Dr. Stephan Lewandowsy’s recent claim that because skeptics and lukewarmers alike ask to see emails, it amounts to conspiracy theory …
So now there’s a conspiracy theory going around that I didn’t contact them.
…has inspired Josh yet again.
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Simon at Australian Climate Madness notes:
You can sense the contempt Lewandowsky holds for those who dare question his methods in the tone employed here. I guess he thought he could brand all sceptics as conspiratorial nut-nut jobs and we’d just quietly slink away and say, “Yeah, you’re right, we are nut-jobs”. And his defence mechanism to this criticism is to resort to childish sarcasm in his responses – as one commenter puts it, how “professorial” is that, professor?
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Lewpaper…oh what a horribly excellent pun !!!!!!
Fecally amazing Josh! 😉
As Steven Goddard points out, it’s not conspiracy, it’s malfeasance we’re charging you with, Lewandowsky.
Lewandowsy shouldn’t attempt sarcasm any more than he should attempt to do genuine science. He’s no good at it.
“Versiongate!” he proclaims, trying to preempt his critics naming of this episode of incompetence. No, professor that ain’t your call. If we were to bestow a “-gate” upon you it would be along the lines of Idiotgate, Buffoongate or Pinheadgate.
But that probably wont happen either. You simply don’t rate a “-gate”. We don’t see your actions as part of some grand conspiracy. We simply see them as the actions of an idiot.
To paraphrase Woody Allen: “Somewhere a climate science conference is missing their idiot.”
I can’t question his methods, because he has none.
How many tree rings died to produce this paper ….
Btw, even if he had sent out this survey, it would still be 100% irrelevant from a scientific point of view.
Science and statistics are not synonymous.
Discovery of a numerical discrepancy is not science. Accounting for that discrepancy in a reproducible manner is science.
Plus, apart from that, such a “survey” based on such a small group is utterly worthless, which is something even he as a “social scientist” should know. If I would hand in a paper with a survey based on a literal handful of participants, my professor would take said paper and slap me silly with it.
Can anyone take Lewandowsy seriously after this debacle. He could solve his own conspiracy by publishing the emails he allegedly sent if he cant provide them then he has a problem a BIG credibility problem.
I believe it is spelled “loo” in standard Oxford English !
The Huffington Post has bought Lewandowsky’s thesis wholesale
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/climate-change-denial-_b_1686437.html
Yes they were. Prof. Lewandowsky is an idiot and organs like Huffpo uncritically regurgitate any old claptrap that fits their ideological bias.
Lewandowsky doesn’t even have to admit he screwed up; he could claim some sort of vaguely defined ‘administrative error’ caused the problem and then just do-over, and do it right.
But that assumes he’s really interested in doing things right, instead of manipulating things to get the predetermined results he desires.
haha how fitting. It seems they’ve known about the University of East Anglia and idiots since the Monty Python days.
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists
Ditto last comment
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
kim2ooo says:
September 7, 2012 at 11:08 pm
REPOST:
H/T David;
[” There’s one I haven’t reported yet, required a bit of effort to do right and folks seem to have lost interest.
Basically, John Cook in cahoots with a Uni of Western Australia professor Steven Lewandowsky conducted some kind of denial social experiment using students as guinea pigs.
John Cook:
I’ve been conducting a psychological experiment with UWA cognitive scientists testing for the effects of blog comments on readers’ comprehension. The first stage of the experiment was live on SkS and we’ve analysed the data and found that for a warmist blog post, there was no difference in reader comprehension when the reader was exposed to all warmist comments or no comments. However, when the reader was exposed to all skeptic comments, their comprehension dropped.
So it’s officially been quantified – reading the comments threads on denier blogs will make you stupid.
(2011-09-21-Need a handful of comments from SkSers for our blogging experiment.html)
They exposed the students to examples of internet posts in one of 4 categories:
Warmist post, warmist comments
Warmist post, skeptic comments
Skeptic post, warmist comments
Skeptic post, skeptic comments
… and ummm, analysed something-or-rather, which isn’t too clear.
So how did they source these ‘internet posts’? They manufactured them themselves!
