Another plonker from Lewandowsky

Still trying to shoot the messenger. I guess some people are so far gone down their rabbit hole, they have lost touch with reality. Lewandowsky should make himself a subject of his papers. At least he kind of knows about that subject.

PLoS One is the money-making arm of the PLoS family of journals. It will publish anything that reviewers consider “scientifically sound” regardless of potential impact. All papers are reviewed, but the quality varies considerably. They published 25,000 papers last year. With their author pays model, it generates considerable revenue that is used to support the other, more rigorous PLoS journals. I am deeply suspicious of PLoS One papers in my field.

Seems to be a man of one idea, doesn’t he. It gets stale after awhile though.

Watts: “He STILL is using the “Free Market” beliefs are associated with climate denialism.”
That wouldn’t surprise me at all, actually. Those that are suckers for every sales spiel thrown at them don’t tend to be free market types. They desparately need someone to babysit them and safeguard them from their lack of incredulity about used cars and combovers.

What a horribly written title! He should take a writing class.

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
— Milton Friedman

Plenty of academics have built an entire career by republishing the same thing over and over. Lewandowsky struck gold with this nonsense, why change? It’s either this or unemployment.

I’ve always had the feeling that those on the right tend to be more rational than those on the left, who seem more emotional. Evidence: differences in political leanings between Arts and Science students. A rational approach to science is, of course, preferable. So it is not surprising to me that more conservatives than socialists (liberals in USA) question climate Science.
As to conspiracies, it is the CAGW crowd that sees Koch and Big Oil conspiracies where none exists.

Seriously? Conservatives don’t believe in science? What we don’t believe in are “consensus” driven, politically motivated statements by supposed scientists like this dork Lewandowsky.

I could equally easily write a paper entitled “Hippie Environmentalists, Professional Activists and neo-Marxist drones are more likely to accept climate change alarmism” and it would be equally true.

Or he could have sampled 1000 comments here to see how many seem to mention free market ideas (eg smaller government, fewer taxes) or conspiracy ideas (eg scientific fraud, climate”gate”). I wonder what picture that would paint?

Lewandowski seems to be a man in pursuit of a fallacy. Let’s suppose that his work is pristine and he has proved that there is an unusually high number of conspiracy theorists among people who reject CAGW. What would that tell us about the work of someone like Lindzen, to pick just one example of many? Nothing. So what is the point of his research? If he were doing serious cognitive science he would have to be using radically different methods. It is shocking that he continues to be funded and published.

“I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.”
And that, folks, was the winner of the October unconscious irony contest.

Since governments have got so involved with funding science, is it such a surprise given the mess governments make of everything they go near that the populace are more sceptical about their claims? In Booker & North’s book Scared To Death, they highlight how much governments get wrong based on just one flimsy report. People also use their personal experience. With vaccination for example, I believe it is generally good, but the MMR vaccine has questions against it with regards to autism. I have a close friend and have worked with somebody who have both experienced a child becoming autistic having received the MMR vaccine. The doctor who suspected a link was subjected to the full force of the establishment to say he was wrong. I believe his evidence has been satisfactorily countered but there does seem to be a lack of enthusiasm to look further at why normal children become autistic shortly after received the MMR jab.
Given that the government will be in trouble should a link be proved, they won’t be keen to fund it. The pharma companies that make the vaccine won’t be keen either. And given the hounding the only person who has questioned it received, why would somebody of limited means put their career on the line?
On free markets, if wind and solar power was so great and profitable, private companies wouldn’t need to be bribed with taxpayers’ money to get involved would they?

Two words sum up Mr Lewandowsky – intellectually dishonest.

I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.

Is that right, Stephan? There was an awful lot of denial of science in Stockholm a few weeks ago in preparing the AR5 Summary of Political Malfeasance, with the scientific evidence now having to be rewritten to match the political statement (as per standard IPCC procedures). Are you convinced that a conspiracy theory is waiting to be aired that explains the political denial of a climate refusing to comply with models? Come on then, out with it.
A whole load of projection, as ever.
Lewpaper – I like it 😀

Oh, and he missed a sitter for Poland against England the other day…

“This is a pervasive pattern now that has been shown multiple times in the literature by a number of different authors. I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.”
Those who he classes as “conspiracist” will question everything. So will those who are genuinely sceptical and enquiring Those who believe what is laughably called climate “science” question nothing.
He does nothing to distinguish the first two groups and concludes that anyone who is not in the latter group must therefore also be a member of the first group.

