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Lewandowsky thinks failure to get or find email is conspiracy theory

13 years ago
Anthony Watts

Wow, this Lewandowsky story just keeps getting more bizarre. It’s like nothing I’ve even seen before.

On DeSmog Blog, Lewandowsky says we are victims of “conspiratorial thinking” and promises “four more people will have egg on their faces.” Great, bring it.

So now there’s a conspiracy theory going around that I didn’t contact them. It’s a perfect, perfect illustration of conspiratorial thinking. It’s illustrative of exactly the process I was analysing. People jump to conclusions on the basis of no evidence. I would love to be able to release those emails if given permission, because it means four more people will have egg on their faces. I’m anxiously waiting the permission to release this crucial information because it helps to identify people who engage in conspiratorial thinking rather than just searching their inboxes.

Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1mwBG)

Newsflash perfessor. We HAVE searched our inboxes and as I reported on Lucia’s blog:

Anthony Watts (Comment #102455)

September 1st, 2012 at 2:03 am

Add WUWT to the list. If he sent me an invitation, I surely can’t find it. Jo Nova asked me to search a couple of weeks ago, didn’t find it then, nor now.

That comment on WUWT referenced by “ob” upthread is not an invitation, and certainly not from Lewandowsky or one of his co-authors. It is from PaulW, who isn’t from Australia.

and…

Anthony Watts (Comment #102580)

September 4th, 2012 at 7:34 am

Regarding Steve McIntyre’s note at 3:11PM.

I understand his problem, I get hundreds of emails a day. Sometimes I miss important emails in the deluge.

So far, on my home computer (where I do most WUWT work) I have not been able to find any evidence that WUWT received an invitation from uwa.edu.au” or Charles Hanich about that time. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any, as it is also possible it ended up in the spam filter and was deleted.

I’ll search my office computer today and get a second look, to see if perhaps it resides there.

Lewandowski should know that if you really want to reach people in this day and age, don’t assume email is reliable. Back in the DARPA days, before SPAM accounted for a significant portion of Internet traffic, it was reliable. Now today, for anything truly important I follow up with a phone call and repeated emails until I get a response.

Lewandosky’s assistant apparently made an assumption not supported by a reply, Lewandowsky made a further unsupported assumption about “privacy”.

and…

Anthony Watts (Comment #102588)

September 4th, 2012 at 10:06 am

Per my previous comment, in addition to my home computer, I did a search on my office computer for:

“uwa.edu.au”

“Charles Hanich”

“Hanich”

And got no emails.

So either it was never sent, or ended up in SPAM and was deleted.

I see a lack of due diligence on the part of Lewandowsky if he really wanted skeptics to take the survey. The fact that he delegated the task to an underling, did no assurance follow up, and went with one-sided sampling tells me he his goal was to create a paper that fit his pre-conceived notions.

There’s no science involved in this paper, just opinion and confirmation bias of the highest order.

The fact that this paper passed peer review is even more troubling.

=====================================================

To be extra thorough, I also searched again just now for “kwiksurvey” which is the name of the survey website Lewandowsky used. Nothing. I repeated all the searches I made above using two methods.

1. Email search tool for my email client

2. Computer file search tool – looking at every file (including the thousands of emails I have back to 1998)

While I found some files with the keywords, none  of them were the survey participation invitation.

So explain to me professor Lewandowsky, how failure to receive or be able to find emails supposedly sent, without any other mode of contact or attempts at communication is somehow conspiracy theory.

If Lewandowsky sent an email, it likely ended up in SPAM. Lots of “take our quick survey” emails are spam these days. He should know better than to trust email as the only contact medium for something he deems important. Instead, he accuses us of being conspiracy theorists when we ask for proof.

<p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>

Jo Nova (via Andrew Bolt) points out this little incongruity:

There are even more strange things about this. Deltoid had already hosted the survey before McIntyre was even emailed once. McIntyre apparently did not recieve the same invitation or a link to the same survey. Deltoid got their invitations from Professor Lewandowsky, not the assistant. Lewandowsky said no skeptic hosted the survey, but Junkscience did. Did Lewandowsky not even check the sites of skeptics he emailed?

Anything goes in climate conspiracy theory science it seems.

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James Allison
September 7, 2012 9:46 pm

Mann, Cook and frenzied followers must be about ready to throw Loosky under the bus.

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James Allison
September 7, 2012 9:54 pm

The bit I like the best is thinking that here is the man? who lied, deceived and misinformed now asking permission to release emails that HE originally sent. If this is the level of rational thought seen at the top levels of academia then we are truly buggered.

