Sadly, a large percentage of Americans are under the impression that climate scientists do not agree on the reality of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). A lot of people are simply wrong about this. They think that there is a great deal of controversy among the scientists who study the Earth’s climate. But there isn’t. One way we know this is from a study done by John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce, called “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”
In that study, the authors analyzed “the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’.” They learned that “66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming.” Among the papers that expressed a scientific position on the topic, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
The study was actually a bit conservative, as in order to be counted as part of that ~3% not supporting the consensus position on AGW a paper did not really have to be fully against the idea. Also, since the study was done, the consensus has increased. I asked study author Dana Nuccitelli about more recent changes in consensus, and he told me, “The consensus is growing over time, and reached 98% in 2011 (the last year included in our survey). So by now the minimizers/deniers are probably in the 1-2% range in the peer-reviewed literature (contrary to the ‘crumbling consensus’ claims).”
The other day I was giving talks at a local high school, and between classes, found myself chatting with a science teacher who had just completed a module on climate change and AGW. She asked me, “Isn’t there now research that shows that the consensus isn’t really as high as previously thought? Or is that bogus? Sounds bogus to me.”
Yes. Bogus.
I’m not sure what research the teacher was referring to (it was just something she had heard about) but there is a paper just published in “Energy Policy” by economist Richard Tol, who as far as I can tell has been a naysayer of climate science for some time now. Tol’s abstract says:
A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change… This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook’s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.
Tol is practicing a special kind of science denialism here, sometimes called “seeding doubt” or as I prefer it, “casting seeds of doubt on infertile ground.” In other contexts this is called “concern trolling” or the “You’re not helping” gambit. The first of two paragraphs of the Conclusion section of Tol’s paper reads (emphasis added),
The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).
Let’s get straight that Cook et al is not flawed, despite Tol’s complaints.
Tol’s main complaint is in the coding of the abstracts. He claims that it is imperfect. Well, duh. This is, essentially, social science research, and coding of text is imperfect. Tol makes the claim that the imperfections, if corrected, might bring the consensus down to a dismal 91%. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about that, but if he is right, we are not impressed.
Tol’s key point is that the papers that are coded as not making a claim include some that do. He then incorrectly calculates how many of of those, if coded “correctly” there would be, and using this, downgrades the consensus to 91%
Nuccitelli explains in detail, in his post, how Tol’s re-analysis is badly done (see the amazing graphic at the top of this post) (go read it) and notes:
In reality, as our response to Tol’s critique (accepted by Energy Policy but not yet published) shows, there simply aren’t very many peer-reviewed papers that minimize or reject human-caused global warming. Most of the papers that were reconciled ‘towards stronger rejection’ went from explicit to implicit endorsement, or from implicit endorsement to no position. For abstracts initially rated as ‘no position,’ 98% of the changes were to endorsement categories; only 2% were changed to rejections.
Nuccitelli also notes that a separate study indicates that Tol’s method is flawed in the sense that no matter what data are used, the consensus will be decreased as an artifact of the methodology. Nuccitelli notes “…by making this mistake, Tol effectively conjured approximately 300 papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming out of thin air, with no evidence that those papers exist in reality. As a result, his consensus estimate falls apart under cursory examination.”
Amazingly, when the Consensus research team fixed Tol’s methodology but applied the same question about coding papers in the no-position category, and re-calculated the percent consensus, it went up by 0.1%. Also, as Nuccitelli points out the Cook et al paper is not alone, and there have been a number of other studies that show essentially the same level of consensus among papers and/or scientists.
So, the consensus is real and isn’t going away. As is also the case with Anthropogenic Global Warming.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is an organization of mainly economists dedicated to mucking up the development and advancement of good science-based policy related to climate change. It is a denialist “think” tank.
A couple of weeks ago, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson joined the GWPF. This was a little surprising, but not totally surprising. It was surprising because Bengtsson is scientist and the foundation is anti-science and, as I noted, mostly economists. (Well, they are sort of like scientists too, but a different kind of science.) It was not surprising because Bengtsson has positioned himself as a “skeptic,” claiming that his skepticism is the good kind (all scientists are skeptical) but really, he has expressed doubt about the validity of much of the standing mainstream climate science, especially the use of models. He is a #Faupause-er, claiming that a decrease in the rate of increase of surface temperatures (which is only part of the global warming picture) suggests that global warming is less of a thing than we all know it is.
Then, just now, Bengtsson resigned from the GWPF citing harassment by scientists. One of the specific actions he refers to is a colleague suggesting he might withdraw as a co-author given Bengtsson’s affiliation with a rather rabid anti-science organization.
The denialists have taken off with this, following Bengtsson’s lead. From Bengtsson’s resignation letter:
I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.
Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
What happened here is simple to understand. A member of the scientific community who was retaining discredited ideas about climate change took one step too far, literally joining with the anti-science community. Colleagues complained about his choice, which is something they not only can, but should do. If the reports are correct, one of those individuals considered distancing himself from the GWPF, which is probably the ethical choice. In response, the denialist community, including Bengtsson (who has now apparently proven himself to be a member of that community) is calling foul. But really, what is the mainstream scientific community supposed to do? Is a professional gasp at a clearly inappropriate decision by a scientist really McCartyism? No, clearly it is not.
The Daily Mail, which I usually don’t refer to, claims that Bengtsson’s climate science colleagues inferred or stated that the mainstream science community is respectable, and Bengtsson’s move to join the GWPF was silly, and apparently one blogger described him as a crybaby. Some told him that the GWPF was a questionable organization. That sounds like a lot of people trying to impress on him that his legitimacy as a member of the scientific community may be affected by sidling up to an explicitly anti-science organization.
Rabett Run notes, “The short take on this is that Prof. Bengtsson ran into a wall of disgust from his colleagues which took him by surprise.”
Roger Pielke, Jr, who himself has had his work in climate science (he is an economist) criticized (legitimately) underscores the McCarthyism claim, and doubled down:
Unfortunately, “climate mccarthyism” is not so far off. It has been practiced for a while…
The main problem here is … that the elite in this community – including scientists, journalists, politicians — have endorsed the climate mccarthyism campaign, and are often its most vigorous participants…
The climate issue is coming to represent a globalized version of the US abortion debates. I tell my grad students that there is no use for policy analysts in the abortion debates. I should follow my own advice!
Hot Whopper’s Sou gives some examples of why a scientist might not want to be affiliated, directly or indirectly, with the GWPF:
As to why climate scientists might not want to be associated with the GWPF, this is a sample of the sort of nonsense that Nigel Lawson and his organisation are known for. On the IPCC:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which published on Friday the first instalment of its latest report, is a deeply discredited organisation
Nigel just made that up. The IPCC won a Nobel Peace Prize for heaven’s sake! How about this GWPF article – about the man deniers love to hate. (Archived here):
IS MICHAEL MANN DELUSIONAL OR A DELIBERATE LIAR?