“This is a pervasive pattern now that has been shown multiple times in the literature by a number of different authors. I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired”
Seems true enough. Seems to me the same people who keep denying the abundance of evidence for the 15+ year pause, for one example, are the same people that keep weaving conspiracies about big oil funding deniers.
“Free-market worldviews are strongly associated with rejection of climate science”
Another way to put it is blind acceptance of it is strongly associated with socialist world-views.

John B says: “‘Plonker’ – British slang commonly used referring to ”
It was popularised by TV character Del Boy as in the catch phrase “don’t be a plonker, Rodney”. It means penis, dickhead, dork.

There’s a very simple reason why otherwise intelligent people fall into conspiracy mindsets. It’s because governments are corrupt. Period. Once you find out your darling lover is a liar, you are suspicious of everything they do, everything they say. Governments lie. Period. When I was younger I fell into the conspiracy trap, but luckily I had some intelligent men sit me down and tell me: “not everything you hear is true, but sometimes they really do land on the moon,” or words to that effect. This freed me to find real world shenanigans with real world causes and effects.
But the conspiracy train is still rolling mightily these days, what with the internet revealing a thousand new juicy “top secret” secrets every second, scary things that will doom mankind and bring about absolute destruction. A million new straw men are recreated every day, fodder for the media canons, fallacies for those who refuse to refute the real arguments on the table.
It’s still fallacy. Pity that debate isn’t/wasn’t pre-req for high school diplomas. Pity that the scientific method isn’t/wasn’t more strongly instilled within our rank and file graduates. But this is the playing field, folks. What to do?
Just keep talking. Keep picking. Keep poking. I figure the climate will eventually swing and we’ll all look like brilliant gurus. NOT! I was intimately involved in IT and telecom back in the days preceding Y2K. Back then people came to me, scared and worried, wanting to know the truth: “were we really gonna go down in flames?” I always laughed them off and assured them that most systems were already attended to and that thousands of us jokers had been working to resolve the issue for months (even years). When the world didn’t come to an end was I looked at as a guru? Nope. No one even remembers being scared, let alone thankful enough to thank me. I’m not saying I helped save the earth from Y2K. I’m saying, as an insider, I helped allay the fears of many friends and family. I seek to do this today about AGW though I am certainly no “insider” this time around. I’m a techie – not a man of science.
“Global Warming” will die the death that all untruths eventually succumb to. In the meantime people can work to hurry along its death as quickly and politely as possible. We are not in control of the climate but we can control what we think and say and do.

He’s an Arsehole! End of!!

Here’s an abstract from an as yet unpublished rebuttal paper which evidently uses the same data as Lewandowsky, et al:
The Role of Alarmist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science
Background
Among American Liberals, but not Conservatives, trust in politicized climate science has been increasing since the 1970’s. Climate science has become particularly polarized, with Liberals being more likely than conservatives to accept the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the globe. Likewise, opposition to genetically-modified (GM) foods and vaccinations is often ascribed to the political Left although reliable data are lacking. There are also growing indications that acceptance of climate science is suffused by alarmist ideation, that is the general tendency to endorse alarmist theories including the specific beliefs that inconvenient scientific findings, such as the recent 17 year pause in global warming, constitute “denial” of science.
Methodology/Principal findings
We conducted a propensity weighted internet-panel survey of the U.S. population and show that liberalism and restricted-market worldview strongly predict acceptance of politicized climate science, in agreement with their stronger and opposing effects on acceptance of vaccinations. The two worldview variables predict opposition to GM. Alarmist ideation predicts rejection of two of the three scientific propositions, albeit to greatly varying extents.
Conclusions
Restricted-market worldviews are an important predictor of the acceptance of any scientific findings that have potential regulatory implications, such as alarmist Global Climate Models, but not necessarily of other scientific issues. Alarmist ideation is associated with the rejection of all scientific propositions tested which may undermine the politicized publications of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We highlight the manifold cognitive reasons why alarmist ideation would stand in opposition to the scientific method. The involvement of alarmist ideation in the rejection of science has implications for science communicators.

Alternative title:
The Role of Narcissistic Projection and Worldviews in Predicting Acceptance of Nonsense.

