Guest post by A. Scott
There has been considerable discussion about the methodology and data regarding the recent 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” (copy here)
This allegedly peer reviewed paper claims their survey data show climate skeptics are supporters of wild conspiracy theories, such as “NASA faked the moon landing.” The author admits, however, no climate skeptic sites were involved in the survey, that essentially all survey results were obtained thru posting the survey on pro-global warming sites.
Due to the serious and legitimate questions raised, I have recreated the Lewendowsky Survey in an attempt to replicate and create a more robust set of replies, including from skeptic users.
Please click on the Lewandosky Survey Page above and you’ll be presented the survey. This survey replicates the questions, both the paper, and several sites have indicated were in the original survey, including those questions deleted from the survey results.
The only change was to use a 1 to 5 ranking vs. Lewandowsky’s 1 to 4, which several people with experience have noted should improve the overall responses.
Each visit to the survey is tracked. Access is password protected for an additional layer of tracking.
THE PASSWORD FOR THE SURVEY IS “REPLICATE” (case sensitive)
Please only complete and submit once. Also, please respond to each question with the answer that best reflects your position, even though the question may not be perfectly worded.
This survey is built on the Google Doc’s open access platform. Results are collected automatically. As no significant randomization or counterbalancing was performed on the original survey none is applied here. Data collected will be provided upon request.
A. Scott
It’s a conspiracy against the biased and incompetent!
I would love to see a cumulative response vs time curve on this survey.
omg, what a leftist poll. Many questions lead to catch-22 answers. The questions refuse to acknowledge that environment can be valued in a free market system. The questions pit free market against environment, and involve Marxist social justice.
Submit button? What submit button?
Why are they asking us? – there’s a peer reviewed paper with the answer provided!
:rolleyes:
LOL
To see the SUBMIT button you need to move the scroll bar to move the text up.
En Passant says
It’s a conspiracy against the biased and incompetent!
-0–
So lewandowski launched it against himself?
Mann, I hope you grade on a curve…
I’ve completed the survey, but what is it supposed to prove? That we aren’t all nutters?
Why not put up the “When did you stop beating your wife” survey?
Can’t help feeling we’re playing so far in the crazy alarmist ballpark that we’ll get lost.
To replicate a study, you need to use the original (poorly designed) 1 through 4 choices, not 1 through 5. You have not replicated the study, you have improved on it.
However, you have made the same mistake the original author did, by not obtaining a random population sample. The original results, plus yours will be biased, thus making the results useless.
I added the following feedback…
Bad phrasing:
“An economic system based on free markets unrestrained by government interference automatically works best to meet human needs. *”
No not always automatically. If phrased as “tends to” then would get strong agreement from me. As is I disagree.
“4. The preservation of the free market system is more important than localized environmental concerns *”
Define “local”. We’re trashing the Amazon or an empty field at the edge of a city where frogs live?
“Smoking causes lung cancer *”
It doesn’t cause lung cancer, but it does increase the risk. You can smoke and not get lung cancer; you can not smoke and get lung cancer.
“Human CO2 emissions cause climate change *”
In sufficient quantity CAN, that doesn’t mean always will.
FWIW, I’ve submitted my response. But some of the questions are a bit nutty. Like what is my opinion of what is done at Area 51? It’s a top secret facility, I can have no agreement nor disagreement with any assertion of what is done there as I have no knowledge of the place. Or the “Kennedy lone gunman” question: There’s a load of evidence that L.H.Oswald was not alone; but that doesn’t make it a ‘grand conspiracy’. Again, an ‘unknowable’ answer on which I’m expected to have an opinion? How about “I don’t know and neither does just about everyone; so I reserve judgement.”? But other than the “have you stopped beating your wife” nature of some of the ‘nutty’ questions, it didn’t take long and isn’t very hard.
Yep. Done.
Lewandowsky gets a chance?
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d .. “
Did the original survey invite reposting the invitation? Should more be invited elsewhere?
Have to agree with Alvin. Wouldn’t play this sick game with a rather sick man (Lewandowsky) if I were you. Sick men make sick claims as he apparently has made of the science oriented minds that frequent this site. Just by making his claim on inadequate data he has proven he is no scientist, that’s for sure!
Absurdly biased set of questions. Did the authors of those questions believe they were writing unbiased questions? I would not call the authors of that survey “scientists” on a dare.
Anthony, I’ve been reading your site for some time now and finally decided I wanted to be involved in the discussions. It seems that anyone who is actually honest with themselves would answer ‘i don’t know’ for many of these questions. I realise it’s about opinions, but I really can’t form a worthwhile opinion about free market economies if I don’t know anything about free market economies. Seriously, any opinion I have is going to be coloured only by popular opinion and not from any real knowledge of whether something is good or bad.
I think far too many people in this debate (the climate science debate) seem to have lost the ability to simply say “I don’t know”.
Anyway, looking forward to being involved in future discussions.
Given this survey is now infamous, aren’t we going to get every troll making their way here to say they don’t believe in AGW but do believe the Illuminati run the world? Just for fun?
Let’s do another suvery.
Same questions. But the responses are:
1 – Great well phrased, meaningful question
2 – poorly phrased question but still useful.
3 – badly phrased question. Conflates issues. Could be saved with rephrasing.
4 – assumptions bad, results not usable.
5 – Hopeless bad question. Irredeamable.
Looks like climate scientists are using the Saul Alinsky method of data collection…
OY!
3. The free-market system may be efficient for resource allocation, but it is limited in its capacity to promote social justice
yep! got to hand it to them… this is your opinion and you will like it…
Mike … scroll down the page for more questions … the SUBMIT button is at the end
To the several that have commented on the questions themselves, this is a recreation of the original survey.
The questions in the survey here are as created by the original authors. Yes, many are poorly written, hard to understand, and/or otherwise flawed. However, for the purposes here retaining the original questions, warts and all, is important.
The test will prove, like thermometer sitings, that biased questions give biased results. No more, no less.
7. The Iraq War in 2003 was launched for reasons other than to remove WMD from Iraq.
Umm, It was launched for many reasons. One of them was to remove WMD. But there were others too. OTTOOMH: Hubris, completion (Bush), ‘legacy, doing the right thing’ (Blair), Do I strongly agree with the proposition because others existed as well? Or strongly disagree because WMD was indeed one of the causes?
Very badly phrased and ambiguous question..typical of many.
I already had severe doubts about the methodology of Lewandowsky’s paper. Now I have seen the very poor quality of the questions he asked, I have had those doubts confirmed (1 = strongly agree).
And if this is typical of the level of rigour of ‘work’ produced in climatology as well as in sociology, then the last 30 years of the climateers has all been pretty much a waste of time. Hardly rises above a science project by Lisa Simpson (age 8). And I may be doing a disservice to Lisa 🙁
I’m sure my responses will not compute. 😉
@E.M.Smith:
“FWIW, I’ve submitted my response. But some of the questions are a bit nutty”
As a “cognitive scientist” he’s running with a hell of a handicap.
” … the “Kennedy lone gunman” question: There’s a load of evidence that L.H.Oswald was not alone; but that doesn’t make it a ‘grand conspiracy’ .. ”
I’m almost tempted to try to discuss this one with him 🙂
The event happened when I was 15. First thing my old man noticed on the newsreels was people hanging out of upstairs windows waiving. BIG failure of SOP.
In that year, I had scored 95/100 on a 400 yard .303 range, Lee Enfield with conventional sight. I knew I couldn’t have done what Oswald was claimed to have done with a bolt-action rifle, down-grade, receding target, plus telescopic sight (= slower action). So I was skeptical. Then there were the “Lucien Sarti” revelations. Quite recently a full reconstruction was done, and yes, it was possible, so I changed my view …
How does one answer this one? “20. The claim that the climate is changing due to emissions from fossil fuels is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who wish to spend more taxpayer money on climate “research”. *
The answer is these are incompetent boobs who make crap up. Heck, half of them believe the nonsense they spew! Look at Steig!
I am only getting a gray screen
https://ascottblog.wordpress.com/wp-login.php?action=postpass
Didn’t join in on this one. With warped questions you can get warped answers, meaning they can read what they like out of it. Not interested in Lew’s methodology, he’s shown himself as biased and slippery in his thinking. His dodge and weave and his “See? See? That proves it!” approach only proves to me that he is completely untrustworthy. I wouldn’t touch any of ’em with a barge pole.
The original survey is bogus and a stooge, do not complete this version as it gives credibility to the unmitigated bias of first laughable piece of junk.
Here’s a better survey question.
What qualifies one to be an Australian Professor of Psychology?
We can have more fun and learn more by
coming up with 4 alternative answers.
Mike says:
September 8, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Submit button? What submit button?
Have you still got the box your computer came in?
Motivated rejection of science
Abstract
“Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the
world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence.”
Nice opening leap of abstraction. It receives a failing for the poorly designed survey and complete bias in citations that support the survey purpose; to mock others.
When i read social justice i gave up
I almost gave up there too, but I really wanted to get through it. It was another fine example of a question that just doesn’t fit the agree/disagree scaled answer. And the last few questions are a bit creepy, to be honest. The majority of the survey seems much more political than scientific, to be honest.
Pamela – you are correct, technically a “recreation” rather than a strict “replication.”
I gave fair amount of thought to this decision. My conclusion was that as this survey is not re-polling the same people who took the original poll, and there is no attempt to validate those responses, it was well worthwhile to increase the quality of the data collected by using the 5 point system.
In my opinion, by using the original questions, in as close to their exact original wording as possible, the basis for responses is essentially identical. The change does not affect the response to the question as written, but the quality, or granularity, of the response is improved.
Because this survey is public, and I assume will be well disseminated – including to pro-science sites who provided most of the original respondents, their users can take the poll again if they choose and their answers will be validated on the same scale as all others.
Also as no significant randomization or counterbalancing was performed on the original, and considering the relatively simple nature of this survey, none is applied here.
This effort isn’t perfect.
I researched the best way to recreate this survey considering accuracy, economics, ability to track responses etc. Based on that research the Google Docs “Forms” platform, coupled with an independent stat counter that tracks responses provided in my opinion the necessary features and robustness, along with tracking, to accomplish this work with a sufficient degree of accuracy. Results and stats are collected automatically, but there is some manual work reconciling the two.
A perfect solution would have incorporated all features in one package. However, the cost for that was quoted at $5,000.00 – not suitable or necessary here.
The original survey was collected using KwikSurvey.com. As part of my research I set up a paid premium acct. there (and set up trial accounts at 6 other online survey providers) and found they offer less robustness than the platform here.
Hopefully what we do here is provide data from respondents across the entire spectrum.
That said, even if the respondents are primarily from “skeptic” sites, I do not see an issue. The original study conclusion (and its clear it’s intent) was to show what/how climate skeptics think. Thus a collection of data skewed towards climate skeptics will provide accurate data on climate skeptics.
At least that’s how I see it. YMMV.
I have to agree with DaveA above. Too many questions are badly phrased for an Agree/Disagree scale answer.
I completed it… without throwing up I might add… this is a huge piece of garbage..
A 2nd survey should be done, with Stephen’s 1/2/3 questions rephrased, and compared.
Pamela Gray:
“However, you have made the same mistake the original author did, by not obtaining a random population sample. The original results, plus yours will be biased, thus making the results useless.”
I think it will be interesting to discover just how different the results will be. My answers to the survey would have been the same if I had completed it at another site. I agree that a bias will exist but I suspect a larger percentage of pro-AGWers visit this site than skeptics visit pro-AGW sites, especially those which stifle dissenting opinion.
I noted this to Pamela – but bears repeating in its own comment.
Technically, with the improvement in granularity by using 5 response options vs. 4, this would be a “re-creation” rather than a “replication” of the survey.
And since we cannot retest and match to the same people that originally took the survey we cannot technically “replicate” anyway.
However, it was my opinion that by retaining the same questions and format, we can obtain a valid re-creation, with better data quality, here. And that allows us to replicate the process, and subsequently test the results and conclusions of the original survey.
Doc Martyn … working for me – try this:
http://ascottblog.wordpress.com/
I’m reminded of Bernard Woolley, the perfect balanced sample.
I can’t find the clip, but scroll halfway down this page and you’ll find the survey questions asked.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=403748§ion=1.1.1
Really? That was the survey? And that was used in some sort of science journal? The questions say a lot more about the author than they would any test taker.
Clearly the author is a warmist, but he’s also a leftist. And, he lacks critical thinking skills.
The survey did get me to pause a bit. Do leftists still dwell on some of these things? I can’t remember, but I thought there was a 3rd person involved in the OKC bombing. As E.M. said, if you don’t know, you don’t know. Do warmists have a litany of things they go through each day and ponder? Like is area 51 alien infested or not?
Maybe there’s a way for the survey to accept only people with over 25 (say) posts here.
I’m looking through the questions and fail to see the point. I will not take this survey. Some questions require deeper explanation and can’t be answered with a simple yes or no.
Best example for me is this: “10. The US government had foreknowledge about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but allowed the attack to take place to as to be able to enter the Second World War.”
The answer to that depends on what you consider foreknowledge. Did they know the fleet was coming? Or did they know that Japan would eventually attack? Because that Japan would eventually attack was pretty clear to anyone who had paid attention to what was going on in Japan (with all the talk about the “ABCD encirclement” that was “strangling” Japan, the war in China and the rhetoric by Japan’s leaders which became more and more aiming at expanding the war into the Pacific, etc, things that were taught in elementary schools even after the surrender and before the occupation), so from that point of view, yes, they knew and the US was caught with the pants down. Of course people like Lewandowsky seem to define it by FDR actually having a report about the fleet breathing down Pearl Harbor, which is completely laughable.
So I have to say that Lewandowsky’s survey is still completely worthless, since he clearly lacks any knowledge to define his questions properly.
