I’m creating this ‘miscellaneous’ discussion to shift comments from posts intended to have a narrow focus on single pin-point ethics, legal etc issues. Normally, I don’t worry about ‘focus’ to ‘on topic’ comments- or more precisely, my view is that one should interpret what is ‘on topic’ broadly. But over the next week I intend to post a few with very tight definitions of ‘on topic’– if ‘off topic’ happens on those, I’ll move those comments here. This is intended to help me because lots of hotnews seems to be erupting. People want to share it– and in fact I do want to read it– but it to get posted on whichever most recent “Lew” post I’ve posted.
I’ll be shifting a few comments shortly.
Technical and/or ethical incompetence is amenable to education. Assuming Lewandownsky is educable, his sincere apology may be forthcoming.
On the other hand, moral incompetence combined with a malignant personality is all but intractable.
5 Quatloos he does not apologize.
Is it just me, or are there others who take exception to the fact that any discussion, by anyone, of climate skeptics should in any way shape of form, be associated with the statement:
“the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics” ?
“Psychopathological”? Who? Lew & Crew?
The ‘independent’ (to LOG12 – Moon Hoax) researchers that Lewandowsky brought into do research and ‘collect’ comment for the ‘fury’ paper, were 2 internet bloggers with an axe to grind against sceptics…
John Cook (Skeptical Science) and Michael Marriott- Watching the deniers..
(Marriott was also an insider at Skeptical Science, writing rebutalls)
there ‘qualifications’ to undertake this were certainly no better than mine, especially Marriott’s (lack of)
Wasn’t there some form that Lewandowsky should have filled in, for each of his researchers (ref ethics approval)
Ths made me laugh:
“UWA will run an investigation, apologise and drop the listing of this study faster than two hot potatoesâ€
they have already run their investigation and told people to get lost (me included) and I quoted the National Statement, in multiple areas.
co-author and researcher, Marriott actually directly interacted with people named in the paper, trying to provoke them. Even asking them about certain ‘conspiracy theories’. He did this with Me, Geoff Chambers and at least 2 others identified in the paper, on more than one occasion.
ON Lewandowsky’s blog, during the research period for ‘Fury’… (before Lewandowsky got ethics approval)
The ethics approval, an amendment on an amendment, said that they would observe reactions to ‘Moon Hoax’!
another thing, Lewandowsky told Robin Owyns the DVC (Research) that he had a team collecting comments, ten days before he got approval. This in itself should have voided the paper .
“Retrospective ethics approval for a research project cannot be granted. That is, ethics approval will not be granted for a project where recruitment of participants has already been undertaken, research data have already been collected, or where any other substantial research activity has already occurred”
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-research/facts
So active concealment, deception and an antagonistic hostile researchers, deceiving named human participant..
UWA and Frontiers KNOW all this, and found nothing wrong….
I sent Steve M all the Marriott links, presumably he will be writing about this soon..
I intend to publish all my correspondence with UWA ethics department (that has NOT been release under FOI) I’ll mention all this then.
Not directly relevant to Lucia’s present situation (since Lew is Australian), but of interest to persons concerned with civil liberties, including being identified in research carried out in the US–
This morning I received notice of a newly-published NAS document making recommendations for the revision of the Common Rule governing research in the social and behavioral sciences. Since these are academics recommending changes in how one does research, they are obviously in a conflict of interest (they would prefer fewer bureaucratic barriers). Not suggesting anything nefarious, but people should be aware that changes are under discussion, and will no doubt deal with Internet surveys among other topics. (The NAS document is in response to a statement in July 2011 by HHS that they are going to revise the Common Rule (45 CFR Part 46 Subpart A: THE COMMON RULE FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS)).
http://nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/publications/e72
In other news: Ugo Bardi, professor of physical chemistry at University of Florence, has resigned as “Specialty Chief Editor” at Frontiers (probably for Frontiers in Energy Policy and Sustainability).
.
He gives his reasons at his blogspot:
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2014/04/climate-of-intimidation-frontiers.html
.
Representative excerpts:
– “It is not for me, here, to discuss the merits and demerits of this paper, nor the legal issues involved (noting, however, that the University of Western Australia found no problems in hosting it on their site). However, my opinion is that, with their latest statement and their decision to retract the paper, Frontiers has shown no respect for authors nor for their own appointed referees and editors.”
– “In other similar [to the case of Torcello] cases universities stood by the rights of their faculty members. They did exactly what Frontiers did not do (but should have done) for the paper by Lewandowsky et al.”
– “The climate of intimidation which is developing nowadays risks to do great damage to climate science and to science in general. I believe that the situation risks to deteriorate further if we all don’t take a strong stance on this issue. Hence, I am taking the strongest action I can take, that is I am resigning from “Chief Specialty Editor” of Frontiers in protest against the behavior of the journal in the “Recursive Fury” case. I sent to the editors a letter today, stating my intention to resign.”
– “I am not happy about having had to take this decision, because I had been working hard and seriously at the Frontiers’ specialy journal titled “Energy Systems and Policy.” But I think it was the right thing to do. I also note that this blunder by “Frontiers” is also a blow to the concept of “open access” publishing, which was one of the main characteristic of their series of journals.”
In June – Prof Lewandowsky is speaking at an event at Bristol BIG Green week
the title of his presentaion is:
NASA faked the Moon Landings therefore climate science is a hoax.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nasa-faked-the-moon-landing-therefore-climate-science-is-a-hoax-tickets-10738026727
“In June – Prof Lewandowsky is speaking at an event at Bristol BIG Green week the title of his presentaion is: NASA faked the Moon Landings therefore climate science is a hoax.”
