Guest opinion by Drieu Godefridi
In a new paper just published with two other authors “The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism“, Stephan Lewandowsky states — for the umpteenth time — that climate skeptics are deniers, that
“there is strong evidence that the rejection of climate science is primarily driven by ideological factors”
(page 2), even psychological factors since their identity (page 3), or worldview, is threatened by climate science, that
“there is growing evidence for an involvement of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of climate science”
(page 4) and that the whole body of skeptical pseudo-science (pp. 4, 15, 16) is incoherent, thus implying a form of “Mad Hatter” nonsense, since he claims that coherence is at the very essence of science.
Mr. Lewandowsky commits errors in reasoning that should have him immediately stripped of his university affiliation.
First of all, the idea that the critics of a dominant paradigm should be coherent among themselves, is not only false or ludicrous, but comical. At every step of the formidable development of science in the history of the West, we find a myriad of parallel and concomitant challenges to the dominant paradigm. That is, before one of them finally takes over. Were all the critiques of Newton, Kepler, Einstein or Heisenberg coherent between themselves? See the present state of physics, with several theories in the quest of the last particle, theories that are perfectly coherent as such, but mutually incoherent.
Lewandowsky is conscious of this slight monstrosity of his (only) argument since he writes (in the end): “Our analysis was performed at the aggregate level; that is, we considered the incoherence of collective argumentation among a “community” of like-minded individuals as if it were a single intellectual entity. It is possible, therefore, that individuals within this community would only hold one or the other of two incoherent views, and that each person considered in isolation would not be incoherent. In that case, one could argue that there is merely a heterogeneity of views in the “community” of denialists, which might in turn be interpreted as being an indication of “healthy debate” or “scientific diversity” rather than incoherence.” (page 16), only to reject it: ” the argumentative incoherence that we analyzed in this article also arises within arguments offered by the same individual.” Lewandowsky then gives a few samples of such individual incoherences, then concludes:
“This sample is far from exhaustive but is sufficient to establish the existence of argumentative incoherence at the level of the individual in addition to the denial movement in the aggregate.”
Having thus conceded the falsity of his argument, Lewandowsky tries to save it by explaining that somehow the incoherence of some scientists reverberates on the whole body of skeptical climate science. May we remind the 15 years old who may read this text that there is not one scientist who has ever been perfectly coherent, and that it takes some magical thinking to sustain that such an incoherence is contagious, not only between individuals, but between individuals and theories.
The main sample of incoherent thinking (at the “aggregate level”) given by Lewandowsky is this: ” Another long-standing contrarian claim has been that global warming “stopped” in 1998. Although this claim is based on a questionable interpretation of statistical data, it has been a focal point of media debate for the last decade or more and it has ultimately found entry into the scientific literature under the label of a “pause” or “hiatus” in warming. Either the temperature record is sufficiently accurate to examine its evolution, including the possibility that warming may have “paused”, or the record is so unreliable that no determination about global temperatures can be made.” (page 4). Did it occur to our expert in coherence that you can show the incoherence of a theory without accepting this theory?
Having thus showed that the argument of the hiatus since 1998 — which is indeed one of the favorite themes of scientists skeptical of the dominant paradigm in climate science — belongs to the realm of ideological, conspiracist and psychiatric pseudo-science, Lewandowsky explains that “the theoretical coherence of consensual climate science does not prevent robust debate.” (page 16). Of this robust, sane debate — opposite to the his alleged conspiracist pseudo-science of the denialists with a problem of identity — he gives an example: the hiatus. “One striking example <of robust debate inside the scientific community> involves the recent controversy about the so-called “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming in the early 2000’s. Some scientists have argued against the existence or special status of this “pause” (here the psychologist Lewandowsky quotes himself) whereas others have taken a contrary position. We therefore argue that science achieves its coherence through a constant self-correction process” (page 16).
In a very recently published paper Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines the “intellectual yet idiot” as a bureaucrat paid by the taxpayer who “pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited.” However, in the case of Lewandowsky, an acknowledged expert in the psychological sciences, one can appreciate that this pathologizing of diverse experts in climate science who do not conform to his consensus ideation, appears to be intentional and is a career theme for him. If this speculation of intent is true, such activity is clearly in breach of medical and psychological codes of ethics, beginning with the acknowledged fundamental of “Do no harm.”
Enormous harm is done to science and to dissenting scientists by Lewandowsky’s portrayal of them as being pathologically unstable for voicing dissent – especially as well-known scientific codes of conduct like that of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine state that “Science has progressed through a uniquely productive marriage of human creativity and hard-nosed skepticism….”
Having fallen down his own rabbit hole into a magical, fantasy world of scientific conformity, the appreciation of the crucial value of critical thinking and skeptical review to science is something that Lewandowsky continues to deny.
