Readers may recall some ethics objections I raised in my complaint letter to UWA and Psychological Science, and also sent to Frontiers. It seems Frontiers agrees.
This statement was posted on their website today:
===========================================================
Rights of Human Subjects in Scientific Papers
The retracted Recursive Fury paper has created quite a blogger and twitter storm. A sensational storm indeed, with hints to conspiracy theories, claims of legal threats and perceived contradictions. It has been fury – one of the strongest human emotions – that has (perhaps understandably at first sight) guided the discussion around this retraction. Not surprisingly though, the truth is not as sensational and much simpler.
The studied subjects were explicitly identified in the paper without their consent. It is well acknowledged and accepted that in order to protect a subject’s rights and avoid a potentially defamatory outcome, one must obtain the subject’s consent if they can be identified in a scientific paper. The mistake was detected after publication, and the authors and Frontiers worked hard together for several months to try to find a solution. In the end, those efforts were not successful. The identity of the subjects could not be protected and the paper had to be retracted. Frontiers then worked closely with the authors on a mutually agreed and measured retraction statement to avoid the retraction itself being misused. From the storm this has created, it would seem we did not succeed.
For Frontiers, publishing the identities of human subjects without consent cannot be justified in a scientific paper. Some have argued that the subjects and their statements were in the public domain and hence it was acceptable to identify them in a scientific paper, but accepting this will set a dangerous precedent. With so much information of each of us in the public domain, think of a situation where scientists use, for example, machine learning to cluster your public statements and attribute to you personality characteristics, and then name you on the cluster and publish it as a scientific fact in a reputable journal. While the subjects and their statements were public, they did not give their consent to a public psychological diagnosis in a scientific study. Science cannot be abused to specifically label and point out individuals in the public domain.
It is most unfortunate that this particular incident was around climate change, because climate change is a very serious threat for human civilization. But the importance of the subject matter does not justify abandoning our principles.
Frontiers’ core mission is to improve peer review. One principle that we follow is that scientific publishing should sit in the hands of scientists. Frontiers implements this principle by supporting scientists to operate the peer-review process from the beginning to the end. Frontiers remains faithful to this mission, despite the risks that comes with it. We will stay the course because we fundamentally believe that authors should bear the full responsibility of submitting papers with the highest standards and that scientists should bear the full responsibility of deciding what science is published. After publication, the community is engaged and a post-publication review naturally follows. Post-publication review is facilitated by the Frontiers’ commenting and social networking platforms. This process may reveal fundamental errors or issues that go against principles of scholarly publishing. Like all other journals, Frontiers seriously investigates any well-founded complaints or allegations, and retraction only happens in cases of absolute necessity and only after extensive analysis. For the paper in question, the issue was clear, the analysis was exhaustive, all efforts were made to work with the authors to find a solution and we even worked on the retraction statement with the authors. But there was no moral dilemma from the start – we do not support scientific publications where human subjects can be identified without their consent.
Editor-in-Chief, Frontiers
Source:
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
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Toto,
They specifically say that the review process continues after publication and that review process is what caused them to retract the paper.
I don’t like it when people make definitive statements about what someone else “thinks” without providing evidence that the person/group in question actually does think that. I hold that same standard for everyone no matter what side of the debate they fall on.
Who want to tell the University of Western Australia that they are hosting a paper that a Psychology journal deemed unethical
Who wants to tell Bristol University, that their new Chair of Cognitive Psychology, doesn’t understand human research ethics?
Who want to tell the Royal Society, that the medal winner, does not understand research ethics of human participants
not me, Easter holidays and kids are off school!
Dear me. It sounds as if Frontiers is exhibiting recursive fury and has become a conspiring denier publication.
I spoke to Federick Fenter – Frontiers in Zurich yesterday, and followed up with an email,
(which I have posted in full under the new Frontiers statement.)
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
extract:
This week I was concerned that the authors of Recursive Fury were attacking the conduct of the complainants and of Frontiers in the media, representing both parties in a very negative light, with accusations of threats, intimidation and bullying made about the complainants. (I sent this email – with minor edits for public consumption)
One of the points we discussed was
1) Frontiers were apparently unaware of author[s] directly engaging (in a hostile manner) with the complainants who were named human participants in the paper (the amended ethics approval said – OBSERVE, and No direct participation)
Here are two examples Geoff Chambers, Barry Woods (myself) I will append more examples
(please click on the date time, to hyperlink to the comments at Professor Lewandowsky own blog (Shaping Tomorrows World)
Watching the Deniers (co-author Michael Marriott) at 13:26 PM on 11 September, 2012
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/news.php?p=2&t=153&&n=160#724
Marriott:
“….Hope,I don’t test the patience of readers and the moderator, I feel as though the “sceptics” are struggling to absorb or even address the issue.”
