Last month, I was alerted to an outrageous act of a scientific journal caving in to pressure from delusionals demanding the science about their publicly displayed delusions be hidden from the world: the NPG-owned publisher Frontiers retracted a scientific article, with which they could not find anything wrong: The article
attracted a number of complaints which were investigated by the publisher. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article.
Essentially, this puts large sections of science at risk. Clearly, every geocentrist, flat earther, anti-vaxxer, creationist, homeopath, astrologer, diviner, and any other unpersuadable can now feel encouraged to challenge scientific papers in a court. No, actually, they don’t even have to do that, they only have to threaten court action and publishers will cave in and retract your paper.
As if we needed any more evidence that publishers are bad for science.
Now even the supposedly “good guys” show that the are not really on the side of science. Instead of at least waiting for a law suit to be filed and perhaps at least attempting to stand their ground (as Simon Singh did), they just took the article down in what can only be called anticipatory obedience. This is no way to serve science.
A week or two ago, I talked with a Frontiers representative on the phone and she explained a few things to me which prompted me to read the paper in question, so I could make up my own mind. After reading the paper, any of the attempted explanations on the phone rang hollow: I’m certainly not a lawyer, but if taking publicly posted comments and citing them in a scientific paper, discussing them under a given hypothesis which has a scientific track record and plenty of precedence constitutes a cause for libel or defamation lawsuits, it is certainly the law and not the paper which is at fault. It is quite clear, why the content of the paper may feel painful to those cited in it, but as long as “conspiracist ideation” is not an official mental disorder, I cannot see any defamation. If you don’t want to be labeled a conspiracy theorist, don’t behave like one publicly on the internet. Therefore, after reading the paper, in my opinion, Frontiers ought to have supported their authors just as their home institution (UWA) is supporting them as their employees.
As the Frontiers representative did not disclose any details and what she was able to disclose was both very general, hence not very convincing, and I promised not to disclose even that, one can only speculate what the motivations and considerat1ions might have been at Frontiers as to why they decided to throw their authors under the bus.
Clearly, if legal problems are cited, it’s always money that’s at stake, I’d be surprised if this were controversial. I have heard through the grapevine that Frontiers apparently may have felt some pressure recently, to make more money, to publish more papers. I was told that they have sent out literally millions of spam emails to addresses harvested from, e.g. PubMed, soliciting manuscript submissions. Obviously, a costly libel or defamation suit in the UK would not have been a positive on the balance sheets.
Alas, as much fun all of this speculation may be, it is not really relevant to my conclusion: Frontiers retracted a perfectly fine (according to their own investigation) psychology paper due to financial risks for themselves. It can only be seen as at best a rather lame excuse or at worst rather patronizing, if Frontiers were to claim to be protecting their authors from lawsuits by removing the ‘offending’ article. This is absolutely no way to “empower researchers in their daily work“. In the coming days I will send resignation letters to the Frontiers journals to which I have donated my free time for a range of editorial duties. Obviously, I will complete the tasks I have already started, but I will not accept any new tasks at Frontiers – at least not until they show more support of their authors.
P.S.: I should perhaps add that the reason I supported Frontiers almost since its inception was that they were and in many respects still are among the most innovative publishers out there and that they drive our communication system away from the entirely antiquated status quo. Of course, Frontiers still serves this particular function very well. My criticism very specifically targets this particular paper and leaves all the other positive contributions of Frontiers to our publishing ecosystem intact. I guess that much of my personal disappointment comes from the feeling of betrayal, when I felt Frontiers was on the side of researchers for so many years. I would have expected such behavior from legacy publishers, but not from Frontiers. This incident, together with several other events over the past month or two have prompted me to think more generally about my involvement with publishers and there will be another post on this topic at some point.
Frontiers do not consider the paper ‘perfectly fine’. Their first statement was a stale compromise agreed with Lewandowsky which they came to regret. They have now made their findings known more bluntly. This is the reality you need to face. Meanwhile I don’t claim to be able to psychoanalyse you at a distance through your words here. The writers of the original paper did not afford me the same respect. It would have helped if before they diagnosed me the words they attributed to me and used in their diagnosis had actually been written by me. This is actually one of the funnier moments in the whole thing. Despite your strong feelings about ‘every geocentrist, flat earther, anti-vaxxer, creationist, homeopath, astrologer, diviner, and any other unpersuadable’ are you at least able to empathise with the fact I do not appreciate being named as a delusional based on words I did not write?
Richard… It was quite clear from their original statement that they evaluated the paper and found it was fine on all merits as a research paper. The challenge for Frontiers were the legal threats that had nothing to do with the paper.
And if you don’t like how you’re portrayed in a research paper based on you public commenting, perhaps you should more carefully consider what you post publicly. Maybe try setting up a private forum where you and your friends can say whatever you like without risk of public ridicule.
Rob,
Your claim that legal action was threatened is not supported by any evidence. In fact, Frontiers has clearly resiled from this position in their second statement on the matter, and also publicly stated that the complaints received were cogent and well argued.
And did you actually read this statement in Richard Drake’s post above:
” It would have helped if before they diagnosed me the words they attributed to me and used in their diagnosis had actually been written by me.”
The original statement was negotiated with the authors, which is standard procedure for retractions. So you are wrong. The original statement was as much the opinion of the authors as it was Frontiers’ opinion. The second statement was from Frontiers alone, and it came from Frontiers because they felt the need to make their own opinions known clearly, because of misinformation from people like you.
What Richard say is correct, he was personally maligned for words he had never said. How anyone on earth can think this is ethical or legal is beyond me, perhaps you might explain how it is ethical to label someone with psychopathological characteristics for something they did not write? Please explain how that is ethical.
Thirdly, Frontiers has stated clearly that there were no legal threats, yet you perpetuate this falsehood with your comment. This falsehood is precisely the reason Frontiers felt the need to make the true story known to the public.
They are going to come to regret the second even more. First rule of holes applies.
Of course, yes absolutely, if quotes in the paper have been mis-attributed, this needs to be corrected. Personally, I probably would not have identified the authors of the quotes in the paper, but that’s the decision of the authors. One can always debate about taste, but I don’t see how even bad taste could become an issue for a court.
Hi Bjorn,
Thanks for responding.
I wonder if you have been able to take the time to read the letters of complaint by Steve McIntyre, a recognised statistical expert with peer reviewed papers to his name? I think they go a long way towards presenting the truth of the matter and are one of the reasons why the second statement by Frontiers said that complaints were well argued and cogent. You can find the letters at:
https://www.climateaudit.info/correspondence/lewandowsky/complaint%20uwa%20-%20ethics%20and%20national%20statement.pdf
https://www.climateaudit.info/correspondence/lewandowsky/complaint%20defamation%20to%20frontiers.pdf
And of course you can find more of the back story at climateaudit.org
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
I quickly skimmed the two documents. One appeared to be a complaint about ethics, which the investigation cleared, so this doesn’t seem relevant.
The second started out with a rather explicit threat of a defamation lawsuit, so my guess is that this is one of the complaints that led to the retraction. However, on the first page (didn’t read further, as I thought he’ll give his best shot on the first page), all I could see was arguments that amounted to “I didn’t mean it that way”, which essentially amounts to an alternative explanation of what Lewandowski et al. claimed in their paper.
Obviously, competing hypotheses are never a cause for a retraction, while obviously the threat of a lawsuit was enough cause, at least according to Frontiers.
So what I take from skimming the documents is that much of the complaints were baseless, but what stuck was the threat of lawsuit. This interpretation of the two documents is consistent both with the retraction notice and what I took from reading the paper. Thus, these two documents confirm my understanding that Frontiers ought to have supported Lewandowski et al.: nothing I saw in my admittedly quick reading exposed enough reasons to retract the paper.
In conclusion, unless any major flaws with the paper in question are uncovered, these documents alone are not even close to warrant a retraction, on the contrary. Some of these complaints may warrant an investigation, which they did which apparently didn’t find anything substantive.
Hi Bjorn,
As you might expect, I would disagree with your conclusion, but thank you for following up on my suggestion and taking the time to at least skim-read the documents I recommended.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
Hi
we briefly chatted on twitter.
Look beyond the paper to the conduct of the authors, who have a history of publically attacking people they name in the paper, leading to the perception that a few scores were being settled perhaps by the authors, for people that criticized LOG13 (NASA moon Hoax paper) perhaps any psychology journal might have second thoughts?
