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:
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.
If his survey asked a group of 1000 physicians, dentists, PhD chemists and physicists, and engineers would he get the same result? Not to mention statisiticians should be included. I find it hard to believe there are very many (less than 2) conspiracy theorists amongst the posters at WUWT, Climate, etc. and Climate Audit. It is intriguing that someone can publish utter nonsense and get away with it.
Questioning Big Brother as always been recognized as a form of mental illness. We have always been at war with EastAsia precisely because the enemy is warming the planet….
How do we characterize the disposition toward science by CAGW fanboys who believe that there are more hurricanes, malaria, extinctions and an imminent ice-free Himalayas because the rapid warming has already taken place?
Notice that skepticism directed at the most politicized corner of science since Lysenko is treated like a form of mental illness or sociological aberration by this clown. “Lewandowsky” is becoming a synonym for self-satire.
In the phrase conspiracy theory, what part of the word ‘theory’ does he not understand?
Speaking personally, my ‘Trust in Science’ has never been greater. Now Activist Scientist…
Too bad that Lew didn’t interview Matt Ridley……
“Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth.
“At first, I thought this was just their usual bluster. But then I realised that they are genuinely unaware. Good news is no news, which is why the mainstream media largely ignores all studies showing net benefits of climate change. And academics have not exactly been keen to push such analysis forward. So here follows, for possibly the first time in history, an entire article in the national press on the net benefits of climate change.”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/
Vince Causey says October 17, 2013 at 7:55 am:
That. Vince, is possibly the best rebuttal of this compartmentalised claptrap I have read to date. Good one!
I’m with Bob Shapiro at 6:07 am on this one.
Lewandowsky can be right for the wrong reason.
Free Marketers and Climate Skeptics probably do correlate. Causality between the two is complex because there is positive feedback.
[Command and Control Progressives, Socialists, and Social Democrats] and Climate Alarmists probably also correlate as Climate Alarmism is a convenient justification to build a new social governance.
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.
Lewandowsky looks on any challenge to official version of events as a conspiracy theory…he would no doubt take the same view with 9/11…..so let us examine the towers collapse. Steel melts at 2,500f…..kerosene in an open fire will burn at a max of 1,800f….deficit is 700f. However the twin towers were enveloped in thick black smoke indicating inefficient fires starved of oxygen meaning an even lower temp estimated at around 850f…..1,650f short of the melting point of steel. So fire did not bring down the towers. Even if the fires had melted the steel and the trusses with their concrete load collapsed it would leave layer upon layer of broken concrete….in large sections, as per the aftermath of an earthquake. And in this case the 47 steel beams which were the core of the buildings would be clearly visible as in the construction photos. It would look like an old record player with several records stacked on the turntable with the central spindle standing up in the middle. But there was no trace as the towers were obliterated with concrete pulverised. On top of this the buildings came down at near free fall speed breaking Newtons Law of Motion.
The declaration that falling floors acted as a pile driver is also nonsense as the top third of the South Tower came away and fell to one side….thus the so called pile driver was no more but the building still collapsed. Close ups showing explosive squibs.
The reason I mention the above is that the moron we are discussing would call any challenge to the official fairy story a conspiracy theory. However as with the climate…….science and physics will always win out.
“Trust in science has been declining since 1970’s.”
Especially in environmental science, source of many over-hyped scares. See Aaron Wildavsky’s But Is It True?
Re conspiratorial ideation: How about claims of a “well-organized, well-funded denial machine”?
No s*** Lew! Those who don’t want to look at the data tend to follow their ideological and political leanings. Heck, even those who look at the data will tend toward confirmation bias, and from what I have read of you, you are no exception.
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.
James Griffin:
re your post at October 17, 2013 at 8:51 am.
The melting point of steel is not relevant to why the Twin Towers fell when exposed to burning aviation fuel. Structural steel softens, bends and creeps under stress at much lower temperatures than its melting point. It loses all structural support ability at ~800°C and would fail to support tall buildings at temperatures well below that. I think you will find this paper provides all the information you need on the matter
http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1345&context=engpapers
On WUWT we do not accept any conspiracy theory thrown about. We evaluate assertions for their flaws. And that is why we find the writings of Lewandowski to be laughable.
