People across the UK are rolling in the aisles in laughter.
Lewandowsky’s latest paper, “Recursive Fury” (which has just reappeared), categorized a comment by Richard Betts under the heading “Excerpt Espousing Conspiracy Theory” (in the supplemental data). But instead of being a comment from a rabid tin-foil-hat skeptic, Betts turns out to be Head of Climate Impacts at the UK Met Office and an IPCC lead author.
When Betts was informed about this by Barry Woods, he tweeted “Lewandowsky et al clearly deluded!”
Here’s the comment by Betts that Lewandowsky et al think demonstrates conspiracist ideation. Betts is pointing out how easily the authors of the original paper (claiming that skeptics-believe-the-moon-landing-was-faked) could have posted their survey link in places where skeptics were actually likely to see it. The Moon landing paper — after all — claimed to analyze skeptics but ended up getting results only from sites that were virulently anti-skeptic.
Richard Betts: “The thing I don’t understand is, why didn’t they just make a post on sceptic blogs themselves, rather than approaching blog owners. They could have posted as a Discussion topic here at Bishop Hill without even asking the host, and I very much doubt that the Bish would have removed it. Climate Audit also has very light-touch moderation and I doubt whether Steve McIntyre would have removed such an unsolicited post. Same probably goes for many of the sceptic blogs, in my experience. So it does appear to that they didn’t try very hard to solicit views from the climate sceptic community.”
In this debate there were literally thousands of comments about the moon-landing paper. What bad luck that of all the ones they could have chosen as “raw data” demonstrating their theory, they pick one from someone who clearly shows how blind their tool is? How unfortunate. As head of a UK Met Office group, is Betts driven by his ideology?
It rather exposes the banality of it all. Betts made a reasonable point, didn’t posit a conspiracy, yet Lewandowksy et al think it’s an example of “recursive fury”.
On twitter @richardbetts asked author John Cook to explain: Hi @skepticscience, why was my comment here “espousing conspiracy theory“?! That‘s just crazy. http://t.co/PKWfisgnEs
John Cook replied: supplementary data for Recursive Fury are any comments *related* to particular theory. It’s raw data, not final paper.
Betts to Cook: You included my remark in list entitled “excerpts espousing conspiracy theory“. This means you think I buy conspiracy theory. So are you now saying that you agree that my remark was *not* espousing conspiracy theory?
Lucia jibes: Thinking Lew authors didn‘t try hard to solicit skeptic views = evidence of conspiracy ideation. The rule is: “criticism of Lewandowsky“ = “Conspiracy ideation“
Richard Betts: I think there‘ll be a few laughs about this at the office tomorrow! Anyway, bedtime – ‘night!
Cook now says people are misrepresenting the paper (by quoting it exactly? oh how cruel), and claims he and the other authors got the header wrong, but not that their entire methodology is flawed.
Cook: “One misrepresentation of Recursive Fury is that we accuse Professor Richard Betts of the Met Office of being a conspiracy theorist because one of his quotes appears in our raw data. This inclusion of a relevant comment in the raw data of a Supplementary Material document was reported in hyperventilating fashion by one blogger as a spectacular carcrash. However, there is no mention of Professor Betts in our final paper and we are certainly not claiming that he is a conspiracy theorist. To claim otherwise is to ignore what we say about the online supplement in the paper itself. The presence of the comment in the supplementary material just attests to the thoroughness of our daily Google search.
Nevertheless, I can see how this misunderstanding arose. The Supplementary Material features the heading “Excerpt Espousing Conspiracy Theory” referring to the excerpted quotes that we pasted into the spreadsheet. In hindsight, the heading should have been “Excerpt relevant to a recursive theory”, because the criterion for inclusion was simply whether or not they referred to one of the hypotheses. The analysis of conspiracist ideation occurred after that, and involved the criteria mentioned at the outset.”
As usual, we can only wonder at Cook’s use of English. (The abuse of which seems to be a recurring problem).
Who is misrepresenting what here? It’s hardly the fault of commentators if they are quoting the paper accurately. Welcome to the wooly world of Lewandowsky-Cook-analysis where exact cut and paste quotes are called “misrepresentation”. It is yet another example of how the pair abuse the English language. We think through our words, and this is not just a typo. When it comes to the core concepts we discuss, like “deniers” and “conspiracies”, if you can’t define your terms accurately, sloppy writing means sloppy thinking. (But then, sloppy thinking attracts it’s own rewards: sloppy grants, and sloppy journalists). Two million dollars and mass headlines is not much of a “deterrent”.
Lewandowsky, Cook, et al will claim that they didn’t filter comments according to whether they were accurate criticisms or not, which is true, they “made no comment on the merit of any criticism.” But that is rather the point. If people made an accurate criticism, and pointed out a true flaw, what use is a tool that labels them “ideated”?
The Brits, who recognise Betts instantly, fell about and found this utterly hysterical. They discuss the rehashed paper and this “car-crash” moment (as Bishop Hill calls it). See also Geoff Chambers’ blog. Jeff ID laughed to tears when he heard.
Enjoy.
h/t Barry Woods.
ahhhh…..I love these guys. Better than watching Southpark
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It may be entertaining from an intellectual viewpoint but Lewandowski et al are STILL on the public payroll and
doing inordinate damage to the reputation of Australian Universities with , of course, special emphasis on UWA.
In a sane world there would be hell to pay over such publicly visible lack of Academic Rigor but the UWA and Australian Universities Commission just plod on as if nothing has happened.
Scandalous.