I was defamed/libelled as much as Prof Richard Betts was [joke] (UK Met Office, IPCC lead author) we both appear in the data set. Big laughs…
(and there were some big laughs at the Met Office as well, according to Richard)
Frontiers must have taken a look at the copious examples of one or more authors being utterly conflicted in researching sceptics., both ethically and with conflicts of interest.
just one example, Michael Marriott writing on his personal blog “Watching the Deniers” blog before after and during the research period, that I and Anthony Watts are Deniers, Disinformers, [part of ] Denial machine, writing Verified Bullshit and suffering form a psychological defect Dunning – Kruger – would give any psychology journal slight pause for thought, perhaps..
https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/here-we-go-again-watts-up-with-that-pushing-the-no-consensus-myth/
https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/watts-explains-why-lewandowsky-paper-on-conspiracy-theories-is-wrong-its-a-conspiracy-between-john-cook-and-the-prof/
especially as co-author Marriot has ZERO psychology qualifications.. he has also been attacking Jo Nova (named in the paper) and her husband David Evans for years (including a particulary nasty, conspiracy theory and anti-Semitic set of innuendoes: https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-protocols-of-the-elder-climate-scientists-and-banksters-is-the-media-is-twigging-to-just-how-extreme-some-sceptics-are/
look at his [Marriott’s] about page – his affiliation listed for the ‘Recursive Fury’ paper – Climate Realities Research – appear to be purely a vanity creation, I can find no official records of a company or institution.
https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/about/
it is not the comments that are the issue, but that the authors that cherry picked them from thousand then and publically named them, with psychopathological traits… in a psychology journal.
Lewandowsky has been having a media battle in Australia with Jo Nova (named in the paper for over 4 years) as has John Cook.
The perceptions that these Cook and Lewandowsky who are are perceived very much as political activists with respect to climate change, might be settling a few scores and labelling their opponents (as John Cook described Anthony Watts and Jo Nova in a Yale interview, a few weeks after the NASA Moon Hoax paper) is damaging for psychology as a field.
Psychology studies human participants, and absolutely has to be perceived as ethically sound with no conflicts of interest.
Marriott writes a blog – called Watching the Deniers, and has been attacking sceptics for years (he has ZERO qualifications in psychology, or by his own admissions on his blog zero science qualifications)
The decisive issue here is that “conspiracist ideation” is precisely not a psychopathological trait – or are all the thousands of conspiracy theorists candidates for treatment? I’m not a psychiatrist, but I don’t think this particular way of thinking made its way into the DSM – and this is precisely where I would draw the line: once it’s classified as pathological, then you can’t name people by their name.
It is never, ever, ethical for any reason to mention people by name as a subject in a scientific study, without their explicit consent. This is standard in all scientific disciplines, for many obvious reasons. Even ignoring the ethics, there is no scientific reason to use names.
“A week or two ago, I talked with a Frontiers representative on the phone and she explained a few things to me which prompted me to read the paper in question, so I could make up my own mind.”
Did you manage to get hold of and read the supplementary material for the paper?
No, I only read the paper and didn’t look at the raw data. After 12 months of expert investigation, I don’t think I would have found anything there that the experts might have missed.
Get over it being all a scam already, testy “scientist”:
https://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
Hey Mann lover, have a laugh at these evil geocentrists, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, creationists, homeopaths, astrologers, and diviners:
https://a2.img.mobypicture.com/8e1234d649766adfef528feb438395b9_large.jpg
You are aware right that the notorious PR firm behind the autism/vaccine scare popularity is the same Fenton Communications/Environmental Media Services that RealClimate.org is site registered in the name of? And that Al Gore’s political family has its origin as tobacco farmers?
Hey Nik, thanks for proving Lew’s thesis.
You have been misled. The journal has issued a statement saying that they did not cave in to pressure, in fact there were no legal threats, contrary to the bogus claims of some climate activists.
Well, I guess we all can imagine how, for example, the promise of hurting someone can be perceived as a threat by someone else. Likewise, a well-reasoned, cogent argument for a lawsuit can be perceived as a threat. Unless I learn otherwise, the words “legal context” with respect to a paper seem sufficiently obvious to me.
IANAL, but it is my understanding that truth is an absolute defense against “slander”, “libel” and “defamation”.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/defamation
If it is true, it can’t be slander, libel or defamation.
If you show the data (facts) you use to come to a conclusion, and those facts are not in dispute, what is the basis for disagreement?
Perhaps we will see how the courts deal with defamation and climate change advocacy when Michael Mann’s lawsuit goes to trial.
So you are on public record as supporting the diagnoses of presumed mental conditions of particular individuals from publicly available blog posts and comments, and then naming the individuals in a journal paper and discussing their presumed mental conditions, all without any permission from the individuals named and diagnosed in the paper.
I don’t think any other physician, psychologist or psychiatrist would agree that this is ethical.
It is one thing to gossip on blogs about presumed mental conditions of individuals – it is quite another for a medical professional to diagnose presumed medical conditions and then write journal papers about the individuals.
This paper clearly crossed a line – which apparently you fail to see or recognize (but which fortunately the journal did see).
Wouldn’t it be better to actually read and understand the paper yourself ? Once I did it became rather blindly obvious that it wasn’t a scientific paper as such but a political “hit” piece. How can you possibly accept the attribution of psychopathological traits to named persons based on selected and out of context blog comments , some of which are even incorrectly attributed ? If that is acceptable I can very readily conclude from your own writings that you are in dire need of professional counselling, and expect it to have the same weight.
Björn, the term you’re looking for is “crank magnetism,” defined as “the tendency of people who subscribe to conspiracist thinking, to believe in more than one conspiracy theory.” The phrase I use for that is taken from a well-known American ad for potato chips (UK: potato crisps): “Bet you can’t eat just one.”
I’m familiar with some of your work (Order in Spontaneous Behavior and related writing) so I’m happy to see you taking a strong stand in the present case. What is at stake here is the ability to conduct any type of social sciences research using internet-posted content as data. Merely declaring one’s methodology or quoting the raw data is sufficient to identify the author of the quoted materiel. Any restraint aimed at protecting the authors of internet commentary from critical analysis is effectively a restraint on the research itself. That’s obscurantism at its most ugly.
Though, I have to differ with you about something: in your list in the “delusionals” link, you’ve conflated conspiracist thinking with other types of belief systems, some of which are clearly not conspiracist though they may be objectionable on other grounds, and some of which are basically harmless or at worst mildly annoying. I would argue that we should focus our efforts on those that are truly dangerous and therefore urgent (climate denialsm, anti-vaccine, etc.).
Regards-
-G.
I like the term “crank magnetism”! And yes, you are right that I conflate different forms of crazy ideas – I’m not a psychiatrist and posts about unpersuadables are more political than scientific. Thus, in this respect, wouldn’t you agree that it’s ok to lump anti-scientific memes from all corners into one? (I admit, I’m a lumper until a splitter convinces me to split!)
Hi Björn, thanks for replying. Lumping together various irrational memes is useful in some circumstances, not so useful in others. I’m thinking I should email you to take up this topic further, so it doesn’t become fodder for some of the cranks who were magnetically attracted to this post;-) Also I have a suggestion for a mouse model operationalization of the spontaneous behavior study, that could be easily replicated by others. I’ll try the email address on the .labs page unless you say otherwise in reply to this comment. I’ll be writing to you from a different email address than the one I use for public postings but it’ll be clear it’s me from the subject header & content. Thanks -G.
Hi Bjorn,
When someone asks a critical question of a scientist or scientific theory, how do you differentiate between “anti-scientific” and legitimate criticism?
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
If it’s in my own field, it’s quite obvious, as I know what we know and where the problems are. Some obvious signs are that contrarians keep bringing up debunked issues or shift goalposts or cherry-pick observations. Another classic, by creationists for instance, is to ask for evidence that would actually prove their point (e.g., asking for a bacterium to evolve into a dog within a human lifetime). So in this case it’s quite obvious for me as it’s in my area of expertise.
If it’s outside of my field, I may do something like this:
http://blogarchive.brembs.net/comment-n592.html
If then for example, I see that non-experts are bringing up questions that were addressed and solved decades ago by experts, I dismiss the arguments. Similar to creationists bringing up long-debunked issues, I guess.
These are all red flags that I might be wasting my time if I pay attention to such arguments. 🙂
Hi Bjorn,
Thanks for your reply and the link which I followed and read.
So if I have an Earth Science graduate training and 30 years of experience in appropriate fields (eg Geological Science, Geostatistics, Oceanography, large scale 3D stochastic modelling) and I question some fundamental of climate science, such as data handling which leads to a wrong conclusion, should I be labelled as “anti-science” or “contrarian”, or am I allowed to make legitimate criticism?
Or put another way, how does science advance if legitimate criticism is simply waved away and labelled as some cognitive defect, and those who are criticised, instead of answering legitimate questions and defending the methodology (see Feynman for clear views on the nature of science), seek to close down alternative viewpoints by labelling their critics as “deniers” or “contrarians”, or worse seek to publish papers where the question askers are diagnosed as suffering from conspiracy ideation and other psychological disorders?