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Streetcred
September 7, 2012 10:16 pm

Let’s face it, this Lewandowski is a coward who doesn’t have the courage to confront his malfeascance at this blog … or any sceptic blog for that matter. He runs and cowers at desmog to hiss and spit.

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Fred 2
September 7, 2012 10:32 pm

What’s the difference if he got replies refusing him permission to post his survey on skeptical sites or if he never sent the requests to skeptical sites in the first place? In either case, he didn’t talk to skeptics, so how can he publish a survey that purports to explain what skeptics think? Did he use telepathy to get this information? Or what?

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Skiphil
September 8, 2012 12:16 am

Lewandowsky, when discussing the squalid Gleick affair (with numerous mis-statements of fact about Heartland, Gleick’s behavior, climate science, etc.), showed that he is a vehement radical unconstrained by facts and actual research:
http://theconversation.edu.au/the-morality-of-unmasking-heartland-5494

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tallbloke
September 8, 2012 12:21 am

“I would love to be able to release those emails if given permission,”
Quite a few sceptic bloggers including me have given permission on Lucia’s blog. If the four people Lew claims he sent emails to are not amongst them, why hasn’t he emailed them for permission?

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Dave N
September 8, 2012 12:36 am

Lewandowsky thinks that because people claim to have not received their emails, that there’s some conspiracy going on. Complete hypocritical moron.

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David A. Evans
September 8, 2012 1:54 am

Matthew W says:
September 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm

So let’s get this figured out.
“Denier” spam boxes filter out the survey, but the “believers” spam filters let it through?
Sounds fishy !!!

Let me re-phrase this…
spam boxes of people I don’t know or correspond with filter out the survey, but people I correspond with on a regular basis spam filters let it through?
Puts a different light on it doesn’t it?
DaveE.

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Steve Thatcher
September 8, 2012 2:55 am

Gunga Din says:
September 7, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Lewandowsky: “People jump to conclusions on the basis of no evidence.”
Isn’t that how got “The Hockey Stick” in the first palce?
******************************************************************************
Not quite. The Hockey Stick was never a conclusion, it was the original intention, and data was chosen/altered to obtain a stick
Steve T

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klem
September 8, 2012 3:18 am

I don’t get why the skeptic side is giving this guy so much attention. His study was biased, everyone sees that, even the alarmists know that it was biased and give his study little credence. So please fellow skeptics, stop talking about this guy, stop giving him publicity and let him fall back into obscurity. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Once his name disappears from the blogosphere, he and his work will be forgotten.

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rogerknights
September 8, 2012 3:27 am

Skiphil says:
September 8, 2012 at 12:16 am
Lewandowsky, when discussing the squalid Gleick affair (with numerous mis-statements of fact about Heartland, Gleick’s behavior, climate science, etc.), showed that he is a vehement radical unconstrained by facts and actual research:
http://theconversation.edu.au/the-morality-of-unmasking-heartland-5494

This “type” is common in sociology–virtually characteristic.

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DaveA
September 8, 2012 3:52 am

Skiphil, I have some insight into that matter. The manufactured blog posts only appeared in SkS’s secret area, that was just a matter of convenience – it suited to use their secret forum as the vehicle to create the threads; that’s not an issue. It’s an issue that ardent warmists created both kinds of posts (warmist/skeptic) with the intention of presenting these to experiment participants for research purposes who still in the end would be none the wiser. There was no attempt at all to exert objective control over the data, just “hey guys, make some posts in these threads for my experiment – we’re doin’ science stuff with Stephan!”.
Your last line holds true.

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richardscourtney
September 8, 2012 6:00 am

klem:
Your post at September 8, 2012 at 3:18 am says in full

I don’t get why the skeptic side is giving this guy so much attention. His study was biased, everyone sees that, even the alarmists know that it was biased and give his study little credence. So please fellow skeptics, stop talking about this guy, stop giving him publicity and let him fall back into obscurity. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Once his name disappears from the blogosphere, he and his work will be forgotten.

