So you thought closing the survey would result in a respite for blog posts on John Cooks’ survey. But. No.
As some of you are aware John Cook contacted a number of bloggers requesting they post a link to his survey. At least one of those contacted requested he provide them a copy of the Application Form for Ethical Clearance for Research Involving Human Participants submitted for his survey. As far as I know, we have not yet obtained a copy of that survey.
Given the details of the survey. I assume it is the one available here. If so, it will be interesting to read the text filled in response to the following:
2) Special Groups […]
2c) People in overseas countries
Does your project involve data collection in an overseas country?: YES/NO
Presumably, the answer to this is “YES”.
If YES, what ethical considerations may arise as a result of such data collection, which are different from those arising from data collection in a general Australian context? [for example, are there any particular local laws, customs, practices, or conditions which should be taken into account?]:
Have you consulted anyone with knowledge to provide guidance? Who?:
I’ll be interested in reading whether use of Cookies and the EU Cookie law was discussed. As I am in the US, I normally disregard this. I also figure that Australians running private blogs can easily disregard this. But I can’t help but I am curious whether (a) cookies were set on machines of participants from the EU and if they were whether (b) the U Queensland thinks it’s necessary for researchers involved in human subjects research to inform people in the EU that cookies might be used.
Of course we are all interested in reading this:
4) In EVERY-DAY or LAY LANGUAGE please provide a summary of the project – including aims and benefit: This section MUST be completed in LAY LANGUAGE.
and this
5) Give details of the research plan:
Note: The committee needs sufficient information to put into context the ethical considerations listed in later questions.
Note: This section should be completed in LAY LANGUAGE as much as possible so that it can be understood and appreciated by all Committee Members, including Lay Members.
Note: For application to the MREC – please keep response to a MAXIMUM of 2 pages.
and this
7a) How will informed consent be obtained from participants or informants?
I am especially interested in details discussing how participants were informed that in addition to sending U of Queensland’s server their answers to the survey and possibly their personally identifiable email addresses, that when they clicked to participate, the survey would also be sending
- Browser screen dimensions
- A list of fonts on available to their browers.
- A list of plugins on their browser.
- Their time zone.
- A unique timestamp identifier.
Naturally, the submission also sent all the information that is ordinarily sent to a server (IP, user agent, referrer, cookies and anything in http: headers). If you wish to see how identifiable your browser is even without the addition of cookie information visit panopticlic.eff.org and click “test me”.
As so much “browser DNA” was sent, I will be interested in reading the answer to this question:
8) Provide details of procedures for establishing confidentiality and protecting privacy of participants or informants:
And these
9) Researchers must ensure that all data, particularly data containing personal information (ie, information that can identify the person), are secure both at the point of storage and during transit. Researchers must be aware of relevant legislation and guidelines governing privacy:- Information Privacy Act (Qld) 2009, Privacy Act (Cth) 1988, and Guidelines under S95 and S95A of the Privacy Act (Cth).
9a) Where will data be stored (eg, UQ office of researcher), and what measures will be taken to ensure security of data (eg, locked filing cabinets, computer hard-drive protected by password/encryption/de-identification of data, etc)?
9b) Will data be stored on, or taken to, premises other than secure UQ premises (eg, researcher’s home)?: YES/NO
If YES, then what measures will be taken to ensure security of data at these premises?
9c) What measures will be taken to ensure security of data during transit? (eg, if data is on hard-drive – protection by password/encryption/de-identification of data, etc).
9d) Will persons other than staff of the research team have access to the data?: YES/NO
If YES, then please specify these persons, state why these persons have access, and what provisions are in place to ensure the confidentiality of data by these persons.
With regard to (9c) I note the survey links were http: not https: and the data described above was sent in a $_POST variable. Please refer to this conversation at stackoverflow.com about the security of data sent in a $_POST variable
SSL is a must. POST is not more secure than GET as it’s also send unencrypted. SSL will cover the whole HTTP communication and encrypt the HTTP data send between the client and server.
With regard to this:
10) In what form will the data be collected:
Note: Tick the most appropriate box:
(i) Identified (ii) Potentially Identifiable (iii) De-Identified
(ie, not able to be re-identified)11) In what form will the data be stored and/or accessed:
Note: Tick the most appropriate box:
(i) Identified (ii) Potentially Identifiable (iii) De-Identified
(ie, not able to be re-identified)
I’ll be very interested in reading how this was answered. In fact, I would be interested in reading details of how the database was organized (though I doubt I’ll learn those.)
I admit that I’m not sure what the definitions “identified” or “potentially indentifiable” are supposed to mean mean. But I think it is safe to say that from a practical point of view, for those participants who volunteered their email addresses, the data was identified when collected and during transit. That is: the connection between the person sending the data and their responses was 100% identified. Moreover, owing to the use of the unique session variable and logging of their browser fingerprint the data could later be used to identify future connections by that participant.
Moreover, if this browser fingerprint information was sniffed by a third party during the transit period of collection, whoever sniffed could identify their answers. If data are stored in either an “Identified” or “Potentially Identifiable” way, data sent to the survey is stored in the survey data base, it could be used by those who are permitted access the data base to connect emails to browser fingerprints of people who later submit comments at blogs.