“…..But – I’ve asked Ben, Barry and others to comment on the conspiracy theories outlined by Evans and Monckton. I have very politely, and respectively, requested a simple yes/no answer: do you (Barry, Ben, Les) accept the arguments put forward, or reject them as too belonging to the fringe.
Or, if you reject such strong epistemological dichotomies, explain your views.
Otherwise if very much looks like you can’t, or refuse. One may imply a form of denial from such refusal to discuss evidence.” – (watchingthedeniers) author Michael Marriott
AND:
Watching the Deniers (co-author Michael Marriott at 16:01 PM on 11 September, 2012
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/news.php?p=2&t=153&&n=160#748
Marriott:
“Geoff, care to comment on the Evans/Monckton statements?
I’ve not called you any of the above. It is a polite request, or will you refuse to review the evidence? – (watchingthedeniers- Michael Mariott)
2) And that, Frontiers were apparently unaware that Professor Lewandowsky had a team collecting responses and data for this paper, over 2 weeks prior to obtaining ethics approval. The UWA policy is quite clear, no ethics approval should be given in these circumstances.
Do Not Start Your Research Without Ethics Approval
“…..Retrospective ethics approval for a research project cannot be granted. That is, ethics approval will not be granted for a project where recruitment of participants has already been undertaken, research data have already been collected, or where any other substantial research activity has already occurred. (Preliminary planning of the research project does not constitute commencement of the research project itself.)
It is the researcher’s responsibility to ensure that ethics approval has been obtained before commencing the research. Prudent researchers will allow sufficient time, and engage in appropriate planning, to ensure that the ethics review and approval process synchronises with other research funding and approval requirements. ”
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-research/facts
The ethics approval for ‘Recursive Fury’ was an amendment Professor Lewandowsky’s previous paper (LOG12), which was itself an amendment of an ethics approval in December 2009 for a paper entitled – Understanding Statistical Trends RA 4/1/4007, this research interviewed the public on the streets of Perth showing thee participants time series data.
An Australian blogger obtained this information under FOI laws and discussed the ethics approval for the three papers here:
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2012/10/12/lewandowsky-foi-substantial-last-minute-changes-to-project-waved-through-by-uwa-ethics-committee/
With respect to the ethics approval for the Recursive Fury paper, Professor Lewandowsky advised the DVC [R] Robyn Owyns on the 5th September 2012 that his team had already been collecting data for his next paper, collecting comment about LOG12. Professor Lewandowsky only approached the ethics officer on the 11th September 2012 asking whether he needed approval, thinking he did not.
This has been discussed here:
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/3758/
The ethics office wrote back referring him to appropriate UWA website pages, which included risk criteria checklists and the appropriate forms for a new application or an amended application. As the proposed paper was observing the public direct criticisms of Professor Lewandowsky own work, it is hard to fathom that a psychological researcher with Prof Lewandowsky’s experience could not see risks involved with this paper.
The risk assessment checklist on the UWA website included the following questions
http://www.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1863081/risk-Assesment-Checklist.pdf
Active concealment of information from participants and/or planned deception of participants
Will participants be quoted or be identifiable, either directly or indirectly, in reporting of the research?
Will data that can identify an individual (or be used to re-identify an individual) be obtained from databanks, databases, tissue banks or other similar data sources?
Might the research procedures cause participants psychological or emotional distress?
Does the research involve covert observation?
The answer is a ‘Yes’ to many of these questions. ‘Participants’ declared to be conspiratorial by Lewandowsky are directly identified by name in the paper………..
———————–
full email, with minor edits here:
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
Don’t be alarmed by what you see gentlemen. This is obviously the work of an immature, unbalanced mind.”
James T. Kirk
The anonymity stipulation in human subject studies is drummed into the head of every grad student engaged in research requiring human observation or respondents. Obviously, a Ph.D in Psychology at a university is not only aware of these stipulations, but is sworn to uphold these standards through the modeling of behavior worthy of emulation. Clearly, Dr. Lew is exhibiting self-destructive behavior in willfully violating these standards. As if that weren’t enough, the fact that this paper passed through several committees designed to protect human subjects, is indicative of group-think mentality where a lack of diversity is a prelude to a dangerous abuse of public trust.
