Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study suggests that if people are psychologically “inoculated” with deliberately “weakened” versions of climate skeptic arguments, they are more likely to reject real skeptic positions.
The Press Release;
Psychological ‘vaccine’ could help immunize public against ‘fake news’ on climate change
Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz,Seth Rosenthal, Edward Maibach
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
In medicine, vaccinating against a virus involves exposing a body to a weakened version of the threat, enough to build a tolerance.
Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation, including the damaging influence of ‘fake news’ websites propagating myths about climate change.
A new study compared reactions to a well-known climate change fact with those to a popular misinformation campaign. When presented consecutively, the false material completely cancelled out the accurate statement in people’s minds – opinions ended up back where they started.
Researchers then added a small dose of misinformation to delivery of the climate change fact, by briefly introducing people to distortion tactics used by certain groups. This “inoculation” helped shift and hold opinions closer to the truth – despite the follow-up exposure to ‘fake news’.
The study on US attitudes found the inoculation technique shifted the climate change opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike.
Published in the journal Global Challenges, the study was conducted by researchers from the universities of Cambridge, UK, Yale and George Mason, US. It is one of the first on ‘inoculation theory’ to try and replicate a ‘real world’ scenario of conflicting information on a highly politicised subject.
“Misinformation can be sticky, spreading and replicating like a virus,” says lead author Dr Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist from the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.
“We wanted to see if we could find a ‘vaccine’ by pre-emptively exposing people to a small amount of the type of misinformation they might experience. A warning that helps preserve the facts.
“The idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible.”
To find the most compelling climate change falsehood currently influencing public opinion, van der Linden and colleagues tested popular statements from corners of the internet on a nationally representative sample of US citizens, with each one rated for familiarity and persuasiveness.
The winner: the assertion that there is no consensus among scientists, apparently supported by the Oregon Global Warming Petition Project. This website claims to hold a petition signed by “over 31,000 American scientists” stating there is no evidence that human CO2 release will cause climate change.
The study also used the accurate statement that “97% of scientists agree on manmade climate change”. Prior work by van der Linden has shown this fact about scientific consensus is an effective ‘gateway’ for public acceptance of climate change.
In a disguised experiment, researchers tested the opposing statements on over 2,000 participants across the US spectrum of age, education, gender and politics using the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.
In order to gauge shifts in opinion, each participant was asked to estimate current levels of scientific agreement on climate change throughout the study.
Those shown only the fact about climate change consensus (in pie chart form) reported a large increase in perceived scientific agreement – an average of 20 percentage points. Those shown only misinformation (a screenshot of the Oregon petition website) dropped their belief in a scientific consensus by 9 percentage points.
Some participants were shown the accurate pie chart followed by the erroneous Oregon petition. The researchers were surprised to find the two neutralised each other (a tiny difference of 0.5 percentage points).
“It’s uncomfortable to think that misinformation is so potent in our society,” says van der Linden. “A lot of people’s attitudes toward climate change aren’t very firm. They are aware there is a debate going on, but aren’t necessarily sure what to believe. Conflicting messages can leave them feeling back at square one.”
Alongside the consensus fact, two groups in the study were randomly given ‘vaccines’:
A general inoculation, consisting of a warning that “some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try and convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists”.
A detailed inoculation that picks apart the Oregon petition specifically. For example, by highlighting some of the signatories are fraudulent, such as Charles Darwin and members of the Spice Girls, and less than 1% of signatories have backgrounds in climate science.
For those ‘inoculated’ with this extra data, the misinformation that followed did not cancel out the accurate message.
The general inoculation saw an average opinion shift of 6.5 percentage points towards acceptance of the climate science consensus, despite exposure to fake news.
When the detailed inoculation was added to the general, it was almost 13 percentage points – two-thirds of the effect seen when participants were just given the consensus fact.
The research team point out that tobacco and fossil fuel companies have used psychological inoculation in the past to sow seeds of doubt, and to undermine scientific consensus in the public consciousness.
They say the latest study demonstrates that such techniques can be partially “reversed” to promote scientific consensus, and work in favour of the public good.
The researchers also analysed the results in terms of political parties. Before inoculation, the fake negated the factual for both Democrats and Independents. For Republicans, the fake actually overrode the facts by 9 percentage points.