It would be great if someone like Brandon Shollenberger could find a chance to get himself into the audience.
Lucia – just been checking a few things based on our earlier exchange.
I would refer you to page 271 of documents2_annotated.pdf as an example from the foi archive. This relates to correspondence for the earlier first study.
During 2011 the Ethics Officer was referring to herself as “secretary”. I get the impression her role was to advise and facilitate including doing appropriate paperwork on behalf of the busy high priced researchers.
SL clearly states that he will not link peoples identities to responses for that amendment so was aware that such a linkage was a likely issue for this kind of work.
The subject of breaching the privacy act is raised concerning email addresses so SL had prior knowledge that privacy could be an issue.
From my perspective I am not convinced that the ethics officer made any fatal mistakes based on what I have seen in the foi packs. A couple of opportunities were missed to tease out issues but the responsibility was with SL to provide the required information.
“NASA faked the Moon Landings therefore climate science is a hoax”
I’m hosting a party this weekend themed: “You trust doctors, therefore Global Warming is true.”
Andrew
Lucia:
Point’s taken. I’m just not into this WUWT flavor of free ice cream you are serving up.
Howard,
Real Q: Why do you think this is “WUWT flavor”?
Lucia,
Cool. The Lewandowsky/SkS soap opera continues……..
Neal J. King (Comment #128148)
I am curious, Neal, where you stand on the Fury paper content and methods.
From what you quote in the post I would say it appears that there are defenders of Fury who, from my view, can use implications of academic freedom as an emotional barrier for a paper writer to hide behind once that author has maligned the critics of a paper – never minding for the moment that the papers involved in this case were nonsense. I have always been as much interested in the thinking of those who defend what I find as seriously flawed papers addressing AGW both directly and indirectly as I am in the authors.
Neal, the resignation letter turned into a bit of an embarrassment.
Given that he didn’t know many of the facts associated with it, it’s hard to argue that Ugo Bardi withdrew over a careful examination of the facts.
Moreover when serially corrected on this by everybody including Tom Curtis, he continues to dig in and not admit error.
Here is my comment from there
Richard Tol made an interesting comment on that thread
So that’s interesting if true.
I just returned to the FOI docs that we’re published by desmog blog and realized I’d made an error. I recalled that Anthony Watts referred to the malicious comments in the secret SKS forum. But in fact it was Steve McIntyre.
Lweandowsky wrote, “Except that in this case, to allege malice against John Cook, hackers trolled through two years of his private conversations and found exactly nothing.”
I hardly think Steve McIntyre hacked the forum. Alleging that he did is likely malicious and defamatory.
Neal J. King (Comment #128148)
My interpretation is
“Ugo Bardi blogger and contributor to Planet 3.0 which hosts the climate-alarmist forum that seems to be the venue where Lewandowsky first solicited alarmist blogs to distribute links for his ‘moonhoax’ paper, has resigned his position as ‘specialty editor’ at Frontiers after becoming ‘grumpified’ that Lewandowsky’s paper was justifiably retracted by Frontiers.”
Might some other people be grumpified by Frontiers behavior? Sure. Might some of these people be special editors at Frontiers? Sure. Lew himself is “co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of ” and he seems grumpified. (If Lew’s resigned, I haven’t read the announcement. )
Could this kerfuffle precipitate further resignations? Sure. Could this damage Frontiers? Sure. What does the cause of the kerfuffle be: It seem to be Lew&Crew writing a dreadfully paper in a way that does seem to have violate ethical rules and managing to get it accepted (though some reviewers seem to have resigned as reviewers rather than having their names appear as reviewers), negotiating wording of the formal retraction then ‘getting in front’ of the formal retraction by openly criticizing the retraction before it was formally published. In addition, it seems Lew or Crew shared details of the retraction with a ‘reporter’ friendly to their side (i.e. Dana) who composed drafts of articles criticizing Frontiers on co-author Cook’s site and published the article that first informed the public of the retraction one week before the formal retraction appeared.
So.. yeah. Ugo resigned. Everyone will interpret the meaning of this differently.
Here is a follow-up comment by me:
I’ve emboldened the three key points I was trying to make in that comment, and mark-up edited a sentence I felt was unclear.
clivere (Comment #128155) ,
I think the information you link is interesting. That said: I don’t think I need to establish who is at fault or identify details of how the ethics issue came to exist, only to show that it does exist. For that reason, from my point of view, my “teasing out” stuff just “stops” when I get to “ethics issue exists”.
I think to communicate these things in a way that shows they exist is facilitated by “stopping” at this point.
I don’t want people to get the impression that I am ignoring these details, that I don’t think they are interesting and so on. But right now, I am focused on:
1) identifying which of the scads of ethics issues that can be shows to exist based on shallow fact pattern. (That is: do not depend on any of series of facts with multiple possible branch points that seem to fascinate people.)
2) do not depend on inferring ‘intent’ on the part of the authors of AWU.
3) Laying out the shallow set of facts along with the rules to show they exist.
4) Double checking a few key interpretive issues I’m not sure about with 3rd parties who are not involved in ‘the climate wars. and then
5) Describing those issues with the shallowest fact patterns.
Ethics issues that with “deep branching” fact patterns also exist. I will be avoiding discussing those. As such, I’m going to leave it to others to discuss those details amongts themselves because I don’t have time to work on presenting the cases that can be shown to be violations using the smallest most easily established ‘true facts’.
