UPDATE: Steve McIntyre has an interesting letter about the Lewandowsky and Cook affair here.
Retraction Watch writes:
Last week, we covered the complicated story of a paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues that had been removed — or at least all but the abstract — from its publisher’s site. Our angle on the story was how Frontiers, which publishes Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, where the study appeared, had handled the withdrawal. It happened without any notice, and no text appeared to let the reader know why the paper had vanished.
Today, Frontiers posted a note to readers on top of the paper’s abstract:
This article, first published by Frontiers on 18 March 2013, has been the subject of complaints. Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated, which is being done as swiftly as possible and which Frontiers management considers the most responsible course of action. The article has not been retracted or withdrawn. Further information will be provided as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
More: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/update-lewandowsky-et-al-paper-on-conspiracist-ideation-provisionally-removed-due-to-complaints/
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Definitely a case of egg on their face. I wonder how they will eventually react to the embarrassment?
Lewandowsky has rapidly managed to make his work about as attractive as a tablespoon of polonium.
You can be a narcissistic rent-seeker with a vast sense of entitlement and moral outrage; or you can be a serious scientist. Not both.
“Tom Curtis writes” to Climate Audit about his troubles accepting the story on SkS hosting the Lew Survey.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/03/tom-curtis-writes/
Complaints from whom?
We all know Lewandowsky’s paper was rubbish, but who actually complained to Frontiers?
Peter Miller says:
April 3, 2013 at 7:22 am
That may simply be a smokescreen; it took them a while to come up with this excuse.
philjourdan says:
April 3, 2013 at 6:54 am
Definitely a case of egg on their face. I wonder how they will eventually react to the embarrassment?
========================================================================
By announcing that they had an extremely thorough investigation that found absolutely nothing wrong with the paper and that we all are indeed conspiracy nuts for challenging the paper.
An amusing comment at Bishop Hill that sums up these papers in a very original way:
“We all know Lewandowsky’s paper was rubbish, but who actually complained to Frontiers?”
—————————–
From Bishop Hill:
When there is so much shakiness about the “science” of AGW, there is no need to seek psychological reasons for people to have their doubts.
“Squirrel!”
@ur momisugly Peter Miller
Frontiers did not state that the complaints were made to them.
Are complaints about academic papers routinely forwarded to the *authors*?
I really don’t know.
Well the Frontier of how far one can push the propaganda before being called out.
But Lewandowsky has won anyway; a few days ago there was a Spiegel article parroting all of his “findings” and citing the paper. All that counts is that the government scientists supply the synchronized media with lies that are believable enough to keep the gravy train rolling.
It is eery that Der Spiegel has brought out their article exactly when first news of the retraction broke. Obviously they were keen to not let it go to waste. I mean, it sat on the shelves for half a year already.
Kudos to Frontiers. Some can quibble about the how, but the fact is they have stood up for integrity in a time when many look the other way thinking the ends justify the means.
pottereaton says:
April 3, 2013 at 7:54 am
You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.
—
They can’t even do that with Marcott.
what good laugh this has turned out to be, but is just about par for the ‘science’ disseminated on the rc.
Old Weird Harold at 9:40: (btw I use to have that Cosby album. Which dates me.)
Yes, but they tried. They schmoozed the glitterati: NYT, Atlantic, etc.
Several bloggers whose straightforward questions about Lewandowsky, Oberauer, and Gignac’s Moon Hoax article, or objections to it, led to their being given “conspiracist” diagnoses in the Recursive Fury article have complained to Frontiers about the paper.
Can someone do me a favor and post a short summary about the current flap? Please address:
Why are people so bent out of shape over at Climateaudit and Bishop Hill’s blog whether the Lewandowsky survey was posted at SkS (or tweeted)?
Who’s going overboard on this? Who’s reacting sensibly on this?
I sort of understand (from http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/03/tom-curtis-writes/#comment-409539) “All he has to do is correct the “eight blogs” in his paper to six” – Sks is one, what the other?
It’s a different topic, but perhaps someone can explain why Marcott produced a FAQ about his paper and released it on RealClimate.
This field is getting as weird as the weather. My wife abandoned her attempt at hiking the Appalachian Trail (dang, I keep typing Trial) because of cold nights and icy trails in Georgia and North Carolina. She’ll try again in a few weeks.
Like the old SOVIET group pictures of their astronauts? Over the years, older pictures were re-issued. Photographically altered to remove the astronauts who died in accidents.
They NEVER, repeat, NEVER admitted any losses. We, of course, lost the one Apollo crew, and two Shuttle crews (that’s 31 people). And never covered it up.
RISKY BUSINESS, space travel.
Max
Ric Werme says:
April 3, 2013 at 10:25 am
…
Why are people so bent out of shape over at Climate Audit and Bishop Hill’s blog whether the Lewandowsky survey was posted at SkS (or tweeted)?
