Ah yes, the tired old you are irrelevant because are funded by big (coal, gas, oil, wood, propane, butane, electric, peat, Exxon-Mobil take your pick) gets turned into a peer reviewed paper. What will they think of next?
Ironically, this is published in the Journal of Business Ethics and is titled:
Astroturfing Global Warming: It Isn’t Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence
Charles H. Cho, Martin L. Martens, Hakkyun Kim and Michelle Rodrigue
Abstract
Astroturf organizations are fake grassroots organizations usually sponsored by large corporations to support any arguments or claims in their favor, or to challenge and deny those against them. They constitute the corporate version of grassroots social movements. Serious ethical and societal concerns underline this astroturfing practice, especially if corporations are successful in influencing public opinion by undertaking a social movement approach. This study is motivated by this particular issue and examines the effectiveness of astroturf organizations in the global warming context, wherein large corporate polluters have an incentive to set up astroturf organizations to undermine the importance of human activities in climate change. We conduct an experiment to determine whether astroturf organizations have an impact on the level of user certainty about the causes of global warming. Results show that people who used astroturf websites became more uncertain about the causes of global warming and humans’ role in the phenomenon than people who used grassroots websites. Astroturf organizations are hence successful in promoting business interests over environmental protection. In addition to the multiple business ethics issues it raises, astroturfing poses a significant threat to the legitimacy of the grassroots movement.
Kid blogger Chris Mooney over at the Intersection Blog of Discover Magazine writes about it and says:
The website for each condition, respectively, consisted of a ‘‘Home page’’ with links to five other pages pertaining to global warming and the organization’s activities. In the grassroots condition, these were labeled as ‘‘About us,’’ ‘‘Key issues and solutions,’’ ‘‘Why act now?’’ ‘‘Get involved!’’ and ‘‘Contact us.’’ Similarly, in the astroturf condition, the pages links were labeled as ‘‘About us,’’ ‘‘Myths/facts,’’ ‘‘Climate science,’’ ‘‘Scientific references,’’ and ‘‘Contact us.’’ All of the content was based on information found on real-world grassroots and astroturf web-sites ….
A further manipulation consisted of disclosing information regarding the funding source that supported the organization. The organization’s name in all websites, regardless of the condition, was ‘‘Climate Clarity.’’ In each of the funding source conditions, all web pages within the condition specified who funds the organization (donations, Exxon Mobil or the Conservation Heritage Fund). The ‘‘no disclosure’’ condition did not have any information on funding sources anywhere within the web pages.
So, they setup fake websites to gather fake data. Nice. Not only that, they “borrowed” content from other websites to use on these “fake” websites, apparently without citation or attribution, lest that taint the results. Sounds like a job for John Mashey and “Deep Climate” aka Dave Clarke. I’m sure they’ll get right on the case like they did with Wegman.
So, this study seems perfect for a business ethics journal. Glad to see that the study of opposite views fits in to this trend recently published by Security Week.
Cybercriminals Creating 57,000 Fake Web Sites Every Week
I was going to do an analysis of the paper, but commenter Nullius in Verba did such a good job already I’ll just repost his comment from the Discover blog.
Nullius in Verba Says:
Mmm. So we have one website with “fluffy” headings like “why act now” and “get involved”, and another site with evidence-related headings like “climate science” and “scientific references”, and people were more persuaded by the one with the science. Why might that be, do you think?
I’m not quite sure what characteristic of astroturf sites this is supposed to be testing. If the only difference is whether funding sources were disclosed, it would indeed test the extent to which people were influenced by ad hominem considerations. But there also appear to be material differences in the content? Is the claim supposed to be that astroturf sites are more likely to use headings like “climate science”? This study does not, on the face of it, make any sense.
I’ve got an uneasy feeling that the difference was that “grassroots” was simply used to label pro-AGW and “astroturf” to label anti-AGW, and what this study is really showing is that giving them information on scepticism made people more doubtful of AGW. The “astroturf”/”grassroots” labelling would then be entirely misleading – propaganda dressed up as science in other words. There are of course many genuinely grassroots sceptical sources, and several prominent pro-AGW astroturf sites.
It would therefore be helpful to make it clearer what the distinction between “grassroots” and “astroturf” being tested actually was, and how it follows from the different types of authors. Because if they really did just label all sceptics as “astroturf”, this is even worse than the usual fare. I’m hoping it’s not true, and I’ve just misread the description. Did they in fact have both pro- and anti-AGW in both categories?
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” Finding the anthropogenic climate signal amongst all the other noise and forcings requires a highly educated individual.” – R. Gates
Let’s leave aside the issue of whether this has been shown or not. Can you explain to me how somebody would show it? In general terms?
