Conspiracy-Theorist Lewandowsky Tries to Manufacture Doubt
By Steve McIntyre
As CA readers are aware, Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia recently published an article relying on fraudulent responses at stridently anti-skeptic blogs to yield fake results.
In addition, it turns out that Lewandowsky misrepresented explained variances from principal components as explained variances from factor analysis, a very minor peccadillo in comparison. In a recent post, I observed inconsistencies resulting from this misdescription, but was then unable to diagnose precisely what Lewandowsky had done. In today’s post, I’ll establish this point.
Rather than conceding the problems of his reliance on fake/fraudulent data and thanking his critics for enabling him to withdraw the paper, Lewandowsky has instead doubled down by not merely pressing forward with publication of results relying on fake data, but attempting to “manufacture doubt” about the validity of criticisms, including his most recent diatribe – to which I respond today.
In a post several days ago, I temporarily considered other issues in the Lewandowsky article beyond the reliance on fake responses, reporting on my then progress in trying to replicate results – not easy since his article omitted relevant methodological information. Separate from this, Roman Mureika and I (but especially Roman) have made further progress in trying to replicate the SEM steps – more on this later.
I reported a puzzle about explained variance results as reported in Lewandowsky’s article – results that could not be replicated using a standard factor analysis algorithm. Roman Mureika also tried to figure out the discrepancy without success. I pointed out that Lewandowsky’s factor analysis did not seem to have much effect on the downstream results where the real problems lay.
The reason why we were unable to replicate Lewandowsky’s explained variance from factor analysis was that his explained variance results were not from factor analysis, but from the different (though related) technique of principal components, a technique very familiar to CA readers.
The clue to reverse engineering this particular Lewandowsky misrepresentation came from a passim comment in Lewandowsky’s blog in which he stated:
Applied to the five “climate science” items, the first factor had an eigenvalue of 4.3, representing 86% of the variance. The second factor had an eigenvalue of only .30, representing a mere 6% of the variance. Factors are ordered by their eigenvalues, so all further factors represent even less variance.
Eigenvalues are a term that arise from singular value (“eigen”) decomposition SVD. As an experiment, I did a simple SVD of the correlation matrix – the first step in principal components, a technique used in principal components and was immediately able to replicate this and other Lewandowsky results, as detailed below. Lewandowsky’s explained variance did not come from the factors arising from factor analysis, but from the eigenvectors arising from principal components. No wonder that we couldn’t replicate his explained variances.
But instead of conceding these results, Lewandowsky fabricated an issue regarding the number of retained eigenvectors in this analysis, a point that I had not taken issue and which did not affect the criticism, as I’ll detail.
Please read the rest here: Conspiracy-Theorist Lewandowsky Tries to Manufacture Doubt
As a side show note, here’s a window into the mind of Professor Lewandowsky:
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Too much hair on the head, not enough on the chin. He cannot possibly be a Climate Scientist!!
(I am posting this again, as the quote I included disappeared within its brackets)
The quote below from Lewandowsky can only come from someone who is very consciously pulling the leg of his readers:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskySEM.html
“Now you know why the title of our paper was “NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.” We put the “(climate)” in parentheses before “science” because the association between conspiracist ideation and rejection of science was greater for the other sciences than for climate science.”
The guy is trolling with abandon. There is no other way to interpret this statement about parenthetical marks that exclude what they supply.
That video is amazing. It is like an Onion skit but the punchline is that he is a real person.
Ah, nah. *This* is a much more insightful gaze into the mind of Stephan Lewandowsky. The free-floating, pompous pretension is clearly evident here:
….Lady in Red
I watched the video and the bit on banking, I concluded that I AM a conspiracy theorist. When I looked at Cap and Trade, I see the only folks that win in that game are the traders and the big industrial corporations who get free allowances. They win at the expense of everyone else, even the environment. Who knew?
Not about the analysis, which I haven’t read yet, but about the video. Psychiatrist heal thyself is what springs to mind. He seems to be completely deluded. It’s a wonder his minder lets him out in public.
FWIW, Diana was killed by a drunk driver, Sadam only had a few, possibly useless WMDs, NASA put men on the moon, and not just the once, smoking increases lung cancer risk, all my children are vaccinated, 9/11 was committed by a bunch of religious zealots (look in the mirror prof), I have no opinion on the Kennedy assassination other than it looked a bit amateur, homeopathy is even more wacko than CAGW (which at least is a severe overestimation of humanity’s capability of influencing the climate), and organic food is for hippies. I think I might have missed a few, but I’m sure you get the picture.
More to the point, however, is the logical fallacy in the assumption that if someone believes a whole bunch of outré theories then nothing that believe can be true. Utter tosh from start to finish.
I don’t know if poor Dr. Lewandowsky has a wife….? …but, at minimum, he needs a handler, to dress him, style him, help him appear less creepy in public….
….and, most definitely, collar and cage him so he doesn’t make too many more of these little YouTube jewels into the secrets of the workings of his mind…
I hope that someone is making an archive of these gems (however many there are). They will be valuable for understanding the state of climate “science” a generation from now.