However, following inoculation, the positive effects of the accurate information were preserved across all parties to match the average findings (around a third with just general inoculation; two-thirds with detailed).
“We found that inoculation messages were equally effective in shifting the opinions of Republicans, Independents and Democrats in a direction consistent with the conclusions of climate science,” says van der Linden.
“What’s striking is that, on average, we found no backfire effect to inoculation messages among groups predisposed to reject climate science, they didn’t seem to retreat into conspiracy theories.
“There will always be people completely resistant to change, but we tend to find there is room for most people to change their minds, even just a little.”
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/uoc-pc011917.php
The Abstract of the study;
Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision-making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested-interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized “disinformation campaigns,” identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (“consensus”) among experts about the reality of human-caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre-emptively protect (“inoculate”) public attitudes about climate change against real-world misinformation.
Read more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.201600008/full
I was curious about exactly how the inoculation is performed, the following from the full study is revealing;
… The rate of cultural transmission, or infection, may be slowed through a process known as attitudinal inoculation. In medicine, resistance to a virus can be conferred by exposing someone to a weakened version of the virus (a vaccine)—strong enough to trigger a response (i.e., the production of antibodies), but not so strong as to overwhelm the body’s immune system. The social–psychological theory of attitudinal inoculation[56] follows a similar logic: A threat is introduced by forewarning people that they may be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs or behaviors. Then, one or more (weakened) examples of that information are presented and directly refuted in a process called “refutational pre-emption” or “prebunking.”[14] In short, attitudinal resistance is conferred by pre-emptively highlighting false claims and refuting potential counterarguments. …
Read more: Same link as above
In the supplemental information document, the study authors provide an example of inoculation. They authors present the Oregon Petition claim “31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs“, along with an image of Physics Giant Edward Teller’s Oregon Petition signature (see image at the top of this post), followed by the following “counterargument”.
General (In1) and Detailed (In2) Inoculation Messages
General: Nearly all climate scientists—97%—have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. Some politically-motivated groups use misleading tactics to try to convince the public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists. However, scientific research has found that among climate scientists “there is virtually no disagreement that humans are causing climate change”.
Detailed: One such politically motivated group claims to have collected signatures from over 31,000 “scientists” (including over 9,000 who hold Ph.D.’s) on a petition urging the U.S. government to reject any limits on greenhouse gas emissions because; “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of Earth’s climate.” They claim that these signatures prove that there is no scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
This may sound convincing at first. However, several independent investigations have concluded that the “Petition Project” is extremely misleading. For instance, many of the signatures on the petition are fake (for example, past signatories have included the long- deceased Charles Darwin, members of the Spice Girls, and fictional characters from Star Wars). Also, although 31,000 may seem like a large number, it actually represents less than 0.3% of all US science graduates (a tiny fraction). Further, nearly all of the legitimate signers have no expertise in climate science at all. In fact, less than 1% of those who signed the petition claim to have any background in Climate or Atmospheric Science. Simply calling yourself a “scientist” does not make someone an expert in climate science. By contrast, 97% of actual climate scientists, agree that human-caused climate change is happening.
In my opinion this counter argument is deeply misleading.
- There is no mention that the 97% consensus claim is based on a disputed study.
- There is no mention of who Edward Teller is. As a skeptic I don’t defer to anyone’s authority, even Edward Teller doesn’t get a free pass. But having someone like Teller onboard surely means that the position he supports is worthy of closer examination.
- Suggesting that people from fields related to climate science have no right to criticise how climate science is conducted is ridiculous. For example, excluding input from non-climate scientists would exclude criticism from statisticians, who frequently object to the sloppy use of statistics by non-statisticians. Statistics matters – in scientific studies which rely on statistical analysis, sloppy use of statistics can lead to erroneous conclusions.
Are the authors aware of these flaws in their counterargument? Quite possibly – but their intention with their study was to test the impact of deliberately weakened skeptic positions, to test their “inoculation” theory, not to educate people about climate change.
The moral premise of this study is my most serious concern – it is not OK to play increasingly devious psychological tricks on people to win support. Of course it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, “weakened” version of your opponent’s position, which is what “inoculation” theory seems to be about – but that doesn’t make it right.
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Well done Eric, a much better version than I just submitted today! I also had a issue with using psychological tools to do harm. As a recent psych graduate I am fully aware of the benefits good practice can bring people trying to cope with hard times, however, I am also aware of the utility in these tools being used for disingenuous ends.