Date: 05/12/11
In my Weekly Standard Climategate 2.0 article I refer to Michael “hockey stick” Mann as the Fredo of the climate mafia, because of his endless bluster and the obvious embarrassment he brings to his fellow scientists.
Expect the Bengtsson story to become denialist yammering fodder. Well, it already is. Expect more.
UPDATE:
One of the complaints made be denialists is, apparently, that Bengtsson was given the shaft by the mainstream scientific community when a paper he submitted to IOP was rejected. Quotes from the peer reviewer comments were used to implicate IOP, the journal, and the reviewer in a McCarthy-istic campaign against Bengtsoon. It turns out that was a lie. The journal rejected Bengtsson’s paper because if fell short of standards, but encouraged him to bring it up to snuff with the implication they would look at it again.
There is a certain ethical question that has to be asked here; was the release of parts of a peer review OK? In any event, once it is released, the journal is obliged to address it, and in so doing, they have to check with the reviewer to see if the confidential review can be released. Well, all that happened, and IOP has put out a press release providing documentation of what really went on behind the scenes.
Here it is:
Statement from IOP Publishing on story in The Times 16 May 2014Bristol, UK
Dr. Nicola Gulley, Editorial Director at IOP Publishing, says, “The draft journal paper by Lennart Bengtsson that Environmental Research Letters declined to publish, which was the subject of this morning’s front page story of The Times, contained errors, in our view did not provide a significant advancement in the field, and therefore could not be published in the journal.”
“The decision not to publish had absolutely nothing to do with any ‘activism’ on the part of the reviewers or the journal, as suggested in The Times’ article; the rejection was solely based on the content of the paper not meeting the journal’s high editorial standards, ” she continues.
“The referees selected to review this paper were of the highest calibre and are respected members of the international science community. The comments taken from the referee reports were taken out of context and therefore, in the interests of transparency, we have worked with the reviewers to make the full reports available.”
The full quote actually said “Summarising, the simplistic comparison of ranges from AR4, AR5, and Otto et al, combined with the statement they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”
“As the referees report state, ‘The overall innovation of the manuscript is very low.’ This means that the study does not meet ERL’s requirement for papers to significantly advance knowledge of the field.”
“Far from denying the validity of Bengtsson’s questions, the referees encouraged the authors to provide more innovative ways of undertaking the research to create a useful advance.”
“As the report reads, ‘A careful, constructive, and comprehensive analysis of what these ranges mean, and how they come to be different, and what underlying problems these comparisons bring would indeed be a valuable contribution to the debate.”
“Far from hounding ‘dissenting’ views from the field, Environmental Research Letters positively encourages genuine scientific innovation that can shed light on complicated climate science.”
“The journal Environmental Research Letters is respected by the scientific community because it plays a valuable role in the advancement of environmental science – for unabashedly not publishing oversimplified claims about environmental science, and encouraging scientific debate.”
“With current debate around the dangers of providing a false sense of ‘balance’ on a topic as societally important as climate change, we’re quite astonished that The Times has taken the decision to put such a non-story on its front page.
Please find the reviewer report below quoted in The Times, exactly as sent to Lennart Bengttsson.
We are getting permission from the other referees for this paper to make their reports available as soon as possible.
REFEREE REPORT(S):
COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S)
The manuscript uses a simple energy budget equation (as employed e.g. by Gregory et al 2004, 2008, Otto et al 2013) to test the consistency between three recent “assessments” of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity (not really equilibrium climate sensitivity in the case of observational studies).
The study finds significant differences between the three assessments and also finds that the independent assessments of forcing and climate sensitivity within AR5 are not consistent if one assumes the simple energy balance model to be a perfect description of reality.
The overall innovation of the manuscript is very low, as the calculations made to compare the three studies are already available within each of the sources, most directly in Otto et al.
The finding of differences between the three “assessments” and within the assessments (AR5), when assuming the energy balance model to be right, and compared to the CMIP5 models are reported as apparent inconsistencies.
The paper does not make any significant attempt at explaining or understanding the differences, it rather puts out a very simplistic negative message giving at least the implicit impression of “errors” being made within and between these assessments, e.g. by emphasising the overlap of authors on two of the three studies.
What a paper with this message should have done instead is recognising and explaining a series of “reasons” and “causes” for the differences.
– The comparison between observation based estimates of ECS and TCR (which would have been far more interesting and less impacted by the large uncertainty about the heat content change relative to the 19th century) and model based estimates is comparing apples and pears, as the models are calculating true global means, whereas the observations have limited coverage. This difference has been emphasised in a recent contribution by Kevin Cowtan, 2013.
– The differences in the forcing estimates used e.g. between Otto et al 2013 and AR5 are not some “unexplainable change of mind of the same group of authors” but are following different tow different logics, and also two different (if only slightly) methods of compiling aggregate uncertainties relative to the reference period, i.e. the Otto et al forcing is deliberately “adjusted” to represent more closely recent observations, whereas AR5 has not put so much weight on these satellite observations, due to still persisting potential problems with this new technology
– The IPCC process itself explains potential inconsistencies under the strict requirement of a simplistic energy balance: The different estimates for temperature, heat uptake, forcing, and ECS and TCR are made within different working groups, at slightly different points in time, and with potentially different emphasis on different data sources. The IPCC estimates of different quantities are not based on single data sources, nor on a fixed set of models, but by construction are expert based assessments based on a multitude of sources. Hence the expectation that all expert estimates are completely consistent within a simple energy balance model is unfunded from the beginning.
– Even more so, as the very application of the Kappa model (the simple energy balance model employed in this work, in Otto et al, and Gregory 2004) comes with a note of caution, as it is well known (and stated in all these studies) to underestimate ECS, compared to a model with more time-scales and potential non-linearities (hence again no wonder that CMIP5 doesn’t fit the same ranges)
Summarising, the simplistic comparison of ranges from AR4, AR5, and Otto et al, combined with the statement they they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.
One cannot and should not simply interpret the IPCCs ranges for AR4 or 5 as confidence intervals or pdfs and hence they are not directly comparable to observation based intervals (as e.g. in Otto et al).
In the same way that one cannot expect a nice fit between observational studies and the CMIP5 models.
A careful, constructive, and comprehensive analysis of what these ranges mean, and how they come to be different, and what underlying problems these comparisons bring would indeed be a valuable contribution to the debate.
I have rated the potential impact in the field as high, but I have to emphasise that this would be a strongly negative impact, as it does not clarify anything but puts up the (false) claim of some big inconsistency, where no consistency was to be expected in the first place.
And I can’t see an honest attempt of constructive explanation in the manuscript.