So get this, the tree-hutters were asked to add comments on the topic of climate change — pretending to be skeptics/deniers — and these were then used in a formal university experiment.
John Cook:
As the second part of our experiment on science blogging, we’ll be showing 4 conditions to lab participants at the Uni of W.A. The condition for this thread is Warmist Blog Post, Skeptic Comments. So would be great if a handful of SkSers could post scathing, very skeptic comments to our “How we know…” blog post – posted here in this forum thread. We need exactly 10 skeptic comments.
The 4 threads used to capture theses cases are:
2011-09-21-BLOG EXPERIMENT CONDITION 1_ warmist post, warmist comments.html
2011-09-21-BLOG EXPERIMENT CONDITION 2_ warmist post, skeptic comments.html
2011-09-21-BLOG EXPERIMENT CONDITION 3_ skeptic post, warmist comments.html
2011-09-21-BLOG EXPERIMENT CONDITION 4_ skeptic post, skeptic comments.html
(each contains a similar introduction as per JC’s quote above)
Do skeptics have a tendency to suffer Tourettes? They do seem to be trigger happy on the explanation mark key.
So why wouldn’t they just grab the real skeptic and warmist comments from his own blog? Oh would it be that he deletes all the skeptic comments? Or are they not crazy enough for his experiment? Or is he just too academically sloppy to provide real data? Take your pick.
And it gets worse.
After having exposed these experiment participants — i.e. real people — to manufactured data does he seek to make amends for any misunderstanding that might create?
Well he does have one concern…
John Cook:
Steve recommended we hand the participants who read the denier blog post a flyer as they leave, explaining what was wrong with the denier blog post (just to ensure we don’t convert too many into deniers). So that’s something I need to whip up shortly as the experiment will be run soon.
But on the topic of that manufactured data…
Glenn Tamblyn (someone gets it, bold is his):
Once your experiment is complete it might be good to actually do a post on it, showing all 4 versions and commenting prominantly that both warmist and skeptic comments were written by the same people
John Cook (hoodwinking people – What, Me Worry?) :
[title] Will definitely post about the experiment
Probably after it’s been accepted or published though, best not to pre-empt the peer-review process.
Not sure if I’ll post the actual article and comments – that will be something to ponder way down the track. Could have a bit of fun with it.
(2011-09-26-Blog Experiment.html)
No John, it’s not about posting details of the experiment on your blog which no one reads. He’s telling you it’s unethical to expose people to manufactured data which may influence their opinion
about major controversial topic and then not giving an ass about it.
Apr 2, 2012 at 7:05 AM | David ‘ ]
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html?currentPage=4#comments
Reply
kim2ooo says:
September 7, 2012 at 11:21 pm
This lost some of Davids’ formatting…follow the link…go to bottom of comments …find David April 2
george e smith says:
September 8, 2012 at 11:18 am
I believe it is spelled “loo” in standard Oxford English !
=================================================================
“Loo” or “Lew” the paper’s still poo.
Luckily….thanks to the warning from Professor Loo….i was able to stop reading “skeptic posts” and “skeptic comments”….just prior to my IQ plunging to zero.
Gunga Din says:
September 8, 2012 at 11:44 am
george e smith says:
September 8, 2012 at 11:18 am
I believe it is spelled “loo” in standard Oxford English !
=================================================================
“Loo” or “Lew” the paper’s still poo.
*
In our house, it’s now “Lew” paper.
from Kim2000;
John Cook:
I’ve been conducting a psychological experiment with UWA cognitive scientists testing for the effects of blog comments on readers’ comprehension. The first stage of the experiment was live on SkS and we’ve analysed the data and found that for a warmist blog post, there was no difference in reader comprehension when the reader was exposed to all warmist comments or no comments. However, when the reader was exposed to all skeptic comments, their comprehension dropped.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Let’s see if we can rephrase this a bit:
1. When a reader is exposed to only one side of the story, they tend to believe the story.
2. When a reader is exposed to only the other side of the story, they tend to believe the other side.
This is new?
