Social psychologist Jose Duarte pulls no punches in describing Lewandowsky’s failures of science in the “Moon Hoax” paper and the later retracted “Fury” paper. And then goes on to describe failure in Cook’s 97% consensus paper. Excerpts follow.
in their abstract they say:
“Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer.”
This is all false, and the paper should be retracted. It should’ve been retracted by the authors already.
…
Surprisingly, climate skeptics got mad about this paper, perhaps because > 97.8% of those who think climate science is a hoax reject the moon hoax idea in Lewandowsky’s own data, placing them squarely in the mainstream of humanity. So, Lewandowsky, Cook, Oberauer, and Marriott (2013) wrote a follow-up hit piece that was all about their critics. They wrote a paper that was about the critics of the first paper, the one we’ve just debunked. It wasn’t enough to lie about people and smear them as believing things they definitely do not believe. He needed to take another swipe. The journal, Frontiers in Psychology, wisely ended up retracting that paper, which is exactly what should happen to this fraud here.
…
This was an awful thing to do. It was damaging to innocent participants. It is unethical to do this to your participants. It is wildly unethical to invite people to participate in a study, and then do this to them. They are helping us. They are volunteering to participate in scientific research. They’ve take time out of their lives to help us out. And in return, we slander them? We tell the world that they believe things that they do not believe? What Lewandowsky and colleagues did here was despicable and fraudulent. Why would anyone participate in a social psychology study if this is what we do to them? Why would anyone participate in research if our goal is to marginalize them in public life, to lie about them, to say that they think the moon landing was a hoax, to say they don’t think HIV causes AIDS, to say they don’t believe smoking causes lung cancer ā when none of those things are true. Do we hate our participants?
Read the whole thing here: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/more-fraudĀ (h/t Bishop Hill)
In another article, Duarte goes on to describe the failures of Cook and his “independent raters” in Cook’s 97% paper.
In social science, it’s common to use trained human raters to subjectively rate or score some variable ā it can be children’s behavior on a playground, interviews of all kinds, and often written material, like participants’ accounts of a past emotional experience. And we have a number of analytical and statistical tools that go with such rating studies. ButĀ we would never use human raters who have an obvious bias with respect to the subject of their ratings, who desire a specific outcome for the study, and who would be able to deliver that outcome via their ratings. That’s completely nuts. It’s so egregious that I don’t think it even occurs to us as something to look out for. It never happens. At least I’ve never heard of it happening. There would be no point in running such a study, since it would be dismissed out of hand and lead to serious questions about your ethics.
But it’s happening in climate science. Sort of. These junk studies are being published in climate science journals, which are probably not well-equipped to evaluate what are ultimately social science studies (in method). And I assume the journals weren’t aware that these studies used political activists as raters.
Examples of the unbelievable bias and transparent motives of the raters’ in Cook, et al (2013) below. These are excerpts from an online forum where the raters collaborated with each other in their ratings: –
See more at: http://www.joseduarte.com/#sthash.gfz7am3K.dpuf
Thank you Jose Duarte.
It is heartening to see somebody outside of climate science finally call these spades a spade. Now if we can just instill some sense of moral responsibility to people in climate science who really should be speaking out about using science as a smear tactic, we’ll be gettin somewhere.
Brilliant. At long last. Thank you JosƩ Duarte.
“What Lewandowsky and colleagues did here was despicable and fraudulent.”
Nicely said!
From another article on that site entitled “Climate Science is Biased, but Right:
Beware centralized authorities and lofty scientific organizations. Climate science is going through a pompous phase right now, where they think that if they issue a report under the banner of the AAAS or the Royal Society or the IPCC, laypeople should just kneel before them. That’s unscientific, un-American, and terrible epistemology. Authority and officialdom are not good heuristics for scientific truth, and clearly, organizations like the AAAS can no longer be trusted. I don’t think climate scientists fully appreciate the fact that lots of people simply do not trust them — and behavior like the AAAS’ scam report will only further erode the public trust, and deservedly so. They need to have much higher standards, make it trivially easy to obtain their data, and always, always, always tell the truth. AAAS grossly misled the public about the quality of the evidence for their 97% consensus figure, and I can’t tell you how much that crushed me — they’re a left-wing political advocacy organization at this point, not a scientific body. A scientific body would use robust scientific methods like meta-analysis, and carefully control for the political biases of its membership ā cherry-picking junk studies is the well-worn tactic of mediocre political advocacy think-tanks.
I’m not sure what weight his opinions carry but he certainly believes in telling it how it is.
Reblogged this on My Daily Musing and commented:
Wow, Jose Duarte puts the shucking and jiving of Lewandowsky and Cook in its place.
If the trash and junk papers that cluster around the climate opbsession were to be withdrawn there would likely be a noticeable and significant decrease in climate papers.
Kudos to Jose Duarte for having the guts to call this particular bit of trash for what it is.
Where are those serious climate scientists who distance themselves from such unscientific studies which abuse of science in every way?
Jose Duarte is clearly beholden to the Koch brothers.
/sarc
Possibly too little too late.
Climatology is drowning in Lew Paper and the byproducts associated with it.
Social Science is about to get lumped in with “Climate Science”.
As dangerous pseudo sciencey rubbish that is dangerous to personal liberty and destructive to civil society.
Just another front, a cover for the statist do-gooder power hungry people haters.
With all due respect to Jose Duarte, I do not have respect for the “science” of psychology in the first place. While I do admire him for the integrity that he is trying to instill into the field, my own anecdotal experiences with the field shows that Lewandowsky is the rule, not the exception.
Berne, They fear the loss of their grants and life style! Here is a question to ask yourself, if you were Mexican and could only feed your children by working in America, would you cross the border? The same goes for for climate “scientists”, the MSM and the publishers and editors of magazines, I believe it is called self interest. The internet is changing the world!
“The person who posted this data, Brandon Shollenberger, is a complete unknown. It’s amazing that if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t know how rigged the study truly was.”
Boom!