If that sounds like the long way to say “I’m not going to discuss whether that letter was to a secretary, whether she was mislead or deceived, whether Lew was intentionally deceptive, or whether, possibly, what he wrote was correct at the time, but ultimately turned out to be untrue when he wrote his article but overlooked….” We could debate all those things endlessly. That discussion would touch on other additional ethics issues that may or may not have occurred. e.g. ‘Did the secretary fail in her fiduciary duty?’ vs. ‘Did the Lew intentionally dupe the secretary?” vs. “Was everything okey-dokey on that day, but Lew somehow never noticed his previous characterization of his ‘research’ no longer applied wrote that particular paper?’ We don’t know which of these if any occurred.
Lucky for use: we don’t need to know which of these occurred. Because no matter which occurred, they have no bearing on the existence of this particular ethics issue which involves a very shallow fact pattern.
I want to keep this particular comments thread focused on this ehtical issue.
Discussions about the erupting UGO BARDI resignation and some discussion of ethical or privacy issues that don’t happe to be the issue discussed in this posthave been moved to a miscenllaenous Lew thread:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/miscellaneous-lew-discussion/
Discussions of Lew’s post on analyzing speech have been moved here
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/refreshing-lews-memory/
If your comments were moved, that’s not a value judgement. I merely wish to keep this thread focused on this issue. I have reasons for that.
Lucia – ok – as I said I am more interested in the review process and the conflict of interest issue rather than the personal identification issue but spotted some of my observations during a trawl through the foi packs.
It may better belong in the other thread but I will mention this again.
On page 31 of Fury there is reference to a conflict of interest. I think we would both agree that there is. The mitigating action is to use other researchers ie Cook ,Marriot to address the conflict. However in my opinion they both have a different even greater conflict of interest which is not declared.
The Australian National Guidelines make reference to conflict of interest. See 5.2.10. A researcher should disclose to the review body any actual or potential conflicts of interest, including any financial or other interest or affiliation, that bears on the research (see Chapter 5.4: Conflicts of interest).
http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/book/chapter-5-2-responsibilities-hrecs-other-ethical-review-bodies-and-researchers
The thing I have observed is that the UWA process does not appear to prompt researchers to declare a conflict. It is possible it exists somewhere but I cant find it in the foi packs or in the UWA processes. We know Cook is part of another academic institution but Marriot is not so SL will have had a responsibility to ensure his other authors are aware of their responsibilities.
Possibly confused. Maybe someone could suggest he correct the sentence to not imply Steve is hacker? (If indeed it’s organized to imply that?)
clivere,
I may eventually be discussing conflict of interest. (It depends on how deep the fact pattern is. Likely within the week if it’s fact pattern is shallow.) But I’m moving discussions of conflict of interest off the ‘failed to get consent when there was potential for harm’ thread.
Stephan Lewandowsky didn’t just portray Steve McIntyre as a hacker. He said:
Lewandowsky claims there were multiple hackers who went through John Cook’s private conversations. He doesn’t clarify who they were, but readers could easily think he means everyone who went through the forums is a hacker. And this isn’t just one sentence. He later says:
Reinforcing the notion there were multiple hackers who went through the forum to look for material to criticize Recursive Fury with. Also, he labels them trolls.
The most remarkable part of this is the hacker who stole the forum has no connection to the criticisms of Recursive Fury. That means there is no “hacker” Lewandowsky can point to. His portrayal here is completely baseless. It’s arguably libel too.
Sven:
I wish I could go. Sadly, I live in the United States, and there’s no way I’d be able to afford traveling to Bristol to attend something like this. If only I were getting paid by Big Oil.
BTW: As Ugo Bardi’s resignation from Frontiers is the ‘erupting lew&crew news’ du jour,
This is the “about” page at for the specialty issue/journal whatever he resigned from
http://www.frontiersin.org/Energy_Systems_and_Policy/about
It begins
Howard
I would rather eat WUWT flavored ice cream then drink John Cook’s kool-aid. ^_^
Further to the above:
Fronteirs in Energy Systems and Policy appears to have published 7 articles two authored by Ugo Bardi
http://www.frontiersin.org/Energy_Systems_and_Policy/archive
Associate editors of the journal appear to include
Sgouris Sgouridis is author of the 2nd paper.
Simone Bastianoni : lead author of 3rd paper.
Léo Benichou: lead author of 5th paper.
LuÃs Alexandre Duque Moreira De Sousa: author of the 6th paper.
http://www.frontiersin.org/Energy_Systems_and_Policy/editorialboard
Guest associate editors (page 2) include
Martin K. Patel co-author of the 1st paper.
David Sander co-author of the 1st paper.
So: every one of the 7 papers in this specialty periodical is authored by someone who appears to be listed as some sort of editor.
I have not examined the papers themselves to evaluate their quality.
Carrick (Comment #128184) :
“If the authors failed to get signed informed consent forms from the subjects they interacted with, and if it were required to obtain signed inform consent form, then the basic point of the journal is correct.”
I don’t know about UWA, but I wouldn’t be surprised that such was required; in fact I’d be surprised if they *didn’t* require informed consent.
However, in Frontiers’ case, there’s no doubt that informed consent is required. While one can perhaps understand failure to comply originally — editors are human too — I would have expected that Frontiers would have referred quite specifically to this requirement in their correspondence with the authors concerning a possible rewrite. And it would also be front and center in their clarification. I can think of nothing simpler and more straightforward for Frontiers than to say something like, “This rule is in place for the protection of human subjects. The paper did not comply, so we are forced to retract. We offered the authors an opportunity to submit a replacement paper, but their re-submission was also not compliant.
We apologize for not applying this rule at the time of submission, and we will take steps to ensure that such incidents will not be repeated.”
“Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased”
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00834/abstract
OT but with a couple of similarities to Fury-
two reviewers, one of them being the editor.
looks like it was under-sampled.
Is the author trying to legitimize fortune tellers and mediums? Good for a laugh.
