Psychologist José Duarte writes: The Cook et al. (2013) 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change.
Let’s go ahead and walk through that sentence again. The Cook et al 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. I only spent ten minutes with their database — there will be more such papers for those who search. I’m not willing to spend a lot of time with their data, for reasons I detail further down.
This paper is vacated, as a scientific product, given that it included psychology papers, and also given that it twice lied about its method (claiming not to count social science papers, and claiming to use independent raters), and the professed cheating by the raters. It was essentially voided by its invalid method of using partisan and unqualified political activists to subjectively rate climate science abstracts on the issue on which their activism centers — a stunning and unprecedented method. I’m awaiting word on retraction from the journal, but I think we already know that this paper is vacated. It doesn’t represent knowledge of the consensus.
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I want to note here that the authors are still misrepresenting their 97% figure as consisting of “climate papers”. For an upcoming event, Cook claims “They found that among relevant climate papers, 97% endorsed the consensus that humans were causing global warming.” Clearly, this is false. There is no way we’ll be able to call the above papers “relevant climate papers”. Don’t let these people get away with such behavior — call them out on it. Ask them how psychology papers can be “relevant climate papers”, raise your hand at events, notify journalists, etc. Make them defend, explicitly, what they did. Hopefully, it will be retracted soon. But until then, make them defend what they did. For one thing, Cook should now have to disclose how many psychology and other irrelevant papers were included. In a scenario where retraction wasn’t justified, they would have to rewrite the paper. In this case, the false statements, fraud, and absurd method mandate retraction, and some sort of penance.
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Other raters, like Dana Nuccitelli, say it should count as “methods” (which might have excluded it), but that “It’s borderline implicit endorsement though, with all the ‘climate change denial’ phrases. If you read the paper I’d bet it would be an explicit endorsement.”
Nuccitelli thinks that if a psychology paper uses the phrase “climate change denial”, it might count as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. We should linger on that. This is a staggering level of stupidity with respect to what would count as scientific evidence of AGW. The implied epistemology there is, well, I don’t know that it has a name. Maybe it’s some kind of postmodernist view of reality being based on belief, anyone’s belief (except for the beliefs of skeptics) — perhaps a grotesque misreading of Kuhn. Even if we thought reality was best understood via consensus, it’s not going to be created by consensus, and the only consensus we would care about would be that of climate scientists. That Marxist or neo-Marxist sociologists pepper their paper with “climate change denial” does not add to our confidence level about AGW — it is not evidence of anything but the ideology of two American sociologists. It doesn’t test the energy balance model, or revise or validate or estimates of transient climate sensitivity. It has no input into our knowledge of AGW. In any case, I’m stunned by Nuccitelli’s behavior in these rater forum pages, and his behavior as a climate science writer – he and Jenny McCarthy should jointly surrender to some sort of authority.
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I think some of you who’ve defended this “study” got on the wrong train. I don’t think you meant to end up here. I think it was an accident. You thought you were getting on the Science Train. You thought these people — Cook, Nuccitelli, Lewandowsky — were the science crowd, and that the opposition was anti-science, “deniers” and so forth. I hope it’s clear at this point that this was not the Science Train. This is a different train. These people care much less about science than they do about politics. They’re willing to do absolutely stunning, unbelievable things to score political points. What they did still stuns me, that they did this on purpose, that it was published, that we live in a world where people can publish these sorts of obvious scams in normally scientific journals. If you got on this train, you’re now at a place where you have to defend political activists rating scientific abstracts regarding the issue on which their activism is focused, able to generate the results they want. You have to defend people counting psychology studies and surveys of the general public as scientific evidence of endorsement of AGW. You have to defend false statements about the methods used in the study. Their falsity won’t be a matter of opinion — they were clear and simple claims, and they were false. You have to defend the use of raters who wanted to count a bad psychology study of white males as evidence of scientific endorsement of AGW. You have to defend vile behavior, dishonesty, and stunning hatred and malice as a standard way to deal with dissent.
