![618_odd_tiny_violin[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/618_odd_tiny_violin1.jpg)
From the tiny dog whistle violin department.
Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky have a new paper out that redefines the term “climate ugliness”. Apparently FOIA requests are “harassment”. And Internet blogs “wrongly sidestep peer-reviewed literature”. Oh Mann, tell that to the IPCC who used magazine articles as sources for AR4. The title suggests all this is happening “subterranean” when in fact blogs are all out in the open, while Dr. Mann continues to fight expensive legal battles to hide his publicly funded emails at the University of Virginia and imagines the Koch brothers behind every virtual rock and tree.
Mainstream climate skeptics admit there has been warming in the last century, CO2 has an effect, but that the issue has been propped up by biased surface temperature measurements and oversold by activist scientists (such as Mann) and the media, since we have seen that climate sensitivity has been observed to be significantly lower than claims by computer models.
Since they are slowly losing the argument as nature keeps adding years to “the pause” in global warming, what Dr. Mann and Dr. Lewandowsky are doing is engaging in suppression of dissent.
Suppression of dissent occurs when an individual or group which is more powerful than another tries to directly or indirectly censor, persecute or otherwise oppress the other party, rather than engage with and constructively respond to or accommodate the other party’s arguments or viewpoint. When dissent is perceived as a threat, action may be taken to prevent continuing dissent or penalize dissidents. Government or industry[1] may often act in this way.
Their tactic is exactly the same thing that went on in communist Soviet Union with dissenters. It is called Political abuse of psychiatry. Psychiatry was used as a tool to eliminate political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted official dogma. Dissenters were labeled as having a form of mental illness that needed to be cured.
We all know how that turned out. The Soviet Union is no more.
Anyone who doubts Dr. Mann is political and using political tools to suppress climate skeptics and access need only look at his recent political rallies and writings endorsing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe. He’s taking that side because it is likely McAuliffe promises to fight to keep his UVa emails secret if elected. The Republican candidate, Cuccinelli, has tried to have those emails exposed to sunlight under FOIA requests and lawsuits. There must be something particularly damning in those emails for Dr. Mann to fight this hard and turn himself into a political tool.
IMHO, it is Dr. Mann and Dr. Lewandowsky who need psychological evaluations, not mainstream climate skeptics.
Here’s their paper:
The Subterranean War on Science
Science denial kills. More than 300,000 South Africans died needlessly in the early 2000s because the government of President Mbeki preferred to treat AIDS with garlic and beetroot rather than antiretroviral drugs (Chigwedere, Seage, Gruskin, Lee, & Essex,2008). The premature death toll from tobacco is staggering and historians have shown how it was needlessly inflated by industry-sponsored denial of robust medical evidence (Proctor, 2011). The US now faces the largest outbreak of whooping cough in decades, in part because of widespread denial of the benefits of vaccinations (Rosenau, 2012). According to the World Health Organization, climate change is already claiming more than 150,000 lives annually (Patz, Campbell-Lendrum, Holloway, & Foley, 2005), and estimates of future migrations triggered by unmitigated global warming run as high as 187 million refugees (Nicholls et al., 2011). A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and relies on platforms such as internet blogs or tabloid newspapers to disseminate its dissent from the scientific mainstream. In contrast, the publication of dissenting views in the peer-reviewed literature does not constitute denial.
The tragic track record of denial has stimulated research into its political, sociological, and psychological underpinnings (Dunlap, 2013; Jacobson, Targonski, & Poland, 2007; Kalichman, 2009; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Although research has focused on diverse issues — from HIV/AIDS to vaccinations to climate change — several common variables have been isolated that determine whether people are likely to reject well-established scientific facts. Foremost among them is the threat to people’s worldviews. For example, mitigation of climate change or public-health legislation threatens people who cherish unregulated free markets because it might entail regulations of businesses (Heath & Gifford, 2006; Kahan, 2010; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013; Rosenau, 2012); vaccinations threaten Libertarians’ conceptions of parental autonomy (Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil, & Slovic, 2010; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013); and evolution challenges people’s religious faiths (Rosenau, 2012). Another variable that appears to be involved in science denial is conspiracist ideation (Kalichman, 2009; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Lewandowsky, Cook, Oberauer, & Marriott, 2013; Smith & Leiserowitz, 2012). Thus, AIDS is thought to be a creation of the US Government (Kalichman, 2009), climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by corrupt scientists (Inhofe, 2012), and research into the health effects of tobacco is conducted by a “cartel” that “manufactures alleged evidence” (Abt, 1983, p. 127).
The conspiratorial element of denial explains why contrarians often perceive themselves as heroic dissenters who — in their imagination — are following Galileo’s footsteps by opposing a mainstream scientific “elite” that imposes its views not on the basis of overwhelming evidence but for political reasons. Mainstream climate scientists are therefore frequently accused of “Lysenkoism,” after the Soviet scientist whose Lamarckian views of evolution were state dogma in the Soviet Union. Other contrarians appeal to Albert Einstein’s injunction “. . . to not stop questioning” to support their dissent from the fact that HIV causes AIDS (Duesberg, 1989).
This conspiratorial element provides a breeding ground for the personal and professional attacks on scientists that seemingly inevitably accompany science denial. The present authors have all been subject to such attacks, whose similarity is notable because the authors’ research spans a broad range of topics and disciplines: The first author has investigated the psychological variables underlying the acceptance or rejection of scientific findings; the second author is a paleoclimatologist who has shown that current global temperatures are likely unprecedented during the last 1,000 years or more; the third and fourth authors are public-health researchers who have investigated the attitudes of teenagers and young adults towards smoking and evaluated a range of tobacco control interventions; and the fifth author has established that human memory is not only fallible but subject to very large and systematic distortions.
This article surveys some of the principal techniques by which the authors have been harassed; namely, cyber-bullying and public abuse; harassment by vexatious freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, complaints, and legal threats or actions; and perhaps most troubling, by the intimidation of journal editors who are acting on manuscripts that are considered inconvenient by deniers. The uniformity with which these attacks are pursued across several disciplines suggests that their motivation is not scientific in nature.
In light of the lethal track record of denial, one might expect opprobrium to be reserved for those who deny the public’s right to be adequately informed about risks such as AIDS or climate change. Paradoxically, however, it is scientists whose research aims to inform the public of such risks who have been at the receiving end of hate mail and threats. Thus, the first author has been labeled a “Nazi zionist kike” and has been accused of “mass murder and treason.” The second author has been attacked on a neo-Nazi website and has received envelopes with a powdery white substance resembling Anthrax (Mann, 2012). The third author has received anonymous abusive emails and nighttime phone calls in her home. This abuse is at least in part orchestrated because the frequency of such emails tends to increase when scientists’ e-addresses are posted on contrarian websites.
Other attempts of intimidation have involved the solicitation of potentially compromising information from the first author by a non-existent internet “sock puppet” whose unknown creators pretended to be victimized by climate deniers — and who then splattered the private correspondence on the internet (Lewandowsky, 2011). At a public level, an American lobbying outfit has recently likened climate scientists to the Unabomber in a billboard campaign, and a British tabloid journalist entertained the execution of the second author by hanging in what passes for a “mainstream” newspaper in the UK (Delingpole, 2013).
Another common tool of harassment involves FOI requests. Under many legislations around the world, email correspondence by an academic is subject to almost unconditional release. During the last 9 months, the first author has been subject to numerous requests for correspondence and other documents, including trivial pedantry such as the precise time and date stamps of blog posts. In a paradoxical twist, accusations of impropriety were launched against the first author when an FOI-release confirmed that inconvenient research (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013) was conducted with ethics approval. The allegations — by bloggers unaccountable to any form of review or ethical scrutiny — cited the fact that ethics approval was granted expeditiously (for details, see Lewandowsky, Cook, et al., 2013). The second author and his former university endured vexatious demands for the release of personal email correspondence by Virginia’s Attorney General. Those actions attracted national and international attention and were labeled a “witch hunt” by Nature (2010). The demands were ultimately rejected with prejudice by the Virginia Supreme Court. Other attacks on the second author involved front groups like the “American Tradition Institute” and the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” which sought access to his personal emails, professional notes, and virtually every imaginable document from his entire career. The third and fourth authors’ research center on tobacco control has been subject to a number of extensive FOI requests from a tobacco giant, Philip Morris International, for confidential interview records involving teenaged participants. Notably, the identity of Philip Morris was disguised during the first FOI request, which was launched with a law firm serving as a front group (Hastings, MacKintosh, & Bauld, 2011). The information requested included “all primary data,” “all questionnaires,” “all interviewers’ handbooks and/or instructions,” “all data files,” “all record descriptions,” and so on.
The use of FOI to obtain correspondence or research data mirrors legislative attempts by the tobacco industry to gain unhindered access to epidemiological data (Baba, Cook, McGarity, & Bero, 2005). At first glance, it might appear paradoxical that the tobacco industry would sponsor laws ostensibly designed to ensure transparency of research, such as the Data Access Act of 1998. However, the reanalysis of inconvenient results by obtaining the raw data is a known tool in the arsenal of vested interests: Michaels (2008) shows how epidemiological data have been subjected to industry-sponsored re-analysis because of their regulatory implications, such as the link between tobacco and lung cancer or the link between bladder cancer and chemicals used in dye production. Re-analyses by industry bodies often fail to detect such well-established links (e.g., Cataldo, Bero, & Malone, 2010; Proctor, 2011). Similarly, results by the first (see Lewandowsky, Cook, et al., 2013), second (see Mann, 2012), and third (Sims, Maxwell, Bauld, & Gilmore, 2010) author have been reanalyzed on internet blogs (sometimes by the same individuals). Those reanalyses used various tricks, such as the violation of strong statistical conventions relating to the inclusion of principal components, to attenuate the inconvenient implications of the research—specifically, that the warming from greenhouse gas emissions is historically unprecedented (Mann, Bradley, & Hughes, 1998) and that those who oppose this scientific fact tend to engage in conspiracist ideation (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013). Another tactic to discredit “inconvenient” peer-reviewed results involves publishing alternative versions of “the evidence” using different sources that proport to be equally legitimate. For example, the third author’s review of the impact of smoke-free legislation in England, published by the UK government (Bauld, 2011) was the subject of a report by Imperial Tobacco, the world’s fourth-largest tobacco company. Entitled “The Bauld Truth” as a play on the third author’s name (Imperial Tobacco, 2011), it presented alternative, non peer-reviewed evidence as more viable and opened with the statement that the third author’s review was “lazy and deliberately selective”. Anyone familiar with climate disinformation on the internet will recognize those rhetorical tools as the standard fare of dismissal of inconvenient science.
A further line of attack involves complaints by members of the public to scientists’ host institutions with allegations of research misconduct. The format of those complaints ranges from brief enraged emails to the submission of detailed, elaborately-formatted multi-page dossiers. The scientific literature on querulous complainants (e.g., Lester, Wilson, Griffin, & Mullen, 2004; Mullen & Lester, 2006) explicates the nature of the majority of such complaints. However, not all complaints to universities are from querulous individuals: The tobacco industry, specifically Philip Morris, used complaints to scientists’ deans or department heads as part of their action plan to discredit researchers who investigated the health risks of smoking (Landman & Glantz, 2009).
The fifth author has experienced a particularly chilling legal attack based on an article that disputed the legitimacy of the claim by an individual (whose name was not released) that she had with the help of a psychiatrist recovered a “repressed childhood memory” of sexual abuse by her mother (for a review of the case, see Geis & Loftus, 2009). Although the suit was ultimately settled, the complaints to the university delayed publication—or indeed any public mention—of the research by several years (Loftus, 2003).
