UPDATE: For all you angry taunting types (Stoat aka William M. Connolley for example) that claim that this post represents a claim of conspiracy theory itself (hint: try to find the word in the post) you might want to register you participation in the original in the census here – Anthony
There’s a lot that has been going on behind the scenes with the Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky “moon landing paper” affair. It turns out that Dr. Lewandowsky is part of a larger association that I dub the Cook-Lewandowsky Social-Internet Link.
You see it turns out that all that serial deleting of comments when Steve McIntyre asked some simple questions about how some blog responders might have “faked” responses in Lewandowsky’s survey, thus rendering it useless for the conclusion, had a root in the behavior seen on John Cook’s main website, Skeptical Science. Poptech has just published a scathing review of the intolerance for debate/questions there. I found this one comment he posted as stunning:
“Exit strategy for the Meet the Denominator thread: Do we have one? […] Poptech is indefatigable …Against such an adversary traditional methodologies are doomed to impasse. This makes the thread the Skeptical Science version of Afghanistan (substitute with many other protracted losing campaigns). I say we let Rob write up a closing synopsis …but giving Skeptical Science the last word. And lock the thread & throw away the key.” – Daniel Bailey [Skeptical Science], February 18, 2011
John Cook opines:
“[O]ne of the moderators flagged Poptech as a spammer and that deleted EVERY comment he ever posted off all the comments threads.” – John Cook [Skeptical Science], October 11, 2011
“[W]e should have a blanket ban of any mention of Poptech in any SkS blog posts – not give him any oxygen.” – John Cook [Skeptical Science], March 21, 2012
We have our troublemakers on WUWT as well, and I’ve banned a few, and I understand this is sometimes neccessary, but this sort of intolerant behavior when it comes to debating facts in evidence has surfaced again recently with Steve McIntyre’s straightforward questions to Dr. Lewandowsky. See Lewandowsky Censors Discussion of Fake Data:
Comment didnt last long.
There’s a curiosity about the time stamp, it appears to have been edited server side or perhaps Steve submitted the comment twice and the second one was deleted and the first one snipped. We can’t be sure, but it is clear that on that thread, wholesale intolerance for questions about the methodology of the Lewandowsky “moon landing paper” were the norm as many other commenters had their comments snipped or removed in asking similar questions. It is a green sea of “moderator response”.
There’s even identical language in the deletion between Skeptical Science and Lewandowsky’s thread:
Shub at Bishop Hill on identical language from mods at Lewandowsky blog and at SkS
[emphasis added]
at Lewandowsky’s “ShapingTomorrowsWorld”:
Moderator Response: As an FYI, compliance with the Comments Policy of this site is non-negotiable; moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.
at Skeptical Science:
“…Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.”
Now here’s the surprise, and the reason for the post title. The website URL for that Lewandowsky thread is: http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/news.php?p=1&t=210&&n=159
Who runs shapingtomorrowsworld.org ? This public domain information shows who:
http://whois.domaintools.com/shapingtomorrowsworld.org
Yes John Cook is the administrator for Lewandowsky’s outlet at shapingtomorrowsworld.org. So, given what happens on his own blog, where there’s serial deletion of comments, and even post facto modification of comments later without the commenters knowledge, it really should not surprise anyone to find that same sort of behavior going on at the Lewandowsky thread when difficult direct questions are asked.
What is even more interesting is that it appears to be a University of Western Australia owned domain, as this little note at the top of the report tells us:
What other domains is Cook associated with? There’s the next surprise. Again, this is public domain information available to anyone who cares to look:
http://whois.domaintools.com/climaterapidresponse.org
Yes, John Cook also runs the Climate Science Rapid Response Team website that marshalls over 135 climate scientists into action whenever there is an outbreak of difficult to answer climate questions posed by skeptics.
It also turns out, that Stephan Lewandowsky is John Cook’s academic advisor:
According to the SkS private forum, Cook and Lewandowsky are very close. One of the forum participants, Tom Dayton, described his background as follows:
Then my PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, where I briefly crossed paths with Steve Lewandowsky, John Cook’s current academic advisor and coauthor while he was a visiting professor.