Of course we are all interested in
Deception of/or withholding information from, participant at ANY stage of the project
For the time being we have no reason to believe anyone was deceived as to the purpose of the projection in any major way. (The purpose does seem confusing to the extent of leading people to believe they would be rating 10 papers drawn from 12,000. I’m not convinced any ethics board would be very concerned about that.
However, it will be interesting to learn whether the use of browser fingerprinting was discussed. It was also be interesting to learn whether the University of Queensland considers failure to inform participants that browser fingerprinting information is being collected is considered to be either deception or withholding information. I consider it withholding, but I’m not the arbiter here. Possibly, the ethics committee considers collecting browser fingerprints (in many cases nearly uniquely identifyable) trivial enough to merit no mention at all. Or, since it is possible for a participant obtain the javascript file used to collect much of the browser fingerprint data, read it and reverse engineer the process, failing to mention this aspect of the survey may not be considered withholding information. On the other hand, many users are unfamiliar with the process of obtaining the javascript and reading the code. So, I guess we would need to learn what the U of Queensland Ethic’s committee thinks of this. The only way to do that would be to ask people at U Queensland.
16) How has the possibility of withdrawal from the project been addressed?:
Note: Ensure that details and effects of withdrawal without prejudice AT ANY TIME have been considered and explained.
Refer to the NHMRC’s National Statement section 2.2.19 – 2.2.20.
I know the survey suggested participants could withdraw from the survey before submitting the review of their abstracts. But I can’t help but wonder how “AT ANY TIME” is interpreted by the U of Queensland. If a user submits an review of abstracts and later learns their browser was fingerprinted, can they withdraw their data after submission but prior to data processing by the researchers? Can they request all data matching their browser fingerprint be withdrawn?
There are several questions on funding. Of course many of us are curious about that. An even larger fraction seem curious about this:
18) In undertaking this research do any “conflict of interest†issues arise?
If YES, please provide details.
Note: Conflict of Interest may arise, for example, because a researcher, or someone close to the researcher, stands to benefit financially from the research or the carrying out of the project or because inconsistent or incompatible obligations exist.
Refer to section 5.4 of the NHMRC’s National Statement:
The NHMRC states
A perception that a conflict of interest exists can be as serious as an actual conflict, raising concerns about an individual’s integrity or an institution’s management practices.
Given that John Cook is a blogger who permits people in his desired subject pool to be called “fake skeptics” at his blog, and who was 2nd author on “Recursive Fury” which seemed to be performing some sort of psychological analysis on people in the subject pool for the current survey, many of those participants perceive him to have a conflict of interest. Of course, John Cook and some others my consider their their perception may be groundless, but it is nevertheless a perception. It appears the NHMRC encourages researchers to indicate perceived conflicts of interest. In this regard it will be interesting to read whether John Cook checked YES or NO.
I wonder whether the ethics panel will permit us to see this form. I hope so. Permitting this would shed light the ethical requirements for surveys at the University of Queensland. I’m not Australian, so I have no say in what they should be. But I am nevertheless interested in what they might be.
I’ve asked UWA for the ethics statement for recursive fury, the grant it was funded by and as a named individual, and for the data they collated hold on me, (without my consent and without informing me they were collecting it – I was interacting with the researchers on their blogs at the time) and I’ve been effectively told to F off and not to contact them again.
I’ve also asked for the data they have on me to be destroyed, and for my name and data to be removed from ‘Recursive Fury’ because I have demonstrated that the 2 researchers used, Marriott and Cook are both openly publically hostile to me, are conflicted and have a vested interest. again ‘crickets’ on this issue.
And yes that is all against the National Statement of research ethics, I did refer to it.
So, I’m guessing for a much more ‘minor’ issue like described in the article above. the result will be silence from UWA/authors
Barry,
I’m not Australian and I don’t work on research with human subjects. So I don’t know their National Statement of Research Ethics is applied and I don’t know how U Queensland applies it. That said: I think it is worth discussing this openly so that, in future, people will know what the imposed limits are.
In this particular survey, we only really submitted our interpretation of abstracts. Some major fingerprinting was done. Maybe it’s ok with their ethics panel. Maybe it’s not.
Now suppose the survey had been asking us questions like:
1) What’s our sexual preference?
2) Had we ever been diagnosed with
(a) diabetes.
(b) AIDS
(c) other venereal disease
(d) cancer
(e) mental affliction of some sort.
3) Had we ever been unfaithful to your spouse?
4) Do we smoke marijuana?
5) How much alcohol do we drink?
If someone submitted that from work, their IT people could be sniffing. Should they be warned?
Or what about obviously political issues? Other things people might wish to keep private? In that circumstance, is it ok that this is all transmitted by http: instead of https:? Along with fingerprinting data? And that people aren’t warned?
I know I’m raising this in light of John Cook’s survey. But I think the privacy issues here are broader than that.
the Fury paper presumably comes under the lead author – so Lewandowsky at UWA, in the case of my ethics concerns?
Yes. I think it means that the first ethics panel would be Lewandowsky’s institution. Is there view that Lewandowsky was just reporting on things observed in public? That seems to create a big fork in what’s permitted and what’s not permitted.