A psychologist should never dabble with things like this because he lacks training and knowledge for it. It’ll lead to just another worthless statistic.
Science and statistics are not synonymous.
Discovery of a numerical discrepancy is not science. Accounting for that discrepancy in a reproducible manner is science.
reno says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:48 pm
When i read social justice i gave up
_________________________________________
screams of justifying wealth redistribution by any means…which is not scientific in any sense of the word… just power hungry fools..
I agree Bill H. Science has nothing to do with beliefs, attitudes, income or whatever.
Bill H says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:57 pm
I completed it… without throwing up I might add… this is a huge piece of garbage..
Universities are eventually going to all fail by their own hand. Too much cost for students both monetarily and socially. Condescending elite intellectual destruction of young scholars will be their demise. They eat their own.
Dr. Loo has no sense of humor. He left out the most fun questions, such as “Obama’s birth certificate is a fake”, “At least one of Obama’s books was ghost written by an ex-terrorist”, “skeptics of CAGW believe the earth is flat”, “skeptics are funded by Big Oil”, “this survey was funded by the Koch brothers”, “Michael Mann’s real name is Dr. Evil”, “CAGW is a world takeover plot”. I’m sure others can think of better questions.
Q: What do crappy statistics generated from a pathetically biased survey produce?
A: What ever you want them to………
I think this recreation will produce some interesting and worthwhile results. It is almost certain to have a sample size several times larger than the original survey.
Unfortunately, it may have the effect of giving the really awful social science involved in the original Lewandowsky paper greater exposure. In a sense, the recreation of a a piece of work “so bad that it is not even wrong”, gives the original work a credibility it does not deserve.
But it will be interesting to see the results nonetheless.
Lets not forget this is a controversial topic and the survey is open to the anyone; WUWT is a popular website: the warmists will be discussing this secretly and giggling at their faux skeptic submissions.
Done. What the??
Again, yes the original survey is flawed – significantly.
But understand that the point of this new survey is to collect a more transparent data set of responses to that survey as written, and from a broader spectrum – including from “skeptics” – in order to compare the findings of a more robust data set with the biased and highly questionable data and conclusions claimed by the original author.
To my mind, a survey like this, with people as bipartisan as they are on either side, is going to reflect the opposite affect.
It is too easy to know where this survey is going with its content and I would easily make the other side look poor or make my side(ideology) look good.
Junk poll.
James Sexton says:
“Clearly the author is a warmist, but he’s also a leftist. And, he lacks critical thinking skills.”
I was thinking the exact same thing. Besides the question that outright mentions it, the majority of the survey reeks of “social justice” and various other far left talking points.
A Scott,
Thank you for your efforts at understanding. You have done an excellent job in your survey, which highlights the complete inadequacy of the original flawed survey.
Just lacking in critical thinking skills? How about a far left-wit shill with an agenda… there is no science in it.. it is pure political propaganda..
the thinking has been done and THIS IS YOUR OPINION… learn it!
I’ve had a look at the questions and did not answer them as often they admit of no answer which fits the scale of 1 to 5. As just one example:
“The claim that the climate is changing due to emissions from fossil fuels is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who wish to spend more taxpayer money on climate “research” “.
I, like many sceptics, accept that fossil fuels are having an influence on the climate but I also believe that its influence is exaggerated by “scientists who wish to spend more taxpayer money on climate “research””. So, to some extent, I disagree with the first part of the question but agree, also to some extent, with the second.
In some ways I am reminded of the document that Gleick claims he received anonymously. Neither that paper not the Lewandovsky survey shows any understanding of the sceptic position.
Lewandowsky is incompetent at phrasing rigorous questions!
So many questions are badly phrased and responses will scatter about based not upon what Lewansky thought the question was supposed to test for but upon how the respondent judged careless nuances in the phrasing.
There also needs to be additional answer option for “WTF” and “don’t know, don’t care, go away”
p.s. A. Scott, I think it’s great you are doing this. The results cannot be scientifically rigorous but it still creates an interesting body of data for comparison to what Lewandowsky generated. For instance, I expect there will be many differences here with SL’s group of “skeptic” responses, and although neither set of data will be properly contained and controlled the discussion may then help to show just how biased and careless his collection methods are.
Dr Burns says:
September 8, 2012 at 8:20 pm
I agree Bill H. Science has nothing to do with beliefs, attitudes, income or whatever.
——————————————————
True science is devoid of those things.. So why do they try to push them? What agenda is in play that requires that they push a failed ideology as science? The moment that social justice was named it became crystal clear what the underlying agenda is.. They were not interested in the facts, they were interested in a false justification for an agenda..
its rather an obvious ploy, I might add..
It’s pretty sad when a Skeptic site has to teach you how to properly do your own research. This won’t even end up as a footnote in the book of climate wars.
I still can not believe that this is what passes for “peer reviewed” work… I am baffled that anyone would publish this garbage as serious science (AScott and Anthony are exposing it)
They deserve a big thank you!
I appreciate your effort and good intentions A. Scott but I see no value in this.
Lewandowsky’s intention, to make climate skeptics look stupid, is obvious from his choice of questions. It was an open invitation to anyone with an axe to grind with skeptics to fake their answers. This was compounded by his choice of venues to host the survey. Not so much a self-fulfilling prophecy as a self-fulfilling poll.
The likelihood of faked answers is even greater now after all the publicity and acrimony on both sides. I don’t think that tracking visits or using passwords will prevent that. WUWT is a popular blog, read and reported on by many warmists. There are even a couple of sites (which I won’t advertise by naming them) devoted to “responding to” (attacking/smearing/libelling) WUWT.
“Skeptic’s” should be “skeptics”.
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs, mod.]
I answered the questions. Badly phrased, intent rather obvious on some popular conspiracies, yet still it was fun.
Agree with some others that good results require proper sampling and careful wording. Therefore we can only expect Garbage Out, as this was certainly Garbage In.
Watch the sun; as it grows quieter the Earth grows colder. The warm oceans cannot keep the land from cooling much longer. Ocean surface temperatures are already dropping noticeably.
When the crop failures begin, our lack of stored food will look idiotic. We burn food for fuel in transforming corn to ethanol. We actually pay farmers to not grow food. Who are the idiots?
But are people being honest in answering the questions? I can see a lot of “skeptics” gritting their teeth and saying they don’t believe in Roswell, or 9/11 truth, or all those other silly conspiracy theories, because they know it would make them look bad if they did admit to belief.
On the other hand, many “skeptics” are probably proud of their conspiracy beliefs…
Seriously ??
This is sooooo much in the “why bother” , category !!!
Ron, and others … please respond to each question with the answer that most closely reflects your position, using the wording as written regardless of the issues described. Each respondent has the same challenge with the questions as written, however the more responses the more data there is which will tend to “smooth” the results to something still usable.
So many problems with that – was it written by the Department of Stereotypes?
Still, put me down as an anti-free market, non-conspiracy-theory (in general – a couple of reservations on those that only scored 4), low wage, AGW sceptic 😀
Skiphil … again, the volume of responses I’m seeing, along with the increased quality from the 5 point scale, may well actually serve to mitigate the poor quality of the questions etc.
And based on the responses seeing so far, in total number, and the high percentage voluntarily inducing emails, I suspect this data will be far more worthwhile than perhaps originally expected.
So, what do you think the result of such a “replication” of the famous Milgram experiment would look like?
the replication of course changes the results.
many of the complains in comments are from people, who have not read or understood an important sentence in the header of the experiment. “Please make the choice that most closely reflects your response to the question as written, even though you may not agree with how the question is framed.”
David Ross says:
September 8, 2012 at 9:22 pm
I appreciate your effort and good intentions A. Scott but I see no value in this.
Lewandowsky’s intention, to make climate skeptics look stupid, is obvious from his choice of questions. It was an open invitation to anyone with an axe to grind with skeptics to fake their answers. This was compounded by his choice of venues to host the survey. Not so much a self-fulfilling prophecy as a self-fulfilling poll.
The likelihood of faked answers is even greater now after all the publicity and acrimony on both sides. I don’t think that tracking visits or using passwords will prevent that. WUWT is a popular blog, read and reported on by many warmists. There are even a couple of sites (which I won’t advertise by naming them) devoted to “responding to” (attacking/smearing/libelling) WUWT.
——————————————–
It is what it is.
Why “fake” an answer ?
I don’t know what the right answer is, in 1/2 the cases I didn’t what the question was (or my answer was not listed in any of possibile replies).
But what the heck, I took the time to consider each question and chose the answer that most nearly fit my considered opinion, every time.
Although I have no doubt that the original survey was biased, this one is possibly even more biased. Everyone here is now aware that the purpose of the original survey was to “prove” that CAGW skeptics are conspiracy theorists. So any skeptic taking the survey NOW will avoid answering any non-climate questions in such a way as to indicate a belief in conspiracy theories.
Also, I would note that not all “conspiracy theories” are wrong, and not all conspiracy theorists are whack-jobs. Almost noone believes the lone gunman and magic bullet theories of the JFK assassination. Are they all conspiracy theorists? The Washington Post reporters that uncovered Watergate were conspiracy theorists … until they PROVED their theory.
And even if there is a statistical correlation between CAGW skepticism and non-climate conspiracy theories, all that proves is that some people don’t take the government at its word on ANYTHING. And why would they? It’s not like the government has a history of truthfulness.
The author admits, however, no climate skeptic sites were involved in the survey, that essentially all survey results were obtained thru posting the survey on pro-global warming sites.
—————-
Why would this matter?
Many of you guys visit pro warming sites so presumably you entered the survey. Especially since you aren’t shy about gaming online surveys.
So how relevant this all is depends on the research question. Obviously questions like how many people believe global warming is not a valid research question. But relationships between beliefs would be a valid research question assuming the courage to go and read what other people saying does not bias the results.
A whole lot of the questions in there don’t seem to have any perception of the questions raised by skeptics.
It isn’t “Does anthropogenic CO2 ’cause climate change’?” It’s -how much-?. And: Is it -catastrophic- change? And is is -unprecedented-?
There’s no: “Was the Medieval Warm Period warmer/same/cooler?” “Was the Roman Climate Optimum warmer/same/cooler?” “How relevant is solar variability?” “Are thunderstorms adequately modeled?” “The latest prediction predicts a so-called global mean surface temperature in 2020 of XX plus-or-minus YY. Is XX too high/ok/too low. -AND- is YY too high/ok/too low.”
Have to say that I don’t really see the point, although it was interesting to see the actual stupid line of questioning in the survey! A Scott (why no first name?) has at least allowed more ‘freedom of expression’ with a ‘middle for diddle’/non committal response!
In essence, those are silly and ridiculously ‘pointed’ and ‘directed’ questions likely to prompt more ‘definitive’ answers. Area 51? WTF? I’m certain there would be logical reasoning for trying to place those types of questions in a survey and in a certain order to prompt certain responses, but only muppets would fall for that trick? – and I presume the original survey was intended for genuine skeptics who have some scientific reasoning behind them (though I accept that this is not always the case, on both sides!)
There were some dreadful questions in there. Worst one IMO was “Out of 100 climate scientists, how many think human CO2 emissons cause climate change”? or words to that effect. It depends on what you mean by “climate change”. 100% will think CO2 has some warming effect, but opinions will vary widely about how much warming it takes to cause “climate change”.
No, the moon landing wasn’t faked in Hollywood.
Mike, in Houston, who knows.
It is hard to answer the “I think X but Y” questions b/c I usually agreed with X but disagreed with Y. I put “disagree” for these questions. I also disagreed that the free market was “best”, but would have agreed that it is “really good” or “better than most other systems”.
The questions all demand either acceptance of “climate-science” or conspiracy-theory. They leave no room for genuine errors or a mix of those and fraud.
Pamela Gray said (September 8, 2012 at 6:45 pm
“…To replicate a study, you need to use the original (poorly designed) 1 through 4 choices, not 1 through 5. You have not replicated the study, you have improved on it…”
True. If they originally used a 4 choice answer grid, they biased people into making a choice (either agree/disagree) – with the MINIMUM answer being slightly agree/slightly disagree. The addition of the 5th choice between the slightly agree/slightly disagree provides a “no opinion” choice.
If the majority of the questions as worded get a “3” (no opinion), it might show people that, as E.M.Smith said (September 8, 2012 at 6:55 pm) some people think “…I don’t know and neither does just about everyone; so I reserve judgement…”.
Maybe that’s why he used a 4-point response – he didn’t want to get the “I don’t know / I don’t care” answers. Wouldn’t have proved his point.
David Ross says:
September 8, 2012 at 9:22 pm
There are even a couple of sites (which I won’t advertise by naming them) devoted to “responding to” (attacking/smearing/libelling) WUWT.
Couldn’t care less that this goes on. Most people are smart enough to see this for the cowardice that it is. Good of you to not mention names.
A Scott,
Thanks for putting the time and effort into this. Some comments:
1. I support the expansion of the answer block to 5 from 4. 3 represents a “neutral” response without which I consider several of the questions impossible to answer.
2. Lots of people will now get to see the questions. They are blatantly manipulative, one can pretty much describe the political leanings of the author from the questions, and where they do touch on science at all, the questions display a remarkable ignorance of the actual questions being asked in the climate science debate.
3. I was shocked at how obvious the manipulation was. We’re to understand that the author of this survey has a PhD in psychology? I’ve been in sales and marketing for nearly 30 years and a second year co-op student could do better than this (create a survey that produces a desired outcome without being obvious in itz intentions I mean)
4. Strangely, I do know quite a few people who believe in one or more of the conspiracy theories in this survey, and every last one of them buys the CAGW meme hook line and sinker. I’ve always thought it odd that the people who jump all over conspiracy theories don’t see one when they look at climate change issues. My experience of course is anecdotal, but I’m betting if this survey were to be advertized on a few conspiracy blogs, that my anecdotal evidence would be confirmed.