That’s quite a little activist organization they have running out of the University of western Australia. I wonder if UWA officials realize the extent that UWA has become a base for this global climate activism operation and if they condone it?
It also begs the question of who’s paying the bills? Cook hasn’t produced anything recently in his chosen field of a cartoonist that I am aware of, and it appears he’s fully engaged in climate now.
[This post was edited for clarity about 45 minutes after it was first published – Anthony]
UPDATE: Steve McIntyre reports the survey was also distributed on the UWA campus. He writes:
Some information from sources at the University of Western Australia. On October 21, 2010, the following email was sent to the UWA staff mailing list:
UWA researcher Charles Hanich is seeking participants for a web-based survey of attitudes towards climate science (and other sciences) and skepticism. The survey carries no risks for participants. To participate in the survey please use this link:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HKLJIN_61fa37b2
Completion should take less than 10 minutes and all data will be analyzed anonymously and without monitoring or identifying individual responses.
Ref: RA/4/1/4007
[Notice approved by:
Human Research Ethics Committee,
Research Services, University of Western Australia ]
For some strange reason, the invitation is online at a web aggregator here. (I Googled the survey id.)
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From time to time she suffers DoS attacks, etc. It’s fine now.
[typo fixed in article, thanks ~moderator]
On the Cook post-edited and KGB-type handling of inconvenient and embarrassing posts on all of those websites (Cooked book websites?). Doesn’t that mean they should all get listed on the right sidebar with that other totally unreliable web site (SKS)? That way, they might be found in a websearch engine when someone types in “unreliable climate”?
Time to start placing those heavily stomped and propagandized website utterings of Lewdy Lew and his false prophet buddy, globally cooked down under Cook into the searches of the world as bad science profs.
Maybe, UWA will finally realize that this crowd are really bad for the public image and future alumni fundings that maybe UWA will get some backbone and clean up their climate religion propaganda cesspools?
I just had another comment deleted (no explanation given) on SKS. I used dana1981’s own words from his article to ask 3 questions. This is the third time it has happened. IMO they have no room for dissenting views on the site. dana1981 is crying about “his side” (pro AGW) not getting fair treatment in the press. The gist of the article is how folks must act to get the government to act on AGW. The first article he said the media was trying to be “balanced” when they used (i think John Cristy) to present the other side. The new article uses “fake balance” to blame the media. I guess it’s blame the messenger not the message in his view. TIA
Bob says:
September 12, 2012 at 7:41 pm
I find it courious that Lewandowsky could not come up with data supporting his imaginary 97% consensus. To remedy this, he decided to make up his own data using an obvious bogus survey, and get it published. Who should this embarrass more, Lewandowsky or the journal that agreed to publish his moronic work?
———————————————————————————————————-
These people are like a 600 pound nudist; The only one who is embarrassed are the ones who look at them.
hypergeometric says:
September 12, 2012 at 9:25 pm
“This kind of guilt-by-association using Internet registries is hilarious. That someone’s name and contact information appear means next to nothing. They might even be forged. You ate also implying control where all you have is a name associated with a Web property buy. There is little forensic evidence here, none that would stand up in court, and little that passes the straight face test.”
Interesting that the doubt-spreaders are trying to quarantine Cook from Lew.
Lewandowsky is clearly going down; his reputation is already ruined.
I guess the Rapid Response team are scared of going down with him.
I remember when RealClimate was the go-to blog for closed-minded climate catastrophists. Any scientific question was met with “go to RealClimate”… until it crashed and burned by way of partisan moderation.
Will SkS go the same way?
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/bio.php?u=23
Does that help your straight face test regarding their association?
Lewandowsky can’t debate climate science because he doesn’t understand it. He believes that to question, to doubt, to be skeptical is wrong. Lewandowsky is an enemy of the scientific method. He is Dr. Propaganda himself.