Looks like Duarte didn’t get the memo. Fellow of Science communication John Cook should straighten him up.
philjourdan says: “With all due respect to Jose Duarte, I do not have respect for the āscienceā of psychology in the first place. While I do admire him for the integrity that he is trying to instill into the field, my own anecdotal experiences with the field shows that Lewandowsky is the rule, not the exception.”
Bad science is bad science, and parading propaganda as science is parading propaganda as science.
It is ignorant to dismiss the science of psychology as not-a-science.
Psychology explores the natural world of human experience and behavior, strives to understand its rules or patterns, and take the findings and put them to some use.
Nearly all of us have been in college and learned of this scientifically verified concept called “bystander apathy.” If you are alone, and see something bad happening, or developing, then you are much more likely to act then if you believe others are also observing.
Bystander Apathy is a component of our psychology, something in the natural world.
Knowing this, we can be trained to recognize our likely disposition to observe but not act, and we can train ourselves to behave responsibly despite this phenomenon of nature.
Any “see something-say something” campaign is an intentional effort to overcome this. If you develop one, or more, see-something-say something” interventions, then test whether it has any notable effect on getting people to behave contrary to the bystander apathy effect, then not only are you dealing with a scientifically-described natural phenomenon, but you are engaged in a scientific assessment of scientifically-designed intervention.
Your life may one day be saved by someone trained to respond in a helpful way despite the natural inclination to do nothing.
Have the fake physics studies driven anyone to write off physics as a worthy realm of scientific exploration?
I could go on an on with plenty more obvious examples, but claiming “psychology” is not a science is just ignorant.
@TheLastDemocrat – Reread my post. I did not say I “dismissed” it as a science. Whether I do or do not is irrelevant to what I did say. And that is I have no RESPECT for the field or those who practice it.
As I also stated, in my experience, Lewadowsky is the rule, not the exception.
As any real scientist should be, Duarte is flabbergasted to witness the scurrilous stratagems deployed by the relentlessly dishonest Lewandowski, Cook et al.. Those of us who have for years been the targets of eco-alarmist slander cannot muster the same surprise, but our years of familiarity can help to answer the questions Mr. Duarte has about the etiology of this perversion.
My comment on a Daily Caller article about the behavior of Naomi Oreskes:
Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Let’s see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.
@LeeHarvey, August 6, 2014 at 8:44. “Jose Duarte is clearly beholden to the Koch brothers.” /sarc
Wait for it, that accusation stands a very plausible chance of popping up, because it is exactly the problem besetting pro-AGW pop-sociologists like Lewandowsky and others: to bolster their assertion that we must analyze why skeptics and the public go against ‘consensus’ opinion, they rely on a single-source talking point about skeptics being ‘paid industry shills’. I covered that right here in a WUWT guest post, and in a post at my own blog:
“The OTHER problem with the Lewandowsky paper and similar ‘skeptic’ motivation analysis: Core premise off the rails about fossil fuel industry corruption accusation” http://ow.ly/nXXny
“Robert ādark moneyā Brulle & Other āSkeptic-Trashing Environmental Sociologistsā” http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=1237
That last part about “moral responsibility to people in climate science” has been a great head scratch-er for me. I suppose they placed moral responsibility of climate goals so high that they overlooked the moral responsibility of the science process, standards, and responsible public policy input. The ends apparently justify the means for a wide swath of the research field. Such total avoidance of responsibility works for awhile and may have little perceived effect incrementally, but cumulative negative impact can be a disaster. I was recently reminded of this when reading the commemoration of WW 1 in the news recently. I did not previously recognize that the wholesale loss of a generation in Germany during the first great war played a part in the moral vacuum giving rise to the unchecked opportunities of radicals that followed in the 30s.
Lewandowsky and Cook are just two more in a long line of charlatans bleating out the party line, albeit with unusual attitude and arrogance.
TheLastDemocrat says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:11 am
The so called science of āpsychologyā is akin to blind men groping about in a dark room and asserting that they are divining the true nature of God. Right now they are no more effective than someone looking for the end of a rainbow. Calling a spade a spade is not ignorance. Someone defending something that is based almost entirely on opinions shouldn’t throw stones.
Bad science and having to retract papers can be hazardous to your health. Yoshiki Sasai, who was embroiled in a stem-cell scandal, committed suicide on August 5, 2014.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2716540/Japanese-scientist-stem-cell-research-retracted-proved-false-commits-suicide.html
“we would never use human raters who have an obvious bias with respect to the subject of their ratings, who desire a specific outcome for the study, and who would be able to deliver that outcome via their ratings.”
…
“But itās happening in climate science.”
“Now if we can just instill some sense of moral responsibility to people in climate science”
You can’t instill something in someone when they never had a shred of it to begin with.
Alec Rawls-
Perfect way of stating a long held belief of my own! May I quote you sometimes with full attribution in the future?
[Response from Alec: Of course.]
bernie1815 says:
“Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.”
What the hell does his graduate student status and the blog post location have to do with anything? Are his facts correct or are they not?
Would publishing in a ‘reputable journal’ somehow change the veracity of Duarte’s account? Or would publishing incorrect information in a reputable journal make it true?
What journal would be willing to do a (deserved) evisceration of Lewandowski’s garbage? Professional courtesy means that they stick together.
Just look at the failure of honest scientists (there must be some) to deal with Mann, Gleick, Cook, Lewandowski, Gore, etc., etc.
It was only a matter of time until someone within the social sciences community spoke against the farcical works of Lewandowsky. Now that Oreskes has inextricably linked her name to Lewandowsky, the scions of Harvard are surely plotting their next move…
Wow! Really trashed Lewendski et al. Hooray!
bernie1815 says:
“Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.”
I agree with you Bernie. I’m concerned for this guyās career, maybe even his physical safety.
Political Junkie:
You are correct, his status as a graduate student says nothing about the accuracy of his commentary. It does, however, have relevance for gauging whether his robust and rigorous criticism of the appallingly bad Lewandowsky and Cook papers, which I agree with, will garner any traction among other psychologists. Personally I doubt it. It would take a critique of someone like Kahneman to really bring Lewandowsky down.
