So much happening in LewWorld, so little time. I’ve decided to simply aggregate all of the posts on Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky into one news item.
First my own observation. Yesterday, Lewandowsky wrote this:
I have several phone conversations scheduled for tomorrow, Monday, W.A. time, with the ethics committee at my university. I will report on the outcome as soon as a decision has been finalized.
No news, and it is 4AM Tuesday in Australia as of this writing. I wonder what the ethics committee said? Maybe they pointed out more ethics issues than Dr. Lewandowsky expected?
UPDATE: On Climate Audit, it is reported by Dave S in comments:
Lewandowsky just wrote Roy Spencer as follows:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 03:01:19 +0800
Subject: survey contact
Dear Dr Spencer:
Please find enclosed correspondence from my research assistant dating back to 2010. He contacted you at the time to ask whether you would post a link to one of my research projects on your blog.
There appears to be considerable public interest in the identity of the bloggers whom I contacted for my project in 2010, and I am therefore pleased that my university has today affirmed that there are no ethical issues involved in releasing their identity.
I will post the relevant information on my blog shortly.
Kind regards,
While we are the subject of ethics, I find it curious that in the same essay he’s linked climate skeptics to a racist rapper who wanted to dedicate a week to killing white people:
If even Mr. Bolt is concerned about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, then we have arrived at a Sister Souljah moment for climate denial.
Lubos Motl says about this:
So at various points, they’re linked to anti-Semitism, a black rapper named Sister Souljah who wanted to kill several whites every other week to compensate for the fact that blacks kill each other, to moonlanding conspiracy theories, and so on.
When you have nothing substantive to bolster your defense of the indefensible, I guess all that’s left is the race card. Stay classy Lew. In other news…
Steve McIntyre tears apart the survey, labeling it appropriately:
“Lewandowsky, like Gleick, probably fancies himself a hero of the Cause. But ironically. Lewandowsky’s paper will stand only as a landmark of junk science – fake results from faked responses.
As Tom Curtis observed, Lewandowsky has no moral alternative but to withdraw his paper.”
And it turns out Pielke Jr. was contacted as the Third Skeptic.
In the Climate Conversation Group » Personal message to Stephan Lewandowsky
They note the curious autoresponder message in Lewandowsky’s email:
[auto-reply from Stephan Lewandowsky] Note that although I endeavour to keep all email correspondence private and confidential, this does not apply to messages that are of an abusive nature.
No matter if the good doctor makes abusive racial comparisons though. Here’s more news via Tom Nelson:
Steve McIntyre checks the data behind Professor Stephan Lewandosky’s bizarre peer-reviewed paper claiming sceptics tend to believe the moon landings were faked. Truth is, turns out what was faked were responses to Lewandowsky’s sloppy survey – and the paper should be withdrawn:
The “smoking-doesn’t-cause-cancer-conspiracy” is a signature of a fake response…The points that are on the top left of the graph are the more outlandish conspiracies, especially the “smoking” point which ranks right at the top. In my opinion this is a signature point. Skeptics don’t believe that conspiracy, but alarmists have been trained to think skeptics do. The high rank there is the “Oreskes Effect”.
After 120,000 comments on this blog, I can’t recall a single skeptic who thinks smoking doesn’t cause cancer, nor do I remember reading a comment on it on any other skeptic blog, nor have I even heard a hint of it in an email. But the two issues are often tied in alarmist propaganda..
Frequently people like Naomi Oreskes claim Fred Singer and others have doubted that smoking causes cancer, something which is an outright misrepresentation (see my point #3 here). Singer wrote about the statistical failures of the passive smoking case, which is scientifically entirely different from the well documented link between smoking and cancer. Given that this dishonest material is circulated widely on alarmist blogs, it’s likely that all 11 of those responding “yes” to that conspiracy question are the fakers, dutifully ticking off the boxes they have been trained to tick.
======================================================
I agree. For the record, both of my parents were heavy smokers, but suffered major smoking related health issues, and both died prematurely of them.