Thus I would strongly advise rejecting the manuscript in its current form.
An important Virginia Supreme Court finding came out today, related to the hugely complicated maneno that I feel totally unqualified to explain to you … but Michael Halpern of the Center for Science and Democracy is:
The Supreme Court of Virginia today found unanimously in favor of the University of Virginia in its attempt to protect its employees from unwarranted intrusions into their privacy through the commonwealth’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). In doing so, the Court rebuffed efforts by the American Tradition Institute (ATI) to gain access to the private correspondence of UVa researchers. The Court’s decision signals to scientists at public universities that the pursuit of scientific knowledge will be protected in Virginia, no matter how their research results might be received.
For brevity’s sake, you can catch up on the events leading up to this decision in my preview of the court case and summary of oral arguments.
My own personal opinion: The authors of the retracted paper and their followers are doing the climate change crisis a tragic disservice by attacking people personally and saying that it is ethically ok to identify them in a scientific study. They made a monumental mistake, refused to fix it and that rightfully disqualified the study. The planet is headed for a cliff and the scientific evidence for climate change is way past a debate, in my opinion. Why even debate this with contrarians? If scientists think there is a debate, then why not debate this scientifically? Why help the ostriches of society (always are) keep their heads in the sand? Why not focus even more on the science of climate change? Why not develop potential scenarios so that society can get prepared? Is that not what scientists do? Does anyone really believe that a public lynching will help advance anything? Who comes off as the biggest nutter? Activism that abuses science as a weapon is just not helpful at a time of crisis.
I’m not sure if this being his own personal opinion gets him out of trouble here. As an assistant field chief editor that is.
The authors of the retracted paper
Please avoid the passive voice. “As the authors of the paper I supervised the undue retraction of.” There, I fixed that for you.
and their followers
Oh, I see, you think is a cult or something. Interesting.
are doing
Actually, I think it is you who is doing something here. They just wrote a paper in their field of expertise, published it in a peer reviewed journal, etc.
the climate change crisis a tragic disservice
No, this research is important in understanding the astonishing and critically important fact that there is a virtually 100% consensus among scientists that climate change is real, human caused, and important in contrast to something closer to a 50-50 distribution of belief among the general public that it is even a thing. This discordance is one of the most important facts of our age, because a) climate change is one of the most important things happening on this planet right now and b) humanity seems entirely unable to address it. There are reasons for this and one of those reasons is the behavior, strategy, and tactics of the denialist community. Recursive Fury was a scholarly study of an important aspect of that. Which you published. Then, the denialist community pressured you into retracting it. That, good sir, is a tragic disservice. You are the perpetrator of a tragic disservice.
by attacking people personally and saying that it is ethically ok to identify them in a scientific study.
Writing about and analyzing public comments without referring to the source is unethical. You have this backwards, It is generally accepted by the research and publishing community that you have this wrong.
They made a monumental mistake,
Well, you got that right. They should have picked a different journal. Generally, I think it would be a good idea henceforth for people to pick a different journal.
refused to fix it
Even though the paper is fine the way it is they did not “refuse to fix it” but rather worked with the editors of Frontiers (perhaps you should meet them some time!) to follow one or more paths to addressing this issue. So, that’s just a lie, apparently.
and that rightfully disqualified the study.
Disqualified the study? That you published?
The planet is headed for a cliff and the scientific evidence for climate change is way past a debate, in my opinion. Why even debate this with contrarians?
Since you are acting as a hobgoblin of the climate science denialists, I’m a little surprised to see that you accept the reality of climate change so readily. But that’s good, good for you. As to why there should be an academic study of denialism, there are two answers to that. a) academics traditionally study whatever they want, and b) see above.
If scientists think there is a debate,
They don’t, yet there is one and that debate is hampering our efforts to do something about it. This is worthy of study and investigation. Somebody should do that!
then why not debate this scientifically?
There isn’t a valid debate, but there is a debate nonetheless. THAT issue is worthy of scientific study. Lewandowsky et al. did that. You have repressed the study.
Why help the ostriches of society (always are) keep their heads in the sand?
Exactly. Let’s address this faux debate. In this case, we need to understand it better. Academic study of the debate is a good thing. Which the authors did. Which you agreed to, published, then under pressure from the denialists, retracted.
Why not focus even more on the science of climate change?
This is a very interesting question. Lewandowsky is not a climate scientist. Others involved both in this paper and other projects are also not climate scientists. For that matter the vast majority of denialists are not climate scientists either. But the issue of climate change has many aspects, including denialism, which was the subject of an academic study that your journal accepted, published, then under pressure from science denialists, retracted.
Why not develop potential scenarios so that society can get prepared?
Get prepared? Oh, I see. You actually ARE a denialist! There are many kinds of denailists, including those who think there is nothing we can do about climate change. This statement seems to suggest that this is your position. That is very interesting. This may be the most important statement I’ve seen coming out of Frontiers. This could explain the whole retraction thing. Huh.
Is that not what scientists do?
What scientists do is they study stuff and write papers and put the papers in peer reviewed journals, and part of that is the process of editorial oversight and review. That is what Lewandowsky et al did. They did what scientists did. You, and Frontiers, did something else, something that editors should not do about the science in their journals. Repress it.
Does anyone really believe that a public lynching will help advance anything?
Most people believe that study of denialism is important. Most people believe that public lynching of scientists who study climate change or climate science denialism does not help advance anything. Did I answer your question correctly? 🙂
Who comes off as the biggest nutter? Activism that abuses science as a weapon is just not helpful at a time of crisis.
Did you just call the authors of the paper you repressed nutters? Wow.
You should go read the original post, but here’s a key part of it:
Frontiers retracted a perfectly fine (according to their own investigation) psychology paper due to financial risks for themselves. It can only be seen as at best a rather lame excuse or at worst rather patronizing, if Frontiers were to claim to be protecting their authors from lawsuits by removing the ‘offending’ article. This is absolutely no way to “empower researchers in their daily work“. In the coming days I will send resignation letters to the Frontiers journals to which I have donated my free time for a range of editorial duties.
And now, on a completely unrelated note, for your amusement:
Ugo Bardi is a scientist who until a few moments ago served as Chief Specialty Editor at the journal Frontiers. As you know, Frontiers has recently retracted a perfectly good paper, initially indicating that the retraction was due to pressure from the climate science denialist community, who did not like the paper because it was about them. Later, Frontiers changed its tune and claimed that the paper was retracted because of ethical violations of the authors, even though the journal had earlier clearly stated that there were no issues, ethical or otherwise, with the paper. I talk about this here.
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.
Ugo is being very brave here, because now that he has taken this action he may well be next on the list for the climate science denialists to go after. Of course, I have a feeling he’s been in that position before because he is a strong and articulate spokesperson for climate science.