Those attacks on scientists by personal abuse, vexatious use of FOI and the complaints process, and legal proceedings, have not only consumed valuable time, thereby delaying research, but have also taken an emotional toll. Those attacks have caused considerable trauma among some junior scientists known to us. However, the problem does not end there. Even more concerning is another line of attack that directly targets the integrity of the scientific process: We are concerned about the activities of individuals outside the scientific community and of little scientific standing, who systematically insert themselves into the peer-review and publication process to prevent the publication of findings they deem inconvenient. Those insertions typically involve emails to editors which have been described as “bullying” by some parties involved. Far from being isolated incidents, at last count we have identified 7 editors of several journals who have been subject to such bullying tactics across two disciplines; viz. climate science and psychology.
Once again, precedents for those attempts to subvert the scientific process involve the tobacco industry. A 1995 Philip Morris action plan explicitly devised strategies to interfere with funding of health research. Those strategies included approaches to the appropriations committee of Congress (albeit without raising the profile of the tobacco industry), and the writing of letters critical of public-health research to the editors of scientific journals by associates of the industry’s Tobacco Institute (without necessarily revealing their associations). Landman and Glantz (2009) show how this plan was translated into action.
What are the consequences of such insertions by external parties into the scientific process? There is little doubt that pressure from the tobacco industry affected the course of medical research, if only by consuming massive amounts of scientists’ time that could otherwise have been devoted to research (Landman & Glantz, 2009; Proctor, 2011). It also delayed the translation of that research into interventions and policies that could have saved lives by reducing smoking rates. There is also a growing body of literature which suggests that the aggressive efforts by climate deniers have adversely affected the communication and direction of climate research (Brysse, Oreskes, O’Reilly, & Oppenheimer, 2013; Freudenburg & Muselli, 2010; Lewandowsky, Oreskes, Risbey, Newell, & Smithson, 2013), and allegations of defamation have led to the re-examination of one of the first author’s papers to eliminate legal risks that is ongoing at the time of this writing (Lewandowsky, Cook, et al., 2013).
How should the scientific community respond to the events just reviewed? As in most cases of intimidation and bullying, we believe that daylight is the best disinfectant. This article is a first step in this effort towards transparency. Knowledge of the common techniques by which scientists are attacked, irrespective of their discipline and research area, is essential so that institutions can support their academics against attempts to thwart their academic freedom. This information is also essential to enable lawmakers to improve the balance between academic freedom and confidentiality of peer review on the one hand, and the public’s right to access information on the other. Finally, this knowledge is particularly important for journal editors and professional organizations to muster the required resilience against illegitimate insertions into the scientific process.
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You can leave comments on the paper at the journal here
Related articles
- Why doesn’t Lewandowsky study this phenomenon? (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Paleoscientist: Mann’s recent work was a ‘crock of xxxx’ (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Inconvenient Truth-Tellers (psychologicalscience.org)
- Stephan Is At It Again (part one) (geoffchambers.wordpress.com)
- Mann’s emails to be subject of state supreme court case (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science (plosone.org)
- Motivated reasoning: Fuel for controversies, conspiracy theories and science denialism alike (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
Rule is simple…whatever Lew and Mann accuse others of, they’ve been guilty themselves of the same repeatedly.
The APS deleted my comments earlier: Screen capture of partf of my 1st comment below:
http://t.co/xBIRKMhmqT
Professor Lewandowsky is clearly (in part) refering to my requests in the article:
I made 2 comments in reply to this APS article, they were both removed
missing comment 1:
The nature of the error in LOG12 and it’s implications is linked below, in a comment I made on Prof Lewandowky’s website (he had not responded)
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyFAQPLoS1.html
I also reported the substantial factual error in the methodology of LOG12 to Psychological Science and asked the Chief Editor of Psychological Science to investigate it, and if he would ask Professor Lewandowsky to supply the proof of posting timestamps and the raw data to me, if Prof Lewandowsky failed to respond..
and to quote, the Chief Editor said this:
From: Eric Eich
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 7:33 PM
Dear Barry–Sorry to disappoint, but no. Best, Eric
this was in response to my email request below:
On 27/08/2013 10:20 AM, barry.woods wrote:
“Dear Professor Eich
Ok.
I will try to contact Professor Lewandowsky (& UWA) and ask him again. If he fails to respond to my requests, will the journal consider asking on my behalf?
Best Regards
Barry Woods”
———————–
Hard to make a comment about a paper, if a data request is refused, and the journal will not help get it.
If the journal will provide the requested data, I will put a comment to the journal about this paper.
However, given the Chief Editor’s email to me refusing to help me to obtain the requested data, how confident can I be that I am not wasting my time?
I am a member of the public, who now finds this article (and the authors & APS response to my concerns) quite intimidating. ”
end missing comment
What was that- state pen, not Penn State?
The truth is that GHGs have an effect on global air circulation but not on surface temperature and the effect on circulation is miniscule compared to the effect from solar and oceanic variability.
Hold the feet of AGW proponents to the fire until they demonstrate reliably how much our emissions alter the global air circulation.
Natural variations cause latitudinal climate zone shifts of up to 1000 miles in regions downwind of a long ocean track such as western Europe.
Let them demonstrate with evidence in support just how far our emissions would shift the climate zones.
I’d guess less than a single mile.
Looks like projection to me too
It is beyond parody
The clearest case of projection I’ve seen in a while.
I’m betting that his email shows how much he received from Fenton for RealClimate. Mann does not work for free.
As far as my funding from the Koch brothers, if anyone has seen my missing checks, please send them immediately. I’ll send Anthony my snail-mail address, and he can forward them to me … … …
Thanks,
Mark H.
How does this tripe even get published?
Okay, I know the answer, but still.
There must not be a lot of other researchers on these subjects. Lewandowsky had to cite Lewandowsky 15 times.
Funny he doesn’t mention the millions who’ve died from malaria due to the de facto ban on DDT (instigated by people like Mike Mann and in the absence of sound scientific evidence).
Great article, Anthony! My guess is that these rent-seeking academics are starting to feel the pinch where it counts, i.e. funding sources.
Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality Project is reeling from donor base losses, so the funding drought due to false (fraudulent) CAGW claims continues.
BTW, President Obama issued a Presidential Directive on Climate Preparedness today:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/01/executive-order-preparing-united-states-impacts-climate-change
they are using the tobacco industry as a straw man…if they have the truth they should welcome questions…these guys are now paranoid
Bob Tisdale – just remember, this is only paper number one…in true Lew form, he will get another one published, based on the comments at WUWT.
Any attempt to suppress dissent is an activity which stands in complete opposition to real scientific investigation. No scientist worthy of the title, would ever suppress dissent. Nobody should blindly accept the word, (or published paper), of any scientist. ALL scientific discovery should be allowed to be checked for validity, repeatedly.
We can expect more and more of this kind of tripe as the climate data does not match the bogus IPCC projections. What I wonder is, can Nobel prizes ever be revoked?
All the wailing from Mann and co merely confirms that the internet and connectivity of global communications empowers ordinary people to eyeball and question what public sector workers are doing with the taxpayer’s hard earned money, and there is nothing the public sector hates more than the disinfectant of daylight shone on their activities, with the ensuing questions seeking accountability that naturally follow…
On who’s time did he write this paper on PSU???
I would love to play a Texas Holdem tournament with M. Mann.
I bet every time he tried to bluff I would bust him.
Awwww, poor babies!
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but this screed absolutely reeks of panic and desperation. Asking to see the data presumptively constitutes malicious harassment? This makes me think of nothing so much as a fishmonger who refuses to let you smell the product before you take it home.
Anthony,
The new Next Generation Science Standards are not instruction-based as in the transmission of knowledge but constructionism. The student builds up an understanding from the supplied Big Concepts and Ideas to categorize their hands-on experiences. Textbook learning is on its way out. Mann and Lewandowsky know this. If anything, constructivism is even further along in Australia than in the US. And AGW is one of the primary concepts to be pushed on students per the definition of what it means to be Globally Competent. Students are also primed to defer to degrees and credentials. The window to recognize what the students are to be taught whatever the actual reality is is narrow timewise.
Rebecca Costa is a good example of pushing instinctual responses now instead of factual rational inquiry. So is the book Ecomind. So is all the virtual reality Gaming coming to K-12 classrooms as a means of engagement that helps decrease dropouts. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/once-again-the-official-target-is-scrambling-rational-thinking-do-pro-social-purposes-make-it-ok/ gives specific examples of what is being pushed.
These people really do refer to the rational mind as the “ego-mind” and they would like to see it hibernating so no one is in a position to contradict desired public policies.
Mann et al are guilty of assisting in the deaths of countless third world people by making sure that £Billions are spent needlessly in useless research regarding CAGW.
Kettle, black, pot, calling, the. Rearrange to suit.
Interesting… even though the article is open for comments, there still is not a single comment. Gate keeping like Real Climate?
Can I assume Lew didn’t ask prominent bloggers and sceptic scientists if they too get harassment or worse?
“Science denial kills. More than 300,000 South Africans died needlessly in the early 2000s”
Bad science kills more. 10 times that number have died because of the bad science behind the DDT ban. Funny the article overlooked that inconvenient result.
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/10/17/5-tech-tools-for-the-next-generation-science-standards.aspx is a link to a current story on the constructionism in the new science standards. Students taught this way will be in no position to dispute any model provided by anyone with political pull.
All of this Big Ideas emphasis is designed to create the filters and lenses used to interpret reality. It is perception being targeted and the psychological research on the potentials of this to affect guiding beliefs that influence future behavior go back to 1962 and Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
Again Mann and Lewandowsky know all this. It’s ordinary parents and taxpayers who need to appreciate why the CAGW pushers are trying to buy time until the Core Values and Core Beliefs Mindsets deliberately cultivated by K-12 can rescue them from reality. And keep the funding coming and the desired public centric economy and society transformation in place.
That absurdity, primarily based on ridiculous projections of death from tropical diseases migrating to now-warmer climes, is enough to cast a large shadow of dubiousness over the international agencies that endorse such alarmism.
Their article is a smear job. It deliberately avoids taking note of the hundreds of knowledgeable scientists who disagree — some of whom are apostates from warmism, and most of whom are not free-market fanatics. This number is far greater than the number of independent scientists who were contrarians in the debate about tobacco or vaccination.
Craig says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:28 am
“Science denial kills. More than 300,000 South Africans died needlessly in the early 2000s”
Bad science kills more. 10 times that number have died because of the bad science behind the DDT ban. Funny the article overlooked that inconvenient result.
—
Make that 100X that number have died from the bad science behind DDT…
I work for a large Midwestern law enforcement agency which has a staff of several people whose sole purpose it is to respond to data practice requests. In order to make their job simple, we archive every document, message and email coming into or out of our agency.
When someone submits a request for data, we don’t throw a temper-tantrum or sulk about being persecuted, we simply give them what they are entitled to under the law. To that end, we pride ourselves in our compliance with the law……on the other hand, we all understand that if one of us were to deliberately violate data practice requirements or encourage someone else to violate FOI law, that we would expect that person to lose their job, pay a fine and/or spend time in jail.
Why does it work this way for us…..but not for scientists.
Are they not civil servants, just like us?
Professor Lewandowsky was clearly writing about me here:
“….the first author has been subject to numerous requests for correspondence and other documents, including trivial pedantry such as the precise time and date stamps of blog posts.”
My second deleted comment at APS. A copy of the email I sent to Professor Lewandowsky, reporting to him the errors in LOG12, asking for a correction:
Deleted APS comment::
“Here is the email I sent to Professor Lewandowsky:
——————————————-
From: barry.woods
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2013 12:32 PM
Dear Stephan
I wish to formally report to you (as lead author and contact) a substantial factual error in the methodology of one of your papers –
“NASA faked the moon landings – Therefore [Climate ]science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” by Stephan Lewandowsky, Klaus Oberauer, Gilles Gignac – Psychological Science [LOG12]
I have also reported this factual error to the Chief Editor of Psychological Science.