It’s because the “responses” data used to “characterize” the skeptical position as paranoid and leaning toward conspiracy theories didn’t come from responses to the survey linked to any skeptical blog site. Neither SS nor RC are skeptical of the “consensus” view of climate theory and the powerful effects of CO2 forcing advocated by AGW theory, yet that is where the data comes from. Lewandowsky, at best sampled an extremely biased population and his data is likely to be about as reliable as Anthony Watts seems to suspect the USHCN data is.
Steve McIntyre, nor Anthony, Jeff Condon at the Air Vent, Judith Curry, or Lucia at the Blackboard are not skeptical that CO2 may actually contribute some effect to climate changes. They therefore do not fit the “lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorist” model that Lewandosky plainly assumed for the holders of a skeptical position before he ran his survey. Most readers of these blogs hold similar positions and differ primarily in nuance (just how much energy is CO2 really capable of retaining for instance (how long does a CO2 molecule remain excited before re-emission), how long the gas remains resident in the atmosphere, or whether the cooling that CO2 would produce near the Tropopause could offset the potential delay in atmospheric cooling it may cause near the surface, effects of cloud formation, effects of equatorial thunderstorms, etc.). In WUWT’s specific case there is the additional issue data reliability. If the data has developed a systematic bias over the last century, then that bias absolutely needs to carefully measured, before you can even assess how much warming has taken place.
With regard to Doc. Lewandowsky and his assertions about paranoia and conspiracy theorists though, the key lies in the fact that the survey responses are not from a population that can be unequivocally understood as a “skepctical” population in the sense used by AGW faithful. That could only be acquired by providing links on sites like WUWT and CA. So for reliably “skeptical” responses Lewandosky should have stratified his sampling by asking the major skeptical blogs, WUWT, Bishop Hill, Climate Audit … to post the link. With a parallel post in the AGW supporting blogs like SS and RC, and Grant Wood’s blog he would then have vaguely comparable data.
Stratifying a study like this is standard practice in Lewandosky’s own field. The survey unfortunately is biased at its heart by the obvious nature of the questions and permitted response ranges. Even if he had run parallel surveys, the conclusions would have been vulnerable to spoofing, which clearly happened in the responses from AGW blogs he did use.
The problem is that calling attention to that bias actually makes the complainant appear to fall right into that paranoid category.
Ric Werme says:
April 3, 2013 at 10:25 am
Can someone do me a favor and post a short summary about the current flap? Please address:
Why are people so bent out of shape over at Climateaudit and Bishop Hill’s blog whether the Lewandowsky survey was posted at SkS (or tweeted)?
——–
Because the analysis of the probable breakdown of survey respondents (what % were skeptics) is based on an analysis of those who frequent the SkS blog. Without that analysis showing there were likely a significant percentage of skeptical respondents, the results in the paper are meaningless.
As the survey was never posted on the blog, the results are meaningless.
Hi Ric, not sure I know all of the details, but I will have a quick go at the SkS non-posting issue.
The first Lew paper was criticized for not being advertised on skeptic blogs and was defended by saying that SkS had 50% skeptic readers. Not sure if this is true, but then someone checked and could not find a posting on SkS, but Lew and Cook (who controls SkS) insisted that it had been there. The fact that there has been a lot of forensics done which pretty much proves no posting on SkS (Check out Steve McIntyre today), now leaves the question of why this is not accepted by Lew et al. who continue to protest that it was posted there. Once again, it is the cover-up where there appears to be something actually fraudulent, whereas the original paper was merely unethical.
Other people with a deeper knowledge may see other things here, but this is my take on this particular point.
Ric Werme says:
April 3, 2013 at 10:25 am
Can someone do me a favor and post a short summary about the current flap? Please address:
Why are people so bent out of shape over at Climateaudit and Bishop Hill’s blog whether the Lewandowsky survey was posted at SkS (or tweeted)?
——————————
The paper claimed that 8 blogs with a “diverse” opinion were surveyed. The basis of this claim was based on the assertion that 20% of SkS viewership was deniers (which was derived from analyzing their posted comments), and the assumption was made that this ratio was representative of the total (eight) blogs and therefore the survey. However, the link to the survey was never posted on SkS. So their claim is based on a lie.
The Marcott FAQ was put out as a PR damage control move, after Steve McIntyre showed that 20th century uptick could not be produced using the methodology they purported to use. Marcott coined the weasel word “not robust” which is climate-speak for “garbage”, admitting that paper did not support the outrageous claims being made in the media.
My cut at a short summary. Lewandosky et al claim that their survey was posted at places where skeptics would see it and take it. But if it was not posted at SkS, they can’t really make that claim in any form. The remaining places where it was posted are not places where skeptics come much at all, let alone hang out and take surveys.
So what those guys did is say we posted it at places like SkS, where this many skeptics are. The leap in logic is the implication that the other places also have the same kind of mix, but they don’t. So it is completely irrelevant and misleading to give statistics for SkS if that isn’t where they posted it. What they ought to do is give the same statistics for the places where they DID post it. So why don’t they do that? Why indeed?