This will be a top sticky post for a day, new stories will appear below this one
Dana Nuccitelli, the Guardian, Joe Romm, and other overly emotional climate propagandists should heed this message, you’ve been put on notice in a rare statement about the false claims of “threats” being the cause of the retraction.
From the Frontiers in Psychology blog, setting the record straight once and for all, bolding in text is mine:
Retraction of Recursive Fury: A Statement
(Lausanne, Switzerland) – There has been a series of media reports concerning the recent retraction of the paper Recursive Fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation, originally published on 18 March 2013 in Frontiers in Psychology. Until now, our policy has been to handle this matter with discretion out of consideration for all those concerned. But given the extent of the media coverage – largely based on misunderstanding – Frontiers would now like to better clarify the context behind the retraction.
As we published in our retraction statement, a small number of complaints were received during the weeks following publication. Some of those complaints were well argued and cogent and, as a responsible publisher, our policy is to take such issues seriously. Frontiers conducted a careful and objective investigation of these complaints. Frontiers did not “cave in to threats”; in fact, Frontiers received no threats. The many months between publication and retraction should highlight the thoroughness and seriousness of the entire process.
As a result of its investigation, which was carried out in respect of academic, ethical and legal factors, Frontiers came to the conclusion that it could not continue to carry the paper, which does not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects. Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics. Frontiers informed the authors of the conclusions of our investigation and worked with the authors in good faith, providing them with the opportunity of submitting a new paper for peer review that would address the issues identified and that could be published simultaneously with the retraction notice.
The authors agreed and subsequently proposed a new paper that was substantially similar to the original paper and, crucially, did not deal adequately with the issues raised by Frontiers.
We remind the community that the retracted paper does not claim to be about climate science, but about psychology. The actions taken by Frontiers sought to ensure the right balance of respect for the rights of all.
One of Frontiers’ founding principles is that of authors’ rights. We take this opportunity to reassure our editors, authors and supporters that Frontiers will continue to publish – and stand by – valid research. But we also must uphold the rights and privacy of the subjects included in a study or paper.
Frontiers is happy to speak to anyone who wishes to have an objective and informed conversation about this. In such a case, please contact the Editorial Office at editorial.office@frontiersin.org.
Costanza Zucca, Editorial Director
Fred Fenter, Executive Editor
Full statement here
Translation:
To all reading this, I have a personal favor to ask; please go to the media outlets and blogs that are carrying the claims of ‘threats’ being the cause of the retraction, and post a link to the Frontiers in Psychology statement: http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Retraction_of_Recursive_Fury_A_Statement/812
Related: A stunning revelation from a UWA Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson over access to Lewandowsky’s poll data
See also: My complaint letter regarding the Lewandowsky affair
Anthony writes, “..please go to the media outlets and blogs that are carrying the claims of ‘threats’ being the cause of the retraction…”
Why do you think you don’t see me comment here as much as I used to. Seems all I do these days is take the fight to the warmistas !
Unless they explain the discrepancy, we’ll have to speculate. Personally, I would read the original retraction as being diplomatic to save offending the authors. The blog entry has decided that being diplomatic hasn’t worked and they need to be more blunt.
More from Lew and company…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/apr/04/climate-change-uncertainty-stronger-tackling-case
– – – – – – – –
Graeme W,
I think what you said is what the journal meant when they said in the latest statement (in lead post above),
Also, I think it is certain that higher level journal leadership stepped in to handle the ‘Lew’ paper situation between their first retraction statement and the second. It was a an effective move for the sake of the journal’s reputation, I think.
John
Pho,
“Some good comments ARE getting on:”
These will be the study subjects for the next paper “Retraction Fury”.
LOL
The University of Woolamaloo, sorry the University of WA actually is standing by the paper. Here’s the link.
http://www.psychology.uwa.edu.au/research/cognitive/?a=2523540
Looking at more stuff from the fall 2013 AGU SFO meeting.
Gavin Schmidt, chief temperature history rewriter: Use pictures, not graphs, people respond much better to pictures.
(didn’t mention in his advice about how to communicate climate science: Delete all comments that come from non-“climate believers”)
(Also didn’t mention: freely rewrite history if it helps the story)
13:28 : “Do not go near questions of data access.”
