When I was first contacted by Skeptical Science proprietor John Cook about his request to have WUWT host a survey, I asked him several questions because I had misgivings about the design. He refused to answer my questions, and now I know why. In my opinion, he’s engaging in a fraudulent survey designed to be biased from the start. I find it ironic that Cook the cartoonist and his survey, is now succinctly summed up by another cartoonist.
Josh writes:
Lots of blogs helping John Cook out here, especially Lucia and Brandon over at The Blackboard where Brandon has just discovered that the survey of 12,000 papers, is, in fact, not a survey of 12,000 papers but a selection of papers based on John’s own idea of which should be chosen. Wow.
If any journal publishes the (whatever) John Cook serves up in a bowl from this survey, it will be the end of their credibility.
ralfellis-
“Sorry, I don’t have the time to understand this. Can someone give simplified analogy of what he is doing?”
He’s pretending to be a scientist instead of a cartoonist, again. Sadly, he seems completely oblivious to the fact that in order to be respected in either field, one actually has to be able to “draw” accurate conclusions that your audience can agree with.
Lucia’s site now gives me (IP x-ed out by me):
Was okay yesterday.
Speaking of Gleick, did I hear he was let out on work furlough?
If the SQL has “order by rand()” and also “limit 10”, then Cook might think the statement will sort the whole 12,000 randomly and then pick the first 10, which will give a different result each time. I think it will pick the first 10 and then sort randomly, which gives the same 10 each time but in different orders.
Dubya G says:
May 6, 2013 at 11:34 am
I see what the problem is here. He has his socks on the wrong feet. The port (left) sock should be red, and the starboard (right) sock should be green. No wonder he has everything bass-ackwards.
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I thought it was red right return?
cn
If the climate change debate is really based on science, when S. McIntyre demonstrated the cherry picking and the fallacy of the hockey stick that should have been the end of the controversy.Instead the “scientists” that McIntyre have proven to be wrong continued to this day to be idolized by established scientific institutions, universities and other institutions. Natural science is added to the debate to give some semblance of rationality or cover. As the emperor’s clothes story shows, a large portion of the population is beholden to complicated things they dont understand and are too proud to say they dont know it on the fear that most of his fellowmen understood the issue and he could be identified as an ignoramus. In fact there is a religious movement that presents a set of series of partial differential equations to show its belief. If the political leaders were really serious of the natural science behind the climate change debate, they should have appointed a climate scientist like Lindzen instead of a railway engineer to head the study. Natural science is just a diversion, it is just a curtain, it is just a smoke screen to the real reasons behind the climate change policy. While it is important to the skeptics to continue on exposing the non-science or fraudulent claims, it is also important to look at the real reasons behind the policies.
It is time to study and counter attack the problem from the stand point of social science rather than natural science. For example, there is a principle in natural science that allows group of people to smear their opponents for receiving one cent from a group such as “big oil” and other big end of town but accepts large amount of money from the same source –even putting it openly in their websites. I would suggests it is time for skeptics to get social scientists on board otherwise the skeptics energy, time and resources are diverted, consumed and wasted in the diversionary tactics of intentionally including sloppy natural science researches into the climate change policy debate.
The world of public opinion turns slowly, but turn it will, and then you will hear the howls of indignation as social propagandists like Cook and Lewandowsky find exactly the same tactics used to refute their garbage, but pushed along by a media waking up to the fact they have been used to abuse their readership and society. Its so obvious that they will be, and bear the brunt of, this reversal, as their misdeeds, data manipulation, and skewed scheming are exposed again and again.
Thats why we need to get behind projects like that of Topher Field and Josh as they provide the public window that will swing the pendulum adding weight to influence and speed the process.
You really know when you are hitting a nerve, when the usual trolls try and divert threads or shut down sceptic efforts to raise funds for worthwhile projects designed to undo the propaganda spun by the likes of Cook and his merry band of taxpayer funded bottom feeding manipulators and expose their pitiful solicitation of “prestigious awards” garnered for each other to boost their own ego’s.
Some of the troll efforts are so laughable and obvious. I know my own reaction to the pathetic and repeated efforts of Greg House (you know, that’s not my point Greg!!) Hah, when I see that trolling repetition, I don’t just “want” to donate to Topher’s 50 to one project video, I “must donate” and get off my backside to urge others to do so.
Same with Josh, we need to support him, and thanks to those that spread the word, along with the ever growing support of a consensus of real scientists, who are heartily sick of these parasites nobbling both science and our economic capacity.
Thanks Anthony, more power to the voice of the sceptics returning science to a revered place in thinking societies, free of the “white anting” and self seeking propaganda of the team and their fellow travellers.
Hmm.. analogy …. Suppose John Cook was someone who owns a bankrupt restaurant and the only meat he has left is this foul tasting gray stuff called CAGW. Because CAGW is the only thing he has to sell he is taking a survey asking people how they would like their CAGW prepared, fried, baked or boiled – NOT whether or not they like CAGW. Then he can use the survey to advertise the different ways people all like CAGW. when in fact no one likes it at all.