Let’s assume that Lewandowsky really believes his conclusion that “the involvement of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science has implications for science communicators,” why is he silent on the obvious implications? Why is he not today publically calling for mainstream climate science to not stop the behavior that gives ammunition to those who would propigate conspiracist ideas – refusing to release data and methodologies, adjusting data without explanation, thwarting FOIA, rejecting falsifiability, and the other actions that, at best, give the appearance of impropriety? Why isn’t he calling for the release of publically-funded emails and show there is nothing to hide when fighting the release only serves to fuel the conspiracy?
It’s hard to accept the premise that conspiracist ideation standing in opposition to the scientific method is a problem when mainstream climate science regularly fails to follow the scientific method in the first place. Notwithstanding, if climate change is the problem we’re told it is, and conspiracist ideation is what is stopping us from taking it seriously, isn’t openness and transparency as important as the science itself?

”In summary, although a free-market worldview is a powerful predictor of the rejection of scientific findings that have regulatory implications such as climate science, we found its effect to be far from general: The involvement of worldview in vaccinations was arguably small, and it was entirely absent for GM foods.”
I think somebody has confused “rejection” with an escalated requirement for evidentiary standard of evidence required for regulatory implementation among those with a free-market world view. The higher the impact of regulatory intrusion the higher the standard of evidence required. While “some credible evidence” may have been enough to phase out CFC’s impacting a small portion of the economy and individual’s lives, to control carbon emissions greatly impacting the economy and individuals to the point of putting large portions of humanity at risk requires a higher level of evidentiary support.
Non-exhaustive list of Levels of evidentiary support:
Reasonable suspicion
Reasonable to believe
Some credible evidence
Substantial evidence
Preponderance of the evidence
Clear and convincing evidence
Beyond reasonable doubt
At what level is it acceptable to condemn the less developed world to squalor for the sake of trivially reducing a possible future inconvenience?
”Our main SEM model showed a negative association between conspiracy theorizing and conservatism (as well as with free-market endorsement), suggesting that conspiratorial thinking is more prevalent on the political left than the right.”
Well, there you have it, completely contradicting his own paradigm that conspiracy ideation = climate denial = political right. Perhaps he should consider an alternative paradigm like “climate alarmism denial” = climate realism.

@ richardscourtney October 17, 2013 at 7:46 am
Precisely Richard. But taking an even wider view, the political spectrum itself is a subset of what I like to refer to as the spectrum of violence. In other words, the entire gamut of political positions – from extreme left to extreme right – falls into the wider set of coercive methods to achieve a given strategic goal or policy objective. Or to put it in layman’s terms, the system is broke!
We need to think so far outside of the boxes within the boxes we have so meticulously constructed to control our social environment that we are almost incapable of such giant leaps in our thinking. They entire spectrum will collapse eventually under the weight of its own hypocrisy, but until that day we must at the very least resist the tendency towards further totalitarian control – stop the rot.
But please bear in mind that any type of collectivist entity that uses the threat of violence to coerce its subjects to pay tax and comply with its often arbitrary rules is already totalitarian at its heart. And that definition covers just about every ‘government’ on earth – scary!

Until he admits he has a problem he will never begin the recovery process to reclaim his mentally healthy life. I suppose thought he could have been born that way.

Speaking personally, my ‘Trust in Science’ has never been greater. Now Activist Scientist…

I’ve quickly read the paper when it was featured in an article on the Guardian. Despite the way it was represented there, the paper’s conclusions (and title!) actually sound pretty reasonable.
Some excerpts:
“Our main SEM model showed a negative association between conspiracy theorizing and conservatism (as well as with free-market endorsement), suggesting that conspiratorial thinking is more prevalent on the political left than the right.”
“a striking feature of the opposition to climate science is that worldview-driven polarization often increases with greater levels of education [3] and greater science literacy [17], suggesting that the opposition reflects a cognitive style rather than a deficit of knowledge or ability.”
“Free-market worldviews are an important predictor of the rejection of scientific findings that have potential regulatory implications, such as climate science, but not necessarily of other scientific issues. Conspiracist ideation, by contrast, is associated with the rejection of all scientific propositions tested.”
As I understand it, it says that if you’re pro free market you’ll be more inclined to reject ONLY climate change science, and even more so as your scientific literacy increases. While conspiracy theorists (nutters) usually reject ALL science (and therefore, I assume, have generally a very poor scientific literacy). Finally, it says that the majority of nutters, according to their survey, are leftists.

No matter how many times you expose the falsehoods, strawmen, half-truths and outright lies these operators will just keep on repeating the same message. Expose them and they move on to a new venue the next day.

