So much happening in LewWorld, so little time. I’ve decided to simply aggregate all of the posts on Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky into one news item.
First my own observation. Yesterday, Lewandowsky wrote this:
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.
No news, and it is 4AM Tuesday in Australia as of this writing. I wonder what the ethics committee said? Maybe they pointed out more ethics issues than Dr. Lewandowsky expected?
UPDATE: On Climate Audit, it is reported by Dave S in comments:
Lewandowsky just wrote Roy Spencer as follows:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 03:01:19 +0800
Subject: survey contact
Dear Dr Spencer:
Please find enclosed correspondence from my research assistant dating back to 2010. He contacted you at the time to ask whether you would post a link to one of my research projects on your blog.
There appears to be considerable public interest in the identity of the bloggers whom I contacted for my project in 2010, and I am therefore pleased that my university has today affirmed that there are no ethical issues involved in releasing their identity.
I will post the relevant information on my blog shortly.
Kind regards,
While we are the subject of ethics, I find it curious that in the same essay he’s linked climate skeptics to a racist rapper who wanted to dedicate a week to killing white people:
If even Mr. Bolt is concerned about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, then we have arrived at a Sister Souljah moment for climate denial.
Lubos Motl says about this:
So at various points, they’re linked to anti-Semitism, a black rapper named Sister Souljah who wanted to kill several whites every other week to compensate for the fact that blacks kill each other, to moonlanding conspiracy theories, and so on.
When you have nothing substantive to bolster your defense of the indefensible, I guess all that’s left is the race card. Stay classy Lew. In other news…
Steve McIntyre tears apart the survey, labeling it appropriately:
“Lewandowsky, like Gleick, probably fancies himself a hero of the Cause. But ironically. Lewandowsky’s paper will stand only as a landmark of junk science – fake results from faked responses.
As Tom Curtis observed, Lewandowsky has no moral alternative but to withdraw his paper.”
And it turns out Pielke Jr. was contacted as the Third Skeptic.
In the Climate Conversation Group » Personal message to Stephan Lewandowsky
They note the curious autoresponder message in Lewandowsky’s email:
[auto-reply from Stephan Lewandowsky] Note that although I endeavour to keep all email correspondence private and confidential, this does not apply to messages that are of an abusive nature.
No matter if the good doctor makes abusive racial comparisons though. Here’s more news via Tom Nelson:
Steve McIntyre checks the data behind Professor Stephan Lewandosky’s bizarre peer-reviewed paper claiming sceptics tend to believe the moon landings were faked. Truth is, turns out what was faked were responses to Lewandowsky’s sloppy survey – and the paper should be withdrawn:
The “smoking-doesn’t-cause-cancer-conspiracy” is a signature of a fake response…The points that are on the top left of the graph are the more outlandish conspiracies, especially the “smoking” point which ranks right at the top. In my opinion this is a signature point. Skeptics don’t believe that conspiracy, but alarmists have been trained to think skeptics do. The high rank there is the “Oreskes Effect”.
After 120,000 comments on this blog, I can’t recall a single skeptic who thinks smoking doesn’t cause cancer, nor do I remember reading a comment on it on any other skeptic blog, nor have I even heard a hint of it in an email. But the two issues are often tied in alarmist propaganda..
Frequently people like Naomi Oreskes claim Fred Singer and others have doubted that smoking causes cancer, something which is an outright misrepresentation (see my point #3 here). Singer wrote about the statistical failures of the passive smoking case, which is scientifically entirely different from the well documented link between smoking and cancer. Given that this dishonest material is circulated widely on alarmist blogs, it’s likely that all 11 of those responding “yes” to that conspiracy question are the fakers, dutifully ticking off the boxes they have been trained to tick.
======================================================
I agree. For the record, both of my parents were heavy smokers, but suffered major smoking related health issues, and both died prematurely of them.
Myself, I’m a victim of the issue not only because of the loss of my parents, but due to the smoky household I grew up in. See this WebMD article:
Secondhand Smoke Raises Kids’ Ear Infection Risk
Study Shows Higher Risk of Middle Ear Infection for Children in Homes Where Parents Smoke
As a small child, I got many ear infections (and I still do). This resulted in me being treated with Tetracycline, which has been known to cause hearing loss and now discontinued from general use due to that and teeth yellowing (which I also have). My hearing loss affected me greatly through my childhood and teens, caused me all sorts of problems in college (before the Americans with Disabilities Act required accommodations), and ultimately led me to my career path of TV Meteorology where I didn’t have to listen, but talk the camera.
So if anyone wants to label me as some sort of “denier” about the health effects of smoking, let’s step outside this blog and have a conversation about that.