KK
650
KK, you are absolutely right.
UInfortunately, entrenched academics are almost as difficult to get rid of as entrenched bureaucrats, unless of course they dare utter a sceptical viewpoint on global warming.
Universities and governments are stuffed full of individuals, like Lewandowsky, who would not last five minutes in the private sector.
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They’re everywhere. The judiciary, the public service, academia and any where else in the public service where a lack of accountability to the taxpayer exists. Just as bad over here in NZ I suspect. They indulge themselves at our expense and our politicians are loath to hold them accountable. Junkets everywhere you look. All under the not so diligent attention of our media who for the most part have both eyeballs firmly lodged in the left eyesocket.
At least parliamentary wing of the Aussie Labour party is looking a bit like a used cow paddock at the moment, most of you must be happy about that. Small mercies.
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Ceetee
“A used cow paddock.” What a beautifully evocative image of our current “leadership”!
176 days to go, I believe.
Cheers,
Speedy
90
To true. In the UK we have equally entrenched characters peddling this (CAGW) rubbish. It seems only retirement gets them out, but that simply opens the door for another. For example, our soon to retire Chief Government Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington, was on TV yesterday claiming that the CO2 we emit today will affect the climate in 25 years time (and similarly the extreme weather events today were ‘created’ by our actions 25 years ago. Where do these loonies come from? In my letter of complaint to him, I notably refused to use his knighted title “Sir”, stating “I fail to see how such a title can be awarded or justified” 🙂
10
Oooh, you are awlful, PM! Just shows your anti-intellectual bias. No intellectual of merit would soil his hands stooping to actually do anything useful.
Go to the naughty corner!
10
Peter Miller
You’re alas correct.
These days you practically have to be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy to lose tenure.
Very sad, really.
20
In a sane world Lewy would be a character in South Park; I’m sure Cook is.
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Update: the scandalous Lewandowsky “moon hoax” paper has now been published, and the stench from UWA is being noticed around the world:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/28/lewandowsky-doubles-down/
20
I want to be a Nascar driver too.
40
Better headline may have been:
😉
111
This is almost as funny as “An idiot abroad” and coming to a cinema near you a young warmist expert in the martial art of “no can do” takes on evil planet destroying oil shills in RECURSIVE FURY!! and soon the sequel CROUCHING WARMIST HIDDEN GERBIL!
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Who would have imagined a return of Gilbert & Sullivan?
He is the very model of a modern delusional professional.
40
Richard Betts is a very nice fellow, even if officially still a warmist, and a beacon of hope that the Met Office will in the future provide only rigorous scientific advice on climate to the UK government. He is a young man and it would be very pleasing to see him as the Met’s director one fine day.
I wonder how long it took Lew and Cook to think up ‘Recursive Fury’ – a day, a week? Reminds me of Gavin’s self-conscious attempts to appear to be of oh-so-superior intellect with his bafflegab on RealClimate.
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Recursive Fury: What you get after a heavy night on the turps, followed by a good Glaswegian Vindaloo.
100
“Recursive fury” relies entirely on the authors’ mis-reading and/or deliberately misrepresenting the rational and valid criticisms of LOG12 – which is, in effect, a ghost-paper that has yet to see the light of a legitimate publishing day.
From my reading of the comments he’s used in support of his “theory”, most – if not all – are on a rational par with Betts’ observations. So, I wouldn’t call Lewandowsky “deluded”, but either intellectually dishonest or profoundly challenged in the reading comprehension and research skills departments!
But that aside, his timing is quite bizarre. His initial (and for all intents and purposes, so low profile as to be considered invisible) “survey” was conducted in 2010. What took him so long to pull together this still un-published (albeit deservedly so) paper? Could it be that he knew all along that as “scholarship” it was completely worthless?!
He didn’t begin his ludicrous barrage of “articles” until circa Sept. 3. It was quite obvious that these were diversionary – as his failure to respond to the questions and criticisms of LOG12 was pathetic and unprofessional.
So it certainly wouldn’t surprise me to learn that his “survey” paper, in conjunction with his September “articles”, was floated simply to provoke legitimate responses from the skeptic community that he could then twist and turn beyond recognition in order to support his magnificent obsession!
[Hro, it certainly would surprise me. That would require quite a lot of forethought and planning. – Jo]
As I had noted on my own blog, Judith Curry had written:
Had he taken her advice, it would have been a far, far better thing that he did then, than he has ever done before!
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HRO:
Phil:
60
That comment of Prof Judith Curry’s is in the Lewandiwsky/Cook supplementary data as well
!!
Under 2 seperate headings..
Is her thoughts also also conspiracy ideation….?
… Or just rational criticism of a poor paper really
60
The big tobacco & big oil conspiracy theorists are back.
22/3/13
Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
“Our paper Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation has been published.”
It was big oil that did it, I tells ya!
Did I mention big tobacco?
They wanna destroy our planet!
10
hro001
“What took him so long to pull together this still un-published (albeit deservedly so) paper? Could it be that he knew all along that as “scholarship” it was completely worthless?!”
It was around August 2010 that John Cook met Lew. In the internal SkS mails (the Treehut Files) Cook talks about dividing his reader database into sceptics and warmists for use in surveys, designing denier bots etc. and expresses admiration for Lew”s methods – described as “kicking the ants nest”. And when Lew asked Cook to link his survey at SkS Cook said he’d do so when he’d got his own survey ready, something he never did, as far as we know.