Anyway: Presumably, you go to UWA. If they are wrong, presumably there is something above them. As I said: I’m not familiar with application of the ethics rules. I’m just interested in how they apply.
After all, Lewandowsky evidently thought he couldn’t tell us which bloggers he contacted to participate but on the other hand, it appears a researcher can fingerprint like mad. (That said: If I recall correctly, it turned out the panel gave Lewandowsky permission to “tell” us who he invited– just after everyone had figured out who they all were. Oh. The. Irony.)
I suspect that the committee views “conflict of interest” as relating primarily to financial considerations, and not to partisanship. Certainly it’s problematic if, for example, an MD conducts a study of the effectiveness of drug X, when he may be receiving royalties from the sales of X, or speaking fees related to X.
IIRC, IPCC also was only concerned with financial interests, not personal ones.
HaroldW–
Possibly. But the Conflicts of Interest document states “While a conflict may relate to financial interests, it can also relate to other private, professional or institutional benefits or advantages that depend significantly on the research outcomes.”
While I have no doubt Cook would characterize this investigation as being motivated by wanting to determine the consensus of science, the presence of query strings for each blog suggests there may be an intention to compare the response from different blogs. As one of the blogs is his, and it operates in an adversarial mode relative to other blogs he is “studying”, one might certainly suggest that he has a private interest to see “his” blog readers come out looking “good” relative to some the groups they tend to call “fake skeptics”. That would be a private interest and I would certainly suggest that there is a fairly wide spread perception that John Cook may care a lot about that private interest.
This would argue strongly toward a board decreeing that the research might be worthwhile but that it ought to be done by someone other than John Cook. Of course, they could only make this decision if the conflict of interest was divulged. Alternatively, they could only decide that it’s ok for Cook to do this despite the perception of conflict of interest if that conflict is divulged.
That said: They may not care. For all we know, the ethics documents may be mere window dressing to show outsiders and enforced rather laxly. That’s the way things sometimes are.
“I am curious whether (a) cookies were set on machines of participants from the EU”
Cookiegate! 🙂
Nick– I like that one!! (Of course we don’t yet know if EU visitors were tracked with cookies. 🙂 )
This is pure speculation but there is an extraordinarily unpleasant possibility that Cook is actually going to use the survey to feed his ‘model’ with data.
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=25118
“Mr Cook, the mastermind behind the successful Skeptical Science website, is developing a psychological model that simulates how people react to evidence that threatens their world view. One of the features of the model is that distrust of science is a key factor in the so-called “backfire effectâ€. “
The 97% AGW strikes again!
What Consensus? Two-thirds of climate studies (8,000) from 1991-2011 take no position on cause of global warming
Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change
“From Thursday 16 May, this paper can be downloaded from” http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Just posted at WUWT:
Fuzzy math: In a new soon to be published paper, John Cook claims ‘consensus’ on 32.6% of scientific papers that endorse AGW
David–
I do think most scientists both of the climate and non-climate variety believe recent warming is man-made. I do. That said, I don’t think a paper that announces that 32.6% of abstracts endorse climate change as man-made is going to shift public opinion toward believing there is a consensus. That’s rather a shame because there is a consensus! The reason the number is as low as 32.6% in abstracts is most don’t engage the question Cook asked!!
lucia writes “That’s rather a shame because there is a consensus!”
Thats not the consensus that Cook is writing about though. There is an enormous difference between CO2 causing some measurable warming in our atmosphere and CO2 being responsible for most of the warming since the industrial revolution.
Consensus on the first? Sure. Consensus on the second? Not so much.
As you observe, Lewandowsky’s blogpost purporting to out the various people was published after the the various bloggers had identified themselves (once “Hanich” was realized to be the inviter). The timing of Lewandowsky’s blogpost is closely limited by the timestamp of his twitter and the time of his emails to SPencer and Morano notifying them of their forthcoming “outing” – notice that arrived after they had already been identified at Jo Nova and CA. Lewandowsky’s blogpost was published no earlier than 3:30 pm Eastern Sep 10 (Sep 11 in Australia).
Despite this, in Fury, Lewandowsky claimed priority in outing the various bloggers and the blogpost in question (Australian time) is dated Sep 10 (Australian), a date that seems inconsistent with other evidence on the date/time of the Lewandowsky blog post.
Simon Turnill submitted an FOI request to UWA on the timestamp of various Lewandowsky posts. The response did not provide the requested documentary information, only a summary of purported publishing times – a summary that raised further questions.
According to the UWA summary, Lewandowsky’s outing post was published 17 hours before the first comment. This is simply not possible as many people, including me, were monitoring STW that day and the threads were being actively commented. The timestamp provided by the UWA appears to be false.
Simon re-iterated his request for documentary evidence and it will be interesting to see the result.
This is interesting. First, the link says 11,994 papers were used, but as I recall, we extracted almost 12,500 papers from the database. Second, that link says:
This is important because, as John Cook told me about the recent survey:
If 2,000+ papers were rated by the authors, the samples for the recent survey should have been taken from 2,000+ papers. Nothing indicate that. Everything suggests the actual amount was closer to 500. Why would there be such a large difference?
