UPDATE: After a cursory look at the percentages in the response to the Lewandowsky survey from the blogs he listed as participating, it seems the outcome doesn’t fit the title. See below.
====================================
From the “free the metadata” department, we have this gem. Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia’s Cognitive Science Department devised some sort of survey where he supposedly contacted skeptical climate blogs to ask we post a link to gather opinions for his survey. He says he contacted five and they all declined. Only one problem with that; none of the mainstream skeptical blogs appear to have any knowledge of being contacted. That includes WUWT and Climate Audit, among others.
I keep all my email, and I see no such contact or invitation. I’ve searched WUWT and found nothing in comments from him inviting to participate either. To be thorough, I also searched for any communications from his co-authors Klaus Oberauer and Gilles Gignac. I’ve found no invitation of any kind, but I did find that a commenter in the USA, PaulW left a note about it on WUWT here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/29/new-wuwt-sstenso-page-now-online/#comment-469869 But, he’s not affiliated with UWA or the authors, and it was purely a comment of curiosity. One of our moderators, D.B. Stealey took the survey (now deleted) after seeing the comment, and noted “Interesting questions.” but he didn’t note any invitation to post it on WUWT, nor did I.
Similar lack of confirmed invitations are being reported in other skeptical blogs, and the list is growing. But, for some reason, Dr. Lewandowsky refuses to divulge which skeptical blogs he contacted.
Jo Nova and Lucia Liljegren are asking some very pointed questions. Given the sheer lunacy on display in the paper…
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E. (in press). NASA faked the moon landing—therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.. Psychological Science.
…I think Jo Nova nailed it with this line:
It’s as if Stephan did not want to know what real skeptics think?
Lucia asked Lewandowsky in a direct email about it and got this response:
Sorry, no, they likely replied to my requests under the presumption of privacy and I am therefore not releasing their names.
The blogs that did post the link (thereby publically identifying themselves, unlike those who declined) are:
%http://www.skepticalscience.com
%http://tamino.wordpress.com
%http://bbickmore.wordpress.com
%http://www.trunity.net/uuuno/blogs/
%http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/
%http://profmandia.wordpress.com/
%http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
%http://hot-topic.co.nz/
“…they likely replied” That seems to me to be pretty weak data for a scientist. Either they replied requesting confidentiality or they didn’t, there’s no “likely” about it when gathering hard data.
Time to fess up, perfessor. Show the list and proof of contact and confirmation that they declined the invitation. You have my full and complete permission to release my name. Other skeptical bloggers have also granted permission on Lucia’s website, so there’s no reason to hold back now.
In comments at Lucia’s, Steve McIntyre notes:
The University of Western Australia has fairly standard academic misconduct policies.
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au…..guidelines
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au…..rch-policy
If Lewandowky’s claim about 5 skeptic blogs was fabricated, it appears to me that it would be misconduct under university policies. The person responsible for investigating complaints appears to be the Pro VIce Chancellor (Research) ,Robyn Owens, dvcr@uwa.edu.au.
She is in a position to get an answer, given Lewandowsky’s refusal to disclose the information.
In other news, the Lewandowsky survey data was put online at Bishop Hill. See it here.
Make of that data what you wish, but it seems to me that if you only ask questions of one side, as shown is the blog list above, you’ll get one-sided answers. That’s hardly science.
UPDATE: After looking at the survey data provided on the Bishop Hill blog here, it is beginning to look like the answers were skewed by participants at those blogs for what they think he wanted to hear, rather than a true sample.
For example: If you look at column R in the Excel spreadsheet, labeled CYMoon, which according to the paper in question:
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E. (in press). : An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.. Psychological Science.
It says:
CYMoon The Apollo moon landings never happened and were
staged in a Hollywood studio. .742
That is the result of this question structure:
Unless otherwise noted, all items used a 4-point scale ranging from \Strongly Disagree’ (1) to \Strongly Agree” (4). Table section headings correspond to latent variable names in
Figure 2.