Bardi also notes something that I’ve also been concerned about. He and I are big supporters of OpenAccess journals. Frontiers is a major player in that area, and I saw their acquisition a while back by Nature Publishing Group as an excellent move in the direction of increased OpenAccess publication. I don’t assume that there is a connection between being OpenAccess and BoneHeaded. But this, as Bardi says, may be a bit of a setback for this important movement.
Recently, the OpenAccess journal Frontiers retracted a paper written by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriot Hubble called “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation.” The paper discussed conspiracist ideation as implicated in the rejection of scientific work …
A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and the rejection of other scientic propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, in press; LOG12 from here on). This article analyzes the response of the climate blogosphere to the publication of LOG12. We identify and trace the hypotheses that emerged in response to LOG12 and that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions. Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking. For example, whereas hypotheses were initially narrowly focused on LOG12, some ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors of LOG12, such as
university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. The overall pattern of the blogosphere’s response to LOG12 illustrates the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science, although alternative scholarly interpretations may be advanced in the future.
Professor of Psychology Stephan Lewandowsky.Since the retraction it has become clear to me that the journal Frontiers has acted inappropriately. One could argue that the journal has been unethical or possibly libelous and left itself open to very legitimate civil action, but I’m not a lawyer. More importantly for the academic community, Frontiers has demonstrated itself to be dangerous. Academics who publish with this journal in any area where there exists, or could emerge, a community of science denialists or other anti-academic activists risk having their hard work ruined (by retraction) and, astonishingly, risk being accused by the journal itself of unethical behavior that they did not commit. For these reasons, I urge members of the academic community to pressure Frontiers to change their policies and issue appropriate apologies or other remediation. Academics considering submitting material to Frontiers should consider not doing so.
Here are the details.
As stated, “Recursive Fury” paper was retracted by the journal in association with this statement:
In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.
According to the authors, this statement was the outcome of negotiations between them and Frontiers and was part of a legal agreement. The authors tell us that they did not agree with the decision, and were disappointed with it. The Australian Psychological Society and other organizations, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists shared their disappointment with Frontiers’ decision with the authors. Other than that, the authors have had very little to say publicly until now (See: Revisiting a Retraction by Stephan Lewandowsky). In fact, Lewandowsky has continued to serve as a volunteer co-editor for an upcoming issue of the journal, and continues peer reviewing work for them. Furthermore, Lewandowsky and as far as I can tell the other authors have not supported any particular action regarding this screw-up by Frontiers, opting, rather, to let things play out for a period of time.
Then, Frontiers got weird.
The journal released a second, longer, and very different statement about the retraction. When I read the statement I felt it accused the authors of at least two counts of unethical conduct, and the statement indicated that this is why the paper was retracted. So, at this point, Frontiers clearly had lied once or twice (depending on which, if any, of the contradictory statements is true). Also, the assertions made in the second retraction were clearly wrong. As far as I can tell the authors used correct and proper methods for obtaining their data, reporting the data, and reporting the results. Yet, the journal makes an almost explicit statement that the authors acted unethically.
Since the second retraction incorrectly, in my view, accused four well established academics of unethical behavior, the journal had become dangerous. The second retraction statement notes,
Frontiers came to the conclusion that it could not continue to carry the paper, which does not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects. Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics.
The source data for this paper was information fully available in public view on the Internet. The data was collected using widely available search engines such as Google. From the methods section:
An on-going web search in real time was conducted by two of the authors (J.C. and M.M.) during the period August-October 2012. This daily search used Google Alerts to detect newly published material matching the search term “Stephan Lewandowsky.” If new blog posts were discovered that featured links to other relevant blog posts not yet recorded, these were also included in the analysis. To ensure that the collection of hypotheses pertaining to LOG12 was exhaustive, Google was searched for links to the originating blog posts (i.e., rst instances of a recursive theory), thereby detecting any further references to the original hypothesis any derivatives
The search for data was later narrowed to focus on a subset of highly active internet sites, but still, all public (even if removed, as per the usual methods of finding blog posts and comments using “wayback machine” like technologies).
I’m not sure if an analogy is really needed here, but this is a bit like a peer reviewed paper that studies statements made by Winston Churchill in public contexts during World War II. Except the conspiracy-ideationalizing anti-science internet trolls aren’t Winston Churchill.
The bottom line regarding Frontiers: If you publish there, and some people don’t like the work you did, they may manipulate Frontiers into throwing you under the bus. If you are an editor there or on the board, you may find yourself unwittingly part of an academic scandal that leaves you liable in part, or simply associated with, extremely questionable behavior. Rather than enhancing careers at the same time it enhances knowledge, this particular journal has become radioactive. My suggestion: Run away.
In order to fully document and underscore the problem, Stephan Lewandowsky has posted a full description of what transpired between the authors and the journal. It is posted HERE.
A few bullet points taken from the text and modified slightly (to be bullet points):
In the second statement, the journal seemed to state that the paper was retracted because it “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects.”
In the contractually-agreed retraction statement, signed by legal representatives of both parties, that Frontiers “…did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study.”
In the second statement the journal said that it had received no (presumably legal) threats.
There exist public statements of individuals who explicitly stated that they had threatened the journal or had launched defamation complaints (see Lewandowsky’s post for links). Also, this claim contradicts the contractually-agreed retraction statement, which ascribed the retraction to an “insufficiently clear” legal context.
This legal context involved English libel laws in force prior to 2014. Those laws were sufficiently notorious for their chilling effect on inconvenient speech for President Obama to sign a law that makes U.K. libel judgments unenforceable in the U.S.
Frontiers revealed the existence of a new paper that we submitted in January 2014 and that according to their latest statement “did not deal adequately with the issues raised by Frontiers.”
In his post, Lewandowsky provides a detailed summary of events behind the scenes. Read his post to get these details. The crux of it is this: Frontiers had told the authors that there were no ethical issues with the paper, but a few changes might be made to reduce legal risks. Further back and forth happened, and during this time the legal liability context changed because of changes in English libel law. A second “replacement” article was produced, apparently going beyond and above what was necessary, but for some reason Frontiers chose not to use it. (They give a reason but the reason seems weak given what we know about the article and about what Frontiers was asking for.)
Lewandowsky sums up as follows:
Throughout the entire period, from March 2013 until February 2014, the only concern voiced by Frontiers related to the presumed defamation risk under English libel laws. While the University of Western Australia offered to host the retracted paper at uwa.edu.au/recursivefury because it did not share those legal concerns, Frontiers rejected an anonymized replacement paper on the basis that non-identifiable parties might feel defamed.
No other cause was ever offered or discussed by Frontiers to justify the retraction of Recursive Fury. We are not aware of a single mention of the claim that our study “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects” by Frontiers throughout the past year, although we are aware of their repeated explicit statements, in private and public, that the study was ethically sound.