The only additional restriction John Cook said he used was filtering out abstracts longer than 1,000 characters. Does that mean 75% of the papers rated by the authors had abstracts longer than 1,000 characters? That seems unlikely. And if it were true, filtering out the majority of the data would be bad. It seems every time John Cook releases more information, it just raises more concerns.
Maybe later I’ll extract the 12,000+ abstracts and check how many are longer than 1,000 characters. I doubt it’ll come anywhere close to 75%. In the meantime, I’m sure you can guess my reaction to this:
the 97% seems to be computed by filtering out the 66% of abstracts that said nothing about AGW and then finding the fraction of the remaining ones that endorse AGW.
Brandon,
On this:
One of the motivations for getting volunteers from blogs was to see how the ratings from the 24 SkS volunteers compared to those chosen in a different way.
lucia, sure, but that’s not what I took interest in. I’m more interested in the idea the papers were “randomly distributed” to 24 “independent… raters.” I don’t see how favored members (and moderators) of the SKS community could be considered independent, and I don’t trust the claim of randomness.
It doesn’t help I’ve seen some of the discussion of this project from the SKS forums. As I recall, people were asked to rate papers, but they weren’t given one set of papers to rate. Instead, they rated as many papers as they wanted. Some may have rated 20, others, 5,000.
In fact, I could have sworn at least one person rated every abstract. They obviously wouldn’t have received a random set of abstracts.
Brandon
Maybe he only means none of the raters were sets of siamese twins.
That would be a problem. I’m not sure if the correct wording is “non randomness”. But if what you say is true, some raters views would dominate the ratings while others would not.
Have you seen how long some of the abstracts are? I think it included ‘extended abstracts’ which might get created when conferences end up creating a publication that is entered into that particular database.
Oh. there is one about global warming on Mars.
lucia, I have good news. Sort of. Nobody rated every paper. What I was remembering is there was one overall tally that people discussed in the SKS forums. My memory mistook that as a tally for a single individual because the idea of talking about survey results as take the survey is insanely wrong. More on this in a minute.
Oh, it’s definitely a problem. Here are two graphs of the top 11 raters, posted by John Cook:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/tcp_raters2.gif
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/tcp_raters3.gif
I don’t know if he ever posted an image for once the rating was done, but you can see there is nothing like an even distribution for how many papers were rated by each participant. Heck, one participant (Tom Curtis) quit because he couldn’t stomach how many papers he had to rate neutrally, and yet, he must be one of the 24 “independent” raters.
Some of the abstracts are incredibly long, but from a quick skim of the total list, it doesn’t seem like there are many like that.
In other news, the leaked forums repeatedly show people say they’re rating 12,000+ papers, as does what John Cook said about the public survey. Despite this, the press release says only 11,994 papers were rated. It appears the reason for this is some papers were filtered out as “opinion pieces” or non-peer reviewed, after the ratings were already done. It’s difficult to know what to think of this comment from John Cook:
It’s been published, including what is almost indisputably a lie. Stay tuned.
So they mash together all “endorse” (1-3). I’m not remotely surprised that this results in lots of (1-3) especially if you read the papers. After all: Papers on climate change do tend to agree that AGW is true. I agree it’s true. People who get called deniers (like Roy Spencer and Pat Michaels) agree AGW is true.
On survey issues: I’m thought the “survey of blogs” paralleled this one. Did wording on the the pull down menus change relative to the “survey of blogs”? Does their 4b (uncertain) correspond to the “8” (don’t know) on the “survey of blogs”? That seems like something of a change. Is “No position” comparable to “Neutral”? I don’t read those has having the same nuance. It could affect my rating.
It’s also interesting they negotiated to agreement on a value for a paper. I wonder why they didn’t just keep both entries? I wonder if the results were sensitive to that. (I doubt if they were. If it did make a difference, it seems to me the extra negotiating and re-classifying would introduce a problem not present without the negotiating and re-classifying. So why do the extra sifting? I don’t think it has any benefit. )
It’s not a horrible paper. It’s discovering the obvious: there are lots of papers on climate change out there. The authors tend to believe AGW is true. (I happen to think it is. But I think even a stone-cold denialists has to admit that most published papers are written by people who believe AGW is true.)
I don’t think we learn much of anything from the paper.
But ironically: I doubt if the paper is going to advance ‘climate communication’ in any way. The 2/3rds of authors of papers on climate change express no view is going to cut-against the effect on “climate communication” Cook and his co-authors are hoping for. Few people are going to read the paper and understand why most abstracts don’t say much about climate change. And it’s going to be easy to spin the author responses: Self-selection.
A lie? Really? And you make an accusation like that based on… your personal distrust and distaste for the person, but with no foundation whatsoever.
And this, I’m afraid, defines today’s self-proclaimed skeptics.
Bob Lactena, shouldn’t you first check what the foundation for my claim is before saying it doesn’t exist?
One hopes your approach doesn’t define SKS’s team.
Lucia,
You misunderstand the 2/3s. It does not consist of the “authors of papers on climate change”, it’s consists of papers that mention climate change but are not specifically about attribution. If a paper talks about how climate change will endanger the blue-toed-tree-frog, then that paper expresses no view on the cause of climate change.