==============================================================
UPDATE2: Lewandowsky lists the 5 skeptic bloggers he contacted:
Shortly thereafter, the first of the 5 bloggers, Mr McIntyre, found his misplaced email.
This leaves us with 4 bloggers whose identity had to remain confidential until now.
I am pleased to report that I received advice from executives of the University of Western Australia earlier today, that no legal or privacy issues or matters of research ethics prevent publication of the names of those bloggers.
So here they are:
- Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
- Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
- Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
- Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)
===============================================================
Of course, having failed to communicate effectively, he went ahead and did a paper with one sided results.
UPDATE3: Lewandowsky Censors Discussion of Fake Data « Climate Audit
Rather than answer the question, Lewandowsky, the author of a paper entitled “NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”, deleted the question
It seems Lewandowsky can’t tolerate the word “fake” when it comes to the data. below is the second before and after:
Original comment:
Edited comment:
I don’t think they understand how fragile their survey was and how easy it was to create fake responses. Instead, they assume they are accusing Lewandowsky of dishonesty, where the accusation actually lies in the realm of incompetence.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s just impossible now to take Lewandowsky seriously. He’s just shooting himself (and his fellows) in the foot. Or worse:
http://www.wtsp.com/news/watercooler/article/272775/58/Teen-accidentally-shoots-off-his-penis-and-testicle
That’s not what the reference to Sister Souljah means. He is referring to Clinton’s attacking of Sister Souljah, and saying that’s what someone needs to do here.
Lewandowsky seems to have entered an epic meltdown (too much CO2?). And what gave him the idea that Pielke Jr. is a climate skeptic?
It’s futile to point out the logical failures of this sort because logic is lost on the true believers. They believe what they want and no amount of facts and figures showing them where they’ve gone wrong will convince them otherwise.
I tend to think that the alarmist vs skeptic debate is less about real science (in the case of the alarmists) and more about psychology. When it’s all over I think the psychologists will study this for years.
You tell it Anthony. I have experienced the tragedy of the smoking-cancer connection. Those that believe otherwise are ignoring the data and in my experience number only a few folks. If the results of the survey show a connection between disagreeing that smoking causes cancer, and CO2 causes global warming, the connection is a huge red flag planted on the head of a fake responder.
I think the major problem with Lew’s “Sister Souljah” post is that he is evading all of the genuine issues about his incompetence, criticisms of his study, etc. by trying to change the subject.
His proposed “Sister Souljah” moment is for climate skeptics (in Australia primarily) to distance or dissociate themselves from the “Galileo Movement” there. The analogy is supposed to be that as Bill Clinton criticized Sister Souljah for her offensive lyrics etc., so are climate skeptics to criticize the GM etc.
Whatever possible criticisms might be made of anyone in the GM (I don’t follow them and don’t know enough about them to comment), that topic is a DIVERSION from real objections which have been raised about Lewandowsky’s work.
Lew’s mode of argument is in effect “nah nah nah nah nahhhh…. you criticize me, I will criticize someone who may or may not have any similarity to you, we don’t know yet because you may not even know anything about them, but I will bring them into this discussion anyway, just for the heck of it!” Now isn’t that an honest, forthright, and indeed scientific way to analyze scientific issues. [/sarcasm]
Professor Lewandowsky is beneath contempt.
Rather than saying that “Skeptics don’t believe that conspiracy” (moon landing), it would be more accurate to say that skeptics don’t believe that conspiracy any more than warmists do. As in both sides you can find all kind of weird people, and among them, probably a few moon-landing-conspiracists.
Thanks, Anthony, I think it is very helpful to bring the various Lew links together here, for one new discussion thread.
It’s also may be the closest approach to “15 minutes of fame” that execrable ideologue Lewandowsky will ever attain, so he should be grateful, too!
I am still filled with astonishment that he is supposed to be a PhD and even a Professor of some kind! Nothing much should surprise us anymore, but this “study” really should not pass muster in a first-year undergrad course. What happened to academic and scientific standards?
Anthony, it’s worth remembering though that the debate about the health effects of smoking itself is a far cry from the debate about the need for the sort of smoking bans and persecution of smokers that we’re seeing today. Ear and throat infections have both been pretty clearly linked with parental smoking. If we believe that smokers don’t tend to get respiratory infections more often than nonsmokers then it seems very likely that the increased infections in the children are due to secondhand smoke. If we believe that the smoking parents DO tend to get such infections more frequently and pass germs on to their children then the causal effect comes into question: and I’ve never seen a study that corrected for that variable … though there may be some out there: it’s not an area I’ve examined that closely.
