UPDATE: It seems another poll/study flies in the face of what Lewandowsky claims about “Free Market Thinkers” Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. See below. NOTE: The section after the graphic has also been updated for clarity by contributor A. Scott. – Anthony
From the “if you keep saying it enough people will believe it”department and the patron saint of conspiracy ideation, Stephan Lewandowsky, comes yet another paper which tries to make people believe that a good portion of climate skeptics think the moon landing was faked, and that free market advocates are likely to be climate skeptics. It also looks like he recycled questions from previous Lewpaper efforts.
The paper data gathering effort supposedly polled 1,000 Americans.
A. Scott writes:
Lewandowsky’s “Recursive Fury” work referenced a new paper undergoing peer review at the time –that used a professional survey firm to survey a random panel of 1,000 people in the US.
That new paper; “The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science,” has recently been published in PLOS ONE.
This new paper is comprised of 39 questions, including approximately 20 of the original questions from the Lewandwsky “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax…” (LOG12) paper.
In addition to adding questions on GMO foods, vaccines etc., the new paper makes another significant change. The LOG12 paper used a 4 point Likert scale for its answers, while this new paper converts to a 5 point Likert scale. This change addresses one of the criticisms of the LOG12 paper, that the 4 point scale Lewandowsky chose purposely forced ‘either/or’ answers by failing to provide a ‘Neutral” answer option.
While PLOS ONE is a ‘pay to publish’ journal it does have positives, including that papers are not firewalled and are readily accessible to all, and they have an open data policy. It appears Lewandowsky has complied – the paper includes the aggregated response data in a table, and Lewandowsky appears to have made the raw data available at his site as well (link below).
PLOS ONE outlines a defined peer review process, which uses “Academic Editors” who “work together to orchestrate the peer-review process.”
The AE evaluates the paper and decides whether it meets the editorial criteria for publication:
“AEs can employ a variety of methods, alone or in combination to reach a decision:
- They can conduct the peer review themselves, based on their own knowledge and experience
- They can take further advice through discussion with other members of the editorial board
- They can solicit reports from further referees”
There are no peer reviewers listed on the paper – only an Editor, Tom Denson, from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Professor Denson kindly and quickly responded to my inquiry, noting the paper was sent to multiple reviewers who provided anonymous feedback to himself and the author, that the paper was revised in accordance with those comments, and was eventually accepted for publication pursuant to meeting the PLOS ONE criteria. He indicated it was PLOS policy that reviewers remain anonymous.
Although anonymous, at least the paper received outside review. Prof. Denson also appears to be qualified as Editor.
PLOS ONE notes that after publication:
“… all articles are opened up for interactive discussions and assessment in which the whole scientific community can be involved”
It will be interesting to see how that works, but it does open the door Lewandowsky and the other authors needing to professionally to engage with their critics.
Comments are currently open at the PLOS One page for this paper noted below.
In the “Moon Landing” paper, Lewandowsky set out to obtain responses regarding the beliefs of climate change “skeptic’s.” Unfortunately Lewandowsky’s methods and protections were seriously flawed, and as such his data collection effort was rightfully challenged.
Although they collected approximately N=1300 responses, these were almost entirely obtained thru promotion at sites openly critical of the skeptic positions and beliefs. Analysis of the data they obtained identified that only approximately N=150 of the total could be considered legitimate skeptic responses.
In this new paper, Lewandowsky uses a professional U.S. survey firm, and a random “panel” of 1,000 U.S. citizens. Ignoring the findings themselves for a moment – this new survey data should provide a professionally and independently obtained “base line” data set.
Lewandowsky’s email comment to Guardian on the new study:
”There are some other more subtle differences, and despite all that, the results are pretty much identical: Free-market worldviews are strongly associated with rejection of climate science and conspiratorial thinking is associated with the rejection of all scientific propositions tested, albeit to varying extent. 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.
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. Addressing lung cancer means to control tobacco, and addressing climate change means to control fossil-fuel emissions. It’s the need to control those products and their industries that is threatening people with strong free-market leanings.”
Setting aside the analysis and findings, it would appear to me, supported by Lewandowsky’s comments noted above, that my past stated beliefs he would use this new paper – with its independent data collection source and methods – to try to rehabilitate the serious deficiencies and compromised work he has published to date in this series.
I would note the Lewandowsky “Recursive Fury” paper was removed by Frontiers in Psychology in April 2013 due to numerous complaints. Going on 7 months later, no action has occurred regarding Frontiers promised swift review of the issues.
I would also note Lewandowsky’s original LOG12 paper – “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax…” was finally published online after a long delay. This paper was received by the journal Psychological Science May 22, 2012, accepted by them July 7, 2012, was released by Lewandowsky to the media in August 2012, but was not actually published online by the journal until March 26th, 2013.
Both the Moon Landing and Recursive Fury papers received significant exposure in the media, being used to smear those skeptical of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming claims.
And the ever reliable Guardian, continues that process with this new paper.
The paper is open access, you can read it here:
The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science
Stephan Lewandowsky, Gilles E. Gignac, Klaus Oberauer
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0075637
DATA for the paper available fro Lewandowsky site here:
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/PLOSONE2013Data.csv
”FAQS” on the paper at Shaping Tomorrows Worlds:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyFAQPLoS1.html
Here is a Guardian Article on the Lewpaper3 – headline: “Climate sceptics more likely to be conspiracy theorists and free market advocates, study claims”
UPDATE:
==================================================
Politico – Study: Tea partiers know science
By Tal Kopan
10/17/13 2:04 PM EDT
A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers.
Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of a set of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative.
However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn’t, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said.
Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him.
“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.
To view online:
Mr Watts.
‘Plonker’ – British slang commonly used referring to a person who is a wally; dope; pillock; dunderhead; bear of little brain.