Voltron, love to read your take as a psych graduate on why climate alarmists are so blind to counter-evidence for their belief system. If you can get your position published in a peer reviewed journal, it would attract a lot of attention.
It would probably be career suicide too haha. I found in my 4 years that there were a number of teaching staff who were very much invested in climate change and its psychological impact on the great unwashed. There is a lot of money to be made there, as I can guess in the current political climate that attracting funding for CAGW is far easier than say trying to get ethical approval for some sort of neurocognitive trial involving at-risk groups like individuals with PTSD or acquired brain injury. The power imbalance was obvious – I believe one student mentioned some dissenting opinion about climate change in a lecture and received a withering comment to silence the matter for all time. Very touchy topic. You would have to be mad to publicly question the authority whilst studying. The large personalities grade your work, remember. Better to have friends than enemies, thus regurgitate what you have been given and all is well.
The staggering thing is that these people pride themselves on being fantastic statisticians and the most critical, sceptical and clear-thinking individuals in academia. In most instances, they ARE very gifted, but at the end of the day, they are human and just as susceptible to inherent biases as the rest of us.
Perhaps with a bit of distance from graduating I will endeavour to make some strides into the study you’ve mentioned. No doubt I’ll be lumped in with the other heretics and frozen at the stake (burning releases CO2).
Please don’t do anything which would harm your career.
This is exactly why some people find it necessary to use pseudos on the internet rather than to accept being cowered into silence for fear of reprisal for AGW zealots at work or elsewhere.
Oh my ! We would not want anyone to be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs do we. That may involve something unhealthy, like SCIENCE.
“A threat is introduced by forewarning people that they may be exposed to information that challenges their existing beliefs or behaviors.”
Have you noticed that nobody ever expects the very next statement to be a falsehood. And yet in this study it was. Like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the nice man says “Trust nobody.” So why are we surprised when he turns out to be the villain?
“The staggering thing is that these people pride themselves on being fantastic statisticians and the most critical, sceptical and clear-thinking individuals in academia.”
Sorry Voltron, but I have to laugh at that… The head of the psychology department where I went to school back in the ’60s once told the class that: “all psychology majors are either alcoholics, schizophrenics or sex maniacs.” And, I’m afraid I have met very few exceptions in the 50 some odd years since then.
We need increased funding for study of Cluster B, which we are seeing everywhere on the left.
Voltron, I apologize for being too lazy to look up the exact quote, but I recall Milton Friedman observing that the only people with true freedom of speech are tenured professors on the verge of retirement. IIRC that was in the ’80’s, so nothing has really changed.
Has anyone filed an ethics complaint? Seems to me they harmed the subjects of this experiment.
Yes, thinking kills! Save the children.
If they NEED to use “psyops” for convincing, it’s obvious their “argument” won’t stand the light of Truth. This is headed for last-gasp land–fast!
It’s more like it’s headed for the “last gasp landfill.”
The effect is known as “anchoring” and was explored by psychologist Daniel Kahneman (Nobel prize winner in Economics) and his late colleague, Amos Tversky. They found that decision-making is not always rational (exclusively fact-based) but can be influenced by a planted suggestion, even suggestions that have little or nothing to do with the issue in question. People tend to substitute their impressions about things for facts when making a judgement. If the impressions are inaccurate, it can lead to a bad decision. They will vote for a politician, for example, who looks trustworthy or telegenic, even thought the policies he advocates are disadvantageous to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
Several Republican senators came to mind when I read your post. Your last statement completely explains why rhinos keep getting elected despite their progressivism.
Hope and Change.
I recognised that one from day one. I was screaming at the television asking “what does he hope for, and what does he want to change?”.
They are definitely on to something here. Unfortunately, when presented with wild warmist claims the inoculation is usually in the other direction.
The problem with this statement is the use of the word “caused”
97% of the scientists agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that additional anthropogenic greenhouse gasses will tend to warm the atmosphere to some extent but its a leap from that to “caused” the observed warming/change and 97% of scientists (eg from Cook et al) dont say that.