This brings into focus several possibilities for the reconciliation of Frontier’s contradictory statements concerning the retraction:
First, one could generously propose that the phrase “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects” is simply a synonym for “defamation risk” and that the updated statement therefore supports the contractually-agreed statement. This is possible but it puts a considerable strain on the meaning of “synonym.”
Second, one could take the most recent statement by Frontiers at face value. This has two uncomfortable implications: It would imply that the true reason for the retraction was withheld from the authors for a year. It would also imply that the journal entered into a contractual agreement about the retraction statement that misrepresented its actual position.
Third, perhaps the journal only thought of this new angle now and in its haste did not consider that it violates their contractually-agreed position.
Or there are other possibilities that we have not been able to identify.
I just noticed that Frontiers has struck up some sort of arrangement to work with the internationally known and usually (but not always) venerated Nature Publishing Group. I wonder if this means that Nature Publishing Group has lowered its ethical standards, or if Frontiers will be made to make amends to these authors and the rest of the academic community.
I just watched a report on ABC news about anti-vaxers causing the current and alarming measles outbreak. It was a reasonable report for MSM though I missed large parts of it because I was multitasking ineffectively. But an idea came to me that would go a long way to manage this problem of anti-vaxers threatening everyone else’s health and well being. Lives, even. They are threatening our lives.
Here’s the deal. Most public schools have a mealy-mouthed policy that allows people to send their kids to school unvaccinated because they are dumb asses. That’s a problem and that should be addressed, but I don’t expect it to be because school administrators are usually easily managed by whackaloon parents if the whackaloon parents organize sufficiently. Unions are already organized as entities and have the potential to change policies. So lets look at the union route.
In states with teachers’ unions, here is what I recommend. The health and well being of the teachers is a workplace thing. They should be protected against disease, injury, death, etc. in the workplace. The anti-vax supporting policies of the school — i.e. that students must get vaccinated unless their parents are morons — place teachers in danger.
So set up a system of appropriate compensation. I recommend the following.
1) If any teacher comes down with a communicable disease covered by vaccines for which there are any students who have opted out, the teacher gets $10,000. Proof of a link is not needed, and there need be no identified “case zero.” Parents are too good at hiding sickness in their families, and the necessary investigation into sickness would be very costly and highly problematic.
2) If a death occurs in that teacher’s family owing to said disease, the teacher is compensated by $100,000,000.
3) This would apply as well to all staff, and visitors.
4) If a student in the school comes down with any of the communicable diseases and this is known to the union, every teacher and staff member gets an extra $1,000 per week in salary during the period of possible infection, to be determined by reference to a lookup table developed by health professionals.
This seams reasonable given that that school administrators clearly feel that their students and faculty are at risk. They should agree to this demand by the union because there will never be a payment. Right?
Every time you make a move you seem to create your own pile of dog do and step in it. The latest own-goal for those who deny climate science was scored after an unreasonable and obnoxious attack on Professor Lawrence Torcello, of RIT. Details here and here.
Those mentioned above, and others such as the Drudge and Infowars, lied. They lied knowingly, blatantly, obnoxiously. They willfully misconstrued Lawrence Torcello’s word and his research in order to make climate scientists look like Hitler. This is not a new tactic and it didn’t work before.
And now, the Rochester Institute of Technology has issued a statement in direct response to these unwarranted and inappropriate attacks on Professor Torcello. Here is the statement:
The search for truth is the animating force of a university, and it behooves those who support open and respectful discussion of controversial issues to get the facts right. Recently the views expressed by a member of our community, Professor Lawrence Torcello, have been misrepresented by some in the media. The misrepresentation follows a pattern similar to other incidents of misrepresentation involving academics that work on topics related to climate change. We encourage people to carefully read Professor Torcello’s article itself rather than rely on distortions of its contents circulating on the web.
The Institute wishes to acknowledge, with Professor Torcello, that a strong scientific consensus exists in support of anthropogenic global warming. Otherwise, RIT takes no official position on the views independently expressed by its faculty members in the course of their research. Faculty members speak for themselves, not for the institution or the institution’s leadership. The university does endorse our faculty members’ rights to free speech and recognizes our faculty’s academic freedom to express their views.
“Colleges and universities, of all organizations, must remain forums for open and respected discussion of controversial issues,” said RIT President Bill Destler. “We are part of a learning community, and much of our learning comes from each other. Respect for the opinions of others, even when we strongly disagree with them, must be a cornerstone of our campus community.”
This is to my knowledge the first time that a major university has ever issued a statement acknowledging the consensus on climate change. I am more than willing to be corrected on that, please supply any other cases in the comments. But in any event, this can’t be common.
But it is a direct result of the nefarious efforts of the denialists. Nice going, guys.
Professor Torcello’s point was made in part by reference to the tragic events at L’Aquila, Italy, where a screw up mainly by non-scientist government official seems to have resulted in unnecessary deaths due to an earthquake. Torcello notes:
If those with a financial or political interest in inaction had funded an organised campaign to discredit the consensus findings of seismology, and for that reason no preparations were made, then many of us would agree that the financiers of the denialist campaign were criminally responsible for the consequences of that campaign. I submit that this is just what is happening with the current, well documented funding of global warming denialism.
That’s a powerful analogy from real life. If we are allowed the luxury of thought experiment, we can probably put an even finer point on it. Let me give that a try. Remember, this is a thought experiment. These things did not happen.
Bridges across the region are starting to deteriorate and some say they should be replaced. But there is an industry that makes a lot of money repairing bridges, as distinct from replacing them. That organization is represented by a number of public relations and lobbying organizations funded by the industry. The ruling legislative body has hearings to help decide if bridges should be replaced over the next few years at great cost, or if the annual budget for repair should be maintained.
There may be legitimate arguments on both sides of the issue, but the vast majority of engineers with relevant expertise feel that repair can not keep up with deterioration and bridges may start falling down despite best efforts to keep them up. A consensus has emerged that the bridges should be replaced. But the hearings happen anyway.
At the hearings there are a number of witnesses making various points, but among these witnesses are several representatives of the above mentioned industry and their lobbyists and public relations organizations. These witnesses are asked a number of questions and they provide a lot of information. But, they intentionally leave out important data, emphasize less important data that happens to support their cause (cherry picking) and they even go so far as to falsify studies. Overall, their argument is convincing, even if it is based on willfully misrepresented information and lies.
The legislative body, looking to save money in their budget decides to kick the can down the road, based on the testimony of representatives of the repair, not rebuild, interests. No bridges are replaced.
