From cartoonist to that’s Dr. Cartoonist to you!~cr
News Release 3-Dec-2019
New game builds resilience against misinformation; ‘inoculates’ users against fake news on climate change; gamifies critical thinking
George Mason University
A George Mason University scientist is developing a mobile game that will teach users to defend themselves from ‘fake news’ on climate change.
ProfessorJohn Cook, an expert on misinformation with Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable development of the game, “Cranky Uncle,” for iPhone and Android phones.
Cook has spent over a decade studying different ways to counter misinformation. He is now combining his research into inoculation, critical thinking, cartoon humor, and gamification, into a mobile game.
“Misinformation does great damage to society,” said Professor Cook, a member of Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth. “An essential solution is making the public more resilient against fake news. But how? Gamification is a powerful approach that can potentially reach many millions of people.”
In the game, players are mentored by a cartoon Cranky Uncle who is dismissive of climate science. As they learn to recognize the flaws in Cranky Uncle’s arguments, they gain points. This is based on a behavioral technique called active inoculation.
“Before becoming a scientist, I drew cartoons for a living, “said Cook. “So, imagine my delighted surprise when after a decade of research, I discovered that cartoons were a powerful tool in countering misinformation.”
Cook has tested a prototype of the game in various college classes. “My students appreciated the combination of humor and real-world examples, while I appreciated how engaged they were in learning how to critically think,” said Professor Melanie Trecek-King at Massasoit Community College, Massachusetts. “Learning how not to be fooled is empowering.”
The crowdfunding page is at https://advancement.gmu.edu/crowdfunding-crankyuncle and more information is available at http://crankyuncle.com.
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Websites: http://crankyuncle.com http://skepticalscience.com
Biography
Dr. John Cook is a research assistant professor at George Mason University, founder of the Skeptical Science website, and lead author of a crowd-funded study finding 97% scientific consensus on climate change. He has spent the last decade researching how to counter climate science denial. His PhD into cognitive science found that inoculation, for explaining the techniques of denial, is the key to making the public resilient against misinformation. His research has explored critical thinking and cartoon debunkings (dusting off his skills as a former cartoonist). He is now testing how mobile games can increase critical thinking in classrooms.
About George Mason University:
George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 38,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the last half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at http://www.gmu.edu.
About the Center for Climate Change Communication
The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University develops and applies social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change. Learn more about our research and expertise at https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/
About the Institute for a Sustainable Earth
The Institute for a Sustainable Earth at George Mason University connects members of the Mason community with others across the Mason community-and with other communities, policy-makers, businesses and organizations-so that, together, we can more effectively address the world’s pressing sustainability and resilience challenges. Learn more at http://www.ise.gmu.edu
Sad, George Mason has sunk this low to call a cartoonist a scientist. This is what counts for climate science along with Greta, Bill Nye and Al Gore.
I have never met anyone who rejects climate science because the so called “scientists” aren’t being precise enough.
John Cook…
The abominable John Cook?
The John Cook who dresses up in his pictures with nazi uniforms?
The John Cook who collaborated with Lewandowski to falsify an alleged 97% consensus by cherry picked chicanery?
The source of massive amounts of misinformation regarding all parts of science?
It’s time to end all Federal financial awards, grants, guarantees to James Mason University and to prosecute their malicious climate fraudsters.
James Mason University? Did George Mason U and James Madison U merge?
My mistake, Michael.
Thanks for the correction.
I crossed brain thoughts with some research I was reading about James Madison’s writings and apparently had ‘James’ on the brain.
It wasn’t until the last part of the article that I realized the game was alarmist. Statements like “game that will teach users to defend themselves from ‘fake news’ on climate change” are clearly in the skeptic camp.
I think a good game for smart phones would start with the following premise: Earth’s climate has been going along doing its thing, which is changing, then comes the industrial age of mankind, and suddenly some people believe that mankind is changing the climate. It’s a hypothesis, which requires that the burden of proof falls on those making the hypothesis, which is you the player. You have all the time you need; no ad hominem attacks, no bleeding heart stories, just facts please; for every climate scientists that refutes a potential finding, the game starts over from the beginning. Ready, set, go!
