Comments on: Lewandowsky’s Fake Correlation

By: Lewandowsky Timeline | Geoffchambers's Blog

Lewandowsky Timeline | Geoffchambers's Blog — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:37:12 +0000

[...] http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/18/lewandowskys-fake-correlation/ [...]

By: Climate Change Australia – Hand That Global Warming Extremist A Mirror « PA Pundits – International

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 05:01:42 +0000

[...] Professor Stephan Lewandowky, whose laughable paper has been so devastatingly critiqued by Steve McIntyre who showed how just two fake “sceptics” answering his dodgy survey seem to have given him his claim that [...]

By: dixonstalbert

dixonstalbert — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 22:26:38 +0000

From Page 13 of Lewandowsky’s paper:

another objection might raise the possibility that our respondents willfully accentuated their replies in order to subvert our presumed intentions. As in most behavioral research, this possibility cannot be ruled out.

However, unless a substantial subset of the more than 1,000 respondents conspired to coordinate their responses, any individual accentuation or provocation would only have injected more noise into our data.
This seems unlikely because subsets of our items have been used in previous laboratory research, and for those subsets, our data did not differ in a meaningful way from published precedent. For example, the online supplemental material shows that responses to the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) replicated previous research involving the population at large, and the model in Figure 1 exactly replicated the factor structure reported by Lewandowsky et al. (2012) using a sample of pedestrians in a large city.

Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Vaughan, S. (2012). Climate science is not alone: The pivotal role of perceived scientific consensus in acceptance of science. Manuscript submitted for publication.

I am not exactly sure what “exactly replicated the factor structure reported by Lewandowsky et al. (2012)” means, but I think he is saying because he got the about same distribution of answers for a subset of questions as he got from a previous survey, there could not have been a significant number of faked answers.

If this is correct, I am not sure how the answers from one population group can validate the answer from a distinctly different group.

In the case of this study, he studied the subset who hold extreme anti-cagw views and also participate in extreme pro-cagw websites; in other words, his study group -if they were actually real – was compromised almost entirely of ‘internet trolls’; a very different population group than ‘climate sceptics’

By: James Evans

James Evans — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:37:06 +0000

“…we have to lower the western climate establishment’s credibility…”

Just play this video to people. Conspiracy accomplished.

By: mrmethane

mrmethane — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:43:14 +0000

The statis-tick deLEWsion?

By: Keith Sketchley

Keith Sketchley — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:40:54 +0000

AT UBC in the mid-60s I was fortunate one year to have as math prof someone who had done applied mathematics at a well known California university.

But later I had the misfortune of of having a “teaching assistant” in a subject that I view as very complex matrices (can’t remember name of course). Probably one of the graduate students given TA jobs so they get some income.

(I did not have Dean Gage as prof, renowned master teacher (probably in early years). Like John Ridpath (economics at York), Gage won teaching awards.

By: Steve E

Steve E — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:19:25 +0000

GrantB

This is the Gong Show:

Very much like climate science and Lewandowsky’s work; you can dress up a pig…but it’s still a pig in a dress.

By: Lady in Red

Lady in Red — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:43:14 +0000

Apparently, no one’s made an announcement, as yet, on Lew’s World. I thought about it but the honor should belong to another. Brandon?

My late husband would get up Sunday mornings and do the NY Times Sunday Crossword in ink. In about 15 minutes. It was just a pleasant exercise for him.

Reverse engineering Lew’s work I suspect was not easy, especially insomuch as it appears the job was not an obvious straight line logical one. I wonder about the effort and manhours Lew invested concocting his analysis stew.

And, then, Steve just reverse engineers the absurdity. Too funny.

….Lady in Red
PS: I still think the whole damn survey is a waste of time, regardless the analysis.
I hope Steve found it enjoyable, like a complicated sudoku puzzle.

By: GrantB

GrantB — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:28:00 +0000

I’ve never heard of the term “gong show” before but I like it. The Urban Dictionary defines it as -

“An event marred by confusion, ineptitude and shenanigans”.

By: Brandon Shollenberger

Brandon Shollenberger — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:21:26 +0000

That’s… incredible. And I don’t mean that in a good way.