I do appreciate the time you have spent responding here and hope you can continue to do so.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
Let me preface what follows with an emphasis that once a section of critics has been infiltrated by individuals with rather obvious intellectual shortcomings, it is probably very, very difficult for the not so intellectually challenged to get their reasonable voices heard and be taken seriously. I acknowledge this problem and don’t have any good, practical solutions to them and think that this is essentially a sociological problem: if you can’t manage to keep being associated with the wrong people, you’re stuck in a place where it is hard to get out of. My answers below may thus seem unrealistically simplified and cartoonish, but I did so for the sake of brevity and in order to make a certain set of points more clearly than I otherwise would have been able to. Some of the reply below is also tongue-in-cheek, if you don’t mind.
Your question reminds me of another red flag which I didn’t think of: contrarians (or whatever one now wants to call them) are also hardly ever constructive – they precisely don’t advance science. For instance, they point out some problem (sometimes a real one) that’s supposedly critical to to the whole issue at hand – and when that gets either debunked or solved or realized as being trivial, they go for the next one, pretending the old one was never addressed.
In contrast, to be taken more seriously, when one points out a problem, one simultaneously presents a solution which not only explains why the problem existed in th first place, but also provides a superior explanation of all other related phenomena. You reproduce the error, fix it and show that what you get works better than what was there before. That’s constructive, rather than destructive or obstructive. That’s how science advances – if every little detail or technical issue would stand to derail the whole enterprise, we’d be back in the stone age.
In my field, biology, creationists essentially provide ever changing variants of always “you can’t explain that” and then offer “magic man dunnit” as their explanation (if they even offer one!). So that’s quite obviously silly. What little I follow from climate change deniers it’s either grasping at long-debunked alternative explanations, denying basic physics, attacking scientists personally but also pointing out what current science cannot explain or got wrong. Essentially both creationists and climate change denialists use sometimes very similar tactics that are easily distinguished from actual science by the range of factors I described. In the US, creationists and climate change deniers are often even the same people (not too surprising, of you ask LOG12)! One of these factors being that they never come up with anything that works better and is more consistent than what we currently have – they’re essentially never constructive.
There is always a lot of questions, holes, contradictions, inconsistencies and potential technical problems and other issues in science – it’s not a trivial job and if we had solved all of these issues, we’d be out of a job. 🙂 Pointing out these problems – even if they’re not imaginary – doesn’t really affect the whole picture all that much, as long as any competing explanation doesn’t explain more than the old one – and in many cases, there isn’t even a competing explanation offered.
Thus, if you want to change anybody’s opinion and actually advance science, here’s a recipe that doesn’t guarantee success (after all scientists are human and prone to the same vices as all other humans, sometimes more so than the general public), but maximizes your chances of not being labeled ‘contrarian’ or ‘denier’: you find a problem, let’s say data handling. First you show that the problem actually makes a difference and is not in effect negligible or trivial. Then you show how that problem arose and how to fix it. Once you fix this problem, the resulting explanation not only avoids raising three new problems which are more severe than the one you solved, but also leads to a testable prediction that nobody had thought of so far, ideally but not necessarily because of the problem you now solved. You then go on to test this prediction and you turn out to be correct. To answer your question, this is how science advances: you not only eliminated a serious problem, you also advanced our knowledge by adding a piece to a scientific puzzle.
If I’d get a penny for every inconsistency, unsolved problem, technical issue or potentially major challenge for one theory or another that I’ve come across, I’d be a rich man – I essentially never mention any such issues, unless I have a solution which explains the issue and everything we already know better than anything that was there before. Follow that rule and at the latest after your death you’ll be taken seriously 🙂
Now after all this, I remember two more red flags that would make me very suspicious that someone is not quite scientifically literate enough to be taken all that seriously: instead of following the recipe above, that person is wasting their and others’ time by writing complaints that threaten lawsuits against scientists, by filing actual lawsuits against scientists or by commenting on blog posts asking an invertebrate neurobiologist what they need to do to not sound so delusional or conspiracist 🙂
Oh and another red flag would be to ask leading, snug questions that are mere rhetorical tools and tricks, rather than actual arguments or evidence – creationists do this a lot. To sum my last few answers to your questions up: in many (not all) cases, with some experience, one can spot a ob-/destructive delusional already after a few sentences.
P.S.: Yet another clue that the person in question doesn’t even care about advancing science (besides not offering any evidence) is the inability of even offering a suggestion of which kind of evidence would change their mind. In the course of my near 20 year research career, I have had to change my mind rather more often than I care to admit, due to experiments that turned out to be quite the opposite of what I had expected. For virtually any tenet I know enough about, I can tell you in a heartbeat which evidence would be required for me to change my opinion. What contrarians/delusionals most often have to offer is either nothing, or would be refuting their own point or is supernatural. Which is why probably one of my favorite descriptors of such anti-science people is “unpersuadables”.
Hi Bjorn,
Thanks for your detailed post below (a reply button does not appear below it, so I have placed my comment here). A thought provoking post which makes some interesting points.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
Could someone explain this to me:
The author of this post doesn’t know who filed complaints with Frontiers. He hasn’t matched up complainants with people who were quoted or cited in Recursive Fury or its Supplementary Material. Given this, how can he call these people delusional?
I filed a complaint with Frontiers, and I was never referenced in any way by Recursive Fury. How then can I be a “delusional” who demanded “the science about [my] publicly displayed delusions be hidden from the world”? How can the author of this piece justify labeling me delusional without knowing who I am or what I’ve said?
It appears he believes his preconceived notions justify ignorant and biased statements that defame people. This sort of ethically vapid behavior is exactly why Lewandowsky et al got their paper retracted. If he believes this sort of behavior is acceptable, it’s good he resigned. The journal is better off for it.
The threat to sound science comes from the psychologizing of legitimate criticism, not the retraction of poor papers. Imagine that a paper was published claiming efficacy of homeopathy based on a sample drawn solely from readers of pro-homeopathy websites because, for whatever reason, no invitations were posted at more sceptical sites. Then imagine that the sceptics start asking questions about the methodology and the sample frame, and concluding that there were serious problems. Following Lewandowsky’s lead our imaginary homeopathic proponents, instead of answering legitimate questions and defending the methodology, publish a paper where the question askers are diagnosed as suffering from conspiracy ideation and other disorders. Is this legitimate science?
Assuming responses are scammed just because you do not believe the responses is not legitimate criticism. Adding further conspiracy thinking by claiming the survey was designed as a dog whistle to invite scamming is not legitimate criticism either. It’s just pseudoargumentation to have a reason to reject the findings. Rather common behaviour, not very dissimilar from some people holding certain strong beliefs getting even more convinced of those beliefs when evidence to the contrary is provided.
Proclaiming no skeptic blogs were contacted and then assign nefarious motives to this (later shown wrong) observation is not legimitate criticism either. It shows someone uses his critical faculties very asymmetrically (think about it: why would they write this in the paper if it wasn’t true?).
Your example is not very good either. In fact, it is outright stupid. Lewandowsky’s survey did not test the equivalent of “efficacy of homeopathy”, but rather whether there was a correlation between certain world views and skepticism about global warming. You would have to change your example to one where proponents and skeptics of homeopathy are surveyed about the correlation between their world view on various matters. One question in the survey could thus be how they rate their trust in homeopathy as a treatment for diseases (or something similar). The survey when only posted on pro-homeopathy sites would likely give a limited response from those skeptical about homeopathy, but that’s it. Let’s take the, unlikely, assumption that the survey would indicate that those skeptical of homeopathy are more likely to believe in ghosts, and that they are more likely to be libertarians. Any and all criticism that assumes nefarious motives and deliberate actions to obtain these results, without any direct evidence to back this up, would be as much suffering from various forms of conspiracy ideation as the climate pseudoskeptics. And I say that as someone who is highly critical of homeopathy, does not believe in ghosts, and is at the very best a moderate libertarian.
It might also be nice if all those people claiming a diagnosis of “disorder” was made would point out where in the DSM conspiracy ideation is listed as a disorder, and where in the paper the people in question are diagnosed as having this particular disorder.
Marco,
You would probably help yourself if you read the letters of complaint prepared by Steve McIntyre, which clearly lay out the facts of the matter and include references to the relevant material. Those references can be followed to source and checked. It is difficult to argue against clearly stated facts and this should always be preferred instead of relying on secondhand hyperbole as you appear to be doing.
I have posted the links further upthread.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
I have read those letters of complaint, and the supposedly factual information that supports the claim many responses were scammed were McIntyre’s *opinion* and a reference to Harrison Schmidt. The fact that McIntyre uses his own “beliefs” to assign nefarious intent (“the responses were scammed”) is a form of conspiracy ideation, regardless of whether the beliefs are actually true (for which no evidence is available). Harrison Schmitt merely is evidence that not all pseudoskeptics believe that the moon landing is a hoax, in concordance with what the JPsych article found.