The factual error is:
The LOG12 methodology states that the survey was posted at the SkepticalScience website, when in fact the survey was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.
This has the following implications for LOG12, which will require corrections to the paper:
1) The methodology of LOG12 states that the survey was posted on the website http://www.SkepticalScience.com (1 of 8 websites) This claim appears to be falsified.
2) The methodology also states that the survey was potential visible to 390,000 visits from readers, including 78,000 sceptical visits at the http://www.SkepticalScience.com website. This is a key claim of the paper that the survey was potential viewed by a large, broad audience, (with a 20% sceptical audience) representative of the wider general public. As the survey never appeared at the http://www.SkepticalScience.com website this claim is falsified
3) Additionally, the content analysis of http://www.SkepticalScience.com is used to assert that there was a diverse representative audience across the other 7 blogs that linked to the survey. As the survey was never show at http://www.SkepticalScience.com the claim of diverse and wide readership for the whole survey, based on a content analysis of http://www.SkepticalScience is now unsupported by the evidence in the supplementary material.
New content analysis will be required for the other 7 blogs, including readership traffic volumes as well. Tom Curtis a Skeptical Science regular author and [moderator] contributor (like yourself) appears to have established beyond doubt that the survey for LOG12 was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.
Tom Curtis wrote to Steve McIntyre (who had made a similar analysis ) publically confirming this in April 2013, following the publication of LOG12 in the Psychological Science journal. To put the importance of Skeptical Science into context, the Skeptical Science website, is by far the most well known, with the highest traffic of the all blogs surveyed.
If you recall, I requested evidence that the survey had been linked at Skeptical Science on July 31st 2012, and at the time you stated to me that you had had the url for it, but had lost it, and perhaps that John Cook had deleted it, (this would also be against UWA policies for data retention I believe)
From: Stephan Lewandowsky
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 11:00 AM
“Hi Barry, the survey was done about 2 years ago, and I don’t have the link to SkS: I worked with John Cook directly at the time and he posted it (and I made a note of it), but I don’t have the actual URL to the survey dating back to the time when he posted it. I suspect he removed it when the survey was closed because then the link would have been dead.
Regards Steve”
John Cook has since rather ambiguously stated that he did post the survey (to Geoff Chambers), but can provide no evidence for the survey ever being posted at Skeptical science. Tom Curtis (also from SkepticalScience) has publically completely contradicted this, as does the evidence in the Wayback machine web archive for the Skeptical Science website. It appears John Cook merely tweeted it from his personal twitter account (at a time when he had a mere 1000 twitter followers) and these tweets did not appear at the Skeptical Science website.
This is a substantial factual error in the methodology of the paper and not a simple matter of scientific debate or interpretation, the survey was either posted at Skeptical Science website or it was not. I suggest that the authors now confirm the fact that the survey was not linked at the SkepticalScience website this for themselves by checking with the owner John Cook.
I then expect that the authors will then seek to quickly issue a correction to the methodology of paper. This will presumably require new content analysis for all the seven remaining blogs, as the Sceptical Science website content analysis cannot apply, due to the fact that the survey was not posted at the SkepticalScience website
I do believe this situation originally arose due a simple innocent error in email miscommunication between yourself and John Cook in August 2010, where you believed that John Cook was going to post it on the Skeptical Science website.
I do think it is in the best long-term interests of the journal and authors, (due to the fact that the paper has seen wide media attention), if they were seen to quickly make the relevant corrections to the paper, following formal reporting of this substantial factual error about the papers methodology to the authors and journal.
Best Regards
Barry Woods
(Tom Curtis has publically stated that he contacted the authors and John Cook about this issue via email in September 2012 (see Tom Curtis writes, link below) but he did not state whether his emails had been acknowledged)
I have also raised this error with Chief Editor of Psychological Science in more detail, but it simply comes down to whether the survey was posted at SkepticalScience website or not.
ref:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/03/tom-curtis-writes/
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/28/lewandowsky-doubles-down/#comment-408051
http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/14/the-sks-link-to-the-lewandowsky-survey/
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13716/
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/5/622.abstract#aff-2
——————–
I had also copied him our private correspondence from a year ago as a reminder, but I have removed that from this comment.”
: end 2nd deleted comment at APS
Tom Curtis recently wrote on his own blog that the survey was not posted at Skeptical Science:
http://bybrisbanewaters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/skeptical-science-and-lewandowsky-survey.html
Charlatans fighting to make a getaway after selling the emperor new clothes.
To paraphrase former NJ Governor Thomas Keane, “Mann and Lewandowsky, perfect together.”
“A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and relies on platforms such as internet blogs or tabloid newspapers to disseminate its dissent from the scientific mainstream. In contrast, the publication of dissenting views in the peer-reviewed literature does not constitute denial.”
Evil bloggers. They want to strip us naked. Horrid people. /sarc
I guess the alarmists are in bunker mentality. Elsewise, they would have dumped Mann a long time ago. There is work being done that do bring into light the possibility that there is something called AGW. But Mann attacks it because it questions his disreputable work.
I suspect Mann is not far from the wheels of the bus, and it is not the skeptics pushing him closer. he has become an embarrassment to their cause.
Lewandowsky always was.
Since they are slowly losing the argument as nature keeps adding years to “the pause” in global warming, what Dr. Mann and Dr. Lewandowsky are doing is engaging in suppression of dissent.
Suggest we euphemistically refer to Mother Nature’s now 17 year long global warming hiatus as ‘Mann-o-pause’.
MtK
I was just re-reading an article that appeared in the American Spectator a few years ago. The reason I was re-reading it was that its probably one of the most important and insightful essays ever written about American politics. I just finished reading it a second time and seeing this post just reinforces how dead-on this essay really is.
Funny thing is, it actually mentions Michael Mann, albeit as one example amongst many. Read it, share it, …
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
So am I understanding that secret forums where you coordinate your discussions is a sign of mental instability according to Lewandowsky and Mann? If so what does that say about Skeptical Science and their private forums?
Craig says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:28 am
“Science denial kills. More than 300,000 South Africans died needlessly in the early 2000s”
Bad science kills more. 10 times that number have died because of the bad science behind the DDT ban. Funny the article overlooked that inconvenient result.
Spot On, Craig!
That’s precisely what I was thinking, when I read that line of unfounded conjectural drivel.
MtK
I am very disappointing to see Elizabeth Loftus’s name on this paper.
Loftus was instrumental in destroying the last great hysteria of the 20th Century. Back then it was not unusual for a women (and it was mostly women) to show up at the police station after “discovering through therapy” the memory of daddy murdering or sexually abusing someone. Thousands of families were broken apart or financially ruined and hundreds of people spent time in prison because of this hysteria.
It was all rather sad and creepy.
Drs. Mann & Lewandowsky remind me (metaphorically) of the picture in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”; they just keep getting uglier and more rotten with each new chapter in their lives.
There are lots of leftists among prominent contrarians. Someone should compile a list whose URL could be posted as a riposte to these “motivated reasoning” smears. Here are a few names off the top of my head, to which I urge others here to add names:
Claude Allègre, (A prominent force in the socialist party in France.)
Richard S Courtney
Judith Curry
Robert G Brown
Steve McIntyre
Freeman Dyson
James Lovelock
———
Incidentally, here’s what Solomon wrote in his book, The Deniers (2008), pages 136-37:
Oops–I forgot to outdent my last paragraph.
So now Michael Mann is a psychologist? Maybe he’s become a paleo-dendro-psychologist.
Is it legal for publicly funded Penn State, through Dr Mann, to be actively involved in politics, especially in a different state (Virginia)?
‘The first author has investigated the psychological variables underlying … ; the second author is a paleoclimatologist … ; the third and fourth authors are public-health researchers who have investigated the attitudes of teenagers and young adults … ; and the fifth author has established that human memory is not only fallible …’
Got that? So, we have a bunch of blather from five highly excremed … er, esteemed … authors, four of whom appear to profess some level of psychological understanding – that is, the underlying motivations behind human behavior.
Let’s have a go at it guys. Let’s consider the underlying meaning behind what is undoubtedly their preferred ‘sustainable’ energy source: Windmills. Ok, for a start, a windmill requires a long shaft, standing unabashedly erect as if ready to penetrate the heavens. If the hidden meaning behind this is not yet clear, well, here’s the kicker: What does it take to get these virile windmills going; what does it take to electrify them? Well, they’ve gotta’ be blown on, of course. And, the final beauty is the seeming fulfillment of a long held fantasy: The belief that it can be ‘sustained’.
I love it when rank amateurs attempt to analyze the behavior of others without a clue that they themselves are just as subject to analysis. I have little doubt that my foregoing analysis applies to those five insecure jokers. After all, what other possible explanation could there be for the enviro community’s passionate love affair with an energy source that’s as impractical and unreliable as wind is. I mean, it’s well known that there’s oftentimes periods when the wind just can’t get it up. Yet it remains the environmentalist’s totem. Freud once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. May I add, Lewandowsky, that sometimes it’s not.
To describe Mann or Lewandowsky as idiots savants would be an insult to savants and idiots.
They’re a pair of worse-than-useless clowns. They’ve done so much damage to their respective fields of inquiry that it’s hard to envision how either can remain tenable without throwing said transgressors under the bus.
Mann uses anything which could vaguely have a purported response to any kind of climate and then picks what suits his cause, inverts it if it helps, chops off anything inconvenient, then shakes and homogenises it. If he could do these things without arousing suspicion he’d be the James Bond of climatology – but he’s clueless about statistics rendering him not fit for purpose.
Lewandowsky might seem like an eccentric oddball when you see him on video but he’s just an awkward know-nothing. He’s furiously butt-hurt because he (as a professor of psychology no less) got taken in by “Alene Composta”: a scam so transparent that someone with the social skills of a developmentally normal 5-year-old could see it a mile off. So his warped ego decides to write heavily-funded and ever-more fantastically risible diatribes against the imagined enemies ranged against his fragile persona.
Reality is distilling the henchmen of the laughable global weirding scam down to a fine spirit.
You can see a soon-to-be classic vintage in M&L’s effort.
It smells like concentrated stupid.
Mann and Lewandowsky are perfect examples of what you get when you cease to teach people logic and critical thinking.
Unfortunately, we still don’t teach logic and/or critical thinking to the vast majority of children anymore, so we are doomed to get far more Manns and Lewandowskys. In spite of the fact that CAGW is crumbling and “Obamacare” is failing even more spectacularly than I possibly imagined that it would, I still fear greatly for the future.
People who don’t know HOW to think will simply think what those in power tell them to think (or more accurately, they will simply believe what they are told to believe without actually thinking at all…)
Their ids are showing. And it aint pretty.
As I read the article, I could just imagine the tantrums, the grinding teeth, the little clenched fists and the stamping of tiny little feet.
No one in their right mind writes/publishes this sort of stuff unless they are deliberately trying to misdirect attention from their own misdemeanours.
Now come on, just which sceptic has been sending envelopes containing ‘anthrax’ to dodgy ‘scientists’? Give me a break, no wonder these ‘climate scientists’ live in a world of their own – the problem is the huge amounts of financial swill, slopping around in the troughs from which they feed – and they don’t want the current very comfortable situation to cease, or God forbid, they might have to find a real job. Not surprisingly, I understand the current job opportunities for failed ‘climate scientists’ is on par with those of a tail gunner for a World War II Flying Fortress.
