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:
“””””……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.
Since I posted the first reference to the Kahan study, maybe a few words from someone who is identified as part of the Tea Party (actually 912 Project, but we are kindred spirits) are in order.
JEM above has it about right. The caricature of the Tea Party portrayed by the lapdog media and the Democrat party is nothing but a pack of lies. First and foremost, we are very concerned for the future of our country, seeing it being flushed down a rathole toward some utopian leftist graveyard. Fiscal sanity was the key driver at the beginning – many of us got involved because we opposed the first bailout under Bush the Younger. It remains a key driver, and why we are sickened by the failure of the RINO-lead House and their jelly-legged brethren in the Senate to stand tall with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
However, this is a science forum, not political. Just wanted to clear up any confusion there might be.
Aghast at the admission (RC not omniscient after all! Just ‘funning’ with you now Richard.)
Please, *I* made no such attempt at division and object to the subject’s introduction into *our* dialog (i.e., between you and me; regarding an address of the board that is purely your prerogative). Please look again at the first post and note the question marks at the ends of interrogatories … the quest here (though crude and time-limited nonetheless) is to determine the ‘trvth’ after the examination of evidence germane to whatever subject was initially brought up. And, I feel strongly about not to bowing nor genuflecting at the altar of ‘PC’ and therefore any and all subjects are open to debate, within the limits of board and the host’s pol(icy)(ices), of course, regardless of ordinate pressure brought to bear by those other than the host and his or her policies.
Pax, et al, RC.
.
_Jim:
At October 17, 2013 at 7:23 am you ask
“Now, I ask again, R or L?”
In social evolution one rule rarely covers all cases, but generically speaking I go with Richard Courtney, agressive population is practised by both extremes. But in the particular period quoted (1930s) and in Europe (don’t know too much about the rest), ‘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 British Royal society (and other societies) only finally distanced themselves from eugenics when it became obvious that the far right were using it as scientific justification for the dreadful road they were travelling down.
oops… ‘agressive population CONTROL’ that is…
“I am now fairly convinced that wherever there is science denial, there is also a conspiracy theory waiting to be aired.”
Funny, I thought it was all a big conspiracy by Big Oil. SO many conspiracies, so little federal funding. What WILL we do?
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.
The new Kahan findings are quite interesting, as Kahan’s prior work is a prominent part of all the Lewandowsky papers. As is the entire “Free Market” association.
If the free market association becomes tenuous then Lewandowsky’s entire premise begins to collapse(as if it needed help for that )
In Australia, where Lewandowsky used to be at University, the accusation of conspiratorial behaviour is made predominantly by AGW enthusiasts. Typically with no evidence, they repeat the line that sceptics are conspiratorially organised and funded. As a variation, they will claim that sceptics have failed to show that there is a conspiracy among AGW scientists, therefore (illogically) AGW science is sound.
It is the AGW crowd that is forever raising conspiracy as an issue. Blame them for red herrings.
I know of no sceptics here who are organised and funded. I do know of the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that is organised and funded, and which receives frequent mention by AGW people. However, the IPA is a body based on logical thought rather than scepticism, so I discount it as a sceptical group. It deals with mostly economic and political matters far more than rejection of science.
The many sceptics known to me do not reject science per se. They reject POOR science. That is a crucial difference.
It is also a reason why the Lewandowsky thesis fails, The examples that are used for comparison, such as vaccination and genetically modified foods, do NOT have significant accusations of poor science in the mix.
For that reason alone, the paper is a comparison of chalk and cheese. It is essentially invalid. I’d not accept it if I was reviewing it.
Concerning the side thread of eugenics, AGW supporters might be sensitive to this account of part of the life of Svante Arrhenius, often promoted as the father of GHG theory.
“Svante Arrhenius was one of several leading Swedish scientists actively engaged in the process leading to the creation in 1922 of The State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, which had originally been proposed as a Nobel Institute. Arrhenius was a member of the institute’s board, as he had been in The Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics), founded in 1909.[11]”
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
BTW, the work on radiation physics by Arrhenius on CO2 and water vapour was heavily based on incoming moonlight being split into parts of the spectrum by a calcite prism, then the heat (energy) of each part measured by a bolometer. While this might have been the best apparatus available at the time, it might not stand modern scrutiny. Errors were large enough to often give a gain in energy of light passing though the atmosphere, but these non-conforming readings were selectively pruned. Also, given that human breath contains rather more CO2 than the ambient air, the presence of a person close to the apparatus in a semi-confined room could wreck the experiment, if such an idea is taken to extreme. Contrast it with the extraordinary clean apparatus measures being taken at CERN by Kirkby & others, investigating charged particles and nucleating particle formation.
WHAT LYSENKO SPAWNED
The Tea Party stereotype is again refuted by fact.
Just for laughs, compare the grounds of a site used by Tea Partiers after a rally with similar grounds after a leftist one. Site One: cleaner than when the rally started. Site Two: trash, burned cars, piles of faeces, smashed windows and looted interiors of local storefronts. ,
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!
Before the Snowden revelations I didn’t believe in a single conspiracy theory: now I do in one that proved to be factual: the NSA network spying on every connected person on this planet. CAGW was never a conspiracy in my view, just peer pressure combined with pear shaped reviews and some politics or religion. Happened before: many Scientific breakthroughs were started by a single person against a tidal wave (>=97%) of old knowledge hanger- on’s with.
I suspect the key words are near the beginning of the methods section: “propensity weighted”.
My translation: “We hired someone to select people that would demonstrate the thesis.”
Sixty years after his death the crafty Georgian still controls our discourse with Comintern’s definitions of left and right.
Cui bono?
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.
Ah, Lewie – a walking, talking demonstration of the rhinoceros hide of the utterly clueless. These people are indestructible.
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 🙂
@Colorado Wellington says: October 17, 2013 at 11:18 pm
Apropos of not a lot, the term “Left” being applied to a political position arose as a result of the French Revolution, when in the French Assembly, the Royalists sat on the right of the chamber, the revolutionaries on the Left. Certainly, the French Revolution set the precedent with regard to the Left’s deep fondness over history, when things don’t go their way, for wholesale slaughter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics
And slightly apropos of something, driving through the Caucasus mountains in 1968, onwards to Uncle Joe’s Georgia, we came across the following slogan painted in huge letters on a rock face.
Long Live Stalin.
@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.
Max Hugoson says:October 17, 2013 at 8:34 pm
Imagining something could work is a bit different than actually making it work. Cheers to engineers.
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.
jeremyp99 says:
October 18, 2013 at 3:37 am
“My opinion is that Lewandowsky – and McKibben – are personality disordered. They are certainly serious obsessives.”
I agree. But instead of, say, simply washing their hands over and over like respectable obsessive-compulsives, they want to cleanse/control the whole freaking world. Imo, they want to control it and us because they can’t control their own minds, or fears. It’s also nice to get paid for it at the same time.
Stuck in moderation: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/17/another-plonker-from-lewandowsky/#comment-1451888
Can you save it?
AND DELETE THIS COMMENT, Thanks