If it wasn’t enough that John Cook dresses himself up as a Nazi in his SkS uniform on his forum, now we have him caught in what looks to be identity theft of a well known scientist.
A WUWT reader writes via email:
I thought I might ask you for your comment on this before I rush to judge John cook.
The Reference Frame: Identity theft: the thief of Lubos_Motl turns out to be a well-known man
Specifically, I’m curious:
1) Why john would wish to post comments anywhere under any circumstances using another persons name?
2) How many other times has he done this?
3) Does he intend to do this again?
Thanks for your time.
This isn’t a brush away issue that he can ignore, as Dr. Lubos Motl found out yesterday, John Cook has been using the name of Dr. Lubos Motl to post comments that Dr. Motl has NOT written.
Dr. Motl writes:
Today, one hour ago, was the first time when I was seeing these pages but interestingly enough, you may find lots of things over there posted by Lubos_Motl. And this Lubos_Motl happens to use the e-mail address jc@sks… and the same IP addresses as another, less prolific participant of those discussions, John Cook! ;-)In the first thread – including comments about the possible influence of the Sun on the hockey stick and exchanges about a planned alarmists’ letter to Anthony Watts analyzing the meaning of the word “denier” – we read:
John Cook: … If a few more agree with the idea of this blog post (noting it won’t directly engage Watts or even mention him, it’ll be a general discussion post) and the direction I propose we go with the d-word issue, I’ll have a crack at writing it over the next day.
EDIT: sorry, accidentally posted this under my Lubos_Motl username, sorry for any confusion 🙁
…
Tim Curtis: would you please stop posting as Lubos Motl. There is reason to doubt his sanity, so I don’t like seeing his name. Further, it is his name, and therefore one you are not entitled to use.
…
Rob Honeycutt: John… You freak me out every time Lubos Motl’s name pops up!
…
John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook.
For the record, if just one or two of you SkSers jumped over to the Technical Forum and posted some comments to the 4 Experiment Conditions, I’d get my 10 comments and wouldn’t have to log in as Lubos anymore. Only one or two more comments required to get the quota. Just some incentive for you 🙂
EDIT: one of the conditions now has 10 comments, so only 3 more threads (with 2 of them only requiring one more comment). So Lubos very close to being put to bed 🙂
EDIT: only one more thread to go…
Minutes before this September 26th, 2011 commitment, we were reading these comments in the other threads:
Lubos_Motl: Ocean acidification is a strong sign that humans are raising CO2 levels. But it’s also a grave environmental concern as the acidification is causing damage to coral reefs which are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Adding insult to injury, the increased CO2 causes warming which is causing further damage to the coral reefs through bleaching. Corals provide both evidence for man-made global warming and concern over its impacts.
Lubos_Motl: The past tells us much about what our future holds in store for us. In the past, when the Earth was warmer than it is now, sea levels were metres higher than current levels. So just on the sea level front alone, we can expect severe impacts on the vast majority of the human population living on coastlines. The past also describes these concerning feedback events, where warmer temperatures lead to further release of greenhouse gases. We’re already seeing this start to happen in the Arctic, with methane bubbling from the permafrost and methane clathrates. The past paints a vivid picture of our future and it’s a picture of great concern.
Well, you can figure out that these paragraphs were written by a scientifically illiterate imbecile rather than Luboš Motl – because you are a TRF reader – but what about others? In Parts 2–4 of the other thread, the same Lubos_Motl wrote lots of other things:
Lubos_Motl: Cherry picking: What this post fails to mention is other factors also affect climate. Urban heat island also causes nights to warm faster than days. Ozone depletion causes the stratosphere to cool. This supposed evidence is just cherry picking supporting evidence and hiding the rest.
…
The article also cites ocean warming as evidence, and yet ocean warming has stalled since 2003. As more than 90% of global warming is going into the oceans, which means ocean heat is the best measure for global warming, the conclusion is obvious – humans can’t be causing global warming because global warming isn’t happening!
