Readers may recall this survey: A poll to test the Lewandowsky methodology The results are in, which is why we can’t say global warming proponents support pedophilia.
Guest essay by Brandon Schollenberger
They don’t. The fact there is a correlation (0.14) between believing global warming is a serious threat and saying pedophilia is good is meaningless. The fact this correlation is “statistically significant” (at the 99.99% level) is meaningless. Anyone who looks at the data can immediately see the results are bogus (a small jitter value was added to allow us to see the density of responses):
There are only 20 or so respondents (out of over 5,000) who claim to believe global warming is a threat and claim to support pedophilia. It’s likely those responses were false. Nobody can seriously claim that proves global warming proponents are pedophiles.
The issue of false responses received a lot of attention with Stephan Lewandowsky’s paper, “NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax. In that paper, similarly false responses created spurious correlations. Unfortunately, the focus on false responses meant a more fundamental issue got missed. Namely, the entire idea behind this approach is nonsensical. The approach is like taking the data displayed above and drawing this line:
The line fits okay in the bottom left corner where most of the data lies. That means there is positive correlation between the two data sets. However, that corner clearly shows a correlation between thinking pedophilia is bad and being a skeptic. It tells us nothing about global warming proponents or pedophiles. Similarly, when I said global warming proponents support genocide, I was doing this:
If we put this in words, the argument is:
Skeptics believe genocide and pedophilia are bad. Global warming proponents are the opposite of skeptics so they must believe genocide and pedophilia are good.
Change a few words, and you have Lewandowsky’s argument for why we should believe skeptics are conspiracy theorists:
Global warming proponents believe the moon landing was real. Skeptics are the opposite of them so they must believe the moon landing was faked.
With this corresponding image:
All of these results are “statistically significant.” However, all of these results assume skeptics must hold the opposite view of global warming proponents on all things. Assuming that guarantees the results. We can do that to criticize any group we want. Just follow these simple steps:
1) Ask group X if they think the moon landing was real. They’ll say yes.
2) Assume group Y would answer the opposite way.
3) Conclude group Y believes the moon landing was faked.
You can replace “the moon landing was real” with anything you want. I showed this by doing it with genocide and pedophilia. Had Lewandowsky asked about those, he could have concluded skeptics are pedophiles. He could have probably got it published too. After all, he didn’t do this just once. He published a second paper using the same approach (with a slightly less skewed sample).
And he’s not the only one who uses it. Lewandowsky’s recent paper cites the paper, Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. That paper argues conspiracy theorists are so loony they’ll accept multiple, contradictory conspiracies. It’s namesake comes from the “statistically significant” correlation between believing Princess Diana and/or Osama Bin Laden was killed in a conspiracy and believing he/she is still alive. The image for this claim would be:
The scale in that image is correct. Let it sink in.
There is no justification for this methodology. Even so, three scientific journals have approved of it. Dozens of scientific articles approvingly cite its results. Half a dozen people have been paid papers using it. It has been promoted hundreds of times in the media. It is widely accepted in the global warming debate. It is complete and utter nonsense, but people like the results so they don’t mind.
And if my suspicions are correct, it’s probably been used in many other papers.
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Brandon, many thanks for the clarity of your explanation. Really well done!
@Brandon Shollenberger at 5:15 am
I did do what you seem to be describing.
Yes, but you put them is separte posts a week apart.
Not only that, but you did not link back to the Jan. 15 post on the correlation matricies.
It is all in the delivery of the message.
Stephan Rasey, anyone following my blog would have followed the narrative fine as the posts were made in relatively quick succession. I’m sure I could have improved on it, but I think it was good enough. The only real problem I see with the narrative is most of the attention to my writing was on other sites so most people didn’t see it.
I’m not too worried about that though. I technically didn’t submit posts. I alerted several people of what I wrote and told them they could use what I had written however they wanted (an offer open to anyone). It was there call what to post. How much of the narrative to display, and what framing to use, was up to them.
That said, I’ve always intended to create a document which stepped through the same narrative. I don’t know that there’d be much use for such, but it could be nice for anyone who “comes in late.” Plus it’d be easier to show to friends. I expect to post a .pdf of it Sunday. That might better address your concerns.
Personally, I’m not big on packaging or promoting my work. I like to write. I don’t like to market.
Brandon –
I agree with you as to the mathematics here, and how they can be misused and can give misleading results. My object was not to dispute your points, but to underscore that genocide is more than a subject for analysis of perceptions or of how people arrive at their beliefs.
I make my case for alarmist genocide by simple observation, without mathematical manipulation or statistical cutting and slicing. When alarmist agitation leads to policies like carbon taxes, and the cost of home heating fuel consequently goes up to the point where low-income people (and especially the elderly) cannot afford it and die from the cold as a result, this is an empirically observed and documented chain of events.
As for the alarmists’ so-what/all for the cause attitude about these deaths, that too is a widely observed and reported fact. There are pages and pages in the UK press reporting instances of these deaths being written off as “trash” or “worthless old people” by people with known associations with the alarmist crowd. This is one of the ugliest sides of alarmism that is not getting the public attention it should.
And no amount of statistical analysis can refute these sorts of direct observations, and denying them doesn’t make then any less true and factual. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said “correlation,” because such a statistic is irrelevant in this instance, the more so when there is such compelling physical proof.
I actually finished a rough draft of the combined document I mentioned a little bit ago. I just have to figure out what to do with it.
Since most skeptics also believe in AGW (but not the multiple x feed backs that constitute the religion CAGW) that must complicate the analysis for Loonandowsky et al.
My latest question for annoying the scientifically literate warmies (a very rare subspecies):
– what was the ex post climate sensitivity per doubling CO2? (The Mauna and HadCRUT4 data are publicly available and Excel has good regression tools.)
– what reason do you have to believe the 21st century will show triple that?
That always explodes their heads.
Chad Wozniak says: @ur momisugly January 24, 2014 at 6:47 pm
….I make my case for alarmist genocide by simple observation….
As for the alarmists’ so-what/all for the cause attitude about these deaths, that too is a widely observed and reported fact. There are pages and pages in the UK press reporting instances of these deaths being written off as “trash” or “worthless old people” by people with known associations with the alarmist crowd. This is one of the ugliest sides of alarmism that is not getting the public attention it should….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do you have any examples of that? I was aware of the deaths but not of the attitude although it does not surprise me.