My thoughts too,
Did the researchers deploy the innoculation that the 97% discarded the volume of papers that ignored climate change and then used bait and switch to apply the results for “Humans may have a theoretical impact on climate EG like UHI – That even I would agree with” and then presented THAT statistical manipulation as if all those people also agreed that the warming was Manmade, substantial and dangerous. Did they present the innoculation that when properly accounted against the conventional thesis that climate change is Human Caused, substantial, and dangerous the percentage consensus found in the cook study was only 0.3%. Did they present the innoculation that a number of authors accounted as agreeing with the concensus disputed that assertion. Did they present the innoculating fact that science doesn’t care about consensus on facts, but only about the observed facts themselves.
It’s very interesting that people can be innoculated from the 97% consensus lie by the truth of how that consensus was fabricated – the truth will out and all.
This “Study” leaves out all the confounding factors and fails to assess innoculation in context. The context of the fact that there are a dozen “prebunking” truths about the 97% consensus that the “Public” need to know before they can assert that they have countered defection from the consensus.
What is more difficult to understand is that the designers of this psychological experiment were obviously
unable to see the problems in the 97% methodology.
They probably took it straight from the Democrats and Obama, who swallowed it in droves.
This then raises the question’How robust is the statistical analysis of their data?’
It’s a pity they screwed with so many people to test them on dubious ‘facts’.
The creator of this fake study is a German named Professor van der Linden and he runs the Center For Climate Change Communication. Ergo: he is a fraud.
the 97% narrative was an enormous success.
as we can see, people are still discussing it – so it is still working.
http://imgur.com/N7bB2np
but the cleverest trick lew pulled was the ‘conspiracy ideation’ gambit.
it was similar to poking someone with sharp sticks to see if they show hostility- so they can squeal about how hostile.
that’s some major league trolling.
97% – it could have just as easily have been 100% if they’d wanted but….
100% no-one would have believed it as it is the province of dictators.
99% has the same problem dressed up.
98% something about even numbers doesn’t quite work.
97% is perfect!
It’s all manipulation of the unwary.
Obama upped it to 99% but that was not repeated.
anybody know off hand which paper was the other 3% ?
The problem arises from restricting trusted “expertise” on climate only to those who identify as “Climate Scientists”.
Climate Scientists have chosen that career becasue they think the field is importabnt. If they thought Climate Change was of low impact then they would not have chosen that career. They would have done something they thought important. Therefore, Climate Scientists will have a bias towards an extreme view. Other expertise is required to assess their bias. Other expertise and assessment of physical evidence, of course.
The 97% line is exactly the same argument as “God exists because most Priests say so”. Priests spend far more time studying theology than lay people – they are relatively expert. But if they didn’t believe in God, why would they have become Priests?
This doesn’t mean that God does not exist or that Anthropogenc Global Warming is harmless.
It just means that the argument for those positions is rubbish.
+10
This is a better argument against the Consensus than saying that science is not a democracy. It ought to be used more often.
If you look at where the “97% are in agreement” on climate came from, there’s actually a far greater percent that believe in UFO’s.
All depends on how you define “god”. When someone asks me if I “believe in god” I always ask “god as defined how?” and they are stumped.
John, why is it necessary to define God? I can be wrong about my preferred revelation with atheists being right. If they disproved the existence of Genesha, or found a signed confession from Yeshua Ben Yusuf of Galillee that he made the whole thing up, so? Conversely, if God confirmed that he is the same around the world but revealed himself through culturally applicable fables through hand picked story tellers, that doesn’t make them less interesting.
God for all practical purposes is defined as a steering intelligence of the solar system of sufficient development as to be indistinguishable from omniscient and all powerful to a casual human observer. He may be Captain Picard or he may be genuinely the creator of the universe, as long as he’s actively influencing events.
I presume that the ‘argument’ about priests and God is a figment of M Courtney’s imagination.
Alba. Yes.
I take credit for this argument.
Can you find a flaw in it?
John Boles,
“When someone asks me if I “believe in god” I always ask “god as defined how?” and they are stumped.”
Oh . . perhaps that’s because they don’t feel like being jerked around by some lightweight playing rhetorical games. If you believe in any god, you’d be the logical one to define it, not them . . Seriously, I wouldn’t be bragging about ducking people around for kicks, kid.
M Courtney,
I think it’s a fine analogy, but I’d be careful about this sort of thing;
“But if they didn’t believe in God, why would they have become Priests?”
