A lot of popcorn is being consumed these days watching the wailing of the Lewandowsky lemming team as they furiously throw themselves over cyber-cliffs in support of a retracted paper that was doomed from the start by it’s own ethics violations: diagnosing people in absentia as having mental disorders, then using a science journal as a bully pulpit to name and shame those people.
I had the good fortune of having dinner with Steve McIntyre last night, who was in California doing some consulting on mining interests. While most of the conversation was about that topic, invariably the topic turned to the Lewandowsky “Recursive Fury” fiasco. The other people at the table, not knowing any of the history, were incredulous that Steve and I (and others) were the subjects of this paper without our giving consent to be studied as psychological subjects. That conversation coalesced some thoughts for me.
The journal Frontiers in Psyschology obviously thought Lewandowsky et al had gotten consent, otherwise they would not have published it in the first place. Once alerted to that fact, by Steve, myself, and others, they had no choice but to do the right thing: let ethics rules guide the decision to either repair or retract. Obviously, they couldn’t repair the damage, so retraction was the only viable option.
Now, there’s a great disturbance in the farce, as Lewandowsky’s slimetroopers deploy their ultimate weapon, hate, against the editor of the editor of the Frontiers in Psyschology journal who dared to fire back about the hype being generated over the retraction.
One of the slimetroopers, an errant and hateful independent scholar/anthropologist/archaeologist in Minnesota, who shall remain nameless here because he deserves no attention, decided that he was going to take this paragraph, a comment on the recent statement Rights of Human Subjects in Scientific Papers made by Frontiers editor Henry Markram, and “fisk” it for politically correct AGW behavior:
Markram writes at 10:14PM 4/14/14 (bold mine):
My own personal opinion: The authors of the retracted paper and their followers are doing the climate change crisis a tragic disservice by attacking people personally and saying that it is ethically ok to identify them in a scientific study. They made a monumental mistake, refused to fix it and that rightfully disqualified the study. The planet is headed for a cliff and the scientific evidence for climate change is way past a debate, in my opinion. Why even debate this with contrarians? If scientists think there is a debate, then why not debate this scientifically? Why help the ostriches of society (always are) keep their heads in the sand? Why not focus even more on the science of climate change? Why not develop potential scenarios so that society can get prepared? Is that not what scientists do? Does anyone really believe that a public lynching will help advance anything? Who comes off as the biggest nutter? Activism that abuses science as a weapon is just not helpful at a time of crisis.
Yes indeed, who does come off as the biggest nutter?
So what does the slimetrooper in Minnesota do? He takes up that challenge and calls Markham a climate change denialist! See below:
Wow, just wow. The lack of self awareness here is stunning.
It used to be that we thought people who are out to “save the planet” at all costs, leaving destruction in their wake were driven by “noble cause corruption“, i.e. the end justifies the means. This phrase was coined to describe the behavior seen in some police departments, where they’d do anything to get the bad guys, including setting people up to commit crimes, making false statements, and planting evidence to get a conviction.
Equally bad, Lewandowsky’s naming people in a science paper as having a psychological affliction without their consent was just another means to an end. Better to get the “deniers” out of the way while the slimetroopers march toward their claimed noble cause of saving the world.
Sadly, watching what has transpired over the Lewandowsky Recursive Fury paper, now it seems that there’s no “noble cause” left in this particular form of “noble cause corruption”, just corruption.
I’ll bet somebody could write a psychology paper about this.
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Strange. Here is Dana replying to Barry Woods in comments.
Barry said that he was at Frontiers only 8 days ago. Dana said a lot can happen in 8 days. So why is Stephan Lewandowsky still on Frontiers web pages and described as Guest Associate Editor? Maybe they haven’t got round to removing his name or Dana is a liar. Dana’s has accused Markham of lying here and here among other mentions.
Skeptics are always the visionaries of society: the ones willing to challenge consensus and demand corroboration for claims made by the crowd. Skeptics are the ones who force the stale status quo outlook to confront its foibles and fallacies and do soemthing better. The behavior of the climate obsessed challenges skeptics to rise to the occasion and keep demanding answers, ikeep demanding facts. The behaviors of the climate extremists, like all extremists, reflects their awareness that they do not have the facts on their side.
Dana tried that once on one of his articles. I pointed out that on the consensus we are being asked to go along with AGW as per IPCC. But he chose an outlier paper to back his new claim. I asked why he did not go along with THIS consensus. I was promptly banned.
He is a Cult member, please take pity on him. He knows not what he does.
Thanks, Robin. Did you ever see Forrester in Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace? He’s in Pt 2. of the three-part series. Around 28 minutes to start. If you need a laugh.
“…we are mostly engineers, chemists, physicists, psychologists, geologists, and laymen with an interest in science all of whom are environmentalists who are curious about how the science got “settled” when no one was looking”
I’m just a podiatrist who usually knows when someone is peeing down my leg while he states it is raining. The smell of ammonia is overwhelming lately.
As a child, when you reached a level of extreme frustration, we would lash out with epithets like “stupid head” or some such. That is what these guys appear to be doing! When faced with something they do not like, their favorite inanity of choice is “d-e-n-i-a-l-i-s-t”. It is like they have no idea of the meaning, but someone told them it was a bad word.
There has long been a shadow cause but not particularly a noble cause.