Watch this past the ad.
All this survey proves is that warmista’s are incapable of being skeptics and prefer to be lead by authoritarian figures.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
The planet has warmed less than 40% of the IPPC predicted warming for a 40% increase in CO2 even if a 100% of the 20th century warming is attributed to CO2.
I would suggest the following survey question.
The planet has warmed less than 40% of the IPCC predicted warming, for a 40% increase in CO2. It appears based on the data, that there is something incorrect with the fundamental assumptions and modeling that predicts a 3C rise for a doubling of CO2. (Likely the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative feedback rather than positive and significant portion of the 20th century warming was not due to CO2 increases.)
Top of the atmosphere radiation measurements vs changes in the ocean surface temperature indicates that planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes (negative feedback). Dangerous warming (1.5C to 5C) requires that the planet amplify forcing changes (positive feedback). If the planetary response to a change in forcing is to resist the forcing change (negative feedback) the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be less than 1C.
There is no scientific evidence the warming of less than 1C will cause dangerous climate change.
It appears there is unequivocal scientific evidence that atmospheric CO2 increases will not cause dangerous extreme. Why is this information not discussed in the warmist blog sites or in the media? Is there evidence of data manipulation for ideological reason?
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.
I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record. … Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000-2008) satellite instruments. … We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility. “It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
http://blogs.forbes.com/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/
The questionnaire is cruelly unsophisticated, almost infantile.
A. Scott deserves praise for his contribution to this saga, in particular for revealing (at Lucia’s) that kwiksurveys, who carried out the fieldwork for the two (or three?) Lewandowsky surveys, have been hacked and have lost a lot of data.
But I won’t be completing the survey. Here’s why. First, I strongly agree with several of the conspiracy theories, (secret services assassinate people – that’s their job) and I don’t want that fact being used to dirty the name of scepticism. Of course, my decision is a way of gaming the survey, just as surely as a Tamino reader pretending to be a sceptic. Maybe one will read this and decide to answer in my place, who knows?
Which brings me to the second reason; on-line surveys are a terrible way of finding out people’s opinions. Cheating is easy, and feels morally indifferent, for the same reason that it’s easy to murder people by pressing a button that rains bombs on innocent civilians miles below. You don’t lie to the interviewer who stops you in the street, any more than you lie to the person who stops you to ask the way to the post office. The face-to-face interview is just a stylised version of a normal human interaction. Filling in a form on your computer is like filling in a tax form – but with no chance of your inexact responses being punished.
The third reason is that the whole debate is plagued by confusion between the two meanings of sceptic – between the informed sceptics who’ve thought about the subject and who form the core readership of WUWT, and the sceptic-at-large picked up in opinion polls, who is naturally influenced by his political and cultural ties, and is probably likely to be sceptical of all kinds of official points of view.
Just a final thought for Robert Phelan, who understood these things and could express them far better than I can.
A dreadful, dreadful survey. Questions are childishly biased in order to obtain the ‘correct’ response. Inadequate options are presented – many times I found myself answering questions with responses that I do not actually agree with merely because a response was required. Questions such as the one on tobacco causing lung cancer were naive in their formulation. Yes, smoking CAN cause cancer and the link is proven, but it doesn’t ALWAYS cause cancer and there are many examples of cancer free octagenerians who have smoked for years. Does this mean I think smoking is harmless? No of course not. Just like it doesn’t mean I believe the moon landings were faked. They are unrelated. As is global warming theory.
Also, in my experience, living in a town renowned for its New Age, hippy dippy contingent (think San Francisco amid the rolling hills of England), the people who believe most in those wacko conspiracy theories such as faked moon landings or AIDS being a CIA plot are the very people who are most vocal on climate change being the most serious threat to the world, ie. the exact opposite of what Lewandowsky wants to demonstrate.
Ultimately none of this matters. The outcome of today’s climate wars will be decided by cool, hard science. Not by post modern psychology. The truth will out.
Curious disinterest as to the responders’ background; scientific or otherwise.
Rick Bradford says:
September 8, 2012 at 8:06 pm
I’m reminded of Bernard Woolley, the perfect balanced sample.
I can’t find the clip, but scroll halfway down this page and you’ll find the survey questions asked.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=403748§ion=1.1.1
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here is the link – a classic.
I started using it in my undergrad lectures and it became very popular with other acadmics as an intro to lectures on research skills.
I agree with Annabelle – the question was essentially meaningless. It would cover everything from “man-made CO2 has a measurable but tiny effect on climate” to “man-made CO2 is the main cause of climate change”. My honest answer was “100”, even though I suspect that the effect of man-made CO2 is more towards the “measurable but tiny” end of the spectrum.
Possibly there should be a rider that “Non-Americans may not know some of these answers”.
McVey, wasn’t she a singer in Fleetwood Mac? Coke’s changed?
DaveA says “the warmists will be discussing this secretly” but of course no sceptics really think it’s a conspiracy…
Can anyone adequately describe and perhaps differentiate social justice from say regular justice?
Annabelle says
It also depends on what you mean by ‘climate scientist’. Since there are few degree courses in ‘climate science’, nor any generally recognised qualification, this term seems to be so loose as to be almost meaningless. Is McSteve a climate scientist – he has published in climate journals? Is Anthony – who publishes the world’s most popular climate website and was a guiding light in the surface stations project? What about Anthony Montford (Bishop Hill)…historian of the Hockey Stick wars? Or me..I have an interest in the subject .. and a second degree in the very closely related Atmospheric Chemistry?
Lewandowsky really must think we – and the rest of the public – are complete boneheads if he believes that he can pass off this poor quality stuff as any sort of ‘science’.
The survey questions tell us a lot more about Lewandowsky’s thinking, or lack of it, than responses that tripe will every tell Lewandowsky about sceptics. Sceptics largely focus on the science,but Lewandowsky writes large his politics. There is panic in the air. How many have been promoting AGW not for science or the environment, but because it could provide an excuse for the implementation of their unpopular political ideologies? If Lewandowsky wants “social justice”, I have some good news! He’s going to get it. Sceptics will never forgive and the Internet will never forget.
I can’t help feeling that this attempt at replication will be screwed up by climate alarmists.
@ A. Scott
You do realize, as was mentioned earlier, that you’ll have some warmists who would take the survey and intentionally skew the results, right? Just like they did in the prior survey.
When behind the big firewall no address with the word wordpress or blogspot or any other common blog server is reachable.
This way the Chinese government made easy for themselves to remove all free opinions from the chinese people and visitors.
I’m waiting for the DownFall version.
JF
I emailed Lewandosky and pointed out to him that people who had actually BEEN to the moon were skeptics.
Oddly, he didn’t reply…
This poll told me more about Lewandowsky than myself, his left wing eco loony bias really shines through…
Not academic at all (more like the work of a Year 1 grad student) and as an academic I’d like to know how the hell his work got through peer review? I suspect pal review had a lot to do with this and folk should be asking his university to investigate the whole process as it must be calling into question that institute’s integrity
No mention of Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love? Forget it.
Seriously… a person who would create that original survey is mentally unbalanced and probably should not be allowed out on their own. Is it possible to actually believe that someone who disagrees with the discredited hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming must, by definition, be an idiot?
Ironic… the very people who think skeptics are part of a conspiracy are crying about conspiracy theories. Projection, anyone?
Rolf says:
September 9, 2012 at 1:52 am
“When behind the big firewall no address with the word wordpress or blogspot or any other common blog server is reachable. ”
Try to find out the IP address of the server you want to contact and replace the server name with the IP adress. This way you bypass the DNS system and get to the exact same server.
There could be a genuine reason why the original questionnaire used four answers rather than five and to change this here invalidates any comparison that is intended.
For example: “There is no clear consensus on the number of options that should be given in an closed format question. Obviously, there needs to be sufficient choices to fully cover the range of answers but not so many that the distinction between them becomes blurred. Usually this translates into five to ten possible answers per questions. For questions that measure a single variable or opinion, such as ease of use or liability, over a complete range (easy to difficult, like to dislike), conventional wisdom says that there should be an odd number of alternatives. This allows a neutral or no opinion response. Other schools of thought contend that an even number of choices is best because it forces the respondent to get off the fence. This may induce the some inaccuracies for often the respondent may actually have no opinion. However, it is equally arguable that the neutral answer is over utilized, especially by bored questionnaire takers. For larger questionnaires that test opinions on a very large number of items, such as a music test, it may be best to use an even number of choices to prevent large numbers of no-thought neutral answers”
http://csdl.ics.hawaii.edu/techreports/05-06/doc/Stasko.html
There is clearly debate as to whether odd or even numbers are best, but once one has been selected, it should be stuck with.
Good idea.
More to the point though, surely Lewandosky should be doing exactly the same thing and throwing the old data out, if he is genuinely interested in the truth.
Thank you all for continuing to take this survey. The response, in numbers and apparent quality, has been gratifying, with folks from across the globe already participating in this project in th few short hours it’s been up.
Additionally, a large share of those responding have taken the time to leave comments. I have read each one, and tried to correct the things you pointed out that I could. As we progress, we’ll try to compile these comments and present as constructive input to the discussion. Rest assured we will not publicly associate comments with posters.
Perhaps more surprisingly, the majority of respondents have voluntarily left contact information including emails, which I think pays strong testament to the validity and quality of the responses.
So far the trusty Google Doc’s “Form” platform also seems to be performing flawlessly, as it appears so too does the visitor tracking.
To those who have pointed out the difficulty in answering some of the questions, but have indicated they persevered and gave the best answers they could – a big thank you. I have a feeling that effort will pay off well, as more responses helps in effect “smooth” the data – helping show a more accurate overall response to those hard questions.
Some of questions are sure funny.
“The claim that sky is pink with green dots is a hoax perpetrated by long-nosed yiddish octopi from Mars”
Sometimes, I’m not even sure what “true” and “false” means in the context of the question.
I found that quite curious, as have many respondents.
Considering the original author, Mr. Lewandowsky is not, to my knowledge, from the US – the US centricity of the “conspiracy” questions was quite interesting.In a roundabout way the questions included – IMO from looking at the original survey data – have actually created a good “control” for the validity of the data.
James – an excellent point, and a clearly identified issue with the original survey. I had the same concerns and gave a lot of thought.
While it is impossible to eliminate these kind of childish games you can make effort to address. Tracking and cross-checks help some. A few “controls” help some more.
But the biggest “hammer” in the toolbox is number of responses IMO.
The more responses the better “baseline” or profile can be created. Won’t share details, but answers can be checked against the majority of responses for similar respondents, and true manipulative responses can be I think pretty clearly identified.
More importantly however, with a large number of legitimate responses, the small number of these attempts to manipulate will have little to no effect as they’ll be so diluted as to not really “move the needle.”
Based on the response in the few short hours the survey has been up – looking at indicators of quality, and number of responses – it appears we’ll have a very strong baseline set … a good “control” to work from.
What a blunder L. made not to run the survey on Above Top Secret, etc. That way he wouldn’t have tipped his hand, and there’d have been less gaming of answers–at least less in a way that would affect climate-related matters, because it wouldn’t have been apparent that that was his focus.
Nick in vancouver says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:41 pm
The original survey is bogus and a stooge, do not complete this version as it gives credibility to the unmitigated bias of first laughable piece of junk.
Here’s a better survey question.
What qualifies one to be an Australian Professor of Psychology?
We can have more fun and learn more by
coming up with 4 alternative answers.
**********************************************************************************
Answer: Only one possible answer.
Not being clever enough to do anything worthwhile, meaningful or valuable for the human race.
Steve T
Lazy Teenager, in Australia, states: “Many of you guys visit pro warming sites so presumably you entered the survey. Especially since you aren’t shy about gaming online surveys.”
The ‘Lewandowsky word’ is “presumably”. It means in this context, I don’t know but I’m going to insult you anyway. His comment is interesting because in his mind the reverse should also be “presumably” what he believes. Therefore the only conclusion Lazy Teenager could reach is that the results of the survey are meaningless.
However why did Lewandowsky fail to include another major conspiracy theory in his survey? For instance on January 23rd this year Cook and Lewandowsky wrote in relation to a book they had had published:
“A Muslim forum speculated that it “Should be useful when engaging people who believe lies about Islam”.
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/Debunking-Handbook-update-feedback.html
One can only “speculate” why Lewandowsky chose not to ask a conspiracy theory question about Islam.
The Dan Rather School of Accuracy has more members than one might think. Lewandowsky evidently skipped the entire freshman class including the basic intro class “151 – Found It In The Mail” and “182 How To Fake A Survey Using Math” and went directly to postgrad “502 Headlines For Fake but Accurate”,
The conflations show a constant pattern. Lewandowsky is so completely locked into fashionable thinking that he’s unable to write an open question. He can’t break out of his idiot assumptions about “sustainability”.
The choice of conspiracy theories also shows the same bubble. Most of them are the theories of left-wingers. Example: the question about McVeigh assumes that the conspiracists would associate McVeigh with neoNazis. Right-wing conspiracists would associate McVeigh with Arabs and FBI. In fact both associations are true.
BTW, someone should check out the positions taken by and affiliations of Dr. L’s co-authors, Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E.
No, no, Anthony. Don’t be contaminated by bad methodology. Say what you will about Australian sociology research then drop it.
Oh come on. Are we seriously going to promote this ‘study’ to the rank of science by trying to replicate it?
Didn’t the title “NASA faked the moon landing – therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science” give the game away.
For anyone who has filled in the ‘survey’ – where is your self respect?
Free market is not answer to all issues, In India there is free market, do you want that US would be the same? Still AGW is HOAX ! Where poor people need police or Army? Wealthy peoples need them to protect their welthiness so it’s right that they need to pay more taxes than poor people. It was those free market’s wich brought us this economic crisis. You should try to understand what Johnn Rawls really said in Theory Of Justice.