It is amazing the extent of deception in the climate science community. Data tampering, rigged review, outright lies, refusal to share code or data, policy implementation without representation, agenda driven study results, funding impropriety, and on and on. We need a reset button as everyone is paying the price for this abhorrent behavior.
Incarceration is the only button that can bring this systemic fraud to an end.
I looked up some of the research programmes (and very laudible are many of them) for Bristol University and found that they have come up with yet another morphed definition of AGW. Now they call it ‘Global Change’.
To this end they have come up with:
Now, I would have thought that any university worth the salt would run a mile from ‘consensus’.
Going through the raters’ discussion on SkS I came across this comment by an “Andy S”:
“The danger, of course, is that we will also grade some iconic denier papers as neutral. We shouldn’t, naturally, change their ratings but we should at least be aware of their existence I suspect that a lot of denialist papers will be rated neutral, since they may have had to hedge their conclusions to get published. I haven’t looked at it again but I suspect that the McLean et al ENSO paper abstract would have to be rated neutral, whereas the authors trumpeted its denialist conclusion only in the press release, if I recall correctly. I’d guess that M&M’s papers and some of the cosmic ray and solar stuff will also be neutral. Remember that many deniers will claim that they don’t doubt AGW, just “CAGW”.”
Just look at the honesty here: “I suspect that a lot of denialist papers will be rated neutral, since they may have had to hedge their conclusions to get published”.
Don’t they feel *any* shame?
bernie says:
“Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.”
I don’t have any figures, but at my psych grad shool the vast majority of papers published
were the work of grad students, even those that had the major professor’s name attached.
The link in the main post to the JosƩ Duarte blog is broken.
To me the major problem with Cook’s study was the fact that it was so stupidly designed and
obsolete. The study was supposedly to determine the opinion of climate scientists about global warming. That implies it should canvas their “current” beliefs, not beliefs they may have held in the past, in some paper they may have been involved with (perhaps before the “pause”).
And the strategy Cook chose almost looks as if it was designed to introduce human bias into the results. If you want to know a scientist’s beliefs about an issue, you do what everyone else (except Cook) would do : YOU ASK THEM. You don’t dig thru a bunch of published papers trying to read tea leaves and infer the answer to a question that the papers probably never even addressed. In court, such a claim as Cook’s study makes would be tossed out as “not best evidence” as well as “including answers likely to be obsolete.”
@Clovis
“Thatās unscientific, un-American, and terrible epistemology”
But it makes for good eschatology if you are a Believer!
Grad students tend to graduate, eventually. If the meme sticks, a PhD is in the offing, and a good one, showing that there is a new form of psychological behaviour that needs to be categorized, named as a form of self-delusion and placed on the list of other delusions.
Willful ignorance is inadequate. L&C papers are perversions of social science. A random act would be an error, but systematic abuse is a syndrome. Perfect grist for a PhD’s mill.
arthur4563 says:
“If you want to know a scientistās beliefs about an issue, you do what everyone else (except Cook) would do : YOU ASK THEM.”
I tried that once. I sent an e-mail to every State Climatologist in the USA at the time. (I believe it was about 36 states having State Climatologists at that time.) The e-mail asked a very straight forward question about global warming with multiple choice answers reflecting a variety of views including ānot enough data to confidently determineā. I got exactly 3 replies. Two I would characterize as warmist and one lukewarmist if I recall correctly (itās been a while). An 8% response rate is hardley enough to determing what State Climatologists think. The lack of response I suppose does say something. Perhaps there is a consensus among State Climatologists that they need to keep their mouth shut or tow the line if they want to keep their jobs.
āIf you want to know a scientistās beliefs about an issue, you do what everyone else (except Cook) would do : YOU ASK THEM.ā
Maybe Cook was worried about what the scientists would say if he asked them. š
bernie1815, you ought to look it up first:
From Duarte’s website:
Publications
āNow if we can just instill some sense of moral responsibility to people in climate scienceā
Good luck with that.
TheLastDemocrat says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:11 am
Freud to Jung upon their arrival in NYC in 1909:
Congratulations future Dr. Duarte.
BTW: How did Lewandowskyās paper account for several Apollo-era astronauts being climate skeptics? Does Neil Armstrong believe the moon landings were faked?
This really says it all.
Yet it was not dismissed out of hand. It’s called an agenda and is part and parcel of Climastrology. It’s agenda driven, paid for, pal reviewed results. And that’s to put it mildly.
To those of us who have been saying this for years, naming names without compunction for Warmists’ bleats-and-squeaks, the sociopathology of AGW Catastrophism is simply Will James’ Anabaptists of Munster writ large (see “Varieties of religious Experience”).
In direct line from Paul Ehrlich to John (“seething maggots”) Holdren, Keith Farnish, Kentti Linkola, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, a certain mindset regards all industrial/scientific progress from c. 1725 as antithetical to nature’s “purity”… in no uncertain terms, these self-loathing ideologues hate Humanity and want you dead
The Lewandowsky and John Cook paper linked many of us to denial that smoking causes lung cancer. I know and insist smoking causes lung cancer. My only question is do climate change campaigners and the British Bias Corporation believe in their own propaganda. Of course not. The MASTERS OF HYPOCRISY are below.
Jeremy Grantham invests via his hedge fund in tobacco companies and he is a climate change funder and campaigner. He also invests in oil and coal companies via Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/bob-wards-rat-snake-ploy/#comment-1583997
The BBC Pension fund, as at 31 March 2013, had investments in the following tobacco companies:
Altria Group
British American Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco
Reynolds American
—
Al Gore, the climate change campaigner, has been quoted in 1996 by the New York Times saying:
Earlier in the same article the New York Times said:
—
—
One of the founders of the wildlife and climate campaigning WWF is Dr. Anton Rupert. The now deceased Dr. Rupert made his fortune from the cigarette manufacturing company called Voorbrand, re-named Rembrandt, now consolidated into Rothmans.
Ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1508360/Anton-Rupert.html
ASU! Go Sun Devils
Wow. First redeeming thing to come from Tempe in some time.
