Conspiracy theorist Stephan Lewandowsky, in keeping with SkS style, has rewritten the history of his blog hosted by the University of Western Australia.
Tom Fuller, who does online commercial surveys for a living, has sharply criticized the Lewandowsky’s tainted methodology – a methodology that relied on fake data to yield fake results.
Over the past week or so, Fuller has commented frequently on Lewandowsky threads here, here, here and here.
Although Lewandowsky snipped some of Fuller’s comments, over the past week or so, all or part of about 50 comments were approved.
Today, Lewandowsky (who is being assisted by an SkS squadron) liquidated every single comment by Fuller on the entire blog, leaving rebuttals to Fuller in place without the protagonist. This is different from not approving the blog comments: it’s an after-the-fact cleansing of Fuller from the blog.
The University of Western Australia should hang its head in shame at Lewandowsky’s Gleickian antics.
Steve: According to a comment at Lewandowsky’s blog operated by the University of Western Australia, Lewandowsky’s moderation is being done by (presumably) members of the SkS squadron, who were merely trying to silence Fuller as a commenter on the blog, stating that their liquidation of the history of Fuller’s comments was an accidental by-product of silencing Fuller.
Climate Audit 
153 Comments
Can something be both outrageous and hilarious? This is…. Orwellian re-writing of blog comment history at STW. The “unreliable” John Cook/SkS team strikes again.
Now they will need to start snipping some of their loyal bots such as JBowers, whose response to a Foxgoose comment is now referring to a *future* comment (JBowers in #84 is now referring to #89 not yet made, according to the server’s revised numbering scheme):
There’s no need to snip comments like that one. People are used to numbering getting screwed up because of comments disappearing. What’s more interesting is how many comments refer to Fuller or his comments. Anyone who looked closely would probably suspect what had happened.
(Especially since at least one comment quotes Fuller.)
Well yes, unless absolutely nobody responded, quoted or requoted Mr Fuller; or indeed made no new post referencing his posts and using his name. Isn’t this going to mar the flow and auditability of comments and give the impression that someone is making stuff up as they go along?
I participate in various forums and most wouldn’t suffer from comments disappearing. Though of course people who frequent Skeptical Science accept it as normal.
Skiphil, get out more often.
Steve
You might get under this guy Lewandwsky’s skin!
Re: Iain McQueen (Sep 15 13:28),
In the secret SkS forum, a member of the SkS squadron stated that “McIntyre must go down”. In another post, another SkS squadron member fantasized about ripping out Watts’ throat as follows:
Gosh.
Can you imagine the uproar if the situation was reversed?
Re: Anthony Watts (Sep 15 17:14),
Perhaps that would be an interesting experiment …. he says devilishly but half serious …
At least he’s proposing to do it when its nice and ripe, presumably that wouldn’t hurt so much as doing it when it’s hard and green…:-)
Any bets that the originator is short skinny and spends large amounts of time on “‘Warcraft” or “Call of Duty”.
Anthony there was a similar situation with Moonbiot over what was clearly a Joke and nowhere near the bile of that set of comments, he made a national issue of it in his Blog.
These guys are past masters at the Science of Hypocrisy 🙂
I guess one might say that Füller’s comments were liquidated by the SkS.
Perhaps as a hommage to Dr. Lew becoming Dr. Who (as in “Who posted that?…), a very Dalekian “EXTERMINATE!!!” regarding the comments would be appropriate?
MAny other explanations are possible. They could have been vaporized by the missing heat, drowned in the sea level rise, eaten by the sky dragons.
Oh Steve – that’s not fair!
You disappeared my “Tomorrow belongs to Steph” post.
I think you should Godwin yourself 😉
Steve: slightly edited,
Lewandowsky et al. (2012)
Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Coleen M. Seifert, Norbert Schwarz, and John Cook, Sept. 13, 2012
Editorial: Knowing Our Options For Setting the Record Straight, When Doing So Is Particularly Important, By Edward Maibach (Behind their paywall)
Am I the only one who finds it somewhat curious that this (far less fanfared) paper appears to have actually made it into print whereas Lew’s back to the future “recently published … forthcoming” shoddily sensationalist survey “results” have not?
That could just be the natural delays in the publication process – unless the Editor discovered these audits.
It would be most fascinating if the Editor had the courage to invite and publish a followup/parallel paper by the auditors.
Steve: it is the authors’ responsibility not to use fake data. No one should be put to the trouble of responding to fake data.
Have Lewandowsky and Gleick every been seen at the same time? Like twins separated at birth.
Use of the word pogrom is much too inflammatory, and probably offensive to people whose families fled Russia to escape the pogroms. Reasonable discourse should avoid the use of emotionally charged terms (e.g. Al Gore’s “environmental kristalnacht”) would fall in the same category.
Steve used pogrom in the text of a post last week. It bothered me on both occasions.
I agree it’s a step towards godwin’s law and that bothers me. But also because it’s a mis-useage. The word applies to attacks on Jewish people and other ethnic minorities, but not blog posters.
Steve: “Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” ” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005183. I submit that the usage is apt.
Yes it is inaccurate. It is specifically the mass murder of Jews or other ethnic groups. The deletion of a blog post is not equivalent to the killing of a person.
Apparently you’ve never seen Monty Python’s Cycling Tour episode (one of their best).
About 4:50 in…
Oops, the link didn’t go.
Lewandowsky defended Gleick http://theconversation.edu.au/the-morality-of-unmasking-heartland-5494
“pogrom” is approximately synonymous with “genocidal massacre”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom
Are you sure that’s the word you want to use?
tend to agree with that – do not give people sticks to beat you with and distract.