There are other potential reasons for espousing something than actual belief. I seriously doubt that all those who espouse the CAGW actually believe in it . . and I seriously doubt that all those who claim to believe in God actually do . .
John Knight, So true.
But the majority of people, in any line, do not dedicate their lives to hypocrisy.
Some do, true.
But about 97% are sincere.
In days gone by, the warmists would buttress their 97% argument by drawing a comparison with the medical profession.
They’d say ‘if 97% of doctors diagnosed you with cancer, the chances are pretty high that you had cancer.’
They’d buttress the ‘Climate Scientist are experts’ angle by saying ‘if you want advice on plumbing, talk to a plumber; if you want advice on the climate, talk to a climate scientist’.
They’d buttress the causation uncertainty issue with a long winded comparison to the link between smoking and cancer. This results in their justification for saying that man is causing the warming.
It’s also the reasoning that underpins the notion that sceptics use ‘tobacco industry tactics to undermine science,’ and hence the demonisation of the oil/coal industry as well as sceptics – a twofer.
I haven’t seen it done but I expect they’d buttress the biased scientist issue by saying that doctors go into medicine because they have an aptitude as well as a calling to do something positive for community health or some such . . perhaps even a rise to a specialist within the field.
It’s all sophistry, of course, but to the untrained eye and when printed in a newspaper article, it carried some weight – still does.
no the problem is 97% because its BS , a little maths tells you to know what percentage a sub-group is of a whole group you must have an idea of the size of the whole group .
Now even if you ignore the fact that climate ‘scientists’ is a term used as a label for people with no scientific training such has fail politicians and pop-psychologists. The reality is there is no known value for this whole group , so its impossible to any level of accuracy worth a dam to give a percentage for a sub-group .
Cooks great ‘trick ‘ was to sell this claim when in reality all he hand to offer it was a hand full of papers ‘carefully selected ‘ , given the number in the area in really was a hand full, based on poor research methodology from people who boasted about ‘fixing ‘ the results .
In all it was the type of research that is any decent science would have been thrown out , if handing in as essay by an undergraduate, but then this is not by any means a decent science its an area where the PR value of your work means you really can dump all over good academic practice and be well rewarded for doing so.
The whole 97% is a pile of dug , that even AGW skeptics give it value sadly shows how good a snow job Cook and friends did .
Indeed and the emphasis should be on the sell aspect
The SkS kidz were talking about the proposed marketing/promotion tactics on their forum prior to the ’study’ even being undertaken. i.e. the result was a foregone conclusion.
Of course, how a study like this would require, let alone pass, peer review is another question, but pass it did.
I’d have thought there’s ample grounds to see it retracted.
“The problem with this statement is the use of the word ’caused'”
The other problem is “of scientists”, including computer scientists, geologists, and so on.
To arrive at 97 percent you remove all but 3 percent of the dissenters by carefully defining what constitutes a scientist.
You have to realise that the 97% concensus claim can be restated as: “73 out of 75 scientists who met Lew’s criteria agreed ……” It is part of the dishonesty of warmists to misrepresent the 97% of Lewandovsky’s so-called study as 97% of all scientists.
Or review what questions they were asked and the answers they were lead into.
Just the questions and responses.
Using Cook et al.2013 , Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 & AMS survey Stenhouse et al., 2014 as basis to the 97%.
So answering the questions –
1) most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic?
2) When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
3) Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
4) Regardless of the cause, do you think that global warming is happening?
5) How sure are you that global warming (a. is /b. is not) happening?
Answers and questions use generalized words of most, think, significant, contributing and no values or significance is asked for. No where is proof or dates or amounts or data of +/- estimates required and did you see CO2 anywhere?
Do these questions really provide the answer that; stopping man-made, catastrophizing, CO2 control knob, ever increasing (global warming / climate change / disruption / weirding ) [pick 1 or more], which can only be prevented by higher taxes, more regulations and a loss of personal freedom will actually keep us all from floating down the River Styx in a handbasket?
Isn’t the problem that they substituted “climate change” for “some uncertain amount of warming”? When did the climate ever not change?
No the problem with the statement is “climate scientists”. The factoid begins by defining climate scientists as those who have got5ten on the CAGW gravy train, and defining them as climate scientists. It excludes skeptics with relevant skills who do not drink the kool-aid. A Roger Pilek, Jr. who has been driven from the camp, will not be deemed to be a climate scientist.