Myself, I’m a victim of the issue not only because of the loss of my parents, but due to the smoky household I grew up in. See this WebMD article:
Secondhand Smoke Raises Kids’ Ear Infection Risk
Study Shows Higher Risk of Middle Ear Infection for Children in Homes Where Parents Smoke
As a small child, I got many ear infections (and I still do). This resulted in me being treated with Tetracycline, which has been known to cause hearing loss and now discontinued from general use due to that and teeth yellowing (which I also have). My hearing loss affected me greatly through my childhood and teens, caused me all sorts of problems in college (before the Americans with Disabilities Act required accommodations), and ultimately led me to my career path of TV Meteorology where I didn’t have to listen, but talk the camera.
So if anyone wants to label me as some sort of “denier” about the health effects of smoking, let’s step outside this blog and have a conversation about that.
==============================================================
UPDATE2: Lewandowsky lists the 5 skeptic bloggers he contacted:
Shortly thereafter, the first of the 5 bloggers, Mr McIntyre, found his misplaced email.
This leaves us with 4 bloggers whose identity had to remain confidential until now.
I am pleased to report that I received advice from executives of the University of Western Australia earlier today, that no legal or privacy issues or matters of research ethics prevent publication of the names of those bloggers.
So here they are:
- Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
- Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
- Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
- Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)
===============================================================
Of course, having failed to communicate effectively, he went ahead and did a paper with one sided results.
UPDATE3: Lewandowsky Censors Discussion of Fake Data « Climate Audit
Rather than answer the question, Lewandowsky, the author of a paper entitled “NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”, deleted the question
It seems Lewandowsky can’t tolerate the word “fake” when it comes to the data. below is the second before and after:
Original comment:
Edited comment:
I don’t think they understand how fragile their survey was and how easy it was to create fake responses. Instead, they assume they are accusing Lewandowsky of dishonesty, where the accusation actually lies in the realm of incompetence.
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PS: I find such thinly veiled threats from the likes of Lewendowsky immensely humorous. [Sorry, had to snip that one. ~dbs, mod.]
I have to disagree with Richard Courtney. The detailed molecular mechanisms by which smoking causes cancer are quite well understood. It is a direct cause-effect relationship. It does not manifest in some people because of their genetics, differences in exposure levels, higher baseline levels of cellular anti-oxidants, pre-existing enhanced function of a tumor suppressor gene, and probably most important, chance. Reactive chemical intermediates and radicals can be found in everyone who smokes above a certain level, and given enough time, these products will cause mutations of DNA, which will produce cancer in a significant percentage of people. The probability of one mutation in one cell is probably reasonably high, but the probability of 3 and usually more (6-7) mutations of exactly the right type in the same cell, which is required to cause cancer, is much lower, so most people do not develop cancer. However, in those who do, most cases were directly caused by constituents of smoke, which are metabolized to reactive intermediates which cause mutations which lead to cancer.
Nevertheless, this question, like most others in the survey is worded in a manner that people who are particularly thoughtful and detail-oriented would answer like conspiracy theorists, just because the premise is not properly stated.
I doubt they misunderstood Steve’s comment. Lewandowsky will now point the moderated (so nobody can tell what was originally there) comment and claim that Steve was unjustly accusing him of personally faking the data.
Bob Johnston says: “…When it’s all over I think the psychologists will study this for years.”
And be studied.
Scottish Sceptic says: “…I just could not imagine a doctor saying …“smoking causes cancer” … because more than likely someone would spend all their money then start a civil action against the doctor because THEY DIDN’T GET CANCER when they had planned to die early.”
That’s just silly. Nobody could be that stupid. Oh, wait…
Pat K says: “Meanwhile over at Pointman’s blog … Lew has shot from relative obscurity to second spot in voting for the Climate Prat of the Year Award…”
So many prats, so few years.