Steve: people who use the term ‘denier” cannot complain about the word “pogrom”
I condemn the use of the term denier, ecological holocaust, and all such ridiculously hyperbolic locutions.
I don’t care how the other side react to the use of “pogrom”. I think that its wrong and that it does you and this blog a disservice.
pogrom = holocaust Use at your peril.
How about research by Twitter? 😉 !
August the 28th (which makes the sceptic invites after seem odd)
John Cook@skepticscience
Help UWA research attitudes about science – fill out this online survey http://bit.ly/aZ7Znv
11:17 PM – 27 Aug [2010]
An odd time of day (or a timezone issue) how many would have seen it? It also had 5 retweets:
BUT, a quick analysis of how many ‘sceptic’ twitter followers SkS has could be fun… Could even tweet them to ask if they took part in the survey..
Steve: Nice spotting!! I snipped a little at the beginning to not distract from an excellent find. I doublechecked and there is nothing at SkS on August 27. I presume that the link was to kwiksurvey.
Yes – the link is to KwikSurvey
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HKMKNG_ee191483
Add one more confirmation to the list:
Warmist:
profmandia HKMKNF_991e2415
deltoid HKMKNF_991e2415
hot-topic HKMKNF_991e2415
tamino HKMKNF_991e2415
illconsidered HKMKNG_ee191483
bbickmore HKMKNG_ee191483
skepticalscience HKMKNG_ee191483
trunity ???
Skeptic:
junkscience HKMKNI_9a13984
climateaudit HKMKNI_9a13984
pielke jr ??? [SM- HKMKNH_7ea60912]
climatedepot ???[HKMKNI_9a13984]
spencer ???HKMKNH_7ea60912
The link goes to kwiksurvey, survey#HKMKNG_ee191483, which is the one posted at IllConsidered & Bickmore.
That nicely reconciles Cook’s reply to Lewandowsky that he had posted a link to the survey, with the absence of a survey post in the Wayback Machine’s archive of SkS posts from that period.
Has is that a confirmation? Posting the link on twitter is not the same as posting it on the SKS site.
Lew’s “methods” as stated in his paper is wrong since the survey was posted on twitter (not a blog) PLUS it was retweeted by 5 people. Is there a way to find out who retweeted on twitter?
Fer cryin’ out loud–never heard of a metaphor?
Can anyone give us the definitive answer on this? I suspect it may be a doozy of a stick to beat Steve with.
If any 150 year old Russians could give us all the definitive answer of whether this title is the most offensive thing to come out of Canada since Justin Bieber that would be nice 😉
Otherwise my knowledge of Pogroms still rests at about the Fiddler on the Roof level 😉
I may be being hypocritical here but Tom Fuller’s comments seem to me to be have been kind of fractious and not constructive anyway. I am of the simplistic and simple minded philosophy that thinks all comments should remain on all blogs for all time, but when rules or even some emotional/psychological filter system is implemented why be bothered by their application when some other more overriding point is more important?
tlitb1, I’d had no problem with most of the moderation I saw applied to Fuller’s comments. He brought plenty of it upon himself, and if the moderators had decided to delete his comments rather than snip them, I’d have understood.
The problem isn’t that his comments got deleted. The problem is they got deleted now. Why wait several days to delete comments? Why delete comments days after you edited them for moderation reasons?
Going back and secretly deleting every comment from a user, despite having already moderated those comments, is dishonest.
Okay that is interesting I saw some of his comments get edited in real time virtually since I was being a bit obsessive and following the “Shaping” blog for activity. I didn’t realise there was some issue of a block removal at a later time.
Probably needs to be better stated?
Hi all,
Steven thanks for the call-out. I’m not sure I’m the only one honored in this fashion.
Most of my posts were on point. I noted:
1. the problems with multiple submissions from the same IP address
2. the low cell counts that make sophisticated mathematical treatment of the results open to question
3. the origin of the respondents taking the survey and the low likelihood of attracting skeptics from them
4. the absence of normal and needed information about the survey instrument from both the description of methodology and the body of the paper
5. the missing questions from the data set (it’s okay not to include them in your analysis, but you don’t go deleting them from the data)
tlitb1, I did get a little snarky. In my second to last comment I mentioned that scientists who wanted to advocate for a political position should feel free, but that when that political advocacy interfered with their science it was not a good thing. However, I specified that I didn’t think that it would lead to changing answers–but that it would change the questions they asked.
In one of my first comments I used the phrase ‘research misconduct’, which they let stand for quite a while. And I snarked back to Eli Rabett right at the end, which is when they removed me bodily from all threads–after fixing a typo in Eli’s post, no less.
Professor Lewandowsky has made no attempt to address these questions. I do not style myself an expert, but I am a ‘seasoned veteran’ of online research. The first online survey I worked on was in 1996 and I’ve done more than a thousand since.
I’m willing to repeat the phrase ‘research misconduct’ now. I have no doubt that Professor Lewandowsky did his sums correctly in linking skeptics to his constructs. But he got bad data from phony respondents, didn’t have enough answers to justify his tortuous reasoning and has been hiding those two facts for two years.
He is not, in my opinion, like Peter Gleick. He is very much like the authors of Anderegg, Prall et al (PNAS 2010) in trying to ram through shoddy science and hoping nobody will notice.
Sorry, Professor–we noticed.
I think most of Fuller’s comments were fine – polite and relevant, eg this one:
#17 thomaswfuller
at 01:45 AM on 8 September, 2012
Actually, Professor Lewandowsky, while randomizing responses within a question is standard practice and could go unmentioned, using different iterations of a survey with differently ordered questions is unusual enough to be mentioned in the methodology description. You should have done so.
