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the Lewandowsky-Cook Paper#2 – titled ‘Recursive Fury’, which detailed all manners of conspiratorial ideation theory, was retracted, or was retracted and put back up, or is about to be, or something.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
Wow! What apparent idiocy and distorted thinking.
And we are funding such apparently deranged and destructive thought? One might think that this guy is one of those kids who grew up without any friends. His current apparent talent is as a news reporter. One that could probably stretch the “news” cycle for the missing 777 into months with a new conspiratorial theory each day. Sorry sane news folk.
Cut to the chase: If humans were born for any purpose other than killing the planet, why do we exhale CO2, that plants and trees thrive on? Also, how many humans were around as the earth sank into the last of multiple periods of glaciation and then emerged 100,000 years later, each time, to de-glaciate the planet presumably using bad breath and broken spears that apparently had a hard time killing Mastodons, likely the major CO2 source at the time?
How else could we humans have melted all of the ice from the last glaciation that caused over a 360 foot sea level rise? And by the way, why didn’t major civilizations of humans populate sea port urban centers until about 10,000 years ago when the sea level stabilized?
This isn’t conspiratorial, its all in the literature.
Since when is skepticism about GMO a right-wing conspiracist issue? The left-leaning governments of the European Union are the primary opponents of GMO, and in California the core of GMO opposition comes from Liberals, and Conservatives are GMO’s supporters.
Thanks to Seth, Crispin and “wbrozek” for pointing up the error of a “know it all but know it wrong” Professor.
According to:
http://www.wsanford.com/~wsanford/exo/sundials/DEC_Sun.html
the Sun’s declination on March 17 (average for the four year cycle) is 1° 35 minutes south. From the North Pole, the sun’s true altitude is equal to the declination, so on March 17 at (I assume) noon, the sun’s true altitude would have been 1° 35 minutes (= 95’) below the horizon.
As “wbrozek” points out, refraction must be taken into account. I quote Norie’s Tables, 1969 edition, page 558. “The true amplitudes given in the main table are calculated for the instant when the true altitude of the body is precisely 0° 00’. In the case of the sun (owing to the effects of dip, refraction and parallax) the lower limb at this instant will appear to be approximately half a diameter above the visible horizon.” This means that on March 21, when the sun crosses the equator and its true altitude is precisely 0° 00’, its upper limb (on which sunrise is defined) will already be about three semi-diameters above the horizon. Again from Nories, p 149, the sun’s semi-diameter on 17 March is about 16.1’. So three semi-diameters is 48.3’, and the upper limb, assuming this correction for the true altitude is good for when the true altitude is -95’ will be only about 47’ below the horizon. Of course, the time could have been as late as midnight on March 17, but which time the upper limb would have rise a further 12 minutes.
Still before sunrise, but definitely not in “darkness”. The sun would have been below the horizon the same distance as three minutes before sunrise on the equator, and everything would have been that bright!
Re Dudley Horscroft says: March 20, 2014 at 11:59 pm [snip – off topic and out of bounds -mod], I don’t keep a copy of what I wrote, so apologize anyway if it was “out of bounds”. “Off topic”? well, judging by the way some of the topics stray …..
Congratulations guys! Another win for free speec…. oh wait…
Recursive Fury:
Conspiratorial analysis of an alleged conspiracy to identify the conspiracy behind a conspiracy to sabotage research on the conspiracy, conspiracy.
ok?
Amusing reading over at http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/rf1.html#3166. Conspiracy ideationed alarmist NathanD does a great impression of Basil Fawlty covering his screwup.
To quote my friend L. Neil Smith: “It’s extremely important in this connection to remember that psychology is not a science, not even remotely. It is not the product of careful hypothesis-formation and controlled, repeatable, peer-reviewed experiment. It is nothing more than a collection of folklore and the armchair opinions of committees, less credible and valid than global warming. The authority it speaks from is purely political.” He was speaking of the current drive to get mental health evaluations for all gun owners.
Given the massive failure of those organizations to even remotely predict behaviors of known unstable individuals in their treatment, see CN, MD, CO, etc., for anyone to take their rantings seriously about the makeup of the intellect of members of the hard sciences and engineering, is moral abdication.
“The funny thing about that graph is that a graph showing the exact opposite can be constructed, depending on the time frame.”
No, it can’t.
Although, I’d like to see your effort: a series of decreasing sub-series with the average temperature of each series lower than the previous.
Off you go.
I just posted the following comment on the retraction notice post at Frontiers’ website:
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00293/full
John
– – – – – – – – – – –
Dudley Horscroft,
The owner of this blog politely advised me privately that it was ‘out of bounds’ for me to initiate discussion that expanded beyond the discussion of Lewandowsky’s ‘science’ / ‘pseudo-science’ into the realm of comparing him to that very very controversial figure of the 20th century.
