by Judith Curry
Don’t let transparency damage science. – Stephan Lewandowsky & Dorothy Bishop
The Mertonian Norms of Science, introduced in 1942, describe “four sets of institutional imperatives [comprising] the ethos of modern science:”
- Communalism all scientists should have equal access to scientific goods (intellectual property) and there should be a sense of common ownership in order to promote collective collaboration, secrecy is the opposite of this norm.
- Universalism all scientists can contribute to science regardless of race, nationality, culture, or gender.
- Disinterestedness according to which scientists are supposed to act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for personal gain.
- Organized Skepticism Skepticism means that scientific claims must be exposed to critical scrutiny before being accepted.
An interesting article on counter norms and critiques of the Mertonian norms is given in this article in the Journal of Higher Ed. This is a very interesting article, and the paper concludes with this paragraph:
The Mertonian norms, as principles representative of the normative system of science, have been challenged, attacked, dismissed, contested, inconsistently referenced, and, in short, battered and bruised by controversy and careless application. They nonetheless have endured for over 65 years as part of the communal property of science.
Lewandowsky’s latest paper in Nature
Numerous lessons in violating these norms are provided by a new paper just published in Nature [link; full paper available online]: Research integrity: Don’t let transparency damage science, by Stephan Lewandowsky & Dorothy Bishop. Subtitle: Stephan Lewandowsky and Dorothy Bishop explain how the research community should protect its members from harassment, while encouraging the openness that has become essential to science.
My ‘favorite’ excerpts:
Many organized attacks call for more data, often with the aim of finding an analysis method that makes undesirable results go away [JC note: most would call that ‘skepticism’].
Even when data availability is described in papers, tension may still arise if researchers do not trust the good faith of those requesting data, and if they suspect that requestors will cherry-pick data to discredit reasonable conclusions. [JC note: ‘universalism’ does not care whether researchers trust the good faith of those requesting data].
What’s more, the scientific community should not indulge in games of ‘gotcha’ (intentionally turning small errors against a person). Minor corrections and clarifications after publication should not be a reason to stigmatize fellow researchers. Scientific publications should be seen as ‘living documents’, with corrigenda an accepted — if unwelcome — part of scientific progress. [JC note: ‘disinterestedness’ doesn’t care about the reputations of specific scientists, nor their feelings. How on earth can you justify corrigenda as being ‘unwelcome’?]
Scientists who are harassed often feel alone. Universities do not tolerate harassment based on race or gender, and neither should they tolerate harassment based on contentious science. They should provide training and support to help their researchers cope. [JC note: big boy pants please. Be a scientist and learn to embrace disinterestedness and skepticism. Training researchers in ethical behavior and their legal responsibilities (and maybe also the philosophy and sociology of science) is all the coping support that they need.]
Public declarations can be particularly useful: in 2014, in response to the harassment of one of its professors, the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York publicly acknowledged the scientific consensus on climate change and its support for academic freedom. [JC note: this might be most frightening statement in the entire paper – institutionalizing a politicized, manufactured consensus on a highly uncertain scientific topic as an argument for rejecting the norms of communalism and skepticism].
Similar attention must be devoted to stressors and threats to science that arise in response to research that is considered inconvenient. The same institutions and bodies that have scrutinized science must also start a conversation about how to protect it. [JC note: ‘disinterestedness’ doesn’t care whether research is convenient or inconvenient. Policy advocates care whether research is convenient or inconvenient]
The comments at the end of the Nature article are very interesting, however the most interesting ones are the large number of comments that Nature has deleted, including a comment from Richard Tol. Paul Matthews has post on this, excerpts:
Tol’s deleted comment read:
“Research integrity and transparency are great. It starts at home. It would be good if Professor Lewandowsky would come clean about his research on climate change, and if he would tell his student John Cook to do the same. Harassment would be much reduced if researchers would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about their data, how it was gathered, and how it was processed and analyzed.”
Canman also has a post, citing some of the comments (by Brad Keyes) deleted by Nature, an example:
Brad Keyes 2016-01-27 07:33 PM
The above article is a heinously antiscientific attempt to make excuses
for obscurantism, deletionism and Phil Jonesism (“Why should I make my
data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong
with it?”) Dear Lewandowsky and collaborator (whose name I’ve forgotten),
do yourselves a favor and wake up to the fact that THE MIDDLE AGES ARE
OVER. You can either be priests or scientists. Not both.