A few years later a string of busses carrying toddlers to a toddler convention is driving across one of the bridges. Below the bridge happens to be a tour boat that was leased by the Dalai Lama. He’s on the boat. Also on the bridge is a medical transport vehicle carrying a half dozen hearts to a nearby transplant hospital where very ill children will be given a new lease on life.
The bridge collapses, everyone on the bridge, and under it on the boat, are killed but many of them die slow and miserable deaths because the busses and other vehicles are pinned below water line under the debris, and they drown over the next half hour as the vehicles slowly fill with muddy, cold, river water.
OK, now, what do you think of the witnesses who knowingly and maliciously provided false testimony to the legislature, which ultimately was used to decide to not replace the bridge? Oh, by the way, the bridge that collapsed in this thought experiment would have been the first bridge to be replaced.
There are several things that Lawrence Torcello did not say. He did not say that “scientists who don’t believe in catastrophic man-made global warming should be put in prison.” But James Dellingpole claims that Torcello said that. James Dellingpole needs to apologize to Professor Torcello for that.
Eric Owens of the Daily Caller said that Torcello “wants to send people who disagree with him about global warming to jail.” Professor Torcello did not say that. Eric Owens owes the professor an apology.
Infowars.com and The Drudge repeated that Professor Torcello “called for the incarceration of any American who actively disagrees that climate change is solely caused by human activity.” He didn’t. More apologies owed.
These quotes (and their documentation) come from a piece by Graham Readfearn, which you can read HERE. Readfearn’s post also describes the kind and amount of harassment Professor Torcello has received since he revealed his idea that people who intentionally cause harm should be held responsible. (See also A corollary to Godwin’s law: the “law of genocidal intentions” by Ugo Bardi.)
The bridge analogy is very straight forward and if that really happened it would be hard to argue against very seriously looking into the industry representatives’ actions. The L’Aquila earthquake is a much less clear situation used by Torcello to make the point. Had there been bought and paid for expert testimony assuring everyone that filling cracks in buildings with some sort of cement like filler would suffice to keep everyone safe from earthquakes, from representatives of the crack-filling-compound industry, that case would be more like the bridge-thought-experiment. How does climate change fit into this?
Significantly changing the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels makes a lot of people a lot of money. But it is also similar to lighting a fire under a pot of tap water on your stove. Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere it starts the multi-decade (and longer) process of changing the climate in ways that will undoubtedly have important negative effects, including sea level rise, changes in atmospheric circulation, and so on. People are going to die, economies are likely to collapse. It is a very bad situation.
Willfully misrepresenting the realities of climate change for personal gain (financial or not) is a nefarious act. I’m not sure if it is technically a criminal act, but maybe it should be. This is overall very tricky stuff. Lawrence Torcello has raised the question, as a philosopher interested in this problem. The result of his raising the question has lead to severe harassment and a spate of public misrepresentation of what he has said. In other words, a scholar has pointed out that there may be serious issues of legal responsibility related to attempts to do something about the fire we’ve lit under the pot, and the response to that has been to try very hard to make him shut up.
Climate change science denialists are not honest brokers. And that’s the nicest thing that comes to mind that I can say about them at this moment.
It is very hard for me to view the world without my Anthropological glasses, since I’ve been one kind of Anthropologist or another since I was 13 years old. Thinking about climate science deniers, I realized what makes them annoying to me. Let me tell you what I mean.
The ongoing conversation at an archaeological site.When Archaeologists (a kind of Anthropologist, in the tradition I was trained in) dig a site, they are constantly learning about what is under ground at that location, and throughout the process develop a model of what it all means. As an aside I should mention that increasing understanding is not the inevitable outcome. Sometimes more questions are raised than answered. Point is, as more and more earth is moved and more of the structure of the site and its artifactual contents are revealed, the conception among the diggers of what they are working on grows more detailed and often more complex. The archaeologists talk while they work. There will be experts and learners, novices and those with great experience, and as they dig the site speaks to them (a common metaphor in archaeology) and the diggers listen, knowing that what the famous Dr. House always says must not be forgotten: Everybody, including archaeological sites, lies. So at no point do good archaeologists come to a comfortable understanding of what they are uncovering. It is always uncomfortable, shifting, nagging, bothersome, challenging. And most importantly, this process is what archaeology is. The late James Deetz once told me that fieldwork was the most important thing to him and I asked him why. He said, “That’s where I think. I think standing in a hole.” And that is generally true of Archaeology. Archaeologists think standing in a hole, usually in groups, and they talk and between the ongoing results of the digging, the thinking, and the talking, stuff happens in their minds that advances our overall understanding (or complexity of questions about) something in the past. It also feels good. If you are doing that – digging holes in all sorts of weather, spending more time on your knees than a Catholic choir boy, always being dirty but not in a good way, sun burned, tick bitten, knuckle scraped, being mocked by the patch of earth you are busy destroying – and it does not feel good than you should do something else.
So that is what it is like to engage in the process of doing archaeology. Then a car pulls up.
The guy gets out of his car and comes over and asks, “Whatcha doing?” and somebody tells him.
“We’re digging an archaeological site, we’re archaeologists!” an enthusiastic less experienced member of the crew pipes up, walking over to the fence to engage with this member of the public, as we are supposed to do. “It’s an historic site from the early 19th century. There used to be a farm here. We’re tracing out the foundation of the house, and over there, we think we’ve uncovered the place where the farmers butchered their …”
One of the larger round rocks.“I found an artifact,” the interrupting visitor says, interrupting.
“What?”
“It’s in my trunk, let me get it.”
The archaeologist is left standing at the fence. Sniggers can be heard by some of the more experienced crew members, and glances are passed around like some neat, newly uncovered object might be. There is a reason the least experienced person on the crew was the only one to jaunt over to the fence when the guy showed up.
Returning from his car, holding a huge very smooth ovate river cobble, nearly perfect in symmetry, probably quartzite, “This thing,” hefting it over the fence into the waiting arms of the young archaeologist. “I brought it to the museum but they told me it was just a rock. Obviously they don’t know their rocks! I’ve been running back hoe on construction for years. I know this is not just a rock.”
For some reason, smooth rocks and people who know things have an affinity.
The conversation goes on for a half hour. We learn this guy has been carrying around his rock for over two years, showing it to people now and then. He has a number of theories about what it is, but his preference is to link the rock to Celtic mariners who crossed the Atlantic in olden times and wandered across the continent teaching the hapless Indians how to build stone chambers in which to conduct ceremonies. Despite the fact that this rock is clearly very important, representing a trans-Atlantic connection that only enlightened people accept as true reality, he leaves the rock with the young field worker who promises to bring it to the museum and put in a proper storage drawer where it can be studied by future Archaeologists.