Mann has become a byword for bad science, while Lewandowsky is the same for whatever sort of quackery he purports to peddle..
Mann and Lewandowsky make an interesting team, only not interesting in the way I am certain they each believe.
Wasn’t opposition to that recovered memory hysteria mostly a grass-roots affair? Did any scientific associations speak out against it? Loftus was one of the very few individuals who published dissenting papers. And the hysteria didn’t subside primarily because of her findings, but because of successful lawsuits against RM practitioners. So science can’t claim much credit for dispelling this scare.
Mikey is getting quite Mannic.
Thanks Anthony. Good article.
Desperation is a funny thing!
Technically, they are complaining about getting caught making stuff up.
Even 3 year olds do this so it isn’t unusual but it is still shows a lack of honor.
We have basket cases all over the place including the White House just giving out an executive order preparing the United States for the impacts of climate change:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/01/executive-order-preparing-united-states-impacts-climate-change
Now that’s creepy because this means this country is run by a wacko.
I have said this on WUWT several times before, AGW is now a belief, no different to a belief in astrology or witchcraft. The science of AGW ended when the world stubbornly refused to warm for 17 years as it was predicted to do by the computer models.
Mann and Lewandowsky are like rats in a corner with a cat coming towards them, hence the squeals. Their squeals though are not of terror, but of spite and self-righteous indignation to those who would dare have the temerity to question their beliefs. One thing is certain though, the louder and the more shrill the squeals, the more certain we can be that the whole rotten mess they have concocted is falling around their ears and more importantly, their wallets!
The website where the ridiculous Lewandowsky-Mann paper is published has just one comment, froma talented and impartial observer name of Monckton of Brenchley. Here is what the comment says:
“The whining tone of this laughable article indicates that its true-believing authors, having offered not a single scientific argument here in favour of the childish climate catastrophism they so religiously espouse,m have begun to realize that the science is in, the truth is out, the game is up and the scare is over.
“I decided to verify one of the “facts” given in this ridiculously paranoiac article: the statement that ‘a British tabloid journalist entertained the execution of the second author by hanging in what passes for a “mainstream” newspaper in the UK (Delingpole, 2013)’.
“In every material respect, the cited passage is factually incorrect. Mr. Delingpole opened his article by asking whether Mr. Mann should be ‘given the electric chair’ – not executed ‘by hanging’.
“Mr. Delingpole raised this question because Mann had, in his view, ‘concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph – the Hockey Stick – in the history of junk science’.
“But did Mr. Delingpole “entertain” the notion of executing Mr. Mann? No, he did not. He explicitly answered his own question, and a couple of others like it, as follows:
“’It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is – regretful sigh – no. First, as anyone remotely familiar with the zillion words I write every year on this blog and elsewhere, extreme authoritarianism and capital penalties just aren’t my bag. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it would be counterproductive, ugly, excessive and deeply unsatisfying.’
“The present article is culpably silent on the numerous public threats that climate extremists have directed at those who – on sound scientific and economic grounds – have questioned how much the world will warm and whether it would be cheaper to let it warm even at the predicted rate and cost than to try to stop it.
“James Hansen, for instance, asked for sceptics to be ‘put on trial for high crimes against humanity’ (which carry the death penalty). Not a word of protest or complaint from Lewandowsky, Mann or anyone else among the true-believers in the New Superstition.
“An Austrian “scientist” was more explicit still: he said that death was the appropriate punishment for sceptics. From the entire climate-extremist movement, in response to this hate speech? Deafening, total silence.
“While the climate extremists continue to demand vicious capital penalties for the true scientists who have exposed the profiteers of doom for the scamsters they are, while whining whenever anyone uses on them the language they themselves so readily use or so insouciantly condone, no one will take them seriously.
“They have the money, the power, and the glory, but we have the truth. That is the real reason why they are snivelling.”
I’m not sure if they could be described as “psychotic.” [i]Desperate[/i], certainly. The desperation in their words is palpable.
I’m not sure if they could be described as “psychotic.” Desperate, certainly. The desperation in their words is palpable.
I love HTML, me.
HEY LEW,
You’re sick.
Because you have to be proven correct to maintain self-esteem and the CAGW bandwagon is crumbling, your fragile ego is shattered.
Self loathing has caused you to become bitter with hatred.
Seek professional help, please.
Tim
“Mainstream climate skeptics admit there has been warming in the last century, CO2 has an effect, but …” No they don’t. Where is the evidence that atmospheric CO2 concentration is not an effect of warming oceans rather than a cause ?
My Comments – part 1 of ‘n’ where ‘n’ will probably be >> 2
1. Taken as a whole Lewandowsky / Mann et al 2013 is an intellectual dogmatist’s manifesto. It is not at all about the people who are critics of scientists like Mann, although that may be the initial perception of its focus. They are really focused on forcing and reinforcing their dogmatic view of climate science as unquestionable. Take that away and then this manifesto is just a long list of hateful or pejorative words directed at the broader climate science community that has a more balanced and less biased perspective.
2. Lewandowsky / Mann et al 2013 Is merely a condensed version of the book*** by Mann. In the book Mann has long diatribes on being the victim of conspiracies by his scientific critics. In this paper Lewandowsky has embellished condensed conspiracy diatribes from Mann’s book with psychological jargon and only sympathetic cites.
*** book ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars’ by Michael E. Mann
More posts with addition comments to come. . .
John
” A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and relies on platforms such as internet blogs or tabloid newspapers to disseminate its dissent from the scientific mainstream. ”
Famously, Martin Luther refused to go through the peer review process demanded by the stake holders and censors of the age. Instead, he put up his papers in plain sight. Of curiosity, another famous example is Galileo. Who got himself in rather a spot of trouble for the same sort of end-run on the authorities.
“The conspiratorial element of denial explains why contrarians often perceive themselves as heroic dissenters who — in their imagination — are following Galileo’s footsteps by opposing a mainstream scientific “elite” that imposes its views not on the basis of overwhelming evidence but for political reasons. ”
Interesting to note that the arguments raised against Galileo were done so on the basis of the ‘overwhelming evidence’ that existed. Problem here is that ‘overwhelming evidence’ never means ’empirical evidence.’ It always means ‘a large volume of apologia that experts like.’ That there was, in fact, a conspiracy against Galileo the man is interesting and incidental. But has not a thing to do with the lack of empiricism then or now.
Dr Warren Pearce of Nottingham University, points out (on twitter) that a ‘glitch’ seems to have prevented his comment from showing on the APS website..
the fact that Warren seems to have anticipated the ‘glitch’ occurring, and that he has taken a copy, demonstrates perhaps that Warren is being tactful about the ‘glitch’
https://twitter.com/WarrenPearce/status/396341592283709440
I’ve met Warren , a nice guy (an academic) with an open mind.
Wow, I love the reference to the “recovered memory” of sexual abuse. Might as well call us all pederasts as well.
I did a research paper based on Dr. Loftus’ work — about 30 years ago. I too, thought the recovered memory phenomenon had been largely debunked, and Dr. Loftus was one of the debunkers.
Isn’t is a wonder at what passes as a “scientific” paper these days? Are we sure this wasn’t published by The Onion?
Glad to see someone else has put up the link to the XO on Climate Change. Very troublingly there is an express mention in it of the USGCRP which has been revised under this Administration to expressly use K-12 education to squelch climate skepticism.
The National Science Foundation has been funding research into both CORE-Cognitive Reorganization-and what it calls Understandings of Consequence. Also don’t forget that the modellers are relying on psych research that shows the human body physically reacts to simulated reality as if it were reality. Game developer and Tech speaker Jane McGonnigle has written that the immersion games to be used in schools are being designed to cultivate new beliefs and values and feelings about the threat to the environment from CAGW.
John Whitman says:
November 1, 2013 at 12:53 pm
More posts with addition comments to come. . .
John
___________________
Thanks in advance.
Because scientists keep such messy offices that they can’t keep track of all the paper they scribbled their data on.
Or so I hear.
Nobody actually cares what Messieurs Mann and Lewandowsky actually think about anything.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/science-says-revolt is another example of the nonsense out there. Unfortunately it is an article sandwiched between one from Gar Alperowitz on how to democratize our economy and another on how econ students are developing new eco theories to fit with the biosphere.
The real purpose of the CAGW–the excuse that supposedly makes transformative change necessary.
GregS says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:33 am
Tell you what Greg, they ain’t the worst offenders either. Gleik – wire fraud. nearly 2 years ago, for example. Back on his career path, extremely well paid and not even under threat of a lawsuit, expulsion from academia or loss of employment, let alone being made a pariah.
.
These events are why the rats are displaying a previously rare ‘bravery’ now. No-one has ever been ‘done’ for the lies, fraud and theft and worse.
The smaller minded the more emboldened it would appear to this observer. So far.
When you are out of facts, out of reasoned arguments, and end up out of your minds, you can only rely on name calling defense – besides ratianalizing lying and bullying. We see this on the Left every day.
omnologos says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:06 am
Bob Tisdale – just remember, this is only paper number one…in true Lew form, he will get another one published, based on the comments at WUWT.
=====================================================================
Can’t wait! Press the button, and watch Lewy go. I have long believed he has a personality disorder.
Name calling is a sign of desperation. The warmists must resort to name calling to attempt to distract the media and uniformed public from the fact observations and analysis (in peer reviewed papers) unequivocally (at best) supports lukewarm AGW rather than EAGW even if 100% of the warming in the last 70 years was due to the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Lukewarm AGW is getting smaller, however, as recent data and papers (past cyclic warming and cooling events were global, sun was in a grand maximum during the recent warming period, the warming has stopped, record polar sea ice in the Antarctic, recovery of sea ice in the Arctic, and so on.) supports the assertion that a significant portion (75%) of the warming in the last 70 years was due to the increase in the solar magnetic cycle and that the planet will cool due to the most rapid decline in the solar magnetic cycle in 8000 years. If EAGW was a stock this would be a good time to sell. The public and the media will not accept the heat is hiding in the ocean and skeptics are deniers, in the pay of big oil, if the planet cools.
Name calling is not part of the scientific method for practical logical reasons. Name calling and ridiculous statements such as 95% of the scientists’ support EAGW has made it very difficult for science to progress and for reason to prevail. There is no reason to waste trillions of dollars to fight the war on CO2 if EAGW is a fallacy, a lie. Commercial greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to increase yield and reduce growing times. Developing countries are deeply in debt, there are no surplus funds to waste.
It is good thing not a bad thing if there is no EAGW problem to solve.
Executive Order — Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change
Section3 part (b)
“”As part of the broader open data policy, CEQ and OSTP, in collaboration with OMB and consistent with Executive Order 13642 of May 9, 2013 (Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information), shall oversee the establishment of a web-based portal on “Data.gov” and work with agencies on identifying, developing, and integrating data and tools relevant to climate issues and decisionmaking. Agencies shall coordinate their work on these data and tools with relevant interagency councils and committees such as the National Science and Technology Council and those that support the implementation of Presidential Policy Directive-21 of February 12, 2013 (Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience). “”
I wish I could just give in and believe….
Talented Monckton (November 1, 2013 at 12:39 pm)
Your comment is visible to you, and my comment is visibe to me, but neither are visible to anyone else, due to the bizarre solipsistic setup of their comments thread.
Under the article it says “Leave a comment below and continue the conversation. Comments go live after a short delay. Thank you for contributing.”
Dozens of people have claimed to have sent in comments, and none have appeared.
Clearly the Association of Psychological Science has the same bizarre belief as to what constitutes normal human interaction as Mann and Lewandowsky.
Asserting the opposite of the truth, and accusing others of doing what one is doing oneself, are well-established techniques of political disinformation.