(Torch- Graduate Class of ’94)
As long as 97% or more of climate scientists are okay with other climate scientists lying and using dishonest methods for the “cause,” I’m going to continue to treat everything they say with extreme skepticism. Trust has to be earned. And you can’t earn trust by using dishonest or shoddy methods or by supporting those who do.
Alec Rawls said
That is the whole thrust of leftist post-modernism, the claim that there is no such thing as truth, only power. They justify their own disregard for truth by saying that there is no such thing as truth and that all ANYBODY does is concoct ways of seeing things that best serve their own interests, then they at the same time turn around and pretend they arenāt doing this.
Quite so, Alec. The left rarely have any original thoughts of their own. So in their simple-minded naivety, they project their lack of any cognitive ability onto others. I have run into this so many times, that now I find it amusing.
TheLastDemocrat says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:11 am
Bystander Apathy
I had an instance of that very thing a couple of weeks ago. While in a store, a man outside was seen, through the window, to have fallen over and lay motionless on the ground. I remarked this to the other people and cashiers and they had seen it but did nothing. I actually had to force myself to go out and check on the guy. He awoke and knew his name – just a drunk
I call a spade a shovel just as I call John Cook evil.
policycritic:
I had in fact seen his list of publications. My comment simply noted that a blog post no matter how compelling, accurate and complete will not be as potent as an article on the same topic in a reputable journal. I have written to Jose Duarte asking whether he has plans to submit an article on the topic of his post as well as to ask for copies of his two published articles.
–So Iām not surprised that Oreskes assumes that climate skeptics are engaged in biased reason. What IS surprising is her ability to see her own cognition as moral and rational when her whole side of the political spectrum is famous for not even believing that unbiased reason is possible. That is the whole thrust of leftist post-modernism, the claim that there is no such thing as truth, only power. They justify their own disregard for truth by saying that there is no such thing as truth and that all ANYBODY does is concoct ways of seeing things that best serve their own interests, then they at the same time turn around and pretend they arenāt doing this.–
Yup.
What is not typical is lefties who imagine there is a possibility of an objective truth.
Or that one could have moral and ethical behavior- which was not just pretense and/or self-delusion.
Such an alien concept would have a requirement that such a lefty be skeptical of the accepted ideology of the Left. And obviously such position is somewhat unstable in terms of remaining a true member of the cause.
Bravo! Unfortunately, these clowns enjoy a great deal of cover from their respective universities. In the headlong rush to embrace diversity; diversity of thought has been given short shrift at Western universities.
Better late than never, I guess. But what took him so long and where are the others? I’d have thought thousands of social psychology types would have come out immediately to protect the integrity of their field.
“I could go on an on with plenty more obvious examples, but claiming āpsychologyā is not a science is just ignorant.”
I’d say behaviorists like Skinner and Watson were unarguably certainly scientists, deliberately avoiding the murky “intervening variables” like thought and emotion, and thereby freeing themselves to study stimulus and response. Pioneering work with rats and food bars has been found to have much applicability to human behavior, including gambling. I really enjoyed social psychology as an undergrad. It too is certainly a science. Are their bad scientist studying psychology? Of course. Given it’s murky nature, it’s probably particularly susceptible to poorly designed studies. But the goal is science, and I think it’s a mistake to dismiss psychology as pseudo-science.
I do concede that especially in the realm of psychopathology, much of what passes for science is truly humbug, but don’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
If it walks like a dog, barks like a dog – I tend to call it a dog š
Kudos to Mr. Duarte for calling BS on obvious methodological BS in all three papers (“Moon Hoax”, “Recursive Fury” and “97% Consensus”). I’d be even more thrilled to see him submit his critiques as a formal rebuttals or comments for publication.
And for the die-hard “skeptics” here, I encourage you to read, and read carefully everything that Duarte has written on his blog… not just the stuff you happen to agree with.
Finding a scientist psychologist is akin to finding an honest journalist. Damned hard to do.
Psychology has been colored by its cousins and associates pop psychology and sociology.
Links to Jose Duarte’s blog
More Smears
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/more-fraud
Lewandowsky Fraud
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/lewandowsky-fraud
Ignore Climate consensus studies based on random people rating journal article abstracts
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/ignore-climate-consensus-studies-based-on-random-people-rating-journal-article-abstracts
But climate scientist so-and-so says it’s not a big deal…
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/but-climate-scientist-so-and-so-says-its-not-a-big-deal
There’s some garbage at the end of the first link that causes the link to fail. The correct link is:
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/more-fraud
bernie1815 says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:25 am
“Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.”
Actually, go and read the paper and see if you can find the faults that were pointed out. That is intellectual rigour not divination from authority.
Jimbo says:
August 6, 2014 at 11:24 am
This really says it all.
It never happens. At least Iāve never heard of it happening. There would be no point in running such a study, since it would be dismissed out of hand and lead to serious questions about your ethics.
Yet it was not dismissed out of hand. Itās called an agenda and is part and parcel of Climastrology. Itās agenda driven, paid for, pal reviewed results. And thatās to put it mildly.
āIt is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding itā.
Upton Sinclair
____________________
That says it all about the modern community of practitioners of social sciences.
Bravo SeƱor Jose Duarte.
Reblogged this on CraigM350 and commented:
Lew is “despicable and fraudulent”? Quite.
I saw the Oreske video yesterday and what she does is advocating Lysenkoism. Probably that never occured to her or that is what she actually want. So either she is stupid or she is stupid.
bernie1815 says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:25 am
Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.
So the truth is only the truth after ‘pal review’ and acceptance by a journal editor? That is just another argumentum ab auctoritate; do his statements really need to hide behind the skirts of a magazine? ….sorry journal
Ian: You have misunderstood the point. A blog post carries little persuasive power.
Some people say.
Steve in SC says:
“Finding a scientist psychologist is akin to finding an honest journalist. Damned hard to do.
Psychology has been colored by its cousins and associates pop psychology and sociology.”
Good comment. In my comment, I said nothing to disagree with this.
If there are 100,000 bad scientist-psychologists and 3 good scientist-psychologists, then all 100,000 are bad, and the field deserves the scorn it receives.