Do they have a picture of a man looking at a alcohol thermometer and declaring that the temperature is 75.2481 degrees Fahrenheit?
John Cook, one small part of a global propaganda effort. Insidious. Disgusting.
It appears that George Mason hasn’t bothered to settle on an agreed-to definition of what science is. Failing that, just as is the case with gender self-assignment these days, anyone can declare himself (herself, it the same) to be a scientist. George Mason is to blame here for not knowing the difference!
“Professor John Cook, an expert on misinformation with Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication,”
Now that is some refreshing honesty.
Yeah, I laughed out loud when I read that Cook was described as an expert on misinformation.
Cook is an expert at creating misinformation. The 97% Lie is his creation. One big pile of disinformation.
He didn’t create the 97% lie, he just continued it.
Cook takes aim at the minds of 5 year olds.
The only minds he feels worthy of combatting.
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. IPCC’s climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth. We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.
“Before becoming a scientist”???
Great one-liner. Cue laugh track.
I have people in my office that saw and believe this clip from CBC last night, informing us that climate change will cause the price of food next year to increase by $12,000 for a family of four.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/climate-change-driving-up-food-prices-in-2020-1.5385000. Here’s the full report. https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/climate-change-driving-up-food-prices-in-2020-1.5385000
What utter nonsense.
My sister is an MD, and doesn’t believe in CAGW. I’m thinking that’s possibly due to the fact that neither her, nor her partner have ever owned a television. The other 99% of Canadians, or at least those that can’t recognize fake news when they read it or hear it, are exposed to the BS flowing out of the CBC and CTV. Both organizations are a disgrace. CNN and the BBC equally so.
If I was to ever win a big lottery, I’d hire the WUWT group, 20 or 30 of the people that post here, and sue both organizations for distributing outright lies.
None of my colleagues believe there is a climate “crisis”, but 100% believe we are causing a small warming trend because of anthropogenic C02 emissions. They won’t even consider looking at WUWT. The “Science is well established,” I’m told, “no need to see any more arguments.”
What an abomination! What a fraud!
This professor has no expertise in the field of climate science. His “information” combating denial is merely propaganda against any critical questions about the field. There is MUCH to be questioned in a field that cannot connect itself to any of the other basic sciences and stay within their framework.
When the asks in the cartoon what the fallacy is, he deliberately overlooks the one not mentioned, how this example could possibly pertain to the climate. Besides, what are the assumptions here ( and there are a few).
Let me give you an example. what if there is only one more floor to go before the ground? What if the situation was occurring in Venice and there is water below? What if the experiment is occurring on Pluto?
See for the last question there is pertinence? DID YOU GET THE ACCELERATION CONSTANT CORRECT, or gid you just presume the constant is a = g ?
Now ask yourself… why does anyone expect to take average global changes (additive changes) from a presumed baseline in CO2 concentration on one axis, and deltas in world degrees Celcius on the other axis (again and additive change) show that they are both rising (roughly, at best), draw a regression analysis line through it, and find themselves justified in contriving a “climate forcing constant” out of it, and then spend the last forty years having to revise that number to account for the discrepancies in the data as it comes in, and expect anyone to call that “good science”, when they can’t even get a constant that’s… constant?
Worse still how can one expect to justify the correlation in the first place when there is no known linear relationship between (when is (CO2 + delta CO2) directly (linearly) proportional (to t + delta t), anywhere in the annals of physics or chemsitry?). Deosn’t that problem bleed over completely into invoking the notion of a forcing constant in the first place? Anyone look at relationships like Ahrrenius’ equation, and know that the relationship between temperature and concentration is patently not linear? (not a Ph.D. in cognitive science, I’ll wager).
Finally, why can’t the known, physically observable constant called the molar absorptivity constant (epsilon) in the Beer-Lambert equation can’t be used up front, because it IS, after all an immutible physcially isolatable constant that can be measured for each part of the three CO2 infrared absorption manifolds? Of course, this would require that “climate science” follow the rigors of all the other real sciences, which cannot be allowed to happen if the movement if to survive politically.