A further problem is that 97% of people who believe anything do not make the object of their belief true or science.
As Einstein famously said about the Nazi tract titled “Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)”, they would have only needed one if he were correct.
Human-caused climate change is happening and it’s measured in the thousands of nanodegrees since 1900.
They might be psychologically “innoculated” … that is until they get their electric, oil heat, or nat gas utility bills and realize the econutters are coming for their wallet.
I was about to write something similar. The sort of scam that nudges a person’s opinion slightly are never going to work against the massive costs involved.
TinyCO2: Right on! Just ask the residents of Ontario who are faced with peak hour electricity rates that are double those of neighbouring Quebec. I’m sure they are gladly accepting them while lying awake nights worrying about what will happen 100 years from now if the temperature creeps up 2 degrees.
The alarmist arguments have been nothing but weak, and it doesn’t appear to be helping CAGW acceptance any…
One simple truth undermines van der Linden, et al, 2017 and the entire concept of climate doom:
if facts and data pointed to the catastrophe they claim, there would be no need for indoctrination, or inoculation.
If the alarmists really believed their own predictions there would be a Plan B, for basic survival in case China or India kept on emitting greenhous gases. I have seen no mention of funding of any work to mitigate the effects of continued warming. Either they are totally confident they will stop climate change, or they do not expect the change to be catastrophic. Neither option aligns with their public warnings.
Goebbels would have been impressed.
+1,000 More Klimat Propaganda.
Yes, I think so. He would have asked for their card and a meeting to hear more about their insights. Such expertise cannot be overlooked.
This is Goebbels.
My 1st thought too Ian.
Glad I read down the comments a bit to see it has also occurred to you.
🙂
You’re not even mentioning the greatest stupidity in this study. The claim of the Oregon Petition of a lack of “convincing scientific evidence” of “catastrophic warming” is wholly consistent with the bland and irrelevant scientific consensus that “manmade warming” is real. I’m sick of this bait and switch argument. Either the authors of the study are incredibly stupid individuals or they are incredibly deceitful individuals.
Kurt correctly stated:
“Either the authors of the study are incredibly stupid individuals or they are incredibly deceitful individuals.”
I agree with Kurt:
“In reality, the truly diabolical forces were the scoundrels who promoted global warming hysteria, and the many imbeciles who followed them.”
Notes:
1. Full quote below.
2. The terms “scoundrels” and “imbeciles” are not mutually exclusive.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/22/climate-and-popular-revolution/comment-page-1/#comment-2350795
In reality, the truly diabolical forces were the scoundrels who promoted global warming hysteria, and the many imbeciles who followed them.
These warmist scam artists have:
– created mass hysteria among their under-educated minions
– driven up the cost of energy and the cost of food
– increased poverty, hunger and winter mortality
– increased human suffering especially among the elderly and the poor.
– squandered many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources that could have been devoted to solving real humanitarian and environmental problems.
For far less money, we could have installed clean water and sanitation systems in every village on Earth. In the decades that the world has obsessed over the false global warming crisis, over 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated drinking water. Yes, really!
That is the about same number of people who died in WW2, and about the same number killed by Stalin. Only Mao killed more, during his Great Leap Backward. That is the warmists’ legacy. Only their fellow-travelers who opposed the use of DDT to fight malaria can compete with their death toll – another group of green fanatics.
None of this was ever justified. It was a classic case of “extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds”.
We need a return to common decency and common sense, and we need it now.
Regards, Allan
Now that’s unfair!
Why the either/or?
Why not both?
HI Mike – you are correct- as per my Note 2 above”
“2. The terms “scoundrels” and “imbeciles” are not mutually exclusive.”
when you go fishing for research grant you use ‘bait ‘ which gets them to bite .
That the whole AGW thign is very much alive is show by such ‘research’ has it indicates there is lots of money around for those that get the ‘right results ‘
They are from Europe. Being left wingers, they probably also believe that letting in millions of angry Muslim males has no downside.
The liberal brain has no ability to resist – “Resistance is futile”
Thank God for Trumpism, even the Borg can’t resist that!
That reminds, one of my favourite scenes.
“Thank God for Trumpism, even the Borg can’t resist that!”
Really! Trump had the union leaders calling their meeting with him yesterday “incredible”. When’s the last time you saw union leaders praising a Republican? Everyone of them voted for Hillary, and now they are calling Trump incredible. And he is. 🙂
“When’s the last time you saw union leaders praising a Republican? ”
Reagan.