Lew had already got the results he wanted by September 2010, when he mentioned them at Monash. While the analysis was quick and dirty, searching the literature for justification for linking climate scepticism with conspiracist ideation might have taken a while. The obvious link would be via research into belief (this is Adam Corner’s approach). But reporting that people who disbelieve one thing are also likely to disbelieve another would hardly shake the foundations of scepticism and help him in his quest to shape tomorrow’s world.
30
As a Pom who has family in Brisbane – has been to the wonderful Fraser Island, ate Surf and Turf at the Hervey Bay sailing club as the guest of some wonderful people, wondered in awe at Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens, spent time in Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, The Hunter Valley, The Blue Mtns’ and of course Sydney – and in all our travels met wonderful kind people who helped us no end…………….
How the hell did someone like Lewandowsky manage to fool the real and well respected Academics in Oz such that he holds the position that he does?
His work is a mess.
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He didn’t fool all of us Doug – only the ones still on the public teat!!
BTW – thanks for your nice comments about Australia & Australians as well.
We sort of like most “poms” EXCEPT when it comes to the Ashes where we can’t stand any of you. (And it;s not looking good for us in regard to the Ashes either – seems the South African coach is teaching us how to lose????
Cheers,
172
I was in a meeting in Brisbane in 2009 when a fellow Brit promised not to mention Cricket at all.
In the next breath – he “put on” a huge sneeze ……… “ASSSHHHES!”
Brought the house down :0)
Looking forward to the Lions tour.
The Six Nations here was tremendous.
All the best.
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Dougy,
Sorry, I think we will do you over in “rugger” (not my favourite sport) but horrified to think we MAY lose the Ashes.
Are you coming out for the Ashes?
Please email Jo if you are so I can get your email address and correspond with you – I would love to meet you and show you the REAL Australia.
Cheers,
30
No sadly – it will be many years before we get over again.
But yes – if and when it does happen
Many thanks for the offer.
10
Don’t blame the coach, you’re just crap at the moment OK?!
40
True but when you finally say farewell to McGrath and Warne it’s a lot like farewelling Howard. Things really turn to crap in a big way fast and we’re left wondering what the hell happened?
30
Not forgetting Gilchrist and Hussey, the pair saving Australia pretty often!
00
I see you guys are talking Ausportugese so I’ll send this to my brother for a translation.
Are there any energy considerations involved?
KK 🙂
00
I don’t think that we need any help with that, that bunch of under-performing overpaid nincompoops are quite capable of excelling in LOOSING without the help of any outsiders. Maybe, just maybe, if they actually listened to the coaching staff and undertook what they are paid to do, then just maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be so damned incompetent at their sport that they claim such expertise in.
Their performance is on par with that of Australia’s CAGW ‘climate science experts’.
When the LIONs come touring here in a few months I cringe for the anticipated mauling that equally incompetent RU representatives will be subject to. No doubt their adoring press will tell them how they are continuously cheated out of victory.
10
Would it be conspiracy theory to say lewandowsky is being as useful as Lysenko?
190
If I may overanalyse the hell out of that analogy….
Seems to me Lewandowsky is implying that Skeptics can’t be trained to believe in accelerating warming amidst a deceleration in warming.
That’s the opposite of Lysenko believing crops could be trained to grow like it was summer while in the middle of winter.
So you are correct, he is being just as useful as Lysenko, he wants the nation to take enormous irrational risks.
Lysenkoism death toll: 40 million starved or frozen.
Lewandowskism death toll: thousands of Brits dying from laughter, and counting!
And it’s only been what, one day? In true warmist fashion we can extrapolate a linear trend based on a nonlinear phenomenon indefinitely into the future and conclude that at this rate it will take Lew over 30 years to beat Lysenko’s record. He may as well give up now. Please.
170
Actually Andrew, I think you have something there.
Lewandowsky is supposedly a psychologist. Psychologists study the way people think, and the ways in which people can be influenced regarding what they think. They use other words, like “cognate” and “respondence”, to make it sound more ju-ju, but the basic idea is all about messing around in people’s heads.
And what he has found, is a whole group of people, many of whom have no tertiary qualification, let alone ‘a superior degree’, who seem to be resistant, if not immune, to the meticulously prepared, scientifically crafted, and psychologically orthodox, messages on climate.
“Sod off,” they say, “you ain’t messing in my head, mate. Go and stick your ideation up your left nostril”.
Well, you can imagine the effrontery! Here is a senior academic, at a prestigious institution of learning, in mortal danger of injury to his left nostril. Something must be done. but what?
The answer is to take the poor benighted English Language, and torture it into forms that are incomprehensible to every member of the population except those who subscribe to the Psychological inner wisdom, and know of the secret writings. For there they are safe. For who is to say they are wrong, when language can no longer be the foundation of rational thought.
340
Rereko, I believe he feels safe in his bubble, surrounding himself with likeminded people who never exercise his doubts. Perhaps there will come a time when psychologists will study his self delusion and ask themselves how, with all his education, he could be so irrational. Ditto for all of them. Thinking about it I sort of see a pattern. There were academics involved in all of the most heinous political movements. I guess higher education can give you an extensive knowledge but not necessarily teach you to be a rational sentient human being. In other words, knowledge is not necessarily wisdom. Just my thoughts.
90
And on the matter of torturing language beyond recognition, I realise now the word “opposite” in my comment was the wrong word choice. Logically the opposite proposition of B(c,s) is ¬B(c,s), not the ¬B(p,w) as was written.
Perhaps “converse” would have been more appropriate.
But as long as the intended message got across… as it seems to have done.