In the age of the internet, researchers have acquired the habit of posting study elements online to provide answers to just the type of questions you are receiving. I think you are remiss by not posting the different iterations of the survey online, labled by which blog fed them.
Well, this is from the treehut logs:
How does one post an image?
Steve
What happened to the post about you being blocked from accessing Lewandowsky’s site ?
Also, I wholly agree with jfk. Your use of the word “pogrom” is unnecessary. One of the problems with Lewandowsky’s paper and conduct is the use of sensationalist language. You ought not to repeat the mistake.
James, I don’t believe that this was a standalone top-post, but rather the suspected blocking discussion was in the comments precipitated by updates to:
Difference between Skeptical Science (or is it?) and ShapingTomorrowsWorld.
Is that ShapingTomorrowsWorld is PUBLICALLY funded… so it should not be a plaything/mouthpiece for actvists…
Any Australian readers going to complain?
funny thing is they have deleted (yet) all the reference to ThomasFuller said (say @20) by the other commenter.. (20 now someone else…)
ie he gets lots of mentions, ie ‘warmists’ saying how wrong he is, but all his original comments gone.
21# at 01:39 AM on 14 September, 2012
thomaswfuller @20, I didn’t believe anybody would fall into this trap, but apparently someone did.
Yes, more warmists believing in conspiracies than skeptics – because there are more warmists overall.
30 is now someother chap!!
Bit more skill in deleting and censorship and revisionism required Sks mods?!(amateurs / sarc off)
Oddly, Lew and company did not disappear my posts on his Sistah Souljah peice….too much…a few snips, mostly of snark.
The worst case of censorship I have seen, is that of Jason Box, on criticizing the FKM2011 paper on Greenland. He nuked the whole post.
Box was unhappy that the 2010 data was not used, in spite of the fact the authors did not have the 2010 data when they wrote it.
I asked Box if he would also be critical of Santer2008 and Hansen2001 papers, which did not use the full data set, and the results changed if they did.
He simply left my responses in moderation, which I could see as being in moderation. Eventually, I was able to post by being tricky with the references. He put some of those back into moderation after they were public for a day.
But, as there were obvious gaps in the dialog, and my posts were still visible at least to me, and had been public for at least a day, he erased the entire post. I suspect that the erasure also had something to do Chip Knappenberger’s reasoned and polite replies to the criticism by Box, even though it was at the start of the conversation. Maybe Box finally read Chip’s reply, after a month.
Following in the Master’s footsteps, Steve M, I printed the entire post to PDF, before he deleted it.
Michael Tobis did that to me, once. Nuked a post.
Ive lost count of the number of times Ive left comments on climate skeptic blogs and they’ve just disappeared in moderation. Not CA I should add.
snip –
Steve, Can you show the deleted comments?
“Steve, Can you show the deleted comments?”
I think given the current controversy it would be wise for Steve to redirect snipped comments to some kind of “against blog policy” thread just for archival purposes.
But I don’t know whether he has that ability?
SkS & Lewandowsky’s blog are populated by the same crew doing the posts.
Why’s anyone surprised that they operate the same censorship methods?
“The University of Western Australia should hang its head in shame at Lewandowsky’s Gleickian antics.”
Phil Jones- Cleared of any wrong doing by Oxburgh, Russell, and the Nouse of Commons Sci committee.
Michael Mann- Penn State rules no wrong doing.
Steve Lewandowsky- Will be exonerated by UWA.
UWA SHOULD hang their head in shame.
They won’t.
This is extremely unethical. Lewandowsky now has a responsibility to make it clear in the blog that the discussion has been censored in this way i.e. to remove posts which he believes put forward factually incorrect information or poorly reasoned criticism.
I think its fair to say that the default assumption of the vast majority of readers who stumble upon the blog that the discussion represents the opinions, praise and criticism by readers and not a distorted version supporting the author’s position. That assumption clearly doesn’t hold now. Lewandowsky should make that clear.
Luckily, the number of those readers who stumble upon that blog innocently is a tiny fraction of the numbers reading the whole story here and elsewhere. Likely less than 1%
I’m a Jew of Eastern European ancestry and I have no objection to the use of the metaphor which is aptly applied to a specific action.
It does not belittle the history of actual atrocities to apply it in this case. I could come up with a string of vile adjectives to describe the close-minded and integrity-free behavior of Lewandoofus.
And while I can’t speak for all my people, I do tire of the overly sensitive reactions of the “PC” world we live in.
And to preemptively answer the obvious replies about the use of “denier”, the difference is the use of the word denier is a blatant attempt to marginalize and cast as evil an entire side of a debate, grouping together and dismissing people of vaguely parallel opinions as less than human, and thus avoid any actual engagement. Not the same. Not the same at all.
Brilliant. Thanks for saying this. My thoughts entirely.
Ha, my comment made in the same minute Steve bowed to others and made the change. I support that too. The precise language and metaphor doesn’t matter to me. The total lack of ethics with which certain players operate is the issue. But thanks again J.
Oh dear, I was being PC? Not something I usually try to do. I posted to try to be helpful. I thought Steve might not know what the word pogrom typically referred to. At any rate he does know and says he is comfortable with the usage, so I withdraw.
Yep the numbers are screwed
Google Cache, grab it while you can:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L_LyHNzZSJQJ:www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyGof4.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C29TB97qoCIJ:www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2l_k15h9xPwJ:www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc2.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9n5YwxDnyxoJ:www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyScammers1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-8PSzCLEYs4J:www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyDH.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
Ah, too late, Google has updated the cache. I’ve made local copies, let’s if I can upload them somewhere.