HaroldW
I think Fury claims to be observation not ‘experiment’. There is a slight difference. That said: given the ‘taunting protocol’ it might be an experiment.
Lucia, the fact that there were interactions between Lewandowsky and the people he was studying precludes it from being purely observational.
Lucia (#128207) –
Distinction noted. That may well be why Frontiers didn’t lean on that particular statement.
Regarding taunting: “Steve Lewandowsky … loves poking ants nests with a stick.” [per John Cook]
HaroldW, I’ve never supplied any proof that I had given my subjects informed consent to a journal. I’m required to retain these informed consents, but I’ve never even had an IRB review board request to see them.
The IRB reviews the form that is given to the subjects to verify that all of the information needed is present. But it’s my responsibility to administer this kind of thing, knowing the likely consequences of failure to adhere to university policies.
Depending on the journal, there’s a form that you fill out when publishing that includes the IRB number under which the study was completed, and a place where you sign stating you have adhered to the journal’s policies on ethics relating to the use of humans in research.
For a second example, see this statement.
Notice the section on “debriefing”, which is a requirement when you used deception during a study (as with the Moon Hoax paper).
I agree. But I think the ‘fact’ of the interactions will be disputed. I think it’s clear he did interact and provable.
I don’t think it’s the basis for the journals retraction because as soon as they got to “identified individual….” they hit “stop. do not pass go….” They don’t need to do more, they just retract.
The journal is a publisher here. They don’t need to investigate every possible violation in the paper. They just need to decide whether to retract. As soon as they have sufficient evidence for retraction, it’s gone.
Lucia, how do you think the fact that interactions occurred would be disputed?
That seems open and shut given the number of posts by Lewandowsky acknowledging the receipt of emails from subjects, with him making public, negative comments about the subject or their email on his blog, which he expects the recipient to view. That’s an interaction, open and shut.
And by taunting them on his blog, is a demonstration that he holds negative prejudicial attitudes towards his subjects, which IMO disallows his participation in the study. (The same goes from M. Marcott.)
Michael Marriott interacting directly with me, at Shaping Tomorrows World, during the research period…
“But – I’ve asked Ben, Barry and others to comment on the conspiracy theories outlined by Evans and Moncktonâ€.
– Watchingthedeniers
He also interacted with Geoff, Foxgoose and others and me several more times, at Lew’s website. I even found out how my quote ended up in the dataset.. 😉
Carrick,
They’d deny them or suggest time tables or whatever. I think they can be proven though. 🙂
Absolutely. I posted on this using McIntyre examples.
carrick: Lew et al will deny “interacting” because they never met the “subjects”. They view it as just observing people at a distance and commenting on them. Lack of self-awareness blinds them to the taunting and provoking they did.
Interesting
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094785
Craig, unfortunately for Lewandowsky, interaction is a prior term of art in that community, so playing Humpty Dumpty won’t help him here.
Interaction is a grade up from intervention, where you do something that the subject notices and responds to.
Here are some definitions:
Lucia #128246
The last line in the abstract of reference 25 in your citation:
So the authors of your citation weren’t just being “nice guys” as that passage might imply. They were following the guidance in ref. 25.
http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/29/4/387
John M
I didn’t suggest they were just being “nice guys”. I’m noting that their behavior is nothing like Lew&Crews and they don’t advance any theory to suggest the Lew&Crew method of identifying whoever Lew&Crew they want is dandy.
Lucia,
I didn’t mean to imply you suggested it. My point was that someone might read the passage that way (“because of this we decided to“).
And I was sort of anticipating an appearance by bugs/bunny claiming that the authors chose to anonymize the data, but didn’t really have to. Thus you’d be applying too high a standard for Lew to follow and blah, blah, blah…
Worth leaving link so I can find it:
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/3758/
Shug describing Lew’s interactions with participants.
Also interesting Australian class action
http://whoswholegal.com/news/features/article/30562/is-australia-new-class-action-frontier
I wonder if everyone listed in the SI or everyone in comments at studied blogs might not form “a class”?
From retraction watch
2 more editors resign
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/09/professors-resign-journal-over-retraction-paper-upset-climate-science-deniers
One sends greetings
“Brembs described Frontiers’ retraction decision as “an outrageous act of a scientific journal caving in to pressure from delusionals†who, he said, were “demanding the science about their publicly displayed delusions be hidden from the world.â€
Brembs, an associate editor at Frontiers, wrote on his blog: “Essentially, this puts large sections of science at risk. Clearly, every geocentrist, flat earther, anti-vaxxer, creationist, homeopath, astrologer, diviner, and any other unpersuadable can now feel encouraged to challenge scientific papers in a court.â€
Discuss and parse.
Hhhh.. I’m pondering whether “Fury” (or even moonhoax” ) might be viewed as being affected by rules in “CHAPTER 4.8: PEOPLE IN OTHER COUNTRIES”
Eli,
I’ve seen those. This is a pretty small number given the apparent multiple thousands of editors at various Frontiers journals. (I think the word “zillions” might fit here.)
It’s not at all surprising that some would quit the unpaid position many may have taken up thinking it might
(a) facilitate the process for getting their own research published or
(b) make a nice entry on their CV which is useful when job hunting or aiming for a promotion.
Now, I know you may think I am being cynical here. What with thinking people trying to advance in academia might wish to be able to list ‘editor’ on their CV hoping it will help them get a job or promotion. But even the 7-article specialty journal Ugo Bardi ‘quit’ from had scads of editors. If we count the chief (Ugo himself), the associates, guests and ‘review’ editors, there were 170 editors listed at ‘http://www.frontiersin.org/Energy_Systems_and_Policy/editorialboard”. Others opinions may differ, but I think 170 named ‘editors’ is a rather large number for a specialty journal that had published only 7 articles.