What worries me about Mann is that I don’t think he is even aware that he is doing it.
Loftus was the hammer that drove the final nail into the coffin of Recovered Memory (RM) because her research buttressed lawsuits against the quacks – but yes, the hysteria was not only a failure of science but a colossal failure of the media and people in authority who should have behaved better.
When any scientist makes such grave assertations that require the Whole World to change fundamentally and spend Trillions of Dollars in mitigations, it is simply insufficient for them to say just “trust us”.
Mann et al must be held up to the most rigorous scrutiny before their combined theories can be accepted and strategies implemented.
If they don’t like the spotlight and public scrutiny – well tough – I don’t like what they are proposing without seeing good evidence. Perhaps cooperating with OIA requests and stop being so secretive would go a long way to help.
Until then – dream on chaps
AndiC
We have basket cases all over the place including the White House just giving out an executive order preparing the United States for the impacts of climate change:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/01/executive-order-preparing-united-states-impacts-climate-change
Now that’s creepy because this means this country is run by a wacko
==============================================================
We have this already in the UK – The Climate Change (Destruction of the Economy) Act of 2008, brought to statute by the current leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband,
FergalR-I’m STILL laughing. Your post was priceless. And Peter Miller, I too could hear the tiny stomping feet and the huffing and puffing behind each keystroke. Mr Mann’s obsession with the idea that not everyone likes or agrees with him makes me wonder when he actually finds time to do any actual research. Oh….wait….:-)
Is this the same Dr. Mann who tweets with abandon? Odd he would choose to discuss media outside the peer reviewed literature if that’s the case. I hope he’s getting the help he needs. I’d hate to see him become a ward of the state. I hope too his circle of trusted people help him recognize this downward spiral of cognition and looming irrelevance.
I just had a look. There are no comments visible to me.
> “A further line of attack involves complaints by members of the public to scientists’ host institutions with allegations of research misconduct.”
A non-issue if the scientist’s work does not involve misconduct. But one can see why Mann and Lewandowsky would see it as an issue.
> “A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature ”
Mann and Lewandowsky don’t bother to mention that “peer-reviewed literature” they are defending is not they unbiased, critically reviewed, and scientific “peer-reviewed” literature of the past. Their “peer-reviewed literature” has lost credibility due effects of pal-review, group-think, peer-pressure, and blocked dissenting literature.
> “In light of the lethal track record of denial, one might expect opprobrium to be reserved for those who deny the public’s right to be adequately informed about risks such as AIDS or climate change.”
Appears Mann and Lewandowsky are not above leaching off the serious health epidemic of AIDs in hopes of transferring some credibility to their AGW. Pretty pathetic and hypocritical of Mann and Lewandowsky to cry of wolf with their “public’s right to be adequately informed”, given all the attention AGW has gotten.
> “The conspiratorial element of denial explains why contrarians often perceive themselves as heroic dissenters who …”
Ironic being Global Warmers have Supermandia… (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/caped_climate_crusader1.jpg?w=640)
Also kind hypocritical of Mann, being it is he who falsely claimed to be recipient of Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to GW. And where does one start with ManBearPig’s perceived greatness?
> “As in most cases of intimidation and bullying, we believe that daylight is the best disinfectant. This article is a first step in this effort towards transparency.”
Well Mann, here is suggestion for your second step, that ties in with your first step. Release your emails. Release your work. Quit hiding behind Lady Justice’s tunica.
> “There is also a growing body of literature which suggests that the aggressive efforts by climate deniers have adversely affected the communication and direction of climate research…”
Translation: the Truth is having an effect, we AGWers don’t like daylight, and that is why we are writing this paper.
> “to enable lawmakers to improve the balance between academic freedom and confidentiality of peer review on the one hand, and the public’s right to access information on the other”
Mann and Lewandowsky, do you really want to go down this road?
Cause I for one would love to pursue and see legislation enacted that forces “Scientist” like yourselves to be held accountable to taxpayers. All your records, all your research, all your computer activity and programs, all your phone calls, all your SMS and emails, all your meetings, and all your discussions be made continuously public.
Being most of our employers monitor our work, which often involves use of security cameras, it would only be reasonable that all scientist’s office and lab areas be video taped too.
Still want to complain?
If they want to be transparent, then show us those emails.
Psychological projection blaming stories written by psychological projectionists themselves. Now that is a quite amazing new phenomena from the getting old CAGW pushers.
Remove the “scientific” adjustments and all fears vanish.
Homogenized crap is what is at the core.
My advice, we need a much deeper look, back in time, into just how homogenization papers did that much needed trick.
Sociologists have a lot to study fifty years from now: The Chicken Little Hype
Here’s the comment I left.
Of course, I made a typo.8-( The line should have been:
“It’s when they don’t ignore the personal disappointment at being proven wrong that pride becomes ego and honest science goes out the window.”
There is something strange here.
Why would anyone pretend to take comments but actually not do that? Why pretend to take comments at all? It isn’t too hard to put up a “Comments are closed” line.
Hmm, does anyone detect a Lew research tool? “This time we got sceptics and they were blind”.
We were insulted and angry too but that wouldn’t be remembered in the Lew paper.
Hmmmm are Mann and Lewinsky suggesting a conspiracy?
mbabbitt: “When you are out of facts, out of reasoned arguments, and end up out of your minds, you can only rely on name calling defense”
“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” — Lots of misattribution for this one
Darren Potter: “Their “peer-reviewed literature” has lost credibility due effects of pal-review, group-think, peer-pressure, and blocked dissenting literature.”
Peer review can only be scientifically justified on the basis of Sociology. But if you do not consider Sociology a science, then it is unjustified. But if you do consider Sociology a science, then the science says that peer-review is *always* pal-review. At least, after a very short beginning period. But then peer-review isn’t scientifically justified, it’s anti-science. (Or, if you’re into airborne pasta, an anti-rational religious fundamentalism.)
But the a fortiori case for peer-review requires stating that Sociology is not science, and that peer-review can only be justified on purely unscientific grounds. But peer-review is used to publish Sociological papers. In which case we are forced to acknowledge that peer-review publishes pseudoscience and quackery. So if we are interested only in publishing science, then we cannot use peer review as a guide to what is science. Even what counts as a branch or discipline of science, since we are required to state that Sociology is not science itself.
Pick your poison: a) Peer-review is a philosophical commitment that publishes pseudoscience and quackery. b) Science has established that peer-review is anti-science. Even, dare I say, that it is ‘science denial.’
This isn’t Lew’s only current activity. He’s giving a talk next week on “Taming The Wilful Ignorance Monster”.
See
http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/lewandowsky-scratches-the-scab/
for details.
Are there any Psychology students that read this blog? What is their take on why potentially offensive terms are used ‘D’ word in a supposed serious paper ?
The paper does not seem to be based on any research, except for references to other papers, but the purpose of the paper seems to simply expresses a biased opinion.
“likely” I mean, just “likely”, not “certainly”?
the second author is a paleoclimatologist who has shown that current global temperatures are likely unprecedented during the last 1,000 years or more;”
===========================================================
A few years ago my family was talking about the kids’ childhood. My daughter laughed as she told us about the time when she was very little that we had put baking soda on her tongue as some form of punishment.
But we’d never done that.
The best all of us could figure out is that she’d had a vivid dream as a child of something bubbling in her mouth. Maybe brought on by using hydrogen peroxide on a scrape? We still don’t know where that “memory” came from.
sam: ““likely” I mean, just “likely”, not “certainly”?”
“There will be a battle at sea tomorrow.” Only answer is may be and may be not. The Mighty Maybe. But that’s terrible for prophecy, so you inductively hoist it as ‘may be’ or simply ‘possibly.’ But if that fails to impress with the emotive content, you rhetorically hoist is as ‘likely’ or ‘probably.’ All of this derived from “I don’t know.”
So the second author has shown that they don’t know. But they really hope that you don’t think that of them. Always challenges one-tailed maybes with a maybe not. If they actually know, they can show it. If they don’t, they’re trying to pass legislation.
They certainly have a curious perspective on the law of the land.
Apparently, FOI legislation is just window-dressing. Citizens aren’t actually supposed to exercise their legal rights; if they do, why it’s “harassment.”
They don’t seen to grasp that this kind of arrogant dismissal of the public’s right to know how their taxes are being spent, and how decisions are made, was the impetus for the introduction of FOI all over the Western world in the first place.
Still, I bet they are all in favour of rigorous enforcement of legislation that they approve of, like stopping people from exercising choice when they buy a light bulb.
@Henry Galt says:
November 1, 2013 at 1:36 pm
Executive Order — Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change
Section3 part (b)
“”As part of the broader open data policy, CEQ and OSTP, in collaboration with OMB and consistent with Executive Order 13642 of May 9, 2013 (Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information), shall oversee the establishment of a web-based portal on “Data.gov” and work with agencies on identifying, developing, and integrating data and tools relevant to climate issues and decisionmaking. Agencies shall coordinate their work on these data and tools with relevant interagency councils and committees such as the National Science and Technology Council and those that support the implementation of Presidential Policy Directive-21 of February 12, 2013 (Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience). “”
I wish I could just give in and believe….
Notice that Mr. Obama, whose leadership ability in regards to effective web based management tools is already well established, is directing yet another web portal with which to save us from ourselves.
This President is rapidly becoming a sad example of poor leadership and policy. One would think that he would have worked to avoid the infamous echo chamber syndrome that has damaged so many Presidents. Instead he seems to double down at every opportunity.
Still not posting any comments at the APS website. I’ve started entering comments targeted directly to the moderator: “Is this ‘post no dissenting comments’ policy really the official policy of the APS? In your heart of hearts, does this speak to integrity?”
Pathetic A-holes. I’m with the guy above that says peer review is really pal-review and NOT science. Science has really only advanced DESPITE pal-review and the “establishment.”
We need more rebels and renegades. But the schools are producing more puppets and dispirited youth. Hence, I’m switching to be a HS science teacher starting in the classroom next year. One kid at a time.
AAA
My most recent “post” to the APS website:
Oh, my bad: it’s not that you are deleting posts, you simply never let them be seen in the first place. Now that is REAL integrity. Ya know, when Einstein unveiled Relativity to the world, he asked for others to pick it apart. He also said, “When one seeks the privilege of searching for the truth, one has a responsibility to reveal all that they know to be true.”
Does this “post no dissenting posts” policy comport with transparency and integrity standards for the APS? Really? Look into your heart and ask yourself honestly if this feels right? Is science really about who controls the portals and who can shut out dissenting views? Really?
Moderator, you know you’re doing wrong. Just stop it and let the dissenting views be heard. If they are as laughable as Mann and Lewandowsky claim, then that will be evident to all.
Comparing anthropogenic global climate change skeptics to people who are anti-vaccination… please excuse the language but [paste in long, grossly obscene rant taught to me by an old Marine sergeant]! How the…. heck… does that compare? Aren’t the anti-vaccine creeps *exactly* the sort of low-information, swayed-by-anti-science-idiots, selfish…. Pertussis? Really?
Must sit down and have strong drink. It is, after all, Friday evening.
Thank you, gentlemen and ladies: Occasionally I idly wonder about my sanity. Now, I know that by any rational comparison, on any scale for a given value of “sane”, I am a freaking paragon of rationality. I can now go off and happily become drunk, knowing that, even if I am a fool, there are those in the world who stride like giants in the land of idiots.
====================================================================
I just went there and the only comment I see is the one I made.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/01/mann-and-lewandowsky-go-psychotic-on-skeptics/#comment-1463774
I guess their mods aren’t of the same caliber as WUWT’s “ModSquad”.
Or maybe they’re just fishing for comments. Throw back the small ones that don’t fit the paper’s premise and keep the one’s that can be stretched to fit?