In other words, it’s been a *long* time.
This is just the “Strawman Argument” in disguise.
Stephen Rasey, precisely. They are trying to scientifically quantify the most effective dosage of misrepresentation. They understand skeptics to be uninformed, unthinking, malleable and gullible (and probably heavily inbred). They think that all they need to do is to frame their propaganda in some particular way, so that it seeps into our tiny brains, and we will give up our resistance to their climate cause – If they could just figure out how!!!!
Fallacy wrapped in nonsense inside cluelessness.
And still believing their own propaganda nonsense. Even if “97% of scientists agree” that human activities are causing dangerous climate change, it would still be MEANINGLESS. Science isn’t done by popular vote. Present SCIENTIFIC PROOF, or STFU already!
but it’s fun
watching them
trying to figure
us out
A cranio-rectal TurDuckin!
That was my first reaction. Manipulating people using lies is generally considered propaganda, which is ultimately self defeating. This is nothing new. How did this dreck get published?
So this is what it’s come to. I’m flabbergasted that a a purported scientific study would advocate out right lies to advance a position. Trump couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
….not when the basis of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming (or whatever they call it at the moment) is ONE BIG LIE. There is no measureable evidence, and the practitioners in the movement know it.
“There is no measureable evidence, and the [CAGW] practitioners in the movement know it.”
That’s right. If they had any evidence, they would have presented it already.
The only “evidence” they have is a “Hockey stick” chart, and skeptics are not buying it.
The Hockey Stick chart is a dishonest attempt to manipulate humanity by changing the historical temperature record to make it appear that the weather is getting hotter and hotter, year after year, when, in reality, it is not.
Ethics, what is that? I don’t think these people can properly answer that. In a system that claims to support the sanctity of freedom of thought, this bangs us between the eyes and belies that in the highest levels of research and teaching. I have always considered the psych types to have an inherent defect, which they are aware of but uncertain of it’s nature, and therefore busy themselves with ways to manipulate other people for the sake of protecting their own self image. Devising ways to re-frame thoughts to influence opinion, beliefs, or life views is the product of the psychologist’s work shop so I am not surprised by the inoculation theory. Is that kind of thing right? Well it might be if someone is disturbed by their own thoughts, opinion, belief, etc. but not when the subject is politics and the recipient of the “treatment” is unknowing, unsuspecting, and operating under their free will. That kind of behavior outside a therapeutic setting is the equivalent of attack, and should be considered a criminal act. It is also quite audacious to consider there is even a need for such things as it is for people to work things out on their own by considering the competing ideas. A government of, by, and for the people is founded on that idea. We are free people, don’t you know! Or is that a lesson that needs to be revisited?
Apparently the contributors from GMU never bothered reading anything he wrote.
three words . ‘the greater good ‘ often heard before something that is far from ‘good ‘
Ethics?
I’ve gotten most of my ethics training from people in legitimate ethics positions.
Peter Gleick is my boy.
These folks are rookies.
“Social psychologists believe that a similar logic can be applied to help “inoculate” the public against misinformation…”
A better summary of the desire for control of the populace has never been given. Orwell would be horrified that they are using 1984 as an instruction manual.
Owell indeed. Just who is responsible for deciding what is “misinformation” and what is “approved information”? Why the same people promoting the “approved information”, of course! It boggles the mind that there are people who don’t see the problem with this.
Quite regardless of the rights and wrongs of the issue, this is just morally sick.
John H
Agreed. The swap from ‘97%’ agree with ‘mankind has an influence’ on the ‘pro’ side and the 31,000 signatures with the ‘leading to catastrophe’ side doesn’t even pass the smell test.
One says ‘everyone believes apples exist’ and the other is ‘apples make you sick’.
It has occurred to me that the ‘psychological test’ taking place, the experiment, is the paper itself, planted in a journal with such obvious defects. They 97% is taken as a given, with no evaluation of its veracity. That is the ‘trick’ part. The test will be to see it that disinformation serves to affect people’s perception of a completely different claim about the catastrophic nature (or not) of human influence.