Marco,
Perhaps you could identify here some items that are presented as facts in the letters that are not correct, or not facts. Just one or two examples would be helpful. For the record.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
I already provided an example of the responses assumed scammed. McIntyre directly argues that his argument that those who doubted the moon landings took place were scammed is valid criticism, because he does not know anyone who believes the moon landings were faked, and he points to astronaut Harrison Schmitt as a “skeptic”. Note that McIntyre did not argue that all those who claimed the moon landings were faked were evidence of a scammed response. Starting to see the problem here?
“Makes me look bad, therefore must be wrong”.
Marco’s comment here is highly misleading. To keep things simple, I’ll discuss only one example. Marco portrays an argument as people saying “no skeptic blogs were contacted.” This is largely untrue. What most people said is no skeptical bloggers could find any evidence Stephan Lewandowsky had contacted them, and as such, it appeared he had not.
They were absolutely correct. Lewandowsky did not contact any skeptical bloggers. His name was not associated with any messages sent to any skeptical bloggers. This is because Lewandowsky decided to have a research assistant contact skeptical bloggers in order to hide his identity from them. He didn’t hide his identity when he contacted bloggers on the other side.
That means Marco is exaggerating a common position and faulting people for not being able to find communication from Lewandowsky because Lewandowsky intentionally hid his involvement from them. Lewandowsky’s supporters are using the fact skeptical bloggers were deceived by Lewandowsky’s deception to criticize them.
It’s silly, and it shows they use their “critical faculties very asymmetrically”
Brandon Shollenberger’s response to my comment is highly misleading as he ignores the rampant speculation about nefarious motives for not contacting “skeptical” blogs. It does not matter whether Lewandowsky “hid” his identity by having a research assistant contact the blogs, it’s about the assumption that Lewandowsky would lie in a method section about something there is no reason to lie about.
But he did lie about the link to the survey being posted at Skeptical Science. While his original statement may have been made in good faith it has now been pointed out to him that there is not a shred of evidence that the link was ever posted and he has never retracted his statement.
(This may be a duplicate; the site got a strange error on my first attempt.)
It’s sad how badly uninformed Björn is, in making this decision.
He says there were no ethical issues. That’s not true. A direct quote from Frontiers editorial director Zucca: “The reference to ethical considerations in the original retraction statement is a reference to the ethical clearance for conducting the study given by UWA. The issue was not with the study as such, but with how the paper was written. The paper made it possible to explicitly identify subjects.”
He is incensed about “deniers.” What he doesn’t understand is that most if not all of the “deniers” named in the study are not the kind of “deniers” he imagines. They generally all agree that: CO2 causes some amount of warming, man has increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, the thermometer record shows the earth has warmed particularly in recent centuries, and that at least some of this warming is very likely a consequence of the CO2. The real climate argument does not lie in any of these questions.
Please get a clue, sir. You rant about what you do not know. And that’s the problem with too much of what goes for climate journalism and debate these days. Objectifying those who have valid critiques of badly-done science is not going to help improve the science. It’s actually those who lambaste the questioners who are setting science back.
One would think that prior to resigning and publishing inflammatory words on your blog you might make at least a small effort at reading the source materials of this dispute with some care. Here’s hoping you do your research with a bit more attention to detail.
@Björn Brembs
In answer to my question asking if you have read the supplementary material you say:
“No, I only read the paper and didn’t look at the raw data. After 12 months of expert investigation, I don’t think I would have found anything there that the experts might have missed.”
Well not knowing what exactly “prompted” you to go and read the paper I am not sure what kind of “expert investigation” you mean here. You did say earlier “I’m certainly not a lawyer”, maybe implying you mean trusting in legal expertise. You say “raw data”, which is how the SM is described in the paper, but I would suggest it is a little more than that.
The “raw data” held a table of excerpts of blog posts and comments all categorized under the heading “Excerpt Espousing Conspiracy Theory” with sub categorizations. Many people named in that list complained and, according to the DeSmog FOI, several of the legal sounding complaints were specifically related to appearances in the SM.
Included in the SM was a comment from Richard Betts, a UK MET office scientist. A year ago when Betts saw his inclusion in the SM he tweeted to co-author John Cook “That’s just crazy.” John Cook tweeted back:
“@richardabetts supplementary data for Recursive Fury are any comments *related* to particular theory. It’s raw data, not final paper.”
At the time this wasn’t enough to placate Betts as he responded with:
“@skepticscience You included my remark in list entitled “excerpts espousing conspiracy theory”. This means you think I buy conspiracy theory”
Since then it appears Richard Betts has had a coffee with Stephan Lewandowsky and has “cleared the air” but to rest of the people who complained – and remember there is no evidence of a conspiracy in organizing all these complaints from ordinary individuals – they have had no similar redress and the supplementary material remains unseen in any corrected form.
Since we don’t know the full extent of the ethical or legal investigations, and the University of Western Australia is still not hosting the supplementary material, even though they are ostentatiously hosting the paper itself, I am not sure how you can be so certain no one has “found anything there” .
“In contrast, to be taken more seriously, when one points out a problem, one simultaneously presents a solution which not only explains why the problem existed in th first place, but also provides a superior explanation of all other related phenomena. ”
Sure.
On the other hand, for (some) climate scientists to have their theories taken seriously, and to rework the economy of the world to non CO2 producing sources, perhaps climate scientists should demonstrate clearly how the observations of the climate system is consonant with their theory of global warming.
Now, if atmospheric warming, for instance, is one of the inconsistencies in the theory, then the theory has much less value to inform policy. Yet, it is looking increasingly like atmospheric temperatures aren’t explained in a satisfactory way by climate science, as implemented in the climate models.
In short, if you have a theory and want to force behavior of billions of people based on that theory, you had better have very high certainty around your theory.
Marco,
The quotation you are referring to appears to be this one:
Note the facts:
(a) Statement that sample groups are too small not adequately discussed in Hoax. N=10=too small.
(b) So in the paper N=10 of which the majority (6) were “warmists”. But the paper concluded it was sceptics that are associated with conspiracy theories and a Moon Landing Hoax is the “Poster Child” of the paper for a conspiracy hoax: it even forms the papers title. But if 6 of the respondents were warmist, how does the paper’s conclusion stand up?
(c) McIntyre expresses an opinion that most of these answers are fake eg that people may have filled them in as a spoof. McIntyre chooses his words very carefully.
(d) I would agree with McIntyre that on sceptic blogs (examples being CA, BH, WUWT) there is no sign whatsoever of belief in Moon Landing as a hoax. McIntyre clearly states this is an aside, as is the whole of this entire paragraph.
Finally, note that if we accept that the respondents answers were true and that 10 believe the Moon Landings were a hoax, but then we note that 6 of those that believe the Moon Landings were a hoax are actually warmists (and let us assume the remaining 4 were sceptics), how do you reach the conclusion that therefore sceptics are likely to believe in conspiracy theories including the poster child of the paper, the Moon Landing was a Hoax? Only by ignoring the 6/10 warmist respondents. The most you appear to be able to conclude from this survey, even if the responses are true, is that some people, from across the full spectrum of climate change views, believe in conspiracy theories.
You seem to be trying to pick fault within McIntyre’s opinion on something which in no way affects the thrust of his argument, whilst simultaneously ignoring the rather large elephant in the room, which is that N=10 and 6 of them were warmists.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
PS Apologies to our host Bjorn, your blog has been somewhat hijacked by a proxy climate “flame” war. Thank you for your tolerance – I think you have been a very patient host. 🙂
lol 🙂 We’re far away from my disk limit, so keep on discussing 🙂
Marco,
For some reason my response to you appeared at the end of the blog, not in this part of the thread.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
I find it a bit troubling I haven’t received any response. I was labeled delusional in this post without any basis, and I think it’s reasonable I should expect an explanation. Regardless, a couple points. Our host’s entire postion is predicated upon the notion Frontiers identified no ethical problems with this paper, but was merely responding to legal threats (he claims this is obvious). This is seemingly contradicted by the journal which says:
Protecting the rights of the subjects of your research is an ethical necessity. Frontiers says the work failed to do so, hence its retraction. The only way to claim this was not an ethical matter is to say protecting the rights of research subjects is not an ethical matter. That’d be silly.
On another point:
One may be “taken more seriously” if they can find a right answer, but that standard is often inappropriate. When someone publishes a paper based upon an artifact, nobody should be expected to find a right answer. All that should be expected is for people to show the results are predicated upon an artifact.
Steve McIntyre criticized the hockey stick and concluded there isn’t enough data to reach a quantitative conclusion about temperatures of ~1000 years ago. People say Stephan Lewandowsky’s results are based entirely upon him applying correlation tests which assume normality in the data when the data was severely non-normal. If the data is normalized or an appropriate test is used, his results vanish. In both cases, there is no reasonable expectation of a better answer.