It might be interesting to see if all who made comments there copied them here which actually show up “in a few days”.
I left a critical comment on their site just now.
I wonder how long it will stay there.
It is not only looking like, climate alarmists are making themselves mentally sick:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/31/green-psychologists-confirm-climate-alarmists-are-making-themselves-mentally-sick-doomer-depression/
Back in the day, Recovered Memory was cutting-edge science and its critics were deniers or worse.
lurker, passing through laughing says:
November 1, 2013 at 2:45 pm
“This President is rapidly becoming a sad example of poor leadership and policy. One would think that he would have worked to avoid the infamous echo chamber syndrome that has damaged so many Presidents. Instead he seems to double down at every opportunity.”
The credo of the Democrat Party is “create a crisis and exploit it”; so how do you know that the healthcare.gov disaster isn’t just the introduction? Imagine e.g. Hillary Clinton appearing out of nowhere, push a magic reset button, and everything works. Wouldn’t you just love to be ruled by such a competent woman for the next 8 years? Besides, she can see the (cattle) future(s).
It is not just a question of suppression of dissent it is also a case of suppression of news that does not promote the cause.
Ten days ago the alarmists were running to the media like a plague of locusts after a power line snapped in a gusty wind in the Blue Mountains New South Wales starting a bush fire that destroyed 192 homes in the space of a few hours.
Will Steffen of the Australian Climate Commission, until it was abolished by the new Government in September 2013 (but now privately funded under a new name the Climate Council), rushed to the TV screens to bring forward his report on how climate change was influencing longer and more dangerous bush fire seasons.
I recall over a year ago he was also forecasting that we would see more heavy rainfall events after Australia’s wettest two year period.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-25/climate-council-links-bushfires-to-climate-change/5046164
Christine Milne of the Green Party and the ABC were beside themselves with excitement for days pointing to global warming as the cause of the fires and announcing the advent of a new norm of climate change infernos.
But what about this?
The ice recce by helicopter was completed yesterday afternoon and indicated that leads towards the southwest were nonexistent. Based on the ice recce and a newly received ice image a course was set yesterday afternoon to investigate a new lead and we reached the end of that lead at midnight last night.
The ship remained stationary at that position overnight as visibility was limited and ice conditions uncertain. This morning we have slowly progressed south from this position with positive signs that the ice is opening up. Weather permitting we will this afternoon conduct a further ice recce by helicopters to confirm that the course we are on is navigable.
Last night was Halloween and many expeditioners dressed appropriately in various ghoulish outfits for dinner. The mess had been decorated in keeping with the occasion. It’s a bit surreal seeing witches and mummies wandering around the bridge and some great photos were taken surely to be remembered with fondness in years to come. If only the witches could wield some magic to assist us getting through this ice. Cheers Tony and Mike.
(Take Note James Cameron)
Yes, this is the latest SITREP from the Australian Antarctic Division’s ship Aurora Australis which is already 7 precious days behind schedule on its trip to Davis Station because of record sea ice surrounding Antarctica.
Has there been jot about this in the news?
I believe Will Steffen is still the chair of the Federal Government’s Antarctic Advisory Committee. What we need to know Will is:
* Is global warming the cause of the record sea ice in Antarctica this year?
* Was the Aurora Australis advised that the crew may have difficulty reaching Davis on schedule and could even be in danger?
* Is this the now norm for Antarctic Sea ice?
* How will this affect the 2013 mission and future Antarctic research?
* Will you be appearing on ABC TV to explain the situation to Australian taxpayers?
https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/display_sitrep.cfm?bvs_id=19257
Is Lewandowsky any different in trying to dominate science in the West than Lysenko was in the USSR?
Rants, are now accepted as papers ?
I prefer these Nutbars to the ones I find in Climate Science:
http://www.purdys.com/Chocolate-Chewie-Nut-Bar-Milk-Chocolate-3-Bars-P336.aspx
Tasty and nutritious unlike the Pyscho-pap of Real Climate Scientists(TM Real Climate).
Goodness, my comment is still there after 50 minutes.
Nothing there under the name of Monckton, though, nor indeed any other comment forby mine.
Strange.
It takes some serious chutzpah to equate climate skeptics with those who oppose proper AIDS treatment or vaccination for whooping cough. This is some really low, cynical, slimy ad hominem crap. But then we are dealing with sociopaths here, people with neither morals nor common sense Why can’t more people tell they’re in the shithouse by the smell? It boggles the mind that anyone is still listening to these reptiles.
Alas, they lack a sense of humor.
There is a very good reason why in science you carry-out ‘critical review ‘ not just review and its becasue you are supposed to look for faults to see they got it right in the first place .
Although to be fair to the authors they actual do not do any science so you can forgive them for not being familiar with the scientific approach. But you you would have thought given the number of time they got this issue hopeless wrong someone would have told them how its supposed to be done by now.
The problem goes away when you stop telling lies.
internal dissent is ok?
18 Oct: MotherJones: Chris Mooney: How Do You Get People to Give a Damn About Climate Change?
Experts have come a long way in figuring out which messages can successfully open minds and move public opinion. There’s just one problem: They disagree about whether the message everyone’s using actually works
As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines public opinion research with psychological studies—Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky tend to agree about most things…
In this episode of Inquiring Minds (click above to stream audio), Kahan and Lewandowsky debate this pressing issue. The discussion begins with a paper published in Nature Climate Change last year by Lewandowsky and two colleagues, providing experimental evidence suggesting a consensus message ought to work quite well.
“We told people that 97 out of 100 climate scientists agree on the basic premise that the globe is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions,” explains Lewandowsky, who is based at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “And what we found was that that boosted people’s acceptance of the scientific facts relating to climate change by a significant amount, and it did so in particular for people of a free-market worldview or ideology.” (The 97 percent figure comes from a recent study surveying the scientific literature on climate change.)
But Kahan, a Yale law professor who has extensively researched how our ideological predispositions skew our acceptance of facts, isn’t so sure. It’s not that he doubts Lewandowsky’s basic finding. But, he says, “when people get that kind of message in the world, there are all kinds of other influences that are filtering, essentially, the credibility of that message. If that would work, I would have expected it to work by now.”…
After all, who wants to fly in the face of what 97 percent of experts have to say?
“We know from my studies that if you can only tell people about the consensus, that it does make a huge difference to their belief,” Lewandowsky says…
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/10/inquiring-minds-kahan-lewandowsky-communicate-climate
I had to double-check my calendar (because I was fairly certain the date is Nov. 1, not April 1) when I read this excuse for “scholarship” under the “leadership” of Team Mediocrity Forever.
Mann and Lewandowsky seem to have much in common – including a most unwarranted high opinion of themselves, of their inane utterances and, it would appear, of each other!
Their mutual dedication to “the cause”, could well have led to this meeting of (two very small) minds, However, theirs appears to be a cause that is crumbling – at least in part – under the rapidly increasing weight of their very own recursive and self-reinforcing furies;-)
And the bottom line, of course, is that regardless of what may (or may not) be happening to the climate (and/or our planet) neither Lewandowsky nor Mann – nor what surely by now must be a dwindling army of supporters who favour such charges from this blight brigade of mendacity and mediocrity – can provide any evidence whatsoever that the primary “cause” of the latest and greatest scare-variant is human-generated CO2.
lovely…..now we have climate scientists (snark) writing papers critiquing their audience
Australia certainly provides a lot of CAGW laughs:
1 Nov: SMH: Peter Hannam: Climate change: scientists attack David Murray for ‘serious slur’
Mr Murray, a former head of the Commonwealth Bank and inaugural chair of the Future Fund, told ABC’s Lateline programme on Wednesday that “the climate problem is overstated” and that “there needs to be some consensus” about the science…
“I often look at systems and behaviours as a way of judging something, and in this case, to watch the accusations that fly between these people suggests there’s been a breakdown in integrity in the science,” Mr Murray said.
The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society said it is “disturbed by Mr Murray’s remarks”.
“The IPCC reports are an outstanding example of international science co-operation, rigour and transparency,” said Blair Trewin, the society’s president. “They are subjected to multiple levels of review by experts both inside and outside the climate community.”
“The society regards the remarks of Mr Murray as being a serious slur on the integrity of the many Australian and international authors of the IPCC report, and views them as highly offensive to those authors and to the profession at large,” he said…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-scientists-attack-david-murray-for-serious-slur-20131101-2wqcc.html
Jarrett Jones says: November 1, 2013 at 12:17 pm. Mikey is getting quite Mannic.
_____________________________________________________
Unfortunately it happens. For whatever reason people crack and clearly Dr. Mann is going off the rails. We saw a good bid of a similar sickness on the skeptical side when Poptech aka Andrew Kahn stalked and ranted himself into disrepute. Sad……
Perhaps this number is overstated. I read somewhere that the SA government had inflated its AIDS death statistics enormously–a survey of coffin-makers found no uptick in their businesses. (But this may have been during an earlier period.)
Chad Wozniak: “It takes some serious chutzpah to equate climate skeptics with those who oppose proper AIDS treatment or vaccination for whooping cough.”
Not as much as you might think. Whooping cough vaccines are given to kids in boosters, and then wear off in a year or so to a degree that the ‘vaccinated’ population of school children falls below the necessary ‘effectively vaccinated’ population necessary to confer ‘herd immunity.’ Nevermind that the whooping cough’s primary vector was, and is, the adult population. So as a starter, the whooping cough vaccine is interesting, but also useless unless you re-up routinely, much like a flu shot.
The only interesting thing is the mythology about forever-vaccination results in misdiagnosis of bronchitis in adults and vax kids; rather than pertussis. Quite unsurprisingly, when they look for pertusssis, they find it. They just don’t look for it except in regions with a large anti-vax crowd. Which is not to say that there aren’t more cases of pertussis in an anti-vax region, there certainly are. But the entire notion of an ‘outbreak’ is nonsense in the first. Herd-immunity wasn’t conferred for pertussis due the efficacy of the vaccination and its schedule to begin with.
So if you really want to stick it to anti-vax folks, you go look for hay in a haystack. If they were serious about the science of the issue, they’d go find outbreaks of illness where herd immunity *is* conferred by the vax efficacy and schedule.
This issue of the APS Observer has not only the paper by Mann and Lewandowsly, but also a Cover Story: “Inconvenient Truth-Tellers”. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2013/november-2013/inconvenient-truth-tellers.html
A quote:
His (Lewandowsky’s) study prompted a flood of denunciation, primarily from people who deny that humans are the major cause of climatic changes, or who deny that the climate is changing at all. The detractors described the research as malicious, incompetent, unscientific, agenda-driven, and unethical. Some even called for the journal to retract the article pending an investigation into Lewandowsky’s conduct. The journal, and Lewandowsky’s university, stood behind the study. The critics were invited to submit a commentary for publication in Psychological Science, but never acted on that invitation. Lewandowsky replicated his study with a large representative sample of the US population. The peer-reviewed study, with a virtually identical outcome, recently appeared in PLOS ONE (Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013)
=====================================================
Love it!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/01/mann-and-lewandowsky-go-psychotic-on-skeptics/#comment-1463935
Perp Review!
rogerknights says:
Perhaps this number is overstated. I read somewhere that the SA government had inflated its AIDS death statistics enormously–a survey of coffin-makers found no uptick in their businesses. (But this may have been during an earlier period.)
___________________________
I heard something else………
“An estimated 5.6 million people were living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa in 2011, the highest number of people in any country. In the same year, 270,190 South Africans died of AIDS-related causes. Although this number reflects the huge amount of lives that the country has lost to AIDS over the past three decades, it is 100,000 fewer deaths than in 2001………..http://www.avert.org/hiv-aids-south-africa.htm
Disappointing waste of space! Lunaticdowski correlates various events through history and claims it as ‘skeptic denial’; instead most of his examples are twisted examples, some are examples of plain greed and others are paranoiac.