OK do a simple scan of the 1’s and 2’s in column R, which correspond to ‘Strongly Disagree’ and ‘Disagree’ and you get them as the majority, with a smattering of 3’s and 4’s. So I decided to use Excel’s function for counting occurances. =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”1″, and =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”2″ =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”3″ =COUNTIF(R2:R1146,”4″
The (corrected, I had the 1 and 4 counts backwards originally, thanks Lucia) distribution of responses to the Moon Landing question are:
1067 Strongly Disagree
68 Disagree
4 Agree
6 Strongly agree
Total responses are 1145 (Rows R2 to R1146, top row R1 is title, so subtract 1 from 1146). Therefore 1067+68 = 1135 1135/1145 = 0.9912
Only 0.9% of respondents actually believe that the moon landings “never happened and were staged in a Hollywood film studio”. So what does that say about the title of the paper:
NASA faked the moon landing—therefore (climate) science is a hoax
I see a retraction for this paper in the very near future.
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Who reviewed this paper? The methodology is painfully embarrassing
Note the other paper in his list of publications,
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C., Schwarz, N. & Cook, J. (in press). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LewandowskyEcker.IP2012.PSPI.pdf
The following principle is described in this paper which he should have had in mind when doing his biased survey,
“Making things worse: Backfire effects
From a societal view, misinformation is particularly damaging if it concerns complex real-world issues such as climate change,”
Isn’t it Michael Mann et al that are always going on about big oil conspiracy against them?
Skeptical Science and Tamino. Ha! He didn’t in fact contact any sketics. Suggestion ANthony. If anyone can find a copy of his survey, we should put links to it on all the skeptical sites and invite people to answer it. We could then compare results 🙂
that scienceblogs – now owned by National Geographic – participated is, of course, not surprising. perhaps lewandowsky et al got the idea from scienceblogs’ denialism expert, Mark Hoofnagle!
May 2009: scienceblogs/denialism: Mark Hoofnagle: Denying AIDS – A book by Seth Kalichman
Seth Kalichman is a better man than I. Kalichman is a clinical psychologist, editor of the journal Aids and Behavior and director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research and Evaluation (SHARE) product…
He also has inspired me to conduct a kind of experiment. Simply put, denialism is an outgrowth of a certain personality type that is dysfunctional. These people with suspicious/paranoid beliefs, a tendency towards conspiracism, and lack of critical reasoning skills are all over the country and all over the world. They interpret events in a predictable manner. I ask the readers to consider world events from this perspective. Let’s see if, in the face of a crisis or other major event, we can predict what those with this conspiratorial mindset will come up with as an explanation. I’m curious to see if we can come up with their unique conspiracy theories before they do. Maybe the next time we see something big break in the news if we can successfully conduct this experiment here at denialism blog…
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/26/denying-aids-a-book-by-seth/
Wikipedia: Mark Hoofnagle
Mark Hoofnagle is an American medical doctor, physiologist and blogger. He was one of the originators of the concept of “denialism”, especially in relation to global warming. His interest in denialism concerns the use of denialist tactics to confuse public understanding of scientific knowledge. Hoofnagle runs the website denialism.com as well as the denialism blog at ScienceBlogs…
Hoofnagle has a M.D. and Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Virginia, and is now a general surgery resident. Hoofnagle received the Ph.D. before entering medical school…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hoofnagle
@ur momisugly Anarchist Hate Machine
Please tell me in what University the Psychology Department uses the techniques of the physical sciences. Inquiring minds want to know.
I have yet to learn of one that does not continue the practices critiqued by Richard Feynman in his “Voodoo Sciences” lecture.
Certainly Lewandowsky’s paper would have been no less scientific if he were to smear himself with chicken blood and incant to Papa Legba.
Could this paper be a candidate for the Ignobel Prize?
Next editor of ‘Nature’ ?
Perhaps Lewandowsky should survey someone that has actually walked on the Moon and get their opinion.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295765/moon-landing-deniers-express-global-warming-skepticism-charles-c-w-cooke
“Could this paper be a candidate for the Ignobel Prize?”
Not likely. Ignobel Prizes are awarded to actual defendable research, even (especially?) if off-beat.
Lewandowsky, although originally from the USA, is ours now, our very own, world class CAGW, Don Quixote style Deniar hunting loon who we are most happy to share for everyone’s amusement. I think he out Gleick’s Gleick and makes Mann , McKibben and Hansen seem like three very wise men. We have a couple of other world class camp followers to fill out the local posse too, by the name of Manne and Hamilton who Jo Nova has been having some sport with recently, keeping her in good spirits and fine touch.