As far as car mechanics goes, I believe there are many scammers out there, but there are a small portion who are respectable.
Does this mean there is no such thing as a decent car mechanic?
Regarding Skinner:
Skinner knew science proper. But he got ahead of himself, and over-sold behaviorism.
His book “Walden II” is not as widely read as similar Science-Utopia novels, but should be; it should be right up there in readership with Farenheit 451, Brave New World, and 1984.
In Walden II, Skinner takes one idea – that behavior and attitudes are a product of experiences, combines it with the concept that most of our experiences are random, and goes on to consider – in the classic sci-fi way: what if we intentionally planned people’s experiences to be “optimal,” rather than to be a product of randomness?
Grab a copy and see his answer.
For a more scholarly review of his views, you can read “Beyond Freedom and Dignity.”
These are the intellectual predecessors of “Nudge.” Get ready, because a bunch of nudges are coming your way.
There have been some interesting psychological characterizations of leftists’ thought processes here. What Damascene Road experience does it take to invert a leftist’s way of thinking, and what are the psychological dispositions of those that do make the change?
Harry Passfield says:
August 6, 2014 at 10:27 am
Now, I would have thought that any university worth the salt would run a mile from āconsensusā.
But they obviously don’t believe AR5 WG1. on the likelihood of extreme events.
Alec Rawls Amen, from and x catholic, whom was thinking returning to the church, but the present pope prevented that. After anyone one whom ignores That shall not steal because they believe everyone steals is not religious> It is appalling and funny at the same time how the “left” project and does not understated how badly they project.
UN agenda 21 leading to world government is the driver of all this rubbish.
philjourdan says:
August 6, 2014 at 8:45 am
s
While I respect your personal experience, I believe you sell short the efforts in social science over the last four decades. In many respects, the social science field is a mini-example of the troubles in climate science today. I have been in the forefront as a consumer and analyst of the findings of the social science field, and much of the work contributed significantly to the policies and practices of the field today, with positive results. Sadly, some would corrupt the science for personal gain by manipulating the data that clearly demonstrated hypothesis gone astray. Prestige and money played huge roles in this sad diversion of a field that worked hard for limited credibility; the nature of social science dictates findings with slim strength of evidence. We serve, I believe, as the canary in a coal mine of ill intended pretenders such as Mann, who want to advance a hypothesis rather than truth. In my career, I now spend more time than I would prefer in sorting out meaningless claims in order to find real advances in our knowledge; but they do exist, and our field still has strong advocates for brutal honesty in the investigation of the human condition.
@David – First, let us differentiate. “Social Science” is a grouping of sciences that includes Psychology. I am not anti-Social Science. Indeed, my field of expertise is in a science that straddles the line (Economics) between social and physical.
And I am sure there are some, perhaps many, psychologists that are both ethical and honest. But they are not the ones making the headlines or the news. And it is the power they wield, to destroy people, that has earned their utter contempt from me. Perhaps I am being too demanding of mere mortals. For people with power over the weak minded to use it for altruistic reasons alone, and to recognize their limitations and lack of supreme knowledge.
The concept of psychology is perhaps the most complex of the sciences. And the lack of recognition of that truism by the practitioners earns it my scorn.
Someone must have said this before, but it just occurred to me: The earth is bipolar!
The Lewinsky papers are at least useful,in one respect. They enable you immediately and conclusively to identify anyone who takes them seriously as an incompetent idiot.
Oops Lewinsky – obviously a Freudian typo.
Friends:
I write to refute the idiotic twaddle about “the left” which is polluting this thread.
Can none of the participants in this distorted political campaign recognise the irony?
This thread is about maligning of climate sceptics. It is being hijacked by people maligning “socialists” and “the Left” with nonsense which is not only untrue but is also irrelevant to the subject of the thread.
Perhaps the clearest example of this execrable and inexcusable behaviour is provided by gbaikie at August 6, 2014 at 12:49 pm. He writes
According to that ludicrous twaddle a “lefty” cannot accept the existence of “objective truth” and believes “moral and ethical behavior” is not possible. These untrue smears are despicable.
Such ludicrous twaddle excludes people of the left from being climate sceptics. Indeed, the most logical explanation of such twaddle is that it is intended to reduce opposition to the climate-scare by excluding people from the political left from involvement in opposition to the climate scare.
And the scattering of such nonsense throughout the thread is certainly intended to distract from the subject of the thread.
Richard
The manipulation of science to ghettoize those who talk about free markets is the topic, here:
“in their abstract they say: āEndorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer.ā”
Key subject: free market advocates are also anti-science. The last I checked, the “left” does not endorse free markets, unless they are of course forcing the purchase of some worthless product, or directing companies and their production through back door legislation, international treaties, and litigation. That is about as much free market as the “left” endorses.
“Such ludicrous twaddle excludes people of the left from being climate sceptics.”
No I’d say the justifiable criticism here is about the hard left who have deliberately hijacked the Green movement and engaged in a Long March through our educational institutions after their ideology was in tatters with the fall of the Berlin Wall. They’ve been quite successful at that and their meteoric rise to the commanding heights came with CAGW meme that finally struck a raw nerve with a Generation that was imbued with the notion of Spaceship Earth way back in 1969 with the moon landing.
Peculiarly enough the oil doomsayers and Club of Rome never managed to gain such traction but at last the hard left had their hands on the reins again, but as Walter Russell Mead noted, it’s all very well being noisy alarm clocks, but you need to turn the alarm off and get stuck in productively to a hard day at the office to achieve anything useful. Copenhagen said it all for these pretenders and with their subsequent failure to achieve anything useful, it’s been all downhill for them since.
There’s an old adage about how you get rid of such hard left central planning types. The answer is to vote them in and wait.
richardscourtney, I’m with observa on this one.