Odd if there is one area of psychiatry that people assume is somewhat known and recognizable to shrinks, paranoid is it.
Also odd, if one steps back and looks at Lunaticdowski’s tantrum whines, paranoia is evident in his accusations. Manniacal’s complaints are strongly evident in the same vein.
Back up a little further; Lunaticdowski write a paper from deep memory that is amazingly reminiscent of Manniacal’s alleged book. Manniacal adds in his two cents and then signs on as a supporting author to a paper completely devoid of science. Not even a bad graph, dodgy math, carefully culled data to support his claims.
Reading the trash masquerading as ‘peerpal reviewed’ research, one quickly realizes that Manniacal wouldn’t know real science if it bit him.
But how many agree that this warming will continue significantly from greenhouse gases (due to their diminishing-returns effect)? How many agree that the effect will be serious or catastrophic?
I suppose they are protecting all the money they have been given in grants etc., Actually Christine Milne did not support Brandts suggestion that Australian bush fires were caused by climate change? She disputed it.
[snip]
Actually, I think this college might turn down Mann and Lewandoswky. Some Institutions of Higher Learning still maintain rigorous standards.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4023/4308370012_47fa6fe1d0.jpg
It’s only to be expected that the enormous public expenditures proposed will be scrutinized and criticized outside the scientific literature. That’s what happened to Reagan’s Star Wars initiative. This is no different. Bulldogs for the scientists have been taking their case to the public for decades–Gore’s movie is an example. Dissenters are entitled to push back in the public square.
“. . . it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature . . . .” could be read as suggesting that contrarians ignore what it says. That’s not at all true. Contrarians give it the jeer-review it deserves. Contrarians are fully engaged in the science. The NIPCC report is an extended set of counterpoints to warmist claims.
I think the problem may be commandment #1 … thou shalt have no false Valerie Jarretts before me; rumor has it *this* is the real power (or “vacuous cipher”, depending on who is ‘tweeting’ out info from behind the curtain) behind the throne.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/obamas_strange_dependence_on_valerie_jarrett.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obamas-keeper-valerie-jarrett-1769821.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/us/politics/valerie-jarrett-is-the-other-power-in-the-west-wing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
.
“Dr. Mann to fight this hard and turn himself into a political tool.”
Yes, I would have to agree that Dr. Mann is indeed a “tool”.
“Dr. Mann to fight this hard and turn himself into a political tool.”
You said, “tool”.
Quote: bushbunny says:
November 1, 2013 at 5:34 pm
… Actually Christine Milne did not support Brandts suggestion that Australian bush fires were caused by climate change? She disputed it. Unquote
Some dispute!
CHRISTINE MILNE: Look, what ignites a fire is going to be lightning or human induced arsonists or what happened with the Defence Force. But the issue is the circumstances underlying the ignition. And we know that south-eastern Australia is experiencing a drying trend. We’ve had the hottest year, the hottest winter; we had conditions which were leading to higher likelihood of bushfires, more extreme fire danger days, a higher probability of ignition chance at the upper end. And the scale of the fires. It’s the intensity and scale of the fires and floods and cyclones that is going to be driven by global warming. And that’s what we have to really respond to in Australia.
Will Steffen said this week. The Climate Council is out saying climate change is the underlying cause of this drying out effect, and as a result heatwave danger, higher levels of evaporation, therefore more fires, but let’s get on and talk about what we’re going to do about it. And that’s where Adam Bandt was absolutely right to be saying what Tony Abbott is doing is tearing down the only policy that we’ve got in place which is reducing emissions, and we have a serious regime in place to address climate change. And Tony Abbott wants to tear that down and try to denigrate the science as hogwash, and then go and insult people like Christina Figueres, who is globally respected in the work she’s doing for trying to negotiate towards a global treaty in 2015.
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2012/s3877828.htm
pat says:
November 1, 2013 at 4:50 pm
“18 Oct: MotherJones: Chris Mooney: How Do You Get People to Give a Damn About Climate
After all, who wants to fly in the face of what 97 percent of experts have to say?
“We know from my studies that if you can only tell people about the consensus, that it does make a huge difference to their belief,” Lewandowsky says…”
Well, I grew up near the Iron Curtain and we were able to receive DDR television.
When I hear that 97% of people agree on something I know I’m being lied to. (The DDR’s ruling party SED hat that kind of election result.)
This is the most pathetic whine-fest I’ve seen in a while … certainly from a grownup, let alone supposedly respected academics and/or scientists.
How many logical fallacies did they employ in that pity party? Ad hominem, appeal to feeling of pity or guilt, appeal to authority, guilt by association, strawman, false analogy. Did they leave any out? And these are men and women of science?
These aren’t people of reason or science. They’re children … having a temper tantrum because the other kids won’t play by their made-up rules.
I just dont understand how science kills people. Surely its an explanation of stuff and nothing more. If people want to use that in some sort of political way, whats that got to do with science ? why should the science care ?
If its wrong to question what was said before, then the first person to speak on a subject becomes the ultimate unquestionable authority. How can that be right ? thats mad.
Look Mann, science does not care about you and your snide twisting of its words. And does not hold what went before in any great esteem either
I hope they realise that the IPCC COULD NOT produce its reports without referencing non-peer reviewed (grey) sources?
Read quotes from IPCC insiders own mouths about the need to use grey literature.
As for tobacco and Koch we know that Koch has funded Mann’s university and that Al Gore has been a past recipient of funding from tobacco lobbyists in the past. Gore even admits to having grown and sold it.
wow… lets hope skeptics are not ‘barriers’ that discourage investments.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/01/executive-order-preparing-united-states-impacts-climate-change
(i) identify and seek to remove or reform barriers that discourage investments or other actions to increase the Nation’s resilience to climate change while ensuring continued protection of public health and the environment;
Did they try to get the editors sacked. 😉
You know if this came to trial, how many scientists will test their hypothesis a lot more than 99.
I have recently been learning about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), due to an unfortunate relationship in my personal life. As I read the above paper, I could not help but see some similarities to the disorder, particularly with Prof. Mann. I am certainly in no position to make a diagnosis. Not only do I lack the necessary qualifications, but I know practically nothing about the authors outside of their published statements. Nonetheless, it is interesting and I thought I would share the Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder as published in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders):
1. An exaggerated sense of one’s own abilities and achievements.
2. A constant need for attention, affirmation and praise.
3. A belief that he or she is unique or “special” and should only associate with other people of the same status.
4. Persistent fantasies about attaining success and power.
5. Exploiting other people for personal gain.
6. A sense of entitlement and expectation of special treatment.
7. A preoccupation with power or success.
8. Feeling envious of others, or believing that others are envious of him or her.
9. A lack of empathy for others.
Five or more of these traits are required for a diagnosis of NPD. Since I do not know Dr. Mann personally, I have no observations for 4, 5, 7 and 8. Perhaps there are others with more personal knowledge. Of the 5 remaining, 3 are readily apparent in the article: the belief that they are special and should only associate with other special people (pal review and nothing else), the sense of entitlement and expectation of special treatment (FOA’s do not apply to us) and a lack of empathy for others (no other point of view has any validity and all those expressing one are evil) (3, 6 and 9).
Given Dr. Mann’s behavior over the last 10-15 years, it appears that he may also have an exaggerated sense of one’s own abilities and achievements, along with a rather constant need for attention, affirmation and praise (1 an 2).
With just the evidence from Dr. Mann’s public life, it would appear that there is a possibility that he meets the 5 of the 9 criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, with no data on the other 4. Again…I am not qualified to make a diagnosis. I am simply presenting the criteria here along with my observations, for the consideration of the readers.
No one seeking to question the wisdom and integrity of these two could do the hatchet job they are doing on themselves here.
Wonderful work to see the Mann and Lew soiling up more Lew Papers.
Oh Mann, where I am from, research is for EVERYONE, not just scientists; it is protected by the constitution as such!
King of Cool, when Brandt said this on TV, she immediately responded, ‘Bush fires have never or will be caused by climate change’ Possibly she enlarged on it later of course. But I never give them much credence what ever they shout about. Now this double dissolution threat, Abbott would be wise to wait until next July, especially as the Greens senator is challenging the WA senate result. And votes gone missing in the recount.
Forget PD he’s an embarrassment to his sponsors and is trying to draw attention to his own mistakes indirectly. He’s gone really and lost credibility. We call him a bullshit artist in Oz.
@jim Clarke – In re: #4 on the DSM criteria list…
4:Persistent fantasies about attaining success and power.
Don’t forget that Dr. Mann has repeatedly claimed to be a Nobel laureate in the past. Pretty sure that satisfies #4.
Every time I hear something from Mann and his pal Lew, it gets worse.
Mann and Lew are following an inverted hockey stick into the dustbin of discredibility.
And I’m loving every episode of their demise.
“Five or more of these traits are required for a diagnosis of NPD” “… Dr. Mann’s public life, it would appear that there is a possibility that he meets the 5 of the 9 …”
There is somebody who might beat out the Mann, by achieving a perfect score of nine. Hint: that somebody just issued an order to prepare for the impact of non-existent, yet proclaimed, Anthropological Global Warming.
Judging by the absence of comments, Mann and Lewandowsky have decided to defend their celebration of free speech and open dialogue by not allowing anybody to respond to it. You can’t say they’re not consistent.
Con men they should be brought to task legally. They must be working to enhance the wind and solar industry eh?
Jon says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:14 pm
~~~~~~~~
‘How should the scientific community respond to the events just reviewed? As in most cases of intimidation and bullying, we believe that daylight is the best disinfectant. This article is a first step in this effort towards transparency. Knowledge of the common techniques by which scientists are attacked, irrespective of their discipline and research area, is essential so that institutions can support their academics against attempts to thwart their academic freedom.’
A case of “Do as I say” NOT “Do as I do”?
I just looked at the listed page -It does say that comments may take a few days to appear.
‘Certain articles may draw an unusually large number of comments that may take a few days to process. ‘
Seems the system is in meltdown.
I can’t be a*sed reading through “yet another” pile of bovine excrement from these fantasists.
I can, however, mention that I have just the piece of music for your tiny dog-whistle violin, in the form of a miniature score for Bartok’s Quartetto I, Op.7. It was given me by a visiting friend from Budapest some years ago, and measures 63 x 46 mm, by 5.5 mm thick. If Kenji is interested, I’ll send him a scan. 😉
They missed a few of the politically inconvenient denials…GMOs, aspartame, preservatives, “processed” foods, anything from PETA, weight lifting for women, milk, eggs, organic foods, free range meat and eggs, McDonalds, “natural is better” etc. Then they also didn’t mention the exaggeration of ozone holes, acid rain, spotted owls, DDT, HFCS, sugar, trans-fat, second hand smoke, pesticides, herbicides, mercury, lead, Amazon rain forests and last but not least…AGW. As an accomplished “denier” and borderline libertarian I must be an anomaly. I have no reason to disbelieve that HIV causes aids, smoking causes cancer and heart disease, immunizations cause autism, 911 was committed by terrorists, the moon landing, and I don’t think that AGW is a conspiracy…I just think that they (the alarmist scientists pushing for policy action) are wrong, politically biased, and in the case of “climategate” and this article…immoral.
I guess they should make a video that shows them decapitating me and my children by use of explosives…(and for the snipers, I am aware of the video).
Mann’s condition seems to worsen by the day — he really is a few tree-rings short of a hockey-stick these days.