“Vaccination” – you mean deliberate propaganda or disinformation that is really an attack on the integrity of ‘skeptics’. A bit like slipping into the public doman ‘suggestions’ that a certain person is a fraudster, into a bit of bestiality or even better a ‘kiddy fiddler’ and see how their credibility takes a hit. Better still watch them squirm as the like of questioning turns hard left to ‘GOTCHA’ now scumbag/denier.
Tels you all you need to know about the grubs who came up with this. I wonder how the paper ‘rated’ in the academic scorecard. How much funding would it equate to? That’s a large part of what this whole fraud is about.
Social psychologists know what about climate change?
“Do not listen to them, they are not *cue angelic choir* CLIMATE scientists. Listen to us, the also not-climate scientists…”
They don’t know very much about climate change or statistics, which is why Lew had to rely on Cookie to help him fudge the 97%.
It took a creative cartoonist like Cookie to get there.
That mentioning it makes gaining research grants easy and 97% of the Establishment support it.
I’m ashamed that this disgusting poisonous nonsense should emerge from the university that gave us Newton, Maxwell, Rutherford, Keynes, Babbage, Wordsworth and Tennyson
Absolutely – Well said.
Plus one.
You can also add Turing and Dirac.
This is just another attempt to “cancel” the debate, which in actuality has never really happened. (The debate between scientists hasn’t happened). This is what they are still trying to avoid by using another sneaky/deceitful/deceptive tactic.
+0.97
There are many ways to advocate for and try to put into place yet another sick version of a supreme race. This is one of them.
Research into propaganda techniques. Dishonest ones, at that.
Over time the social response to climate alarmism is that they have become inoculated. So the authors need anti-inoculation theory to keep the alarm response active. In general interest in any topic follows a normal distribution with an inception, rise, peak,and decline. This is what the authors are reacting to with a blame theory rather than an understanding of basic behavioral principles. That is, with no counter-argument at all to climate alarmism, interest must peak and will decline at some point.
Any real progressive can always find someone or something eles to explain their failures.
Just ask Hillary and our Barack.
Somehow, it’s never their ideals that are in question.
There inoculation theory also assumes that the person is only subject to this one inoculation (screed).
As soon as the person reads other sites, sees conflicting reported studies spoken of on news articles, talks with their friends and family ect. The inoculation becomes null and void. It simply adds to the overall mistrust of authority figures.
And don’t people get really pi$$ed off when they know they have been manipulated.
‘discover’ is better than ‘know’, in this case
Remember, it’s much easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned.
I think Abraham Lincoln or PT Barnum or someone else said that.
If I understand them correctly they are saying that if you use a strawman argument you can sway their opinion.
Revolutionary.
‘… it is possible to convince more people by providing them with a distorted, “weakened” version of your opponent’s position, which is what “inoculation” theory seems to be about – but that doesn’t make it right …”.
==================================
Of course not, the whole rotten Climate Change™ edifice is built from half-truths, exaggerations and straight-out lies.
The oregon petition is actually consistent with the 97% consensus… Note the use of the word “catastrophic” in the oregon petition. Of the 97% consensus, less than one percent considered climate change to be catastrophic. The rest (96+%) did not adhere to the “catastrophic” meme. (the 97% consensus actually includes prominent skeptics such as doctors lindzen, curry, and spencer) i think the word “inoculation” is a bit loaded; “clarification” is perhaps a better choice of words. AND all points made are most always in need of some clarification not just those that confirm a personal bias. The authors of this study are saying nothing new. (nothing to see here, folks, move along)…
Actually, “clarification” is the exact opposite of what they are proposing. They suggest taking someone’s argument, then remove some of the clarifying detail so that it appears “weak” (sloppy, incomplete) to make it easy to see that it is “wrong”. This is a basic strawman technique and a very dishonest form of propaganda. Shame on them.
Tell small lies about a truth, and the people will believe the bigger lie. George Orwell was an amateur.
So have 90% (?) of contrarians and 100% of lukewarmers.
So this is a strawman. The debate is about climate sensitivity and positive feedbacks.
“The debate is about climate sensitivity and positive feedbacks.”
Exactly, and the IPCC’s self serving consensus is demonstrably wrong on both counts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/07/how-climate-feedback-is-fubar/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/05/physical-constraints-on-the-climate-sensitivity/
These UOVs (“universities of vomit”) really know how to shove their snouts in the grant money gravy train.
Their game is up. It’s a lovely day, so it is !