““a striking feature of the opposition to climate science is that worldview-driven polarization often increases with greater levels of education [3] and greater science literacy [17], suggesting that the opposition reflects a cognitive style rather than a deficit of knowledge or ability.”
Hey dumbass, maybe the fact that opposition to “climate science” often increases with greater levels of education and greater science literacy suggests that the opposition is not worldview driven. Maybe, opposition to “climate science” is based on an understanding of science, and the recognition that much of what is promoted as “climate science” ain’t it. Perhaps instead, “climate science” is in important ways simply politicized pseudo science, a fact that is not comprehended by the motivated reasoning “cognitive style” employed by people who self-select to participation in other pseudo-scientific endeavors. Like the field of psychology, for example.

Greg Goodman said on October 17, 2013 at 7:21 am:

John B says: “‘Plonker’ – British slang commonly used referring to ”
It was popularised by TV character Del Boy as in the catch phrase “don’t be a plonker, Rodney”. It means penis, dickhead, dork.

Actually, as the word is used here in the US, and as seen elsewhere, when referring to an object, it is synonymous with turd, as in a large turd, having as much value as such. In your example of it referring to a person, that meaning also works.
This is easy to understand, as I can readily testify to from personal experience and from being within earshot elsewhere, the sound of a large turd hitting the toilet bowl water is plonk. Thus naturally a plonker is a turd, as I’ve heard and read it used many a time here in the States.
By this origin, I know your definition by US usage is wrong, as I have anecdotal evidence from a reliable source that the sound of a large penis hitting the water is “Damn, I hate when that happens!”

It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a conspiracy fact. The Climategate scientists conspired to:
– Dodge FOIA requests
– Blackball scientists that held opposing views.
– Manipulate and adjust data to support their bias confirmation
– Promote science that furthered their political agenda. They even had a name for their conspiracy: “The Cause”
These are facts, not theories. Their own words exposed them.

“I cannot be sure of the causality, but there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest that the involvement of worldview, such as free-market principles, arises because people of that worldview feel threatened not by climate change or by lung cancer, but by the regulatory implications if those risks are being addressed by society.”
Lewandowsky misses huge groups of people when he casts his nest. For example, I belong to a group of people who are skeptical of regulatory regimes because we have learned that they are often ineffective and cause more harm than good. For example, efforts to regulate speech on college campuses in the US rarely achieve their ends but cause much confusion and rancor about what can be spoken by private individuals. To make matters disastrous, cases of prohibited speech are not adjudicated but are summarily decided by people employed by the university who have no special expertise in the matter.
Does my point have anything to do with regulations regarding climate? Sure, how about the US government decision for ethanol mandates? The results have been mixed at best.

Lewandowsky must be deeply unreflective not to see the flip side of his thesis: Collectivist worldviews are an important predictor of belief in “consensus [i.e. groupthink] science.” Collectivist world views are an important predictor of belief in the desirability of centrally planned energy markets. Collectivist world views are an important predictor of belief in the desirability of global treaties to establish global governance. Collectivist worldviews are an important predictor of belief that unregulated capitalism is destroying the Earth.

Reading that FAQ page, I notice Lew points out factors that “renders the present research important.” And it’s important because the public “must also understand”.
This is my analogy to how Lewandowsky must see himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIETlxquzY

Yale Professor’s Surprising Discovery: Tea Party Supporters More Scientifically Literate
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/87474-yale-professors-surprising-discovery-tea-party-supporters-scientifically-literate/

“I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,” Kahan wrote. “But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party,” he continued. “All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the ‘paper’ (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico). I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.”

Get outside the echo-chamber more often, Mr. Kahan. You might learn something.

This mix from “Yale” professors claiming relations between any political tendencies and scientific knowledge are just outstanding and incredible pathetic to say the least. Giving some credit to these kind of so called “studies” or “discoveries” remember me some claims made by alarmists. From the same graphic I can conclude that no Tea Party members excel in scientific knowledge, beyond rank 19. So the ” intelligent” non Tea Party members are better than Tea Party members. Come on…
What were the questions, how the universe was picked up? Why the samples are so different in size 430/1886??? I can choose 20 high school students with blonde hair and claim that they are more scientifically enlightened than 80 students with brown eyes. With the kind of detail gave by the “Yale” professor, this experiment would have exactly the same validity. Very very poor experiment design. In coherence with the problems that we identify in alarmists claims, this study should never have been even mentioned in this site.
Whenever you mix politics with science, you’ll end up getting distorted knowledge.
Some tea party that I know believe that the Earth has about 4000 years and god created everything in 7 days. Is this the kind of scientific knowledge that was eligible for this professor’s quest? No one knows. In a word – impressive. It would be fun to see the opinions if this was made by any professor from Burma or Iran…