Finally:
This interpretation isn’t remotely supportable. The commenter (Foxgoose) was participating in a discussion of one topic (whether or not skeptical bloggers were contacted by Stephan Lewandowsky). Recursive Fury portrayed his quote as discussing an entirely different topic (whether or not responses to the survey were fake), exaggerating it to the point of absurdity (claiming he suggested all the responses were fake). While it may be hard to tell this by the documents linked to in this post, it is utterly undeniable if one reads the paper and quoted comment. In fact, one need read only two sentences to be sure:
(And as we found out, Foxgoose was right to think Lewandowsky had not contacted skeptical bloggers. A research assistant contacted them while intentionally hiding Lewandowsky’s involvement. This was unlike the non-skeptical bloggers, who were told Lewandowsky’s name from the outset.)
Brandon,
I don’t want to appear antagonistic but I find when I am on a new blog and want to try and elicit answers from people I find it most effective to:
(a) address them by name and not in the third person such as
(b) behave very politely and try not to sound angry
(c) try to make my arguments or questions clear and concise
(d) not presume that I will get an answer
If you glance over this blog, our host has ignored a number of rather angry and somewhat impolite posts but has made some lengthy responses to polite ones.
Its also very difficult in a post to know whether someone is being serious, sarcastic or humourous, and also very easy to read posts as angry, or infer something when people don’t respond. Sometimes they don’t respond becuase they are busy, or maybe they don’t want to get sucked into a pointless argument with someone who sounds angry (even if they are not angry).
I am trying not be patronising, I don’t want to cause offense and I don’t want to presume to speak for our host about reasons for not replying, but I have found good manners go a long way with strangers.
Just trying to help. 🙂
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
ThinkingScientist, I agree, and under different circumstances, I’d have done what you describe. I just didn’t feel like writing a comment which was far more civil and polite than the post I was responding to. Sometimes its hard to be the “better man.”
I don’t even know what I could have said. Should I have posted, “Hey Björn Brembs. You just publicly accused me of being mentally unstable. Could you explain why?” It’s like if a guy randomly accuses you of murder. Are you supposed to respond politely, acting like his remark is anything other than unconscionable, or should you just say, “What in the world is this guy smoking”? I don’t know, but I don’t think good manners requires turning a cheek to bad behavior.
That said, you may be right on a practical level. It’s possible Björn Brembs would have responded if I had been politer in my comment.
Correction, part of snetence missing:
(a) address them by name and not in the third person such as
“How can the author of this piece”
You have put much on your blog here about creationists, etc. Please explain what that has to do with anything related to this issue. Those who were first manipulated and then defamed by Lewandowski have not offered a single word that could be construed as questioning mainstream science. All they did was point out the dishonest, not to mention incompetent, nature of Lewandowskis first paper, and the unethical practice that characterized his second.
Long ago Samuel Johnson called out those who hid their dishonesty behind a cloak of “patriotism”, which he labeled the “last refuge of a scoundrel”. We are on good grounds here to update the saying that “science” has become the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Finally, please go on record: do you think that the “Moon hoax” paper, the first paper, is a good example of social science research?
Calling someone delusional was the Soviet Unions way of controlling critics of the government. It was the first step in isolating them from society .Having Lewandowski label highly respected engineers and scientist conspiracists, etc is a similar attempt to isolate their voices from the debate as this allows other people to claim that they are delusional.
Tom C, I wasn’t going to bring this up since it’s not very relevant to the post’s topic, but I can only ignore it for so long. There is nothing wrong with being a creationist. The word refers to a wide range of belief systems, ranging from fundamentalist Christians to Buddhists to people who believe aliens seeded Earth with life as part of an experiment.
The much (and rightfully) derided group are commonly labeled Creationists. The capital letter is there to distinguish the Young Earth Creationists from the broad group. It’s stupid, and it shouldn’t be accepted, but it is. You see, what happened is fundamentalist Christians realized people were mocking them for their views but accepted the views of creationists. That gave them the idea to trump up their inclusion in the broad group (creationists) by declaring themselves to be Creationists. This allowed them to largely co-opt the term. The reason it worked is creationists didn’t want to pick a fight with Creationists, and the critics of Creationists had little reason to care about the distinction.
It has an interesting parallel in the climate debate with the term “skeptic.” Many “deniers” try to paint themselves as “skeptics” in order to steal the credibility earned by people with legitimate views. The difference is many skeptics have happily called “deniers” out on this, actively trying to prevent them from co-opting the term. The same is even true of some of the critics of skeptics. In theory, both skeptics and their critics should be able to come to an agreement on this issue and push “deniers” away.
Unfortunately, a lot of the critics of skeptics either don’t care or don’t know about the distinction. They try to conflate the two groups together. This is helped by the fact some skeptics join in.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling. I just hate seeing over a billion people insulted because of semantics.
Brandon –
I am not a young earth creationist and I think such belief is anti-intellectual. But, frankly, I would take it over the anti-intellectual ignorance on display at Universities where myriad professors embrace Marxism as a valid economic system and, apparently, others cannot grasp that Lewandowski is a crank and fraud.
Björn, I truly appreciate what you wrote: “For virtually any tenet I know enough about, I can tell you in a heartbeat which evidence would be required for me to change my opinion. What contrarians/delusionals most often have to offer is either nothing, or would be refuting their own point or is supernatural. Which is why probably one of my favorite descriptors of such anti-science people is “unpersuadables”.”
The interesting thing is, this is exactly what the informed skeptics are complaining about with respect to some of the more visible “warmist” scientists. There is nothing that will change their opinion, even when their models are proven completely unphysical. Even when the field biology (I know that’s not your specialty but it is one of my wife’s arenas…) doesn’t match how they model the data.
Sadly, too much in this particular arena has become more about PR and politics, even religion in a way, than science. What you describe above is essentially a religious “faith” in the sense that belief is more important than measurement. The data will be tortured until it confesses.
We’ve got to get past that, period. I would suggest that “blind” experimental methodologies need to be applied to climate science, as they already are not only in medicine but certain areas of physics and more.
Björn, you probably won’t be happy at the idea, but you are actually boosting climate skepticism with your stance.
One of the things that reinforces skeptics is the appearance that the pro-warmers refuse to admit any single failing on the part of anyone in their camp. The skeptic view is that, no matter how bad the behaviour – or on occasions the “science” – it is OK with the pro-warmers, as long as it supports them.
In this case, the original study (LOG12) was obviously flawed to anyone who took the time to understand it. A survey of skeptics’ views, conducted at blogs that skeptics don’t visit (as someone put it, rather like studying Republican views by conducting a survey at the Democrats convention); the authors claiming the survey link was included on a pro-warmist website that might possibly have some skeptic visitors (SkepticalScience.com), with the others sites not being on skeptics radar screens at all, but internet archives suggesting that the link was never posted there, and the authors having no record of the link actually going on the site; the authors refusing to release data that would have shown the source of traffic – including whether any came from that disputed site. This is to say nothing of the methodological flaws with the survey itself, or with the interpretation of the data, or with the many other criticisms levelled at the paper.
Then the withdrawn Fury paper, where the authors appeared to regard criticism of flawed work in LOG12 as a demonstration of a psychological disorder, and where the author’s behaviour included taunting, provoking and deceiving their critics while they are actually gathering data and studying them – and then releasing their subjects’ names without consent – contrary to established behaviour for psychological research (as Frontiers said “we do not support scientific publications where human subjects can be identified without their consent”). Any where the UWA ethics approval appears not to have followed the UWA’s own processes.
So a skeptic would regard Lewandowsky’s LOG12 work as indefensible, and the Fury paper as just compounding the incompetence, yet scientists like yourself are prepared to defend it. The problem that creates in persuading people that the science behind global warming is sound is that there appears to be nothing that the establishment will consider beyond the pail. People don’t need to understand climate models, or the physics of warming, or indeed many of the details of the arguments back and forth, to be able to see that LOG12 and Fury are laughably bad – and that the establishment is not prepared to throw Lewandowsky under the bus.
How bad does behaviour have to be before the science establishment will see what a regular person can see? When will scientists stop defending the indefensible?
Some quick remarks:
– There seems to be some confusion in the comments: my post was about retracting a paper for legal reasons. As far as I can tell, all quotes in the paper were public statements and not maliciously altered in any way. The way I see it, if you don’t like to be quoted, the right thing to do is to stop making public statements, rather than threatening a scholarly publisher with legal action. Otherwise, all political op/eds quoting politicians would have to be retracted, as well as “The Daily Show” canceled. If you don’t like publicity, don’t be public.
– There may or may not be other than legal reasons to retract this or other papers, but that was not the issue, nor would I feel very qualified to raise that issue in this case. In fact, the world may be cooling to a snowball right this instance and both LOG12 and ‘fury’ may be both bad social psychology and methodologically flawed, it would still be irrelevant to this post. The one reason why the post above exists is this sentence:
Had this sentence instead mentioned major academic flaws, I’d still be an editor for Frontiers and the post above would not have been written. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the retraction.