…
Good point re cosmic rays. The simplistic argument that the sun can’t cause global warming only looks at one possible link between sun and climate – total solar irradiance. But the relationship between the sun and our climate is much more complicated than that, as the solar magnetic field modulates the amount of cosmic radiation hitting the earth. This affects cloud formation which also interacts with our climate in complicated ways, with lower clouds causing cooling and higher clouds causing warming. A prettily coloured graphic created for young children doesn’t even begin to capture the complexities of our climate system.
Lubos_Motl: It’s hilarious that this article cites Usoskin 2005. That paper concludes that over the last few decades, the correlation between sun and climate breaks down. Therefore, recent warming must have some other cause. This article’s own sources debunk its assertion that the sun is causing global warming!
…
The full truth about the percentage of CO2 is that over 99% of the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen, both gases which are not greenhouse gases. So the fact that CO2 is a small percentage is irrelevant to the strength of its greenhouse effect. It’s like holding an election in a town of 1000 people where only 10 people vote. They may only be a small number but each individual has a significant effect. It’s the same with CO2. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it – what do measurements find? Both planes and satellites measure heat as it escapes to space and both find a big bite out of the outgoing heat, at precisely the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat. The greenhouse effect is an empirically observed fact.
Lubos_Motl: Good point re the co2 lag. Not only was co2 higher in the past, it also lags temperature, showing temperature drives co2, not the other way around. The ice core record is not kind to the warmist agenda.
…
Good point re the number of scientists. The alarmists like to boast about there being 2500 scientists who wrote the IPCC report. But the number of skeptic scientists is AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE greater than the number of alarmist scientists. Not only there is still a debate, the weight of opinion leans heavily towards the skeptic point of view. This article presents the compelling evidence that explains why.
…
John Cook: Note re Lubos Motl: I won’t use the name Lubos Motl or any of our names in the final webpage used in the experiment (so the last two comments by Rob and Steve won’t be used, I’m afraid).
Full story: http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/07/identity-theft-thief-of-lubosmotl-turns.html#more
To me, this is the most telling comment:
John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook.
This is just unbelievable; “the UWA experiment”. Think about what this refers to: University of Western Australia. This is where Cook launched his career defaming climate skeptics by helping Stephan Lewandowsky in designing/running a gussied up poll that was never actually posted on climate skeptic websites, that purports to give answers by climate skeptics, to be used in a paper where it is claimed that climate skeptics are believers that “the moon landing was faked“. What sort of “experiment” was John Cook running by stealing the identity of Dr. Lubos Motl, and writing comments under his name?
Cook is a man who has co-authored two papers about how climate skeptics are not to be trusted because in essence, “they are crazy conspiracy theorists”. Yet, John Cook, now of the University of Queensland after leaving his connections at UWA, has so little moral integrity that he’ll post comments on his own website (the SkS forum, see below) as a skeptical scientist, such as Dr. Lubos Motl?
Who else has John Cook impersonated? Has he encouraged his team to do this? These are valid questions that need answers.
This may be actionable, not just to get his latest smear paper retracted, like the first one was, but legally actionable. And maybe it’s time, because quite frankly I’m getting tired of this crap coming from this band of zealots in Australia who seem to have no scruples or integrity. Identity theft of another scientist’s name to post fake comments is just beyond the pale.
This isn’t the first time Cook and crew has done something reprehensible like this. Readers may recall he and his team of moderator zealots have been caught changing user comments after the fact:
On “Skepticalscience” – Rewriting History
This is why Skeptical Science has it’s own special category on the links at WUWT’s sidebar:
Unreliable*
Skeptical Science – John Cook
* Due to (1) deletion, extension
and amending of user comments,
and (2) undated post-publication
revisions of article contents after
significant user commenting.
Then there’s all the questionable tactics Cook used to create a faked 97% consensus: Richard Tol’s Excellent Summary of the Flaws in Cook et al. (2013) – The Infamous 97% Consensus Paper
May I suggest Mr. Cook, that your next fake persona name be: What. A. Slimeball.