No, the average deluded left leaner is not in any way malevolent or evil and truly wants peace for all humanity and prosperity and no hunger or war and no climate change and sweetness and light and unicorns and rainbows. Really, they do. And you gotta give ’em a hug sometimes, because they’re always running into the obstinate grumpy, grouchy naysaying right, who insist that it’s ridiculous to expect sufficient energy density in hydrogen fuel tanks, or that the monstrosities being erected to generate electricity from wind are nothing useful, mere eyesores, wasteful and expensive, a bigger blight on the landscape than any sane person would ever build, and destined to be removed in only a few more years, if they aren’t all just allowed to decay into giant broken hulks.
No, the “Left” that are being decried here are the smarter ones, the ringleaders, the ones who know FULL WELL that they are wishing a horrible kind of failure and defeat upon the entire first world with this inane and ridiculous claim that we’re “ruining the planet”, that we need to abandon ALL fossil fuel use, that we should decivilize to give third world countries a chance. These are the insidious architects of the downfall of our entire civilization, the ones who not only don’t notice the barbarians at the gate, but invited them and are eagerly opening the gate for them.
Social Science my ass.
The entire field is down the tubes because Progressives are in charge.
I believe this is the same field of study that forced the crazy murdering jihadist US Army Major Hasan at Ft. Hood to stay in the army and to top it off they made sure he had access to a gun.
The man went through psychological testing, had written evidence of his hatred of American policies but, Progressives say you cannot discriminate.
Gun Free Zones is more of the Social Science of the Progressives.
Trust the European socialist left to direct world policies.
They’ve proven so transparent, honest and good./sarc
cn
Gotta say, I like this guy, Duarte. He’s thoughtful and fair. I don’t know whether not having a forum for reader comments is a good idea or not, but I must say that I don’t get off track into other people’s thoughts when reading his stuff. And his stuff is that good. This might be one of the best paragraphs regarding climate science ever composed :
>>>
“It’s clear that some climate scientists bring their politics into this. They leap to policy prescriptions and seem unaware of their ideological assumptions. Scientists are surprisingly not well-trained in separating ideological assumptions from descriptive facts, and don’t seem to run bias-correction algorithms on themselves. Climate science displays many of the classic signs of groupthink, and the tenor of the debate is disturbingly hostile and malicious as a result. ”
>>>
Jose Duarte wrote in āIgnore climate consensus studies based on random people rating journal article abstractsā – See more at: http://www.joseduarte.com/#sthash.gfz7am3K.UyaE4nzD.dpuf
And
Jose Duarte wrote in āClimate science is biased, but rightā http://www.joseduarte.com/#sthash.E3gGgmUZ.dpuf :
= = = = = = = =
I have a new favorite bookmark now, Jose Duarteās site.
Although I agree with the main thrust of what Jose Duarte is saying in his above quotes, his use of the term left-wing in a political context is illogically fuzzy terminology. Better to use collectivism which conveys the more accurate distinction from āindividualismā than the term left-wing does.
Thanks WUWT for carrying the article by Jose Duarte.
John
CodeTech:
Substitute the word ‘right’ for each use of the word ‘left’ in your post at August 7, 2014 at 5:55 am and your post remains equally true.
The smearing in this thread is despicable, and it is compounded by the fact that the subject of this thread is a complaint about different smearing.
Richard
richardscourtney, just, NO. You are curiously incorrect here.
And I used to have some respect for you, too.
It’s amazing how some people simply refuse to accept that they’re supporting the wrong side.
On Jose Duarteās site you will find also an article severely critical of the AAASās āconsensusā report that mirrors a lot of his severe criticism of the Cook et al (2013) āconsensusā paper. NOTE: I thank commenter Clovis Marcus (@ August 6, 2014 at 8:29 am) for bringing the other Jose Duarte article to my attention.
Jose Duarte wrote in āClimate science is biased, but rightā
http://www.joseduarte.com/#sthash.E3gGgmUZ.dpuf :
{all bold emphasis mine ā JMW}
= = = = = = =
Indeed, very bad epistemology by the AAAS in their consensus report and also by the ERL editorial board (who published Cook et al (2013)).
I suggest that where you find false epistemology you will almost always find irrationally false metaphysics that leads to and complements the false epistemology.
Kantās dual reality metaphysics is most often the basis of post-modern philosophyās fundamental view of science. I think the AAASā and ERLās false metaphysics justifying publication of the ‘consensus’ studies is the Kantian conception of a dual reality. Although the source of the dual reality metaphysics found in post-modern philosophy of science is largely Kantās, his ideas were passed down through Hegel and it was Hegelās metaphysical ideas that were the essential ones used by Marx and Engels as a basis of their widely known political theory which they called āsocialismā. Therefore, I do not think it is a coincidence that dual reality metaphysics is a basis of the faulty science in these consensus papers (AAASā & Cookās (in ERL)) as well as being the basis of modern political socialism (which some people fuzzily refer to as the āleftā but is more precisely referred to as the collectivist approach as opposed to the individualist approach).
John
Well thank you Jose Duarte, but is he the only psychologist who is aware of this work and who thinks what Lew did was wrong? A geology paper that unabashedly reworked data to fit a clearly biased conclusion that served some outside motive would be panned by thousands of geologists, if indeed it got miraculously published in the first place.
And what about climate scientists!! Not a peep. This paper did have an unexpected very valuable result: it showed CAGW climate scientists to be accepting of the worst crap possible if it supports their scenario. It says that it is okay to totally fabricate and lie in ‘science. The silence on this paper is a huge indictment of the CAGW clan who have caused trillions of dollars in economic loss and waste for an ideol_ol-ogy. When you allow such felons to intrude into your discipline in this way, says much about the diligence you employ in your own work. Shame, shame. There will be other papers on the real psychology of this disgraceful period. How Lysen_ko is remembered will be somewhat better than that to be enjoyed by the Team. The use-ful id-iots are fine, of course. They are always there waiting to be ab_used.
CodeTech:
At August 7, 2014 at 12:21 pm you write saying in total
Defending myself and all other smeared left-wingers is NOT “curiously incorrect”.
And I don’t care if some anonymous internet popup has or has not “respect” for me.
You are supporting the very, very wrong side “side” of division, hatred and demonisation. It is not amazing that people who support such evils refuse to accept that theyāre supporting the wrong side.
