Today has been entertaining to say the least. On Twitter, Ben Pile of Climate Resistance has been telling us all about how he learned that the Lewandowsky-Cook Paper#2 – titled ‘Recursive Fury’, which detailed all manners of conspiratorial ideation theory, was retracted, or was retracted and put back up, or is about to be, or something. Nobody seems quite sure of the behind the scenes machinations going on at “Skeptical Science” and Lew-world.
Pile pointed out that Cook’s buddy and SkS Tank Commander Dana Nuccitelli (context here) authored a post at Skeptical Science announcing the paper’s retracton/demise/flushing, but then, that post was inexplicably removed from SkS. But, it is still on Google cache here. I’ve saved a PDF of the page here.
The puffed up embargo notice for the SkS blog post is a hilarious touch, as it is now March 21st in Australia.
Some excerpts of that “disappeared” SkS post:
EMBARGOED UNTIL 20 March 2014
Contrarians bully journal into retracting a climate psychology paper
Posted on 20 March 2014 by dana1981
Given that fewer than 3 percent of peer-reviewed climate science papers conclude that the human influence on global warming is minimal, climate contrarians have obviously been unable to make a convincing scientific case. Thus in order to advance their agenda of delaying climate solutions and maintaining the status quo in the face of a 97 percent expert consensus suggesting that this is a high-risk path, contrarians have engaged in a variety of unconventional tactics.
- Funding a campaign to deny the expert climate consensus.
- Harassing climate scientists and universities with frivolous Freedom of Information Act requests.
- Engaging in personal, defamatory public attacks on climate scientists.
- Flooding climate scientists with abusive emails.
- Illegally hacking university servers and stealing their emails.
- Harassing journals to retract inconvenient research.
That final tactic has evolved, from merely sending the journal a petition signed by a bunch of contrarians, to sending journals letters threatening libel lawsuits. Unfortunately, this strategy has now succeeded.
NASA Faked the Moon Landing
The story begins with the publication of a paper titled NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science. The paper was authored by Lewandosky, Oberauer, and Gignac, and published in the journal Psychological Science in 2012. Using survey data from visitors to climate blogs, the paper found that conspiracy theorists are more likely to be skeptical of scientists’ conclusions about vaccinations, genetically modified foods, and climate change.
…
Frontiers Bails Out
However, nobody likes being called a conspiracy theorist, and thus climate contrarians really didn’t appreciate Recursive Fury. Very soon after its publication, the journal Frontiers was receiving letters from contrarians threatening libel lawsuits. In late March 2013, the journal decided to “provisionally remove the link to the article while these issues are investigated.” The paper was in limbo for nearly a full year until Frontiers finally caved to these threats.
In its investigation, the journal found no academic or ethical problems with Recursive Fury. However, the fear of being sued by contrarians for libel remained. The University of Western Australia (UWA: Lewandowsky’s university when Recursive Fury was published – he later moved to the University of Bristol) also investigated the matter and found no academic, ethical, or legal problems with the paper. In fact, UWA is so confident in the validity of the paper that they’re hosting it on their own servers.
After nearly a year of discussions between the journal, the paper authors, and lawyers on both sides, Frontiers made it clear that they were unwilling to take the risk of publishing the paper and being open to potential frivolous lawsuits. Both sides have finally agreed to retract Recursive Fury.
It’s unfortunate that the Frontiers editors were unwilling to stand behind a study that they admitted was sound from an academic and ethical standpoint, especially since UWA concluded the paper would withstand a legal assault. Nobody wants to get caught up in a lawsuit, but by caving in here, Frontiers has undoubtedly emboldened climate contrarians to use this tactic again in the future to suppress inconvenient research. Academics also can’t be confident that the Frontiers staff will stand behind them if they publish research in the journal and are subjected to similar frivolous attacks. Frontiers may very well be worse off having lost the confidence of the academic community than if they had called the bluffs of the contrarians threatening frivolous lawsuits.
Hopefully editors of other climate-related journals will learn from this debacle and refuse to let climate contrarians bully them into suppressing valid but inconvenient research.
We are all scratching our heads at the “threat of libel” narrative. As far as I know, nobody in the climate skeptic community has instigated a libel lawsuit or even gotten a lawyer involved over the Lew paper. Mostly we just laugh about it. But I do know that some letters were sent to the journal about the procedures involved in the paper, where people that you are studying for psychological evaluations/studies must be notified and/or give consent, something that apparently wasn’t done.
There’s another oddity; Ben Pile gives details about a notice at the top of the online version of the paper at UWA which floated up today (last edited March 18th according to the PDF properties) which explains that Courts in the USA have ruled that foreign libel rulings are unenforceable in the USA:
And to top it off, the original paper can still be seen at the journal, Frontiers in Psychology.