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Cognition is in large part categorization, and we need more categories to understand and sort people’s views and frameworks when it comes to fresh scientific issues like AGW. If our science category or camp includes people like Cook and Nuccitelli, it’s no longer a science category. We won’t have credibility as pro-science people if those people are the standard bearers. Those people are in a different category, a different camp, and it won’t be called “science”. Those climate scientists who have touted, endorsed, and defended the Cook et al. study – I suggest you reconsider. I also suggest that you run some basic correction for the known bias, and cognitive dissonance, humans have against changing their position, admitting they were wrong, etc. Do you really want to be on the historical record as a defender of this absurd malpractice? It’s not going to age well, and as a scientist, certain values and principles should matter more to you than politics.
If you’re always on the side of people who share your political views or aims, if you’re always on the side of people who report a high AGW consensus figure, no matter what they do, something is wrong. It’s unlikely that all the people who share your political perspective, or all studies conducted by them, are right or valid — and we know that in advance. We need more honesty on this issue, less political malice, better epistemology.
Read the full essay here: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97
h/t to WUWT reader Randy Hughes
See the Legates paper here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/
With you on the need for “some kind of penance”, suggest the old British penance they are made to bare their arse in Burton’s window (or other prominent high street tailors ).
From the article “…The implied epistemology there is, well, I don’t know that it has a name. Maybe it’s some kind of postmodernist view of reality being based on belief, anyone’s belief (except for the beliefs of skeptics) — perhaps a grotesque misreading of Kuhn…”.
How ’bout we just call it “fraud”.
This essay would be a cult buster for the Appells and McKibbens out there but they are the walking dead infected with the climate pandemic.
I really like the civilised tone in general of WUWT: it allows me to have a level of trust in its articles that I cannot have elsewhere, but the mention above of “professed cheating by the raters” I think is truly misleading. Just to avoid any doubt, I think these 97% consensus studies are not worth the paper they are written on, and the website the link refers to actually illustrates nicely how subjective the ratings are and prone to bias, but Cook and co do not “profess” to “cheating”. Using such terminology undermines the credibility of the article.
Methodology? Bayesian.
This is precisely the tone and mastery of subject I look for when skeptics repond to errors. I believe the IPCC would collapse if this quality became general and could be sustained.
Calling out someone for lying can be like telling someone who says he or she is “being kind” that what they are doing is actually harmful and untrue. To many more people than we care to admit, methods matter little, it is the result that counts, so they think. This kind of thinking invades the benevolent mind, not realizing the malevolent risk always lurking under the surface of those who think they know better what others should believe. Grand experiments in “populous equality” always begins with benevolence towards the populace. But it only takes minutes of such thinking to bring harm to those they think they are caring for.
This “climate consensus” grand experiment is of the same cloth as all other grand sociological experiments. And they gather round them whole herds of people willing to disregard the lies because the supposed “benevolence” should be supported and not subjected to criticism. However, the history of such experiments should readily prompt vigilance towards the current flavor of benevolence, along with determined efforts to put the brakes on this nonsense and to call to task their supporters, regardless of the well-meaning intent. Why? Therein lies the malevolent risk, not in the instigators but in the supporters.
The author of the scathing review focuses proper attention on those that have given this lie a pass.
José Duarte,
Your full post on your site has circumspect insights about the Cook, Nuccitelli, Lewandowsky related work product. You’ve shown it is mere mockery that fails to even mimic science.
Of all that you said, the most interesting aspect of this post and of several of your past posts on the topic of Cook / Nuccitelli / Lewandowsky work product is your frequent references to epistemology, cognition, political bias and problematic philosophies (post-modernism). The interconnection and hierarchy within all philosophical systems involving metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and myth (aka art) is my greatest interest in discussion of the climate dialog raging for the past ~30+ years. In future posts, I hope to have the opportunity to discuss that aspect of the problematic behavior in the work product of Cook / Nuccitelli / Lewandowsky and how it relates to the broader problematic aspects of much of climate dialog and argumentation.