Don’t know if this works, it’s the first time I use scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106026885/Bloggers-Hall-of-Amnesia?secret_password=146x1ycpi5oonof2znav
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106027024/An-Update-on-My-Birth-Certificates?secret_password=2by2suqumfn7khbsup96
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106027057/Misplaced-Email-in-the-Climate-Wars?secret_password=ajcvv0niidk1izfq753
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106027087/Faking-That-NASA-Faked-the-Moon-Landing?secret_password=1zpwkzw2ff5umxu30n4x
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106027132/Climate-denial-a-%E2%80%9Cwarmist%E2%80%9D-hoax?secret_password=chqn1vodq4qii9wi7mx
Tony, thanks very much for this. I have reviewed all my comments there and in retrospect I don’t see a legitimate reason for airbrushing me out of the history of this conversation. I’d really appreciate it if someone would double check and see if I’m just kidding myself. Preferably someone from the consensus side.
I don’t think that users of the term “denier” are in any position to complain about the use of the word “pogrom”. Nonetheless, I will defer to readers on this point and have amended to the term “Cleansing”.
People complained some time ago when I started shortening SkS without the k, because it was the same abbreviation as wartime Germans you-know-what.
How about referring to other Germans of a few years later, masters of history rewriting and of conspiring against people for a “noble” cause? Such as in naming the Cook&Lew Squadrons as the “SkaSi”…
Thank you! Apart from the fact that deleting blog-comments does not qualify (IMHO) as a “violent” act, to the extent that the pogroms in Europe preceded (and some might say prefigured) the Holocaust, your use of the word in these posts struck me as being somewhat anachronistic (and, as a Jewish person whose family tree includes too many branches severed by pogroms, somewhat uncomfortable).
Were I at your keyboard, I think I might have chosen to use something along the lines of “Lewandowsky’s ludicrous discussion distorting and self-serving acts of comment-purging”.
The two terms are not equivalent.
Whenever someone has called me a “denier”, the context has always been clear in my mind. It is a shortening of “living in denial”, a reference to 5 stages of grief, insinuating that I am rejecting a diagnosis because it’s implications are too awful. I’ve never personally taken it as an insinuation of repudiation of well documented history because of conflicting ideological convictions.
Still pejorative, and somewhat dehumanising, but not Godwin-esque.
I was also ignorant of the definition, and beforehand would have said cleansing is inadvisable, as it is similar to ethnic cleansing. The moniker SS is not a problem given the discussion they have in their forum of their preferred actions against skeptics.
The response to tomas fullers cleansing:
For the record I say NO post from Tom that was remotely out of line. His were generally some of the most straightforward non-inflammatory there.
‘has recused himself’? In plain English, someone recuses themselves voluntarily because of a conflict of interest etc. There is no connection whatsoever with having all their posts deleted by an an anonymous ‘moderator’.
More Orwellian language.
Indeed, this blog post is libelous. He didn’t recuse himself. They are writing it that way, saying he caused his removal from the board through his behavior. You wouldn’t say someone dropped out of school if they were kicked out for violating the honor code.
I knew I had seen this scenario played out somewhere before:-
“Groucho as veterinarian posing as Head Psychiatrist”
Could have sworn when I read the link on Tom Nelson’s page, it said ‘pogrom’….
Well basically you were always snippy as I remember with approaches such as “why did you ever think this would work…” – a characterisation that may be negotiable?
In my approach I flatter myself I was always forensic – bottom line stuff keep the bitchin’ offline on other blogs – maybe you missed a trick here? Just talk to people in their manner ? (double meaning in cockney English of “manner” ;))
Apologies to otter I seem to have put this comment in the wrong place
I think you’ll find it’s “manor” meaning territory.
I hadn’t been paying the Lewandowsky stuff much mind, but based on this post went and read the most recent thread. I do feel that there is a much more basic objection, that regardless of who said what it is poor empirical methodology.
I therefore posted the following. Given the barb in the tail in might well not last, and I see indulgence to repeat here:
“Just a quick read here shows Lewandowsky et al in its claims goes well beyond the limits of the non-random two tier sample selection and subjective classification of blogs. It says something about an idiosyncratic collection of respondents, but frankly nothing generalisable based on usual methodological standards.
“I’m surprised Psychology Science accepted it.
“IMHO Lewandowsky et al should get a collaborator with this methodological understanding if they want to get into empiricism. In the meantime they could could do some reading around cognitive distortions and over-generalisation fallacies, and even the application of cognitive models to dealing with this.”
There’s a website called the “internet wayback archive machine” that lets you put a link in it and then it preserves that page contents of that link so you can go back and view it exactly as it was when you submitted the link. Too bad this wasn’t done for any of his blogs.
SkS – ! micro blogged ! survey – SurveyID=HKMKNG_ee191483
someone did spot this in another thread, thought you’d missed it (they didn’t put the URL in though !!)
Steve: reference please>
you need to hover mouse over link in the tweet.. I have emailed you a screen capyure.
to be more specifc, click on the survey link in the SkS tweet.
here http://bit.ly/aZ7Znv
it will launch a new web pages, saying now – 404 error. if you hover the mouse over the tab of the page, the original url shows up
Actually it was two tweet thst I found and posted yesterday. My post is at the bottom of the SKS Link thread. I have another post, stuck in moderation for a day, that shows that there were actually 2 tweets from John Cook.
tokenskeptic@tokenskeptic 28 Aug 10
@skepticscience – hi, where’s this survey come from? Is there a particular source? Some questions about the design! 🙂
John Cook@skepticscience
@tokenskeptic online survey was done by UWA, contact details at http://bit.ly/aZ7Znv
29 Aug 10 ReplyRetweetFavorite
John Cook@skepticscience
Great Spot!
as generally only ‘warmist’ follow Cook, how many sceptics took the survey.