This does not mean the authors have no opinion or that the paper has no opinion, and it certainly does not prove that the paper is undecided on attribution or says that it could go either way. It means the paper is not directly about climate change attribution, and so it makes no statement one way or the other (not an equivocating statement, but no statement). As such, it simply doesn’t count towards the question.
Which means that a huge number of papers endorse the theory of AGW, while a vanishingly small number of papers, by even fewer authors, refute it.
Face it… if you take the position that AGW is not real, then you are far outside of the mainstream of modern science.
Bob Lacatena
Neither you nor I know the basis for Brandon’s statement because he has not yet given it. Presumably “stay tuned” indicates he will be explaining further.
But the fact that you don’t know the basis for his claim doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. It doesn’t mean his basis is personal distrust of distaste. Possibly Brandon will turn out to be mistaken. We’ll see.
I know you like and trust John Cook. But that doesn’t mean you should dash around making your obviously incorrect claims.
Brandon,
Are you serious? You call someone a liar with no foundation, and then criticize me for not waiting to see if you turn out to have some random, unknown, theorized-but-non-specific reason for having called him a liar?
Seriously?
Lucia,
Someone on your blog called someone else a liar without giving a reason. “I may tell you later” doesn’t cut it.
It’s slander, and I think it’s inappropriate. And immature. And despicable.
Uh… If you’re going to complain about the fact I haven’t given my reasoning yet, you should probably take note of the fact I already did.
I think I can be forgiven for taking half an hour to write a blog post.
Bob
First: I’m not sure what you think I misunderstand. I didn’t not say “papers that specifically mention attribution”; if I meant “papers that specifically mention attribution” I would have said that. I know that the 2/3rd who express no view are papers that only mention climate change.
Second: I am telling you how this paper is going to be perceived. You are trying to give a nuanced explanation of what it really says.
No matter how you characterize that paper at your blog, in news conferences or on news radios: that paper was included in the 12,000 as a result of the filtering method Cook cooked up. When this paper is discussed “out there”, people will view this as a “paper on climate change”. Second: They will see this as a paper “on climate change” where the author expressed no view. This will be seen as “The 2/3rds of authors of papers on climate change express no view” This is going to create a big uphill battle when you are trying to “communicate”.
Never said the 2/3rds means any of those things.
I agree with you. But what I am saying is that this paper is going to confuse people many of whom will take away the message that 2/3rds of papers on climate change express no view or believe it is uncertain. Of course I may be wrong. But wait and see. Carnac predicts. Bet I’m right. 🙂
As for climate scientists: They won’t be confused by the paper. But they don’t need this paper. They know that most climate scientists think AGW is real. Roy Spencer? He thinks it’s real. Pat Michaels? He thinks it’s real. Pretty much everyone does thing it’s real. But this paper will convince lots of members of the public the opposite is true.
Bob–Seems to me the time stamp on his post is 15 May, 2013 (12:26).
I Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means.
Why do the authors of he 12,000 papers have 7 choices and the SkS team used 8? The 12,000 paper authors couldn’t pick anything equivalent to (4b) “Expresses position that human’s role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined” even if that was the position of their paper but SkS “randomly chosen volunteer” evaluators could.
Bob,
You are kaking a fool of yourself.
Thank you very much.
So he fabricated a criticism by theorizing about possibilities based on a press release, without reading the paper, and without really knowing what he’s talking about.
And this proves what?
Exactly where did he provide any evidence that anything in the paper is a lie?
It seems to me that you people have a length of rope, and you’ll do anything you can to find a way to hang your chosen victim, with no regard whatsoever for fairness, intelligence, or facts.
You could have asked him which claim was supposedly a lie and insisted on the basis instead of proclaiming he had none.
It’s true that Brandon might have been wiser to hold back, write his blog post before posting the brief statement in comments. But he wrote the post. If you like you can defend your view of whether the reviewers were “random”.
Lucia,
Scientific papers are not written for uncomprehending morons. They are written for science. I don’t think it matters one whit that some people will misunderstand, or that others will purposely misrepresent the result.
[Well, actually, it does matter, but it doesn’t mean scientists should sit and fret about how the idiots are going to misunderstand their work.]
Your blog is supposed to be about science, not suppositions that make fun reading for people who hate the concept of AGW.
Or am I wrong there?
Bob,
Could you state what criticism do you think Brandon fabricated? And why you think it was fabricated based on the press release?
The link is provided twice above. Here it is again.
Maybe you should read the post discussing Brandon’s claim along with the evidence supporting it. After you read the post (link provided 3 times now), you can explain why in your view, the statement Brandon believes to be untrue is in fact true or why Brandon’s evidence is inaccurate.
Re: Bob Lacatena (May 15 12:59),
Define independent.
Provide evidence for Cook’s assertion that the raters were indeed independent.
Brandon has provided evidence that supports his contention that they weren’t according to the usual meaning of ‘independent’.
Lucia,
No. I’m a little stricter about how I think people should behave online. Starting out by calling someone a liar, while providing no specifics or evidence whatsoever, is on its face, totally regardless of the ultimate outcome, unacceptable.