Now let’s do a study on fakers posting on web sites who are posing as citizens concerned about global warming but in fact are paid by environmental organisations to spread propaganda and disinformation.
Thanks to Just the Facts, I made a quick skim of the paper. They cite Greenpeace as a credible source about Exxon/Mobil behavior, and they proudly assert that all astroturf sites about climate are by Deniers. They fail to list the sites they consider to be astroturf; there is no appendix listing sources for their text, or references to archived copies of their eight versions of the site. They used about 250 undergraduates in business and marketing as their subjects, so it suffers badly from a small numbers problem. All in all, not a very convincing effort.
I’m not going to pay to read the authors’ own cynical attempt to profit according to an unethical and probably
astroturfedsubsidized business model which makes people interested in completely understanding their “study” pay in order to do so. Even thought maybe it’s better than Climate Science’s preferred “method” involving Zero transparency?But according to the authors’ own “study”, the handwriting is apparently on the wall, at least if the CO2 = CAGW matter is to be decided by a vote of the “people”. Because astroturfing, ‘evil’ by definition, actually won in a head to head contest, presumably involving the very best of the authors’ own selected communications on the grassroots “pro” side of CAGW; while the noble authors…surprise, surprise…somewhat paradoxically managed to remain ‘good’ despite the contest, which also included them as manifestly no more informed on matters of science than the “people” studied!
So will the Warmist Believers of a proven similar “communicative” inability now surrender peacefully to the results of their own best case “grassroots vs astroturfed” poll, instead of only continuing to disparage by definition their opposition, since violence or “might makes right” evil, despite the beliefs of the “people”, seems to be their only other option?
R. Gates says: July 11, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Certainly not myself and I can’t speak for anyone else’s credentials.
Then how do you know that these “few thousand people in the world really qualified to look at the actual data with a trained and educated eye and draw any sort of conclusion at all” actually exist?
I knew this day would come. I must admit that in 1980 I helped the New Hampshire Audubon Society lay a board walk through the Ponemah Bog in southern NH. During much of that work I was supported by Big Peat. In my defense, I also covered areas where sphagnum moss merely floated on the pond water and hence I supported merely by moss.
Other spinoffs from that period were my one person consulting business (Sundew Systems) and my car’s vanity license plate, Sundew.
“Serious ethical and societal concerns underline this astroturfing practice, especially if corporations are successful in influencing public opinion by undertaking a social movement approach.”
That is serious indeed. But wait, there has got to be a solution – something the legislature can do for us!
Couldn’t they just tryyyyyy to protect us from subtle influences on our opinion which we simply don’t understand? How about some government agencies who would be able to determine who should “influence public opinion,” and who really should not? What is Congress doing, don’t they even care about us anymore?!
R. Gates says:
July 11, 2011 at 6:01 pm
This is the problem with the level of “discussion” surrounding this issue. The vast majority of climate scientists are quite ethical, are trained to be skeptical, and being able to think for oneself is absolutely essential. To characterize them as something else is the stuff found on astroturf sites, and merits the same sort of regard.
You are certainly entitled to your fantasy, Gates. We skeptics/climate realists prefer reality, though.
And the reality is that climate science is corrupt through and through, by money and politics. If climate “scientists” ever were trained to be skeptical, then that training has gone out the window in order for them to accept the Warmist dogma without question. They “see” the anthropogenic “signal” because they must. That is why we have hockey sticks.
Just The Facts July 11, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Thanks for the link. The authors seems to think they have something approaching a random sample… in fact, all they have is just a good old fashioned target-of-opportunity sample…. a bunch of poor students grubbing either for grades or some spending money. I was originally concerned, as apparently Bernie was, as well, that the researchers had located and manipulated naive web surfers…. but apparently they recruited students who were told they were taking part in an study. That’s the good news. The Bad news is that the students were told they were taking part in an evaluation of web site designs: in other words, they knew that all of the web sites they were looking at were in fact fakes or prototypes. The seemingly anomalous conclusion that students evaluated the “astro-turf” websites as non-credible but nonetheless accepted the information indicates to me that the students were evaluating the information separately from web site design, which they were supposed to be evaluating.
Also interesting was “the degree of interest or involvement” variable. The text does not say how it was operationalized, but it looks like involvement or interest in the consensus perspective rather than in the skeptic perspective was the operational definition.
The earlier discussion was full of nonsense…. I especially liked the section where the authors insisted the corporations were conservative entities and would fight to maintain the status quo. Good God! What world are these people living in? These fools have been coopted by the biggest of the corporations and are doing their bidding. Exxon, GE, Deutch Bank and hundreds of others…. the last thing they want is the status quo.