UPDATE: Since some commenters have run astray in their thinking, assuming incorrectly that this lab exercise was related to the “moon landing” and “fury” papers, perhaps this addition will help clarify the issue. I sometimes forget readers don’t keep up on the vagaries of the SkS underworld as much as I have.
These comments were from the SkS private “subscribers only” forum, where you had to be on the “inside” to be a part of it. So, these were not public comments like we see on WUWT, but rather a discussion with his network of sycophants helping with his “research”.
The point that needs to be driven home is that rather than getting real comments, he had his buddies (and himself) write faked up comments from their own perspective as “fake skeptics”, and then analyzed those for his research experiment. Whether the results of that experiment made it into any published research is unknown.
Essentially, he and his friends made up pre-biased data, by “assuming” they knew what a skeptic comment might look like, and that’s an issue of integrity. What we see is an attempt to ascertain if a few skeptical comments are influential enough to undo the “good” of an alarmist post. That’s where “noble cause corruption” is at work. It seems he wants to find excuses to explain why everyone should censor skeptics out of the conversation, something he’s actively pushing on CNN right now.
Therefore the important question is: did he get the required ethics approval to make up his own data for that lab exercise?
See:
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-research/approvals
The mendacity of creating commentary from your own group to use it to analyze and then label another group is truly mind boggling.
If readers are going to register complaints, they need to do so in this context, not from the standpoint of this being about public comments faked up by Cook, that remains to be determined, yet given the behavior, we would be correct to look for such instances. Readers should take care not to make complaints to universities that this incident shows that Cook faked public comments, as inaccurate complaints will be ignored and make it more difficult for other complaints to get a hearing. Until further details become available, it is probably best that readers hold off anyway.
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Wow. This is pretty bad.
Another peek behind the curtain.
It gets nastier every peek.
Will there ever be consequences?
Doubt it.
More like opening the outhouse door in summer. Flies abound.
If you want to know what the weasels do, observe what the weasels CLAIM their opponents do, and then you will know what the weasels do.
Exactly.
I just emailed the following to CNN. I suggest that everyone else ought to do the same to any outlet that is publishing John Cooks opinions.
==============================================================================
Dear CNN,
You have been posting articles on Climate Change Denial by John Cook. For example: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/opinions/cook-techniques-climate-change-denial/index.html
John Cook, founder of the website Skeptical Science, has been and apparently posting comments to the Skeptical Science website using the user name Lubos_Motl.
Lubos Motl is a theoretical physicist who highly skeptical of climate change. Cook has adopted the identity of Motl when making posts. That, in and of itself, is very troubling. Faking comments or posts by assuming someone else s identity is wrong. However, from the comments Cook himself made, it appears that Cook posted comments as Motl then use those very same comments in an ‘experiment’ that Cook himself ran.
For more background on the situation please read:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/07/identity-theft-thief-of-lubosmotl-turns.html
This type of behavior is unacceptable and very well may be illegal.
I suggest that CNN needs to rethink your relationship with John Cook. At the very least, CNN should investigate the situation. If Cook has been posting comments with the intention to persuade people that he is Lubos Motl, that in and of itself is enough to shatter the idea that anything Cook reports on the subject of climate change is believable. If Cook used the fake comments in his ‘experiments’, then that is scientific fraud.
CNN is in the news business and that business is based upon honest reporting. The purported behavior of John Cook is beyond dishonest. CNN needs to remove all content related to John Cook until this issue is investigated.
Sincerely,
Eric Dahlgren
==============================================================================
This goes beyond labeling, it goes beyond the faked studies. This is so absolutely unacceptable that I am (almost) at a loss for words.
Eric; CCN will dismiss all our comments Perhaps FOX might find some joy to it. Myself I am hoping that some persons in the Australian Gov picks up on it, as some of their past policy decisions were made on studies done by Mr. Cook.