(Absent the ease of adding names to the ‘cc’ list on email which dispenses with the cost of a stamp or paper, I suspect few of these people would be regularly informed or any decisions by that specialty journal and would have nearly no interaction with the ‘chief’ editor. But that’s a guest.)
Given the title of ‘editor’ applies to such a huge number of people, I anticipate we may see dozens quit. But even multi-hundreds quitting would fail to put a dent in the number of editors across the entire “Frontiers” inventory of ‘editors’. Other than PR, I think this will have no effect on Frontiers. Even the PR effect will likely be small– and limitted to people like you posting comments in blogs to make sure we are aware of this ‘exciging and meaningful event”.
Right now: Editors quitting seems a bit like someone formally renouncing their membership in “The Democratic Party”, tearing up ‘their card’ and threatening to join “The Republicans” or vice versa.
““Essentially, this puts large sections of science at risk. Clearly, every geocentrist, flat earther, anti-vaxxer, creationist, homeopath, astrologer, diviner, and any other unpersuadable can now feel encouraged to challenge scientific papers in a court.â€
Eli wants parsing.
The parsing is simple. If a scientist Like Lewandowsky rapes you and writes about it getting it published in a peer reviewed journal, then yes our court system is available. The answer is simple: Tell Dr, Lew that no means no. he needs informed consent
Mosher,
Precisely. They can be challenged for certain things.
I would argue that the ethics case contains issues that touch on the validity of the results and analysis. An incomplete list of examples:
1) The fact that quoted statements in some (possibly most) cases are direct responses to Lewandowsky’s emails to ‘subjects’ he later studied or blog posts naming ‘subjects’ he later studied should affect the interpretation of what ‘ideas’ or ‘tacit hypotheses’ the comments contain. His article falls apart if those are incorrect (which they are.)
2) The fact that he was taunting ‘subjects’ he was studying also turns this into “what people do if they are taunted by a researcher”. This casts an entirely different character on the interpretation of the quotes.
Both of these– and more– cut to the validity of the research. But when making an ethics complaint, one must discuss why these behaviors are ethical violations. Discussing why they also resulted in a piss-poor paper from an academic point of view only dilutes ethics complaint and makes it difficult to present to people trying to judge whether an ethics violation occurred.
But yes: If academics want to complain that the ‘only’ thing in the complaints is a ‘ethical’ violation and that yanking a paper for ethical violations that occurred is going to encourage people to challenge papers that commit ethical violations: Yes. It will encourage people to do this. They have a right to do so and the suggestion that academics ought to be free to trample the rights of subjects in the name of academic freedom is outrageous.
Are there clear examples from the SkS forum of malice and hostility, from Cook or Lewandowsky specifically? I ask because Lewandowsky seems to be claiming that trolling through two years of this stuff produces nothing. I consider that spectacularly unlikely; I’d rather guess that no one was interested in finding hostility before now. Any good examples?
Eli,
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Brembs is full of crap.
And Eli,
After all of this time here and at other skeptical blogs, it seems you have learned so little. Do you really think quoting some spoiled deceptive editor who calls skeptics of climate apocalypse delusional is accurate? Do you also think, like Brembs, that skeptics of climate apocalypse are delusional?
Reading the comments on the blog for the editor who resigned…
It never fails to amaze me how some academics see skeptics as a simple monolithic block of knuckle dragging drooling utter morons. The blatant disrespect is worn as a badge of honor.
It can be useful sometimes as these types tend to underestimate their opposition, plant their own landmines, and go jump on them, as Lewandowsky has done here.
One hopes that these types are a minority out there.
Wow – there are two other academics out there who are peevish leftists like Eli? Who knew?
I have no idea. Lew none from Cook specifically. My recollection is Cook commented infrequently.
The issue of whether one can find malice in SkS is a red herring. It’s easy to find statements suggestiong malice by lew
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/refreshing-lews-memory/
Note the update. While Lew might claim his malice was justified I suspect that would be irrelevant to any defamation suit. I think what would matter vis Fronteirs is (a) if it existed and (b) if it existed at the time he conducted his ‘research’, prepared the manuscript, and when Frontiers published Fury. What might matter vs any suit based on republication is whether this malice exists when he republished at AWU.
Note: malice is a term of art in law. It has different meanings under US copyright law and UK defamation law. In the later the meaning is close to common usage. Not so in the former.
Tom Scharf wrote: “It never fails to amaze me how some academics see skeptics as a simple monolithic block of knuckle dragging drooling utter morons.”
.
It doesn’t amaze me at all. That’s what they’ve been told are the facts by members of their tribe. It’s what Hoax and Fury were designed to “prove”.
.
An interesting study would be to run a questionnaire containing statements from AR5 to see what level of confidence and understanding self identified groups of people would ascribe to these statements compared to the IPCC.
RE:
Brembs, an associate editor at Frontiers, wrote on his blog: “Essentially, this puts large sections of science at risk. Clearly, every geocentrist, flat earther, anti-vaxxer, creationist, homeopath, astrologer, diviner, and any other unpersuadable can now feel encouraged to challenge scientific papers in a court.â€
As someone who does not believe the earth is flat or the center of the universe, who has been vaccinated, is not a creationist, a homeopath or diviner and thinks astrology is for people with vivid imaginations, little education and easily gullible, I have come to the conclusion that Profs Brembs and Bardi are major league drama queens.