What you “don’t get” is that “the skeptic side” does not want Lewandowsky and his work to “be forgotten”. Some reasons for this are as follows.
Firstly, alarmists shout the lie that “peer review” is some sort of validation of published information especially when the information is published in a leading journal. But even alarmist bloggers can see that Lewandowsky’s paper is complete rubbish although it was peer reviewed and published in a ‘leading’ journal.
Therefore, whenever the ‘peer reviewed lie’ is proclaimed then that lie can be rebutted with, “So how do you explain Lewandowsky’s survey paper?”.
Secondly, accountability is the only constraint on misconduct by scientists. Prestige is important to scientists: they would have followed a different career if personal wealth were their great motivation. So, accountability for misconduct is a serious deterrent to misconduct by scientists because revelation of misconduct trashes the career and reputation of a scientist. But ‘Climate scientists’ have escaped accountability for much outrageous misconduct e.g. as revealed by the ‘climategate’ emails and, therefore, many feel – with good reason – that they are unaccountable.
There is a clear possibility of holding Lewandowsky to account for his gross misconduct in the production of his survey paper. And holding him to account would be a breakthrough in applying normal scientific accountability in ‘climate science’. The benefits of this deterrent to misconduct could be very great.
Thirdly, smears of ‘climate realists’ are normal behaviour for alarmists. Lewandowsky’s paper is a clear example of a bogus smear of climate realists. Publicity of the example could cause e.g. mainstream journalists to be less receptive when presented with such smears.
etc.
Richard

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Max Hugoson
September 8, 2012 7:06 am

Found on JoNova’s Blog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Hits it right on the nail head. Thanks Mark H. for this!
Max

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Gunga Din
September 8, 2012 7:07 am

Steve Thatcher says:
September 8, 2012 at 2:55 am
Gunga Din says:
September 7, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Lewandowsky: “People jump to conclusions on the basis of no evidence.”
Isn’t that how got “The Hockey Stick” in the first palce?
******************************************************************************
Not quite. The Hockey Stick was never a conclusion, it was the original intention, and data was chosen/altered to obtain a stick
=======================================================================
I stand corrected.

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David Ross
September 8, 2012 8:08 am

Dang! We’ve been rumbled.
So Lewandowsky thinks the skeptic blogosphere conspired to kibosh his survey to make him look stupid. He needs no help from us, or anyone, for that.
Some, grant-challenged, social science researcher needs to look into the correlation between climate alarmism and massive egos.

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David Ball
September 8, 2012 8:31 am

In Canada we had what was called in the media the “robo-calls” scandal. It was reported in the media that it was a big part of the reason the Conservative (our republican) party won the election. Someone was using an automated system to steer voters to the wrong polling stations. It was very quietly reported (not at all IMHO) that when the perpetrator was found, it turned out the source was a Liberal (democrat) constituency office. The mindset is appalling. Right in line with the Gleicks of the world. Win at any cost. Stick to the truth and you win the long game every time.

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David Ball
September 8, 2012 8:38 am

klem says:
September 8, 2012 at 3:18 am
I disagree. Expose his lack of integrity and the methods he uses to help the general public see the lengths these people will go to to control the message. The general public does not know or seem to care who any of the players are in the climate melee.

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Lars P.
September 8, 2012 11:44 am

Ian Weiss says:
September 7, 2012 at 5:42 pm
“….
It’s terribly unfair for him to say that, but we need to understand that this demeaning attitude towards blogs is pervasive. Accordingly, I believe WUWT and other skeptical blogs need to be STRIKINGLY different from the typical online blog. ”
Ian, things are on the move and irrelevant how “pal-review” goes and irrelevant how deep they dug their heads in the sand when a blog review is putting the finger where it pains, with logic, data and quality review there is no way for them as to retract or to try to fix -as we have seen again and again.
Ignoring the blog will only postpone the inevitable and make the matter worst.
I love the example with NASA and rrresearch as it is not climate related.
Who ever heard of rrresearch? Certainly less people then the ones who heard of NASA. But in one blog review the red haired lady put the NASA paper – which proudly announced arsen to replace phosphor in living bacteria – to its place: the trash bin.
http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html
There are many good quality, skilled people out there who do not have the time or the vanity or the resources to put a paper through peer-review and publish, but they can read and point out the errors of many such papers within hours if they take the time to do so.
This is why blog review is becoming so relevant and this is why the warmista try now to spin “what to do with the contrarians”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/01/wuwt-is-the-focus-of-a-seminar-at-the-university-of-colorado/
WUWT has a great deal of such good quality people who know much about climate and hard sciences (physics, chemistry) this is why people like hanging around and reading through the comments, and this is why low quality papers once taken into focus get busted within days.
Similar communities gathered at climate audit, Jo Nova and some other.
They cannot silence the blogs, they cannot control them and they cannot ignore them.
Well, they try. This is why the demeaning attitude and comments.
But as “they” silenced discussion on “their” blogs, as they practice “pal-review” and “keep those papers out with any price” (or something like this), the result is they made blogs be great, because it is the only place where scientific conversation continues.

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A.Scott
September 8, 2012 6:17 pm

davidmhoffer says:
September 7, 2012 at 10:23 am
Well if someone REALLY wanted to turn the tables on him….
We’ve got copies of the questions? The survey site is free? Science is about reproducibility right?

David … watch this space …. will have something avail in near future … 😉

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