look like the answers were skewed by participants at those blogs for what they think he wanted to hear, rather than a true sample.
For example: If you look at column R in the Excel spreadsheet, labeled CYMoon, which according to the paper in question:
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E. (in press). : An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.. Psychological Science.
It says:
CYMoon The Apollo moon landings never happened and were
staged in a Hollywood studio. .742
That is the result of this question structure:
Unless otherwise noted, all items used a 4-point scale ranging from \Strongly Disagree’ (1) to \Strongly Agree” (4). Table section headings correspond to latent variable names in
Figure 2.
OK do a simple scan of the 1’s and 2’s in column R, which correspond to ‘Strongly Disagree’ and ‘Disagree’ and you get them as the majority, with a smattering of 3’s and 4’s. So I decided to use Excel’s function for counting occurances. =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”1″, and =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”2″ =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”3″ =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”4″
The (corrected, I had the 1 and 4 counts backwards originally, thanks Lucia) distribution of responses to the Moon Landing question are:
1067 Strongly Disagree
68 Disagree
4 Agree
6 Strongly agree
Total responses are 1145 (Rows R2 to R1146, top row R1 is title, so subtract 1 from 1146). Therefore 1067+68 = 1135 1135/1145 = 0.9912
Only 0.9% of respondents actually believe that the moon landings “never happened and were staged in a Hollywood film studio”. So what does that say about the title of the paper:
NASA faked the moon landing—therefore (climate) science is a hoax
I see a retraction for this paper in the very near future.
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I’m having a look at the paper in question and I’m just shaking my head. This is utterly ridiculous on one hand, but also utterly outrageous on the other. He’s really putting people, who’re looney enough to ignore hard scientific facts & data (i.e. moon landing deniers) into the same box with people who point out the hard scientific facts & data and issues with what we’re being told are scientific facts (AGW/climate change “deniers”.)
If anything, this paper will prove my position (again): psychology is not a science.
I would believe that someone like this would see a small steel pineapple on the street, pick it up, and say to themselves; I wonder happens when I pull this pin?
That he thought he could get away with publishing such a blatantly biased, partisan and unscientific paper and that Psychological Science see fit to publish it makes me want to leave academia and never return once I complete my PhD.
Luckily science is not determined by social theorists.
The son of a friend went to a respectably UK university for interview for acceptance to start a course. He was told his grades were not good enough for the chosen course but recommended he chose psychology because it was impossible to fail the psychology course.
So much for psychology.
This guy needs treatment on the couch himself I think … and UWA needs to take action. I spent a year there once, shame on them. Their standards have crashed.
I love the smell of uncovered scientific misconduct in the morning
I agree to a point with Edohiguma. I believe the *methodology* used in psychology right now (that is, the same methodology used in the physical sciences) is inappropriate, given that it’s a social science, and there are unobservable phenomena to take into account, such as free will and subjective valuations – just as in economics, my area of study. Studying a social science using the physical science method, imo, you get things like keynesian economics or pseudopsychology.
“Page Not Found” for the Bishop Hill Link
REPLY: Fixed, thanks. Anthony
“The blogs that did post the link (thereby publically identifying themselves……”
Publically?
Perhaps we should contact Brian at the Reproducibility Project?
http://saintleoinkblot.com/2012/04/18/the-reproducibility-project-and-why-some-psychologists-may-be-nervous/
My goodness! A “scientist” starting with a result he wants to prove and then fudging up the data? What a concept! I think this is SOP in the sciences these days.
I am utterly amazed that propaganda masquerading as science such as this got through the peer review process and was published. From hypothesis, through methods, analysis and conclusions, the paper is riddled with errors and should have been rejected by the editorial team without bothering reviewers.
I do think it is unfair to tar the whole of psychology because papers such as this. There are many areas of psychology where the science is as rigorous as any of the better conducted physical sciences.
The thing that keeps baffling me is the paper is titled, “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax” despite the fact only *ten* people said they believed the moon landing was faked. And of those ten people, most were “believers.”
How do you smear skeptics like that based on less than 1% of your data?
Ugh! One of my countrymen. How embarrassment.
It IS possible to examine human behavior in a properly scientific way, but academic psychologists never do it. They always begin with false theories that ignore natural tendencies, and they always reverse leading and lagging variables.
Exactly like climate “scientists”.
While the MSM are happy to publish stories about the results of this paper, you can rest assured that when it is proven to be a heap of rubish, they will suddenly go awol.
Is it too much to say `Lewandowsky, you are a LIAR!` ?
Mind you, I am being polite.
The paper is so flawed it isn’t even wrong. How did this pass peer review? That says a lot about the journal too.
Jo Nova and I have been corresponding about Lewdandorky.
I have organised a meeting with my university’s Interdisciplinary Ethics team to discuss this paper.
Would it be a surprise that a climate zealot lied to advance his cause? True scientists offer real data. I’ve noticed that a lot of the warmers spins anecdotes and lies in lieu of real data. Why is that?
Sure people question the moon landing. But the response to those questions is real data. Even Mythbusters conducted experiments to refute the skeptics. They didn’t just offer anecdotes and lies.
Speaking of which I wonder if Mythbusters could do a whole season digging into the CAGW claims.
I remember seeing something about skeptics by a social scientist/psychologist(?) (this blog?). Can’t remember if I commented or just thought that psychoanalysis of “deniers” was just another attack on the non-believers by those of the true faith. I’m not sure what is gained by trying to understand the non-believers other than propaganda.
Has the editor of the esteemed journal nothing to answer?
Dr. Lewandowsky’s paper is based on a false premise.
Here are the questions Doran & Zimmerman asked:
“Significant contributing factor” is not the same as “largely due to” or “having catastrophic consequences”.
Anderegg et al did not ask any direct questions of any scientists but selected and interpreted the literature according to their own criteria.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s human nature. Scientists and students who “support the tenets of ACC” are more likely to be interested in (or even evangelical about) ACC; they are more likely to become “self-identified climate scientists;” they are more likely to publish papers and “scientific assessment reports” about climate science and sign “multisignatory statements about ACC.” And that’s before an ocean of grant funding is thrown into the equation.
These “supporters’ ” beliefs are then bolstered when they read “research” from “social scientists” that assert that “90% of climate scientists agree” with them -a positive feedback mechanism of confirmation bias.
Let’s face it. Without the global warming issue “climate science” would not receive the massive funding that it does; would not be get the media attention that it does; and would probably not even exist as a subject outside of meteorology with its own purpose built institutions and departments.
And without “global warming” nobody would even have heard of Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, outside of his sad little pseudo-scientific clique.
Tallbloke, do tell!
It will be interesting to discover how they justify this travesty, which would attract a resounding ‘F’ in any decent course on survey design.