…Lady in Red
Just when you thought nobody could shoot themselves in the feet like climate scientists do, they get henchmen like that!
Lewandowsky chose the wrong words to use as a headline at his blog. Recall the concluding paragraphs of my 9/11/12 WUWT guest post about the ‘OTHER’ problem with Lewandowsky’s paper ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/11/the-other-problem-with-the-lewandowsky-paper-and-similar-skeptic-motivation-analysis-core-premise-off-the-rails-about-fossil-fuel-industry-corruption-accusation/):
” …. accusation that skeptic scientists are paid to manufacture doubt about man-caused global warming. It certainly appears that what we have instead is around two decades of efforts by enviro-activists to manufacture doubt about the credibility of the skeptics. So, how many more attempts to smear skeptics can be thrown on this pile before the whole thing collapses?”
This guy is scary.
If the YouTube link is the face of climate change alarmism, then the skeptics have the argument and public opinion in the bag.
“This guy is a total tool. And actually that is what students in Uni of Western Australia call him – A Tool – he is one of the most disliked “professors” on the campus. And yeah, get a bath and shave you grub.
ivanv1952 ”
The above is from the comments on yet another youtube diatribe by Lewandowsky. Telling, if even his students have this opinion.
Lewandowsky publishes a POS paper, but then defends his assertions, not by talking about IT, but by talking about an anecdotal instance of one person’s criticism of him in the Aussie media? This guy is, in my Internet Opinion (IO) going nuts, but yet perfectly represents an entire class of academic chicken littles in today’s society.
Here’s what Edmund Burke wrote in 1790 about “men of letters” in France just as the reign of terror was cranking up. I have added a few comments in square brackets, and added emphasis is mine.:
“Lewandowsky” will become a noun, an adjective and a verb, and they won’t be a positive ones.
“Brazen disregard for science” !!! Projection?
Lewandowsky illustrates the principle that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, even with the best statistical techniques and a ton of hand-waving.
Lewandowsky always dreamed of being a climate scientist like Michael Mann!… He’s dreaming too.
I listened to “evita” again recently (so sue me, I adore Webber) and a little snipped of the lyrics struck me as exactly the kind of thinking that is going through the head of Lewandowsky and his co-conspirators these days.
sung by Juan Peron:
“It’s annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause
The inconvenience of having to get a majority;
If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause
There are other ways of establishing – Authority.”
If this guy is not going to be sidelined by the UWA then all his colleagues will be tainted by association. If they don’t take action they will be guilty by association.
You, Sir are an absolute wanker with no clue whatsoever. Give up science and consider a career in comedy.
The title of McIntyre’s article is ‘Conspiracy-Theorist Lewandowsky Tries to Manufacture Doubt’.
That title could be adapted by substituting in Naomi Oreskes which would make it useful to describe her anti-skeptic smear job. She feverishly tried to manufacture doubt about skeptics in her fanatical konspiracy (intentionally misspelled to avoid WP filters) theory book ‘The Merchants of Doubt’.
John
The case of Jan Hendrik Schön (a physicist who worked for Bell Labs) comes to mind.
(from Wikipedia)
In 2001 he was listed as an author on an average of one newly published research paper every eight days.
[…]
Professor Lydia Sohn, then of Princeton University, noticed that two [of his] experiments carried out at very different temperatures had identical noise.
[This led to an investigation]
[…]
The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. According to Schön the files were erased because his computer had limited hard drive space. In addition, all of his experimental samples had been discarded, or damaged beyond repair.
[…]
On September 25, 2002, the committee publicly released its report… They found that whole data sets had been reused in a number of different experiments. They also found that some of his graphs, which purportedly had been plotted from experimental data, had instead been produced using mathematical functions.
In the video listen to his tone when he talks about ‘the Climate Deniers’
Swap the aussie accent, and replace climate deniers with dissidents and recall a period in the last century which many pschologist would choose to forget.
I am a member if the public with views and opinions and a life, that does not revolve around climate science, but to actually hear an academic reduce someone to a label of ‘a climate denier’ is actually quite shocking
Wow, just wow. I watched and couldn’t convince myself that he was truly being serious. But he was and is – I was shaking my head in disbelief.
James Padgett – the punchline is that he is a (tenured???) professor. Cripesamighty. If he’s a professor then Western civilisation really is screwed, just not because of AGW.
Bob Tisdale
-to “Lewandowsky” a result?
-to Lew (skew) data so that your prejudices are always confirmed by your results.
-to perform a “Lewandowsky analyses” – that is to perform a statistical technique that is actually different from the one reported in your method.
When combined with the universally accepted climate science method of “the Trick” (TM) and the typical techniques of “shrinkage” (TM) – decreasing the sample size to only include data that fit the desired outcome. Any pro-AGW paper is guaranteed peer review, multiple citations, plaudits in the press and instant access to the gravy train.
Lewandowsky the man who put the “posterior” in posterity. I typed that without moving my eyebrows – it can’t be a conspiracy, it must be true.