Step one: The Human Subjects Committee: Even if Dr. Lew chaired this committee, he should have recused himself from the proceedings for obvious reasons. Did Dr. Lew deceive the committee vis-à-vis his intent to disclose names, or did he later decide to breach this most serious violation of ethical boundaries? What we do know is Dr. Lew deliberately disguised his association with the study from the onset and that he deliberately devised a questionnaire designed to trick readers into responding in desired ways. Consequentially, this Dr. of Psychology (a man sworn to do no harm) used the information from the studies and his disguised association with the study to taunt individuals opposed to his layman’s belief in a theory he is wholly unqualified to study.
Step two: Peer review: As with step one, not all facts are known. We do know one identity (she chose to self-identify when lodging a complaint against the retraction) who happens to be a Ph.D Journalism candidate at the same university as Dr. Lew. This same individual has written a series of articles which on balance, express a deep concern for the environment. Of course, this in no way qualifies the woman to judge the merits of a “Psychological study”. Most alarmingly, we have to wonder if the identities of the remaining reviewers are just as incestuous in association with Dr. Lew and UWA?
Step three: Publication in Frontiers. It would seem the Dr. Lew “Toilet Paper” found a sympathetic pen in the hands of the editors of Frontiers as evidenced by this statement from Henry Markram: “It is most unfortunate that this particular incident was around climate change, because climate change is a very serious threat for human civilization. But the importance of the subject matter does not justify abandoning our principles.” In fact this fellow and his team bent over backwards to protect the not so good Dr’s reputation through a carefully crafted retraction notice. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished and Frontiers’ efforts were rewarded by Dr. Lew embarking on a “woe is me” tour throughout the blogosphere. A campaign which no doubt pressured Frontiers into issuing not one, but two post-retraction explanatory letters. Is this the self-destructive behavior of a man in denial of his own deceptive practices, or is he simply a Psychopath lacking in scruples?
Step four: The aftermath. Where does UWA stand on this matter and has Dr. Lew been punished for this serious breach of ethical standards? Since the victims of this violation are public figures, are they not entitled to a public apology from Dr. Lew and the UWA? Furthermore, if Dr. Lew has a clinical license (not sure if he does) should it not be revoked?
I wasn’t sure. But both Frontiers and Psychological Science are ^in DC^–part of right-thinking (left-thinking) PC psychology and mainstream publishing. That “Moon Hoax” is acceptable there is a bad reflection on them and their fake objectivity.
Old Hoya:
These kinds of problems will not occur during Obama’s third term because officially insane people like Anthony Watts will no longer have standing to complain about the diagnosis and start this kind of trouble.
I’m not sure that was meant as sarcasm.
I am sorry, but I disagree with most comments here.
Frontiers’ response was utterly pompous and disingenuous, they knew Lew’s paper was total crap and were probably worried that Lew might sue them if they even hinted at this self-evident truth.
My BSometer went off scale, when I read this: “Frontiers then worked closely with the authors on a mutually agreed and measured retraction statement to avoid the retraction itself being misused.”
Lew’s pals are circling the wagons, I guess we all remember the response of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Western Australia to polite queries from Steve McIntyre to be allowed to examine the data used in ‘Recursive Fury’. The Vice Chancellor, like Frontiers, obviously reviewed (or had someone review) the material used to generate Lew’s paper’s conclusion and said, “We can never allow any of this stuff to see the light of day, or we shall look like complete idiots.”
“Dear Mr McIntyre,
I refer to your series of emails to University officers including Professor Maybery and myself (which you have copied to other recipients including the Australian Research Council) in which you request access to Professor Lewandowsky’s data.
I am aware that you have made inflammatory statements on your weblog “Climate Audit” under the heading “Lewandowsky Ghost-wrote Conclusions of UWA Ethics Investigation into “Hoax”” including attacks on the character and professionalism of University staff. It is apparent that your antagonism towards Professor Lewandowsky’s research is so unbalanced that there is no useful purpose to be served in corresponding with you further. I regard your continued correspondence to be vexatious and there will be no further response to your requests for data.