“This allegedly peer reviewed paper claims their survey data show climate skeptics are supporters of wild conspiracy theories, such as “NASA faked the moon landing.” ”
When the statement recruiting people to answer a survey tells them what hypothesis the author wants to disprove, the resulting data is going to have zero validity whether ten or ten thousand people answer.
I wonder how many other similarly goofy articles Psychological Science has published–especially regarding climate science. Worth researching.
We have a new word for junk scientific papers, Lewpaper.
A new Lewpaper… A Lewpaper using models…
Strange as I get older I am finding that the difference between intelligence and stupidity is wafer thin.
I took the survey after putting on my tin-foil hat so the aliens couldn’t manipulate my thoughts! 🙂
* SPOILER ALERT *
Seriously, Lewandowsky presented this survey and its brethren “counter-balancing” surveys as a valid, statistically significant, meaningful survey? Just reading through the survey many issues jumped out at me. I would expect that even an incompetent psychologist could find hundreds of issues with these questions and a psychologist or sociologist who specialized in group profile analysis could many more.
My take on the questions is below. As I’m not a psychologist, sociologist, or statistician my wording might not be technically correct for the point I’m trying to make. (i.e. I used logically in places where I perhaps should have said contextually or statistically).
* SPOILERS BELOW *
Question 3: What is ‘social justice’? This term is relative culture, ethos, and mores. In a non-anthropologic or sociologic survey, with such a complete lack of context or definition, this term is functionally meaningless.
Question 4: The word localized is not defined and thus contextually void. Localized here could mean at a city, county, province, national, continental, global, or stellar scale. Without defining the bounds there is no ability to ascertain the level of ‘acceptable impact’ the survey participants feel is allowable to a free market economy.
Question 5: Again, sustainable development is vague and contextually void. Sustainable development is a term that is dependant on local and regional economy, culture, and historic population factors which are not explored by this survey. Question is meaningless.
Question 6: “Unsustainable consumption”? See comments re: Q5
Question 7: Allows one of two choices thus automatically filtering out a valid third choice that WMD were ONE of the considerations among others leading to the invasion.
Question 8: Given the apparent intent of the survey author, including the phrase “known as the New World Order” applies an automatic filter to a certain number of participants. Question would have greater validity if the phrase was omitted.
Question 9: Leaves out the option that is was produced in a lab under research conditions and released accidentally which is a valid choice. Question is predetermined to show either a ‘conspiracy’ or ‘mindlessly accept the press-release’ mindset.
Question 10: Assumes that foreknowledge (if any) was specifically for the purpose of allowing the attack to occur, not poor military planning or failure to comprehend the realistic possibility of an attack. Question is biased.
Question 11: Many flaws. Leaves out a valid choice of “or other agencies”. Also falls subject to the same criticism of question 9.
Question 13: Question is logically flawed. Properly asked should have omitted “in a Hollywood studio”.
Question 14: Could be argued that this question is logically flawed as well. Given that the question appears intended to uncover a ‘secret alien contact’, ‘secret alien influence’, or ‘conspiracy’ mentality, the question probably should have been written as follows: “One or more government or international agencies have, or had in the past, secret bases that contain hidden alien spacecraft, alien bodies, or alien technology.”
Question 16: Also logically flawed and poorly written unless this question was worded to filter out everything but a very narrow group respondants. Everything following ‘attacks to take place’ could have been omitted. Alternatively everything between “achieve” and “goals” could have been omitted. The wording of the question excludes an entire group of potential respondants.
Question 18: Narrow filter (again). Excludes assassination attempt theory by groups other than the royal family. Possibly invalid question again as it is very narrow. Would need to see the underlying methodology and psychology that went into the question design.
Question 19: Again and oddly placed, narrow filter. Why “Neo Nazi” ? There are many other conspiracy theories here as well: Government (foreign or domestic); Shadow government; false flag; etc.
Question 20: False choice leaving some respondant no alternative but to answer falsely. What about the group of respondants who do not feel it is a hoax perpetrated by scientists but by government agencies or corporations with vested financial interest in ‘green’ technology? Or that don’t feel it is a hoax, merely poor science? Or that it isn’t a hoax, but simply a runaway political process that has taken on a life of its own?
Question 24: Once again, requires a selection between only two choices where there are multiple alternative answers. Question is predisposed to display only one of two responses and thus is not valid for true picture of the respondant group beliefs.
Question 25: Predisposes that the changes are “serious”. Built in selection bias.
Question 26: Assumes that all respondants believe that CFC’s WERE a serious threat originally. Question should have a predecessor or descendant question to filter out or identify the bias inherent in the question wording.
Question 27: See comments re: Q 26
Question 35: Possible inherent bias. By not quantifying the intensity (somelots) and direction (positivenegative), nor including any clarifying questions in the survey, this question classifies all respondants into one of two buckets. This may be valid or may not depending on the intent of the survey.
Question 38: Identical criticism as in Q 35.
==================
Question 3: What is ‘social justice’? This term is relative culture, ethos, and mores. In a non-anthropologic or sociologic survey, with such a complete lack of context or definition, this term is functionally meaningless.
Question 4: The word localized is not defined and thus contextually void. Localized here could mean at a city, county, province, national, continental, global, or stellar scale. Without defining the bounds there is no ability to ascertain the level of ‘acceptable impact’ the survey participants feel is allowable to a free market economy.
Question 5: Again, sustainable development is vague and contextually void. Sustainable development is a term that is dependant on local and regional economy, culture, and historic population factors which are not explored by this survey. Question is meaningless.
Question 6: “Unsustainable consumption”? See comments re: Q5
Question 7: Allows one of two choices thus automatically filtering out a valid third choice that WMD were ONE of the considerations among others leading to the invasion.
Question 8: Given the apparent intent of the survey author, including the phrase “known as the New World Order” applies an automatic filter to a certain number of participants. Question would have greater validity if the phrase was omitted.
Question 9: Leaves out the option that is was produced in a lab under research conditions and released accidentally which is a valid choice. Question is predetermined to show either a ‘conspiracy’ or ‘mindlessly accept the press-release’ mindset.
Question 10: Assumes that foreknowledge (if any) was specifically for the purpose of allowing the attack to occur, not poor military planning or failure to comprehend the realistic possibility of an attack. Question is biased.
Question 11: Many flaws. Leaves out a valid choice of “or other agencies”. Also falls subject to the same criticism of question 9.
Question 13: Question is logically flawed. Properly asked should have omitted “in a Hollywood studio”.
Question 14: Could be argued that this question is logically flawed as well. Given that the question appears intended to uncover a ‘secret alien contact’, ‘secret alien influence’, or ‘conspiracy’ mentality, the question probably should have been written as follows: “One or more government or international agencies have, or had in the past, secret bases that contain hidden alien spacecraft, alien bodies, or alien technology.”
Question 16: Also logically flawed and poorly written unless this question was worded to filter out everything but a very narrow group respondants. Everything following ‘attacks to take place’ could have been omitted. Alternatively everything between “achieve” and “goals” could have been omitted. The wording of the question excludes an entire group of potential respondants.
Question 18: Narrow filter (again). Excludes assassination attempt theory by groups other than the royal family. Possibly invalid question again as it is very narrow. Would need to see the underlying methodology and psychology that went into the question design.
Question 19: Again and oddly placed, narrow filter. Why “Neo Nazi” ? There are many other conspiracy theories here as well: Government (foreign or domestic); Shadow government; false flag; etc.
Question 20: False choice leaving some respondant no alternative but to answer falsely. What about the group of respondants who do not feel it is a hoax perpetrated by scientists but by government agencies or corporations with vested financial interest in ‘green’ technology? Or that don’t feel it is a hoax, merely poor science? Or that it isn’t a hoax, but simply a runaway political process that has taken on a life of its own?
Question 24: Once again, requires a selection between only two choices where there are multiple alternative answers. Question is predisposed to display only one of two responses and thus is not valid for true picture of the respondant group beliefs.
Question 25: Predisposes that the changes are “serious”. Built in selection bias.
Question 26: Assumes that all respondants believe that CFC’s WERE a serious threat originally. Question should have a predecessor or descendant question to filter out or identify the bias inherent in the question wording.
Question 27: See comments re: Q 26
Question 35: Possible inherent bias. By not quantifying the intensity (somelots) and direction (positivenegative), nor including any clarifying questions in the survey, this question classifies all respondants into one of two buckets. This may be valid or may not depending on the intent of the survey.
Question 38: Identical criticism as in Q 35.
This survey adds more evidence to prove that there is no such thing as an impartial position. Scientists always start out with an hypothesis and then proceed to prove it, however, the scientist is only a man/woman influenced by their preconceptions. For example, Global Warming is happening so when I adjust the temperature figures the adjustments always go up. This is why any scientific work that requires interpretation, adjustment or averages creates doubt. And if this paper was peer reviewed my doubts are increasing by the minute. I did the survey; love surveys; can we do another one?
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit pulls no punches in his analysis of the Lewandowsky imbroglio:
“Anatomy of the Lewandowsky Scam”
http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/08/lewandowsky-scam/
LazyTeenager says:
September 8, 2012 at 10:36 pm
“Many of you guys visit pro warming sites so presumably you entered the survey. Especially since you aren’t shy about gaming online surveys.”
a) Where is your evidence that we did? Remember, Lewandowsky promotes his drivel under the guise of science. Science is evidence based. Your presumption needs a proof.
b) I do occasionally visit grist when I need a laugh. But I wouldn’t stand visiting them systematically. Too hard on the mind.
I don’t visit SkS as enough warmists come over to notrickszone, paste huge amounts of SkS drivel and let me have the fun of shooting them down. Unfortunately, none of them brought the Lewandowsky survey.
So what you’re trying to do there, some after the fact justification of a flawed methodology? Why is it that you defend each and every warmist idiot researcher? Because there are no smart ones?
Mike McMillan said:
“No, the moon landing wasn’t faked in Hollywood.
Mike, in Houston, who knows.”
Where was it faked then?
/tinfoilhat
I’m pretty sure I got two wrong. The one about Area 51 causing global warming for sure. May have been a trick question.
Let’s clear up the Area 51 question once and for all. Anyone who has worked in classified areas should appreciate this:
Area 51 Commander: Washington, we had a classified aircraft go down near Roswell NM.
Washington: Does anyone not cleared know about this?
Area 51 Commander: Yes, locals have found the wreckage.
Washington: Put out a cover story and refer all subsequent inquires to us.
Area 51 Commander: Roger.
Washington (hours later): What did you use as a cover?
Area 51 Commander: We planted an alien spacecraft story.
Washington: YOU DID WHAT????? Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me! Now there will be no end to the nut jobs who will say this is proof of aliens. Well, maybe on second thought, we could make good use of this in the future.
Well,it was pretty awful, but I completed it as well and left a comment that it is impossible to answer many of the questions accurately where they include words like `cause’,, `significant,, or` serious’ without defining rather more what is meant – e.g. smoking has been shown to increase the risk of contracting lung cancer considerably, but it doesn’t necessarily `cause’ lung cancer. That’s not a particularly good example, but the same sort of objection could be made – more strongly – to many of the questions concerning climate change (and indeed the free market).
How many medical students believe smoking causes lung cancer? Well, did he missed out the word only. What kind of question is that?
How many climate scientists believe CO2 …etc. Well, how many climate scientists want a paycheck?
There was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy … and it as successful.
There is a conspiracy to form a world government … it’s called the United Nations.
That was as hilariously bad a survey as I’ve ever seen. That the idiot left wing ideologue who thought that has a doctorate shows the level of quality the educational system has sunk to.
Quite astonishing that such a shoddy set of questions should be the basis for a “study”, and then accepted by a Journal.
I filled it in – holding my nose; I have had a lot of practice at filling in daft questionnaires after a lifetime in industry and commerce – but don’t know if any good will come of it.
John Brookes says:
September 8, 2012 at 10:10 pm
But are people being honest in answering the questions? I can see a lot of “skeptics” gritting their teeth and saying they don’t believe in Roswell, or 9/11 truth, or all those other silly conspiracy theories, because they know it would make them look bad if they did admit to belief.
On the other hand, many “skeptics” are probably proud of their conspiracy beliefs…
=====================================================================
Then you have just admitted having the exact same bias against people who are skeptics of CAGW as the author of the study. I don’t believe in ANY of that conspiracy horsebleep. Not one of them. But just the wording of the questions makes it obvious that the author thinks I, and other skeptics do believe them. Not just do believe, but MUST believe. Projection.
==================================================================
==================================================================
LazyTeenager says:
September 8, 2012 at 10:36 pm
The author admits, however, no climate skeptic sites were involved in the survey, that essentially all survey results were obtained thru posting the survey on pro-global warming sites.
—————-
Why would this matter?
Many of you guys visit pro warming sites so presumably you entered the survey. Especially since you aren’t shy about gaming online surveys.
So how relevant this all is depends on the research question. Obviously questions like how many people believe global warming is not a valid research question. But relationships between beliefs would be a valid research question assuming the courage to go and read what other people saying does not bias the results.
=====================================================================
LT,
“Why would this matter?”
For the reason stated above to John. They will project what they believe “skeptics” think about all of these nutty conspiracies.
I don’t believe climate scientist/researchers are reaching the conclusions they are reaching “to get more grant money”, reseachers were trying to get grants long before global warming became the issue “du jour”, and they will be doing it long after people stop talking about global warming.
I think they are doing it as they believe they are doing something for the general good. I am skeptical because when I hear about scientists that wont release their background data and methodology my personal bullsh*t meter starts going off. I think they are cherry picking the data to support their beliefs. Rant over.
If this (original survey) was done as an April Fools joke, it might be funny. That the original survey might be sold as serious “science” in any way shape or manner is tragic.
I like this approach to shooting down a botched survey –
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/08/where-can-you-find-out-whether-climate.html
Lubos does a great job of showing how polls taken on one side of the argument are going to be heavily skewed.