Either psychology PhD’s or just PhD’s in Australia are getting cheaper. Lewandiowski needs to ask for a refund of his fees from whomever he purchased his degree.
To Ken Stewart and others who are wondering why the disparate focus on the smoking issue:
This is a critical issue for those who seek to tar climate realists as kooks. The Team and its media minions have focused very heavily on Heartland Institute’s work in the 2nd hand smoke issue. And almost needless to say, they misrepresent that position, in a way that people here are suspecting Lewandowsky seeks to do, too, in order to show people who use CAREFUL, PRECISE and/or CIRCUMSPECT language in a scientifically appropriate way, to be nuts and kooks.
Anthony says:
“I don’t think they understand how fragile their survey was and how easy it was to create fake responses. Instead, they assume they are accusing Lewandowsky of dishonesty, where the accusation actually lies in the realm of incompetence.”
I wish I could be so accomodating, but I think they understand perfectly what the word fake refers to in McIntyre’s question.
Lewandowsky’s assistant, Charles Hanich, is quoted here: http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/10/the-third-skeptic/#more-16699 in a reply to Pielke Jr:
Subject: Re: Survey link post
Dear Roger,
I am sorry for not replying earlier. You have raised a very valid point. We are aware of methodological issues, one of which is dealing with repeated replies.
When we published the surveys, we had two options:
a) Use the provision offered by the hosting company to block repeated replies using IP addresses. This, however, will block legitimate use of the same computer, such as in our laboratory, where numerous participants use the same PCs.
b) Not to block multiple replies and allow for the possibility of repeated replies when evaluating the data.
We chose option b), which was more practical in our situation.
———————————
In other words, it was “more practical” to allow multiple replies by the same respondent (an allowance highl likely to be exploited), than to disallow a few who share a computer.
McIntyre also points out:
“And why would he be trying to accommodate respondents from their own laboratory? What business do they have filling out the survey in the first place? I wonder how many responses came from his own university? And how many of the fake responses?”
I don’t know how dim Lewandowsky is, but he can’t possibly be so dim not to know what McIntyre is referring to with the phrase “fake data”.
Lewondowsky is behaving like a lout.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 10, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Hey Lew: Bring it. Wear kevlar. You’ll need it.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 10, 2012 at 4:02 pm
PS: I find such thinly veiled threats from the likes of Lewendowsky immensely humorous. [Sorry, had to snip that one. ~dbs, mod.]
***********************************************************************************
I’m very interested to see how the WUWT moderators will handle this…
[Thanks, fixed. ~ dbs, mod.]
Anthony,
If you think that anyone could consider you to not believe in the link between smoking and cancer, how do you think we feel here at the Galileo Movement being branded anti-Semitic when our own families are Jewish!
We placed the following text on the Lewandowsky’s article to help try and defend our organisation.
“The Galileo Movement is horrified that the fabricated smear by the SMH suggesting The Galileo Movement as anti-Semitic is still being reported and referred to as fact.
Anti-Semitism is alien to The Galileo Movement which is made up of a group of unpaid volunteers having a single, published purpose – to rid Australia of the ‘The Carbon Dioxide Tax’, its derivatives and the means by which such negative, economic and socially destructive legislation may be reintroduced.
Both the Directors of the Galileo Movement have the credentials to dismiss any challenge of them having anti-Semitic opinions or attitudes having strong Jewish association, including John’s wife being a Holocaust survivor.
Again, this smear can only be seen as an attempt to discredit the work that The Galileo Movement has done in exposing the anti-scientific nature of the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument.”
@ur momisugly [Sorry, had to snip that one. ~dbs, mod.]
********************************************************
No problem. I think the point was made. Have a nice day. 🙂
DirkH says:
September 10, 2012 at 11:51 am
Lewandowsky … what gave him the idea that Pielke Jr. is a climate skeptic?
______
Bravo.
The problem with Dr. Lewandowsky (or whoever their mod is), they don’t realize what snipping a single word does – they would have been better having an SkS moment (re-word the ENTIRE message to make themselves look good).