The Lewandowsky method is to take a viewpoint he disagrees with and rather than debating the evidence for the viewpoint, he puts up an analogy and debates that as if that were the subject under discussion.
Lewandowsky is the king of the straw man analogy.
Donald Woerd says:
September 12, 2012 at 11:25 pm
re: Kevin Judd, he definitely seems to be the other key player along with Lewandowsky, and they are closely tied to SkepticalScience:
http://www.uwa.edu.au/climate-science/news/media
I don’t know what Kevin Judd may or may not be a “whiz” in but his article about climate models and “predictions” shows an overweening confidence in models that few of even the IPCC’s most fervent defenders would claim (I thought we were told that the IPCC doesn’t claim such definite “predictions” anyway??):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Confidence-in-climate-forecasts.html
“The survey carries no risks for participants”
But quite a few for the authors.. 🙂
As Cook is a ‘Team ‘ wannabe this is hardly surprising, and you only have to see his efforts over Mann’s book to see how very desperately he wants in . Sadly for Cook ‘the Team ‘ is a rather exclusive outfit under and he can kiss rear as much as he like but he will very be truly ‘one of them’
fyi, I haven’t seen it mentioned but Lewandowsky has moderator privileges at SkepticalScience — he is clearly the “SL” in the moderator responses on this thread because the first person “I” refers to the article and SL’s specious comparison of the future to driving into a brick wall at 80 kph (of course if the choice is hit a brick wall at 80 kph or enjoy “economic rewards” of drastically changing our economies then it’s an easy choice, but both sides of that comparison are highly tendentious at best):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Long-Term-Certainty.html
Here is how Australian John Cook changed career from web cartoonist to CAGW media spin doctor(?). From his own old web site: http://cartoons.sev.com.au/The-Pits/Global-warming/p446
“Smarter than experts
Due to bandwidth and server load issues, you need to subscribe to access cartoons archived over 24 months ago (sorry, it was that or close the site down). Subscription costs are AUD$15.00 (around 9 Euros or $11USD) for 12 months. ”
“There’s a Ig Nobel prize winning paper with the beautifully worded title “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. It led to an effect, named after it’s authors, called the Dunning Kruger effect. The paper basically shows that incompetent people lack the competence to rate their own skill level. Consequently, they have an inflated view of how good they are. You see it every year on the American Idol auditions. I also see it in global warming debates, where layman skeptics somehow think they more about climate than all the climate scientists who have spent their lifetime studying and publishing research on climate. The winning punchline was submitted by feyanne. There were 21 finalist punchlines chosen for this cartoon. This cartoon was archived on 2009-10-24.”
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
Ivor Ward
John Cook was promoted to “Research Fellow in climate communications at the Global Change Institute” at the University of Queensland http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/AboutUs/OurStories/MrJohnCook.aspx
A quote: “John is now working to bring together research into effectively countering misinformation. He says while some work has been carried out, no one has brought it altogether. “I’m trying to pull it all together and come up with practical guidelines.” Since he first entered the climate science debate, John says it is now moving in a more positive direction. “In Australia, it now seems to be shifting towards solutions and carbon pricing. That’s a positive step.” He says it helps that both major political parties publicly accept the idea of climate change. “That means we’re looking at the best solution rather than still arguing about the science.”
This seems to be the announcement in Feb. 2011 that the Climate group at UWA was about to launch the blog “ShapingTomorrowsWorld” in conjunction with SkS — it doesn’t mention a blog name but Lewandowsky chimes in at the bottom and describes what seems to be his conception of STW (and John Cook registered the domain shapingtomorrowsworld.org in the name of Lewandowsky on Feb. 21, 2011:
Voicing values and climate change
Posted on 9 February 2011 by Mark Edwards
A short piece for the general audience of RTR radio, Perth, Australia.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Voicing-values-and-climate-change.html
….. [visit link for complete text] ….