Also, I forgot to mention this in my comments on the actual survey, but I think 1-3 questions gauging education background (and maybe area of expertise) would be useful. First, it would give you more data to work with. Previous studies have shown that the average skeptic is more educated than the average CAGW believer. Second, it’d make the survey harder for the CAGWers to game by two mechanisms. First, their vanity might get in the way because they love to show off their letters/degrees. Secondly, if they did try to pretend to be a nutso skeptic, they’d have a hard time forcing themselves to pretend to be an educated conspiracy theorist. Thus, the result would likely be show pretty accurate results at the education levels above the lowest category.
-Scott
In principle, any voluntary online poll is biased and not worth the paper it’s printed on. Those working for a valid poll will be trying hard to get responses from a representative sample of the populace. I look on ANY online self selecting voluntary poll as a push-pull poll with political motives- this is reinforced by all the online crappy leading polls we get here in the US during election season.
Had I been in Anthony Watts’ position, and had I received such a request to post this poll, I would have justifiably consigned that request to my spam file, along with all the other polls asking leading questions in an effort to get cash support for a specific proposition or candidate.
In quantum theory, there’s a problem of the observer influencing the results- I’m thinking of the “double slit” experiment. That same problem occurs in the macro field of poll questions. When those questioned are aware that they’re being tested to determine whether THEY or their OPPONENTS are kook conspiracy nuts, that’s going to bias the answers.
Jumping between quantum theory, politics, and economics, I see a similar problem with Keynes’ theory, According to the theory, government spending will help boost the economy when it’s in a slump. Keynes was implicitly assuming that workers would be UNAWARE of this government stimulus, and would accept constant wages in the face of inflation. When workers are AWARE of government stimulus efforts- again we have the observer influencing the results.
A quick question if I may… If I use my real name will it be publicized? Will my online moniker be sufficient?
Such a transparently biased survey – what a joke. Anyone who can’t see what results they were trying to get out of this shouldn’t be allowed to respond due to low IQ.
IT IS AXIOMATIC….only bogus evidence can support a bogus hypothesis ! ! !
BTW….i am firmly in the “conspiracy camp” as there is overwhelming evidence that all of the many frauds perpertrated on humanity stem from our defective banking system. This is explainded in “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality”. A few of the many elitisted directed, government funded science frauds are explored in “Becoming a TOTAL Earth Science Skeptic”. When the monarch/monopolists publish their neo-feudalist game plan, then direct their puppet governments and lap dog media to enforce this new-think mind warp, you’ve gone beyond conspiracy theory to CONSPIRACY FACT. It is time for a new Magna Carta and to free ALL of humanity from this suffocating corruption.
I’ll answer those questions right after I stop beating my wife.
I want those five minutes back.
Anthony,
Please ask this post’s author, A. Scott, to include a prominent note in the explanation of the survey he provides here that, at the very end of the survey, one is asked for both a name and an email address.
I wasted 10 minutes filling it out and then didn’t submit it because of the quite personal nature of the last five to ten questions about quality of life, income, etc., followed by the request for my name and email address.
People should be informed going in that they will need to supply that information, or if the field is optional, that should be specified in Mr. Scott’s post. (In fact, it might be optional, since I don’t recall it having a red asterisk by it, but I gave up at that point, so I don’t know.)
In the former british empire is Lewpaper the same as Loo paper? Inquiring minds want to know.
I filled in the survey for a bit of fun – but entirely honestly. I liked the questions at the end, for example, about how much you earn relative to your neighbours and are you happy with your life. Are we supposed to feel guilty or something?
I have worked hard all my life to get where I am today and I did it all by myself. I was born into a poor family and everything I have now I earned by my own hard work and I do not feel guilty in the slightest.
Now for another ice cold carbonated beer.
Cheers and all the best!
I know three conspiracy theoreticians. They are all rabid CAGW believers too.
I did not ‘submit’ the survey on A. Scott’s page. I also left the following as a post there and at the good Bishops site.
I found the survey as posted by “A. Scott” impossible to answer.
First: I refuse to answer personal questions about sex, age or financial status.
Second:
I am convinced that whoever (lewandosky or ?) prepared this list of questions knows much less than the average citizen and has many assumptions of causes without evidence or proof. Their level of understanding is not that of a scientist, but seems to be that of a religious zealot.
e.g. Question 34: Smoking causes cancer. Is this a generic or specific question? Does smoking always cause cancer or is it that smoking tobacco may cause cancer. As stated the question is absolute but in the most general way, therefore I cannot agree nor disagree to any degree as I do not wish to further belief in general absolutes.
Much of this survey is framed in variations of this general absolutes form. Did a true Doctor of Psychiatry truly vet these questions?
And where did they get their inadequate level of scholarship on historical events? The absolute simplistic questions on some very complex historical events are just plain absurd, incompetent or outrageously fraudulent.
I pity anyone who actually believes useful knowledge can be derived from completing this survey. Surely such people are activists or worse, zeolots.
‘The author admits, however, no climate skeptic sites were involved in the survey, that essentially all survey results were obtained thru posting the survey on pro-global warming sites.’
So actually then, this was a study aimed at his own bigotry, about how he thinks all of us think. Perfect.
Ok, Lazy Teenager (et al), here’s your chance to skew the survey by answering it as stupidly as you possible can… never mind, forget I said that, just answer the questions.
One of the best ways to introduce graduate students to poor versus high quality surveys is to have them take such surveys and then discuss their experiences. Both response points and question design can and often do destroy the validity and reliability of surveys. Anyone thinking they can just willy nilly create a high-quality survey without having studied both valid and reliable survey development and statistical analysis of such research tools at the graduate and post-graduate level is engaging in useless work.
I took the “recreated” survey and it reminded me instantly of the poor quality designs we panned in class. This post would have been far better had we been encouraged to spend time discussing the validity and reliability weaknesses this survey, whichever version, is filled with.
However, I am not too concerned that we have not focused our attention on that kind of discussion. I have no doubt that this survey will land on the desks of graduate-level sociology class discussions on poor survey design. That includes the improved version.
Sorry A. Scott, but you need to be taken to task on this one, though I wonder if you might be reluctant to learn from such a discussion. Be forwarned. If you come back to post your results, and I hope not, you will be on the hotseat.
A. Scott says:
September 8, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Again, yes the original survey is flawed – significantly.
But understand that the point of this new survey is to collect a more transparent data set of responses to that survey as written, and from a broader spectrum – including from “skeptics” – in order to compare the findings of a more robust data set with the biased and highly questionable data and conclusions claimed by the original author.
This is a pipe-dream and an invalid conclusion. Whether N=10 or 10 million is irrelevant to the conclusions of a biased, manipulating survey. What you get is a survey of responses to the survey questions, not a survey of the subject matter of the survey questions. What you are testing is the distribution of interpretation of the questions, again, not the subject content of the questions. This is Interviewing 101.
There is a much greater danger in replicating/recreating the flawed survey over a greater N, and publishing the results. A clear and present danger that any entry level PR hack can school you on. You can put wheels to the bias contained in the questions that you have no ability to stop. To consider this, all you need to do is reflect on the global effect of climate science by press release. Accuracy and truth are not the concern of either the PR rep or the scientist who plays the game, only the agenda, and its ALL built to feed the agenda.
The result of this re-survey, can and will be used against you. Almost none of the community at large will know of the controversy over the questions – they will only know of the selected interpretations pulled from the results. The survey is already skewed and biased – making it bigger doesn’t do anything but shout the skew and the bias through a megaphone.
Many of you may well and truly be good, even great, scientists, but the majority who post here are utterly naive to the science of propaganda and “herd” management. I sincerely hope you bury the results of this so deep even the geologists can’t find it…
The survey is unbalanced.
The “free market” questions are badly framed. 3 are Free Market v. Environmentalism, so a positive FM response might be anti-green and a pro-green response might be anti-FM
Most pro free-market people are first and foremost Libertarian. So there should be questions about relating Environmentalism to authoritarianism.
A lot of environmentalists are also to the left of centre. So a balanced survey should investigate their preferences. For instance, are green policies worthwhile if they make the poor poorer – through raising domestic fuel prices, or making motoring unaffordable to the majority.
And where’s the question on the biggest conspiracy of them all – “Climate denial only exists as a serious force due to significant funding by oil and tobacco interests.”
Problem is though, there is plenty of incentive for fake responses. So I think you will find a much higher belief in conspiracy theories on both sides as a result than Lewandowsky found.
What’s the difference between “True” and “Absolutely true”? And between “False” and “Absolutely False”? Is that like “Free” and “Absolutely free” in advertising that still requires you to pay something to get the “absolutely free” item?
So is there any way to get this in front of respected polling groups? I know there are question standards out there. I suspect this would be easily and quickly panned by Gallup or Rasmussen or any of the major pollsters.
Surely, social science is enough of a joke already, without Lewandowsky and Cook doing their best to make things worse.
The problem with the vast majority of surveys is self-selection bias. Only those people who believe surveys are a worthwhile activity take part it them.
“Many of you may well and truly be good, even great, scientists, but the majority who post here are utterly naive to the science of propaganda and “herd” management. I sincerely hope you bury the results of this so deep even the geologists can’t find it…”
One of my master degrees include a mandatory psychology course. I learned that personalities who engage in the study are psychologically looking for their own self generated questions of their own psyche. The group who post here who lend any credibility to this are suspect. The survey is written for a specific agenda around being mean spirited and accusatory condescension. Herd management exploits those who are incapable of their own opinions and certainly lack critical thinking around hard science. Pretty sad.
Doh! … take part in them.
Robert of Ottawa says:
September 9, 2012 at 5:31 am
———————————————–
“how many climate scientists want a paycheck?”
@Robert. You made the same serious mistake I did. You stopped and thought about the question. At first I thought “how many climate scientists actually do believe in GW?”. Not 100, but probably most of them. So I entered 90. Then I thought “what if the survey was confidential? I bet a lot would fess up or at least admit they can’t be sure with the evidence at hand.” So I changed my answer to 60. But then I thought “how could a scientist live their whole career not believing in what they were studying?”. So I entered 100. But then I thought that maybe climate science is like the equivalent of physical education in teaching. And then I remembered that 97% of all climate scientists do believe in global warming and – not being home schooled – I did the right thing and entered 97. So I know I got one answer right!
The questions should be like:
“The freemarket system can save the economy” or “Private land owners can protect the environment by protecting their property rights through the courts”
I can give them capitalist’s answer to these……”Strongly Agree”
or
“Unsustainable spending by ‘The State’ can save the economy” or “Land ownership by ‘The State’ can protect the environment”
Again, the capitalist’s answer……..”Strongly Disagree”
Do you feel like Charlie Brown, the State is Lucy and she keeps moving the football while we fall for it over and over and over again.
Who OWNED Lake Erie when it burned? The State.
Who OWNED the forests when they burned? The State.
Who WASTED hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on bad mortgages? The State.
Who WASTED hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on bad science? The State.
Who CAUSED thousands of innocent people to die by drug cartels? The State.
Who CAUSED California’s excellent agricultural land to die without water? The State.
I see a correlation here, so……
I’m looking at Gary Johnson for POTUS. The R’s and D’s are trying to keep him off the ballot and out for the debates….I see why? To give congress a chance to fix things he would:
Present a balanced budget for 2013. He vetoed 750 bills as Governor of NM.
End “The Income Tax System” for revenue. Propose a Fair Tax.
End the unnecessary wars. Bring troops home.
End corporate welfare. GE and GM are on their own.
End the nanny state. It’s time for the takers to get into the game. Everybody needs to contribute something in return for living here.
IMHO it’s the job of our congress to pass laws to protect the US Constitution and keep the president and his minions off the people’s backs. Major FAIL. Did AG Holder give congress what they demanded for ‘fast and furious’ or are they just going to let it die with Agent Brian Terry? Holder works for the POTUS. Major FAIL. The State kills citizens and congress and the president just ‘let it slide.’
cn
” I sincerely hope you bury the results of this so deep even the geologists can’t find it…”
Yeah, but it’s the other side who bury adverse results in case they spoil the integrity of the story, even at the expense of their own. Not that I think there will be adverse results or that some on the other side wouldn’t make accusations out of any imaginable result. All part of the rich patina of life at the blogface.
I ended up answering in the middle for most questions. I assume the middle option means “I don’t know” or “No opinion”. I think a similar option, since you were “improving” the quality of the survey, should have been provided for the questions requiring a numerical answer (number of so and so…)
cui bono says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Given this survey is now infamous, aren’t we going to get every troll making their way here to say they don’t believe in AGW but do believe the Illuminati run the world? Just for fun?
Yep.
I think, judging by one of the posted questions I got a request on my suggestions page from the same pollster, going under the name ‘Wermet’, stating they wanted to remain anonymous. I don’t see how this can be expected to gain an unbiased sample, given the tendency for people to crowd source respondents via the net.
Pamela Gray and others have commented on the use of a 5-point rather than a 4-point scoring system and seem to be of the opinion that this improves the survey. In my opinion it is an improvement, however it is possible that the professor chose a four point system specifically because it forces respondents to polarise into one of two camps rather than remain neutral, which I am sure would assist him achieve his desired outcome.
Since i am a sceptic with regard to CAGW I am neither a believer nor a denier – I remain unconvinced by the evidence and am naturally suspicious of anyone who claims certainty – so the use of a 4-point scale would not enable me to state my true view on many of the questions..
Alvin says:
September 8, 2012 at 6:29 pm
omg, what a leftist poll. Many questions lead to catch-22 answers. The questions refuse to acknowledge that environment can be valued in a free market system. The questions pit free market against environment, and involve Marxist social justice.
====================================================
I agree !!
