Brandon Schollenberger writes:
As you’re aware, Stephan Lewandowsky has written several papers claiming to have found certain traits amongst global warming skeptics. I believe his methodology is fundamentally flawed. I believe a flaw present in his methodology is also present in the work of many others.
To test my belief, I’m seeking participants for a short survey (13 questions). The questions are designed specifically to test a key aspect of Lewandowsky’s methodology. The results won’t be published in any scientific journal, but I’ll do a writeup on them once the survey is closed and share it online.
The Poll follows.
Please feel free to participate and/or share the survey with anyone you’d like:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=jblyccj8lluam18284546
Note: the poll is just one page, and after submitting you’ll get a “make your own survey” ad page.
Ted Clayton, I’m afraid I don’t see the distinctions you draw in the literature I’ve read. My usage may be “wrong,” but if so, it appears to be common enough to be justified.
Vote early and vote often, as they used to say in Chicago in the time of the late great Mayor Daley. The dead voted in Chicago in the day.
A bit off-topic, but in surveying the ‘Lewandowsky question’ … I see that he has a week-old post that may indicate a new upcoming activity-area:
Antarctic Confusions
Not a lot there, but it sounds like he is considering how he might help with the basic premise of Prof. Turney (that Anthropogenic Global Warming is indeed behind increasing sea ice around Antarctica).
btw, I recall literature from before the advent of AGW, lamenting the difficulty/impossibility of linking the movements of glaciers & icesheets with climate or weather (or anything else). There has been a ‘prize’ awaiting the ability to predict such ice-behavior, dating back to the early 20th and even late 19th C … and I believe that prize remains uncollected.
Scientifically.
The question about Bigfoot being a racist who didn’t like his mother confuses me.
🙂
Global warming is real. If it wasn’t we would be in the last ice age.
A Sergeant in B Battery 4th Battalion 333rd Field Artillery was known as “Bigfoot”, so Yes, I’ve seen Bigfoot and he was real big.
I’ve seen an alien, and he was bigfoot, and my mother.
Question Number 14:
The Blackfeet Reservation is located in Montana. Assuming there is more than one Bigfoot alive and that there was a reservation for them, it would be called The Bigfeet Reservation.
O Strongly Disagree
O Disagree
O Neutral
O Agree
O Strongly Agree
How many shades of ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’ are there? Once you agree or disagree, does it matter a whit whether or not you agree/disagree more?
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer the psychic powers question. I put neutral but that is not entirely honest. You see I do have this really weird ability to melt ice remotely and I spent a couple of decades doing just that to perfect my powers . I gave it up quite a few years ago as it seemed a bit pointless really. I mean I can’t see anway you could make a living out of that….
H.R., people generally feel more comfortable giving answers if they have the option to show some hesitance in their agreement/disagreement. Results will tend to be better for it. Also, a finer scale allows for more information, making correlations easier to find.
Your thought would be probably be true when having a one-on-one conversation where you can interact and clarify. Creating a survey is far murkier than that, and this is one way of trying to extract a clearer picture.
Hmmm.
My training was in philosophy, so I have a major problem with all kinds of surveys. For instance, I disagree strongly that I have a wonderful mother. She was marvelous, and I loved her very much, but she died some years ago. So I DO NOT ‘have a wonderful mother’. I HAD a wonderful mother…
Any correlation between belief in AGW and belief that 9-11 was an inside job? Any correlation between AGW and belief in income redistribution? Any correlation between belief in AGW and support for statism? A negative correlation between belief in AGW and support for personal liberty? A correlation between belief in AGW and belief in doing or saying anything to support the cause, even if contradicted by the facts?
I s’pose I’ll just have to create my own survey.
I posted this on Twitter, and since ~70% of the respondents arrived via this post, I wanted to share it here. Thanks everybody!
https://twitter.com/Corpus_no_Logos/status/421769639249453056
The question should be reworded to “Is climate change real?”
Did the survey. But for the life of me I see no merit in it. The same as all survey questions too vague unspecific or too pointed without room for expression. Am curious as to the intent though.
Wait a minute WAIT A MINUTE- what about if someone’s (won’t say who) only seen space aliens on the psychic planes, but has been abducted by Bigfoot (bigfeet)?
You can’t even pass a test in Sociology 110 at my local university unless you are a full-fledged communist, let alone get a PhD there.
kev-in-uk, there is no merit in the survey. It is complete and utter rubbish. Despite that, the survey will “prove” all sorts of things. For example, it may “prove” skeptics are racists. It may “prove” global warming advocates believe they have been abducted by aliens.
People will reject conclusions which are obviously unhinged. However, if they reject the methodology when it produces results they find silly, they’ll have to reject it when it produces results they like (or be seen as hypocrites). That means they’ll have to reject it when Lewandowsky and others use it.
The point of this survey isn’t to try to analyze what people actually believe. The point is to create a situation where nobody can accept the results. The hope is if everybody agrees the results are bogus, everyone will agree the methodology is bogus.
You missed out some other very obvious questions:
1) do you think that Lewandowsky is a self serving know nothing who uses pseudoscience to further a cause that he knows nothing about?
2) do you think he is an embarresment to his profession and his university (or at least should be)?
I also believe that:
The Americans landed on the Moon.
Mohamed Atta and his cronies were responsible for 9/11.
The Earth is round.
The Earth is not the centre of the Universe.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK etc.
Am I weird?
Brandon, thanks for some fun.
So … my budgie, lorikeet, ‘tiel or Green Cheek’s answer may suffice?
.
OK, so back to first principles. For a scientific opinion research survey to be valid, two factors are critical – selection of a true random sample and the construction of questions that elicit the true nature of the information sought. Neither is simple. Self-selection is the devil.
Any survey sent to a selected group people, who then choose to respond or not, is the opposite of scientific research. Sort of like sending out a survey to alien abductees asking about the number of the alien’s fingers (or whatever) with which they conducted their rectal exams. If you were only the lucky recipient of a one finger(or whatever) exam, not feeling special, you might not respond to the survey.
The (non) scientific researcher would conclude that almost everyone had been abducted and that the majority of rectal exams were milti-appendage. Based on that, the government would undertake a nationwide program to sew up everyone’s assholes for their own protection.
Julian Hancock says:
January 10, 2014 at 4:12 pm
I also believe that:
The Americans landed on the Moon.
Mohamed Atta and his cronies were responsible for 9/11.
The Earth is round.
The Earth is not the centre of the Universe.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK etc.
Am I weird?
_______________________
What difference, at this point, does it make?
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Then you’d be just a plain ol’ spaced out bigfoot.