Now if we all communicated in “the language of science” imagine how confused most of us would be. 😉
All our comments would be much shorter, but they’d take even longer to understand.
31
STOP! You’re playing with Lew’s delirium! (lyrics)
With apologies to Ladyhawke, who are groovy, and ought not be associated with such… ugliness.
60
That is absolutely brilliant. I had to laugh. Thank you Rereke W. Annie.
40
You’re welcome.
20
That’s a keeper Rereke, i shall frame it and hang it on the wall. Very entertaining, keep it up.
40
I’ll remember that line for the next time I want some “colorful” language.
10
Andrew McRae @ 6.1
yeah but what a way to go!
30
Actually, thousands of Brits HAVE been dying, not rhetorically, but literally, from cold. Not least and very visibly a fit 26 year old film maker who had decided to sleep rough for research. In a building. in a city. He died.
rhetorical; deaths kind of devalue the real deaths.
Lewandowskis camp really do have blood on their hands.
00
The sad thing is the buffoonery of Lewandowsky, Cook and Mann probably does more to undermine the alarmist cause than just about anything else.
Sad?
It is so much more intellectually satisfying (but much less fun) to see alarmist ‘science’ being methodically sliced and diced than to watch its leading adherents flounder around in a morass of clearly manipulated data, falsehoods, forced retractions and deliberate misinterpretations.
Someone recently made the comment that the term ‘denier’ should be restricted to those who deny the self-evident existence of natural climate cycles – the great heresy of the alarmist cult. Yet, this is the great denial: the rejection of natural climate cycles.
Sceptics are often falsely accused by alarmists of not believing in climate change. I think I can speak on behalf of all reasonable sceptics by saying: “Yes, we do believe in climate change because it is the natural state of things. We just do not believe: i) AGW – if it exists – is anything other than a mildly interesting minor phenomenon, and ii) that CAGW is anything other than a scary, unfounded concept designed principally to perpetuate the comfortable lifestyles of the leaders of today’s Global Warming Industry”.
The type of half truth, quoted both above and below, seems to be becoming increasingly standard practice in ‘climate science’ – always blame the headline, not the methodology, when caught out publishing nonsense as a result of gross data manipulation or deliberate misinterpretation.
“Cook now says people are misrepresenting the paper (by quoting it exactly? oh how cruel), and claims he and the other authors got the header wrong, but not that their entire methodology is flawed.”
491
True Peter, as the warmists struggle to retain any credability for themselves they will lash out at some and then side with others also known as tearing each other apart.
I wonder how many will suddenly snap out of their delusion and what the personal damage will be?
91
Yonniestone,
I don’t that those fully committed (to the point of hysteria) will ever admit that they were wrong. They will go through life muttering about the “coming doom”.
With the dawning realisation that public spending can’t keep rising without limit, they might not however be able to do so as full time government employees. People like Paul Ehrlich “have never had it so good” but would be copyists face a far rockier road. (I think I need not extend the analogy to a resident troll).
Nor will the drying up of funds to the climate NGO’s help. One can only hope that the Climate doesn’t change to to cold a state to imperil their abodes on the park benches.
80
Graeme No.3
A very poetic thought about the park benches, or maybe a disheveled Mann screaming warnings at passing crowds of the impending flames of a vengeful Gaia whilst shaking a hockey stick at the sky, yes one can only dream.
101
Yonniestone
I can already see Michael Mann’s epitaph:
Cheers,
Speedy
181
One thing I would add even if the climate warms as much as the alarmists claim to me its nothing to worry about. We are at the technological stage now where its not going to stop our progress. The only thing that will is the taxes and rolling back of cheap energy supplys that the greens are demanding.
40
Nice one Richard Betts.
I dunno why realists get in such a tiswaz about Lewandowsky – like his ‘scientific’ works [if I may use that term] – the bloke is very confused and is lot of tiles short of a full roof.
What he needs now, is to spend some quality time in an institution where they have special rooms and so that he cannot hurt himself too much.
150
because the headline (backed by peer reviewed science) sceptics are nutters believeing in all sorts of conspiracy theories, will go around the world in the media.. and amongst the public and politicians
no journalist will ever actually read the LOG12 paper, or data, just the press release..
just like ‘97% of scientists say….”
or
“300,000 peple are dying every year due to climate cahnge” (soley based on a dodgy GHF think tank report, not from scientists)
161
I thought he already was at the University of Western Australia.
10
Yep, A Smarter Australia. That’s what we need. But not too smart at UWA it would seem.
Received this from the VC UWA just last month:
Great! A Manifesto. Now where have I heard that before?
60
They have finally figured out that there is a strong possibility of a change in Government, and as a result, their revenue streams may decline somewhat.
Everybody Panic!
150
LOL … what a dim statement … what kind of a First World society would not consider universities making an important contribution to it ? Shows that these ‘fools’ are indeed unhinged from reality and desperately clutching at whatever flotsam they can.
No doubt that this important research was funded by the hard-working Australian taxpayer.
30
Ahh.. the recurring nightmare. Wonder if Lew regrets ever conspiring with et and al to assemble the thing?
Oh. The word “assembly” has connotations of a functional construct. Bad choice of words, me.
60
John Cook’s SkS are trying to defend the indefensible, ie 16 years of no warming. Which fits the low sensitivity hypothesis very well, but which forces CAGW people to do ever more hysterical epicycles to justify the high sensitivity hypothesis. SkS’s cloth is visibly looking more threadbare.