The few sceptics that follow Cook (I do) can just be asked if they did the survey..
Barry,
There’s a great tool, snapbird.org, that does a great job of going through older tweets. The search engines of google and twitter only look back about 1000 tweets. John’s a proflific tweeter (twit?) with over 3,100 tweets.
DGH
DGH – ahem, as I cough in emabarassment as I admit: I ‘ve got 18,000 plus tweets, and I only started last year… 😉 @barryjwoods
Is there a Twitaholics Anonymous? 🙂
Call me follower #301.
And for the record I’ve got seven rather effect tweets. Both Peter Gleick and Michael Mann have blocked me.
For what it is worth, I was also snipped at Lewandowsky’s “Nasa faked the moon landing” piece and of course a response by another reader to my comment now makes no sense.
I don’t think I said anything inflammatory. I only suggested a comparison between lobotomies and ghg regulation, and how prevalent lobotmies might be today if the only justifcation for their continued use was a survey of those who felt they were a great treatment.
Steve: the issue isn’t snipping. It’s after-the-fact rewriting blog history.
I object to the use of the letters SKS as a applied to a crackpot website thereby denigrating a perfectly durable Soviet era Russian firearm. Hmmmph.
Tony Mach, thanks!
Steve McIntyre:
I think you did yourself and others a service with the wording change. Regardless of whether other people have a “right” to complain, they will complain, and this derails any attention to the substance of your arguments.
A good cognitive psychologist would tell you that people who stay “reasonable” in their rhetoric appear more trustworthy to a neutral audience than one that engages in rhetorical extremes. Use this to rank cognitive psychologists. 😉
Does anyone recall what Lewandowsky’s UWA stands for: is it the University of West Anglia?
Re: Steve McIntyre (Sep 15 21:55),
Stephan Lewandowsky
Winthrop Professor, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/bio.php?u=22
Steve, that’s not fair – and you said it with such a straight face!
You owe me a new monitor, sir 😉
I placed caches from earlier today at http://www.climateaudit.info/data/psychology/cache
And the first file is called amnesia1.htm. That’s the kind of deadpan humour that has made this blog famous.
Steve, I’m awed at the work you’ve been doing. And ROTFL, the caches are not just Amnesia but also Bray, Hoax, Fake, Goof …
cute! WUWT regularly deletes comments during moderation without any announcement, and one of its commenters is probably a sock-puppet for a moderator. Where is your thread of outrage on censorship in the skeptic blogosphere?
[mod: feel free to encourage such a discussion over there, and make your accusations to their face. This thread relates to topics relevant to this blog. Your over-the-top accusations, particularly when unrelated to any discussion on this blog, go against blog policy.]
To “mod”: I now know that you have been hanging around at Shaping Tomorrow’s World, as it was over there that you were alerted to this comment being trapped in the spam filter (haha). So now it is also clear that the proprietor’s of this blog have been informed about moderation policy on STW, and are aware that a) Lewandowsky didn’t snip anything b) Lewandowsky is not hte moderator of his own threads and c) the deletion of all Tom Fuller’s comments is a flaw of the moderation software used there, not a deliberate decision by the moderator. Are you going to amend this post to indicate that everything you claimed about the “pogrom” (stay classy!) was wrong? Or are you going to just let all the accusations made here stand, without informing the commenters reading this post that they are wrong?
And it cannot be reversed? And human beings had nothing to do with it? In which case, has a public apology been made for this error?
Well then Richard, I guess this blog owes me a public apology for throwing my previous comment into spam for 3 days? Since when did blog proprietors owe random strangers an apology for their choice of software?
Re: faustusnotes (Sep 18 07:02),
You really don’t understand blog software much.
Spam-detection software functions before anybody sees a comment. And, for what it’s worth, here on WP.com we have zero control over any of the code that runs the site. That’s one condition of being hosted here.
The Tom Fuller incident involves deletion of his posts after they were approved/visible to all.
Please provide any evidence or example that this is a flaw of the software as you claim. AFAIK that can only be done as a deliberate moderator decision. Without further evidence, your claim is false on the face of it.
I’m sure that many who read this blog are also now perusing STW. So what? I can guarantee you that dragging comme nts out of the spam trap isn’t the highest priority use of anybody’s time. And yes, I’m one of the moderators here (and one of those who helped build this site.
Thank you BTW for your short, concise and (apparently) on-topic comment suggesting a different analysis approach. I’m not a statistician so I have no comment on your content.
SO… let’s get back to the science!
MrPete, it was you who was on the STW website, where you posted a response to my accusations of censorship, so I know you have seen the STW moderator’s reply to this post. In that reply the moderator makes clear that their software deleted all comments in the thread and that they have no control over this. Are you accusing the moderator of that blog of lying? Is this another in the long line of accusations that this blog makes at anyone it disagrees with? Is this blog going to change the post to reflect the facts as provided by the moderator at STW? you are a moderator at this blog, presumably you have the ability to ensure that the posts on this blog accurately reflect the truth, rather than simply being a grab-bag of conspiracy theories.
If you are going to claim that “without further evidence, [my] claim is false on the face of it” then I can say the same of you: without further evidence, how do I have proof that my comment was previously in spam rather than being deliberately withheld? Without further evidence, your defence is false on the face of it.
You see how this game goes? Fix your post so it is accurate, rather than accusing others of lying.