Yours faithfully,
Professor Paul Johnson,
Vice-Chancellor”
The paper still needs to be defeated on technical grounds, and this actually makes it difficult to do that. How do you critique a paper that has been withdrawn? How do you submit a comment to a journal regarding a paper that has been withdrawn? Why should a University provide raw data for a reanalysis of a paper that has been withdrawn.
This allows the Alramistas to claim that the paper was scientifically correct but that Frontiers caved due to an ‘ethical technicality’, all while stonewalling attempts to detail the technical failings of the paper by its legion of critics.
Regarding the ethics issues, Frontiers, no doubt, will also be reminded that the paper relates to Climate Science and therefore the code of ethics that should be applied is the Schneider Code of Professional Ethics, which states:
So UWA will feel perfectly justified in continuing to host the paper when looked at using the “correct” ethic standard.
/cynicism
University is Western Australia is hosting the study because their lawyers said they wouldn’t be successfully sued, not because the lawyers said it was an ethical study. We all know that lawyers would not be acceptable reviewers when it comes to ethics.
Strange episode, credit to Fronitiers for standing by their ethics but I can’t believe they don’t know that Lewandowsky has what can only be described as an ‘alarm bell’ reputation, form for tweaking data and that all his research proceeds from and leads to a preconceived conclusion, frankly they’re not fooling anyone. If they were really into ethics they’d have told him to take a running jump from the outset,
Perhaps it’s the cross they have to bear, or they were under some pressure to accomodate Lewandowsky.
Thanks Aphan….Elaine. (Brain-fade gets to you after a while…..)
Aphan says:
True, they say the review process continues after publication, in this case at least. I interpret that to mean that the journal had a private in-house post-pub peer-review. That is not in my mind true peer review.
Frontiers is obviously new and naive at this game and can easily be manipulated by players such as Lew. Therefore I am going to spell it out clearly for their benefit. The peer review that a journal does before publication is to protect the reputation of the journal. It is not to establish the validity of the science; it is CYA, and Frontiers failed miserably. This does not exclude the existence of noble publishers and reviewers, nor noble-cause ones for that matter.
Goes to show how entrenched are the warmunists: they don’t want to give an inch, even with so demonstrably dodgy a character as Lewandowsky.
“It is well acknowledged and accepted that in order to protect a subject’s rights and avoid a potentially defamatory outcome, one must obtain the subject’s consent…”
Like they give a fig. The EPA don’t even tell the victims of their human testing of their potential peril.
What matters to EPA and their sort is the furtherance of their agenda – not truth, not human rights, not even human life.
I know it is not good form to invoke Nazi comparisons, but Dr Mengele sure springs to mind.
“We stand by our non-denial denial.”
(With a hat tip to Ben Bradlee RIP.)
I think we have to give Frontiers credit where it is due even if they got the “very serious threat for human civilization” bit wrong.
I wonder if they don’t warrant a nice note acknowledging their statement and at the same time garner some support to dislodge UWA’s position of hosting a retracted paper.
But another thing is:
“One principle that we follow is that scientific publishing should sit in the hands of scientists. Frontiers implements this principle by supporting scientists to operate the peer-review process from the beginning to the end.”
Isn’t this a problem in itself?
The authors get to choose the reviewers?
We end up with a Frontiers editor (conflict of interest) and a tame journalism graduate student (inappropriate field of expertise).
On the up-side though:
“Three university professors are resigning as editors at a scientific publisher in protest at its decision to retract research linking climate change scepticism to conspiratorial thinking.”
http://desmogblog.com/2014/04/09/professors-resign-journal-over-retraction-paper-upset-climate-science-deniers
More precisely , what the lawyer said was this:
The lawyer doesn’t think a suit would have merit and was happy to turn it over to insurance if it did.
Its hard to imagine how a lawyer can support this position now that the study has been deemed to run afoul of ethics rules related to human subjects. I personally think that the University, through its reckless conduct and acceptance of bad advice, has subjected itself to a substantial class action lawsuit. And, (again, solely in my opinion) there is ample evidence of actual malice, both from the author and from the University staff. Its not an adequate defense to say, “my lawyer told me that insurance would cover it”. In fact, in my opinion, it helps in proving negligence. It seems to me that anyone who is an active member of the skeptical sites targeted would be a member of the class, although the named individuals are the people who have been most grievously injured.
“One principle that we follow is that scientific publishing should sit in the hands of scientists.” If you would have followed that rule to begin with, this whole episode wouldn’t have happened.