It is very interesting that the SkS crew are of one particular political colour. This supports the view that they are driven by political outcome not scientific outcome. As for Dr Lewandowsky, well all I can say is the design of the web-poll is the worst piece of experimental design I have seen in 30 years in science. Which calls me to the question: why? I’m not sure I want to think about the answer as I prefer scientific terminology over scatological.
161
No. No. No.
The warming is continuing. There is just a Mann-opause in temperatures. 😉
150
Ah there Bruce, g’day.
Self proclaimed guru’s such as Prof Lew are not new. Their hero Karl Marx set about the Manifesto on the basis of exactly zero (0.0000 recurring) days within a mine, factory, or workplace within the same postcode of the working classes he was supposedly the champion of.
All that was required was a grandiose ego and a heavy dose of self-delusion. Prof Lew would fit right in.
Cheers,
Speedy.
60
Speaking of Karls, don’t forget that other quintessential self-appointed guru, the guru of all gurus, none other than that Dr Karl Whatshisname on ABC tele.
20
Lew and Cook quote mined my comment, ie they even cherry picked part of my full comment!.
The full comment backed up the fact that the title of the LOG12 paper was rejected by the data of LOG12
With A link To Lewandowsky’s Log 12 survey data, so that anybody could see for themselves
130
As I was named in the papers data (and quoted selectively )
I have made this comment at Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Recursive-Fury-Facts-misrepresentations.html#92440
60
John Cook – Eureka……
He’s just a web designer with government funding to live his lifestyle in a red (fossil fuel) manufactured bean bag. The guy is a pig with his snout in the trough of lies and government funded communication outlets.
A media TART with all the finesse of an expelled
prostituteALP member.In fact he is a few possum balls short of a Kuka Kuka necklace.
121
Dave
That last line is intriguing.
KK 🙂
20
KinkyKeith
You were talking in the last thread about the Kooka Kookas – and they make necklaces out of tree possum balls with numerous other bones (all species) etc. Often quite a few of the possums are used in one necklace.
Sort of like a Kangaroo short in the top paddock.
I just wish John Cook would visit the Angu area of PNG for a few weeks. I had two Angus guarding my place, never saw them, but no one in 5 years ever came into the property. Always, I could leave the house etc unlocked and they would never ever touch anything, ever. John Cook could learn the value of honesty from these people, and if he told them a lie – then that would be terminal for him.
The KukaKuka is just the correct spelling of this nickname of the Angu folks, not Kooka Kooka. These guys could cover themselves in bark sheets and you couldn’t see them from 2 meters in your own garden.
But if you did the wrong thing by them, it was all over.
Would love to go back and see them.
30
Dave
Sounds like a good idea for John C to take a trip there !
I have photos somewhere of a gathering at Hagen or Goroka where I had a couple of hours to spend before the next flight; perhaps the Angu were even among them.
I have in recent years had the idea of going back to visit the bloke I stayed with; the net tells me he is still around and living in Vanimo but have had so much on my plate, and the prospect of the unknown up there, that it is still on the back burner. Security may be an issue and money certainly is.
KK 🙂
20
Hi Dave
A worrying description of yours:
Surely not for incompetence I hope? This would establish a dangerous precedent – what think you, Julia? Wayne? Stephen? Penny? Peter? Craig? et al at nauseum…
Cheers,
Speedy
50
Richard Betts is from the civil and rational (apart from his faith in GCMs!) end of the climate alarm spectrum, whereas Loopy and Cook are further right towards the unhinged end. We poor ‘bemused ones’ (aka ‘sceptics’)have to tackle the whole range of them since each band has had some influence. If they start to fight amongst themselves, and apply some of their abuse to one another, that may make progress to the marginalisation of them all a little faster?
130
Where do I sign up?
10
“… start to fight amongst themselves, and apply some of their abuse to one another …”
Sounds like a certain political party in Australia, recently in the news.
40
Longer Lew and Mann are encouraged to preach, the greater harm they do the cause.
I have been practising , damning thro faint praise on my local Eco_nuts, instead of arguing reality I have pretended to agree and support their vision and encourage them to bravely proceed to the next logical step, as indicated by their “logic”.
They don’t seem to appreciate satire.
But as these politically, ecologically “good folk” will not engage in honest debate, this is a great tool , so far, to set them talking amongst them selves.
They do seem to implode on the concept of draconian imposition of ecorules, yet that is what they insist they need to save the planet.
Keeping a straight face and mouthing the ecospeak is important,I hope to get them to sign up to ban DiHydrogen Monoxide later this year.
90
OMG!
I AM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SICK OF THESE PEOPLE!
As the previous post by Jennifer Marohasy highlighted. . . .
Where are the real world benefits from all this spending of taxpayer funds on climate reaearch?
SERIOUSLY?
WTF has Lewandowsky and his accolyte Cook contributed as an ROI?
‘recursive fury’ is unproductive and counter productive rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, RUBBISH!
180
RESEARCH!
DAMMIT!
30
And the amusing bit is, the useful tools would focus on your misspelling, rather than address the true issue.
20
I think the way you spelt it, sums it up quite nicely.
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Jo I posted this on Skeptical Science. I wonder if it will get snipped or deleted as the Moderators there do not have a very light touch by any means.