I am defending the “side” of honesty and truth which – whatever you may assert – is the correct side.
Richard
norah4you on August 6, 2014 at 1:57 pm
It’s more like AGW’ers produces the same as dogs sometimes leave behind …
TheLastDemocrat says “Psychology explores the natural world of human experience and behavior, strives to understand its rules or patterns, and take the findings and put them to some use.”
That it does. Its complexity stems from a nearly hopeless mixing of causes and effects and the researcher’s own biases in this area — starting with why he chose this profession in the first place. I believe some people (actually, some that I know personally) learn these theories with the specific aim in mind of manipulating others — I believe that is why John Cook enlisted the assistence of Dr. Lewandowsky.
Certainly it is the case that advertisers place great stock in psychology. I read an interesting small book called “Buyology” about using functional magnetic resonance imaging to discover what actually motivates a person, a byproduct of which was exploring how much and how often a person deceives even himself.
I have found considerably utility in the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. It is good for what it is good for — predicting suitability for certain kinds of work and uncovering “poseurs”.
It would be useless (and obvious) if merely observations; any poet does that much. Its utility is prediction and prescription.
The sinister aspect is that politicians can abuse psychology just as they can abuse any other “ology” and label their enemies with any of dozens or hundreds of social diseases.
“Psychiatry possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine. The diagnosis of mental disease allows the state to hold persons against their will and insist upon therapy in their interest and in the broader interests of society.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry
“Duarte is a graduate student. The commentary, while pretty accurate and powerful, is in a blog post. Letās see if he can get an article published in a reputable journal before ringing the bells.”
Hi all, Joe Duarte here. We do have a journal article, now in press at the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences: http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf
I takes a broad look at issues related to what Lewandowsky did, and how invalid and unscientific papers can be published in normally excellent journals like Psychological Science.
It is true that a graduate student will usually have less impact and power compared to a famous tenured professor. But my arguments are very simple and I think indisputable ā I don’t go after marginal cases. If we have 10 moon hoaxists in a sample of 1145, and only 3 of them also endorse a climate science hoax, then yeah, we can’t link those two things in the very title of our paper. 10 is zero. 3 is zero (and is a *minority* of the 10, which is zero anyway.) This is supposed to be science, not literature.
(And I’m only a graduate student for a few more weeks.)
Congratulations soon-to-be Dr. Duarte! And thank you for starting your career with integrity and courage! May you continue to speak out against those who think their degrees can hide or excuse their own erratic behavior and flawed thinking. We need more of you!
richardscourtney, of COURSE you think that.
But I, also, am supporting the “side” of honesty and truth. Unfortunately, we have a difference of opinion on what that means.
My observation has always been that a certain group of people believe that they have a monopoly on honesty and truth. And yet, those people wouldn’t know honesty and/or truth if it kicked them between the eyes. Those are the idealists and fascists that cling to the left side.
And the main problem with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s that they know so much that isn’t so.
– – – – – – – –
Joe Duarte,
Thanks for the info.
Appreciate your insight on your website into both the Cook et al (2013) ‘consensus’ paper and the AAAS ‘consensus’ report.
John
Code Tech,
As I read Richard’s words, I give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that what he’s trying to say is that it’s insulting and lazy thinking to treat all people under any given label as if they are ALL identical. My experience is that fools come in every flavor imaginable- left, right, conservative, liberal, young, old etc. I resent being told what I supposedly think or feel or believe by total strangers once they’ve classified me under some title or another. It’s arrogant and irrational to do such a thing. Which is why I try to never do it to anyone else. Perhaps Richard is trying to get you to think outside your own biases…?
Aphan:
re your post at August 8, 2014 at 10:04 am.
Yes. Thankyou.
And some of those “biases” are both offensive and ridiculous; e.g fascism is left-wing.
Richard
Richard,
Originally, fascism was anti-communist, anti-conservative, and anti-liberalism. It borrowed from both sides and the middle. Today, fascism means something different to everyone it seems….no one defines it in exactly the same way.
For example, Jonathan Alter, a left wing columnist, just wrote an article in the Daily Beast calling for American Corporations to have to take “loyalty oaths” and promoting rabid nationalism. Both are typically viewed as fascist practices, but Alter isn’t a right winger.
That’s another reason why trying to stereotype people as one thing or another is foolish…if the people you are accusing of a certain behavior/mentality actually DON’T believe/think that way…it makes you a liar and a bigot in the end.
To say that in the US global warming enthusiast/alarmists political affinities fall overwhelmingly to the Left is True. Period.
To say all people with Leftist affinity are Global Warming enthusiast/alarmists is false. Richardscourtney personifies a Socialist Sceptic. And a large and vital input to WUWT.
Aphan:
Many thanks for your thought-provoking post at August 8, 2014 at 12:10 pm. Clearly, there is room for debate about it, but such a debate would be very off-topic in this thread.
I fully agree with your concluding paragraph which provides a clear and succinct summary of what I was trying to say in my earlier posts. You conclude and I applaud
Richard
Aphan, I totally understand what is going on here, I suspect it is richard that doesn’t.
Absolutely there are whack jobs on both sides, in any debate, in any issue. It would be wrong to try to say that “all leftists are idiots” or “only idiots lean to the left”. I’m not saying that. However, RobRoy points out the obvious: ALL of the “we need to do something”, running around, arm waving, panicking, socialist climate mitigation and reparation schemes are coming from the left side.
It’s really not that difficult. I wouldn’t be offended if I was involved in a discussion where someone pointed out that a lot on the right are, for example, creationists. I’m not, but I know there are a lot who are. I would accept that observation and move on.
(fascism is currently EMBRACED by the left wing)
CodeTech:
Your post at August 8, 2014 at 2:28 pm is both disingenuous and offensive.
Of course I “understand what is going on here” and I am objecting to it. For example, your post includes this untrue smear
That may possibly be true in the US but it is complete nonsense everywhere else.
Indeed, I suspect the smear is presented as a method to divide opposition to climate mitigation and reparation schemes (incidentally which are not “socialist”).