Steve: An inline comment overnight at STW hardly constitutes notice to me here. Nonetheless, I managed to locate the inline comment and have added the following as an update to the post:
Steve: that’s alright then. Glad to have that cleared up. 🙂
Accidental byproduct in the sense that apple juice is an accidental byproduct of the operation of a press.
MrPete,
It’s possible that removing the comment permission from a user might delete all their comments depending on how the blog software was written. That is possible and the wholesale removal could have been inadvertant.
For that not to be a known issue of which the moderation crew was aware is very sloppy if it’s actually true.
Since I’ve been censored on this issue at Lew’s world while fautusnotes’s subseqent comments remain, I must continue this here.
I looked for any comments held by faustusnotes in the moderation que at WUWT yesterday and there was nothing there. Still looking for evidence of his accusations. If true, looking for the reason, if false, well nevermind.
And my last comment about moderation went into moderation. I wonder which word was the trigger?
Steve: that is an extremely mealy-mouthed response. It’s not an inline comment, it’s a message from the moderator. Why should they be responsible for your egregious errors? I’m doing you the favour of auditing your work, and pointing out that you are wrong in all your particulars, so you should be a little more gracious than to accuse them of hiding things from you.
You don’t know who the moderator is so saying they are from “the SKS squadron” is an assumption: please do note you’ve already been caught out writing a completely wrong post on the basis of a series of assumptions, so continuing to make them is probably not a good idea. Referring to the moderation practice as “merely trying to silence Fuller” when the moderator makes clear that he was given multiple chances to change his tone is also really cheap. Look around over there and you’ll see even the gentle Eli Rabbett gets the odd snip, and I was threatened with the same for discussing moderation practices here.
Every single statement you place on this blog is intended to inflame suspicions of conspiracy and sinister dealings by people you disagree with, but in every case you are shown to be over-reaching or directly misrepresenting your victims – as in this case, where you were clearly caught out. Yet, you still manage to be snarky and bitchy in your responses, and refuse to admit when you are wrong. When you’re caught out as spectacularly as this, it would probably help your reputation if you offered a mea culpa instead of flinging more poo.
Rot. Steve began his ‘climate career’ by asking highly reasonable questions about the hockey stick graph. He never expected to find behaviour as duplicious as he has, time and again. You lost a valuable ally with considerable statistical expertise along the way. By now he does perhaps expect the worst – but that’s from long experience. And it remains a viewpoint always tested against reality – in this case the details, semantic and statistical, of Lewandowsky, in blog and ‘paper’ form (in a no mans land of published and unpublished?)
Remember that Steve knows Tom Fuller and to a reasonable extent we all do, through his writings. Hardly a character to get riled and adopt a negative tone over something trivial. And given that this whole PR push began with a blatant attempt to smear those with whom Lewandowsky disagrees, with sceptics confused with lukewarmers confused with skydragons confused with Pielke Jr, so that all who differ in any part can be smeared equally, it’s rich indeed for you to cry foul on blog methodological grounds. I’m actually proud of the self-control of the assorted contrarians who have spoken up since this shameful paper broke out in the UK news on 27th July. As a result those that adopted this gutter psychology are looking increasingly foolish and inept.
The smear machine goes on and on, as Tolkien might have written. Fortunately it’s effectiveness won’t. Wishing you a nice trip back to oblivion.
re: faustusnotes,
No, I’ve not seen their moderator’s reply. You can be grateful I did notice your complaint about comments-in-moderation and took a few minutes to fix that. I barely have had time to skim this morning and see that you’ve written something here.
Sorry, I’m a busy guy who takes a break every once in a while to help out. Currently on the road and not sure when I’ll have another chance to take a look.
I’ve now looked at their statement about the comment removal. Your explanation is specious. Of course it is “software” that removes the comments. People can’t touch bits; only software can touch bits. But it was people who clicked on the choice to auto-block Fuller AND to remove his comments. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing. It was their choice to do it by means that removed his comments. This is not worth arguing over.
Again, if you want to be taken seriously here, I encourage you to tone down the over the top commentary and zero in on the science. You’ll learn a lot. 🙂
faustusnotes, I personally believe your characterization of my comments is inaccurate. They’re here for your inspection. Perhaps you can identify which ones were inflammatory enough to justify my removal from the thread. That way I can learn.
I really hate being rude unintentionally–so this is a serious request. I can snark with the worst of them, but AFAIK it has always been conscious and intentional. If I did it accidentally, I’d like to know.
well MrPete, it looks like it’s you who doesn’t understand blog software.
charles the moderator, you were warned clearly at Lew’s that further comments on the moderation policy here were off topic. That’s a warning I took – I didn’t comment further on the issue. As a result, your comment (which I saw when you posted it, FYI) was snipped. The moderators at STW are very clear about their reasons for snipping and deletion, and they gave thomas fuller (and you) multiple opportunities to abide by the comments policy. You may not agree with their definition of “inflammatory” or their objection to all caps, but they give clear warnings and police fairly.
MrPete, the same response goes to your second comment: they gave Thomas plenty of warning and opportunities to change his tone and he wasn’t able to. It may not be your preferred form of moderation, but it’s what they do there and Fuller had the opportunity to abide by their policy.
And no, it’s extremely difficult for me to “zero in on the science” when almost all of the posts here are straight-up conspiracy theories. Primarily, accusations that people gamed the survey without evidence. Remember, Mcintyre’s entry into this little game was his false assertion – made without proper research – that he had never been contacted for this survey. He’s built an entire edifice of conspiracy theories on that very soft ground and he hasn’t backed down. This thread has nothing to do with science, it’s about a post that contains a series of assumptions and misrepresentations about how Lewandowsky behaved. So no, “I can’t zero in on the science,” because there is none being done here. And don’t patronize me – Mcintyre’s said nothing about stats that I didn’t already know, and shown pretty clearly that he knows nothing about the social sciences. If you pay a little more attention to his critics, you might learn something about how deceptive and malicious his work is.