To suggest, even by association rather than directly, in the supplementary data that Professor Betts, a lead author of the IPCC and head of Climate Impacts at the UK Met Office espouses conspiracy theory makes one wonder if any other of those who the paper claims “espouse conspiracy theory” are not “deniers” but proponents of CAGW. Professor Betts in his tweets on the matter states the suggestion he is “espousing conspiracy theory, that’s just crazy” and “Lewandowsky et al are clearly deluded”. Naturally I assume you regret this incident as it does rather put “egg on the face”. Perhaps more significantly, Professor Betts, who is manifestly not a “denier” posted on Bishop Hill a site more anti- than pro-CAGW and asks this question “The thing I don’t understand is, why didn’t they (Lewandowsky et al) just make a post on sceptic blogs themselves, rather than approaching blog owners”. He then refers to Steve Mcintyre at Climate Audit as “Moderating with a very light touch” and states “I doubt Steve McIntyre would have removed such an unsolicited post” These comments clearly show that a) although he is a well respected climate scientist he is not averse to reading and posting on anti-warmist sites and b) he regards these two sites as being vety lightly moderated.
I do hope this post does not get snipped as it is a) on topic; b) not repetitious; c) not malevolent and d) does not use hyperbole or inflammatory language
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Recursive fury ???
More like Recursive hilarity..
Each new paper brings more and more to laugh at. !!
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In the USA our Senate just passed an initiative to hopefully stop wasting taxpayer money on the type of useless research offered by Lewandowsky/Cook.
Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds to carry out the functions of the Political Science Program in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation, except for research projects that the Director of the National Science Foundation certifies as promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.
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John Cook has I believe a first degree in physics.
So why hasn’t he chosen to use this to develop his knowledge of meteorology and engage in some proper science?
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Dollars.
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Bollocks Cook! Obviously they thought it was relevant because they thought it espoused conspiracy theory. Now he’s replaced conspiracy theory with some made up term “recursive theory” to weasel his way out of it.
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Jo – hope you won’t mind if I re-post this comment I made at Loopy & Cookie’s “World Shaping” blog earlier, continuing my pursuit of them for faking one of my quotes in their paper.
They may leave it up as a masterpiece of “conspiratorially ideated recursive fury” – but, just in case:-
REPLY: Would I mind? Not at all. Thank you. – Jo
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Foxgoose,
That is superb, thank you.
But since they left a non-redacted version on the website, it is now likely be in the Wayback machine, and possibly several other automatic web archive systems.
I suggest the onus should be on them, or their employer, to demonstrate that all of those archive copies have been removed.
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John Cook:
In other words, the preparation of this paper is sloppy. We can also expect the “science” to be equally sloppy.
Very poor excuse. John
CockCook. Its very clear they ere pissed with the criticism and anything that smelled remotely of it made its way into the “conspiracy” list.Funniest thing is, these people do not see their own ideation. I challenge Lew to do a study of the material on the SkS website and see what kind of people really are loopy. Then to look at his own ramblings.
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Hi BS
Your observation:
“Funniest thing is, these people do not see their own ideation. I challenge Lew to do a study of the material on the SkS website”.
The funny thing, for me, is that the type of analysis done by Lew et Al does not seem to fit into any area of Academic Psychology that I would be happy to acknowledge.
Modern Psychology examines the functioning of the human brain and attached nervous system and cannot really look at “content” the way Lew at Al does.
It is a bit like trying to fix the real shape of a cloud when we can all see that clouds continue to change shape and any such endeavor is pointless. Likewise the “content” of human thoughts are not a topic that any sensible academic would admit to studying.
Sure, “content” can be examined to determine “how” the brain functions but the content itself is not important.
For any academic to use their Authority to determine that some particular line of thought is “wrong” is just nutso.
KK 🙂
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A content psychology professor Eh ! Or a deeply disturbed one ?
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Now Joe you are getting to the nut of the thing.
Disturbed; in terms of content we can recognize groups of thought patterns like: being disturbed.
Technically psychology recognizes things like : Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Happiness, Surprise and Fear but
it is absurd for people like Lewandowski to claim that psychology gives them a base from which to comment
on the “content” of ideas expressed in a rational disagreement.
As a further example of the misuse of “psychology” we have no further to look than the “people
management” or mismanagement that is occurring under the guise of “Organisational Psychology or Marketing Psychology”.
The local banks have driven staff mad with idiotic over the counter marketing requirements that I would
suspect have not been personally trialled by the brilliant Marketing Psychologist who designed the
“patter” to be used to suck in customers for more services and more fees .
I hate my bank for the two reasons that they are stressing their staff, are intruding into my time by asking “do I want this or …. ” when they screw up so many things in basic operation of their “banking system.
The point is: psychology does not include commenting on opinions about Global Warming nor management of business activities. The use of psychology to dress up attacks on Anti Global Warming comment, to increase business share of a company or to create manipulative marketing campaigns is just WRONG and misleading.
KK 🙂
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Even if we take Cook at his word, that this was just an accidental mistake, even then under his new criteria “Excerpt relevant to a recursive theory” there is nothing remotely recursive about the quote from Richard Betts. All Betts did was point out some practical (and easy) ways the methodology could have been improved… that is to say, everything he mentioned rested on an external reference (e.g. Betts knowledge of typical editorial procedures on septic blogs), which is all fully testable (e.g. post a comment and see how the editor responds).
Cook can’t even get it right when he has a second bite of the cherry, I don’t think he really understands the meaning of “recursion” anyhow. What he is groping around for for is more aptly named “circular logic” and happens to be quite a different thing to “recursion”. Even when you go to the effort of accepting that some idea was lost in the translation, nothing Betts said could be an example of circular logic either.
FWIW some people call this, “Begging the question” like so: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question
Don’t ever use the phrase “begging the question”, ever, for any purpose. It is a bad way to describe it, and guaranteed to cause confusion.