As George Carlin would have said – this is some “major league BS”. Psychology is a really broad area of scientific study but this kind of utter garbage is of the not very scientific kind, like all that UTTER PISH from Freud about Oedipus complex and penis envy and anal-retentive personality (stemming from potty training, no less – seriously, look it up).
As for “conspiracist ideation” – the guy and his co-authors are totally away with it – did they just make that term up? I’ve read some sh*te in my time (have BSc in Psychology), but this is some of the most completely unscientific drivel I’ve had the misfortune to cast my eyes over.
Now, having said that, I do think the study of how the term conspiracy theory/theorist is used – in the MSM and everyday conversation – is most interesting. Personally I find it fascinating. Ever since George Bush said “let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories”, it made me think, “well, what is a ‘conspiracy theory’ anyway?”. Take the LIBOR (inter-bank interest rate) rigging scandal which came to light recently; people said it was going on for years but they were labelled conspiracy theorists (tin foil hat, etc.), then, when it came out that it had actually been going on it wasn’t a conspiracy theory anymore. Did it become a conspiracy fact? No, just dropped from the headlines. I think basically it can be used as a label to put people off investigating stuff (including climate change) and discovering FACTS which contradict the official story. This piece above looks like a classic example (and I admit I’ve only read the abstract as presented above). Pure, unadulterated BS.

David Hagen
Thatcther in her destruction of the National Union of Miners did the folllowing:
1.She said she “broke quite new political ground,speaking ominously on climate change” to the Royal Society (U.K. Academy of Science) in September 1988, just months after Hansen’s U.S. Senate testimony on the same subject. “It is possible … we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this climate itself,” she hectored scientists, universities and government departments.
2.Thatcher then set up the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research and was one of the main political forces to establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) .
She held a press conference upon the release of the first IPCC assessment (1990) and warned that “greenhouse gases … will warm the Earth’s surface with serious consequences for us all.” 3.Thatcher, after she was booted out of office in 1990, she prevailed on George H. W. Bush to sign the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in 1992,
Thatcher is the godmother of the Kyoto Protocol.
The history of climate alarmism shows clearly that in politics always follow the money. The pity of climate science is that it wasn’t dragged kicking and screaming by Thatcher but like any half smart whore followed the money. Lewandowsky is a particularly tawdry example of the process.

From the “if you keep saying it enough people will believe it”department
Hm, this lew person does not seem to have many ideas, just a few, but obsessive ones.
He is coming back again at the same conspiracy ideation, believing in the conservatives conspirating against science. In my view this has pathological traits.
Interesting enough, if anything is attributed to the political left, then “reliable data are lacking”.
I bet that his analysis fails to check if there is any relationship between climate rejection and science supporters who may be also free market supporters which may be a common trait of the technical people, enough to make the difference, which land suddenly in his “conservative” bucket.
Interesting enough representative warmists alarmists tend to be malthusians, authoritarian advocates, be against the democratic process and pro centralisation, believing in big government solution.
In their minds all others are idiots, only they and their clique is right and they know the best to decide for everybody. People are too stupid to judge meme:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/michael-brown-astronomer-says-science-is-not-about-debate-the-people-are-too-stupid/
Oh and I forgot: they believe in big oil, big coal, big gas conspiracy to ruin the world.

chris y says:
October 17, 2013 at 4:48 am
techgm says: October 17, 2013 at 4:12 am
“Trust in science has been declining since 1970’s.”
Besides the error of attributing emotion (trust) to something that is inanimate (science), the article errs in that the decline in trust has been with scientists (not “science”) – that people believe that (many) scientists have been corrupted by grant money and a lust for recognition, and/or that their skills are 2nd-rate.
******************
Bingo! Well said.
I think the terminology chosen is deliberate. It is inconceivable that Lewandowsky et al. are that stupid.
exactly, well said.