This isn’t denial. These are legitimate questions which MUST be addressed, because in the real sciences these questions can’t go unanswered before drawing real conclusions about the relationships between phenomena, that would otherwise be completely independent (and uncorrelated, rendering the whole concept of climate forcing meaningless).
One can’t ignore all this and expect to be taken seriously.
But somehow, propaganda artists like this Cook character, are taken seriously, after all he has pull at a university, and cartoonish humor for children who have no defenses against this stuff, and a website to bolster his amazing “science”, doesn’t he? It astounds and saddens me.
misspelled Celsius, sorry, I’ve been working in Kelvins (like a REAL scientist) for so long, that I overlooked that before I submitted this.
Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication and, hence, Mr. Cook are funded by the National ‘Science’ Foundation. Your tax dollars Hard at Work:
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/portfolio-view/nsf/
No wonder John has achieved his doctorate just like his mentor doctor Lew, to be able to reduce such a complex “coupled non-linear chaotic system” to the simple analogy of gravity is ‘almost awful in its profundity’.
John Cook confuses ‘science’ with his Zombie passion for the CAGW argument game.
When observations kill a theory, computer modeling and manipulating the temperature record cannot bring it back to life.
CAGW is a dead theory. Debate will not bring it back to life.
The Paleo record does not support CAGW.
The idiots have hidden the fact that what we are experience now high latitude warming with more warming in the Northern hemisphere, correlating with a solar cycle change) has happened cyclically before.
The past warming events all of which were followed by cooling events were not caused by atmospheric CO2 changes.
The paper quoted below notes there has been 342 natural warming periods, all of which were followed by cooling periods, in the last 250,000 years in the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet data.
The periodicity of the southern hemisphere warming and cooling is the same as the periodicity of the northern hemisphere warming and cooling which requires a global periodic forcing function. (it is the sun).
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
As this paper notes the highly precise periodicity of the past climate changes points to a forcing function outside of the earth (it is the sun).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin.
A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is.
An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; ….
An expert on misinformation , never a truer word said this person has shown time and again their abilities in offering misinformation often know as total BS . Indeed its an area were they can be consider to be ‘world leading ‘
But I do have to challenge the cartoonist claim, for there are limbless gibbons who have a better claim to ability in this area than Cook.
There needs to be a CONSUMER WARNING message on the app:
Use of this product may reduce your ability to think critically. Extended use may make you more susceptible to lies and scams. Do not operate machinery while using this product. Not safe for children who intend to become mature thinking adults. The Surgeon General has determined that this product will NOT inoculate you against diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, chemical substances, and sheer stupidity on your part. Not safe for pets. Avoid using if you experience smugness, over-confidence, and feelings of elitist superiority (you’re already too far gone for it to have any effect). Don’t blame us when reality slaps you up side the head.
Nothing riles me up more than “Professor John Cook”. The guy was a failed cartoonist with zero skills or knowledge. Yet gets promoted well beyond his ability and hailed a saint. This is equivalent to calling a 16 year old school dropout a science expert.
But I do agree with his title: Professor John Cook an expert on misinformation. That is exactly what he is.
“This is equivalent to calling a 16 year old school dropout a science expert.”
I saw what you did there. How dare you?
“Professor John Cook, an expert on misinformation with Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication”
I think it’s really intended to say:
Professor John Cook, an expert on disinformation with Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication.
This is how wiki refers to disinformation:
“Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive. ………………….. The English word disinformation is a loan translation of the Russian dezinformatsiya, derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department”
That describes Mr. Cook’s job very nicely.
OMG there is so much wrong with that cartoon i do not know where to start!
I’m declaring the extreme alarmists members of the Climate Obligatory Orthodox Church. That would be the CO2 Church. The Earth will not be burning, only those heretics who fail to repeat the dogma. Hence, “obligatory orthodoxy” is a key tenet of the faith.
The headline should be Mason Cartoonist….
Of course, that means you can say they are the COOC (pronounced “kook”) faithful.