Lesson 2 is that failure of the journal to require data, methods, and code for independent replication is NEVER going to work in the Journal’s favor. After repeated requests from McIntyre didn’t prove persuasive, the journal should have retracted the paper right then. Again, if there is no data, it doesn’t belong in a scientific journal. If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science, not even the pseudo-science psychology. If it is offered up front, you will have to do a better peer review, because you know we’re going to be looking at it in detail. Not even Lewandowski would have released this into the wild if he knew that he couldn’t hide the data, no one in their right mind would do that.
The only way these propagandists can operate is in the dark. Science operates only in sunshine.
“It is most unfortunate that this particular incident was around climate change, because climate change is a very serious threat for human civilization”. It seems that climate change (and possibly medicine) is the locus of the worst science possible. We’re never going to know how much of a threat it might or might not be if someone doesn’t start enforcing the rules of science.
Your journal could shoot to the top if it starts publishing replicable science. It is getting rare, and it WOULD be noticed.
BTW, if I were an executive at the University, I would bring in outside Counsel at this point to assess the facts of the case and advise me as to the potential liability of leaving the paper up on the website. On the surface it seems (IMO) that their inside lawyer was too caught up in the tribal blood lust associated with destroying the reputations of the University’s critics to be an objective adviser. It doesn’t seem like he had any interest in gathering facts. Lew’s paper trail on public blogs is damning wrt to malice (in my opinion). But I get the sense that the inside lawyer didn’t even bother to look and simply accepted Lew’s emails at face value.
If a journal wishes to ‘improve peer review’ then it needs not to select or approve reviewers like McKewon.
“Science cannot be abused……”
Actually it can and is abused daily. But thanks for declining to be party in this instance, or leastways attempting to clean up the mess.
As to the “climate change”/”threat to civilization part”, it’s almost laughable that someone felt the need to toss in that bit of ridiculousness. Groupthink wins again.
There are two importantly different kinds of ‘consent’ that are misused / lacking in research involving Lewandowsky as a lead academic. One kind of ‘consent’ is an issue with Lewandowsky’s ‘Moon Hoax’ paper (2012 in ‘Psychological Science’). There is a different kind of ‘consent’ at issue in Lewandowsky’s now retracted ‘Recursive Fury’ paper (2013 in ”Frontiers in Psychology’).
In lead academic role of ‘Recursive Fury’ we see Lewandowsky has violated rules requiring he get prior consent from individuals whom he diagnoses in his published research. Lewandowsky’s paper was retracted by ”Frontiers in Psychology’ on those grounds.
In his lead academic role of ‘Moon Hoax’ we see Lewandowsky has violated a basic academic integrity principle involving failure to get prior consent from survey takers that the author of the survey [Lewandowsky] can remain anonymous to the survey taker. To date there has been no public disclosure of any investigation by UWA, or the Australian gov’t or the journal ‘Psychological Science’ into why there was a lack of prior consent by survey takers to accept surveyor anonymity.
Conclusion:
UWA, the Australian gov’t and the journal ‘Psychological Science’ have been professionally derelict in efforts to reveal and / or to pursue investigation of Lewandowsky et al about consent in their research for ‘Moon Hoax’.
NOTE: In addition, there are several other aspects of their ‘Moon Hoax’ paper which require info from longstanding FOI requests to UWA. The UWA opposes transparency and openness in the matters at hand.
John
It is evident that Lew and his crew are practicing what psychologists call “projection” (different from the IPCC kind). In psychological projection you see things like:
Claiming to be a victim of bullies, while at the same bullying others to get what you want;
Claiming that others have conspiracy theories, while firmly believing in a vast right-wing denial effort financed by Big oil and the Koch brothers;
Claiming that others are denying settled science, while agreeing with people who have trashed basic meteorology and atmospheric physics, not to mention biased statistics;
Claiming that others are unethical, while subverting the ethical procedures of your own profession;
And so on.
mpaul: “This allows the Alramistas to claim that the paper was scientifically correct..”
That would be Recursive Futility.
Richard martin MD says:
April 11, 2014 at 9:48 am
The important point is that the Frontiers people stuck to proper ethical and proceduralprinciples of scientific investigation. The grown up response is to respect them for that.
Rick
Uh. ‘Scuse me. How did this “ethical” journal publish the paper in the first place?