“Why none dare call it Treason” anyone care to finish?
michael
It’s been years since CNN has done honest reporting. They are barely distinguishable from MSNBC.
Everyone has a breaking point, my friend. They might be biased journalists, but they are still journalists. Clear and unambiguous fraud admitted in his own words is pretty darn condemning, and it might open people’s eyes. That’s why sending this to CNN is important. They have private leverage against Cook and their reputation to protect. Even if they don’t believe it is enough to discredit him, something like this should at least get a boss to come down and say “stop embarrassing us”
As Kate from smalldeadanimals.com says, CNN is that background noise at the airport.
Eric
You might do better with James Delingpole at Breitbart UK.
‘ why DOES John Cook of ‘SkepticalScience’ and the 97% have to use identity theft in his ‘research’?’
I would guess it is because he is lying scum bag that cannot pratice good science .
You are too kind.
He does not practise good science.
That doesn’t mean he cannot practise good science.
It just means he will not practise good science.
Knowledge of this tends to raise one’s suspicions that there might not be as many individual trolls out there as folks would think.
Trolls use many names to make it look like there are more of them. There are also bots
An example: How do you stop Twitter trolls? Unleash a robot swarm to troll them back
Given that the Seabrook Nuclear protesters were paid #10/hr (Boston Globe Want ad) I do not find the idea of paid trolls unreasonable.
John Cook et al would make Heinrich Kramer proud.
Anthony,
Seems to me that he would be more likely to use
Watt A Slimeball
It does make you wonder though about that Conspiracy Ideation paper paper and the validity of all the purported responses as perhaps ALL SKS kidz using various pseudonyms weather from Identity Theft or just synthesized like the Model Data.
Here’s hoping Lubos follows through. Still not likely to stop much of anything though.
Do you guys begin to see why I tend to be so pessimistic about this? When these *** can do stuff like this and their supporters not only don’t condemn, but support them, wherein lies hope?
I don’t see any of the usual suspects on the warmist side weighing in here.
But now whenever the 97% paper is mentioned it can be pointed out that the 97% were all the author faking the responses under false names.
And it might even be true. It fits his modus operandi.
He won’t claim otherwise. Also, he can’t point to his raw data as we know that was rubbish.
We’ve got him. Because he’s proven to be corrupt.
And it won’t matter one bit to those pushing the agenda. It won’t matter to the politicians. And it won’t matter to the media. THAT’s the point I’m making. We have the proof, and they WILL NOT LISTEN because they don’t care.
The tiny hope I have is with the very few people who are actually open-minded enough to listen and engage. I just don’t think they represent a large enough group to matter. Certainly that’s the case in my personal circles.
“When these *** can do stuff like this and their supporters not only don’t condemn, but support them, wherein lies hope?”
Well quite simple really. The lying will be their own downfall. While the truth is on our side, and will lead us to victory.
Or put another way: An organization so corrupt cannot afford anymore to hire one honest soul as they would risk exposure of their corruption. THey must lie MORE! There is no way back for them – until it reaches a point where they will look so ugly not even criminals will touch them with a ten foot pole.
Ugly, and plain old ridiculous.
Ridiculous is worse for credibility.
It is the best proof possible that the argument is political and socially ideological and not scientific. People tend to wed to those ideologies so strongly that no logic or evidence of criminal activity can change their minds.
Forget about the legal aspects, this is yet another gut check for the climate science community. Here we have a researcher who produced a paper that was cited by the President of the United States and is used routinely to discredit skeptics. Now we have evidence that suggests that this researcher has been falsifying data.
Will the climate science community mount an investigation? Does climate science have any ethical standards? The reaction of the Journals and the Universities involved with Cook will say volumes about the credibility of climate science.
In the past when these things have happened, the climate science community has swept them under the rug. So why should we “trust the science” if the scientists and untrustworthy? Why should we “trust the science” if the climate science establishment has no ethical standards?
10+
“Forget about the legal aspects, this is yet another gut check for the climate science community.”
Yes, indeed it is. You make a great point.