Seems like some serious randomness is going on. Given the unreliability we have witnessed from SkS in the past, maybe they are simply mixing things up in this pea-and-thimble game to keep us guessing. If so, have at it SkS kidz, we’ll watch with amusement.
Or, maybe they are just incompetent. Who knows?
As Johnny Carson used to say “That is some weird, wild stuff“.
UPDATE: Steve McIntyre leaves this note in comments
Anthony, you say “But I do know that some letters were sent to the journal about the procedures involved in the paper, where people that you are studying for psychological evaluations/studies must be notified and/or give consent, something that apparently wasn’t done.” This gives an incomplete picture,
The Lewandowsky article made a variety of defamatory and untrue allegations against me with malice. I accordingly sent a strongly worded and detailed letter to the journal formally requesting that they withdraw the allegations and retract the article. I didn’t “instigate a libel lawsuit” or get “a lawyer involved” but the letter was a formal one. It was my hope that the journal would recognize the many defects of the Lewandowsky article and behave responsibly, as they eventually did.
UPDATE2: 3/20/14 10:00PM PDT. Now the paper at UWA that was available earlier at http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/Publications/LskyetalRecursiveFury4UWA.pdf has been removed from the server. Quite amusing that these guys can’t seem to find a permanent place to house their paper, which seems to be toxic now.
UPDATE3: 3/21/14 7:45AM PDT The paper at UWA that was available earlier at http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/Publications/LskyetalRecursiveFury4UWA.pdf seems to have been put back on the server. No explanation given.
UPDATE4: 3/21/14 10:20AM PDT Retraction Watch says:
Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted
A year after being clumsily removed from the web following complaints, a controversial paper about “the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science” is being retracted.
…
The release of the news about the retraction has been a messy affair, with a Google cache version of an “embargoed” post about the situation circulating on the web yesterday, and then the story apparently breaking on climate skeptic blog Watts Up With That.
More here: http://retractionwatch.com/2014/03/21/controversial-paper-linking-conspiracy-ideation-to-climate-change-skepticism-formally-retracted/
Note: WUWT didn’t break the story, that honor goes to reader Barry Woods, who advised Ben Pile, and Andrew Montford at Bishop Hill had it before WUWT did.
UPDATE5: 3/21/14 10:35AMPDT The formal retraction is up on the Frontiers of Psychology Website. http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00293/full
[snip let’s leave that one alone – Anthony]
Since he can’t find anything else to do with it maybe he’ll plant it on someone’s server as user FOIA.
Recursive retractions.
Here’s an interesting thing. Lew writes:
“If it is not bronzed Aussie swimmers, it’s the picture of a U.S. submarine surfacing at the North Pole in 1959 that has been circulating the nether regions of the internet to disprove global warming. The photo of a sleek submarine is unlikely to overturn established science, but it can at least claim some involuntary humorous credit: The U.S.S. Skate surfaced on 17 March, which is before sunrise at the North Pole, and so whatever photos are circulating on the internet are doubly wrong: Not only are they meaningless as evidence, but they didn’t even capture an event that actually occurred in darkness.”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/mar/01/antarctic-expedition-climate-change-pictures-graph
So, the man who thinks that i) deniers think that the moon landing was faked, also thinks that ii) deniers faked a picture of the USS Skate at the North Pole!
Petard. Hoisted.
Australian Climate Madness synopsis of why it is in limbo: http://australianclimatemadness.com/2014/03/21/lew-paper-danas-catalogue-of-excuses/
The abstract is available here..
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/abstract
It’s enough gibberish without reading the whole thing
Poor Bristol
Unlike W.A. which is ‘scorchio’ most of the time, the climate of Bristol (and SW England in general) is incessantly gloomy and mild. I think Lew will have will have a very tough time there trying to persuade the population that a couple or three degrees of Warming would be a bad thing.
[snip – off topic and out of bounds -mod]
“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”
(Proverbs 26:11)
so getting back to these predictions from unvalidated models that cannot recreate past know climate and the claim co2 is the main driver of temps…….
Decontextualising ice age cycles by taking a ‘snapshot’ of 30years of data then extending 100year prediction lines is not proof.
I may just have a very small sample here, but of my circle of acquaintances it is only the warmists who want to ban GM (even Golden Rice,for crying out loud); they are anti-vaccination, want a moratorium on space research and exploration, don’t want any new houses or power plants of any non windmill or solar panel kind built (thorium salt bed reactors, either never heard of them or standard enviro nuclear = I don’t understand it = scary = ban it). They see conspiracies everywhere, value all other life on the planet more than their own species, I am clearly quite mad, as Rousseau attested “To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness”. That’s me and the small number of rational friends I have. As an aside, Most of the latter group are graduates, most of the former not.
