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 The article has not been retracted or withdrawn.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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Joe: Interesting “human factor” error. I actually was THINKING 7 + 7 + 3 = 17. BUT, I happened to look at the number 31, on a document near me as I was typing. BINGO, I typed “31” (too much time transcribing things in college for non-typists and other reasons..) Amazing, I looked back and had to THINK for a moment to figure out where that 31 came from. Thanks for catching it. Please note, however, we probably never will know exactly how many brave Russians gave their lives for their program, because like the “bad Landowski paper”, they just vanished without a trace!
Lewandowsky et al. Is based on parapsychology?
The Mythbusters have experience polishing turds to a high gloss. The loo crew might want to hire them as consultants.
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/polishing-a-turd-minimyth.htm
“Lewandowsky et al. Is based on parapsychology?”
No it is based on a Soviet Job. Moscow Trials “evidence” are a good ballpark.
They just don’t have state power to finish the job. Yet.
Lewandowsky redux at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/americans-obama-anti-christ-conspiracy-theories
ChrisR….You are talking of US ground crew deaths in tens, I was referring to Soviet ground crew deaths in THOUSANDS,possibly even TENS of thousands. The N1 obliterated the entire launch complex including the family apartment complexes where the engineers and their families had lived, until blown away with their homes in that single launch failure.
The USSR didnt give a shit about its own people.
I would agree to leave that, “at that”.
To Wamron:
Thanks for the information. The worst U.S. ground accident related to space that I
know of was when that Titan missile exploded at a fabrication plant in Arkansas
back in 1965, killing fifty-odd. Before my time, but certainly of a lesser order of
magnitude than your figures.
Thanks for all the summaries about the Lew paper. When news about it came out, I looked at the poll and concluded I had seen it before somewhere. I may have even started filling out out but abandoned it when the questioning turned to conspiracies. So not only should there be doubts based on who saw it, but also the demographics of the people who submitted results.
Wamron says:
April 4, 2013 at 5:18 am
IIRC from reading something about this a couple years ago, the explosion didn’t happen at launch, but during an attempt to fix a problem while skipping the step of draining the fuel tanks first to save time.
Among the victims was the person who made that decision and several of the top scientists and engineers who worked in the space program.
Sorry, I don’t have time this AM to find a link.
Here is another paper about those wacky conspiracy theorists from none other than Regulatory Czar Emeritus, Cass Sunstein…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
Since I am a plain ol, Constitution-believing, not-a-communist democrat, it is easy for me to see what these elitist totalitarians are up to as they strive to pose as regular, American liberals/democrats.
Of all of my friends and family who would also claim to be democrats, most are deceived by these totalitarian. It all began to fall apart, for me, when I took time to look into a few issues, including the global warming issue, several years back. Maybe 8-9 years.
They basically are a cult. They present themselves as the saviours of the world, and the enemy are those who disagree. To sustain a cult, you need to innoculate your members from reason and discourse.
This is where the name-calling and the armchair psychology comes from.
I have gotten into debates abt AGW with liberal friends. I have rad this stuff well, and can hold a pretty good argument beased on actual observations and the principles of science.
If I get into this with a friend, or family member, they resort to the “consensus” argument, and name-calling – I am a fool who has been bought by Big-Oil-funded propaganda. Of course, this is only projection. I know Big Oil is playing both sides of this, so I need to be discerning of any data, and of motives.
For me, the medieval warmingperiod surely seems to have existed, at a fairly global level, and so the hockey stick , however sharp the blade, remains in the range of natural variability on a decent time scale.
This is only logical.
The elitists want to control the planet. I have done extensive reading on this for the past several years. Their ideas don’t change much. The appearance of Darwin helped legitimize the disdain for the poor, who were believed, and are still beleived, to be reproducing too much. This is a theme in elitist literature and reports for a hundred years, solidly.
Tied to this is their idea of over-population. They believe this strongly, and have been on this jag for a hundred years or more. Solidly.
Over-population is supposed to lead to envirinmental catastrophe. This has been a solid plank of the elitist agenda for decades.
In the 1940s, physicist Harrison Brown laid down the model for popular-press appeals of imminent doom, only to be avoided by globallly hading over the keys to a special group of elites.
The Population Bomb of Ehrlich does not look so novel and alarmist if you go read Brown’s works.
However, Brown’s predictions and Ehrlich’s have not been realized. Pollution is bad. Starvation is bad. But their particular view is developed to point to one answer: put us elitists in control of the planet.
Quite a saviour complex – making this a quasi-religion, and about morality and immorality, redeemed and unwashed sinners.
Cults attract by making avg people feel special, and feel that they have a mission, and by painting everyone else as unenlightened, and by placing cognitive kill-switches wherever reason might infiltrate the air-tight cult world.
This is why they need the denier = psychologically deranged meme.
Unfortunately for them, this cannot be shown with normal psychological assessments. Or they would be doing it.
Because skepticism of AGW has a strong reasonable basis, skeptics generally cannot be found to all have the same psychological problem. Therefore, a study that show they do will eventually be found out to have a fatal flaw.
But, the talking point is all that is needed for those cult members who want ot be special, and be redeemers and saviours, versus being headed for doom in sin.
Regarding 9-11 truthers, I really don’t see how they are causing problems, other than disrupting efforts to memorialize those lost on 9-11, and other lousy, but not fatal, efforts. So, let them carry on. Healthy distrust of govt, and movements toward more open govt, cannot be all bad. Sunstein asks whether the govt should lock them up, or infiltrate them to soften their views by inserting some grey into black-and-white thinking. Sunstein’s conspiracy paper never says, ‘just let them carry on, as the jfk conspiracy people do and the fake-moon-landing people do.’
Sustein cannot accept that world.
Mr. Cook’s integrity is under fire, as it should be, and Mr. Curtis feels bad for him because he feels Cook was merely really wrong rather than attempting to decieve.
Sorry Tom, there is way too much hide-the-decline “science” in your community and the integrity of the science has been demolished by scientists of dubious character, aided by corrupt politicians and a progressive enemedia. If Mr. Cook was simply wrong, let him apologize profusely, chase the truth, and fight against public policy based on, um, poor science. Has he done so or does he continue to cowardly support BIG GREEN’s BIG LIE induced anti-human, anti-Liberty agenda? Until he sides with fact and truth he’s just another deceitful fraud like Mann, Marcott, Jones, Hansen, Gore, Suzuki and the rest and he deserves every bit of scorn that comes his way.
Free Carbon, jail the Green Frauds
See Bishop Hill post http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/4/3/comedy-climate.html
From the paper by Dunlap & Jacques:
“For a good and continually updated overview of denial claims that have been debunked by mainstream scientists, see http://skepticalscience.com/.”
Yep, that says it all…
Rick Bradford’s comment (near the top) was fantastic 🙂