When a message is left that says “As I’ve mentioned at Climate Audit, the substantive issue is the reliance on…data in the survey”, it makes people want to fill in the blank themselves.
The moderator didn’t help much, in fact, made it worse – “Please refrain from accusations of dishonesty (snipped) in this venue”.
So now we know it went something like this “As I’ve mentioned at Climate Audit, the substantive issue is the reliance on (insert your own accusations of dishonesty here) data in the survey.”
So I can say that Dr. Lewandowsky is a real (snip).
Message to those that advocate for action on climate change:
There is no well-funded well-organized denial machine; belief in such against the overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary is paramount to belief in an actual Ark that Noah built and housed EVERY living land animal on the planet during a global flood (belief in something without a shred of physical evidence) or that creation and evolution are mutually exclusive concepts (buying into a false dilemma). [Sorry for the Biblical reference, for the record, I’m a Christian that happens to believe in both creation and evolution or to be more exact: creation by evolution (the life part anyway).]
Just because skeptics don’t agree with you doesn’t mean there’s something flawed within their psyche.
It’s really more a matter of crossing a convincing personal evidentiary threshold for acceptance as well established reality.
The simple truth of the matter is that if one wants global warming to be anthropogenic and catastrophic then ones threshold for evidence is lower than someone that doesn’t. If ones importance (or personal finances) in the grand scheme of things increases with increased perceived danger from climate change then ones threshold for accepting evidence of potential risks from climate change decreases.
I’m convinced we landed on the moon.
I’m convinced the world has warmed since pre-industrial times.
I’m not convinced the warming is primarily anthropogenic even though, admittedly, there is some supporting evidence. Since I don’t particularly want the warming to be man’s fault nor does the warming being man’s fault increase my wallet or stroke my ego, my personal evidentiary threshold has not been met with the paltry evidence presented thus far.
I’m not convinced the warming will necessarily be catastrophic even though, admittedly, there is some supporting evidence (if you call what basically amounts to the guesses of those experts most to gain from the perception that it is necessarily catastrophic evidence). Since I don’t particularly want the warming to be catastrophic nor does the warming being catastrophic increase my wallet or stroke my ego, my personal evidentiary threshold requires more evidence.
Similarly, I’m not convinced there’s extraterrestrials (UFO’s) visiting the planet even though there’s some evidence to support it. While the vastness of the universe certainly supports the notion that life may exist out there somewhere, it also minimizes the chances of being noticed and there’s also the possibility that Earth is uniquely life bearing even among a near infinite number of other planets just as there’s only one 42 amongst an infinite number of whole numbers (as far as we know).
Among the many things I find both interesting and amusing is the emails didn’t come from Lewendowsky, but from one of his assistants (and entirely unsolicited, btw). Lewendowsky even admits this, but the professor can’t seem to understand that when you search for an email sent by ‘Lewendowsky,’ you won’t find it when it was in fact, sent by someone else. The email apparently doesn’t contain the word ‘Lewendowsky.’
What does this tell us about the good professor?
I guess I’m a nutter now, but I just realized that Freddie Mercury was either a time traveler or precognitive. Hehehe.
“Steve walks wearily down the street …”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQRfBAzSzo?rel=0&w=560&h=315%5D
I’m sure this post was supposed to be titled “The Daily Lew Spew”
or maybe “Lew’s Spew”
how about “Lew Spews Few at you…….. whew!”
Read the questions in your duplicate survey, and I believe the phrase I was looking for, to address the surveys original creator; is in fluent estuary English the rhetorical “You’re ‘avin a larf, en’cha?”
Lewandowsky has produced a piece of work that might cause first year social science undergraduates to blush with shame.
So here they are:
Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)
It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I’d like to see:
1. What was sent to them.
2. What the response was.
“he replied to the initial contact” could mean anything from an autoresponse (I’m on holidays…) to a request for additional information (that itself wasn’t responded to).