Thomas Fuller, I have no idea whether your comments were inflammatory or not – never read them, I’m sure you’re a great guy. But it’s the moderator at STW who gave you repeated warnings, so it’s their opinion you should be seeking, not mine. I don’t like their moderation policy but it’s not capricious and I have a strong suspicion that it has to be done that way in order for the blog to be associated with UWA. But that’s an angle no one here has considered, because they’re too busy accusing Lewandowsky of “pogroms” (stay classy, climate audit, stay classy!)
Science is about truth. Lewandowsky does not seem to appreciate this even in blog comments.
Lewandowsky’s fake results appear to be designed to strengthen support among journalists.
However, if you google ‘lewandowsky’ ‘cognitive’ ‘psychology’ you (currently) see ~15,000 results whereas if you google ‘lewandowsky’ ‘fake’ you see ~20,000 results.
Lewandowsky will be remembered as a fake.
They never learn. Pavlov’s dogs, who learned after just a few attempts, would run circles around the Klimate Krew at UWA.
Here is a complete list of known surveys. Two were distributed only to skeptic sites and the other three distributed to known warmist sites or within U. Western Australia.
Warmist:
profmandia HKMKNF_991e2415
deltoid HKMKNF_991e2415
hot-topic HKMKNF_991e2415
tamino HKMKNF_991e2415
illconsidered HKMKNG_ee191483
bbickmore HKMKNG_ee191483
skepticalscience [Twitter] HKMKNG_ee191483
climate.uu-uno.org HKMKNG_ee191483
UWA listserve HKLJIN_61fa37b2
Skeptic:
junkscience HKMKNI_9a13984
climateaudit HKMKNI_9a13984
climatedepot HKMKNI_9a13984
pielke jr HKMKNH_7ea60912
spencer HKMKNH_7ea60912
climate.uu-uno.org is part of what was previously listed as Trunity.
Green Sand video. Yup, it’s a Groucho world alright.
“Moderator Response: Mr. Fuller found compliance with the comments policy too onerous a burden and has recused himself from further discussion. His comments were then excised from discussion as well; references to other comments via numbering may thus be off.”
Ah yes Mr. McIntyre, Eli misses the many conversations on the Climate Audit Forum that have been cleansed so many years ago. That, of course, was not a recusal. At the time people simply stated that it was your blog and you had the final say but we do miss the discussion about \Miz w. Nick Stokes and others.
Steve: Climate Audit has migrated servers a couple of times. I had no involvement with the forum, which John A set up. The server moves were not easy and, in one of them, the old forum did not move with the blog. There was never any wholesale and targeted disappearance of opposing comments in the heat of controversy. Whatever criticisms you may have of Climate Audit, I take particular care to let critics have their say on any topic at hand, as, for example, Hengist has recently observed.
Talking about himself in the second person ? Now that is something to study.
He always has… full of himself, actually.
Mark
Re: Streetcred (Sep 16 05:35),
That wascally Wabett, doesn’t he know yet, tricks are for kids ….
😉
Steve:
That is really unfortunate. It was a real resource.
Hopping to conclusion again Eh Eli.
FWIW that discussion on Miskolczi was a keeper for whenever the topic came up. Its disappearance lost a good place to point people when the issue came up again (and, this being the INTERNET it did). Fortunately Science of Doom essentially recreated the thread
Fascinating stuff
I commented a lot on the Lewandowsky article, and merely had snips where quoted Tom Curtis (at Skeptical Science!)
and one comment deleted.
BUT, on the articles by DANA, everys single comment removed….
he really believes in the exxon conspiracy, !!
I had a quick look at some other Lewandoswsky blogs on his site and one caught my eye in which he was making the case that the larger the uncertainty surrounding an issue (like climate change) the more urgent the need to pay attention to the extreme ends of the spectrum of possibilities within the uncertainty band. This misunderstanding of statistics and decision theory in particular does not bode well for the standard or objectivity of the statistics he will have used in the current case.
Having said that, the substance of the topic is interesting. Personally I would be curious to see some numbers about whether we sceptics are more or less gullible than warmists on such matters as belief in fake landings, illuminati, pyramidology etc etc. Of course one would need to see added to the list belief in supernatural interventions in the material world, or granting of sort of deistic sanctity to the Planet and the natural environment etc. Always interesting to know how well one fits into the various compartments that we construct for society!
But clearly Lewandowsky wouldn’t be the man for the job.
Max
Lewandowsky’s thoughts on uncertainty were discussed at length at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/06/reinventing-precaution.html
“The University of Western Australia should hang its head”: what, hang the Vice-Chancellor? Harsh!
Someone mentioned somewhere about recovering passwords to Shaping Tomorrows World coming from SkS. So I registered and clicked the “I’m a prat and I forgot my password” link.
Yep – the email back is from John@skepticalscience.com
Image link : http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X9kexJOTVIw/UFX6nrh2XxI/AAAAAAAAAgA/IK0piNWuPrE/s607/Password.png
Use of the term denier does make sense if properly defined.
Lord May, Science as Organized Skepticism presentation, defines Affirmer and Denier as individuals who blindly support or blindly reject IPCC/climate science conclusions with little to no understanding.
However, Lewandowsky construes it to mean Skeptics = Rejection of science/climate deniers.
John from CA:
It also makes sense if the intent is to dehumanize people who disagree with your viewpoints, which is I’m pretty sure the sense in which it’s meant here.