– There is a reason I put a link at the first mention of ‘delusional’. If you clicked it and still don’t see the relevance, I can’t help you.
– If you feel personally addressed by my post, you are probably deluding yourself as to your importance.
– I do have plenty of research, teaching and a private life, so in what little time is left, I have to make some hard choices when deciding to whom, when and in which way I can reply on my own blog. I apologize if this occasionally means disappointing one or the other commenter, I always try to be as inclusive as possible. I’m already happy to even get a post a month out.
Does the explanation that Frontiers gave after your 9 April post, but before your most recent comment, change your views at all? Excerpts:
“The studied subjects were explicitly identified in the paper without their consent. It is well acknowledged and accepted that in order to protect a subject’s rights and avoid a potentially defamatory outcome, one must obtain the subject’s consent if they can be identified in a scientific paper. The mistake was detected after publication, and the authors and Frontiers worked hard together for several months to try to find a solution. In the end, those efforts were not successful…
“For Frontiers, publishing the identities of human subjects without consent cannot be justified in a scientific paper. Some have argued that the subjects and their statements were in the public domain and hence it was acceptable to identify them in a scientific paper, but accepting this will set a dangerous precedent. With so much information of each of us in the public domain, think of a situation where scientists use, for example, machine learning to cluster your public statements and attribute to you personality characteristics, and then name you on the cluster and publish it as a scientific fact in a reputable journal. While the subjects and their statements were public, they did not give their consent to a public psychological diagnosis in a scientific study. Science cannot be abused to specifically label and point out individuals in the public domain.
“…For the paper in question, the issue was clear, the analysis was exhaustive, all efforts were made to work with the authors to find a solution and we even worked on the retraction statement with the authors. But there was no moral dilemma from the start – we do not support scientific publications where human subjects can be identified without their consent.”
Had this been stated like this in the retraction notice, this would likely have changed my reaction quite a bit. Like this, it just sounds like an excuse to at least appear to be doing some damage control, prompted merely by the backlash.
And yet, I’m not entirely sure I would even subscribe to their policy formulated like this, as this would, for instance, effectively be a gag order, preventing scholars publicly discussing the mental status of politicians and other public figures of importance. But I’m not a legal expert by any means, and the benefits may outweigh the costs in this case.
“There seems to be some confusion in the comments: my post was about retracting a paper for legal reasons.”
But Bjorn,
It now seems the only people involving Lawyers were Lew and Frontiers, and it’s been evident for some time now. Frontiers states:
“For Frontiers, publishing the identities of human subjects without consent cannot be justified in a scientific paper.” . . .
“With so much information of each of us in the public domain, think of a situation where scientists use, for example, machine learning to cluster your public statements and attribute to you personality characteristics, and then name you on the cluster and publish it as a scientific fact in a reputable journal.”
That’s the reason, as offered by Frontiers. The reasoning seems solid to me.
I can certainly understand how people would be offended by Lewandowsky’s use of the information to diagnose traits in people, and then publish their names in a paper. But even still, the legal threat meme was generated by people close to Lewsdowsky:
“”The paper names and quotes several blogs and individuals. Shortly after publication, Frontiers received complaints from climate deniers who claimed they had been libelled in the paper and threatened to sue the journal unless the paper was retracted.””
Elaine McKewon : https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2014/04/reviewer-journal-wilts-under-climate-of-intimidation/
Yet, Frontiers states:
“Some of those complaints were well argued and cogent and, as a responsible publisher, our policy is to take such issues seriously. Frontiers conducted a careful and objective investigation of these complaints. Frontiers did not “cave in to threats”; in fact, Frontiers received no threats.”
I suppose the idea that a journal caving to pressure and not protecting its scientists could cause reasoned people to want to rethink their relationship with the journal. However, if the journal did not in fact receive any threats, and their retraction was due to concerns as outlined by Frontiers, then I fail to see the objection.
In fact, it seems to me Frontiers should be applauded for taking a stand on privacy matters.
No threats? Stephen McIntyre wrote to Frontiers:
And then this threat is answered by a retraction that states “the legal context is insufficiently clear”
That was the state of affairs at the time of retraction. If that isn’t an explicit threat, you live in another world than me – which, on second thought, you actually may. Frontiers live in this world, saw it for what it was and reacted accordingly (see also the link above to Simon Singh’s case which is pertinent as it also took place in the UK, was also about unpersuadables and also involved libel).
Moreover, to me, this latest post-hoc reasoning by Frontiers reeks more like damage control than anything else (see my reply above).
P.S.: Just FYI, see the combination of ‘malice’, ‘defamatory’ and ‘untrue’ with regard to public statements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Proving_libel
Bjorn,
I think we have had a civil discourse on your blog, but I must speak out on this point. I agree with you that Simon Singh’s position was absolutely reasonable regarding homeopathy. He should have been supported to the hilt.
Steve McIntyre is, quite frankly, a level above Singh. And more. He is a top level statistical expert. He is very careful in what he says. His reputation is important to him. He has pointed out (in peer reviewed papers) statistical flaws in climate science papers. He pointed out an obvious one in Lewandowsky’s first paper ‘Hoax’. Even I can understand it.
Lewandowsky accused McIntyre of, as I recall, six psychological defects. I cannot see how any of them are true, and given Lewandowsky’s involvement in a highly antagonistic blog, his motives must be scrutinised at least.
You interpret McIntyre’s letter as an obvious legal threat. I think it is much more pragmatic. It points out the truth of what Lewandowdky is doing: he is acting with malice, and is making defamatory and untrue allegations against McIntyre. What would you do in the same circumstance, if similarily accused. Nothing?
Remember, McIntyre has one of the top three climate science blogs traffic sites in the world. And McIntyre says what he means. He has a private professional consulting business too. If he said he was going to sue, he would have said it. But he didn’t. Why should Lewandowsky get a free pass? Or is he above criticism because he published a paper? Lewandowsky is highly suspect – dig a little deeper, like at climateaudit.org, before you reach a conclusion. I think Frontiers has just lost a good man in you for the wrong reasons.
Regards,
ThinkingScientist
I’ve read McIntyre for years. He is very careful in what he claims, and when he has erred, he has always been upfront about it, in my experience.
In this particular case, my sense is that Lewandowsky is correct. Those attracted to conspiracy theories are attracted to skeptic theories. I also think they are attracted to CAGW theories: to wit, Rosie O’Donnell who thinks 9/11 is an inside job. AGW is one of those complex, hard to prove anything about problems that is going to attract the conspiracy minded to one or the other side of the debate. They will look to human motives to understand it.
Why Lewandowsky performed a one sided study is an interesting question. Why not see if the subject attracts conspiracy theorists, on the skeptic and CAGW side? That would have been a more honest question.
And why double down and attack prominent skeptics in Fury?
There could be a wealth of motivations, such as using science to trash skeptics, thereby vindicating Scientists and launch oneself into prominence.
I don’t know if these are Lewandowsky’s motives or not, but I could certainly imagine a person with these motives doing exactly what Lewandowsky did. And if you think about that, it illuminates a darkness in the Scientific world. A world in which predators posing in scientific clothing manipulate a world of conforming scientists. The scientists, against evidence, circle the wagons, and adopt the viral memes of their manipulators as their own.
That’s not a threat. A threat would be “If you don’t withdraw this article I will sue you”.
How many times do you have to be told that the journal said there were no threats?
Have you seen the most recent statement from the journal?
“While the subjects and their statements were public, they did not give their consent to a public psychological diagnosis in a scientific study. Science cannot be abused to specifically label and point out individuals in the public domain.”
You should also note that they say that “we even worked on the retraction statement with the authors”, so that original retraction statement was partly written by Lewandowsky himself!
LOL, if that is your position, let me see if I can make you an offer you can’t refuse 🙂
Bjorn,
As “Thinking Scientist” notes, these are statements of fact: certainly they are supported in McIntyre’s notes. I don’t know McIntyre’s motives, though I’ve read his blog for years. What I do know is that McIntyre has tried to use the institutions and their rules in order to add what I think of as considerable value to a subject of considerable impact to humans. As far as I know, he is doing this solely as an individual.
I also know that Frontiers stated there were no threats. Additionally, Frontiers stated clearly and compellingly the reason for retracting the paper is over privacy concerns. For some reason, you have equated McIntyre’s ability to sue with his intent to sue, but that’s contrary to the public statements.
Some people have a hard time admitting they are wrong. You claim you are willing to take new information from experiments, and adjust your understanding of the world from that. Are you willing to look at the facts here and change your view?
Prof.Brembs,
I congratulate you on your principled stand. Someone has to make a stand against the deniers!