“””””……Gary says:
October 17, 2013 at 11:53 am
“I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,” Kahan wrote. “But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party,” he continued. “All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the ‘paper’ (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico). I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.”
Get outside the echo-chamber more often, Mr. Kahan. You might learn something……”””””
I’ve actually attended three outdoor TEA party gets together, all in downtown San Jose Ca.
No; I can’t describe them (the people) to you; because ANY description I might give; that’s as in ANY description, would only apply to the half dozen or so persons currently in my field of view. If I turned around, I would have to give you a different description of TEA partiers.. The ONLY apparent common element, is that for some daft reason, each one of them thought they were being Taxed Enough Already. I was just a fly on the wall spectator, since, not being either a citizen, or an illegale, I am not allowed to vote.

oops… ‘agressive population CONTROL’ that is…

Andy, consider the proposition that “Left-Right” is poor model.
Political systems are not linear or planar, but are closer to a Cylindrical Coordinate system.
From a point of greatest individual freedom, whether you go left (west, counter clockwise) or you go right (east, or clockwise), eventually you will find the very same totalitarians waiting for you.
The only real difference between Fascism and Communism is in the ownership of property. Individuals are without rights and serve the state in either definition. The vertical component of the cylindrical system is the ownership of property.

WHAT LYSENKO SPAWNED

I don’t know about this “Tea Party/Neandrethal Conservative”, and whether I’d be considered well versed in “science”. I guess like Marconi, since I’m only a dingy “engineer”, I really don’t have the “chops” to go up against real “scientists”. But then, I wonder…if once considers the “behavior” of the “scientists” in the climate realm, (hiding data, being arcane and obscure about sources, analysis methods, computer “codes” developed for making their papers)…versus “engineers” (Mandated by the FDA, NRC, FAA, etc. to PRODUCE and DOCUMENT computer codes, and structural analysis and device (for medical devices) parameters and data…under penalty of law)..if one REALLY looked closely at this marked difference in ethics, behavior, etc., do you think that ANY “Climate Scientist” would actually board an AIRPLANE designed by “Scientists”, rather than “Engineers”???? NOT ON YOUR (THEIR) LIVES they wouldn’t!

Lewandowsky is merely rationalizing his own cognitive dissonance with all these propaganda papers. It is necessary because of the inconvenient truth: almost all kooks come from the left.
(1) The JFK grassy knollers were the first of them to infect the mainstream that I can remember. They were easy to explain since the core justification for all their nonsense was to simultaneously lionize their favorite philanderer-in-chief JFK, while shifting blame away from the left – the Communist governments that despised him and the Communist that shot and killed him. That was a two-fer and a no-brainer for the leftists of the 1960’s and 1970’s, getting to attack the CIA and America, while pushing the Communists off the front page and resulting in a revisionist history where many people couldn’t connect “Communist” and “Oswald” together if their life depended on it. As for anti-Science, this is where they made their bones with talk of “magic” bullets, gunshot echos and skewed timelines.
(2) The Apollo landings being described as faked also had a nucleus of Communist propaganda at its core, probably state sponsored at first and fed to their willing brainless zombies in our education and media institutions. Although we all laugh at this particular crowd of kooks, it can be useful as a measure of the gullibility of the left. Yes there were other factors besides the “We can’t show up the Soviets” reason, for example it served to attract Nixon haters naturally, but the majority of them that I have read about are simply mindless leftists malcontents, gullible to the core, and receptive to any story that either hurts America, defense, intelligence, and Republicans. If the conspiracy theory is in any way favorable to the Soviets specifically or Communism in general then they get that two-fer again. The anti-Science leftist philosophy showed up here as well, speaking of incorrect shadows, flags flapping and other nonsense.
(3) When Islamic terrorists flattened the WTC towers and part of the Pentagon you would think the leftists would finally shut up. But no way. They immediately set upon the most incredible revision including blaming variously Cheney, defense contractors, paramilitary security companies and of course the Jews. Nothing that happened that day escaped their wild and mentally sick imaginations. As usual there was the opportunity for another two-fer here, or perhaps three. Along with exonerating the religion of peace that hates Jews more than any other, they get to use them as scapegoats and they also get to smear Bush 43 and the inexplicably hated Cheney. The three-fer comes into play by extending this delusion to simultaneously describing the Pentagon and Intelligence agencies as both inept for missing some early warning sign and being so incredibly efficient that they orchestrated the mother of all secret attacks, on ourselves. The leftists are all over this insane 9/11 truther garbage, and they put their anti-Science credentials right on the line here with melting steel strawmen, and missiles, and controlled implosions.
Contrary to everything Lewandowsky says and thinks, Anti-Science is like a bug zapper that attracts double-digit IQ leftist dummies like Rosie O’Donnell just for example. And it helps us spot them easier because they cannot help themselves from opening their big mouthes and inserting both feet.
So Lewandowsky has set upon an impossible quest here, but damned if he won’t keep trying though. The forum mouth-breathers at DU and DailyKOS and Huffington ( and probably Real Climate and Tamino ) live for this stuff. Don’t believe me? Start a thread at those places discussing those three topics and also here at WUWT. That’s a study Lewandowsky should be able to accomplish. He’ll find a much better reception for these kook theories there than anywhere else.