Since the start of the CAGW movement, the term “noble cause” has always been questionable when the cause, beneath the surface, is often mainly to reduce future human energy and material consumption (production), as if several terawatts power consumption for mankind (thousands of times less than the amount of sunlight hitting Earth) is intrinsically too much. Many of the improvements to mankind’s capabilities over the centuries have depended on efforts raising such. A lot of potential further gains (e.g. space colonization) would be aided by increase. Decrease can also go by a shorter name: poverty.
With that said, whether reducing mankind’s consumption (production) is a direct goal or whether there is rather yet another motivation beneath its surface can vary depending on the individual: For instance, some might not have it as a goal if not for desiring the kind of government (dominated by their ilk) which would be involved in bringing it about.
But behavior not decent towards some specific human individuals (including dishonesty) is unsurprisingly extra likely if someone has an attitude not positive towards mankind itself.
“It used to be that we thought people who are out to “save the planet” at all costs, leaving destruction in their wake were driven by “noble cause corruption“, i.e. the end justifies the means.”
I never assumed anything noble about them. The leaders are pure Macchiavellists; the followers stupid cult members.
Old Hoya says:
April 15, 2014 at 9:18 am
“Imposing hackneyed bourgeois values (“ethics” “objectivity” etc) on efforts to root out denialist scum is itself denialism.
Sincerely,
Clueless in Minnesota”
So a thermometer is an instrument of the bourgeosie, I see. Are you Gavin Schmidt?
So anyone whose ethics puts them out of step with “The Team” gets branded with “The Big ‘D’ Word”.
I know what they are trying to associate the word with but maybe coming from them it should be worn as a badge of honor? One who is not a denier of ethics and honesty.
What I mean is that, considering the source and the context, they are turning the word meant as a slam and a slur into a compliment. (In the context of CAGW)
Ethics? We don’t need no steenkin’ ethics.
“Wow, just wow. The lack of self awareness here is stunning.”
It is called hypocrisy.
Ummmm…
I’m having a bit of trouble working out who are supposed to be the conspiracy-mongers here…
If I am a denialist,, is Lewandowsky a nomative or an accusative?
DirkH,
Don’t you mean Macchiavelistas or Macchiavellians? Anyway, Lewandowsky is certainly behaving like Savonarola
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola
Maybe he’s a Savonarolist 🙂 He certainly isn’t on a roll 🙂
On the one hand you have an anthropologist complaining that deniers are not climate scientists and then offering his expertise on climate science.
On the other hand you have Steve McIntyre looking at a mining deal in California.
That is what most of us in the mining industry would call “a draw”.
Why do you have to be a climate scientist to be involved in this debate? High school chemistry tells you that CO2 is more soluble in cold water than warm water (flat beer is a constant reminder) and that the oceans contain orders of magnitude more CO2 than the atmosphere, so that it would, prima facie, suggest that CO2 responds to ocean warming (from whatever cause) and not the other way around, And, surprise surprise, that is what ice core data confirms. Ice core data clearly shows that fluctuations of atmospheric CO2 follow fluctuations of ocean temperature. Put even more simply, warming causes CO2; CO2 does not cause warming. Also, as a geologist, I know that our planet has gone through enormous cycles of climate change, fluctuating between snow-ball and greenhouse episodes, some lasting millions, even tens of millions, of years. And there is no evidence that any of those changes were driven by CO2. Indeed there is evidence to the contrary. All previous ice ages occurred at times of much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And lastly, contributions from the disciplines of history and anthropology. Warming is good. Civilisations thrived during periods of warming; they struggled to survive in periods of cooling. None of all this has anything to do with climate science or atmospheric physics. It is basic education and common sense. The title of “flat-earthers” belongs to those who believe we live in a static system, a Garden of Eden.
If no rebuttal to the absurd Moon Hoax paper appears in the peer reviewed literature of psychology, that says a lot–negative–about the peer reviewed literature of psychology. And its practitioners.
hunter says:
April 15, 2014 at 12:20 pm
…The behaviors of the climate extremists, like all extremists, reflects their awareness that they do not have the facts on their side.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I agree, but the statement is incomplete.
Society supports academia because of belief in perceived value. Previously this included accepting that the academy could detect, and would police, absurd academic behavior.
This particular band of climate extremists appears to have zero scientific credentials (psychologists are not actually “scientists”), compounded by having spent their professional lives in the academic ivory tower attempting to intimidate post-adolescents.
TYPO: “ against the editor of the editor of the”.
I wonder how the Guardian’s legal eagles would react to one of their columnists calling someone a liar in their paper? Main articles in national papers are rigorously screened and edited for anything that could possibly lead to libel or other legal action. But here we have said columnist writing it as a point blank statement in the comments away from normal editorial checks…
i’ve been following the thread on the guardian http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/apr/14/climate-contrarian-backlash-journal-difficult-lesson#start-of-comments and it seems that they have dissapeared all of Barry Woods comments!
can someone else verify this
i have since brought it up on the guardian thread where barry woods has confimed that his comments were deleted.
also my post asking where his comments had gone and all replies has now been completely disappeared
Another thought came to me as I was reading this.
Once upon a time we named people that thought they could “save the world” as the ones with a psychological disorder. Now they’re attempting to do the opposite. It would funny if it wasn’t so scary.