Heh, speaking of “climate deniers” and “smoking deniers” you might find it interesting to check out these two quite recent/current conversations on your opposite-number blog:
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/hate-mail-and-cyber-trolls-great-article-on-science-versus-vested-interests-reprint/#comment-13983
and
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/a-hive-of-scum-and-villainy-wtd-versus-the-smoking-trolls/
You’re mentioned by name at one or two points as well I believe.
– MJM
What keeps me sane is the knowledge that scientists who overturned the jargon, or dogma of their day and who were chastised for it were found out, retrospectively, to have been correct, such as Galileo and Darwin.. Of course, we were not around when they were, so we don’t know the extent of the jeering and boo-ing.
It is a failing on the part of rationality to advocate ad-hominem as a response, and therefore, the ideas of those committing ad-hominem ought to be examined.
My late father smoked. He was of the generation where smoking was “just fine” and he even rolled his own – not even a cigarette filter to help. When lung cancer hit him, it was brutal and swift. To watch a strong man deteriorate as he did is a thing no one needs to witness.
http://sixmeatbuffet.com/images/racecard.jpg?iact=hc&vpx=1359&vpy=473&dur=416&hovh=164&hovw=139&tx=151&ty=94&sig=113627782936987188954&ei=k0JOUOnGJMGa0QXP74DICQ&page=1&tbnh=163&tbnw=138&start=0&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:0,i:135
Two close friends have died very lengthy, hugely premature and very painful deaths from lung cancer. They were both heavy smokers
I need no lectures on the topic.
My contempt for Lewandowsky, his ‘subject’ and his stance grows daily to almost Mannian proportions.
Can the smoking and cancer question be interpreted to mean whether all cancer (even of one type of cancer) is due to smoking? Surely one can’t claim that all cancer occurrences are caused by smoking.
Let’s not generalize like AGW people do…
I am not a smoker but…
In a 2006 European study, the risk of developing lung cancer was:
0.2% for men who never smoked (0.4% for women)
5.5% for male former smokers (2.6% in women)
15.9% for current male smokers (9.5% for women)
24.4% for male “heavy smokers” defined as smoking more than 5 cigarettes per day (18.5% for women)
This is far from saying that smoking will automatically give you lung cancer. Let’s not get emotional here. Can we say that smoke makes people cough… yeah, I think so.
This is the elitist intellectual totalitarian playbook.
When people do not go along with their rarified, enlightened world view, they decide that there are some regrettable problems that must be remedied. By elistist intellectual totalitarians.
My political views are not easily penned in, and this is because I prefer evidence over political-party-based beliefs or the official government pronouncements.
This matter of noting educational or psychological defects in those who do not play along is a growing theme. In the end, though, it is totalitarianism: the elistist intellectuals will let the rest of us know what is valid to believe and valid not to believe.
I do not believe the govt developed the HIV virus in order to kill off Black people; I do see the attractiveness in this belief to some in the Black community, and I am in no rush to force these parts of the Black community to change their minds.
Cass Sunstein is. He mentions this “conspiracy theory” as one of a few examples in his article, “Conspiracy Theories.” Written with A. Vermeule, so just google those names to pull up the article. In the article, Sunstein “suggests” a few ways that the ” government” (or, the Regulatory Czar) could counter any “conspiracy theory” that has been determined to be false enough, by a govt panel of presidential appointees, to need debunking. One strategy is disinformation on the disinformation by infiltrating the conspiracy groups.
In John Holdren “Ecoscience” style, Sunstein can simply claim he was raising a high level discussion, and was advocating nothing of the sort. Yeah, right.
Also coming out of the elitist intellectual totalitarian think tank is, from Communication Czar Mark Lloyd, advocacy for the return of the Fairness doctrine, and more. He and fellow travelers argue that the U.S. depends upon “deliberative democracy,” and that citizens must be sufficiently informed in order to be able to join in deliberations over how we govern. They then note a “problem:” we rank and file citizens have, with the ginormous EXPANSION of media and info avaiable to us, have foolishly stuck our heads in echo chambers.
To solve this problem – lest our republic fall due to the demise of deliberative democracy, the solution is, again, a panel of elistist intellectual totalitarians appointed by the president to promote and comtrol “content” in the media – especially that most scary, effective media of all – gasp – talk radio.
So, the govt would develop the “well-balanced mix” of what can ride the public airwaves. Thanks! Why did I not thik of this?
Again, you see that the problem is defined as us plain ol citizens not being properly educated, and being susceptible to psychological flaws such as the human desire to stick head in echo chamber.