I wager they “science” community will fail this gut check yet again.
This Cook is, together with Mann and Oreskes, an “advisor” for climatetruth.org, the organisation behind forecastthefacts.org, collecting signatures to force Smithsonian to fire Dr. Willie Soon.
What a bunch of evil people, and 97% of scientists are not standing up against them. Disgusting.
How many fake signatures have they collected?
+1!
Silly question: what kind of “experiment” requires sock puppet commenting? I guess this is the state of social “science.”
The kind that is used to paint climate skeptics as conspiracy theorists and the like.
Or the kind that purports to show that skeptical commentary makes people stupider.
This is a similar meme to one that built up steam a few elections ago, that people who watch Fox news actually become dumber the more they watch…as if knowledge is being sucked out of ones eyeballs directly out of the brain, like the space vampires in the movie Lifeforce.
Good God.
I hope any SkS’ers with any shred of integrity (if there in fact are any with a shred of integrity, I’d like to believe there are) reading this reconsider the wisdom of associating with John Cook via SkS.
Most of the SkS’ers knew his pseudonym because they are his accomplices.
That’s what you expect from a pseudoscience site like SkS.
Yes, the Guardian has proven fraudsters as regular commenters.
The Guardian just has poor technical understanding. They don’t get science.
And they don’t realise SkS are the loony fringe, expecting warming 5 x the level of mainstream science.
They know but do not care , SkS are ‘on message’ so that is all the matters .
I knew my comments would get modded out eventually.
I’m just so wrathful at the awful abuse of power that this cartoonist has wrought on the integrity of science.
Sorry.
It was most likely the fr**d word. I’ve noticed that posts get released from mod hell after a quick review from moderators to make sure someone (who may in fact deserve it) isn’t being called names.
“… I’m just so wrathful at the awful abuse of power …”
Who could blame you? I would be very suspicious of you if you were not wrathful.
M Courtney
John Cook-The-Books is a failed cartoonist. Like Hitler (Cook’s SS uniform) was a failed artist.
Eugene WR Gallun
John Cook is not a scientist. He is a psychology graduate student. As has been published in the literature, most social science studies are wrong. These guys like to make things up as they go along. Remember Cook throwing away about 90% of his selected data? That’s par for the course for psycho-dummies.
It comes as no surprise that Cook is trying to bring down real scientists like Lubos Motl. Lubos earned his PhD by doing original research, while kiddies like Cook make it up. Cook gets away with it because the psychology field is made up of dishonest people who could not make it in legitimate science. It’s all about jealousy.
Crooks like Cook will always be around.
I am a bit puzzled . Unlike most people here it seems I know very little about J Cook so I did a bit of looking around and via the Wayback machine found his own statements about his credentials , from a time when he was setting up skepticalscience.:
“About Skeptical Science
This site was created by John Cook. I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist and web programmer by trade. I did a Physics degree at the University of Queensland and while I achieved First Class Honours and could’ve continued onto a PhD, I instead quit academia and became a professional scrawler. Too much doodling in lectures, I think. Nevertheless, I’ve pursued a keen interest in science and if anything, found my curiosity about how the world works increased once I wasn’t forced to study for impending exams. —–”
I did not make this up, the link is :
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213042858/http://www.skepticalscience.com/page.php?p=3
Is this the same person that all this post is about ? He is claiming a first class degree in Physics – no mean feat surely?
Hi Mike. In your link Cook says he is not a scientist. On other sites he says he is a PhD candidate in psychology. His papers certainly are not science, and don’t know of any physics papers he has written. No doubt, he is a smart guy, just confused about the real world and the scientific method.Go ahead and analyze his data collection methods in his phony attempt to arrive at a 97% consensus number and you will see that he has forsaken science altogether.
His methods are laughable and make intelligent people shiver to thin, that crap like Cook’s is published at all.
I don’t know the guy, but I have read at least one of his papers. Is he really a cartoonist? That’s probably the better career for him.