I happily honor his request without prejudice.
NOTE: But we can take our interesting (to us anyway) conversation that was snipped elsewhere. I have copies of all comments of yours and mine that were snipped. I also have copies of all of Jason Calley’s comments on the subject that were snipped. Do you do FB or Twitter? I do. Shall we continue elsewhere? Do you have suggestions about where to continue our discussion?
John
I’m willing to believe virtually anything you can prove without glaring holes in the logic. In fact, I’m still willing to believe that OJ is innocent, but when I see “fake” and “men on Moon” in the same sentence, my eyes glaze over immediately.
I can see clearly I have to employ many expensive supercomputers to manage the ever growing statistical idiosyncractic data streams flowing into my “Mann O Man O Meter” data adjustment filters to account for phsycological climate sensitivity variables and extreem events. Such unforseen developments in the anti-climatic climate alarmist future probable crimes against humanity caused by thinking rational concerned CAGW AKA CCC (catastrophic climate change which can be either too hot or too cold) skeptics sometimes derogetorilly hate speech termed Climate Change Denialists. Leaves me to compile several leading indicators for corellaries between CAGW raw data sets deliberately with-held from public access , frivilous FOI requests for said Data, Phycological profiling of Catastrophic Climate Change skeptics (which in itself appears to be illegal , akin to racial profiling) Elapsed time vectored with popcorn sales and projected (computer modeled of course) virtual popped kernals against specific hemispheres of the globe. Seeing this added unforseen of Climate Change Deniers being lumped in with Conspiracy Theorists and GMO safety makes my think somehow a spring loaded hockey stick lever should be installed to deliver each sigularly popped pop corn kernal into the counting bowl, where they can be collected together and disappeared into a many black holes, whoose event horizen is seen to the observer as teeth.
I see many people here are cheerfully providing raw data for a third Lewandowsky paper. And making sure the second one is read more widely that it otherwise would have been.
– – – – – – –
Magma,
I really appreciate your timely appearance to say that because it provides an intellectually clear dichotomy wrt my thought.
I think all the comments on this thread (and comments in threads on the same topic on other blogs) provide data that there may be a reasonable case for a propagation of retractions backward in time for Lewandowsky to include retracting his ‘Moon Landing’ paper, since his retracted ‘Recursive Fury’ fundamentally extended from ‘Moon Landing’.
It is quite an opposite context from which to view this thread versus your context. N’est ce pas?
John
Magma says:
March 22, 2014 at 11:34 am
I see many people here are cheerfully providing raw data for a third Lewandowsky paper. And making sure the second one is read more widely that it otherwise would have been.
———————————-
I’m sure all those unemployed Soviet psychologists, who generally operated on the principle that if you opposed the Soviet system then you were mentally ill, are eagerly awaiting the next paper from one of their ideological brethren in the West.
But then again, maybe Putin has found some use for them.
Who is suing whom? Confused wombat I am.
I still think Lew’s paper is missing a couple of words “Once upon a time” for instance.
John Whitman says: March 22, 2014 at 9:44 am ” ….. Do you do FB or Twitter? I do. Shall we continue elsewhere? Do you have suggestions about where to continue our discussion?”
Thanks for the invitation, John. I don’t do either Facebook or Twitter, so that is not on. I think, however interesting the conversation might have been, I will have to decline – I am up to my eyeballs in work, etc. Regards
Dudley Horscroft says:
March 22, 2014 at 5:59 pm
– – – – – – – – – –
Dudley Horscroft,
OK. See you sometime perhaps in the future on a blog somewhere.
Did you look at the recent book by Michael D. Gordin entitled ‘The Pseudo-Science Wars’?
Given your expressed interest and views then you should look at it.
Sincerely, I hope to see you on the flip side. : )
Regards.
John
Just some backups of the google cache of the missing SkS page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140323024536/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com//search?q=cache:skepticalscience.com/contrarians-bully-frontiers-lewandowsky.html
AKA http://archive.is/LVaTV
—-
https://bitly.com/SkepticalScience 😀
Steve McIntyre: “I accordingly sent a strongly worded and detailed letter…”
I’m wondering if you could be our new ambassador to Russia. It seems to me Putin deserves a sternly worded letter on his recent behaviour, n’est pas?
John Whitman says: March 22, 2014 at 6:40 pm Thanks for the lead – have put in a request for this to my local library.
Wait…Is the conspiracy about the prediction Mann will cause earth to warm, or Man proving he can change the climate?
It always amazes me that there are so many so seriously deluded that they continue to take ‘often wrong John’ & friends seriously.
Haven’t these gullible perpetual victims ever heard the the story of ‘The boy who cried “Wolf”‘!
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2014/02/28/is-skeptical-science-wilfully-dishonest-or-just-plain-stupid/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/skeptical-science/