Those questions are worded to get a leftist/AGW answers
Wow is all that comes to mind. A “real science journal” actually published a “survey” based on THESE questions. Out right FAIL The editor of this ‘journal” has a great deal to answer for.
I suppose I need not point out that what the author has demonstrated is that Warmists are basically delusional.
It’s a stupid and annoying survey, but I answered the questions as I understood they were intended, i.e. to make skeptics look bad, so I answered to make us look good.
The phrase “I believe that. . .” is anathema to me and to science. I make my decisions based on evidence, not belief.
And I have no idea how much my neighbors make.
/Mr Lynn
A Scott
Perhaps more surprisingly, the majority of respondents have voluntarily left contact information including emails, which I think pays strong testament to the validity and quality of the responses.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Would be most interested in dividing the data between the ones with contact information and the ones without and comparing them.
Who in is right mind would take a survey like that? What propels the human to fill out a totally useless survey that produces totally useless answers to totally useless questions? Is this a late saturday funny? I will not participate in this farce.
@BA
“This allegedly peer reviewed paper…”
I suppose that the most important finding this paper presents is that peer review is no guarantee of correctness, academic rigour, or anything, really…
I completed the survey because I thought it was a joke, anyway. Some of the questions revealed ignorance, like the one about Area 51. Who knows anything about Area 51 that has not come from bad programs on the History Channel? Plus, how should I know how many scientists believe CO2 is a world ending gas? Who cares?
The big question is how can anyone think they do a decent survey on the web? It is a fool’s game.
Jeff Alberts says:
September 9, 2012 at 8:19 am
What’s the difference between “True” and “Absolutely true”? And between “False” and “Absolutely False”? Is that like “Free” and “Absolutely free” in advertising that still requires you to pay something to get the “absolutely free” item?
It’s like being a little pregnant.
“The State kills citizens and congress and the president just ‘let it slide.’”
The “state” let’s it slide because the public is apathetic, uninformed, misled, suffer from “herd” management, are divided by political propagandists, fall victim to “the lies become the truth,” are subjects of a total brainwashing education system, suppressed (voting, Ruby Ridge, Waco) and oppressed (obstructive regulation, IRS, EPA).
Example of insidious condescension toward the conservatives is in the following Google search; however the text in the Google search has been scrubbed from the Wikipedia site:
Voter suppression – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
In the United States, voter suppression was used extensively by Democratic party operatives in most Southern states until the Voting Rights Act (1965) made …
It is the ongoing tactic to rewrite history in favor of lefty Marxist domination to promote the progressive agenda. Just like the survey of discussion. Is it a conspiracy? No, it is the agenda of those who promote their ideological progressive beliefs. That’s what they do.
Here’s my partial summery of the questions on the survey.
5. Free and unregulated markets pose important threats to sustainable development *
6. The free-market system is likely to promote unsustainable consumption *
Nothing is ultimately sustainable. Ignorant questions.
8. A powerful and secretive group known as the New World Order are planning to eventually rule the world through an autonomous world government, which would replace sovereign governments
It is the space aliens who will run things, and they are not here in force, yet. Everybody knows that.
11. US Agencies intentionally created the AIDS epidemic and administered it to Black and gay men in the 1970′s *
This is a popular meme of the Democrat Party, especially as espoused by that brilliant scientist, Van Jones.
16. The US government allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place so that it would have an excuse to achieve foreign (e.g., wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) and domestic (e.g., attacks on civil liberties) goals that had been determined prior to the attacks *
This means that it was Bush’s fault. Who could believe that?
20. The claim that the climate is changing due to emissions from fossil fuels is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who wish to spend more taxpayer money on climate “research”.
Who is kidding whom, here? DUH! Allow me to follow the money.
22. I believe that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric temperature to some measurable degree
23. I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has increased atmospheric temperature to an appreciable degree *
What does the word appreciable mean? How can I measure “appreciable”? Questions not thought out very well. Sloppy work.
24. I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years will cause serious negative changes to the planet’s climate, unless there is a substantial switch to non-CO2 emitting energy sources *
25. I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has caused serious negative changes to the planet’s climate *
Past tense vs future tense. Sloppy work.
38. Out of 100 climate scientists how many do you think believe that human CO2 emissions cause climate change? *
It doesn’t matter.
The more I think about it, the more I think that there is a deep structural flaw in the basis of the study design.
It is structured largely to force you into choosing WHICH “cliff of conclusion” from which to leap; when IMHO the basic character that sets a skeptic apart from a ‘warming believer’ is the very RELUCTANCE to leap off any cliff of conclusion.
So, for example, on the “Area 51” question: You are asked to choose “space alien studies” or not. Yet it is a secret site where by definition only the folks who work there will know. It is highly likely there are other life forms in space somewhere. To assert either that they have never come here or that they are here and being studied both are leaping off a ‘cliff of conclusion’ for which there is not sufficient evidence.
For the Kennedy Assassination question: You are asked to choose ‘grand conspiracy’ or ‘Warren Report single shooter’; yet there is a lot of evidence for what I’d call the “small conspiracy” approach ( things like recorded history of an attempt in Florida and Mafia involvement, and that the Kennedy clan had a history of conflict with the Mafia reaching all the way back to the Saint Valentines Day Massacre era of rum running, not to mention the Bay Of Pigs when John F. had made promises to the Mafia that he blew off… a bad idea…). Is it ENOUGH evidence? No, not at all. Suggestive at best. But the same can be said of the “Single Shooter Oswald” conclusion. The “correct” assessment is “We don’t know, likely can’t know, but either answer is an insufficiently supported ‘leap'”… THAT is the “skeptic” answer, not choosing one wrong answer over another. So I chose the “slightly agree” with the conspiracy theory, because there are more loose ends to the Single Shooter than to the “small conspiracy with Mafia help” choices; BUT what I really wanted was a “We do not know” or a “strength” metric. I.e. I’d like to have been able to choose “conspiracy” but with a “strength” of 2 (just above weak) out of 5, AND marked the “single shooter” as 1 (weak) out of 5 strength as well. BOTH are possible, but a bit weak and with poor evidence.
So to me, the survey is designed to force a “decline to accept dogma” to show up as a “whacky theory advocate” when the reality OUGHT to be “decline to accept insufficient proof for dogma AND decline to reject ‘whacky theory’ without sufficient proof”. That is, an ‘open but cautious mind’ very aware of when there is simply insufficient information to support an idea, or reject one.
So you may be able to ‘replicate’, but it still isn’t going to say much about the actual “skeptic” axis, as that axis is clouded by the question structure.
I just completed the “survey”. I naturally used the same name and email as I use here. So I would also be interested in Mr Scott’s results for folks who used contactable details.
As for the survey itself, LOL. I was in Area 51 last week, and I know for a fact there are no aliens there, remember folks, the aliens have rule number one – always retrieve your wounded.
And the moon landings were not faked in Hollywood, but in Burbank. /LOL
It would be more interesting to survey his department …
(1) Energy in the 15u band is mainly held ..
a) In the rotational and vibrational modes of the CO2 molecule
b) In the words and works of Dr Mann
c) Only in renewable forms of energy and sustainable living
d) In a piss poor internet survey masquerading as science
e) You are a denier funded by a big fuel conspiracy and Agenda 21 is the way forward
f) Do you believe in conspiracies? The clay model I made of you does!
g) I lost the plot a long time ago – what was the question again?
It is the peer review system that is failing. Anyone is free to conduct any survey they want, in order to make hay. That doesn’t mean scientific journals should publish their findings as scientific hay. GK
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
Better yet – would be to survey Lewandowsky et al…IT IS THEIR INTERPRETATIONS of the Questions that drive the results!!!
I deal with standardized surveys all the time (what special educator hasn’t?). The scaled response usually includes a “not observed” or “not applicable”, or “do not know” category to allow respondents to state that the question’s focus is new to them, they have no knowledge of its focus, or does not apply to them.
As for the Kennedy assassination, modern ballistics, including trajectories and deflections through various materials demonstrate that it is equally possible that all injuries were caused by a single assassin from a single location. As for multiple assassins, they would have to be located very near each other (as in nearly on top of each other) for that theory to be a possible cause of all injuries. That does not prove the assassin was the only one who knew (IE acted alone) what he was going to do. Criminal research demonstrates it is relatively rare for a killer to plan for a political assassination (versus a mentallly deranged killing) without others having prior knowledge of what he was going to do. While I tend to lean towards a single shooter, I think the commission came to the “acting alone” conclusion without benefit of a thorough investigation. Of course, back then, no one had heard the term “sleeper cell” before.
The “forced choice” approach to survey questions (allowing no neutral or “do not know” option) is a conscious choice by Lewandowsky et al to polarize the answers. Yet, for many of the conspiracy questions “do not know” is the rigorous rational answer since the respondent has no genuine evidence at all. However, it is also rational to reject outlandish conspiracy theories automatically UNLESS one has credible evidence to consider one. I reject virtually all conspiracy theories out of hand, but I am now willing to entertain a theory that Stephan Lewandowsky et al set out to provide evidence that CAGW alarmists are delusional dishonest morons. I admit that Lewandowski and his pals are a tiny sample, but they are more representative of their ilk than anonymous web survey respondents are representative of anything at all.
Bob says:
September 9, 2012 at 10:41 am
In a free market system, a resource becomes more expensive as it gets scarcer – this leads to less consumption and replacement of the scarce resource with an abundant one. Therefore, a free market system cannot lead to unsustainable consumption. The Free market system is demonized by the left as an ever growing monster, but that is not the definition; wealth and consumption can shrink when resource scarcity forces adaptation.
See Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
Here are some questions that should be asked in a survey of believers in global warming:
1. A single stick breaks easily but a bundle of sticks (Italian fascies) bound together is much stronger, true / false?
2. A climate skeptic obstructing action on global warming should be treated as an enemy of the people, true / false?
3. All people are equal but some are more equal than others, true / false?
3×2 says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:12 am
That terminology would be a bit too complicated for a social scientist.
@A.Scott 9/8 10:24 pm reply to Skiphil: may well actually serve to mitigate the poor quality of the questions etc.
You are fooling yourself if you believe this. More answers to poor questions does not add knowledge.
You have strong standing to show that the survey results are not replicable and therefore their statistics are meaningless – a valid sample was not taken can adequately represent the population. Stick with that.
I repeat my suggestion to repeat the survey questions but with responses that only evaluate the quality of the question.
Sorry, I just can’t respond to such poorly constructed questions. Too many of them conflate ideas making it impossible to answer accurately. Any results tell you nothing except some people are willing to take a survey, no matter how bogus.
I originally tried to take the survey on one of the believer’s sites. I abandoned it partway through, thinking it was a childish parody, badly done satire, not a genuine survey.
I’ve answered it now, but note that my ‘lukewarmer’ position might well be misinterpreted as not being skeptical. I suspect that if Lewandowski had crafted a survey that adequately explored the opinions of his respondants, he would think I’m the archetypical ‘climate denier’.
Many of my responses on another day would differ from those I gave today, because today I guessed at the meaning of some questions. Another day, my guess might be different, and therefore my answers would also differ.
For example, the question about affecting the quality of the environment. If he meant we should leave the world as untouched wilderness, I strongly disagree. If he meant to ask about making areas unfit for life, that’s a completely different answer. Which did he actually mean? There’s no way to tell. There were similar difficulties with many of his ambiguous questions.
I’d like to see a second survey but properly worded questions and with a heavy hand toward basic science literacy. Questions like:
What does “logarithmic” mean?
Are the effects of CO2 logarithmic?
What is the commonly accepted baseline CO2 concentration?
What is the CO2 concentration today?
How much additional CO2 would we have to add to the atmosphere to equal the effects of the change from baseline to current?
How much has CO2 concentration increased in the last 10 years?
Based on the change rate of the last 10 years, how long will it take to equal the effects of the change from baseline until now?
The reason I suggest questions such as these as a lot of people, skeptics and alarmists alike, will get the answers wrong. Who will do worse? That’s not the point of these questions. The point of these questions is to educate. When people who come back to see what the right answers were, they get an education in physics in the process, and rather simple physics at that, not something anyone can dispute without looking like an utter fool. In fact, not something that anyone can dispute without being in disagreement with the worst that the IPCC reports have to say on the matter. As far as I am concerned, the fact that CO2 is logarithmic should have been the end of the discussion in the first place. The alarmists twist and turn to avoid that discussion and keep the issue off the table at all costs. Time to put it back front and centre and a well thought our survey would be a great way (I think anyway) to educate a lot of people on this simple and obvious fact of physics that largely negates the while catastrophic meme in the first place.
Then perhaps they should stay out of real science and get back into the wonderful world of politics and PR.
Then again … we have this …
I simply can’t believe the coverage this muppet has had in a supposedly ‘science based’ blogsphere. What is wrong with you people? Slow news week? The guy is a certified fruit loop obsessed by conspiracies against the lovingly crafted sustainability utopia he wishes you all to live in. PROJECTION much. Should never have left the ivory tower – thar be sharks in them there waters Prof.
The Iraq War was launched because Saddam Hussein was potentially the world’s most dangerous terrorist, given his unlimited financial resources and a diplomatic corps that was little more than a terrorist planning organization that could operate with near impunity around the world. He also had a maniacal enmity toward the United States which refused to allow him to win the war with Iran and then decimated his military in the Gulf War. Nearly every intelligence organization in the world believed he had WMD, and Saddam conducted misinformation campaigns that were designed to convince all other nations that he did.
Next question.
Given that Tony Blair has publicly admitted he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public, is that a conspiracy theory?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/12/tony-blair-iraq-chilcot-inquiry
theduke says:
September 9, 2012 at 1:52 pm
The Iraq War was launched because Saddam Hussein was potentially the world’s most dangerous terrorist, given his unlimited financial resources and a diplomatic corps that was little more than a terrorist planning organization that could operate with near impunity around the world. He also had a maniacal enmity toward the United States which refused to allow him to win the war with Iran and then decimated his military in the Gulf War. Nearly every intelligence organization in the world believed he had WMD, and Saddam conducted misinformation campaigns that were designed to convince all other nations that he did.