Chuck,
Red right return IF he’s coming back to port. I’m hoping he’s heading out to sea for a long voyage never to be heard from again.
Mike M,
Excellent analogy.
Toilet paper. However it is not sprial bound, but does scroll.
Mike M,
I would modify the analogy for what Cooks is doing: suppose that there is some kind of SPAM or “mystery meat” served by this restaurant, long assumed to be healthy, but with no sufficient evidence. Cook does not care to re-assess the evidence for whether this mystery meat actually is healthy, instead he compiles thousands of “recipes” from the Internet which assume the mystery meat is healthy and provide further applications of this BELIEF (new recipes using CAGW “mystery meat”).
BUT, neither Cook nor anyone else has justified the belief in the value of mystery meat in the first place! Yet, Cook can then point to “thousands of recipes” (abstracts, articles) which somehow are supposed to prove that the CAGW mystery meat is healthy. It might be foul floor scrapings, but Cook won’t care so long as he can analyze how people evaluate “thousands of recipes”……
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat
gotcha!
cn
Now I realize why “Lew’s Fixation” has a familiar look to it. And that’s not a compliment.
arthur4563 says:
May 6, 2013 at 9:45 am
“Last time I looked, science has never advanced one iota by finding out what…experts believe.”
I understand your point about “laymen”, but come on… experts? I think a very great deal has been learned by finding out what experts believe. JP
Why not do your own survey? You choose the questions and the background material. It may not be scientifically important, but interesting none the less. JP
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic..
Thankfully, their selling of this AGW scam is rapidly falling apart because of the ridiculous stunts and shrill churlish arguments they put forward without any true scientific basis. In the near future, the “science” purported by these lazy money-grubbers will shoulder alchemy and phlogiston.
About red right returning [to the harbor]… just a small amplification: the vessel (or airplane) always has red on left (port) and green on right (starboard). The RRR refers to the harbor entrance lights. You want the red one on your right as you enter the harbor (and on your left as you exit).
I know, I know, who cares… but this could actually save a life (or at least boat damage) someday! (Mostly, it’s just that FOR ONCE I knew something)
However, since Cook seems to do much of his thinking with his stern… he may (just a 50-50 chance, though, every day) have put his socks on the correct feet in that picture. LOL.
Good work as always, Josh!
I really liked your including his latest satellite launching device (the high-tech piece of equipment in his pocket). He’s made it 1/10,000,000 of the way to the moon! (just about as far as the US is to making a dent in the global CO2 supply).
Why did you use the wayback machine website when looking up the SkS about page Anthony? Is it because the more up to date SkS about page has inconvenient information? Such as this:
John Cook, the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. He studied physics at the University of Queensland, Australia. After graduating, he majored in solar physics in his post-grad honours year.
Your argument that John Cook is only a cartoonist falls flat now that you have the up to date info on his academic qualifications.
REPLY:No it was just that I’ve used that link before. I didn’t have to look it up. Yet, he still lied about his survey, and now I’ve learned (in our private email thread on the issue) that he actually lied to me directly in my email exchange with him. So you are right, it doesn’t matter whether he’s a cartoonist or a something else, what matters is that he’s a liar, and no amount of accolades is going to change that. – Anthony
I think all these silly surveys are Cook’s way of coping.
Nice touch on the watermelon socks, Josh. 😉
Mike M says:
May 6, 2013 at 2:36 pm
ralfellis says: Can someone give simplified analogy of what he is doing?
Hmm.. analogy …. Suppose John Cook was someone who owns a bankrupt restaurant and the only meat he has left is this foul tasting gray stuff called CAGW. Because CAGW is the only thing he has to sell he is taking a survey asking people how they would like their CAGW prepared, fried, baked or boiled – NOT whether or not they like CAGW. Then he can use the survey to advertise the different ways people all like CAGW. when in fact no one likes it at all.
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Good one!
I just took the survey, and what was striking was that every abstract chosen for evaluation was a pro-AGW one, except for one that seemed neutral. I had assumed that roughly half of the abstracts would be on the skeptical side, but this was not the case. It makes me suspicious of the purpose, which would seem to be find skeptics who won’t, out of a grudge perhaps, evaluate pro-AGW abstracts as “strongly pro-AGW” as other people. Or something like that.
The whole exercise is quite strange, in that one is supposed to evaluate not whether the study actually has anything meaningful to say about the causes of climate change, but only whether the authors seem to assume it does, from the language used in the abstract. Pretty much an “attitudinal” survey, not one about facts and reasoning. And not about one’s own attitude, but about judging the attitudes and/or assumptions of others. Again, very strange, and not very meaningful. One could easily answer the survey questions based on whether the study itself seems to have any relevance to the causes or effects of climate change, which only a few did.
The whole idea of ANOTHER survey is sooo ridiculous you have to wonder what he could possibly be thinking.
But the 12,000 papers required seem to be too much even for this crap….it’ll block the lew!