(Don’t say FOIA to him!)
14:35 : “Perceived attempts to shut down debates are frequently counterproductive”
(Oh. Guess he looked at his tanking alexa rating recently.)
15:00 : “Avoid arrogance, elitism, argument from authority”
(What?)
15:47 : He is clearly in favor of the D-word and avoids calling us skeptics.
Only one comment so far in support of Lew. Of course, it’s not actually in support of Lew, but rather an ad hom against Barry. Churlish. It’s all they have remaining.
“…the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics.”
There is an error: It is not “psychopathological” behavior, It is psychopathetic.
“Jim Bo says:
April 4, 2014 at 3:54 pm
Oh dear. Surely Wikipedia, that bastion of truth, will be shortly updated….
Study retraction
[snip]
After some climate change d____r bloggers accused the paper of being defamatory, it was retracted on March 21, 2014.”
———————————————————————————————————————-
wiki’s “climate change d____r” page is a real hoot
Yeah, seems a little unbalanced doesn’t it? For example, were is the page for?????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_advocate
And interesting that Wikipedia inserts a quote from Peter Christoff,, who is not only a colleague of Lew, he’s also a Climate_change_advocate, and is on the board of the ACF.
http://www.acfonline.org.au/about-us/governance/acf-council
According to The Conversation:
“He is also currently a Board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation and was its Vice President for eight years.”
Phew! Here I was thinking this page about vested interests would be written by people without a vested interest, oh well.
http://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-christoff-2050/profile_bio
I hope by the time wiki gets around to adding the climate_change_advocate page, it inserts plenty of quotes from skeptics!
Two wrongs make a right
-Homer
Dirk-new frontier on where climate change would be fought and silenced per the described intentions.
I’m the lady who laid out all the seminal ed figures who went to Wundt’s lab to train and then brought it back to the US, I know it’s not new. My editor even asked me about the phrase “once again traipsing off to.” It was a long, influential list.
Psychology and education are the weapons, but most people are not monitoring those areas as the way in to change what is believed and valued, real or not. That needs to change to truly stop these horrific intentions grounded in deceit.
I’ve been reading Hayden Washington’s and John Cook’s ‘Climate Change Denial-Head in the sand’ book. If you want to know where the kind of trash in Lewdonsky’s journal article is coming from, this book is a pretty good start, if you can weather it.
“Some of those complaints were well argued and cogent….”
=========
Better get used to it.
Regarding the various papers designed to indicate that expressing a contrary point of view to ‘Climate orthodoxy’ is somehow to be evil, delusional, or even a sign of mental illness; I can’t help feeling that those making such assertions are indulging in a great deal of psychological projection.
dbstealey says
re name calling
‘The fact is that we are currently living in a “Goldilocks” climate’
Goldilocks is a name.
Wikipedia watch out! An attitude of “we don’t care” may warrant a legal opinion.
When Wikipedia talk pages are edited with comments based on valid physics, which point out errors in their various articles, they take a “we don’t care” attitude. They deliberately introduce greenhouse talk, even in an article about Venus, where the surface temperature cannot possibly be raised by the small amount of radiation reaching it. All they do is cite 1980’s literature which contains nothing but assertive assumptions that the carbon dioxide atmosphere is “obviously” the cause of the high temperatures.
I’m just making a suggestion as to what I believe Wikipedia administration ought to find out for themselves from their lawyers, because I don’t think they can hide behind the cover of an encyclopedia (in the eyes of the law) and excuse the propagation of fictitious propaganda about the greenhouse effect, now disputed by hundreds (if not thousands) of scientists and academics. But I’m not a lawyer and I’m not suggesting that I would be involved, unless called to address some committee investigation or court hearing.
Just suppose, for example, when the truth comes out about the carbon dioxide political hoax, that large companies (affected by elecricity and carbon tax costs) pool their funds to mount a global class action against those parties who have contributed significantly in the promulgation of biased “information” likely to be read by voters and politicians alike, and likely to have led to corruption in numerous ways pertaining to research funding, and also likely to have wasted many billions of taxpayer funds.