Next question.
——————————————
Ever wonder why a crediable threat was never given to the U.S.
Smoking holes tell their own story.
I took the survey and did the best I could to answer the questions with an honest opinion, though as others have well noted some were catch-22. But then it’s opinion right? You know, “opinions are like A$$ holes…everybody has one.”
The ET questions did prompt a thought though; has anybody else noticed that the reports of alien abductions (not to mention spontaneous human combustion) seem to have declined over recent years as the CAGW rhetoric has increased? Perhaps the crazies have found something new to go on about.
This may already have been fixed, but:
This survey replicates the questions, both the paper, and several sites have indicated were in the original survey, including those questions deleted from the survey results.
Something missing there. Otherwise, nice post.
Is there any way of knowing which responses are genuine climate skeptics?
Lurid Off Key clearly hates the thought of real science, real truth, real evidence. Why else would he try to imprison us in his spider’s web that (1) is constructed around nothing but irrelevant politically incorrect beliefs, and (2) doesn’t even begin to touch the real climate skeptics’ issues?
Dirk H said:
” In a free market system, a resource becomes more expensive as it gets scarcer – this leads to less consumption and replacement of the scarce resource with an abundant one. Therefore, a free market system cannot lead to unsustainable consumption. ”
I agree. At the least, you have to pump in resources and energy to keep any process going. Solar cells fail. Windmills wear out. There is always a cost. Physical systems have the property that they will eventually become unstainable.
The Lewandowsky paper is remarkably clownish. It’s amazing the author has such an atrophied sense of ridicule.
I am thinking a link to this Lewandowsky paper should be added to the famous site that compiles “A complete list of things caused by global warming:” http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Maybe it could go in the letter R (rejection of science) right between the links for “reindeer larger” and “release of ancient frozen virus”.
@A. Scott The response, in numbers and apparent quality, has been gratifying,
I have to ask, what is your basis of “quality of response”, apparent or otherwise?
I would take the survey, but every time I glance over at Elvis he shakes his head “no”.
I went back on my answers before NOT completing!
Some it seems to have changed!
DaveE.
Lewandowsky blogs today:
– ” I have several phone conversations scheduled for tomorrow, Monday, W.A. time, with the ethics committee at my university. I will report on the outcome as soon as a decision has been finalized.”
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskySouljah.html
ethics committee? decision?
“””””……Researchers in history
and sociology frequently cite the \manufacture of doubt” by vested interests and political
groups as a factor (Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008; McCright & Dunlap, 2003, 2010;
Mooney, 2007; Oreskes & Conway, 2010; Stocking & Holstein, 2009). For example, over
90% of environmentally sceptical books published since 1972 have been demonstrably
sponsored by conservative think tanks (Jacques et al., 2008). Oreskes…..”””””
I wonder if researchers in history and sociology frequently cite the \manufacture of doubt” by vested interests, such as academic /climate scientists” whose sole source of income rests on keeping the manmadeglobalwarmingclimatechange idea supplying them with grant money to continue “research” into issues that will never decide the issue; but continue to foment public fears.
What percentage of public climate scare articles, are demonstrably sponsored by business interests, who seek to profit, from “alternative energies” and other anti- energy interests often subsidized by taxpayer funding.
It seems that Jacques and Dunlap at least are showing a clear bias in their social studies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/31/1?INTCMP=SRCH
Poll of 1,000 British adults, by film company 20th Century Fox, in 2008
· 1 Area 51 exists to investigate aliens (48%)
· 2 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government (38%)
· 3 Apollo landing was a hoax (35%)
· 4 Diana and Dodi were murdered (32%)
· 5 The Illuminati secret society and masons are trying to take over the world (25%)
· 6 Scientologists rule Hollywood (17% )
· 7 Barcodes are really intended to control people (7%)
· 8 Microsoft sends messages via Wingdings (6%)
· 9 US let Pearl Harbour happen (5%)
· 10 The world is run by dinosaur-like reptiles (3%)
By far the biggest conspiracy is that someone can call themselves a “scientist in the School of Psychology”.
Psychologist are not scientist because psychology is not a science. It never has been, and that psychology, in all its many forms, entertains the ideas of being a science is just wrong.
There are many generalized ideas about the psychology of man but virtually no tried and tested, verified laws. Psychologists often employ only empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Additionally others may sometimes rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. So much of it, especially in the last few years, has proved itself as just hokum dressed in a pseudo-scientific language.
The best that can be said is that psychology is just one of the lesser arts of the human consciousness, and occasionally it stumbles across techniques that benefits some individuals.
Rod … sorry you feel you wasted your time, but I tried to make it very clearly identified that leaving comments and providing contact info is entirely optional and voluntary (emphasis added):
Interestingly the optional, voluntary information respondents have left may be some of the more valuable benefits of the survey.
“””””…..climate deniers believe that temperature records have been illegitimately adjusted to
exaggerate warming (e.g., Condon, 2009). In all those cases, the conspiracy theory serves
to explain away overwhelming scienti c evidence……”””””
Well i’m NOT a climate “denier”, and I don’t recall if the authors gave a formal definition of that term to match their “ideation” definition, and I DO believe that Temperature records have been adjusted; I’ve seen the blink comparator demonstration of James Hansen’s GISSTemp graphs, where decades old records were inexplicably lowered to create the illusion of a greater warming since. I’ll let the authors choose to describe that as illegitimate. I personally regard ANY alteration of already publicly published and presumably peer reviewed scientific data records, as fraudulent.
But I personally know of no conspiracy to fraudulently alter those records; but it IS a fact that the records WERE altered. As to that final sentence; I have no idea how a conspiracy theory can serve to explain away overwhelming scientific evidence. A more pertinent comment would be: Overwhelming scientific evidence of WHAT ??
That is the point; there IS no overwhelming scientific evidence that greenhouse gases are overheating planet earth. No quarrel with a statement that GHGs do lead to warming the atmosphere by intercepting a portion of the surface emitted long wave EM radiation, and also by intercepting a portion of incoming solar spectrum EM radiation, lead to cooling of the surface.
The vast majority of the “overwhelming scientific evidence” the authors are talking about, is unfortunately not provably related to manmadeglobalwarmingclimatechange; however interesting it might be to other disciplines of scientific knowledge.
The roundup of strawmen, the authors appeal to, to try and make their thesis, is simply a pitiful effort to make argument where none exists.
Whoever described this paper as crap, was right on target; and if in fact nobody, made that observation; then allow me to be the first to do so.
The question about burning fossil fuels causing global warming failed to mention that would be instead of abtaining the same amount of total global energy as fossil fuels deliver from PRESENTLY AVAILABLE alternative energy sources. It has not been proven that existing available alternative energy sources are less environmentally problematic, than burning fossil fuels.
Many so-called alternative energy sources, have not even been shown to be energy sources, rather than energy consuming schemes.
This is a new documentary that’s being aired by PBS
http://video.pbs.org/video/2270078138
It’s supposedly one of the most watched documentaries on PBS in recent weeks.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/332051
It’s not so easy to dismiss because the many, many professionals being interviewed are all practicing engineers in fields pertinent to the issue at hand, physicists, chemists, architects etc. None of them look deranged to me. In fact they all look quite sane AND qualified.
Also viewable on youtube:
uk(us): “Ever wonder why a crediable threat was never given to the U.S.
Smoking holes tell their own story.”
I’m not sure what you mean. Please elaborate.
As to the questions about the reason for declaring war on Iraq and Afghanistan, the real reason is that in both cases the Congress of the United States, which is Constitutionally charged with the authority to declare war, did so by majority votes in both houses of the Congress. Those votes followed an earlier vote to authorize the President to do whatever was necessary and appropriate to curb international terrorism. That vote was carried by a vote of 529 to 1 with five senators not voting (absent ?) The lone no vote by Communist Barbara Lee of Oakland who is educationally challenged, and doesn’t understand that a vote to not do that which is NECESSARY, is a fairly good definition of insanity. Nobody questioned her right to argue her view as to what might be necessary.
And yes the Constitution does NOT specify the required wording for a declaration of war; it doesn’t specify the wording of anything else the Congress can vote on either’ only that they alone have that authority.
These questions have to be some of the most poorly written imaginable. Some of the questions are based on events which have multiple official explanations. For example, the M.L. King assassination had two trials, one criminal trial and one later civil trial. It is a fact that the two trials reached differing conclusions. The criminal trial ruled against conspiracy, the civil in favor. Similarly the Kennedy assassination had two major governmental investigations, the original Warren Commission and the later 1979 (1980?) Congressional investigation. One said lone gunman, the other said multiple shooters. If the aim of the study is to somehow give a value judgement of the ability of survey responders to find the truth, then the reasonable assumption would be that the two assassinations were both conspiracies, since the later investigations (which presumably had access to more data since they were both done after more investigation than the first reports) both found for conspiracy. Does that mean that non-conspiracy believers refuse to update outmoded opinions?
The best reason, among a dozen or so reasons, was Saddam’s repeated violation of the terms of the 1992 Cease Fire agreement. ‘Nuff said.
Unable to respond intelligently to criticism, Lewandowsky continues on his contemptible path with a bizarre ranting post about cabals and “Sister Souljah” moments:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskySouljah.html
Rather than address any substantive issues about his Psychological Science article and survey, he behaves like a squid squirting ink, trying desperately to obscure the waters. He thinks smearing critics is a way for him to avoid the reckoning. It is not working, Professor.
Tom Curtis joins in with comments, apparently trying to recoup his standing with the charlatans of SkS by allying himself with Lewandowsky in the new smears of evil “deniers”. I notice that John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli are among the fellow authors at the pitiful blog “ShapingTomorrowsWord” for which Lewandowsky is a co-Principal:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/authors.htm
This is a sad, pathetic band of wannabes clustered around the University of Western Australia. Lewandowsky thought he could propel his little clique of green groupies into the big time; instead, he will end by discrediting and humiliating all who do not rapidly distance themselves from his babblings.
oops, typo, “ShapingTomorrowsWorld” is the name of that blog
Anthony and Willis, two people I respect, have endorsed this survey. So depite the reservations I expressed in an earlier comment, I tried to answer it. However, after entering the password the page refreshes with no change. I’ve tried switching off add-blockers and such but to no avail. Any ideas?
Lewandowsky can speak with authority on the subject of unsustainability, considering his very large house, with swimming pool, backing on to a golf course that requires a 60 kilometer commute by car to the UWA.
David Ross;
However, after entering the password the page refreshes with no change.
>>>>>>>>>>
I ran into the same thing initially. Turned out that scrolling with the mouse wheel was the problem. Scrolling by clicking on the side bar enabled me to expose the parts of the survey from the top and in proper increments. Your root cause may be different then mine, but I think it is a browser compatibility issue. If that doesn’t work for you, try a different browser.
A. Scott, I’ll just ditto Smokey’s compliment to you above and thanks for all of your time re-constructing a copy of Lewandowsky’s survey. It has shown exactly the response I suspected it would show, for far to many here have the scientific intelligence to see completely through it and I for one am grateful to most of the great comments above.
lol, amusing comment on the Lewandowsky article, probably won’t last with all the snipping that is going on there:
===============================================================
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskySouljah.html
18. LewPaper at 11:56 AM on 10 September, 2012
This blog’s policies emphasize “civil and substantive” discussions and fostering “conditions for reasoned debate”.
Do authors and members of the Editorial Board actually regard Professors Lewandowsky’s last several articles here as “civil and substantive”?
Does the smearing of all sources of criticism foster “conditions for reasoned debate”?
Across the academic and policy worlds this blog is an extreme outlier, a locus of reckless ad hominems and slovenly discourse. Its sponsors and and contributors should be deeply ashamed of what Professor Lewandowsky has done to this forum. Thank you for your consideration.
If you read his paper you see that Lewandowsky believes in the theory of “manufacture of doubt” as an organized effort by certain nefarious organizations to undermine well-established scientific facts they find detrimental to their interests (smoking and cancer, whatever). Okay, maybe there is something to that, but that’s definitely a conspiracy theory. No doubt about it. And he believes the skeptics who write papers questioning the case for catastrophic global warming are an active part of a conspiracy to “manufacture doubt” about what he thinks is a “well-established” scientific fact.
In this case, the negative load of the word “conspiracy” doesn’t seem to bother him. Because it’s his pet conspiracy theory. But he is very happy to use this loaded phrase, conspiracy theory, to smear skeptics with it by sending out some nonsensical survey where most of the questions are ill posed on purpose and don’t even allow “I don’t know” as an answer. His paper is a unique mixture of pseudoscientific trash and manipulative bad faith. I can’t believe this thing will be published anywhere.
The page seemed to be broken, but I managed to complete the survey after a simple cut and paste. For what it’s worth, my comment at the end of the survey is regurgitated here:
Asking what I think are the numbers out of 100 “professional” scientists and medical students is fallacious. This requires someone like myself, a non-professional to base my answer on those requiring certain results within their professions to remain employed.
The answer will be skewed and results cannot be derived from this.
Certainly, smokers CAN develop lung cancer – but many also don’t. Notably, non-smokers CAN also develop lung cancer, which means that smoking isn’t definitely causative.
Similarly with climate change, there have been no measurable results regarding human emissions. Instead, ocean oscillation patterns and solar activity bear closer resemblance, however so-called “climate scientists” are now deriving “positive” results from computer models that have little or no ability to model the effects of clouds and, almost completely ignore ocean oscillations and solar activity.
NASA have noted climates becoming warmer on Mars and other planets, however we still cling to the fanciful notion that we on Earth are causing this on our own planet. This is both shameful and neurotic and harks back to the 1300’s where “witches” were burned at the stake for crop failures.