Oh yeah, and they never did identify the astro-turf sites whose content they borrowed. This is a shabby paper from one end to the other and should be ignored. Unfortunately, we’re going to be hearing about it for a long time to come, in much they same way we’ve had to listen to the warmista cite the pathetic Oreskes and Anderegg papers. They were peer-reviewed, doncha know.
I admit it’s a cheap shot because it fails to address the points of the paper, but the publisher (or more precisely the editor) is certainly fair game as part of the paper’s contextual setting. As such, Alex Michalos, the editor of “The Journal of Business Ethics,” wrote an interesting paper in 1997 entitled, “Non-academic Critics of Business Ethics in Canada” – http://www.jstor.org/pss/25072929 . The short Abstract reveals that:
“This paper shows that there are contemporary moral appraisals of business ethics in Canada published in periodicals that would not ordinarily be regarded as scholarly substance or format. Because there is so much important material in these non-academic periodicals, scholars interested in business ethics in Canada ought to give them serious consideration in any overall review of the field here.”
Where did I read something similar recently…? Oh yeah – here:
“Astroturf organizations are fake grassroots organizations usually sponsored by large corporations to support any arguments or claims in their favor, or to challenge and deny those against them… Serious ethical and societal concerns underline this astroturfing practice… In addition to the multiple business ethics issues it raises, astroturfing poses a significant threat to the legitimacy of the grassroots movement.”
It’s freaky how the wonderful world of academia spins… and respins its ideas (mayhap, allegations in these instances) with the subtle ignorance of noblesse oblige – a hubris far too common to a life narrowed by the scholastic pursuit. Hey, if the paper can connect the disparate dots between Big Peat and the oh-so-obvious-it-need-not-be-proved climate denialists, then clearly the dots can be connected in this… collusion.
The “Journal” is apparently wedded to certain notions:
“Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a silver sixpence [from your] shoe.”
Ah, that would be skepticism, and it cuts at least two ways and maybe more..
R. Gates says; “There are probably only a few thousand people in the world really qualified to look at the actual data with a trained and educated eye and draw any sort of conclusion at all. Finding the anthropogenic climate signal amongst all the other noise and forcings requires a highly educated individual.”
Since you can’t win by using convincing scientific data and analyses you fall back to using the “appeal to authority” again eh? All of us scientists and educated people not involved in climate research are not intelligent enough to read and analyze climate data and interpret graphs? If you really want to use the appeal to authority approach, then the leaders of the “authority” better have empicable credentials.
Who amongst the leaders are you willing to say have empicable credentials? Michael “HIde the Decline” Mann? Kevin “It’s a Travesty” Trenberth? Phil “Delete the Emails” Jones? Al ” the world’s largest hypocrite” Gore? The list is long…
Also, the pillar of “unprecedented” global warming relies on the Hockey Stick temperature graph (which ALL leading AGW scientists swear by and hold as Gaia given truth) has been thoroughly discredited. So tell me again why it is we should ignore our own, and other independent analyses of the data and blindly follow what these great “leaders” and their infantile computer models are telling us?
It’s odd…
The influential warmist sites I’ve seen are financed. All of them. As others have pointed out, this would seem to fit the definition of “astroturfing”.
A “study” like this is absolutely worthless, and in fact demonstrates the mindset of warmist-alarmists: they went looking for something, and didn’t stop until they found it… even if that meant fabricating it.
Seriously, in not too many years all of these people will be doing everything to put distance between themselves and their “work” from this entire era. Thankfully, the internet makes for long, long memories. I look forward to putting this stuff back in their faces in 5, 10, 20 years. Heck, it’ll be more fun than digging up college-era porn…
Also, as Gates says “Finding the anthropogenic climate signal amongst all the other noise and forcings requires a highly educated individual.”
I guess you are admitting that the AGW (CO2 induced) signal is so miniscule above background (natural forcings) that only a high trained specialist using the world’s most powerful computers, running highly technical software written by the world’s brightest scientists, is able to dig the signal out of the background noise?
Does “conducting a study” make one a scientist?
I’d like to see a study that analyzes the ability of editors and publishers to distinguish between meaningful information and propaganda produced to promote a agenda.
The Left, especially on AGW (and a lot of other issues) is suffused by denial of reality, projection of motives, and paranoia. This is the thesis of drsanity (just google), a retired clinical prof of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.
This is an alternative meta-explanation of what is being “tested” here.
John Whitman says:
“The Journal of Business Ethics article framed the discussion in context that grassroots are altruistic and astroturfs are egoistic. Implying egoism is killing the planet and altruism is fighting an underdog-like battle to save it.
“It is a childish intellectual false dichotomy and trivial perjoritive fairy story.”
We can do better than simply asserting it. This false dichotomy has been tested and disproven. Prof. Todd Zywicki at the public choice economics oriented George Mason University Law School:
“Baptists? The Political Economy of Environmental Interest Groups,”
This paper is available online here.