The radiative greenhouse conjecture is false. It is a part of a sinister political agenda. It does not stand up to the rigors of valid physics theory, such as (ironically) WP does also publish. Nitrogen and oxygen hold about 98% of the energy in the Earth’s atmosphere, and they slow the surface cooling. But the cooling stops at night where the gravitationally induced thermal gradient supports the surface temperature. Carbon dioxide and water vapor cool by radiating energy (mostly from nitrogen and oxygen) out of the atmosphere, and also lowering the gradient so that lower surface temperatures result. The key fallacy in the radiative greenhouse effect is assuming that all the radiation from the surface is transferring thermal energy out of the surface, when in fact most of it is just scattering the back radiation.
[snip – Doug Cotton -mod]
hacktivist cranks like this one are turning up around the web, railing against “threats” toward the journal and slinging the “denier” label around freely:
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/04/04/journal-that-retracted-conspiracy-ideation-climate-skepticism-paper-says-it-did-not-cave-into-threats/#comment-89295
a couple of links to annoy Lewandowsky.
***not even a loaded para such as Neuhauser’s below will win back the trust of the public, i’m glad to say:
4 April: US News & World Report: Alan Neuhauser: Poll: Americans Still Unconcerned About Global Warming
Most Americans are not greatly concerned about climate change, a Gallup poll finds.
Just 34 percent of adults said they worried “a great deal” about “global warming,” about the same as last year. Meanwhile, 35 percent said they felt the same way about “climate change,” just a 2 percentage points more than last year.
“A major challenge facing scientists and organizations that view global warming as a major threat to humanity is that average citizens express so little concern about the issue,” Gallup said…
***The poll was conducted in early March, yet the results were released Friday – just one week after a comprehensive report by a United Nations climate panel reasserted that not only is climate change a man-made phenomenon, but its effects are already being felt around the world, they’re worse than previously predicted and no matter what actions are taken, they’ll persist for centuries to come…
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/04/04/poll-americans-still-unconcerned-about-global-warming
the warming they predicted isn’t happening, and cold, hard facts such as the one below haven’t helped the CAGW-enforcers’ cause, either:
4 April: CBC: It’s official: Winnipeg’s winter the coldest since 1898
Environment Canada says it was also one of the snowiest – and it’s not over yet
“It was 116 years ago,” he said. “And think about it. In 1898, there was no talk of global warming or urban heat islands, no cars or pavements and the population was a twentieth of what it is now in Winnipeg.”…
“Just keeping your home and your business warm has cost you about another 17, 20 per cent more so, not a lot of good things we can say about it except the fact that you survived it,” Phillips said.
He said on average, temperatures during the period of December through March were 6 degrees colder than normal.
Phillips also said the past winter was one of the snowiest since 1898. ..
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/it-s-official-winnipeg-s-winter-the-coldest-since-1898-1.2598530
4 April: San Francisco Chronicle Blog: Caroline Lochhead: Stanford economists say social cost of carbon too low
In an article published Friday in the journal Nature, Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow and Lawrence Goulder, both of Stanford, along with six other law and economics scholars, said the controversial “social cost of carbon” calculations developed by the federal government are too low, not too high, as conservatives argue…
The Nature authors list four reasons why the cost of carbon is likely to be higher than the administration has estimated…
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2014/04/04/stanford-economists-say-social-cost-of-carbon-too-low/
meanwhile, in the real world:
2 pages: 4 April: Reuters: EU carbon slips 3.7 pct on weak power, gas
“(Carbon) volumes have been pretty weak so it hasn’t taken much to move prices lower,” a carbon trader said….
Many large utilities sell power forward several years in advance, buying the fuel and carbon units needed to generate the electricity at the same time to lock in margins.
However, if power prices drop, those companies may choose to buy the power back, earning them a profit but meaning they are also likely to sell the fuel and carbon permits back into the market…
Firms regulated by the EU Emission Trading System will get 6.6 billion free allowances between 2013 and 2020 to help them compete with rivals in other regions which have looser environmental regulations.
Seven countries, including Poland and Romania, have still yet to award the 2014 allowances, the Commission data showed.