Tom,
RE: knuckle dragging drooling utter morons
As a former torpedoman, the first two could possible apply to me. The last one not so much. I am curious if Brembs, Bardi (or Eli for that matter) can claim selection to the national Standards Board in their profession, degrees in 3 different disciplines or 18 years of science education work with students in the field. I highly doubt they can attest to being a qualified submariner – a group far more select than graduates with PhD’s.
Wow! I thought an anti-vaxxer was someone who still hated DEC after all these years.
Re: Eli Rabett (Apr 9 21:28),
Please tell me on what grounds could a creationist, say, sue a journal over a paper on evolutionary biology. What is the tort that applies? What is the harm? These are not rhetorical questions.
Brembs’ statement is nonsense. Any journal should be thrilled to lose him as an editor if that’s the quality of his logic.
“challenge scientific papers in a court”
I think this rabbit-hole that is best avoided, if anyone gets any gets a burr in their saddle. Don’t let them trick you into it.
Andrew
Re: j ferguson (Apr 10 11:19),
At least VAX would tell you, if you bothered to look, that your hard drive was starting to go south by reporting the number of soft errors, unlike DOS or Windows at the time and to some extent still.
re: Brembs–Everyone gives joy, some when they arrive, and some when they leave.
j ferguson:
For some, the pain still lingers on.
DeWitt have you looked at GSmartControl?
John,
I did and found this:
“Lucia,
I didn’t mean to imply you suggested it. My point was that someone might read the passage that way (“because of this we decided to“).
And I was sort of anticipating an appearance by bugs/bunny claiming that the authors chose to anonymize the data, but didn’t really have to. Thus you’d be applying too high a standard for Lew to follow and blah, blah, blah…”
So, what it is about?
Sisi, Perhaps we have to spoon-feed you.
Unless you’re being willfully obtuse, it should be a simple matter to scroll up a bit on that thread (two comments I believe) to see what Lucia and I were discussing.
Lucia,
I see you are very fast reacting to me acknowledging that a different situation has different rules. But that was not what we were discussing. If you do not mind I would prefer discussing that point with Carrick. If you want to discuss with me further than take it up from the last comments I made to your comments.
Carrick,
You mention many “statements of fact”. I am not sure what you are tying to say. Please, try again laterz.
Anyone else feel like this right now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b5aW08ivHU
John M
“Unless you’re being willfully obtuse, it should be a simple matter to scroll up a bit on that thread (two comments I believe) to see what Lucia and I were discussing.”
In what way is it relevant? The comment you linked to was full of references to previous comments which I did not feel like following after. If there were relevant things in previous comments, please describe them here, or copy and paste.
Or link to something that is relevant on first sight! 😉
(two comments up didn’t really help btw)
Enough with Sisi folks. It has to be trolling, no one is that obtuse. We have done our best.
Sisi,
The way in which it is relevant is John M and I are having a discussion in the context of this blog. If you jump into a discussion between John M and me, and you wish to understand a particular comment, you should scroll up and read context. If you do not know this you may be suffering from the “less mature than a 10 year old” syndrome.
As you somehow were unaware of the specific rule that John M was referring too– which appears in this post– I should think the onus is on you to find whatever rules you think apply (and in particular the ones you suggested we consider and cut and past those. That would be somewhat wiser than suggesting others must be held to standards you do not apply to yourself.
I would suggest it’s rather difficult for anyone to link anything that’s relevant to you at first sight because it appears you won’t read the content of the link.
More importantly: possibly you could actually advance some arguments and provide evidence to support your own. Otherwise, everyone is pretty much going to agree with Will J. Richardson above.
Sis,
As for this:
He was addressing me, not you. I understood it. If you don’t, you don’t. He’s not required to devote time and energy or wear out his finger tips explain it to you merely because you appear here.
I would suggest you concentrate on supporting your claims instead of finding things that were addressed to someone else and demanding people explain them all to you.
Hey now. What’s this? I stop posting drivel here for a week or so and some other village idiot moves in? No way Sis, this village already has an idiot. Move along.
Sisi, You did not respond to any substantive point I made. Lew and his paper did the diagnosis. How about the point that the paper is simply incorrect in its diagnosis?
Sisi,
I believe Lew & pls would say, ‘duh’.
There is a new column in the Washington Post on this subject by Krauthammer which speaks of the left entering a new ideological phase on the climate issue.
“The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.”
Sissy, are you a totalitarian?
David Young,
“Diagnosis” is not a good word because it has both an common language sense and a clinical meaning. He did not do a ‘diagnosis’ in the clinical sense. He characterized text as evincing psychopathological behavior traits. This is not a clinical diagnosis, but it is sufficient to require him to have obtained consent.
Since the ethics problem exists without any ‘clinical diagnosis’ it is counter productive to use the word “diagnosis” or to argue about it.
Lucia, You may be right. Lew’s paper is in a grey area here. It really I would argue falls into the political arena and not the science arena as its many scientific defects indicate.
Focusing as you are on a specific issue may be more productive if you want to pursue the matter.
David,
I don’t think there is anything “grey” about the area Lew’s paper falls in. It’s not scientific, it’s bad history, it has multiple ethics defects. It just happens that “diagnosis” is a word that is subject to misinterpretation. Examine the definitions offered in the dictionary:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diagnosis
1a : the art or act of identifying a disease from its signs and symptoms
3a : investigation or analysis of the cause or nature of a condition, situation, or problem
b : a statement or conclusion from such an analysis
He did not do (1a). He did do (3a or b). Because what he analyzed touches on characterisitics that can be symptoms of mental illness it what he analyzed borders on medical. But he didn’t actually identify any disease— and so didn’t do 1a. But he certainly did 3b.
But doing (1a) is not necessary to establish the ethics violation. Given the possible harm of the conditions he’s saying exist, (3a or 3b) are sufficient to establish the ethics violation.