My opinion is that Lewandowsky – and McKibben – are personality disordered. They are certainly serious obsessives. Mann’s increasingly abusive behaviour towards those who DARE disagree with him suggests the same. I think maybe a spell in the Lubyanka would sort out their state of false consciousness 🙂

@Geoff Sherrington says: October 17, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Eugenics ceased in Sweden as late as the mid-70s. My stepdaughter lived there for 6 months a couple of years back, and found it, beneath the veneer of social democracy, to be a deeply racist country.
And of course, the Fabians in the UK, the so-called Socialist “intellectuals”, were big fans of Eugenics, Wells even going as far as saying that “useless” citizens should be put down. GB Shaw was with him as well on this. Nice people. A blot on Labour’s early Methodist, working class origins.

Andy West says:
October 17, 2013 at 2:16 pm
“… ‘scientific’ backup for population control (a la eugenics, phrenology, whatever) was definately a tool of the right, of course culminating in the dreadful things done by the facists in 1940s.”
The Nazi Fascists were Socialists.

Stuck in moderation: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/17/another-plonker-from-lewandowsky/#comment-1451888
Can you save it?
AND DELETE THIS COMMENT, Thanks

@jeremyp99 October 18, 2013 at 3:42 am
French Revolution set the precedent …
Without a doubt. The durable innovation of the celebrated son of Georgia was applying this assembly shortcut for ancien régime to his modern rabble-rousing competitors.
I wonder if the painted letters still exist on the same mountain or if Stalin’s old and new admirers found a more stately place.

Ref my posting yesterday on the twin towers….steel framed buildings have never collapsed to fire and if they did they would not come down at free fall speed into their own footprint.

As many have highlighted above, Lewandowsky does several dishonest tricks here using:
“- the role of conspiracy …. rejecting the science.”
Alarmists talk of climate science as “the science”. The climate-science church scripture is known as “the science”.
Skeptics have pointed out point out that much that comes in climate science is poor science, not using properly the scientific method, hiding the data, truncating etc etc. Gergis comes to mind, Marcott and so on – starting from the emblem, the hockey stick.
But this for Lewandowsky is: “rejecting the science”.
And instead of looking at the arguments that skeptics put forth he is “studying” the skeptics, trying to find common traits on points in an obsessive quest to mudden the waters.
Oh my, poor students who have such a person as teacher.

Thus Spoke The Economist….
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-science-goes-wrong-2013-10

So do liberals blindly “trust” or better truly believe what is told to them by “experts” when it aligns with their world-view, apparent this is true especially with the word ‘climate’ attatched. They sure do reject all peer-reviewed paper to the contrary, that is also true as this paper shows.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.”
— Dr. Richard Feynman
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”.
— Dr. Richard Feynman
I’m definitely not a liberal, a free market thinker in physics, and will continue to stick with Feynman’s proper view of “science” and not Lewandowsky’s (who ever he is).

Lewandowsky misses to define science. This allows him to put whatever he wants in that place and drive the conclusions he wants.
To my understanding science is defined by the use of the scientific method.
From wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
“Science (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”[1]) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”
(my underlying)
As Wayne has just posted above:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.”
– Dr. Richard Feynman
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”.
– Dr. Richard Feynman
As Craig above mentioned:
““Immune to falsification” precisely defines mainstream climate science. ”
So Lewandowsky’s replacement of “science” with current “mainstream climate science” is wrong.
Skeptics have repeatedly pointed out the failures to use the scientific method, the drift of climate science away from science.
Each paper without proper raw data release and clear description of the methodology, thus not allowing duplication of the results is a drift away from science – see above “tested”.
Clearly, Lewandowsky does not understand what science is or willfully ignores it.
I cannot believe he is doing this on purpose, so my only option left is that he does not know, which begs the question how can such a person who does not understand what science is and how science works find a harbor in a scientific organization?