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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Tallbloke, if you read Mosher enough, you’ll understand that he is talking about the GHGs in our atmosphere impeding the outflow of energy from our planet sufficiently to effect a warming influence; so, yes, Mosher is correct, GHGs do not cool the earth.
@Jimmy Haigh says:
September 1, 2012 at 8:38 am
Another ‘intellectual’ proving that you don’t have to be intelligent to be classed as an intellectual.
————–
No, another intellectual proving that you need absolutely no integrity to be an intellectual. It’s not intelligence that’s missing here, it’s respect, honesty, humility, and regard for the truth. (Probably also any attempt at self-reflection or self-awareness.)
Jimmy Haigh says: “Another ‘intellectual’ proving that you don’t have to be intelligent to be classed as an intellectual.”
Someone once said, “An ‘intellectual’ is someone educated beyond his intelligence.” That would seem to apply here.
Hey, Lewandowsky,
Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, the first and last astronauts to walk on the moon graduated from my alma mater. And I still believe CO2 is a harmless beneficial plant food necessary not only for plant life but animal life.
Martin Clark says:
September 1, 2012 at 6:01 am
“Ugh! One of my countrymen. How embarrassment.”
Australia’s per capita climate prat emission rate is becoming alarming.
And that, Martin, is certainly more alarming than good ol’ CO2 plant food, amen.
Hey, I just read in this thread that Lewandowsky was originally from the US of A, so maybe we’re not entirely to blame for this lettered kook.
Sean Peake says: “Well Komrades…These poor souls must be reeducated using the latest psychological techinques as soon as possible to eliminate such flawed thinking in society.” [/sarc]
No, tovarich, we now have improved method to handle denier. No rubles for reeducation, no time-wasting trials. Have it video:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010/10/01/most-honest-political-ad-of-all-time/
[in case you’ve forgotten what lurks in the unconscious mind of most AGW fanatics]
No, Mosher-san, I don’t include you in that category.
Steven Mosher,
Whoever said that “dumping of GHGs into the atmosphere will not be without consequences”?
——————————————–
Smokey says: @ur momisugly September 1, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Everything has consequences. What you always ignore is a cost/benefit analysis. There is no evidence of any GHG-caused problems, so the effects appear to be minor. You cannot point to any global damage or harm from the added CO2, so spending $trillions to mitigate a non-problem is irrational.
——————————————-
So far the consequences I have seen are all good. Plants were near starvation Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California and now The Earth’s biosphere is booming, data suggests that CO2 is the cause we have pretty much halved the amount of land need to grow a bushel of wheat or corn.
On top of that even Joe Romm over at Climate Progress states:
“Absent human emissions, we’d probably be in a slow long-term cooling trend due primarily by changes in the Earth’s orbit — see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds…
This paper agrees: Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007)
And so does Woods Hole
Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried? – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Looking at graphs of temperature show the most likely catastrophe is a slide into a glaciation at this point and not warming. Also warming is a heck of a lot easier to adapt to compared to a glacier over one mile thick sitting on Hansen’s office. I lived near there with one of the glacial dumps (morianes) on the back doorstep and I also lived near the finger lakes. New York state is so full of glacial terrain you trip over it every time you turn around. Just watch out you don’t step on a copperhead, they love it.
If CO2 can stop glaciation I say lets keep burning coal!
Lewandowsky, a psychologist, is undoubtedly aware of the work in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s of Anthony Pratkanis on “Phantom Alternatives”. Let me summarize (and no doubt, unavoidably distort) the concept:
Say you are asked to make a choice — but presented only one option. (You may have lemon) You likely will be miffed — and choose nothing at all, rejecting the proffered option.(I won’t take a lemon) However, if you are offered one option and informed that the OTHER, customary, alternative is at present unavailable, (Sorry, but today we are already out of grapefruit) you are more likely to accept the single option offered. (Oh, okay, I guess today I’ll have a lemon.)
Lewandowsky offers us the choice– accept the consensus on global warming. But, we are ALSO offered the choice of a “skeptical position”. We can have, instead, creationism, moon landing stagecraft, and other moonbattery. Now, since we are offered a clear choice, we neither reject both the “science” and the “conspiracy” but embrace the first and reject the other.
Pratkanis has offered a number of scholarly articles about how psychology can be used, or abused, to sell science, or psuedo-science. He’s a pretty interesting guy. Lewandowsky is, by comparison, in my opinion, the Michael Mann of psychological research.
““…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….”
I think Australian grammar has tricked you (and maybe some of your audience again),Anthony. What he is clearly saying is that they likely replied with a presumption of privacy, whether they asked for it or not. Its just an excuse for not being willing to give up that information by inventing a presumption of confidentiality. Also we spell perfessor as “professor”, here.
I read the abstract of the paper and agree it is a disgusting attempt to paint AGW realists as insane anti science conspiracy theorists so I am also waiting to see when it will inexplicably disappear from the internet, probably Monday morning.
His continued funding depends on it!
Does he know how dreadful his propositions will end?