So, we can argue all day whether he “diagnosed”. He did under defintion “3” and did not under defintion “1”. But this is a pointless argument. When explaining what he did wrong, use another verb. Because it’s wrong even if you use a verb that does not have any clinical association.
The “grey” issue is not with Lew’s paper. The “grey” issue is the range of definitions of the word “diagnosis”.
“And Eli,
After all of this time here and at other skeptical blogs, it seems you have learned so little. Do you really think quoting some spoiled deceptive editor who calls skeptics of climate apocalypse delusional is accurate? Do you also think, like Brembs, that skeptics of climate apocalypse are delusional?”
++++++++++++++++
I’ve posted this before. Perhaps it’s relevant here. Eli appears to have a poor rating amoung his students.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=543236&pageNo=1
DCA, I object to posting Eli’s rating. Few of the rest of us are exposed to such ratings and accordingly we must infer those commenter’s comprehension and insight from their posts alone. I think this is reasonable and a good thing especially if unclouded by opinions reached by other means.
It seems entirely possible that someone, certainly not Eli, who is thought a colossal jerk by those he lives among could yet provide useful comments.
I like that anonymity can be chosen or not and that each commenter can make his or her way solely on what he or she writes. This is a rare privilege offered by the blogging world.
Maybe this courtesy shouldn’t be extended to Lew.
Eli’s rating by his students is irrelevant here. We know that climate hysterics like to play the person rather than the ball – to discredit climate-related arguments by references to funding, religious beliefs etc – but maybe sceptics and lukies can hold to higher standards. It is perfectly obvious that Eli cannot make a statement outside his own field without making himself appear to be foolish. We do not need to question his academic or pedagogical qualifications.
Bjoern Brends post on his resignation from the Frontiers editorial staff is located here.
By his behavior, Lewandowsky has harmed the publisher as well as his own human subjects. Hopefully he is proud of this.
Carrick:
In this case it looks to me that Lewandowsky has helped the publisher by improving the average quality of their editorial staff via the loss of Clearly Careless Brends.
There is a blog post on LOG12 (Moon Hoax) located here. The title is “Conspiracist Ideation Falsified?” It does a reanalysis of LOG13 (Moon Hoax redux)
I think this makes a good summary statement:
That fits with my own observations. It’s not whether you’re on one side of the tail of the distribution that is a predictor, it’s whether you are on the tail at all.
I think the conspiracies just change: “global warming is a hoax” on one extreme versus “large fossil fuel funded climate denialism” on the other.
j ferguson, lol, well played.
Carrick,
“I think the conspiracies just change: “global warming is a hoax†on one extreme versus “large fossil fuel funded climate denialism†on the other.”
.
For sure… delusional is delusional, and I would suggest it is at least as common among the wild-eyed greens as among the deni#rs.
.
The odd part is that a “qualified psychologist” can see delusion (in the form of ‘conspiracy ideation’) on one extreme, yet be utterly blind to comparable delusion on the other. The maxim “know thyself” seems to have been forgotten by Lew and Co. Of course, the ethical failings of Lew and Co. are independent of what specific individuals they are abusing…. whether wild-eyed greens or deni#rs.
Has anyone looked at the conspiracy survey Lewandowsky published last October? Since there was no fanfare for it I assume it didn’t say what “Hoax” claimed.
Key is in Table 1 here (some scores are reversed): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3788812/
Data (.csv) is here: http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/PLOSONE2013Data.csv
In any case Lewandowsky will be doing an “ask me anything” on Reddit on the 14th from 7:30AM EST – but since it’s being moderated by the “science subreddit” mods – no criticism of him will be allowed.
FergalR, yes, as I mentioned above, it’s discussed in this link.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/04/10/conspiracist-ideation-falsified/
FergalR #128432 asks
“Has anyone looked at the conspiracy survey Lewandowsky published last October?”
I have. Posted last night.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/04/10/conspiracist-ideation-falsified/
Summary
A recent paper, based on an internet survey of American people, claimed that “conspiracist ideation, is associated with the rejection of all scientific propositions tested”. Analysis of the data reveals something quite different. Strong opinions with regard to conspiracy theories, whether for or against, suggest strong support for strongly-supported scientific hypotheses, and strong, but divided, opinions on climate science.
My results are tentative, and need submitting to a battery of statistical tests. However, there were a lot more believers in conspiracy theories than in “moon hoax”, so it is not so susceptible to scam responses.
Kevin Marshall;
Thanks for that. Not at all surprising that I didn’t notice that paper until now. If it had supported “Hoax” in some way then Dana et al would have broadcast it far and wide.
I’d be interested in how the “Moon Hoax” ideation specifically correlates with belief that CO2 is an existential threat but I lack the spreadsheet skills to check.
I looked at that paper when it first came out. I even contacted Stephan Lewandowsky about some basic concerns with it, and he responded. When I pointed out his answers did nothing to address my concerns, he basically told me to go away (publish in a journal and he’ll care).
That’s what triggered the survey I did a few months ago. The new paper did not suffer from the problem everyone discussed with LOG12 (that only “scammed” responses supported Lewandowsky’s conclusions). That meant the problem I’ve always found more troubling, the fundamental methodological failing, was the key issue.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read a writeup of it I did here. Put simply, Stephan Lewandowsky found people who believe in global warming don’t believe in conspiracy theories. Extrapolating from that, he concluded people who don’t believe in global warming do believe in conspiracy theories. It’s one of the most blatant abuse of statistics and logic I’ve ever seen. I find it mind-boggling he’s gotten away with it, and I don’t understand why so few people have looked at the issue.