It is disgraceful that a thread about untrue smears is being hijacked by people making untrue smears.
Richard
Okay whatever.
Go ahead, be wrong.
Your posts throughout this entire thread are exactly what you are accusing mine of being: disingenuous and offensive.
I was trying to be nice, but there’s no point. Leftists simply don’t understand nice, they seem to mistake it for a form of weakness.
You’re wrong, richard. Wrong with a capital W. I wonder how much more damage the left will do to science, culture, and our entire civilization before apologists and fellow travellers like yourself realize how toxic and damaging they are. How much?
Code Tech,
You say you understand what is going on here, but then you provide an example that makes me wonder if you truly do:
“Itās really not that difficult. I wouldnāt be offended if I was involved in a discussion where someone pointed out that a lot on the right are, for example, creationists. Iām not, but I know there are a lot who are. I would accept that observation and move on.”
Apparently it IS difficult for you to grasp what I’m pointing out. Whether or not YOU would be offended is totally irrelevant to whether or not someone ELSE might or might not be. I might be fine with being linked to creationists, but not fascists. I might be more sensitive about your opinion on my religious beliefs than I am on your opinion on my political ones. That YOU would accept an “observation and move on”, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else can, or should!
You’re doing the same thing that Alec Rawls pointed out so clearly above- you’re assuming that everyone thinks the way YOU think….or you believe that they SHOULD think the way you do….and respond the way you do….etc.
And then, as if you are literally trying to prove my point, you posted:
“(fascism is currently EMBRACED by the left wing)”
How can you NOT SEE that you are miles away from “pointing out that a lot of people on the left are, for example, fascists”?
The way you make your statement automatically implies that “the left wing” (all of it…not some of it, or parts of it) “LOVES (EMBRACES)…welcomes with open arms, accepts readily, holds close to” fascism!
If you cannot see the difference between those two examples, then YOU have the problem here. If you CAN see the difference, but you CHOSE to phrase your words in an insulting manner, rather than an observational one, then I, and others, will indeed continue to have a problem with you.
Aphan:
Quoting from richard:
This is a typical error made in political discourse. Fascism is neither left nor right. It’s a tactic, used to control populations and minds. Currently, the left are using fascist tactics to shut down conversation and belittle the right. Yes, they are. Tell me the mind control techniques being used RIGHT NOW are not the left: specifically the overwhelming takeover of education, media, and entertainment industries. This was a conscious effort undertaken in the 60s.
So people don’t like being associated with fascist techniques and tendencies. The obvious solution would be to distance yourself from the ideology that is using such techniques, and stop whining and getting faux outraged when someone points it out.
No, I don’t think everyone thinks like I do, in fact very few people do. But I’m NOT going to get someone lecture against people pointing out the obvious: The Left Is Driving The Climate Change Bus.
Code Tech,
If you want us to view you as credible in any fashion, and your chances of that are slipping away quickly, then YOU need to learn to represent other people ACCURATELY.
RobRoy posted at 11:17-
“To say that in the US global warming enthusiast/alarmists political affinities fall overwhelmingly to the Left is True. Period.
To say all people with Leftist affinity are Global Warming enthusiast/alarmists is false. Richardscourtney personifies a Socialist Sceptic. And a large and vital input to WUWT.”
In other words- if you took ALL of the global warming enthusiasts/alarmists in the US and examined them, you’d find that the overwhelming majority of them fall to the political LEFT. And he clarifies that he is NOT saying that “all people on the left are global warming enthusiasts/alarmists.” I agree with both of his statements.
Three hours later, YOU said:
“However, RobRoy points out the obvious: ALL of the āwe need to do somethingā, running around, arm waving, panicking, socialist climate mitigation and reparation schemes are coming from the left side.”
Now, either you have a reading comprehension problem, OR you deliberately misrepresented RobRoy because his CLARIFIED his viewpoint three hours before your post and he did NOT say what you are saying.
I fall on the political right. And I find YOUR behavior today to be both disingenuous and offensive. I think YOUR behavior, and statements to be far more damaging to and toxic than ANYTHING Richard has ever said or posted here. Let me clarify-YOU do not represent me, or “the right”, or anyone else I affiliate with in any way, and if your opinions and statements are that foreign to me, then I can only imagine how much more idiotic you appear from the other side of the fence.
Obviously Richard can defend himself perfectly well. He is a highly intelligent, articulate man who is well respected in this forum and others.
I’m not attempting to speak for HIM or his viewpoints Code Tech. I am speaking for MYSELF, and how I view his comments in comparison to yours.
“Fascism is neither left nor right.”
Correct.
“Itās a tactic, used to control populations and minds. ”
Wrong. Fascism is an IDEOLOGY, a belief system, a political movement. The “tactics” YOU describe-describe-mind control, shutting down the conversation, belittling the opposition etc. are adoptable by anyone, on ANY side of any issue, for any reason. They are not mutually exclusive to “fascism”. Your own “tactics” here are just as offensive and irrational. What ideology shall I ascribe them to on your behalf?
Perhaps you should educate yourself on how ill used the word “fascism” is before you go accusing people of being fascists. George Orwell tried to explain it in 1944. Maybe you’ll understand him-
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
What a breathtaking display of arrogance and intolerance, masquerading behind being offended by arrogance and intolerance.
You should be ashamed. But you’re not.
Brilliant misrepresentation. But not even worth replying. Have the life you deserve.
@Joe Duarte 8/7 at 7:41 pm
Good to hear from you. Please don’t be a stranger.
There is so much dirty laundry to take in if you are receptive to the ugly, conflict of interest, self-serving, dishonest statistics and data manipulation that passes for main stream climate science. They go so far as to hide data in plain sight.
Yes, it is so egregious that most people don’t look for it.
I would think that the air’s really thin up there,
Where you sit, looking down, from your lofty chair.
When the clouds block your view, and the Sun’s too hot,
Just remember, you fought for the throne you’ve got.
And how IS life under that bridge, aphan?
My only disagrement with Duarte’s stance is that he gives too much credit to this whole affair as being about science. It doubt it was.