concluding remarks [Mark Edwards]:
anthony, not sure if u realise your old friend is Director of the Global Change Institute at QUT, as well as a Professor of Marine Science:
University of Queensland Global Change Institute
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
Global Change Institute – Director
Inaugural Director of the GCI and Professor of Marine Science, at The University of Queensland (UQ), Ove is deeply motivated by a desire to communicate science effectively; to undertake game-changing research; and to find high-impact solutions to address several of the most pressing and serious challenges facing humanity worldwide, such as climate change, food security, clean energy and population growth.
http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/AboutUs/OurPeople.aspx
ove’s awards keep coming, the Smart State Premier Fellow is a recent goodie:
Australian Govt: Australian Research Council: 2012 Australian Laureate Recipient: PROFESSOR OVE HOEGH-GULDBERG
Ove has received numerous awards including the Queensland Smart State’s Premier Fellow, the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research, the Thomson Reuters’ ISI Highly Cited Researcher award, the Wesley College Foundation Medal, the UCLA Distinguished Scholar Award and the Whitley Certificate of Commendation for the book The Great Barrier Reef. He was a member of the Royal Society’s Working Group on Ocean Acidification and a founding member of the Australian Climate Group, now Climate Scientists Australia.
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/FL12/OVE%20HOEGH-GULDBERG.pdf
whereas Cook is pretty much a regular Fellow:
University of Queensland Global Change Institute
Mr John Cook
Family row spawns quest to debunk climate myths
An argument with his father- in-law sparked Skeptical Science creator John Cook’s passion for debunking climate science myths.
“We had a long discussion where he said it was a hoax and global warming wasn’t happening”, says John, now a Research Fellow in climate communications at the Global Change Institute.
“At the end of the conversation he gave me a speech by a US Republican senator which gave all his arguments about why it was a hoax. I started researching it and found all his arguments were the opposite of what the science was saying. I started building a database at first for the next family meal. Then it became a bit of a hobby.”
http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/AboutUs/OurStories/MrJohnCook.aspx
hypergeometric says:
September 12, 2012 at 9:25 pm
“This kind of guilt-by-association using Internet registries is hilarious. That someone’s name and contact information appear means next to nothing. They might even be forged. ”
But Lewandowsky’s internet survey is research? Of a quality as the taxpayer who funds it can expect? I don’t think so. Or are you trying to safe Cook while throwing Lewandowsky under the bus?
This smells exactly like the web in europe with potsdam. There are very few people globally controlling the message. It is a scandal and dishonest activism disguised as science.
(Lewandowsky) The professor/teacher has lost their true and honest purpose when the become the propagandist whose methods are designed to shut down the human mind.
Exposing John Cook’s lack of an ethical moral compass — YAWN. But please do keep it up. IMO any person who supports his argument with “Cooked”-up articles should be ignored.
“That’s quite a little activist organization they have running out of the University of western Australia. I wonder if UWA officials realize the extent that UWA has become a base for this global climate activism operation and if they condone it?”
I don’t really like the thinking behind this kind of comment. It implies people (that we happen to disagree with) should have their freedom of speech curtailed by some backdoor means. We see this kind of thinking a lot from Team AGW and I don’t think we should stoop to the same kind of thinking.
the thick plottens…
Brilliant, Robert. Says it all.
Ryan says:
September 13, 2012 at 3:17 am
Ryan, I think it’s about the purpose(s) of universities and whether any lines can and should be drawn between research and teaching about research vs. propaganda for a cause. Especially with publicly funded operations, taxpayers in any country have every right to monitor and be concerned about potential sectarian, activist, and/or propagandistic uses of their funds. We can be sure there would not be this kind of funding for the “freedom of speech” of “skeptical” bloggers, but it does appear that public funds have found their way to Lewsandowsky’s activist blog for “the cause” and also probably to John Cook and SkS to the extent they are providing support operations….. that is a legitimate public concern for taxpayers of that country. Other observers are free (our freedom of speech) to raise the matter, although of course we do not get a vote on the politicians who are enabling this specific instance.
Intriguing Anthony.