I stumbled upon a recent opinion by a CRR Kampen who is described as a cognitive scientist at https://climatenuremberg.com/2014/04/11/communication-dilemmas-1-wishing-death-on-people-without-losing-them/. Essentially he seems to be wishing for a major catastrophe to catalyse action to fight climate change. However this raises ethical issues and I wonder you or anyone else visiting this blog can comment.
My understanding is as follows. Deniers are evil, anti-science, suffer from various psychological disorders and are only interested in serving their paymasters to perpetuate capitalism – 97% of scientists say so. The “climate concerned” are trying, each in their different way, to fight climate change. However, global, concerted action on a massive scale is needed to save the world from deniers as well as climate change. In that sense, I have some sympathy with Kampen’s views since a disaster might catalyse world opinion and bring about action. On the other hand it seems wrong that many people have to die. But I also understand that 97% of scientists believe that climate change will bring about “resource wars”. I fear that these could be nuclear wars. Even this cloud has a silver lining in that it could take out 100s of millions of potential polluters and the nuclear winter might mitigate global warming. Yet on the other hand it somehow seems wrong that so many people should die. So is Kampen’s wish the lesser of the two evils ?
Hi Bjorn,
And just to complete the story to the “Fury” paper, I am reposting here (with some edits), the background story that Barry Woods posted on the Frontiers blog page concerning this matter. All of the following can be checked.
someone on the Frontiers blog asked – “Who comes off as the biggest nutter?”
John Cook, co-author on the “Fury” paper, is the owner and founder of the SkepticalScience (SkS) website, a strident pro-warming site.
John Cook keeps photo-shopped pictures of himself as Himmler, with the Nazi badges photo-shop replaced with the Skeptical Science logo. How do you think the ‘contrarians’ feel about being researched by John and classified as suffering from psychological disorders?
Prof Lewandowsky, Michael Marriott and John Cook (founder of SkS) are all involved with the Skeptical Science website. This website exists to attack ‘sceptics’. SkS has a private moderators forum called SKSforum.org which is owned and administered by John Cook (co-author of Fury). This can be checked with:
https://www.whois.com/whois/sksforum.org
A while back their images directory was made publically available., Note this was not a hack – they were sloppy with their web admin and left what should have been a private folder publicly accessible. As a consequence it was cached by a Google robot-crawler. The wayback machine captured it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130806172838/https://www.sksforum.org/images/a11g0n3/
They eventually secured the forum, but not before the images were widely seen by an utterly bemused ‘sceptical’ audience. Copies have been stored at the WUWT website. The photos include:
HerrCook: (Himmler photo-shopped with John Cook’s face, note the attention to detail SkS logo on the cap badge, etc)
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/1_herrcook.jpg
and the 1930’s infamous Nuremburg rally photo, photo-shopped with SkS logos on the flags!
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/skstroopers_marked.jpg
John Cook (co-author of Fury) also had photoshopped pictures mocking sceptics,
including Anthony Watts (named in the Fury paper)
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/monkeys.jpg
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/weareskeptics1.jpg
So who are the ‘nutters’ here? The skeptics labelled with psychological disorders in the “Fury” paper or the authors of the Fury paper?
Frontiers have been blindsided by political activistist posing as ‘researchers’ who are trying to settle a few scores with their opponents and critics. At least that is the perception many people have. Steve McIntyre a nutter? Hardly. And John Cook does not have any valid qualifications in psychology. But he does have a penchant for wanting to appear in mocked up Nazi photos and performs similar activities photo-shopping climate skeptics onto unflattering imaginary situations. and then he goes onto to co-author a paper called Recursive Fury claiming those he diskes have psychological disorders.
John Cook/Prof Lewandowsky are no doubt briefing Dana Nuccitelli (a Skeptical Science super admin, and author) about their side of the ‘story’ who is now using his Guardian blog to attack Frontiers… Maybe Frontiers lawyers should check that agreement with the authors, very carefully, as Dana seems to be a proxy of the authors to attack Frontiers.
Long post, probably some typos, but the gist should be clear.
Best wishes,
ThinkingScientist
Thinking Scientist
No the gist of your startlingly ad hominem repost is not clear, nor your reason for posting it.
And you were doing so well with the “I’m a reasonable guy just interested in truth and stuff” act.
Shame.
Hi Clev,
Please feel free to show that any part of my post above (reproduced from Barry Woods post at Frontiers) is untrue.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Every part of that post is factually accurate. Not nice, sure, but not ad hominem. Cook did all that stuff himself. And its public.
Best wishes,
ThinkingScientist
Thinking Scientist
From your reply it appears you do not know what ad hominem means. Seriously, how can you say the rant you have posted is “not ad hominem” and keep a straight face? How relevant are photos the guy keeps on his PC?
As for “every part of that post is factually accurate”, I don’t really want to get into what I suspect would degenerate into a tedious semantic debate, but one example of an inaccuracy: to describe the Skeptical Science website as “pro-warming” is bizarre. If you are “pro” something you are in favour of it. “Anti-warming” would surely be accurate?
Just to cut the “no contradiction” – “no threat” discussion short: https://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/xp.html
From my perspective, if someone cannot see the legal threats, if someone cannot see the contradiction between retraction and damage control, those are all red flags to me that I shouldn’t waste my time on individuals who live in a different world from me – a world where evidence is irrelevant and one’s one own ideation rules. Is it pure coincidence that the same individuals who ignore obvious unpleasant circumstances (threats and contradictions) are also the ones who ignore unpleasant scientific evidence?
The way I see it, the respective individuals commenting here are anecdotal examples of precisely the collusion of psychological traits which characterize many communities of unpersuadables, quite accurately summed up by the categories in the recursive fury paper or evinced in LOG12. Say what you will about how these two papers have come about, but some discussants here exhibit traits reminiscent of the ones described in them. Clearly, some portions of what ThinkingScientist (denial of legal threat), Paul Matthews (denial of contradiction and denial of threat) or Ed Barbar (denial of threat) have written, inasmuch as I can call them ‘climate skeptics’ (or denialists), makes them look precisely like the type of character outlined in the fury paper, at least in my eyes. But since many commenters here have pointed out that these two Lewandowski papers must be wrong, there is only one other possible explanation: Surely, no ‘real climate skeptic’ would ever come out and write publicly, without sarcasm tags, that dropping ‘malice’, ‘defamatory’ and ‘untrue’ in the same sentence would not be an obvious legal threat? No ‘real climate skeptic’ would ever come out publicly and state, in ernest and not in jest, that “no ethical issues” and “The identity of the subjects could not be protected” wouldn’t constitute a contradiction? Clearly, such public statements would only serve to make the whole ‘climate skeptic’ community look utterly silly, so every individual posting such comments must be a ‘warmist’ plant, just like these extreme answers in the LOG12 questionnaire. 🙂
So now I’m thinking to moderate this thread more heavily, in order to protect the reputation of the ‘skeptic’ community. Maybe from now on I should delete every obviously silly post that would make the ‘skeptics’ look like crazy people? 🙂
Seriously though, on the other hand, some of the evidence shown here (in particular the leaked images, taken at face value) reveal a disturbing side of the scientists as well. That being said, Linus Pauling was a great chemist but a nutcase for vitamin C. Newton was a great physicist, but a religious nutcase. So there are cases (although I’d imagine these would constitute exceptions) where being ‘eccentric’ doesn’t necessarily invalidate your science.
Bjorn,
1) there has been a formal complaint at least from McIntyre;
2) the initial retraction notice, agreed with the authors of the paper, mentions an “insufficiently clear legal context”;
3) there has been no legal action, not even the beginning of one, as far as I know.
On the other side, Frontiers produced three statements:
1) the aforementioned retraction notice, that doesn’t mention any legal action, but an unclear legal context;
2) a second statement in which specifies that there have been *no threats* and that the article was retracted because of ethical issues (protecting the rights of people is an ethical issue to me).
3) a third statement that says very clearly that the article was unacceptable (“publishing the identities of human subjects without consent cannot be justified in a scientific paper”) and that it constituted an abuse of science (“Science cannot be abused to specifically label and point out individuals in the public domain”)
Finally, the editor in chief of Frontiers himself published a personal comment in a thread on the Frontier’s forum, that calls the paper “a tragic disservice” to science, “a monumental mistake” that they refused to fix, “a public lynching”, and “activism that abuses science as a weapon”.
These are the actual facts. Although the possibility of legal action was real, we have no news that any such action was started by anybody. We have instead a succession of statements from the journal that with increasing directness state that the article was ethicaly unacceptable and an abuse of science.
So, given these plain facts, how can you
a) claim that there were legal threats. Although we all agree that legal threats weere certainly possible, no formal one was made before article was retracted. The theoretical possibility of a legal threat is not a legal threat;
b) claim that the reason of the retraction resides in the legal threats. When the journal has repeated over and over again, with incredible frankness, that the article was indefensible crap.
And at the end of all that, you dare calling other people “unpersuadables”! That’s really hilarious. Think about it.