Then of course they define believing the other side as equating to lower comprehension. In other words, if I present facts opposing my point of view and you agree with them, you are stupid. The reasoning is incomprehensible.
David Ross says:
September 8, 2012 at 11:20 am
That’s because HuffPo got all the social scientists.
Lewandowsky is the rule, not the exception. In Germany they often hide in “sustainability” institutes that by now cover half of the arable land area. We have fired all stand up comedians and replaced them with sustainability lecturers.
Artec in Bremen is our leading humorist institute. I don’t know if Google translate captures the punchlines. This is from the “Research field social sustainability and labor”.
http://www.artec.uni-bremen.de/files/aktuelles/Vortrag_071211.pdf
The Frankfurt School is SOOO 20th century.
I sent a psychic message to Lew, but he hasn’t responded yet. What’s wrong with him?
The science of surveys is quite extensive and requires both statistical application in survey development, as well as proper statistical evaluation of results. I see none of these quality control measures in his survey. This is not a “-gate” issue. This is just really bad social science. Any journal that would accept a paper like this must also have as its editors, like minds.
While the joke is a laugh-out-loud one, there is an under-current of concern here. If professors involved in climate research are of such low quality, that tends to self-correct. But if the editors and peer-reviewers are of the same low quality, then self-correction is not as likely. This set-up has happened before when group-think (be it low quality science and even high-quality science thinking) over-ruled criticism with dire results. Even worse, I am beginning to wonder if Ph.D. programs have lowered the bar as well, allowing through less than qualified candidates as long as they are “members” of the “club”.
Saturday fun?
This woman visited a beuty parlor. “Can you help me look a little more attractive and sexy?”
The parlor manager politely and said, “Well we sure can try!”. The really wanted a makeower to look really beautiful attractive and sexy. She was under beaty treament for a whole day and the beauty parlor really gave her all the treatmant they could provide and all the make up skills they could delivier. Finally when she was done the woman looked into the mirror with great expectation but was not happy at all with the result, and she didn’t think she looked attractive at all! “What’s this? I look a little different but not beautful or sexy at all”. The parlor manager explained that they tried with everyting they had and this was the best they could do with the material they been given. “Well” the woman said. I’m never coming back here again, that’s for sure. I’m going to NOAA instead!”
“NOAA ?” repeated the manager. “Yes, or maybe to see someone at the IPCC instead” she replied. The manager: “What do yóu mean NOAA or IPCC? Do they do make up and makeowers” Yes, she said, “They make things up and can make anything look hot!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Naomi_Oreskes,_HSS_2008.jpg
Stephan Lewandowsky wrote on Shaping Tomorrow’s world blog “Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N > 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science.”
Well he didn’t ask me. But for what it’s worth I agree that “human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate”, but I see no empirical evidence that it is by more than a miniscule amount that doesn’t amount to a gnat’s crotchet. I can also report that most people have never worked with multi-dimensional, chaotic feedback systems (the heart of the physics of climate science) and those who have, in honesty, wouldn’t even have the temerity to suggest that they could predict a single resultant change with any degree of confidence let alone a time evolutionary path that would allow statements about whether the results would be good or bad in the long term.
Then you have Climategate where conclusions can easily be reached that not all is fair, sceptical science (intentional tautology).
And then you get pontificating psychololgists, using an assumed authority, to assert a parallel between a rag bag of conspiracy theories and what is essentially mathematical physics.
He even talks about “Acceptance of science” that is an oxymoron. You should challenge all science, if you can think of a challenge.
I’ve thought of lots and read of lots of challenges to the assertion that anthropogenic CO2 is a bad thing for humanity on any timescale, let alone on a century timescale.
So you’d expect “segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence” on all sorts of levels and good for them.
Baa Humbug says:
September 8, 2012 at 11:28 am
haha how fitting. It seems they’ve known about the University of East Anglia and idiots since the Monty Python days.
Brilliant find!
That’s a keeper.
Aren’t there any cognitive scientists out there who are embarrassed by this?
I have been wondering what would be the next field of study to be turned into bumf.
This guy and his associates have just trashed the subject.
People who can’t think straight become – cognitive scientists.