National Academies:
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La Lewney writes:- “there is strong evidence that the rejection of climate science is primarily driven by ideological factors”
but then La Lewney is himself strong evidence that the rejection of climate science skepticism is primarily driven by ideological/psychological factors .
Dunno where that leaves us in Australia except as others have noted much better off as La Lewney and Kapitan Kook have both left the country.
PS I know its probably bad for my mental health but I did watch some of La Lweney’s vidoes, the still in the article is from one of them, and it is mesmerisingly weird viewing is all I can say. The closeup shot and the manoevering if his eyes, eyelids, lips and mouth is just a bit too much information. The main benefit is that you just do not relly listen to what he is actually saying. You could turn the sound off and still just watch the pantomime of authoraitive, narcissistic lunacy.
I am going to go pourmyself a glass of wine and do the dishes just to flush my head with some reality.
PPS
Just reading an article in the Spectator Australia by Matthew Lesh regarding the advent of “trigger warnings’ in universities, a whole dimension of communist inspired madness that has spread like ebola through the now inbred leftard and utterly illiberal world of academia. The article does note one wry consequence noted by an academic, in all seriousness as she is a fan and proponent of ‘trigger warnings’, which that her students are coming to class after doing their reading and basically not listening to what she has to say, their minds made up from their own research ( at least that was my take on what she was reporting).
Anyway, perhaps La Lewny should add trigger warnings to his ( and Kapitan Kook’s) utterances and publications.
I read through the Lewandowsky paper and calling him idiotic was being generous. Here’s an example of Lewandowsky engaging in a little incoherent ideation himself. Contrast this statement:
“However, the overwhelming scientific consensus about the . . . risks of climate change—and the impetus for mitigative policies it entails—poses a particular dilemma for people whose identity is threatened . . . ”
with this statement:
“One of the most important, but uncertain, variables that determines the extent of future warming is climate sensitivity, defined as the warming that is ultimately expected in response to a doubling of atmospheric.”
If climate sensitivity is uncertain, i.e. if we don’t know how much warming results from a doubling of CO2, how can there be an “overwhelming scientific consensus” as to the “risks of climate change?” Note also that the articles used in the paper to document some “overwhelming consensus” position do not purport to establish any consensus on the “risks of climate change.” I just checked them, and they all merely deal with the threshold issues about whether adding CO2 causes warming and if so, whether most of the observed warming was caused by man.
Also from the paper:
“When a person’s worldview and identity, or their livelihood, are threatened by the regulatory implications of climate change, or other environmental risks, they frequently engage in “identity-protective cognition”
Couldn’t this be flipped around on climate scientists? Since their livelihood would be threatened by a conclusion that athropogenic-CO2-induced climate change is negligible, wouldn’t they also tend to “engage in ‘identity-protective cognition’ to maintain the level of their paychecks”?
*As a footnote, isn’t climate sensitivity DEFINED AS how much warming ultimately results from a doubling of CO2, as opposed to merely being “one of the most important variables” in determining it?
Kurt
Said in another way, “A person whose job depends on not knowing the right answer is unlikely to find the right answer”.
Yes, this reminds me of the situation with the Freudians. Someone would criticize their ideas, and they would label it a “reaction formation”. It’s depressing that the same stupid tricks still have mileage a century later.
“We therefore argue that science achieves its coherence through a constant self-correction process” (page 16).
Except if Lewandowsky got his wish, any dissenters from an imaginary consensus on climate science would be ridiculed and shunned. In such an environment, no one would dare deviate from the official line, and the “constant self-correction process” in science would cease to exist.
Lew can’t have it both ways. He wants to assure us that any mistakes that might creep into the science will be “self-correcting.” But, at the same time, he wants to label anyone who might point out a possible mistake as someone involved in “conspiracist ideation” who rejects science. Science can only sustain a constant self-correction process when alternate conclusions are free to be voiced. There can be no self-correction or coherence in science when dissenters face an inquisition and a possible charge of heresy for simply voicing an alternative view to the status quo.
Excellent post, Louis. End of argument.
Luis,
You sum up Lew’s real damage most succinctly. Thanks.
“Global Denier movement”
It’s nice to be a part of this great conspiracy.
‘Tis a badge of honour DM, a badge of honour.
The DEPLORABLE “Global Warming Denier Movement” I’m sure he meant to say.
At least he recognizes the subject is Global Warming and not the meaningless term Climate Change (even if the issues he avoids are the extent of that warming and whether it is harmful or beneficial).
I think they guy is really creepy and also really scary.
(Maybe its the ‘stock photo’ wuwt uses – a 4 eyed fungus faced red & sweaty blob being strangulated by his own shirt & tie)
How can he get away with saying such things?