Thus, the very premise of any of its conclusions is false.
[FULL CITE: 53 Case Western Reserve Law Review 315 (2002) (symposium on BJORN LOMBORG, THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST: MEASURING THE REAL STATE OF THE WORLD (2001)]
(SOMEBODY PLEASE POST AT mooney’s Discover blog – The Intersection – I cannot.)
R. Gates says:
July 11, 2011 at 5:19 pm
…
There are probably only a few thousand people in the world really qualified to look at the actual data with a trained and educated eye and draw any sort of conclusion at all. …
All it actually takes is time and stubborness to discover that the disagreements regarding how “the climate” works or even what “the climate” is are deep and far from any general agreement within the scientific community. If there is a differential of access to media “outlets” among various factions, those factions that are presented to the public as the dominant views by the main-stream media are the factions that are thought to hold the authoritative “consensus” views by the general public. Given the existence of immense differences within the educated “few thousand,” it seems unlikely that “reasonable conclusions” – i.e. based on both sufficient data of adequate quality, and informed and demonstrably valid scientific argument – are afloat anywhere in the argument. If there were, the level of discussion would be considerably less vituperative.
Robert E. Phelan says:
July 11, 2011 at 5:33 pm
“Today, every branch of the social sciences that I know of includes an “informed consent” clause in their code of professional ethics that requires social scientists to inform their research subjects that they are research subjects and to explain the purpose of the research to whatever extent is possible without compromising the validity of the research “.
“Given that the visitors and commenter on those BLOG sites were the subjects of an experiment and that experiment involved the manipulation and shaping of the subjects’ attitudes, beliefs and perceptions, I’d be very….. no make that extremely interested in learning how the subjects were informed and how their anonymity and well being were preserved by the experimenters. I Think we should also know which committee approved this research.”
It is ironic that this work was published in Journal of Business Ethics. Furthermore who says that BLOGS sponsored by George Soros or NASA are not Astroturf sites since they are paid to spout the party line
R. Gates says:
July 11, 2011 at 5:19 pm
” “People are realizing…” can only mean they are being pursuaded by others as the average person is in no position to realize whether or not there is a true anthropogenic signal amongst all the climate data.”
————————
Perhaps you are right, but there are somewhat more out there with experience in writing reports and making decisions as to what to include and what not to; as whether a computer program was written to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion, regardless of the data it is given. Climategate expanded the debate to a wider audience and exposed the kind of things more people have experience with.
R. Gates says:
July 11, 2011 at 5:19 pm
There are probably only a few thousand people in the world really qualified to look at the actual data with a trained and educated eye and draw any sort of conclusion at all. Finding the anthropogenic climate signal amongst all the other noise and forcings requires a highly educated individual.
————————
BREAKTHROUGH!!!
You have just made the ultimate skeptic’s point. If it is so difficult to tease out the anthropogenic effect, it cannot be possibly be (practically) significant. (And as my statistics professors drummed into my head, there is a big difference between statistical significance and practical significance.)
That is, even if there is a real physical anthropogenic effect (which few here would deny) and it is large enough to separate out from natural variations, if it takes such sophisticated techniques to tease out from natural variation, it is practically insignificant compared to the natural variation.
And the Huffington Post [their investigative journalism arm] is getting lots of money from none other than currency buster George Soros….So?
Very nicely done hatchet job. Let’s see if I can summarize:
1) No examples of actual astroturf sites.
2) Study presumes that “corporate polluters” are incented to undermine AGW theory, yet presents no evidence to support this assumption.
3) Not one example of an actual “corporate polluter” who would be thus inclined, let alone any evidence of one actually involved in such activities.
4) No evidence what so ever that any skeptic site, not even a single example, is funded or influenced in any way by “corporate polluters”.
They’ve invented a crime, invented the evidence, invented the criminal, and found the criminal guilty. Sadly for them, even in a scenario of invented crime and evidence, the invented AGW proponents were not as pursuasive as the invented AGW skeptics. Perhaps the facts speak for themselves?
the left claimed the Tea Party was astroturf (lol) and pelosi claimed the angry New Yorkers protesting at the proposed mosque were astroturf…its just silly…and this from the party that we know hired ACORN types and put them on a bus to demonstrate in front of bank administrators’ houses and bussed in thousands of out of town and out of state thugs to demonstrate in Wisconsin….what a joke…
R. Gates is hilarious. Gore said more frequent and more violent hurricanes. The Met office said “barbeque summers. Suzuki said “in ten years we will have catastrophic warming ( he said that 25 years ago, LOL). It does not take a “highly educated person” to see this for what it is. I don’t need to astroturf anybody. I think the proponents of AGW do.