I note from David Ross’s comment earlier that this survey was done in Aug-Oct 2010. That means it took nearly two years to write , be reviewed and get into the pre publication phase. Given what we know of ” pal review” and how it helps speed up the publication process one has to wonder what took all the time –maybe they had trouble finding some pals for this one.
I realise that 2 years would not be unusual for a serious scientific paper but this is just based on a simple ( yes,stupid) survey and that is all.
More on legal issues
One, uwa might have a policy on data retention. In that case, I lost
The data does not work.
The ethics in Ozzie universities is authorized by NHMRC.
So if uwa does nor react appropriately, NHMRC is next step.
Here is a another gotcha. Ethics guidelines usually refer to avoidance of harm to
An individual or a community. Does the group of people who subscribe to the
Belief that the cage claims are overheated constitute a community. There should
Be a plain language statement about the use of the data.
Btw, the NHMRC can strip an organization of it ability to conduct research
Involving human subjects.
Jim
Guys, it’s about to get worse. He’s coming your way in the Fall.
AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
By Stephan Lewandowsky
Winthrop Professor and Australian Professorial Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia
Posted on 16 July 2012
We have proposed several sessions for the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco on 3-7 December 2012: on uncertainty, misinformation and social media. AGU members are invited to submit abstracts for the sessions – the deadline to submit an abstract is August 8.
Alice
I have a simple analogy of the statistics used in the above report.
sarc->
based on a recent survey, more than 95 percent of voters will vote for the republican candidate and no respondents indicated at all would that they would vote for the democrats. Therefore republicans will win the next election hands down, the democrats needn’t bother to turn up to vote.
Source: 200 people at republican conference. 9 respondents refused to answer how they would vote.
Breakdown:
Republican: 191
Democrat: 0
Don’t Know: 9
/sarc
Hey, didn’t the old USSR like to use a psychiatric diagnosis in order to discredit political oponents?
Or even scientists who wouldn’t conform to the New Soviet thinking in science? Lysenkoism anyone?
Well?
If this isn`t scientific fraud conducted by Lewandowski… what is?
@lucy skywalker
Re your idea Lewandowsky/Cook
Pls contact me at alder/period/latimer/at/btinternet/period/com
so we can transfer to a secure service to discuss.
Thanks.
The results of the survey are simple, most people answered sensibly and ten people were making fun of Lewankowski:
Q. The surveys produced by Lewankowsky were written by retarded aliens controlling his mind?
True or false.
Hello Anthony!
A suggestion:
Send emails to 100 Critical Global warming blogs.
Question:
Do you believe that the moon landing was faked?
Prognosis:
100 people will say that the moon landing was not faked. (Surprise!)
Give the paper to the Institute, send it to the press and the university.
Together with all the information on blogs and sources.
Then the professor must respond. Where does his data come from?
Prognosis:
Unfortunately, his data was lost.
In the future, this professor will be the laughing stock of his University.
Stephan
Perhaps we should put Lewankowski in touch with Kari Marie Norgaard
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/02/rewriting-history-treatment-of-sceptics-disappears-from-university-of-oregon-press-statement/
They would have a lot in common . He can diagnose us and she will cure us. Think what lovely babies they would have.
Ivor Ward
A few months ago I tried to get some information about grants processes from the Australian Department of Climate Change. Evasion was expected and obtained. I am considering if I will apply for a grant so that i can at least see the requirements and hurdles that such authors face. Does anyone know how many highly qualified scientists are employed by the said department to consider, approve or fail applications for funds? We are not talking small sums here.
In the meantime, I just chuckle at the amateurism of a non-achiever having the silliness to challenge the achievements of many of the so-called sceptics that I know have contributed mightily to science and national economies.
Mosher seems to be the one avoiding facts by simply stating that “dumping of GHGs into the atmosphere will not be without consequences”, implying constantly over many threads in many blogs that such consequences are bad.
Let him show what are the bad consequences that have happened to this world in the last 150 years when there ha been a steady increase in CO2 levels and there has been around a 0.8 degree C rise in temperature based on current data.
There have been no such consequences. So his entire premise is based on beliefs and not science or facts. So in fact he is the one currently seeming to be practising post normal science.
Mr Watts.
Why should I show you my data…you’ll just try and find something wrong with it!
Stephan.
Here is a serious question for the people posting to WUWT (Anthony, perhaps a separate thread if this one goes stale? Maybe even a poll?)
1. How many skeptics have been BLOCKED from each of the sites Lewankowsky used to survey “Deniers”?
2. How many skeptics have had their comments ‘dissappeared’ and therefore no longer even bother looking at those sites.
3. How many (like me) refuse to visit those sites on general principles so the site numbers and ranking torpedos and therefore they will not show up when a subject is searched?
The sites 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/
Heck the skeptics blogs might want to approach Dr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Pratkanis and offer ourselves up as guinea pigs so he can do a counter presentation at AGU Fall Meeting sessions on Social Media, Misinformation and Uncertainty for the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco on 3-7 December 2012.
It is a bit of a short notice but doable.
I agree with Lucy Skywalker
Climate skeptics need something, a reference, to pull apart their non-science garbage line by line, item by item.