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Egats! how embarrassing: s/septic/sceptic/
I blame the spell checker… obviously a conspiracy.
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To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion
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And anybody who does understands recursion will immediately see who actually has the fury.
For example, writing a paper regarding “conspiracist ideation” on your paper on “conspiracist ideation”.
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IMHO Lewandowsky is seriously off his trolley.
I wonder if he has checked his “Moon Landing” conspiracy theory with these guys from NASA ?
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or even these guys from NASA?
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Friends, Australians and GingerBreadMen…go hither and mock the bearded biffoon:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-global-change/201301/thinking-memory-and-blog-comments/comments
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[…] From JoNova […]
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Lewandowsky is not “deluded”. He is just a fourth rate academic trying to attain fame and if possible fortune by joining the warmists. In a way he has been successful, despite being incompetent. How else does one explain the observation that never a day goes past without his name being mentioned, one way or another, in the blogs.
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The pervasiveness of the CAGW meme throughout academia should not be underestimated. As members of the we-know-best chattering classes they are indulging in a feel-good quest for ‘relevance’. Of course if they include the words climate change in their research grant proposals, no matter what their subject area may be, their sanctity is likely to be amply rewarded, and most deservedly so from their perspective.
In attending a conference these days one risks the tedium of some middle-aged or older professor, from a totally unrelated discipline, sanctimoniously crapping on in their welcome speeches about the wondrous new world of renewable energy or similar, in a nod and a wink to the cognoscenti in the audience. Nauseating!
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A conspiracy theory purports to explain an important social, political, or economic event as being caused or covered up by a covert group or organization.
The argument suggesting that skeptics believe that warmists are following the precepts of vested groups, organisations and individuals is accurate. It doesn’t matter whether these actors are covert or overt.
So why the fascination?
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He has an answer in search of a question. Perhaps he should try the Personal columns.
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Nor does it matter whether these thousands of warmist pawns realise how their goodwill & noble motives are being exploited.
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Who is this impostor, Bruce of Newcastle? Is nothing sacred? Bruce.
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I’m the one in charge of the sheep dip.
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That clears it up, Bruce.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what passes for erudite conversation in some parts of Australia 🙂
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Rereke, you do realise that we were discussing philosphy? We drink therefore we are.
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In a positive opportunity for balance and redress, dont forget its Earth Hour tonight at 2030. Turn all your lights on and idle your car in the driveway to ensure we dont slip into another ice age.
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Safety, I’m all over it except I’m going out in the V8 for an hour of spirited driving, we’re sick of cold weather in Ballarat and want to do something about it. Look at me I’m being SOCIALLY RESPONSABLE!
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OT. Belfast, Northern Ireland had its ‘Earth Hour’ earlier than expected. The entire City of Belfast was without power tonight, Friday, during a snow storm spreading across Ireland & UK today..
After Spring starting so gently just three weeks ago.. Is this more of Climate disruption or the next Ice Age setting in already ?
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That’s
gerbilglobal warmin’ fer ya!30
British Summer Time is just a term used for Daylight Saving in these parts. It’s a somewhat arbitrary date chosen for changing the clocks, though usually towards the end of March and always at 2am on a Sunday.
.
In the meantime we expect some Spring. The Spring Equinox has already passed, on Wednesday. While some wild weather often accompanies the Equinox, not normally with snow across these parts.
.
Snow on the English Riviera, and it’s. falling, right now.
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[…] The ‘Lew paper’ comedy show rolls into the post normal ‘science’, lalaland, of the IPCC: IPCC Lead Author calls Lewandowsky “deluded” […]
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Reading about Professor Lewandowsky’s professional endeavors brought to mind a college experience I had 50 years ago. In partial completion of the humanities requirement of an undergraduate degree, I took a class in psychology. Unlike Professor Lewandowsky, the instructor could recognize professional irony. She related a story. As best as I can remember, the story went as follows.
A group of psychologists decided to address the 3,568,111,328th most important problem facing mankind—to wit, when faced with an impossible task, who will persevere longer: highly-educated or poorly-educated people? After the obligatory backslapping for finally addressing this important problem and the mandatory backstabbing deciding whose name would appear first in the author list of the forthcoming paper, the group got to work. They decided to (a) construct a problem that had no solution, (b) present the problem to both highly-educated and poorly-educated people, and (c) tell the test subjects that the purpose of the test was to determine which human trait, common sense or formal education, was the determining factor in the speed of finding a solution—so the test subjects were asked to solve the problem as rapidly as possible. [As an aside, if you’re ever the subject of a “psychology test”, always assume you are being tested for something other than what you are told.] The psychologists devised a test involving (a) an infinite checkerboard pattern of squares, (b) a “piece” having a finite number of allowed square-to-square moves, (c) a starting square for the piece, (d) a final square, which the psychologists believed could not be reached by any combination of allowed moves. The psychologists asked the test subjects to construct a sequence of moves that placed the piece on the final square. The psychologists then sat back and waited to see who would give up first. Low and behold, a few of the test subjects solved the problem. So much for the findings of tests devised by psychologists.
Now that I put the incident in writing, I’m getting the vague feeling that the instructor mentioned the name Lewandowski as somehow being involved with the study.
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When I (well, not really me, a long ago 11 year old boy sharing corporeal continuity with me) sat the entrance exam to a certain school I recall on the one hand getting well into the essay task and on the other being so clueless on the maths test that I actually wrote in response to one, “It cannot be done”.
