On the other hand Lewandosky’s statement, “…attitudes to… …other scientific propositions (eg HIV/AIDS)…” is well beyond obtuse and smacks of dissembling. It, in my opinion, is a deliberate attempt to conceal the real focus of the study which is to ‘create’ a linkage between climate change ‘skepticism’ and belief in paranoid, pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories. Here, Lewandowsky is trying to ‘game’ Pielke the Younger – not going to work. Exactly how stupid does Lewandowsky think Dr. Pielke is?

And, he wonders why nobody on the skeptic side, gets associated with the skeptic side or wishes to maintain their professional reputation wants to play with him.

It does have to hurt though, that so many of the bloggers he attempted to hustle into his survey didn’t even notice him.

An interesting follow-up survey to ask respondents might be [IF you could get an honest answer]:

When you took the survey did you believe that the survey was a valid and scientific attempt to study the issue?
a] Yes
b] No
c] if b, did you care?

~W^3

You might want to check out this blog article :

http://www.ambitgambit.com/2012/09/06/fish-rot-from-the-head-part-1/#comments

The article has screen shots of the full survey he took. His survey started the same as first questions as HKMKNF_991e2415 (so it probably was that).

Questions 1-5 from KMKNI_9a13984, “Satisfaction with life scale” SWLS questions, appear in the same order as questions 28-32 on his survey on their own page. I would hazard a guess the survey variations may just depend on the positioning of these SWLS questions as L makes mention of them as being some sort of benchmark in his paper.

You can find the original SWLS ED DIENER, ROBERT A. EMMONS, RANDY J. LAR.SEM, and SHARON GRIFFIN paper if you Google.

I can’t see anything about using it for counterbalancing it seems a pretty arbitrary way to do it, but I’m just guessing.

Thomas

Here are the first page questions from at least 2 of the surveys (h/t tlitb Bishop Hill):

surveyID=HKMKNI_9a13984

* 1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal

* 2. The conditions of my life are excellent

* 3. I am satisfied with my life

* 4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life

* 5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing

and:

surveyID=HKMKNF_991e2415

* 1. An economic system based on free markets unrestrained by government interference automatically works best to meet human needs.

* 2. I support the free-market system, but not at the expense of the environmental quality

* 3. The free-market system may be efficient for resource allocation, but it is limited in its capacity to promote social justice

* 4. The preservation of the free market system is more important than localized environmental concerns

* 5. Free and unregulated markets pose important threats to sustainable development Strongly Agree

* 6. The free-market system is likely to promote unsustainable consumption

This pretty clearly shows us there was no randomization or worries about order effect. They kept questions grouped similarly and simply moved them around in blocks.

There were exactly 6 questions in the “free market” group and only 5 questions in “am I happy” group … and room for only 6 or so questions on the first page. The lack of a 6th question on the one page pretty much proves the questions were not truly randomized but were kept in their order with their orig groups. Basically no value I can see to this – no attempt to address order effect.

My opinion of the quality of Psychology journals just dropped several notches.