‘Plonker’, you might care to note, is also British nursery slang for ‘poo’.
Either way…
“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.
You could paraphrase this by saying “free market conservatives having learned to spot BS at almost any distance see the CAGW story for what it is. On the other hand they see the scientific justification for vaccinations and GM crops.”
If you need any help in understanding any of this please contact your nearest conservative, preferably an engineer and always someone who is old enough to tie their own shoelaces. Getting tired of these “sailors know about the sea” stories coming out of social “scientists”.
“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.
Keith says October 17, 2013 at 6:59 am
And I kid you not, Keith, I swear the commentator said the pass came from Glik!!! And, you will note also, Lewandowski played on the LEFT WING and Glik was lying in defence!!! 🙂
For those who think I make it up, see this link with the team sheet: http://www1.skysports.com/football/teams/poland
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.
I thought pop-control was more a leftist-influenced endeavor? Am i wrong? Take Margaret Sanger for instance … Quickie from wiki:
Now, I ask again, R or L?
.
Why don’t we turn L’s statement around and state that “those of a left-leaning political orientation, hence adherents to a collectivist ideology, are more likely to accept a ‘consensus’ point of view and are more likely to reject opinions based on an individualistic approach such as self-learning and verification”.
A totally meaningless, quantifiable and objectively immeasurable fact. Sort of gives the clue to the content of the rest of the paper.
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.
I might agree with his conclusion if he replaced “science” with “scientists.” The constant drumbeat of climate horror projections, each scarier than the last and look like release dates are scheduled so as not to compete but to amplify could make most sentient beings a bit skeptical. I’m not sure what the free market worldview has to do with trust of scientists. Maybe he should have thrown in Koch Brothers and Tea Party.
@Pamela Gray: Thanks for the links to Retraction Watch and “climate puke.” Maybe it appeals to my free market worldview.
He’s an Arsehole! End of!!
It doesn’t surprise me that those who don’t believe that govt is the answer to all problems, (IE free market types), would be skeptical of the AGW scam in which govt is required to take control of the economy in order to protect us from a problem that only they can see.
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.
_Jim:
At October 17, 2013 at 7:23 am you ask
The answer is neither or both because the true answer is that the cited behaviour is totalitarian, and totalitarians can be found across the entire political spectrum.
Totalitarianism is evil, and mistaken ideas that it can only be found at some parts of the political spectrum are dangerous: it lowers guards against totalitarians with other political allegiances.
Richard
Alternative title:
The Role of Narcissistic Projection and Worldviews in Predicting Acceptance of Nonsense.
The trustworthiness of science has been declining since the 1970’s.
I cannot be sure of the causality, but there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest that the involvement of worldview, such as command economy principles, arises because people of that worldview feel, not threatened by climate change or by lung cancer, but instead attracted by the regulatory implications if those risks are being addressed by society. Addressing lung cancer means to control tobacco, and addressing climate change means to control fossil-fuel emissions. It’s the desire to control all products and their industries that is beguiling people with strong nanny government leanings.
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?
Lew’s paper raises the corollary. If we must ask why sceptics tend towards free market views, we must also ask why believers tend towards socialist or statist views. Given Lew’s answer to the first question, one could equally reply that people with socialist/statist views believe in cAGW precisely because mitigation entails statist solutions, government intervention and redistributive economics.
Of course, Lew isn’t going to give this answer. He might say something like “People with liberal/left wing views aren’t contaminated with the free market blinkers that prevents those types from seeing the truth,” or something equally logically absurd. In other words, the liberal/socialist/leftist positions are characterised by an absence of a property (free market blinkers) rather than with properties of their own.
But, if we look at the activities of cAGW scientists we see not merely the absence of free market views, we see a vigorous pursuit of pushing mitigation policies. Why is this, if not that they themselves are driven by statist ideologies?
If Lew’s paper has anything to commend it, it is that it has shown the politicisation of climate science – on both sides of the divide. Having now let the cat out the bag, he must confront his own reflection in the mirror, to mix metaphors.
”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.
“Trust in science has been declining since 1970’s.”
Of course it has. It’s entirely justified and a reaction to
the diminishing adherence to truth in science declining since the 1970’s.
Any pit stop over at ClimateCentral.org, (should be called ClimateExcuses.org) loads one up with the chronic distortion and deceit climate science has become.
The site is a disgraceful display of science abandonment from an alter of mendacious authority.
They have a lack of hurricanes sermon.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/what-happened-to-the-2013-atlantic-hurricane-season-16616
“The scant number of storms is surprising given some of the favorable conditions that exist that would normally fuel tropical cyclones. Forecasters say that three main features loom large for the inactivity: large areas of sinking air, frequent plumes of dry, dusty air coming off the Sahara Desert, and above-average wind shear. None of those features were part of their initial calculations in making seasonal projections. ”
Our pal Joe stopped by to “reject their science”.
By Joe Bastardi (16827)
on October 16th, 2013
…..” By the way, Saharan dust is a cop out. IT IS THE PRODUCT OF THE PATTERN…NOT THE CAUSE. The Saharan dust is because of the abnormal build up of higher pressures, which is a sign of sinking, all of this a sign of the drying that is taking place, which takes us back to the IPCC trapping hot spot being debunked in front of our very eyes.”
The two sides are not even debating any longer.
The alarmists are in fetal position whining for more time to start behaving while the parent skeptics lecture them to stand up and be adult.
” I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.”
Perhaps he is right – his science denial is causing him to put forth this conspiracy theory.
Lewandowsky–the Alinsky acolyte.
@ur momisugly 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!
“TRUST in science has been declining since 1970’s.”
Other commenters have pointed out just how empty this statement is but if skepticism is an integral part of the scientific method, wouldn’t this be a good thing?