So that was one hour the entire crew can never get back, one hour of failed and eventually forsaken attempts to dissuade the guy of his silly misconceptions, one hour of not thinking about the archaeological site, and also, for reasons of security, one hour during which one or two of the diggers found something interesting but kept quiet about it lest the discovery be drawn into the useless and distracting conversation, or worse, prompt Mr. Backhoe to return over the weekend with his big yellow machine to see what he might find.
That’s what climate science denialists do.
At the moment, and this is probably almost always true, there are some very interesting things going on in climate science. Some of the current issues have to do with the effects of anthropogenic global warming on severe weather. Here’s a brief overview of what is going on.
We know warming increases evaporation and thus potentially causes drought.
We know warming increases water vapor in the air, which further increases warming (but how much is a matter of debate) and increases the potential for severe rainfall.
We know sea surface temperatures are elevated, so when major tropical storms form, they have the potential to be bigger.
We know sea levels have gone up and continue to do so, which means that storm surges from various kinds of storms are greater than they otherwise might be.
These effects have something to do with the Drought in California, some major flooding and rainfall events of recent years, and the severity of a handful of major tropical storms including Katrina, Haiyan/Yolanda, and Sandy.
For some time science has predicted changes in atmospheric circulation caused by warming that would likely alter major weather patterns. In recent years, this seems to have been observed. So-called “Weather Whiplash” is a phenomenon where the weather in a region goes extreme for a bit longer than it should, then shifts to a different extreme. Drought and flood, heat and cold, that sort of thing. We don’t know but strongly suspect “Weather Whiplash” is caused by global warming’s effects on major air circulation patterns. This is a hot area of research right now, and it is fascinating.
We argue about the likely effects of global warming on specific kinds of storms, from temperate tornadoes to tropical hurricanes. Numerous analyses of data and models of climate change have suggested that there may be more of these storms in the future, other studies ‘conclude’ that we can’t be sure, and very few studies show that storms will decrease. The most methodologically questionable studies are the ones that predict decreases in storm overall, though there are a few good studies that suggest that certain tropical regions will experience fewer major cyclones.
That is a rough outline running from greater to lesser certainty. Down there in the lower certainty range there is some interesting science going on. One thing that makes the science especially interesting is the unhappy tension between what climate scientists ideally would like to do and the urgency of understanding what will happen with severe weather in the future. On one hand, climate scientists would like to get a couple of decades of excellent data to supplement older, not as excellent data, to see how climate systems responding to warming reshape our weather patterns. On the other hand, we would ideally like to know now not only if we have to worry about increasingly severe weather, but we’d like to know what kinds of severe weather will occur, when, and where.
That’s interesting. Going back to the analogy of digging an archaeological site, this is like digging a site that is of a familiar type, finding mostly what you expect, but knowing you are adding important data to the overall growing body of information about Early Bronze Age Peloponnesian urban settlement, or New England 19th century farmsteads. But while you are excavating the site you find a stain deep in one corner of a test pit you thought you were about to be done with, and there’s an unexpected artifact in the stain. So you open up a larger area and find a homestead that is not on the map and is not supposed to be there, and as you excavate more and more of it you discover it is loaded with exotic unexpected artifacts and represents human activity that was not known to have occurred at this place and at this time. This would be the most fun you can have with your pants on, kneeling, in the field of archaeology.
And then some guy comes along with his stupid rock and takes you away from it all for an inordinate amount of time. But in climate studies, it is not some guy. It is dozens of denialists, who do appear to be at lest somewhat organized, showing up and doing everything they can think of to interfere with your work. When the scientists get together to discuss the very interesting and important uncertainties, to evaluate very recent work, to share thoughts about the interpretation of newly run models or newly analyzed data sets or newly observed phenomena, they have to spend a certain amount of that time dealing with the denialists. They may even have to spend a certain amount of time talking with lawyers. When they talk to the public or to policy makers they have to spend a certain amount of time, sometimes quite a bit of time, debunking denialist myths and explaining the basic science that should have been accepted as premise a long time ago.
Now imagine once again that you are an archeologist and you and your team have finished work on a major project. You’ve put together a symposium to be part of a major international meeting, at which 9 different papers will be read and discussed addressing various aspects of your findings. You go to the conference. But 2 out of 10 of the people in the room are this guy’s friends. They will insist on asking questions about the Celts and the Giants that once roamed the Earth, and Aliens that mated with earthlings in antiquity to form a race of Lizard People. And they are not polite. Only 2 of 10 in the room come to the conference with these ideas, but they are highly disruptive and control much of the conversation at the symposium, at the bar afterwards, at the airport waiting lounges where people going to and from the conference accidentally run into each other, on the twitter stream spewing from the conference venue.
This is why climate science denialists are so annoying. They are sucking a measurable amount of energy and resources from the process of doing the science and understanding the climate system. Another analogy would be this: Every department of natural resources spending 10% of its budget mitigating against negative effects on Bigfoot, and every news report of anything having to do with parks, hunting, bird conservation, etc. having a Bigfoot spokesperson to address bigfoot issues. When you take climate denialist fueled false balance and re-describe it in any other area of public policy or scientific endeavor, that’s what you get. Bigfoot or something like Bigfoot. Cold Fusion experts always included in any discussion of the Large Hadron Collider, Alien Hunters having equal time after every episode of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos 2014, and so on.
There is plenty of uncertainty at the cutting edge of climate science. There is very little uncertainty at the core. This is because it is centuries old science and the scientists pretty much know what they are doing. Engaging in the false debate is a waste of time and effort, and that, I personally suspect, is the main objective of the denialists. They want to slow down progress, though they may have various different reasons to do so. None of those reasons are valid. They are not Galileo, though they want everyone to think they are. One wonders if they believe that of themselves.
That would be extra annoying.
Photograph of Eliot Park Neighborhood Archaeology Project by Jen Barnett.
WTF Frontiers in Psychology Journal? Scientists publish a peer reviewed paper in your journal, a bunch of cranks complain about it, and successfully bully you into taking the paper off your web site? Do you seriously want the rest of the scientific world to take you seriously, ever, from now on? I’m thinking that’s not going to happen. We await a full and unmitigated apology to Stephan Lewandowsky, JohnCook, Klaus Oberauer and Michael Marriott, the authors of Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
In the mean time, since you felt the need to dispose of any semblance of ethical and professional behavior and remove the paper from your web site, here is a copy of it for anyone who wants it. That should be available until further action is taken to silence these scientists.
Also, I won’t be writing about any papers published in this journal in the future until the above described apology is produced.
[Recursive Fury] reported a narrative analysis of the blogosphere’s response to publication of [an earlier paper,] LOG12. The blogosphere’s response bore a striking resemblance to the very topic of LOG12: our finding that rejection of climate science is associated with conspiratorial thinking triggered elements of conspiratorial discourse among those who sought to deny that denial of climate science involves a measure of conspiratorial thinking…
Recursive Fury attracted some media attention…as well as critique. It should come as little surprise that this critique did not involve a scholarly response, such as submission of a rejoinder for peer review, but that it entailed a barrage of complaints to the University of Western Australia (UWA), where I was based at the time, and the journal Frontiers.