If he came up with that craic about black peeps, Jews, Muslims, Texans vs Canadians, peeps from Cumbria vs rest-of-the-world, the Farceborks and Titterati of this world would be in uproar.
mmmmmmm
does Facebork and Titland actually matter?
But anyway, you know what I mean..What he’s saying is potentially very dangerous
Lewandowsky’s situation is just like a Wile E. Coyote trying to catch sceptical Road Runners. Every time out, you know he’s going to get blown sky high, or flattened by a 10 ton weight, or whatever, but a few frames later, sure enough, there he is, back again plotting his next doomed plan anyway. And, just like the (excellent) cartoons, every time we watch and laugh.
The paper has already been completely shredded by several bloggers.
Geoff Chambers points out that the “its only purpose is to insult and denigrate people that the authors don’t like (mainly Ian Plimer, Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts)” and that none of the supposed contradictions listed are really contradictions at all.
Brandon Shollenberger carefully goes through the list of supposedly incoherent contradictory statement listed in Table 2 of the paper and says that ‘nearly every single “contradiction” the authors list in this table is fake, and I feel it is worth demonstrating this.’
For example the two allegedly incoherent and contradictory examples quoted in the paper from Anthony Watts are one saying their isn’t a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature, and another saying that temperature rise isn’t linear with time. There’s nothing remotely contradictory or incoherent between these two statements, but this obvious point escaped the notice of the dimwits who reviewed the paper and accepted it for publication.
Michel at the TrustYetVerify blog has a series of articles pointing out the misrepresentations and falsehoods in the paper. Start here and work forward.
I just discovered the power of the Incoherence Drive: it’s enough to be incoherent to transform reality itself. I want the Earth to be flat? It’s easy, I just say that “the Earth is not flat because red frogs are blue”. The Lewandowsky God gets upset by the incoherence and makes the Earth flat.
Unfortunately psychology has big issues nowadays with reproducibility among many others and crapping on the scientific method like that is one of the reasons. Science should get rid of Lewandowsky kind of pseudo-research and science denial. It should turn back to logic and the real scientific method, instead of using the cargo cult ‘scientific’ method.
I realise that this is somewhat off topic, also somewhat not.
I’ve just seen that South Australia, one of Australia’s economic basket cases, sorry Renewable Energy Powerhouses, has had a blackout!
Unbelievable, they boast of being one of the 2 States in the Vanguard of the energy sources of the future. The other is the only other basket case – Tasmania.
DOH!!! For energy reliability they are both likely to the brown coal power stations in Victoria but claim to be “Progressive Green Economies”. It’s s total falsehood. They both have high levels of unemployment and little economic future othrr than subsidies.
Of all the failings, South Australia could be Australia’s powerhouse with Nuclear Powerhouses sending “clean” electricity around the nation.
Can only sigh and silently weep at such poor governmental stewardship.
“there is strong evidence that the rejection of climate science is primarily driven by ideological factors”
No, Lew, it’s the other way around: it is the AGW movement itself that is ideologically driven, the ideology (collectivism) being promoted by proxy (AGW), because collectivism failed to convince people on its own merit.
The political divide in the AGW question is simply due to the left-wing generally embracing AGW for its appeal to their collectivist instincts, which automatically leaves AGW sceptics predominantly right-wing.
“The political divide in the AGW question is simply due to the left-wing generally embracing AGW for its appeal to their collectivist instincts, which automatically leaves AGW sceptics predominantly right-wing.”
Good point. And the Leftwing tends to be more credulous and prone to a herd mentality.
This post reminds me of an H.L. Mencken quote that I have seen. From memory it goes something like this:
“You can take a moron and drag him through a University, you can even confer a PhD on him, but he will still be a moron.” (may not be exact)
Speaking of ‘incoherent’…….
I expect ‘Dr’ Lewandowsky’s next work to be to prove that all ‘climate deniers’ are also members of {Donald Trump ‘Basket of Deplorables’}.
Psychology is NOT a science.
For Lew and others like him, skepticism to their state religion is completely inexplicable. Their favorite state (the UN) has spent trillions of dollars to carefully inculcate their propaganda throughout the world to enable their one-global-state dictatorship of bureaucrats and yet there are those who still resist. The great and powerful should not be resisted – after all they used the magic word – “SCIENCE”, and yet, the people still resist.
Lew and Co have FAITH that we will all fall into line once we hear and understand the magic word, but they themselves do not have the intellectual horsepower to look behind the press releases and look at the data. Once one sees how the sausage is made, dinner is not as enjoyable.
“For Lew and others like him, skepticism to their state religion is completely inexplicable.”
Tunnel vision. The blinders are on. They should be examining their own mental processes. They don’t think to do that because they don’t understand their problem.