I strongly urge you all to read the paper in question, it is some of the finest science comedy writing going, makes Mann and the Team look like the amateurs they are. If they gave out Nobel Prizes for such stuff, an absolute sure thing.
PS Timothy Leary was a psychologist too just to make it absolutely clear which cloud I think the Lewandowsky cuckoo hails from.
The delicious irony is that qualifications for climate research:
No objectivity
No reproducibility
Bogus data / statistics
Ad hominen attacks
are disqualifications for real science.
“Ugh! One of my countrymen. How embarrassment.”
Australia’s per capita climate prat emission rate is becoming alarming.
Anthony, there was recently another survey (longer, and with a 1-5 scale) put out by Lewandowsky’s research assistant, Charles Hanich, on June 4, 2012. It seems that the link for this survey was only posted on two blogs: Watching the Deniers and Skeptical Science. Charles Hanich was also responsible for creating Lewandowsky’s 2010 survey, as mentioned in the comments here.
Unfortunately, the link to the June 2012 survey is also unavailable. However, a skeptic called the “Manic Bean Counter” captured all the survey questions and dissected them on his/her blog, here. The following is Manic Bean Counter’s breakdown of the types of questions asked in the survey:
1. Climate Change – 5 questions
2. Genetically Modified Foods – 5 questions
3. Vaccines – Benefits and harms – 5 questions
4. Position of the Conservative / Liberal perspective (US definitions) – 7 questions
5. Select neutral (check of the software, or check for spam?) – 1 questions
6. Free market system v social justice / environment / sustainability – 5 questions
7. Conspiracy theories (political) – 6 questions
8. Conspiracy theories (scientific) – 6 questions
9. Personal Spirituality & Religion – 8 questions
10. Evolution – views upon – 7 questions
11. Corporations – 13 questions
12. Personal emotional outlook – 6 questions
Ah, even the journal title “Psychological Science” is laughable. I would note that it is not uncommon for “academic” journals to be started for more or less pecuniary if not actually nefarious purposes by editors who are essentially running a scam. The articles aren’t peer reviewed, there is generally a fee to be published, and such. “Psychologiocal Science’ may be one of these or not, but even if it is legitimate, it is still laughable. And a note to his department: psychology and cognitive science are not the same thing.
He’s got the beard, scholarly looking glasses and a serious look. Seems to me he must be an authority to be reckoned with.
They lie and they know that they lie, and we know it too.
Is that the same Cook as the one behind SkS?
I got my PhD at an Australian University about 25 years ago. Since then the standard of both schools and university Education has become abysmal due to minority political corretcness (everybody passes etc). You can see this now through many of the very poorly educated scientists occupying positions in Australian Universities (ie GERGIS paper), Tim Flannery, etc…
This has now become standard modus operandi among these scammers. Hide the data, hide the ‘participants’ hide, hide, hide.
@ur momisugly Leo Morgan
Umm… every single one?
They use the same scientific method. Unless I’m mistaken and the psychology course I recently took at the University of Texas is a one-off. Are most universities teaching students to use mostly a-priori deduction in psychology now?
I’m not going to debate this view with you or anyone on this thread. This is a personal opinion that relying on empirical evidence in the social sciences is a mistake due to the unobservable nature of free will. The same view Ludwig von Mises shares about economics, I personally believe extends to psychology as well. I could be wrong.
On the Bishop Hill blog, “P Jones” posted “Oh bugger. Why does everything have to be in Excel ?”
Hilarious.
Does one have to “live” AGW skepticism on the internet to understand it properly? Could it be a climate n00b came down in the last shower and really believed “Open Mind” and “SkS” were actually skeptic’s websites?
I thought “Cognitive Science” might have something to do with finding the truth. My mistake.
What a load of horse[snip]. Here are my few points.
The Moon landing was real.
The climate is real.
Science is real.
Climate change is real.
Co2 is a greenhouse gas.
The world has been warming since end of LIA.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Runaway Global Warming is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the human race.
JoNova point out:
It says it all really. And they call us the deniers.