While not retracting the paper, Frontiers removed the article from its website in March 2013. The journal then commenced an arduous process of investigation which has now come to a conclusion.
Frontiers will post (or has posted) the following statement on its website today:
“In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.”
In other words, the article is fine but Frontiers does not want to take the legal risk that its restoration on the website might entail.
Go to Stephan’s post for additional links and a much richer context and history of this bone-headed move by Frontiers and the climate science denialists.
Our future is at risk. The science is settled, in the main, though there are many details to continue to work out and there are unknowns. But no one doubts that business as usual release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere mainly as the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide spells big trouble for humanity and the planet Earth, including eventual massive sea level rise and highly disruptive changes in the Earth’s climatology that will make a mess of many things including our food supply. Think failed state. Think Syria. Now, think failed planet, Syria over half the globe, the other half merely a mess. That’s what we are heading for.
We know less than we need to about the timing and severity of various impending disasters, but we already see the beginning. Sea level rise and warmer seas has made for some of the most severe tropical storm systems ever seen. That’s a genie we can not put into the bottle. And these storms don’t seem to always confine themselves to the tropics. Extreme cold and extreme heat, extreme precipitation and extreme dryness, floods, and other catastrophic weather related events are happening with increased frequency. Central Europe, Colorado, Calgary, Great Britain. Some of these weather and climate problems are clearly connected to climate change such as those related to extreme heat, increased drying through evaporation, and increase water vapor. Others, such as those caused by changes in the jet stream, are also probably connected to global warming but the climate scientists are still arguing about the details and extent of this, a normal part of the consensus building scientific process. For the most part, though, almost no one is saying “no connection.”
And we can fix this or at least, ameliorate the effects on behalf of those who shall inherit whatever is left of this one Earth we’ve got, when we are done messing with it.
Unless…
Unless organized climate science denialists, right wing “morans” from the Tea Party, self interested paid-off politicians, and the likes of David and Charles Koch, get their way. Unless they get what they want, which is to interfere with the translation of climate science into science policy. Unless they also get their way by interfering with changes to how we approach and build for clean energy and updated infrastructure.
I once said, and a lot of people (well, bad people, not any good people) got mad at me, that taking away the future of our children and grandchildren was a criminal act. Of course, you know it is. But in saying that, unfortunately, I can only be referring to “criminal act” as a metaphor, or perhaps as wishful thinking. There actually isn’t a law against ruining the planet and ending civilization as we know it, against taking part in the death and misery of countless humans, against carrying out acts of such utterly despicable selfishness and general terror that you will be placed among the ranks of the genocidal once all is said and done, if you get your way. Nope. That’s totally legal.
Or is it? Or, at least, should it be?
What if someone other than me came along with the opinion that “There oughta be a law” or at least, a serious proposal that organized climate science denialism and obstruction against implementation of planet-saving policies and technologies should be considered an act against humanity?
What would happen is this. The very denialists who work so hard to ensure the misery of our grandchildren, for whatever mercenary, psychopathic, demented, or just very badly misguided reason they may have, will instantly spring to life and attack that person. Anthony Watts will sneer and kvetch, and call his minion of eleven or twelve climate science denying winged monkeys (and their myriad sock puppets) to arms. Christopher Monkton will pretend he is someone, pretend he has a functioning brain, pretend to sound smart and legal, and pretend to say pretend threatening things.
Well, that happened.
Lawrence Torcello of Rochester Institute of Technology stepped in it. He called them crooks.
…critics of the case in L’Aquila are mistaken if they conclude that criminal negligence should never be linked to science misinformation. Consider cases in which science communication is intentionally undermined for political and financial gain. Imagine if in L’Aquila, scientists themselves had made every effort to communicate the risks of living in an earthquake zone. Imagine that they even advocated for a scientifically informed but costly earthquake readiness plan.
If those with a financial or political interest in inaction had funded an organised campaign to discredit the consensus findings of seismology, and for that reason no preparations were made, then many of us would agree that the financiers of the denialist campaign were criminally responsible for the consequences of that campaign. I submit that this is just what is happening with the current, well documented funding of global warming denialism.
More deaths can already be attributed to climate change than the L’Aquila earthquake and we can be certain that deaths from climate change will continue to rise with global warming. Nonetheless, climate denial remains a serious deterrent against meaningful political action in the very countries most responsible for the crisis.
At first I was not sure if I agreed with Professor Torcello about L’Aquila. I think the scientists got thrown under the bus, as it wasn’t mainly them who messed up, it morel likely that it was the administrative officials and politicians. But he’s indicated to me that he saw L’Aquila as an example of the importance of science communication, not as a specific precedent. To be clear, Torcello is asking if the funding of science, in this case, climate science misinformation criminally negligent.
But for the present, that is not an important detail; the point is, yes, you can lie to every one and then they fucking die because of your lies. That is for real. That is your fault if you do that. That makes you some kind of crook, even if at the moment there is not a law against your utterly misanthropic behavior. and that is how I see the hard core climate science denialists.
And, of course, Anthony Watts is whining and Christopher Monkton is Mocking, and the Winged Monkeys are aloft.
They are attacking Professor Torcello by demanding redress from his employers at Rochester. I sent a note to them supporting the good professor. If you are friend and not foe send me the secret handshake and I’ll send you the list of individuals I sent the letter to with their emails, and you can do the same if you want.
Image is from The Lorax, which gives a message some people apparently missed.
I have four things for you, two of which you already know about and one that is brand new and very exciting.
You already know that Skeptical Science is a web site that addresses most, perhaps all, of the questions that people raise about climate science. These questions might come from your Uncle Jeb who just figures global warming is a fad and not very important, or they may be questions that come from trained trolls who travel the Intertubes attempting to systematically disrupt the most important conversation we can have in the early 21st century. Skeptical science is also like an intro textbook of climate science, you can learn pretty much everything at a basic or intermediate level without having to know too much math. THE SITE IS HERE and there are also apps you can get for your smart phone so you can science circles around Uncle Jeb.
Very quickly, the second thing: My own “Climate Science Search Engine” which is a customized Google search that scans only sites that are not denialist. It is in the right side bar of this blog.
Fourth, and this is new, is Media Matters’ Mythopedia!
Mythopedia allows you to search for the truth about a variety of right-wing lies and misinformation. It should work on your desktop or mobile device as a web site. At the start, the database underlying Mythopedia has a few hundred of the most common myths about subjects including climate change. Media Matter expects to expand the data base on a regular basis. Think of it as a highly specialized Snopes Snooper.