Lewandowsky et al. are postmodernists who actually deny that science is a real thing. They are the real denialists.
They don’t understand science and, because they study scientists, they think they are somehow superior. They are suffering from infantile omnipotence.
The sane hatter is really pi55ed that sceptics pulled his original “conspiracy ideation” paper apart so badly that the journal was obliged to retract it. The critique of it, moreover, was based on the quality of his data collection, ethical considerations in revealing who his subjects were and interpretation of it (what else is there in social science?). It is widely acknowledged that social science is totally corrupted and co-opted by neomarxbrothers as a tool in their war against western civilization. I’m on a phone and not skilled at links and lesser subtleties. Google social psychologist Durarte, probably the only honest one left in the genre- he has a killer U tube/Facebook video on it.
Lewandowsky is effectively a government-paid climate hitman, taking pot-shots at all and sundry who challenge establishment climate orthodoxy. He seldom studies the actual climate data evidence, instead projecting his hysterical BS to try and discredit or silence his opponents. High-brow ad homs from a low-brow ‘academic’.
Regardless of all the sensible and accurate demolitions of this paper, here and elsewhere, the fundamental point is that the paper is anyway pointless.
I don’t have to hold coherent views on science to be right about climate change – and vice versa.
If man-made CO2 is causing the Earth to warm in a dangerous way, that is true whether or not I believe it, and whether or not I also believe in faeries.
Truth in science is not dependent on what else is deemed to be true.
Parapsychologists, astrologers and pseudo-experts in coffe grounds reading. Ludicrous.
I think I would make one heck of an astrologer. All I’d have to do is predict just the opposite of CAGW and people would say I am really good.
All the famous personalities of the alarmistas, Hanson 2 Naomis, Pachauri(The Novelist). This Guy Lew. etc.
What they all have in common is the you-better-watch-yourselves manifestation of pedantry, finger wagging pedantry.
These peopkle are of the ELITE group who know whats best for all of us. They seek control .
.To all political science students, these charactereistics are archtypical of a Central-Planning Socialist.
As We’ve learn from the Soviet Union “experiment”, this form of civilizatioin doesn’t work .
They’re snakes in the grass.so ,just like in the Soviet Unioin, eventually they turn on themselves.
Finger wagging from a public speaker is a gesture that I’ve been observing lately. I first noticed wagging in videos of Bin Laden or other radical imams preaching , They wag, sometimes two fingers.
Then I see President Obama wagging. Then, what-do-you-know, Slick Willy Clinton wagging his finger.,
(Nothing like being talked down upon by a dis-barred sexual predator.)
I invite others to observe this phenomenon too.
I Think its a tell, as in cards.
The tell of the Socialist
All sorts of junk is published under the banner of climate science or commentary, but the only work criticised is that by so-called “deniers”. Who for the most part do not deny CO2 radiative forcing. They mostly assert the importance of other effects. A paper I criticised on climate policy (one author is a GP board member) has data which might as well have been made up: http://nukespp.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/refutation-of-recent-climate-policy.html Although they claim open data origin, the data isn’t where their reference says is should be and all other corresponding data contradicts it. I still can’t imagine how it passed “peer review”. I found 18 issues (at least) with that paper. It took me about 60 minutes to find most. I copied some issues from other’s. No one has opened a Pub Peer issue on it yet. If nothing’s done by the end of the year, and I get no reply from the journal editor, I may end up petitioning the likes of Anthony W, and Judith C to raise the issue! Any old paper exaggerating any real or imagined effect of climate change is hyped and loved by them. The same idiots who claim the science is only on their side.
“Any old paper exaggerating any real or imagined effect of climate change is hyped and loved by them.” <– By "them" I clearly meant the GP crew. Certainly not Judith and Anthony.
Anybody who tortures the English language, as Lew does, is obviously up to no good. Most of psychology could be consigned to the bin on this basis, but Lew is an egregious example of the worst of his discipline.
The booklet linked at the end of the article sits on my bookshelf — and sails the seas with me. I recommend it to all those interested in science.
For a psychologist’s opinion of Lewadowsky, its always good to turn to Jose Duarte:
http://tinyurl.com/z4nkdaj
I don’t know if there is a cartoonist’s opinion of Cook, but Durate does a good job anyway:
http://tinyurl.com/z4nkdaj
Sorry, not sure what happened, but you can google Durate’s page by using:
site: http://www.joseduarte.com/ Lewadowsky
site: http://www.joseduarte.com/ Cook
(realizing that most people here know this)
Thanks, Caligula Jones, for the joseduarte links.
Must reading!
The ‘Pathology of Lewandowsky’ will some day make an interesting study for some astute sociology or psychiatry undergrad.