If CO2 were the powerful mechanism behind climate, Earth would have had a runaway greenhouse millions of years ago when levels were some 20 times higher. How is it possible that we still have frosty mornings and can freeze to death in deserts on clear nights if CO2 is supposedly such a good insulator? Do these “scientists” actually remember OBSERVING frosty mornings don’t occur in overcast conditions and why this might be so? Their precious models likely can’t account for that.
If CO2 is such a thermal god at such low concentrations (currently 0.039% – 390ppm), wouldn’t we expect people to burn their tongues on their own exhalations on a sunny day at 4%, or 40,000ppm?
Notably, Aragonite corals evolved in high-CO2 climates, in an ocean that can never become acidic enough.
This is proven by placing eggshell (calcium carbonate) in soda water. The shell will never dissolve in this water that’s thousands of times more CO2 and carbonic acid concentrated than seawater can ever become.
Warm water also can’t absorb as much CO2 as cold water, so if any global warming occurs, how are the oceans to become acidic at all?
This survey is scientifically invalid and biased.
One last suggestion for the poll is to include the statement
“The People have a right to all data, information, assumptions, methods, reports produced etc. by taxpayer funded research because they already paid for it up front so it’s their data.”
Strongly Agree or Strongly Disagree
When the phone rings at dinner time, more likely than not the party at the other end wants to survey me for something or another. I regarded this intrusion as an affront to my privacy. Over the years I have learned to regard such calls as entertainment; pure and simple. Issues that may matter to them, just don’t interest me. So, I am free to provide “off the cuff” responses; frequently with a glint in my eye, to deceive, mislead.
This survey is of the same character, and I regard it as same; treat it as same; fluff.
Next question.
There should always be an “I don’t know” choice.
Frankly, that is the point when it comes to climatology.
We don’t know enough to justify any action.
Same thing happened to me until I re-read the instructions. Password is CASE SENSITIVE and the password is REPLICATE. GK
Make no mistake. This will be used against you. Have you learned nothing? Sorry Anthony.
I wonder if Chris Mooney will refer to this survey in some later updated edition of “The Republican Brain”
David Ball … first, I’d note this is my project – Anthony was simply kind enough to allow me to get the word out. And for what its worth the reach of WUWT has been proven again to be worldwide and huge. The response from that single post has been phenomenal.
2nd, plenty of interesting and useful things going on with this project – more than I envisioned when I began it.
It started as a response to those typical taunts we all hear – ‘if you don’t like it, the questions are available, go do it yourself.’ This time I said – ok … I will ….
I hadn’t fully thought about much other than that I wanted to re-create the survey and build a more robust, transparent data set which attempted to avoid or minimize the data collection issues raised regarding the original survey. I wanted to try and make sure as broad a base as possible was aware of, and had opportunity, to respond.
Wanted to duplicate as closely as possible the original, so the data collected would be a meaningful comparison. As noted I did struggle over decision re: the single change – to use a 5 point vs 4 point rating. Pretty much all the pro’s I looked at or spoke with said that was significant improvement. That it improved quality a lot without changing the issues regarding question structure, phrasing and the like. Respondents would have to make the same effort to understand poorly constructed questions, we just gave a scale that allowed a more nuanced answer.
I pretty much understood up front we would not see a vast improvement or benefit – as the survey’s problems still existed. What I thought we could do was try to at least help generate broader based and higher quality data, and allow ALL the opportunity to participate. If we stopped right now that goal has been met and exceeded in my opinion.
Along the way though it’s become apparent this project is generating other significant benefits. IIt has spurred review and discussion about the many issues – about quality, confirmation bias, standards and practices, communication practices of the pro-AGW side and much more. It has – again IMO – helped bring the peer review, and publication process directly under the bright lights of public scrutiny.
It also has the potential for a lot more. Several other interesting and potentially valuable experiments and projects have come up along the way – both using the data being collected, and regarding future projects as well. It has also been an education about the potential of crowd-sourcing, showing that simple tools, when coupled with a good plan, can be as, or likely more, effective than high dollar institutional work.
As this project proceeds, and runs its course, I believe that finding will become reinforced and apparent to all.
Then again, maybe the data will show skeptics are full on conspiracy theorists, as Mr. Lewandosky claimed – that they do believe the Moon landing was faked. If that IS the conclusion though, and I wouldn’t hold your breath , it will be based on a robust, broad based, transparent data set, with input from all.
You may worry that is a risk. I have less concern. If that were to happen, as this process and the large base of comments is showing, it would be largely an artifact of the survey and question failings and bias, not a reflection of the real world..
Time will tell. Until then the more responses the better the data. Yes it will still have the flaws as a result of survey problems, but it will also improve the quality of the overall data. And there are many uses for that data, unrelated to coming up with conclusions of the original authors.
That is my, now educated, layman oriented opinion … and I’m sticking with it.
Once again – a big thanks to the large number of participants – while we may not be doing brain surgery with this, we are accomplishing something positive regardless, now – and I think – potentially in the future.
Again – all your efforts and comments are much appreciated.
…It seems clear this “paper” was intended to serve one purpose – to provide the headline and basis for ongoing attack, denigration and derision of those skeptical of AGW – in order to promote the authors well documented agenda.
This is already occurring right on cue – see: How do people reject climate science?
… please check out the author. Big surprise there right? .
I have already seen this “paper” referenced by AGW alarmists in a number of places:
This is EXACTLY the purpose of their flawed work. It was not to do actual research, but rather to create this exact pre-planned talking point. Which will now serve as the “support” and basis for these attacks to continue regardless of the controversy over the flawed results.
In my belief, one of biggest positives of the the whole re-created survey project is that it is continuing to generate awareness, visibility and more important, fueling wide discussion of the serious flaws of Lewandowsky’s work.
It doesn’t simply tell people about the issues it has allowed them to directly EXPERIENCE them first hand. And as the comments show – once you have that direct experience the serious failings becomes extremely obvious.
The authors I’m sure fully expected this issue disappear and fade away, and they’d be able to continue the attack and derision of skeptics long after …
Not gonna happen – not this time. That train has left the station.
So by all means take the re-created survey – see firsthand the quality of the original authors work. Its really even different than reading thru the questions – having to decide on an actual answer is truly enlightening.
.
stupidest survey EVAH
As an old friend used to say to fools, “you think you’re a wag but in fact you’re a %&^%$”. Such is Lewandowsky and his survey. The laughable questions are framed as, “Mr Bloggs is a good man who likes taking things, agree or disagree”. Absolutely hopeless. Are we sure that Lewandowsky isn’t the janitor at UWA?
For supporters of an unregulated free market, regulating polluting industries to reduce global warming is so unpalatable that they are far more likely to reject that climate change is happening.“
What utter nonsense. Governments have been regulating polluting industries for many decades, and its the political issue that probably the broadest public support. Hardly anyone objects to bringing in measures that reduce pollution.
I guess the survey is down. The link in the post above leads only to a page asking a PW input. But as I have no password, it is impossible to continue. No link leads directly to any survey.
Tom Vonk says
Please reread A. Scott’s post carefully once more. You will see that he tells you the password you need. If you cannot do this, the relevant extract is
When filling out the survey just don’t mention that you have a roo culling licence or you will not get any jelly at the lunch that is supplied.
/Sarc
I think that the CAGW debate on the wrmistas side is lost and people like Lew are just outliers that can be ignored. The hard work will be getting government departments like the EPA to start to refocus on true EPA problems.
Given that we know what the survey is asking for, and we know how AGWwrs think, answer the questionnnaire as an AGW believer who also believes in the moon landing hoax, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, the Princess Di conspiracy etc- thus “proving” that AGW believers are
kook conspiracy nuts- the same as the AGWers did when answering the questionnaire on THEIR blogs- only in reverse
Seems this poll is also a test of following instructions…
Hope there’s an analysis of this poll. S McIntyre’s analysis of the original poll is interesting:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/08/lewandowsky-scam/
@ 3×2 says:
September 9, 2012 at 1:25 pm
What a bizarre video you linked to! I honestly wondered if it were a parody of the actual person. Amazing, but not in a good way. 🙁
A.Scott
I do not know who you are. I have never seen your name before and A.Scott does not tell me much. Neither does your blog. I have never been a sheep to mindlessly follow others. The alarmist have proven over and over again to be deceptive and use tactics just like this. Even after reading your response to me, something is still not kosher here. Sorry.
I did try to complete it and the ruddy thing disappeared as I came near to the end. I’m not going through that again. I wasn’t very impressed by some of the questions; ticking boxes never allows one the chance to give what one’s real position is anyway. Some of the questions were way-out loopy too; one wonders what sort of mind thinks up some ideas.
I’ll stick to mainline WUWT and JoNova I think; thanks all the same!
“When did you stop beating your wife?”
Puh-leeeze…
Thanks for your help davidmhoffer and G. Karst. It wasn’t a character-case or scrolling issue. I tried a different browser (something I should done in the first place as issues like this is the reason I have different browsers on my hard drive). I typically use Firefox but succeeded in entering the survey with Internet Explorer. My first alternative choice, Chrome, also failed -curious, as the survey is powered by Google Docs. Go figure.
David Ball wrote:
And
I share some of your concerns, David, but A.Scott is a regular contributer to WUWT so you can gauge some of his views/integrity/motivation by reading them.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=a.scott&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F&as_occt=any&safe=off&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=
He has expended some effort on the issue of integrity in science.
The Fakegate Timeline
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/28/the-fakegate-timeline-from-soup-to-nuts/
I have already expressed my doubts about the value of replicating a fundamentally flawed survey. But, WUWT is, above all else, about airing opposing points of view. People I respect have asked for help, so I gave it. They may see some worth in this endeavour that I do not.
Note: You do not have to provide an email address to participate in the survey. I didn’t.
Incidentally, why the password? To control participation, identify which announcement is used, or keep out spambots?
Mr Scott, can you give us a clue how many responses you have received so far?
Where and when can we see the results?
In order to replicate the previous experiment, should you release preliminary results when there are 1101 answers?
Steve McIntyre has reported on a 3rd and 4th site finding evidence of being contacted – Pilke Jr. and Morano
Coincidentally he also shares email Pileke Jr. rcvd from Lewandowsky indicating his ethics committee says he can release the names. No word on whether they inquired about the well documented quality and issues with the research itself 😉
We also need to see copies of each of the 4 different surveys distributed.
Don’t you have to hire a psychologist to interpret the results?
(sarc)
Upon conclusion of the survey project the data will be made available. Don’t have a projected date yet.
Each survey is timestamped which should allow viewing by a specific period if so desired.
Dave Ross … thank you for your support.
A now retired Epidemiologist / Psychiatrist / Pediatrics former professor friend of mine once told me: “There is a body of evidence that links smoking to lung cancer, as a cause. There is also a body of evidence that sex is linked to children, as a cause. But the smoking / cancer data is much more convincing. ” So I already knew that one.
On the subject of what “climate scientists 97% of all species thereof believe”: I was able to visit the Mt St Helens eruption site not too long after the event. Specifically, my sister and I were passengers on the very last tourist bus (very dusty) that was allowed up to the closest possible viewing site near the mountain. When that bus returned to the base, that road was closed, and from then on, nobody could get closer than five miles from where that base camp had been, until they eventually got the park facilities built.
The scene at the blast site was of total and complete devastation. The entired area was essentially sterile and devoid of any life form. A couple of years later, when I hiked up to that same region, various plants had started to take hold in that sterile soil, mostly some forms of “fire weeds”.
Life forms eventually figure out how to survive in previously uninhabitable places. As plants reproduced, near the boundaries, some mutations were able to suvive, whereas others couldn’t so they got a living space advantage. So species are often expanding their territory, as niches become available, and fortuitous examples are able to prosper.
In the same way, plants and animals are able to expaqnd their range into fringe areas, and gain a space and resources advantage over mutations not so adaptable.
So scientific observations of plants and insects and other flora and fauna, moving into habitats where they previously were absent IS NOT evidence of climate change; simply ordinary Darwinism acting according to its principles.
And the rebirth of Mt St Helens wild life is stll going on taday, based on my more recent visits.
Assuming these poll questions accurately reflect the original poll questions, the original poll was garbage. Had I ran across such a poll there is a good chance I would have answered the questions with twisted sarcasm; if I had bothered to answer them at all.
Why should one give credence to any poll that asks: “21. The Coca Cola company intentionally changed to an inferior formula …”
Why sure Coca Cola company changed to inferior formula since Coca Cola is in the business of P.O.ing customers for the purpose of losing sales, thus going bankrupt.
Or this wacko question: “32. If I could live my life over I would change almost nothing *”
Why yes, I would not change a thing! I want to live my entire life over exactly as before, never experiencing anything new or different – same old, same old. Learning nothing from my previous mistakes, thus being doomed to repeat them. D’Oh!
CO2’s contribution to the recent warming may be “appreciable”, but given the poor quality of the models for a phenomenon this small, and given the uncertainty in the aerosol data, its contribution may not be “measurable”.
” Jason Calley says:
September 10, 2012 at 7:03 am
@ 3×2 says:
September 9, 2012 at 1:25 pm
What a bizarre video you linked to! I honestly wondered if it were a parody of the actual person. Amazing, but not in a good way. 🙁
”
Thanks for the recommendation to view the offering.
All I can say is that a Department of Drama somewhere is missing it’s talking head.
marchesarosa … prefer not to relate exact numbers but I would say the response has been “energetic” 😉 … has far exceeded expectation … WUWT’s reach is global and very significant
82. Computers cause pornography.
83. Alcohol causes automobile accidents.
84. Bicycles cause road-rage.
85. Donuts cause police obesity.
86. Twinkies cause murder.
Any idea when we could see some simple prelim bar charts? Maybe even with the scale removed and simply showing relative proportions of the relevant issues?
Thanks