Richard
“I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.”
—
I have to wonder if Lewandowsky looked into the fact that when alarmists like Gore and Mann are confronted with science that contradicts their pet theories, such as the recent lack of warming, they resort to blaming the “KochMachine” conspiracy. Doesn’t blaming scientific observations on the Koch brothers count as conspiracist Ideation? Try googling the phrase, “blames Koch brothers.” You will get over a million hits blaming the Koch brothers for every evil the left has ever imagined.
For another view, see the following:
Yale Law professor Dan M. Kahan was conducting an analysis of the scientific comprehension of various political groups when he ran into a shocking discovery: tea party supporters are slightly more scientifically literate than the non-tea party population.
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/87474-yale-professors-surprising-discovery-tea-party-supporters-scientifically-literate/
If you’re going to tax the populace into fuel poverty and beyond, and tax industry into uncompetitiveness with non-taxing Asian economies, and destabilize the power grid, and impose rolling blackouts, you can’t just tell the populace it is their duty to grin and bear it. You must answer the populace’s questions and ripostes, and do so in open public debate, not just in the journals. You must not try to squelch public questioning and debate.
Anyway, the populace will push back against these impositions in time, if the Divergence continues. And ALL science will be toppled from its pedestal if that happens.
LKMiller says:October 17, 2013 at 9:29 am
Beat me to that link!
It’s a circular argument to equate “climate science” with science in general and then point out that people who are skeptical of climate science are less trusting of science.
It’s also a no-brainer to conclude that those who have Free-market worldviews will be skeptical of any unproven scientific theory that calls for more control over the markets.
My own “conspiracist ideation” tells me that government funding of science is going to favor findings that support more government and more government control of everything. That doesn’t make me anti-science. It makes me opposed to the corruption of science by politics. I suspect that Lewandowsky can’t see the difference.
re: richardscourtney says [on] October 17, 2013 at 7:46 am
Richard, in many instance my questions on sensitive issues are to be viewed in a strictly rhetorical vein while attempting to enhance the contrast with the contemporary conservative (there, I said it!) viewpoint; this was one such instance.
Recall the “A Time For Choosing” speech given by Ronald Reagan who said (paraphrasing) ‘there is neither left or right, but only up or down’ … the exact quote follows:
“we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. ”
http://reagan2020.us/speeches/A_Time_for_Choosing.asp
PS I don’t have near the time-resources that some posters have at their disposal and therefore must get to the point in short order. Posting is sometimes intermittent or curt on account of these limitations. Please bear these points in mind going forward and we may both enjoy a pleasant, positive relationship.
.
more soylent green! says:
“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.”
This is a despicable tactic. It is used even by the President of the United States. Saul Alinsky gave the recipe that they all follow:
Mitt Romney was by all accounts a very decent human being, who took no inheritance, and gave multi-$millions to charity. Any normal person would be happy to have him as their neighbor. His kids are typically all-American.
But Romney was instantly demonized by the Obama campaign, until even folks who should have known better started to wonder about the baseless innuendoes. It was the worst character assassination in our history, bar none.
Same with the Tea Party [IANAR, nor a Tea Party member]. The Tea Party formed under G.W. Bush as a protest against profligate spending and disregard for the Constitution. It still has those concerns as its mission.
But like Romney, the Tea Party was demonized incessantly. Only those people who think for themselves can see what is happening. Don’t be a tool of the Alinskyites. When you think for yourself you make good decisions. Otherwise, you are being manipulated with the rest of the mindless crowd. Or worse, you will be another Lewandowski.
Illogical Lewandowski
Lewandowsky has such poor research skills that he begins with a logical fallacy of the false dichotomy:
He presumes central control (“mitigation”) is the only option, ignoring the possibilty that adaptation is 100 times more cost effective and readily achievable.
““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.
“this is the theory that climate skeptics are well organized and well funded by “Big Oil”. ”
There ARE a number of skeptics funded by big energy. There are groups like Heartland that receive large donations from those same industries. I don’t think anyone has claimed they are “well organized.”
Greg Goodman said on October 17, 2013 at 7:21 am:
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!”