In a related elistist totalitarian move, a high profile group on behalf of the National Cancer Institute took a quick glance, in 2003, at the epidemiological studies assessing whether abortion adds to risk of subsequent breast cancer. They said a clear “no,” although data are cetainly not definitive. The medical establishment has been free to carry on since then, and this has given new ammo to the opponents of that most threatening, scary group of volunteers, crisis pregnancy centers. Yes, those demon volunteers handing out diapers, getting low-income women linked with pregnancy/delivery medicaid, and offering to gasp – say a prayer with the woman, if she likes.
I count about ten ABC studies that have emerged since the NCI panel and in my view the science is far from settled.
Never mind new data. In 2011, Rowlands came out with a review (in the journal Eu J of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care) noting that the persistence of the ABC belief, and including that in decision-making, is either the product of people who cannot interpret epidemiological studies (I can, but he does not note me individually) or are up to no good. Elitist intellectuals bent on saving the planet from Paul Ehrlich’s impending population overload can rest assured that the opposition is either uneducated or in psychological delusion. Bryant and Levi followed in 2012 with more of the same: ABC education = “misinformation” (in the journal “Contraception”).
If these elitist totalitarians do not nip things in the bud, it will be difficult for them to continue controlling population dynamics in all of those countries where we educated elitists have to keep throwing money, since those uneducated savages keep reproducing like bunnies without our oversight.
That is the common strategy: discount disbelievers by labeling them as uneducated or psychologically misguided.
On the other hand, we could value free speech, and continued inquiry into these issues.
We also could emphasize NOT delivering a bunch of PC guilt onto kids as a proxy for education, but could actually educated the next generation in decent, thorough math, science, reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. Benezet 1935 is too good, and is a must-read.
These schoolkids have the potential to be just as clever as any of us, but the opportunity will be wasted if they are “taught” jingoism about how mommy and daddy are killing the planet and how we could all live just fine if we reduced our carbon footprint to fit within the solar panels on our roof.
I think I got through k-12, and college, just before the elitist intellectual totalitarian guiltucation took over education.
In other words, it was found that 1 of 13 people will develop lung cancer from smoking… hardly a majority.
Lewandowsky of course has built a strawman. He is now attacking the poor science that led South Africa to abandon anti-retroviral drugs, and comparing these people to climate skeptics.
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/news.php?p=2&t=51&&n=160
Wierd part is, when you point out that green groups did that with DDT and Golden Rice, they immediately say that I believe its all part of a conspiracy.
Strange people.
Steve McIntyre has posted this not long ago on his site, which indicates what “ethical issues” were being considered. In the same SMc thread all five ‘sceptic’ blogs now appear to have been identified.
Lewandowsky just wrote Roy Spencer as follows:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 03:01:19 +0800
Subject: survey contact
Dear Dr Spencer:
Please find enclosed correspondence from my research assistant dating back to 2010. He contacted you at the time to ask whether you would post a link to one of my research projects on your blog.
There appears to be considerable public interest in the identity of the bloggers whom I contacted for my project in 2010, and I am therefore pleased that my university has today affirmed that there are no ethical issues involved in releasing their identity.
I will post the relevant information on my blog shortly.
Kind regards,
Lewandowsky is up late.
I would have thought that the University should have been addressing what to do about Lewandowsky’s fake data.
Yea, I would dispute that smoking CAUSES cancer, as there are many people who smoke and do not get cancer. However, making cancer more likely is solid. On the other hand, the effects of secondhand smoking are not well established. The EPA did a science fixed around the policy 20 years ago and concluded that secondhand smoking is a problem, and the methodology was very weak.
Lewandowsky has created a sewer masquerading as science. Whatever he now adds to it, the product will always be pseudo-scientific sewage. It is no surprise that such a man resorts to abuse in response to valid criticism.
The more Lewandowsky struts hubristically on his infamous stage ,the more the excellent reputation of the University of Western Australia and its alumni will be contaminated and decline by being associated with a man so lacking in judgement, sense and impartiality.
There are many carcinogens used in our daily lives, smoking is one, asbestos (was/is) another, I seem to recall washing up liquid is another. Obviously there are many more.
Does smoking cause all lung cancer; no. Does it cause some of the lung cancer; yes.
I just found this post on Stephan Lewandowsky’s site under his most recent post.
excerpt:
I am pleased to report that I received advice from executives of the University of Western Australia earlier today, that no legal or privacy issues or matters of research ethics prevent publication of the names of those bloggers.
So here they are:
Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)
It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted.
Does Lewandowsky warrant this level of interest? He seems to be an activist rather than a scientist and his work is clearly absurd.
I hope the ethics committee pointed out that they take a very dim view of someone undermining the University’s reputation this way: that academics can’t use the good name of their University to try give credence to abysmal work which appears to have no purpose other than to denigrate some blog posters that he just happen to disagree with.