John
This comes under the heading of OT but not OT (my apologies if someone else has already posted the link).
It comes with the tag “just when you thought they couldn’t sink any lower”. LOLOL
scared kittens
Somehow, I don’t think these ‘scientists’ would have any problem being associated with the likes of Cook and Nuccitelli.
Cook’s work is nonsense top to bottom , it does not even make mathematical sense . But that does not matter its now part of the ‘the cause’ dogma and has with Mann stick must be defended by AGW promoters regardless of it many problems . So we can find 10, 100 or 1,000 ways it which it is wrong and end up feeling better about ourselves has we do so. But to his ‘followers’ and those politicians that attach themselves to this nonsense this is not matter at all , they have to much to lose by admitting Cooks work is BS.
Actually, reading this all again, there is a simple, straightforward message here that can give pause for thought even for moronic political activists like Cook.
Apparently, if you are an economist, sociologist, or psychologist who believes in this stupid religion, you count towards part of the 97%
However, if you are an engineer, physicist or whatever who does not subscribe to this stupid religion, then you are not qualified to express an opinion, for example on the BBC.
This is the sort of inconsistent stupidity that any idiot social scientist can be pinned to the ground on in any public situation, for example at a conference, so take them out and make them squirm.
@max Roberts
Apparently, if you are an economist, sociologist, or psychologist, [note 1] who believes in this stupid religion, you count towards part of the 97%
Note 1: “or journalist, lawyer, politician, or sycophant to any of the above….”
But otherwise, your point is well taken Max.
The school of CAGW says the 31,487 signers of the Oregon Petition are unqualified to hold any worthy opinion of climate science and should be ignored. The opinion of English environmental journalists should govern.
No global warming in many years, the climate models have failed and the 97% consensus is debunked, as an Alarmist I can truly say, “it’s worse than we thought“.
The really disturbing anti-science reality that’s worse than we thought is the 97% consensus among editors that politics trumps fact in the representaion of scientific topics in their publications.
A very well written attack on the current state of play around climate science. The killer sentence to me is this :
“When did we discover that people who doubt, or only mildly embrace, the rumor of a consensus of researchers in a young and dynamic field whose estimates are under constant revision, and whose predictions center on distant future developments, are “deniers”? “
It was when some felt it was necessary to call those folks names because everything else in \their belief was failing.
The cult will burn the witches, err “deniers”, as long their priests, err politicians and financiers, can extort money for this cause. When the truth finally comes (for whatever reasons- another cold cycle, e.g.) the mob will be led to a new cause and shorn again as the sheep they have always been. As Dorothy Parker once quipped when asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, “you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think”. Camp followers, all.
JohnWho,
Exactly right. A good example is the Forbes climate blog by James Taylor [to comment there, or to read the comments, click on “Comment Now”, then “Expand all Comments”].
The typical alarmist comments are scurrilous. That crowd cannot argue intelligently. Instead, they engage in constant name-calling and insults. It is really amazing how childish their comments are.
The reason is clear: Taylor tells the truth, and the alarmist cult cannot handle the truth. You see the same mindset in many publications. Alarmists are losing the debate, and they can feel it. So they lash out.
Their egos have been thoroughly entwined in the ‘carbon’ scare. Now that the scare is being debunked by Planet Earth [no global warming for many years now], their egos are seriously hurt. So they resort to vile name calling and ad hominem arguments. Actually, it is kind of pleasurable to watch their impotent complaining. Schadenfreude, I guess. ☺
The ‘97%’ paper was written to provide a headline to the mainstream media.
The truth does not matter.
The article simply provided one ‘beat’ in the constant mainstream meda ‘drumbeat’ of global warming/climat change/carbon is bad/more government regulation is needed.
As the facts come out, they: 1) will not be reported, and 2) will be buried under a fresh layer of alarmist articles.