Richard Courtney and Mickey Reno:
Yes, I agree the smoking question is at the heart of what is wrong with the survey as Steve McIntyre has pointed out. I also agree that scientifically literate responders would understand the poor wording of the question wrt the actual link between smoking and causes of cancer. My point (obviously poorly made) is that this survey was not aimed at scientifically literate responders but was seeking an emotional/ gut response from “conspiracy theorists”, and arguing the toss about smoking/ lung cancer, however objectively and rationally, takes the emphasis off how bad the survey and its interpretation was, and allows The Lew to claim that skeptics really do deny the risks of smoking.
Over and out.
Ken Stewart (aka kenskingdom)
The questionnaire’s questions are simplistic to the point of being meaningless.
I smoked around 30 unfiltered cigarettes per day for over 50 years, but after moving to London(UK) after most of a lifetime lived in rural and small-town NZ, After a few years there I became quite concerned about the air quality so I quit smoking. Sniffing and tasting avgas from jets passing overhead every minute in daylight hours, on average, was the game-changer for me, and reading the mortality figures for non-smokers in Greater London compared with rural areas helped me decide to stop. I have always believed that cigarette smoke is only one of many possible causal factors for lung cancer.
Since returning to NZ, I greatly appreciate the vastly superior quality of the air we breathe here..
Dr Lewendowsky not only exhibits all the attributes of of a charlatan but also demonstrates the intellectual vacuity of his acolytes.
Kudos to Tom Curtis for calling Lewendowsky’s nonsense as he saw it!
The reaction to the Sister Souljah moment comment is being misinterpreted. Souljah said a very bad thing. No question about it. The SJ moment came when Clinton called her on it, and rightly so, and was the first SJM. We are a few good scientists away from having a Sister Souljah Moment regarding Gleick – a condemnation of Gleick and his self-cratering activity involving the Heartland Institute. Had they done so it would absolutely have been a Sister Souljah Moment. It is a shunning of the offender, not any approval for Sister Souljah. If anything it is a reminder of how she earned this dishonor.
In fact, the exact opposite of a Sister Souljah Moment is a Peter Gleick Moment where an egregious act has occurred and no thunderous condemnation from his support community followed.
There should probably be a Peter Gleick Moment page on wikipedia as a taunt to those to ignore the elephant in the room.
don’t miss the chance to vote for “Climate Prat of the Year” at Pointman’s — Prof. Lewandowsky is coming on strong although Julia Gillard is still in the lead. There are several (un)worthy candidates!
fwiw my vote was for PM Gillard, because as a head of state she is in position to do so much ongoing damage with her carbon tax, etc. I’m American and this poll is Australian-focused but still of interest to all who care about truth, justice, and the American Way.
CA thread “vote for Climate Prat of the Year at Pointman’s blog
p.s. correction, the “CA thread” at beginning of hyperlink is a mistake, an accidental leftover from a prior post with a hyperlink, sorry. Also, I said the poll is Australia-oriented bc I was thinking about Gillard, Lewandosky, and Flannery, but Peter Gleick and Jim Hansen are also finalists, as is Naomi Oreskes, so North America is well represented among the dismal options.
You can get the details from the Climate Audit post on the subject. What appears to be the full exchange between the assistant and Dr. Pielke Jr has been posted by Steve McIntyre in the thread, including the original email.
If that’s representative of what was emailed to the other recipients, I’m not surprised that most didn’t respond. The original email looks too much like a scam – a link with inadequate explanation of what it is for (and no mention of Prof Lewandowsky by name, which is why all of them initially denied receiving the survey).
I am not disagreeing with you, but I was wondering what death causing disease termination point do you find “pretty”. Now days, most death by disease, ends with heavy narcotics. In fact, it’s use will mercifully speed the process up. It is hard to witness anyone dying of any disease, but in N.A. – we all die of two causes: Heart disease or Cancer. No one gets out alive. GK