Hello again, Brian. It is instructive to read the comment of Brandon Schollenberger who captures what is exactly going on with John Cook. Here’s the link to his comment
.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/23/yes-why-does-john-cook-of-skepticalscience-and-the-97-have-to-use-identity-theft-in-his-research/#comment-1991962
Cook is one of those guys that dreams up a project, decides his outcome, and then fabricates his data to arrive at that outcome. This is Cook’s science, and is a crooked as it gets. If this guy wanted to buy you a beer, you would slit your throat avoid the situation.
Possible courses of action. Contact: CDPP Australia’s General Prosecution Service
General Fraud
The University of Western Australia has Guidelines for dealing with fraud and corruption at UWS
(Recommend archiving all the relevant posts before they are deleted. )
Another effective recourse would be to notify the Australian Museum’s Eureka Prize Sponsors to tell them hear how their donations were used to honor fraud. Perhaps they could be persuaded to have the funds recovered and donated to Lubos and others exposed this fraud!
How many other people has he impersonated?
Well, I dunno, Phillip. It could well be that poor little Mr. Cook is truly hampered by a heretofore undisclosed disability of the psychological kind: Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) seems to fit the bill, does it not?!
Hilary, my uncle has that. It’s ok, though. He’s good people.
Anyone familiar with Lubos’s writing style can tell those are not authored by him. Pretty outrageous behavior
All this stuff coming out from the Pope. Has anyone checked where Cook was at the time ?
Hehe!
Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen Cook and his Holiness in the same room at the same time? Hmmm…
As a world dealing with the evils of extremism, we ask the people who’s faiths are being taken to extremes by others as a cover for terrorism to police their own, or to at least speak out with a vengeance! Granted, this current save-the-climate issue on this thread pales in comparison. Still, laws enacted to deal with the perception of impending global climate doom could begin a road to such an approach as terrorism’s known atrocities.
It is time for Cook AND Lewandowsky to go before a jury of his peers. Else the silence of those peers deafens.
still no response from SkS…
silence of the trolls, I suppose.
“John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook.”
I take it he stole the identity and qualification of Dr. Motl in order to conduct taxpayer funded ethical university peer reviewed research to prove that skeptics are unethical.
My suggestion to Anthony is if possible he should enable gravatars. They are based on the email address without disclosing it, so immediately you can ascertain if someone else is using your name. And if someone is posting on climate blogs with different names but the same email address you can immediately tell from the icon.
Both the computer generated and especially the user chosen gravatars are valuable for verification, since they don’t change and are common to most WordPress blogs.
Anyone with n email addresses can have n identities.
I would be shocked if I learned that anyone who has followed this “debate” for any length of time is surprised at this latest example of chicanery from the alarmist side. I have been watching underhanded trickery from the alarmists for decades. Let us not forget the original Hansen congressional testimony and the turned off A/C units at the very start of this racket. (yes, I do mean racket)
Let us recall that the governments of the world all see something in this racket for themselves and science is now mostly a government funded racket. So, my friends, what else can be expected? As the man who resurrected the libertarians movement in the US in the middle of the last century once said, “the state is a gang of thieves writ large”.
One in a while the state will toss one of its own under the bus if it pleases them or helps them, but it is rare. So, I wager that Mr. Cook will get away with this one just as he did the last one. He will not pay any damages nor will he see even an hour in jail … “Scott Free” comes to mind.
Stealing someones name happens or used to happen a lot on Andrew Bolt’s blog in Australia. It was always the Marxists and warmists that did it. They would take someone’s name and put in comments opposite to their usual position. Readers quickly woke up and opposed the thief. Now they used devices like calling themselves Dr..
Bolt is not a scientist but he contributed a chapter in the same book as Anthony. He compiles sceptical pieces for his readers.
From Lubos Motyl’s blog entry http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/07/identity-theft-thief-of-lubosmotl-turns.html: “Thank you very much, crook and kook Cook!” If nothing else, people will start calling him “John Crook” and just reference that blog entry if he or anyone else complains….