What are you talking about?
Brandon’s argument was that the raters were not independent or anonymized. His argument is also false on all counts, and based on ignorance.
I also find it reprehensible that he uses stolen personal correspondence in his post.
So far, there is nothing there but air and wishes. No evidence. No facts. Just vitriol and venom, mixed with nonsense.
Perhaps if he read the actual paper before posting? Or is basing a post on actual facts and knowledge anathema to the way that “blog science” is conducted?
Bob Lacatena
Some are. But I would suggest that a goal of this one seems to be to assist in climate communication. I get that impression from the first few sentences of the introduction
As for what my blog is “about”, it is “about” what I am currently interested in discussing. When you create your own blog, you can make rules about what your blog is “about”.
DeWitt,
Are you American? In the USA, one is innocent until proven guilty. While it is a tenet of the American legal system, it’s also a good way to live one’s life.
So Brandon is making an accusation, based on a broad interpretation of a few scraps of writing. It is not evidence.
He hasn’t read the paper! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He’s making inferences based on suppositions based on nothing.
Why do I need to refute that?
Lucia,
I read his post. It’s nonsense. I’m not going to say why. If you want to know why, go and actually read the paper, understand what it says, and understand the methods it used.
I think this whole thing pretty much sums up how things are done here.
Step 1) Reach a desired conclusion.
Step 2) Look for vague, foggy evidence.
Step 3) Present it all as facts
Step 4) Demand that everyone else refute it, and if they can’t or won’t, then it must be true.
Sad.
Lucia,
No, he hasn’t. In keeping with the skeptic approach, he’s taken a few snippets of stolen correspondence, presented them out of context and without considering the entire body of evidence. Around it he throws lots of rhetorical questions, and that is supposed to pass (here) as a valid criticism.
Some of Brandon’s rhetorical questions… a supposed no-no on Lucia’s blog:
Bob Lacatena
Could you define “independendent”, “anoymized” and explain the counts on which his argument is false?
First: As he did not steal it and it is in the public domain, I would not find that reprehensible. Nor does any such general principle exist in journlisms, life, the judiciary or anywhere I am aware of. Second: I’ve never seen any evidence any of that material was stolen. So you seem to be making an unfounded accusation that Bradon is indulging in behavior you would consider reprehensible. Have you put up a post providing your evidence this material was stolen by anyone? I’d like to read the evidence for your claim.
So are the graphs showing who rated the papers erroneous? Are the quotes erroneous? Presumably if these are not facts, you can state that directly.
What makes you think he has not read the paper before he posted the comment providing a link to the paper and claiming the paper contained a lie? It seems to me that your rhetorical question amounts to are accusing him of having lied about reading the paper prior to making his claim. But you have no basis for that notion. He seems to have read the paper.
I’ve read it. Have you read it?
Bob Lacatena
Are you saying Brandon hasn’t read the paper? Could you provide one scrap of evidence for your claim?
I usually don’t like to make observations about people’s personalities, but you seem to be a pretty emotional dude. Maybe you should take a few breaths and let your brain cells catch up with your spleen!
Wait, I didn’t read the paper? I could have sworn I quoted the paper and linked to it my post.
Bob Lacatena
The rule is one can ask them as a rhetorical device provided they suggest their own answers. Brandon does that. For example in answer to “What would you consider “independentâ€? Would you consider raters independent if they participate in the same, small forum? How about if they are moderators for the same site? How about if they’ve published papers together in the last six months?” : Surely we can’t say people who work together to produce results are independent of each other. Nobody would call that independent. Just look at what Glenn Tamblyn said in the leaked SKS forums:”
If you believe the we can say people who work together to produce results, discuss them among themselves, and talk together about how to rate individual papers are rating “independently” say so. If you think that’s not what happened, say so.
Claiming that the evidence that these things happens was stolen tends to suggest the evidence is true and these things did happen. I get that you might not like how the material became public, but whether it was stolen, not stolen or whatever doesn’t affect whether the contents are accurate.
Apologies. I assumed he was writing his post based on the press release.
So he has read the paper.
He’s simply failed to comprehend it.
Lucia said:
Interesting question, because that’s the crux of Brandon’s mistake. He’s chosen his own, narrow interpretation of independent and anonymized, instead of what it meant in the context of the study. Then he’s taken quotes out of context to further distort and buttress his original mistake.
Again, read the paper and figure it out. If you need to, go read the stolen correspondence, consider what was discussed and how, and think about it intelligently.
And why would you? Who answers to you? It was stolen. The owners of the material said it was stolen. Period and end of story.
So if someone takes pictures of you in the shower, and posts them on the Internet, and someone else reposts them, then it’s okay? They’re in the public domain, and the reposter himself didn’t steal them?
It’s funny how you guys were all over Gleick and the poor, lost anonymity of the Heartland donors, but you have no problem invading other people’s privacy yourselves… as long as it’s people you don’t happen to like.
Do you figure those teen girls who recently committed suicide after being raped were being drama queens, because the re-posting of embarrassing pictures of them and texts about them was all perfectly fair and reasonable behavior — public domain, not stolen by everyone, and all that?
