The Daily Lew

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:

Lewandowsky’s real finding: warmist professors more likely to believe in faked data | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

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:

Steve McIntyre finds Lewandowsky’s paper is a “landmark of junk science” « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax

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.

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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.

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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)

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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.