Wow, remarkable – is this another ‘warmist’ trying to make the ‘skeptics’ look bad? Because if this were representative evidence for the psychological state of climate deniers, they are rightfully ridiculed.
Funny, it’s obvoius to me that you’re in plain, utter denial. Let’s see how Lewandowsky’s “Fury” categories apply to what you wrote.
“unreflexive counterfactual thinking (that is, the hypothesis was built on a non-existent, counterfactual state of the world, even though knowledge about the true state of the world was demonstrably available at the time):
You said: “if someone cannot see the legal threats […] those are all red flags to me that I shouldn’t waste my time on individuals who live in a different world from me”.
However, you are perfectly aware that Frontiers declared officially: “Frontiers did not “cave in to threats”; in fact, Frontiers received no threats.”
“Must be wrong”
You wrote: “to me, this latest post-hoc reasoning by Frontiers reeks more like damage control than anything else”
“Nefarious intent”
“Clearly, if legal problems are cited, it’s always money that’s at stake [..] I have heard through the grapevine that Frontiers apparently may have felt some pressure recently, to make more money, to publish more papers.”
“Mutually contradictory hypotheses”
“It is quite clear, why the content of the paper may feel painful to those cited in it, but as long as “conspiracist ideation” is not an official mental disorder, I cannot see any defamation.”. Yet at the same time your whole argument is that the legal threats of defamation were serious enough to convince the journal to retract a perfectly sound paper.
“Victimization”
Pretty much everything you wrote, as it starts from the assumption that the paper was retracted because of “threats”.
Bjorn,
“From my perspective, if someone cannot see the legal threats, if someone cannot see the contradiction between retraction and damage control, those are all red flags to me that I shouldn’t waste my time on individuals who live in a different world from me”
That’s right. Your world and the rules governing that world are different form the world of offered evidence and facts. That’s why people are calling you to task.
“Ed Barbar (denial of threat)”
Don’t put words in my mouth, Bjorn. You may think you are brilliant\, but so far you seem rather weak in your thinking.
lol 🙂 You wrote: “the only people involving Lawyers were Lew and Frontiers” and spent about 40% of the remainder of that comment to show how “the threat meme” was all a conspiracy by Frontiers and Lewandowski and that no legal threat ever occurred.
Now, if you just could just please start attempting to deny that your denial of a legal threat is actually a denial at all, you would so completely make my day! 🙂 That’s the key piece of evidence that might actually convince me that climate change deniers really are a bunch of crazy people.
If you keep doing this, I might actually start believing that you guys are all ‘warmists’ having a field day with me, lol 🙂 Do people like this really exist?
“to show how “the threat meme”was all a conspiracy by Frontiers and Lewandowski and that no legal threat ever occurred.”
I find it very difficult to understand how you can go from: ” But even still, the legal threat meme was generated ***by people close to Lewsdowsky***:”
To:
“conspiracy by Frontiers and Lewandowski”
On the other hand, you make the jump from stating facts to writing threats, so who knows what else goes on in your mind.
Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t going to review for Frontiers anymore.
Hi Bjorn,
Just to be clear, John Cook (co-author on Fury and owner of Skeptical Science) has no scientific qualifications whatsoever. By his own admission:
“”I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist” – John Cook, Skeptical Science”
(see https://www.populartechnology.net/2012/03/truth-about-skeptical-science.html)
Similarily Mike Marriott, also on the Fury paper. He is an Information Management consultant who also admits (on his own blog) he does not understand climate scence papers. You can see it on his blog under “about”. Jo Nova has blogged about it at:
https://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/lewandowsky-dismisses-bloggers-but-they-are-his-research-team-who-is-mike-hubble-marriott/
So of the three authors on Fury, two are not scientists and run a high profile blog dissing those that don’t agree with them and historically censoring and rewriting comments to retrospectively change arguments.
On the other hand, Steve McIntyre is a highly qualified mathematician and statistical expert who has published several peer reviewed papers on statistical flaws in climate proxy reproductions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre
Best wishes,
ThinkingScientist
I see McIntyre cited as credible.
People might check out McIntyre profile at DeSmogBlog, although I see it needs updating, as many items are missing, like the serious problems with this key post of his..
McIntyre’s most famous paper depended on a 100:1 cherry-pick atop distorted time-series statistics, see Effect of Selection in the Wegman report and Replication and due diligence, Wegman style. Since Wegman+Said used the code, they got the same results. I checked the R code,
(a) Wrong statistics, possibly total incompetence.
(b) Sort + 100:1 cherry-pick code, not an accident.
Dear John,
Nice attack, but does not change the truth of the following that I stated:
“Steve McIntyre is a highly qualified mathematician and statistical expert who has published several peer reviewed papers on statistical flaws in climate proxy reproductions”
Best Wishes,
ThinkingScientist
You guys crack me up! lol 🙂 Ok, I’ll admit I was wrong! How could I ever think that mentioning all the necessary legal criteria for proving defamation in a court could ever, possibly be perceived as a legal threat? How silly of me. Obviously, all these complaints were only offers, offers that Frontiers simply couldn’t refuse 🙂 How could I not see that?
Bjoern, which part of the official journal’s statement:
“Frontiers did not “cave in to threats”; in fact, Frontiers received no threats.”
you don’t understand?
Or, if you understand its meaning, could you share with us your own conspiracy theory as to why we should disregard it?
Hi Bjorn,
I can see how you can interpret Steve McIntyre’s complaint as a legal threat. There is nothing unreasonable in your interpretation, even though I disagree with it.
I disagree with your interpretation because I have read a lot of McIntyre’s output. He is making a statement of fact. If he were to issue a threat I think he would have stated something along the lines of “if you don’t retract, I’ll sue”. However, that is not McIntyre’s style (although it appears to be Michael Mann’s preferred approach).
Disagreeing over an interpretation of words does not make those who disagree with you irrational or delusional. Reasonable people can see the other side of the argument and accept alternative interpretations exist even where they have different opinions.
Best wishes,
ThinkingScientist
I’ve skimmed the comments and will add some of my own.
First up, I applaud your stand, Björn. You have hit the nail on the head with your assessment of the situation.
Second, a quick comment about the pictures you referred to – which were stolen from a private website, they were not in the public domain. These people have been relentlessly pilloried, caricatured by tasteless cartoons and called all sorts of names in the climate deniosphere, including nazis, fascists, communists and socialists (sometimes all at once!). While the reaction may not have been the most tasteful, reading what they’ve had to endure I don’t blame them for trying to ease the pain by making a joke of the disgusting name-calling they’ve had to suffer.
Thirdly, Steve McIntyre is not a statistician by profession. His hobby is using statistics to try to show up flaws in the work of real scientists. He has made no positive contribution to climate science, quite the reverse – attempting to slow research and tie scientists’ time up in FOI and other vexatious requests (on the public record). He has not published oodles of papers. Maybe a couple including one which, as John Mashey pointed out, was deeply flawed (not just a small error but one that negated a major point he was trying to make).
The “subsequent comments” from Frontiers were blog articles, not formal statements, which might explain why the authors felt they were able to take such liberties – and a lot of what was written there is contradicted by evidence elsewhere. (The handling of this situation makes one wonder what else is not handled in the most professional manner.)
Finally, except that certain people have been pointing out the fact all over the internet for the past 12 months or more, few would realise those same people’s comments were part of the analysis for Recursive Fury. Most weren’t mentioned in the paper itself, their comments were buried in the supplementary material (and you’d probably need a magnifying glass to read it). The recursive fury continues unabated.
Dear Sou,
In your post you state:
That statement by you is untrue – or are you suggesting that a Google webcrawler hacked the SkS site? The photos were publically accessible on the SkS website, which is why a Google web bot found them. I
even provided a link to demonstrate this. If you have evidence that they were stolen, please provide it.
With the following quote you appear to demonstrate that you have a reading comprehension problem:
What I actually wrote was “Steve McIntyre is a highly qualified mathematician and statistical expert who has published several peer reviewed papers on statistical flaws in climate proxy reproductions”
I did not claim he is a professional statistician – that is your straw man. I did not claim he had published “oodles of papers” – I said several. That is your straw man, although even then you qualify your statement by pretty much agreeing with me (“maybe a couple”). As regards the alleged error you claim, there has been no peer reviewed paper rebutting McIntyre & McKitrick. If its so full of critical errors, why has no-one published a correction? As regards McIntyre’s qualifications – have you ever actually read his Bio showing his academic credentials? He is a highly qualified mathematician and his academic achievements clearly show this.
Best wishes,
ThinkingScientist
hi Björn,
A great posting and an excellent decision that you have made up your mind and thus will resign as an editor for the Frontiers journals. Your statement below is a very clear signal for all other editors at one of the Frontier journals.
“The one reason why the post above exists is this sentence: “This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study.” “
Recursive twit.