You have decided that SkS is an unreliable site – you list it as such in a sidebar. Then you devote an entire post to trying to read the tea-leaves on what Steve Lewandowsky’s paper means and ‘links’ to John Cook etc.
Thanks for all the extra traffic by the way.
You might care to do an analysis of the posts at SkS and how many do not carry the John Cook byline. The author community over there is rich, deep and thriving. Why? Because there is a large community of people who are concerned about the issues, want to express opinions based on a deep understanding of the science and communicate that to others.
Various commenters here have mentioned the moderation policy at SkS. Very simply, that policy. enforced by the community, is based on several things. Aggresion, insults to others, abusive language is off-limits. Political comment is off-limits – boring as! Endlessly off-topic comments are off-limits. If a thread is about subject A, there is a low tolerance of discussing subject B. If you want to discuss subject B, move it to that thread. There is a low tolerance for unsubstantiated statements. References, citations etc are required.
Also there is a low tolerance of statements that contradict the published rebuttals on the site without addressing the substance of those rebuttals. Not because there is a problem with people disputing the rebuttals – there isn’t. Dispute the rebuttals by all means – that will be freely accepted and discussed. However using a general thread to dispute a published rebuttal isn’t generally accepted. The moderators will gently, and then more forcefully redirect discussion to the relevant thread. Similarly posters who engage in web-search ‘dumps’ will be given little latitude. Stick to the point, give references for claims and don’t run-away-at-the-mouth.
Mention has been made here of PopTech. Poptech has a track record of flooding threads with multiple voluminous posts. Overwhelming the thread and distracting from the capacity of other participants to contribute is discouraged. If the Poptech’s of the world aren’t capable of mounting a cogent case in anything less that 10,000 characters they are discouraged for the benefit of other participants. That isn’t supression of their views, it is supression of their tendency towards verbal diarrhoea. Yes, the needlessly prolix are discriminated against for the benefit of other participants. No apologies made or needed for that.
Do the Authors at SkS have an agenda? Yes, We want discussion of climate science carried out at the highest level possible, deeply based on the science. Unfortunately we often find that skeptic commenters post opinions based on less understanding of the science and data than one might hope – not all, some are very well informed.
However, when a poster, for example, makes a comment about ‘temperatures haven’t warmed since X’, where they haven’t considered what time scales are meaningful for assessing this, haven’t recognised that they may only be considering warming of the atmosphere which is only 3% of the observed warming in the Earth’s systems, etc etc, what policy should a site take. Should they just let anyone say anything they like? Or should they take the approach that when someone makes a statement that is factually in error (I am not discussing opinion here, just facts) the site has an obligation to make the case to that person about the factual errors they are commiting?
You have a more lenient policy here Anthony, of letting people say what they like with relatively little moderation/site admin involvement in correcting the most egregious errors of fact. SkS does not operate on that basis. We will point out to people when we think they are factually in error while allowing them to make counter arguments. And we have a much lower tolerance of comments about politics, conspiracy theories, hidden agenda’s etc. You may be comfortable with indulging peoples predilection for entertaining such outlandish ideas. We are not. And we do not apologise for that fact. We will discuss science with serious interested parties. The wing-nuts (and unfortunately they are more common than we might like) can go find another forum to haunt.
And no doubt said wing-nuts will go to another forum and complain about how badly they were treated. Meh. Life is too short to concerned about every crank. There are a lot of serious skeptics who want to discuss subjects rationally and civily. Which we do. But don’t expect that skeptic views will be easily accepted. We do reserve the right to apply the blow-torch to them. If a skeptic argument has merit, it should be able to survive the blowtorch.
REPLY: And the shoddy way you treated Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., coupled with the way you treat other scientistists such as Christy and Lindzen, along with your post facto revisionism of comments and issues that don’t paint you in a favorable light shows what your true agenda is. Note I didn’t revise your comment, run strikethorughs though sections of text, edit it or delete it, as SkS has regularly demonstrated. – Anthony