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:
_Jim:
I am replying to your post at October 17, 2013 at 9:54 am.
I, too, hope “we may both enjoy a pleasant, positive relationship”.
I was not aware of your quote from Ronald Reagan and I am very grateful for it because I applaud it, and I would not have thought there would be a statement from him that I so completely agree. Thankyou for providing it because it goes the the heart of what I was trying to say.
WUWT is a ‘broad church’ and when we divide on the basis of politics or religion we all lose the ability to learn from each other. In my opinion we need to unite against totalitarianism and we can use our differences to learn from each other how to oppose totalitarianism.
The AGW scare is driven by totalitarian aims from politicians of both left and right. I genuinely think that greatest understanding of them all is afforded by using the understandings of people from both left and right among the WUWT ‘community’. I freely admit that I fail to understand the lunacy of people like Lewandowski.
All the best
Richard
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.
Uh, aren’t the AGW crowd the true “deniers” of science? Worse than that, they are the deniers of a new Holocaust – the deaths from hypothermia and starvation being caused by attempts to control CO2,
“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.
Joe:
At October 17, 2013 at 10:13 am you make these untrue assertions
Your falsehoods are spread across the web, but they are untrue.
Please read the active WUWT thread on the subject and contribute to it if you want. Clearly, the reading will correct your faulty education. To help you, I provide this link to the thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/15/oh-the-pain-kochmachine-is-in-many-american-universities-including-penn-state/
Richard
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.
Another interpretation of his results might be that people who understand and value the importance of free markets are good at detecting stalking horses intended to undermine or destroy them.
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
Whenever I see a survey I first enquire after the sample size and selection. This one tells me that “1001 were recruited” but “1383 responded” ! 382 were incomplete or failed “filtration”and discarded . This was from a panel of 5.5m americans held by the INDEPENDENT survey company, where can be found details of the process. There I went and found ” Now you can specify, price and populate your research study with qualified responders who match your most exacting criteria”! The specification relevant to this study are nowhere to be found.
There is a lot to be said about this study but the only acknowledgment says more than enough.
“We thank John Cook for his contributions during questionnaire design”.
A further irony is that Lewendowski is now a Professor at the University of Bristol, UK, whose alumni include Paul Dirac. His questionnaire includes the usual conspiracy questions around tobacco. Bristol Uni’s earliest large benefactor was H.O.Wills & Co. Never mind Professor Woodbine – you are never alone with a strand.
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/
James Griffin says:
October 17, 2013 at 8:51 am
The nice thing about WattsUpWithThat is that bad science gets shredded no matter which side it supports. If richardscourtney hadn’t beat me to it, I would have written a similar post.
Get outside the echo-chamber more often, Mr. Kahan. You might learn something.
This paper lines up one false premise after another in the introduction.
”For example, if a scientific consensus cannot be accepted as the result of researchers converging independently on the same evidence-based view, then the belief in a scientific conspiracy can provide an alternative explanation for the consensus.”
If nothing else, the Climategate emails demonstrate that the idea of “researchers converging independently” is questionable. This alone necessitates consideration of alternative explanations.
”Moreover, because conspiracist ideation need not conform to the criteria of consistency and coherence that characterize scientific reasoning its explanatory reach is necessarily greater than that of competing (scientific) theories. ”
This has the causality backwards. It’s the fact that mainstream climate science regularly and blatantly does not conform to the consistency and coherence that characterize scientific reasoning, to say nothing of the systematic suppression of competing (scientific) theories that is, in no small part, the genesis of conspiracist ideation.
”Conspiracist ideation is also typically immune to falsification because contradictory evidence can be accommodated by broadening the scope of the conspiracy, often with considerable creativity. ”
“Immune to falsification” precisely defines mainstream climate science. No conspiracist ideation is necessary to see it in practice. That fact that mainstream climate science implicitly, if not expressly, denies that science must be falsifyable in and of itself justifies rejection of mainstream climate “science.”
”The prominence of conspiracist ideation in science rejection is not unexpected in light of its cognitive attributes:“
What shouldn’t be unexpected is science rejection in light of the behavior of mainstream climate scientists. From refusing to release data and code to adjusting data without explanation to patently unscientific research to rejecting the requirement of falsifiability, you can’t play fast and loose with the scientific method and then conclude that conspiracist ideation is behind the opposition of the scientific method or the rejection of science.
Nor can you conclude that a free-market worldview leads directly to a rejection of science that has regulatory implications. Regulatory implications give rise to an incentive to look past consensus, and consider the quality of science, and it is the quality of science not the worldview that leads to rejection.
The more revealing, and also not unexpected, observation is the prominence of those who do not hold a free-market world view and deny that there are fundamental problems with the conduct of mainstream climate scientists and with mainstream climate science itself.
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…
This Kahan study resulted in the reports back in May of climate skeptics knowing more than believers…
http://in.news.yahoo.com/global-warming-skeptics-know-more-science-climate-change-051913092.html
He’s not going for an Ig Nobel is he?
I will stick with The Declaration of Independence
Margaret Thatcher (1975 Oct 10) on
A Free Society and the Economy
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.
Spartacus – I don’t find his numbers, or his findings, to be particularly questionable.
The Tea Party movement began – and is today – largely a fiscal-sanity movement, and it’s not unexpected that those frightened by the scale of government indebtedness should also be more numerate than those who are not, or who simply don’t pay attention to the issue.
It also stands to reason – and it’s no more than a guess – that those at the extreme end of his scale of expertise may be professorial types whose expertise may be deeper but less broad, and whose cultural bearings – as does the author – come from within the cloistered leftist confines of the academy.
And so we see in climate science – based on their public posturing the highly-credentialed crust that drive the climate ‘consensus’ appear to be – extensively though certainly not exclusively – textbook leftists, while the data-driven end of the skeptic community tends to be broader in both range of expertise and experience as well as in political position.
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.
In agreement with JJ 10:08 am
““a striking feature of the opposition to climate science …. increases with greater levels of education [3] and greater science literacy [17],
Say what?!
A) “opposition to … science” increses with greater levels of …. science literacy” There is only one way for this statement to make sense:
B) Opposition to climate science done poorly ought to increase among those with greater levels of science literacy. Can it be any other way?
So, one is left to conclude given A) that if science literacy is correlated with climate science in general, then B) climate science in general must be done poorly.
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.
Well we know that Director Ron Howard (Opie) faked the whole launch sequence in “Apollo 13” the movie, to where even the astronauts wondered where he got the video from.
So yeah; maybe the whole thing was faked in Photoshop.
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.
@Stephen Fisher Rasey
Opposition to climate science (i.e. climate alarmism) grows with scientific literacy in pro free-market people. For liberals, it is the opposite, as found by Dan Kahan in a previous paper (The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks – http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n10/full/nclimate1547.html).
I suspect that such an impact of political worldviews on a scientific issue may be indicative of a lack of sufficient data from which to draw definitive conclusions.