I agree, its commonly abused and intentionally used to fan the flames.
Pogrom – completely irrelevant, since it’s now been changed, but my objection to ‘pogrom’ would have been that it’s the wrong word. ‘Purge’ would be closer in meaning to what was apparently intended, I think, but that doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head either. Any suggestions?
Steve: purge isn’t bad.
There must be a short catchy phrase to describe what happened to the Soviet politicians who were removed from photographs of the elite…
Orwell’s 1984 uses the phrase “rectification”, but I’m not sure that this was ever applied to the Soviet era.
Application of Orwellian terms is very apt: Blogposts doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise rectify
The SkS mods would probably have it that they recused themselves.
unperson. Try Orwell
Re: Dave (Sep 16 12:03), “Purge isn’t bad.”??? Perhaps. The phrase is often used in conjunction with the use of the word enema. I can see it.
A comment from Jo Nova and Lucia:
Yes, Orwellian. That’s the nuance that I was looking for. Fuller became an unperson and the comments became uncomments. Here’s a Wikipedia example:
In Lewandowsky's terminology, the fellow on the right "recused" himself.
Re: Steve McIntyre (Sep 16 17:42), brilliant final answer!
There’s a lot to be said for the Orwellian aspect of the climate debate. Changing the meaning of words, for example:
– “Science” redefined to mean whatever is considered scientifically orthodox, as transmitted by whatever scientific priest is currently anointed. No, science actually is a method of inquiry and discovery which may take you to someplace completely different from the orthodox position.
– “Denier”, holocaust references aside, sounds like someone who refuses to accept the obvious. Absorption of IR radiation by certain atmospheric gasses is not obvious, and is not high school physics, it’s Schrodinger’s equation. Most users of the term denier could not explain how this works – rather they seem to believe that anyone who does not accept the ex cathedra assertions of authority and wants to inquire independently does not understand what “science” is.
Or rewriting of history – 1934 gets cooler every year. Get rid of the Medieval warm period. Never point out that Camille and Betsy were more powerful storms than Katrina. Call a modest tropical storm that passes over NYC a hurricane – hardly anyone is left who can remember the 1938 hurricane anyway.
Actually observation of IR absorption by greenhouse gases and radiation from the atmosphere predates Schroedinger by about 80 years, starting with Tyndall’s experiments, and, somewhat later by the Angstrom the younger
Since it was Angstrom the Younger who described it, maybe all this dates back to the Medieval Ages, or even the Age of Rome.
Re: Steve McIntyre (Sep 16 17:42)
Can we also say that the blog and the picture were both doctored ?
doctoring- Change the content or appearance of (a document or picture) in order to deceive; falsify
The definition doesn’t mention PhD as a requirement…
Rational thought is to be twisted to correspond with the lefts ideological fallacies. Comments that contradict the AGW “team” think will be eliminated. Only thoughts approved by the Party will be allowed.
Say, Mr Lewandowsky, yer very flawed poll
Has brought out the critics ter comment and so
Yer go all Orwellian, these comments must go.and its
Farewell ter debate … oops… and down the memory hole!
Say,Mr Lewandowsky, feel ok about that do yer?
This is a test post
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[…] McIntyre points out the wholesale deletion of over 50 of Tom Fuller’s comments at Lewandowsky’s blog today (after they had been in place for days) and made this […]
[…] The University of Western Australia should hang its head in shame at Lewandowsky’s Gleickian antics. (source) […]
[…] Lewandowsky seems to want to silence – as he has recently demonstrated by the post-moderation purging of inconvenient comments on his flurry of self-serving “revisionist” […]
[…] The University of Western Australia should hang its head in shame at Lewandowsky’s Gleickian antics. (source) […]
[…] Y ahora están tratando de defender la basura desde la web de Lewandowski, por los acreditados métodos de John Cook. Censurar los comentarios inconvenientes, o cambiarlos. O cambiar las entradas posteriormente, sin ningún aviso. Por ejemplo, Tom Fuller, conocido periodista con mucha experiencia de encuestas por internet, estuvo haciendo una serie de preguntas y comentarios. Le censuraron / cambiaron muchas, pero aun así pasaron unas 50. Pero después llegó la brigada de Cook y las borró todas, dejando el espectáculo de respuestas a preguntas que ya no están.[Lewandowski cleansing program –>] […]
[…] Y ahora están tratando de defender la basura desde la web de Lewandowski, por los acreditados métodos de John Cook. Censurar los comentarios inconvenientes, o cambiarlos. O cambiar las entradas posteriormente, sin ningún aviso. Por ejemplo, Tom Fuller, conocido periodista con mucha experiencia de encuestas por internet, estuvo haciendo una serie de preguntas y comentarios. Le censuraron / cambiaron muchas, pero aun así pasaron unas 50. Pero después llegó la brigada de Cook y las borró todas, dejando el espectáculo de respuestas a preguntas que ya no están. [Lewandowski cleansing program –>] […]
[…] Lewandowsky maintains a weblog here. As I mentioned above, I have prior experience with him. In 2012 he published a series of posts on conspiracy ideation. When I criticized his methodology he deleted about 50 comments I made. Perhaps I’ll discuss that episode further–Steve McIntyre blogged about the incident here. […]
[…] Lewandowsky maintains a weblog here. As I mentioned above, I have prior experience with him. In 2012 he published a series of posts on conspiracy ideation. When I criticized his methodology he deleted about 50 comments I made. Perhaps I’ll discuss that episode further–Steve McIntyre blogged about the incident here. […]
[…] https://climateaudit.org/2012/09/15/lewandowskys-cleansing-program/ […]