How about the tragic track record of conformity? E.g., the CDC (or some similar body) recently upped its estimate of the number of annual cases of Lyme disease by a factor of ten, finally implicitly conceding that the scientific mainstream had been suppressing the truth about this alarming situation for decades. (A few bigshots decided early on that certain ineffective tests for the condition were sufficient, and refused to back down.) It was only the clamor of outsiders that kept the debate alive and eventually forced the pompous authorities to concede.
Lew wishes it were trivial pedantry, instead of the fatal flaw in his perfect crime.
gregschiller says:
November 1, 2013 at 11:51 am
I am very disappointing to see Elizabeth Loftus’s name on this paper.
Loftus was instrumental in destroying the last great hysteria of the 20th Century.
Exactly, very disappointing that she was not able to see through the scam, especially as that case has similarities to the current, where skeptics are fighting for science against the “consensus science view” which in that case was the RM consensus science.
rogerknights says:
November 1, 2013 at 12:10 pm
Wasn’t opposition to that recovered memory hysteria mostly a grass-roots affair? Did any scientific associations speak out against it? Loftus was one of the very few individuals who published dissenting papers. And the hysteria didn’t subside primarily because of her findings, but because of successful lawsuits against RM practitioners. So science can’t claim much credit for dispelling this scare.
Correct, this only underlines the similarities. Seem that Loftus was not able to discern clearly this time, I suppose as “the science” (climate science) is not being in her speciality. I can explain this only considering that she might have got all her info about skeptics from alarmists and their sites/papers.
As she accepted to be a tool in such a lew paper if knowingly or unknowingly it does not matter.
As for the case of unscientifically ban on DDT sooner or later the truth comes to surface.
Even in the 20 years resolution it is clear to see the point where DDT has been banned in large areas of the globe:
Year : 1900 1930 1950 1970 1990 1997
World Population (millions) 1,616 2,050 2,669 3,605 5,388 5,759
Annual no. of deaths from malaria 1900: 3,132,000 1930: 3,573,000 1950: 1,285,000 1970: 578,800 1990: 897,000 1997: 1,059,000
http://cmr.asm.org/content/15/4/564/T3.expansion
http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=2141&catid=57&subcatid=381
In 1970s the National Academy of Science reported that “to only a few chemicals does man owe as great debt as to DDT. According to some estimates DDT in conjunction with chloroquine—which was widely distributed during the DDT campaign—saved tens of millions of lives between 1945 and 1965.
It is exactly the push for the unscientifical “consensus science” without critically analyzing the theory and silencing disenting views that makes scientific progress slow or impossible. Science does not progress by consensus and authority, nor by pal-review.
Most scietists understand this, however lysenkoists have other agenda. Good intentions cannot be used as an excuse as the information is freely available, they only needed to listen what the skeptics say.
Lewandowsky has a history of smearing:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/why-publishers-should-explain-why-papers-disappear-the-complicated-lewandowsky-study-saga/
so another smearing paper from him is just consequent behavior from him.
The paper conveniently ignores the climategate inconvenient truth:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/flashback-institute-of-physics-submission-to-parliamentary-inquiry-on-climategate/
What was the answer to this? “The climate establishment’s response to this submission was to get the IOP sub-committee which produced the report abolished, and to smear its members.”
“1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.”
The Institute of Physics
February 2010
And what is the request of the new smear paper?
“This information is also essential to enable lawmakers to improve the balance between academic freedom and confidentiality of peer review on the one hand, and the public’s right to access information on the other. Finally, this knowledge is particularly important for journal editors and professional organizations to muster the required resilience against illegitimate insertions into the scientific proces”
Of course they want to be exempt to disclose such damning communication, and of course they want to publish their “studies” and “conclusions” without publishing the raw data and the methodology. Yes, true scientists at work…
Elizabeth F. Loftus do you really want this?
Jim Clarke says:
November 1, 2013 at 8:29 pm
I have recently been learning about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), due to an unfortunate relationship in my personal life.
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Hehe. I’ve run into one of them. And I hope I never run into another. And I’ve had the same thoughts about the likes of Mann and Lewandowsky. A clue for me is how they react when challenged.
Jim, there’s a guy called Sam Vashkin, that rarest of beasts, the self-aware narcissist, who has published a lot about the condition on the internet. Worth checking out. Forewarned is forearmed.
Oh and by the way, NPD gets worse as the “sufferer” ages. We ain’t seen nothing yet from M & L.
Dirk, have you ever been in a relationship where one party was intent (come hell or high water) on creating ‘drama’? I give you the (modern) U.S. Democrat Party* …
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* IDK if yesteryear’s demo party was similarly possessed, but I am willing to wager that it was.
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My Comments – part 2 of ‘n’ where ‘n’ will now probably be ~7
(Note => Comments 1 & 2 were in previous comment ‘part 1’ .
3. Lewandowsky / Mann et al 2013 has its paragraph #1 start with the sentence “Science denial kills.” That paragraph ends with these two sentences “A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and relies on platforms such as internet blogs or tabloid newspapers to disseminate its dissent from the scientific mainstream. In contrast, the publication of dissenting views in the peer-reviewed literature does not constitute denial.” The author’s inference in the paragraph is that, for instance someone like co-author Mann, has never labeled as a denier any climate scientists with peer reviewed published work that critiques Mann’s own published and peer reviewed work; yet amongst Mann’s tweets and blogposts and emails we see Mann is not being factually correct with his co-authored inference. Scratch paragraph #1 based on lack of integrity about Mann’s own behavior of denier labeling some peer reviewed scientists associated with their peer reviewed published work. Mann’s behavior refutes his own paper’s paragraph #1.
4. Lewandowsky / Mann et al 2013 paragraphs #2 through #4 develop what I think is their reverse-cønspįråcÿ psychologizing trick. The trick is they hypothesize cønspįråcįës exist where published (peer reviewed) climate scientists, like for instance co-author Mann, are being labeled as cønspįråcįsts by people who (the authors claim) have a pathological history of seeing cønspįråcįēs; that is by those whom the authors call science deniers. Ironically, the authors have, prima fascia by their own paragraphs, the same sort of pathological history of seeing cønspįråcįēs as they assert exist in those whom they call science deniers.
More posts with addition comments to come. . .
John
One technological deus ex machina is e-cigarettes. Although “smoking” is retained, that’s no matter–the problem is irritating tobacco tars, which it gets rid of.
Left this comment at APS, still no comments visible:
Do the authors acknowledge that people on both sides of an argument are subject to the attacks they describe?
For example, was Dr. Mann (one of the authors) employing similar tactics when he made this request: “If someone has close ties w/any individuals there who might be in a position to actually get some action taken on this, I’d highly encourage pursuing this.”?
http://junkscience.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-0-mann-suggests-harvard-take-action-against-soon-baliunas
How many died when we started turning corn into biofuel?
“Dr. Mann and Dr. Lewandowsky need psychological evaluations”
Agreed.
wagons in a circle
Daylight is the best disinfectant…for Mann’s emails.
Prof. Lewandowsky’s articles have recurring analogies. That it is to assume the statement “There will be catastrophic climate change unless (some) countries implement drastic carbon reduction policies” is equivalent, in terms of scientific evidence, to the hypotheses “HIV causes AIDS” or “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer”. If you search on the latter two statements, you will find very strong empirical evidence to support the hypotheses, through use of laid down standards. Both conditions are extremely serious for each person afflicted and in the number affected. Unfortunately, in neither case does knowing the cause indicate a cure.
Catastrophic global warming is a prediction about the future caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Even if the prediction were true, there would be very little evidential support at the present time. An examination of Richard Tol’s “costs of climate change” graph demonstrates why this is the case.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/04/new-paper-by-richard-tol-targets-for-global-climate-policy-an-overview/
Even if there were evidential support, this does not immediately indicate an effective solution to the problem, nor are climate scientists qualified to give an opinion. Ultimately that is a question for economists to answer.
The use of these analogies is for another, superficial, reason. Like the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, the vast majority of scientific opinion supports the hypotheses “HIV causes AIDS” or “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer”. But to use a legal analogy that is equivalent to saying that the confidence of police officers in the competency of their co-workers to assess evidence should be viewed as superior in prosecuting criminals than high quality forensic evidence.
DP, isn’t Michael Mann already a ward of the state, feeding off federal grants and employment at a publicly funded university? I wonder if the tripe that was just published helps meet his publishing quota even though there is no scientific research involved?
Some comments to the article are now visible, including one by Willis Eschenbach. Most are negative, though not all.
Talking about health issues, how about Bubonic Plague caught from prairie dogs. Rabies, and West Nile fever outbreaks. The government here has not made it mandatory for children to get innoculations against child hood diseases. They forget adults can catch these too, I got measles and german measles as an adult. And was I sick! And TB amongst Aboriginal people is also rife.
The first author has investigated the psychological variables underlying the acceptance or rejection of scientific findings
Yes Lew, but yours are not ‘scientific findings’ now are they? People accepted the concept of Bose–Einstein condensate almost a century before one could be created. What you and your ilk do is to ride on the backs of ‘scientific greats’ in order to promote your own mediocre output as ‘science’. Truth to be told, you are a political pollster masquerading as a scientist.
Which leads to …
This article surveys some of the principal techniques by which the authors have been harassed; namely, cyber-bullying and public abuse; harassment by vexatious freedom-of-information (FOI) requests
In the ‘hard sciences’ there would be no need for FOI because everything needed to confirm the conclusions would be in the published paper. If it wasn’t then ‘The Theoretical Physics Community’, for example, would be rightly suspicious of your findings. Resistance, on your part, to their questions would make them even more suspicious. If they had to take you to a Congregational committee hearing where, even there, you refused to disclose your BS, then I’m fairly sure that we can discount your findings.
Lew… it’s all about replication. No ‘replication’. No ‘Science’. I know why this is ‘alien’ to you but it is the ‘nature of the beast’.
So, no more ‘blah blah … ‘Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation’ you $uk!ng simpleton. How about doing some real REPLICABLE science like your good chum Mikey does all the time?
Or are we talking …
I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and … (better say no more)
So much for your science eh Lew?
Looks like the Mann is swirling around the Lue… It needs a good flush…
Two politcal hacks looking for relevancy in real life. IMHO
PLEASE trust Lewandowsky and Mann,
They’re fudging as hard as they can.
And only a churl
Would ask for the URL
Of the data from ‘studies’ they ran.
,blockquote>Gunga Din says:
November 1, 2013 at 5:40 pm
[snip]
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Sorry about that.
No objections on my end.
I had commented under a previous post that we need to be on guard for the next excuse for a power grab the UN will use once CAGW has fizzled out. (I don’t say that as a claim that the thought never occurred to anyone else.)
In the context of a power grab, we’re fortune that the natural pause didn’t cooperate with them. Now they are forced to sniff around for another excuse.
Stay alert. The UN in not the world’s friend.
Mann can breath a huge sigh of CO2 in relief at his nemesis Cuccinelli’s “losing” in VA, thanks to being hugely outspent, vote fraud & Democrat bankrolling of a “Libertarian” candidate, the formula that has worked so well in past races to turn the US into a Zimbabwe/Venezuela/Cuba-style one party state. Now Mann’s emails which must not see the light of day won’t, despite their having been sent from a publicly funded “work” (ie, fraud) computer.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
From the subject paper:
“A common current attribute of denial is that it side-steps the peer-reviewed literature and relies on platforms such as internet blogs or tabloid newspapers to disseminate its dissent from the scientific mainstream. In contrast, the publication of dissenting views in the peer-reviewed literature does not constitute denial.”
Given that there are many dissenting views in peer-reviewed literature, that support the “denialist” claims, one wonders about their level of cognizance of reality, when they label two exact same items as either ‘denial’ or ‘not denial ‘.