I think the Rabett has just encountered the fox and been eaten for lunch, metaphorically speaking of course.
Brandon: Do you know if the “rcorr” function corrects for multiple comparisons?
One of the editors who resigned (link per Eli) captured the spirit of the enterprise by characterizing the retraction as surrender to “delusionals.”
I think the academic standard they seek is that once the anointed diagnose dissidents (e.g., well-known Ãœberdelusional lucia) as being mentally unfit, the dissident (“delusional”) then loses all standing to respond or question the anointed. That’s why ‘the debate is over’. It usually is over early in totalitarian states.
I am reminded of the time IPCC Gruppenführer Pachauri attacked critics (who happened to be irrefutably right) as practitioners of “voodoo science.”
Perhaps alarmists should start wearing brown shirts both to symbolize the baked future earth and their own commitment to groupthink.
toto, no. It’s no different than calculating the correlation coefficients between each pair of variables on its own. It doesn’t attempt to address the possibility of spurious correlations. It’s expected you’ll do that downstream.
In my examples, I didn’t bother to discuss it because so many relationships having such strong correlations couldn’t possibly be spurious (in the sense multiple comparisons can cause). In Stephan Lewandowsky’s case, factor analysis and SEM can account for the issue.
Interestingly, because Lewandowsky used SEM in a confirmatory manner rather than an exploratory manner (confirming what he suspects instead of looking for possibilities), his approach was highly susceptible to spurious correlations. Things like SEM often have many different possible answers. There’s often no way to tell which, if any, is “right.” One normally uses SEM in an exploratory manner to determine what answers could “fit.” From there, you consider how the different answers match your real-world knowledge. Lewandowsky instead assumed his beliefs were correct (i.e. there’s a link between conspiratorial ideation and skepticism) and built those assumptions into his model. That meant he ignored other possible explanations for his results.
It doesn’t matter much because calculating correlation coefficients on non-normal data is wrong, and that issue guaranteed his results. However, it’s interesting because it means had he used SEM properly, even on data completely inappropriate for SEM (which his data was), he wouldn’t have gotten the results he got.
It’s remarkable how much Stephan Lewandowsky got wrong. It’s sort of like Michael Mann: it’s too much to detail. Speaking of which, I need to finish my next Mann post. I stopped halfway because this Lewandowsky stuff is so distracting.
FergalR
I have done a couple of graphs to illustrate the “Moon Hoax” against the 5 climate questions.
For each question you can score 1 (reject) to 5 (accept). So scores for 5 questions range from 5 to 25. The count of responses was a normal distribution, skewed towards accepting “climate science”. I color-coded the Moon Hoax. Majority rejected moon hoax, but those in the middle on climate had most 3s for “moon hoax”.
http://wp.me/ah0hR-Zw
Second graph gives average response. Those in the middle scored highest, due to the high frequency of 3s.
http://wp.me/ah0hR-Zv
Tobin, spot on. Perhaps the nazi play date clothes of the SkS gang were more in the way of how they hope to eventually dress for work, than some bizarrely weird toe-curling prank?
Did Sisi take his/her ball and go home pouting?
hunter,
“Did Sisi take his/her ball and go home pouting?”
Not at all, just not playing the game of relocating comments. Final comment of me being made in this thread.
Sisi got moderated and has not verified his/her email address. So the two comments are moderated until s/he verifies. Or I may clear them tomorrow.
I should add: Carrick also got moderated, wasnt sent a link to email verify and did email verified. He also asked me about the feature and I told him it was new. For now: if the moderation filters moderate you for any reason and you don’t email verify…. well…. OTOH: if you do email verify, your comment should appear either immediately or once I see you’ve email verified.
“So: every one of the 7 papers in this specialty periodical is authored by someone who appears to be listed as some sort of editor.”
Lucia – Frontiers is an “open access” journal … authors pay to publish. Authors who are Editors pay less. Specialty sections are groups of authors who get together in their own little group and publish in their own little friendly environment.
As we can see from Lewandowsky’s claim that he is an Editor of a Specialty Section and a peer reviewer (of a Michael Woods paper no less!) as well.
You help me and we’ll all help you. One for all and all for one.
Frontiers would not exist without authors paying fees to publish. Which it would seem is why they bent so far backwards to come to an agreement that saved face – for them and Lewandowsky both.
http://www.frontiersin.org/about/PublishingFees
http://www.frontiersin.org/about/reviewsystem
http://www.frontiersin.org/Design/pdf/ReviewGuidelines.pdf
Re: A. Scott (Comment #128489)
“Frontiers is an ‘open access’ journal … authors pay to publish.”
I think it’s pretty much standard for academic authors to pay to publish, in “closed” as well as “open access” journals. The fees aren’t trivial, either (especially if you have pictures!).
I found this an interesting discussion on research ethics.
Suffocated Science and Scholarship
Research Ethics Committees, Institutional Review Boards, and the Crisis in Ethics Review
It argues, among other things, that Ethics Institutional Review Boards impose unrealistic participant consent requirements, thereby limiting valuable research.
The complaints about Fury that I have seen via the desmog FOI were lodged with Frontiers with at least some of them then forwarded to UWA. Geoff Chambers has posted the details of responses he got back from Frontiers in a comment at Climateaudit.
Do we know if anyone complained directly to UWA about Fury and what responses were provided along with timeline?
clivere,
Some people complained directly to UWA. I don’t have all those.
Lucia – ok – I was wondering if they used a boilerplate type response similar to what they used for Hoax.
clivere,
I don’t have the full list of complaints or responses. So, I don’t know the answer to that question. I am aware that some people received boilerplate type responses from some people at various places. But I’m not curious enough to create a list.