This is all just so sad. You people are so blinded by hatred that you’ll do and justify anything.
Lucia,
No. It just affects what sort of person you choose to be.
Re: Bob Lacatena (May 15 13:12),
Innocent until proven guilty is for suspected criminals on trial. In a scientific paper, it is expected that one doesn’t make unsupported assertions that are critical to the results. Nullius in Verba is, after all, the motto of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.
Wow, really? It’s hypocritical to condemn Gleik for lying and stealing (and forging a document when that wasn’t enough) but be willing to discuss “stolen” material? At what point did stealing become equitable to using leaked material?
And if we’re going to claim hypocrisy, what of SKS using Gleik’s stolen material to condemn people? Isn’t it hypocritical for SKS to complain about people using material stolen from it?
By the way, those aren’t rhetorical questions. Bob Lactena is said to be a moderator at SKS. It would be interesting to see what his standards are.
DeWitt,
Nice try. You missed the point.
Brandon hasn’t provided a coherent criticism. He’s thrown around a lot of noise and bluster, filled with umbrage and assertions, without intelligently considering what it is that he’s discussing.
He “read” the paper and shot a blog post up about it as quick as he could. Prior to this he complained in a blink about an online survey, based on false and unfounded inferences based on the most meager of evidence and misinterpretation of words (much as he’s done here with the word “independent”). All of his posts are similarly full of insults for “Cook” (heaven forbid he should say Mr. Cook or John Cook… “Cook” sounds so much more delightfully venomous).
It seems to me that he has a habit of shooting from the hip, always at the same victim, and not even bothering to ask questions later.
I’m done here. I like to deal with rational people. People who have already made up their minds and start drooling at the thought of a fun witch-hunt are, quite simply, not worth the time.
You go ahead and believe what you want… because it’s what you and your ilk are going to do, no matter what.
Don’t let facts and reason get in the way of a good, fun lynching.
I shouldn’t need to explain myself, but… here goes: I made my post in a light-hearted way. I avoided talking about dishonesty and lying with the specific intention of making the discussion lighter. I found the topic funny, and I posted for that reason. If I were blinded by hatred, I would have laced my post with emotional ranting. I would have lambasted Cook et al with vitriolic rhetoric.
In other words, I would have posted like Bob Lactena.
Bob Lacatena
There is absolutely nothing wrong with quoting material that is in the public domain.
There is nothing narrow about Brandon’s interpretation of “independent” and I don’t think it’s idiosyncratic. It’s pretty common not to consider a tight knit group of collaborators discussing among opinions among themselves and then contributing their opinions to be “independent”.
I’ve read the paper. Brandon saw a claim in the paper and believe it to be either false or so misleading as to be substantively false. He seems to have made a good case. Your rebuttal seems to consist of insisting that the evidence that the statement in the paper is false comes from a “stolen” correspondence and it’s stated as if the (unsubstantiated “fact”) that it is “stolen” would somehow mean the information in the correspondence is untrue. But that’s wrong. As for “thinking intelligently”? I might be better if you actually advanced a case for your position. If you think that case can be made based on the contents of the paper then use those contents. Quote them. Knock yourself out.
That is a pretty hilarious claim! This may come as a surprise to you but the owners of material can be mistaken.
Interesting rhetorical questions. What answers do you suggest?
Huh? I never said third parties should re-publish what Gleick stole. But that’s entirely different from criticizing Gleick for Gleick obtaining material through deception. If you identify the person who you think “stole” the SkS material and have evidence, I’ll be happy to criticize that person just as I criticized Gleick. But I never criticized people for reposting the material Gleick obtained by stealth; equally I’m not going to criticize Brandon. And in the Gleick case we know how the material was obtained. Gleick himself admitted it.
Is this rhetorical? I don’t even know how you are jumping from evaluating whether a fact is true to whether one would consider the teen girl who committed suicide a “drama queen”. I wouldn’t think it fair to post semi-pornographic images of teens even if the pictures were not stolen. So I can’t even begin to see how you connect this to the issue of “stolen vs. not stolen” nor the issue of whether the material is now in the open domain. This example seems entirely irrelevant to assessing whether one can use quotes from the spilled SkS super-secret private forum.
I have no idea why you think one would need to be blinded by hatred to support your argument by providing facts that include hotlinking graph showing the names of the paper reviewers like this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/tcp_raters3.gif
The graph exists on SkS’s site. If you don’t want people to look at it, you could tell them to take it down. (Though, really, the cat is out of the bag now, isn’t it?)
The paper referenced by Brandon above would appear in my view to be aimed at marketing the idea that there is a consensus on AGW and then using that consensus and a public acknowledgment of that consensus (as vague as it is) to encourage the public to have faith in whatever a climate scientist might claim. Otherwise the paper would appear to be an effort to show that, of the 1.0 degree C or so warming over the past 100 years or so, the consensus believes some of it is caused by humans. No effort was made to elucidate thoughts about the future or past warming/cooling or whether the effects of that climate change will be detrimental or beneficial. Of course, the thinking people involved in this discussion are interested in those issues and the implications for policy.