(Reporting by Susanna Twidale; editing by Keiron Henderson)
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL5N0MW37A20140404
5 April: Bloomberg: Alex Morales: U.S. Seeks Changes to ‘Skewed’ Data in UN Climate Draft
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is concerned that a crucial United Nations report on climate science may be too harsh in assessing the cost of fighting global warming.
Such a finding may lower the incentive for the world to reduce fossil fuel pollution and feed the arguments of those skeptical about whether it’s worth spending money to curtail rising temperatures.
The report will be completed by hundreds of scientists and government officials at a UN meeting in Berlin next week…
“The discussion of the economic costs of mitigation is too narrow and does not incorporate co-benefits of action,” U.S. officials wrote in a submission to the UN, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg. They said including only one side of the equation “unnecessarily skews the information.”
The comment refers to “global consumption losses” identified in the report of as much as 4 percent in 2030, 6 percent in 2050 and 12 percent in 2100 as a result of action to protect the climate, according to a draft leaked in January…
*** A draft of the study and a 222-page document containing comments from government officials was obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to the documents who asked not to be further identified…
Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC, said that the report’s wording will “certainly be improved” during a week-long session starting April 7 in Berlin to review the text line-by-line…
Sweden and Norway were among other nations seeking to include in the report data on the benefits of cutting emissions. Those include the avoided damage that would result from a lower amount of warming, and consequently lower sea levels as well as less melting of glaciers…
The U.S. was among several governments to question why the panel isn’t using GDP instead of the less-understood term consumption losses…
Japan said it “would appreciate if cost of mitigation is measured in percentage of global GDP.” Canada said the term consumption losses “is not understood by the reader,” and the European Union said “the choice of consumption losses as a metric seems to be unclear and misleadingly suggests relatively higher impact than other metrics.” …
Rosen (Richard Rosen, executive vice president at the Tellus Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit policy research group) also questioned the validity of trying to calculate costs and benefits so far into the future.
“None of the costs or benefits of mitigating climate change can be forecast to any scientifically credible level of accuracy over the long run,” Rosen said. That’s because of “the fundamental uncertainties associated with all the hundreds of key assumptions that need to be made.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-04/u-s-seeks-changes-to-skewed-data-in-un-climate-draft.html
The editors at FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY retracted Recursive Fury because Lewandowsky did “not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects”? THAT WAS THEIR REASON???????
The paper was not science — it was a hatchet job
Was there ever a more blatant example of junk science? How could any editor begin to read Recursive Fury and not immediately recognize it for the absolute claptrap it is? Yet the editors of FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY published it! And now the editors tell us it was retracted because it did “not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects”?
Eugene WR Gallun
+Eugene WR Gallun
I fully agree. There is a pretty odd scent around this story, The Lewtanic paper was peer reviewed. The reviewing peers ought to have noticed that it was not up to the standards of ethics in that field of science. Did they really fail to notice it? Or did they take it as a minor risk? Well, so they were either incompetent, or negligent. Do we really need incompetent or negligent peer reviewers? Or did they take the risk that this hoax might not be unveiled? Then that was bad science with a good portion of criminal intent. The publishers, though not entirely incompetent, obviously decided to rely on the reviewing peers, thus shifting responsibility to somebody else. So let us focus on the reviewing peers. Who are they? How are they connected to Lewandowsky? Has there been peer pressure put on Lewandowsky or is Lewandowsky in a position to exert peer pressure onto his reviewing ‘pals’?
I am absolutely convinced that there is another story behind this story, so that you could even say that it stinks.
@Louis Hooffstetter
Why are all the tech news agglomoration sites (think Conde Nast) so radical left wingers? The luddites are reporting on tech, and everything green and stupid is their top story. Is there a tech news site that doesn’t share their crazy bias? If not, why can’t WUWT give birth to some competition? Seriously, I read Techdirt every morning.
Paper retracted on legal grounds.
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/04/paper-retracted-legal-grounds
Statement by University of Queensland Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and International) Professor Alastair McEwan.
The University of Queensland has been advised that a publication on which a UQ researcher is one of four co-authors has been retracted by an academic journal for what appear to be legal reasons.
What is it about physicists who think they are psychologists and vice versa???
What happened to the days when science was decided by … you know…. SCIENCE?!?!?