Anthony,
“Quite amusing that these guys can’t seem to find a permanent place to house their paper, which seems to be toxic now.”
I suggest it should be placed between the tightly clenched cheeks of their buttocks to stem the dire rear that flows there from. That’s a corker!
Perry
Bertram Felden “That’s me and the small number of rational friends I have.” You probably have more friends than you realize. As Phil Jones lamented in my favorite climategate email (#2621): “The internet has allowed all these people to find one another unfortunately.”
🙂
Michael Hart – thanks. I forgot to mention homeopathy. The warmists love that. Right up their street.
for some reason the mechanisms of energy transference [short term weather/ long term climate] are made out to be some rare sport that only gm modified geniuses can comprehend with £30m supercomputers, satellites and billions in grant money
Ben was tipped off about that Skeptical Science web page, being in the google cache..
Was it a Skeptical Science insider, was it their hacker, or was there a more simple explanation to who tipped Ben Off about it…….
I wonder why SkS withdrew it, the page said embargoed to the 20th March, I wonder what happened (now the 21st)
I complained to Frontiers about the ethical conducts and conflicts of interest and vested interest of the authors. I requested my name to be removed from the paper. Because one of the authors Marriott, (Watching the Deniers blog) had been writing over a dozen articles attacking the critics of LOG12 during the research period (ie not neutral as claimed) and more particularly, had personally attacked me, naming me (and others) on his blog Watching the Deniers.. and as such I said this compromised the paper.
I also said because of this it was also in Frontiers best interests to remove this paper for consideration, in light of these issues
I emailed Frontiers, links to Marriotts personal attacks about myself and Anthony Watts, labelling us deniers, disinformation, denial Industry, writing ‘Verified Bullshit’ and worst labelling us with a psychological defect Dunning-Kruger, and he had adulterated an WUWT graphic (my article) with a red rubber stamped ‘Verified Bullshit’
https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/?s=woods
This article I found was was endorsed by Skeptical Science, and it transpires that Mariott was also a Skeptical Science insider (writing rebutalls)
and most importantly (I think) after I actually spoke to somebody at Zurich, the paper was taken down 30 minutes later, to be investigated I assume, when I raised my concerns about personal public attacks on me, Anthony and others, by a ‘researcher on this paper. I do think speaking to people is much better than email, LOTS of people HAD already complained, so that phone call was perhaps just the final straw for a tipping point, to allow Frontiers to make the correct decision to investigate the ethical conduct for themselves, in it’s (Frontiers) and the field of psychologies own interests.
I did complain to UWA ethics department, asking for my name to be removed form th epaper, in light of Marriot’s conduct, (I also said it had no impact on the paper, and this should be a simple request for UWA/ and the lead author to fulfill, given the circumstances) but UWA found no problems with Marriott’s conduct, or the other issues I raised about the paper. which says a lot about UWA, I think
Has anybody told Richard Prof Betts yet (he was also named in the data, as was Prof Judith Curry))
i don’t see people inventing conspiracy or in a fury. I just see people waiting for proof to claims co2 is the main driver of temps and will result in catastrophic change.
if people want to talk psychology then the word cult comes to mind? Patrick Moore uses the term cult.
Definition of a cult
“A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular thing:”
“A person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society:”
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/cult
An amusing coincidence : at football (soccer) side Borussia Dortmund, and in the Polish national squad, Lewandowski is the top goal scorer. In the warm monger team, Lewandowsky is the main own-goal scorer.
…nobody likes being called a conspiracy theorist, and thus climate contrarians really didn’t appreciate Recursive Fury. Very soon after its publication, the journal Frontiers was receiving letters from contrarians threatening libel lawsuits.”
Yep. I felt personally libeled because that paper was directed at me and others like me. LOL!
Unbelievable the garbage these guys emit in the global information commons…
Stop laughing as this is not funny. Every week these clowns collect a paycheck, many of them paid by we taxpayers.
Still think it is just harmful fun?
SKS is a bunch of Kreepy Kooky Klowns.
[snip – off topic and out of bounds -mod]
dbstealey said (March 20, 2014 at 5:46 pm)
“…The funny thing about that graph is that a graph showing the exact opposite can be constructed, depending on the time frame…”
What’s even funnier is that their attempt to take a swipe at “deniers” actually proves a point – that the “pause” exists, as evidenced by the top “step” of the escalator.
Someone needs to ask Dana Nuccitelli how much longer that top step will get, and when will the next “step” get installed. Seems that the escalator has merged with a moving sidewalk.