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 It should’ve been retracted by the authors already.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 – when none of those things are true. Do we hate our participants?
Read the whole thing here: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/more-fraud (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 — 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. But 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.
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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 I’m 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 aren’t 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 “psychology” 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 🙂
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. Let’s 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 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.
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.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.
Upton Sinclair
____________________
That says it all about the modern community of practitioners of social sciences.
Bravo Señor 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. Let’s 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 ‘consensus’.
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.