I think they underestimated the childs arrogance in declaring their question unanswerable and took it to mean he couldnt do it.
I passed.
Now in march of 2013 I have been required to conduct (yet another) psychological experiment and have found this one so challenging that I had pretty much declared “It cannot be done” (by this party).
Your story was a good one, but psychology is not all guff and has produced very many robust, useful and most importantly, counter-intuitive findings. It CAN be as practical and sound as engineering. However, I note that you were studying psychology as a humanities subject. You presumably never had to apply statistical tests by hand. I thank God that nowadays its done by computer.
I prefer designing the experiments. But that holds (entertaining) challenges that no chemist, physicist or engineer ever has to contend with. Because the item under examination (human beings) are an aware quantity, which molecules or atoms are not. The physical sciences do not have to contend with the thing under study giving phoney responses.
Moreover, participants are liable to have been tipped off by their mates (on web sites, such as above, or elsewhere) not to believe the stated purpose of the experiment. So we have to figure out ways of bluffing the double bluff and beating the subterfuge of those being studied. And we do. Technology helps. Some of the classics of psychological research have demonstrated ingenuity that is truly brilliant.
The problem is partly with the publics confusion between “psychological therapy” and psychology as a research discipline. But it is also a problem with the usurpation of the discipline by fundamentally Marxist inspired “Post Modernist” ideology that generates the kind of crap this Lewanduffsky peddles.
But if you think REAL psychological research (cognitive psychology) is woolly or an easy touch, then I think you cannot have had any experience of it.
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Ace,
I didn’t mean to impune either the field of psychology or the dedicated and honest practioners of that field–well maybe I did a little bit, but I’m sure that as with any discipline there are honest and capable practioners of psychology. The physical sciences have their share of “headline grabbers”–e.g., Pons and Fleischmann of cold fusion fame. In fact, although my formal education is in physics, I’m ashamed of the behavior of the American Physical Society as it pertains to the AGW issue. And I realize that the formulation of experiments to better understand the inner workings of human thought is a difficult task. I personally wouldn’t even want to try. The behavior of Professor Lewandowsky was just too good a target to pass up. If I offended you, I sincerely apologize (no sarcasm intended).
And you’re correct; I haven’t had any experience with REAL psychological research–but then I think the same might be true of Professor Lewandowsky.
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Its OK, I didnt take offence, Im among the visitors here who are scathing about both pop-psych and (for my part) the tragic descent into guff that much of the field has taken. I even mentioned before now that I suspect cognitive psychology will eventually adopt the term “behavioural biology” to distinguish itself from the Lewandowsky type of rubbish. And after all, CAGW pseudo-scientists are basing their “scientific” status in the physical sciences. Which makes Lewandowsky’s “contribution” all the more suspect. what the hell has climate got to do with his bag?
But I would pick you up on one thing in what you just said: a scientific approach to psychology (in my old fashioned opinion) disavows any notion of “the mind” and concentrates only upon measurable responses of the organism. This is as “old school” and unfashionable as can be said now, since pseudo-psychology has embraced subjectivity and “feelings”. But I think its still a valid perspective if you want the discipline to be truly scientific.
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They should have sought Lord Monckton’s help . While he never claimed his Eternity II puzzle to be insoluble, it appears to remain unsolved to this day.
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I put on my tinfoil hat this morning just for Lewandowski and his friends.
Actually I’m finding that being part of a conspiracy is more rewarding than I thought. 🙂
Stick that up your PhD in psychology professor Lewandowski!
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Hey! Professor Lewandowski!!
This is from me to you, so pay attention. I know that you will read this and probably right now you are drooling over this thread for your third paper “More Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation”
To begin, admit to yourself that you are the leader in the latest tactic of warming alarmists to enforce “social consensus”, as put forth by Andy Hoffman. You are the number one man. You are the leader in vilifying those that disagree with yourself and your warming alarmist mates. This is the “conspiracy” and it is very real and you know it. You will stoop as low as you feel you need to.
Secondly, why don’t you spend some time studying conspiracist ideation within the warming alarmist movement? Surely things like accusations of “working for big oil” and “working for big coal” should catch your attention? Along with pathetic websites like that of your mate John
CockCook. Here is a nice experiment for you – go onto JohnCock’sCook’s website pretending to be a CAGW sceptic. See what happens. I am sure you could write reams of psychobabble on that!!Thirdly – Just admit to yourself that you are a pathetic excuse for a a scientist. You are a bigot and a moron and you hang around with bigots and morons.
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[…] The follow up paper by Stephan Lewandowsky was one of the most widely covered topics of the week, including my dismissal of it as actual science here. Skeptics joined me in denigrating its methodology, analysis and conclusions–Bishop Hill having posted several times on it, the final one (so far) being here, while Jo Nova posts on it here. […]
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In the private sector bad management of a business has a negative feedback on its revenues. The bad management is replaced or the company goes out of business.
Universities with large endowments or strong government funding (federally financed student loans) have revenues independent of the performance of their management. Under such circumstances “bad drives out good” — first in the quality of the management and then in the quality of the product provided (education).
When the product you “sell” is no longer the true source of revenue then that product deteriorates. A disconnect between revenues and product is ultimately what destroys the quality of life in all socialist states. Our universities have for all practical purposes become “socialist”.
Once that is understood then the deterioration of their management and their product is no longer a mystery.
Eugene WR Gallun
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/ipcc-lead-author-calls-lewandowsky-deluded/ […]
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Jo, I’da made a small donation if you accepted PayPal, but you don’t so I can’t. ;(
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