Would a John Cook think it would be helpful to the discussion on AGW for the public to acknowledge that almost all scientists writing papers agree that humans have caused some unspecified amount of warming over the past 100 years or so. I suspect the issues that affect the public’s view on AGW has more to do with the disagreements that they see amongst knowledgeable people on the amounts of warming into the future and what the effects of that warming might be.
Bob Lacatena,
Is it true that you are “Sphaerica” of SkS?
‘All of his posts are similarly full of insults for “Cook†(heaven forbid he should say Mr. Cook or John Cook… “Cook†sounds so much more delightfully venomous).”
Brandon has almost made me cry by calling me Mosher.
The best guide for style in this type of matter is SkS
lets review an article about Spencer and one about Watts
( Roy and Anthony to those of us who are important enough to know them on a first name basis )
Spencer began the interview
To his credit, Spencer did mention
Next on the ‘skeptic’ checklist, Spencer ticked off
Spencer expressed his skepticism
Spencer next claimed that
Overall, Spencer made very few factually correct statements in this interview.
First Watts (wrongly) suggests
In the same quote, Watts has asserted
Watts rehashes one of those attempts in his interview:
Watts was also aware
As Watts has admitted, w
#########
and I am officially bored.
Here is a clue, if you read something by Brandon and your best shot is that he used somebodies last name in a venomous way then that suggests one of two things
neither of which is nice for me to point out
Mosher
Oh. But it’s different. “Mosher”, “Spencer” and “Watts” don’t start and end with a hard clacking consonant like “C”. So it’s ok for Mr. Cook to call Dr. Spencer “Spencer”, but it’s just not right for people to call Mr. Cook, “Cook”. Because of all those hard C’s sound so cold and venomous.
Woah. I didn’t even notice Bob Lactena claimed me calling John Cook “Cook” was a bad thing. That’s crazy. What I do is standard practice in writing. You use a person’s first and last name the first time you refer to them, and from then on, you use just their last name. You only reuse their first name if there’s enough distance since you last referred to them as to cause confusion (or if confusion would arise from something else).
Quite frankly, I think I write names out more often (and more appropriately, from a formal view) than almost anyone who participates in climate blogs. Not only is this a stupid issue to criticize someone over, I’m arguably the worst person to criticize about it.
lucia,
I thought calling Mr. Cook, cook, was just Brandon’s sly way of implying that John would do better in front of a oven.. and that is not a godwins law violation.
maybe Cook and Curry should do a paper together.
Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #113008)
May 15th, 2013 at 3:17 pm
Woah. I didn’t even notice Bob Lactena claimed me calling John Cook “Cook†was a bad thing. That’s crazy. What I do is standard practice in writing. You use a person’s first and last name the first time you refer to them, and from then on, you use just their last name. You only reuse their first name if there’s enough distance since you last referred to them as to cause confusion (or if confusion would arise from something else).
#######
Brandon that is exactly what the SkS articles on Roy and Anthony do, so I was a bit puzzled by that particular attack on you.
Interestingly, in Brandon’s blog post, he uses “John Cook” three times, and “Cook” by itself not at all.
.
Steven Mosher (#113011)
“maybe Cook and Curry should do a paper together.” Perhaps with Rabett.
HaroldW, nice catch. I didn’t even think about that, but you’re right. Stanger and stranger.
Are Cook’s studies really worth much band width at all? I think that some here are having some fun with it and I guess I can understand that. On the other hand, Bob Lacatena’s reaction is either to the way that “fun” is being handled here and that it affords him an opportunity to vent and leave in snit or that he actually thinks that Cook’s work has some worth. I find the latter hard to believe.
Having carefully re-read Bob Lacatena’s contributions to this discussion I am minded of two regular expressions used in most school playgrounds
it takes one to know one
and
is that all you’ve got
it takes one to know one
and
is that all you’ve got
Mirror. Seriously, this gotta be the dumbest bunch of posts and comments ever, and there is some pretty serious competition out there.
Eli Rabett (Comment #113093)
You bet. Have you ever seen the stuff at Rabett Run? Especially the blog posts?
I think Mosher won the thread.
HaroldW, yes I saw that part about Brandon never saying anything other than “John Cook”…
What Bob Lacatena said was so silly it deserves repeating:
How delightfully silly.
I’ll note Brandon did use the word “cookie”. Perhaps Bob can explain to us why that is in poor taste.
Considering SkS moderation policies where people critical of a post are censored whereas those regular supporters are allowed to run riot in their ad hom attacks…
I find the following statement from Bob, (a mod there?) ironic in the extreme
“I’m done here. I like to deal with rational people. People who have already made up their minds and start drooling at the thought of a fun witch-hunt are, quite simply, not worth the time.”
lucia writes “I think Mosher won the thread.”
+1 to that. I really did lol.
Doubling down Lucia? Seriously, this is almost as stupid as McIntyre’s fit about the Pages2K paper being published as a Progress Article in Nature.
Eli Rabett
Purveyor of the Finest Posts.
Doubling down on what?
I can say this: You are a legend in your own mind, Eli.
Considering SkS moderation policies
Using the surname alone is the default position in science. It completely avoids all misunderstanding except for those looking to promote it.
Yes willard. You are moderated.