Nail: you’ve been hit on the head.
Barry Woods received the following email from Nature:
Dear Dr Woods,
A user has reported your comment on the Nature article “Research integrity: Don’t let transparency damage science” so the comment (below) has been removed. Please see the website terms and conditions, section 6, for more information on Nature’s community guidelines: http://www.nature.com/info/tandc.html.
Thank you.
Regards,
Web Admin
Nature
Any nominations for the ‘users’ reporting all these comments?
Violating universalism
This whole episode has generated substantial discussion on twitter. Barry Woods raised the following issue:
ATTP (Ken Rice) made the following comment on the Nature article:
Ken Rice • 2016-01-28 04:03 PM
Additionally, it says “In compliance with University of Bristol regulations, the data are therefore made available to credentialed scholars only and through a standardized approval process.” Has anyone who is a credentialed scholar tried to get access to the data? Is there an objection to it only being available to credentialed scholars?
Barry Woods writes:
Bristol have refused me the data, after I followed the standardised approval process.
Universalism says ‘all scientists’. We previously ran into this issue via the antics of Phil Jones, who provided his data to Peter Webster, but not to Steve McIntyre or Ross McKitrick – McIntyre was not a university academic, and McKitrick was not a scholar in the ‘right’ field.
This ‘credentialed scholar’ business is a relic of the 20th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many scientists had no obvious academic credentials. Ben Franklin is an example of a scientist who is self-educated and without academic credentials.
During the 21st century, enabled largely by the internet, we are again seeing the rise of independent scientists and self-taught scientists, particularly in the interdisciplinary field of climate science. Steve McIntyre and Nic Lewis are examples – in spite of having no formal credentials in the field of climate science, both have published papers in the peer reviewed literature, and both have been active in critiquing and auditing other papers and publishing these critiques either in the peer reviewed literature or on their blogs. Nic has effectively ‘joined the club’, and is often invited to attend Workshops, etc. After trying (relatively unsuccessfully) to engage with the mainstream paleoclimate community, at this point Steve McIntyre is operating outside of the ‘club.’
The norm of universalism demands that that scholars from other fields, independent scientists, and ‘auditors’ such as Barry Woods have the same access to the data and other scientific goods as ‘credentialed scholars’ in the ‘approved’ field.
This trend away from universalism is particularly pernicious in light of the concerns of the heterodoxacademy.org, whereby there is a lack of intellectual and political diversity among scholars in many fields in the academy. Specifically with regards to climate science, I wrote:
The minority perspectives on climate science are effectively being squeezed out of the academy as individuals choose to join the private sector, retire, join think tanks, or switch research topics. Further, dissenting individuals are emerging from other fields (and are non academics), some of this which is supported by the blogosphere.
Climate science is badly in need of a more catholic (universal) definition of universalism in terms of participants in the scientific debate. God bless the internet.
JC reflections
Why are such obvious scientific norms/values being eroded away? IMO the main cause is violations of ‘disinterestedness’ — a combination of careerism and public policy activism/advocacy.
Careerism leads a scientist not to want to have their research be challenged or audited, for fear of damage to their reputation that is shallowly based on such things as publication numbers, funding, memberships on prestigious boards, press releases and citation numbers (rather than an interest in learning and making meaningful contributions that advance science).
Policy advocates/activists do not want to see their science challenged (or the science of their political allies), for fear that the challenge will diminish their policy and political objectives. Challenges from someone on the ‘other side’ of the policy/political debate are regarded as especially objectionable, since their motives are ‘different’. As a result, we are seeing an epidemic of ‘activism that abuses science as a weapon.’
All of this squashes skepticism, which IMO is the central norm of science. Disagreement, skepticsm and challenges are what moves science forward. Robert May has a superb Royal Society article: Science as Organized Skepticism. Another good article that I just spotted on this topic is Certitude Seeking Truth.
A secondary cause of the erosion of scientific norms is the campus ‘safe space’ movement, which protects university folk from minority and unpopular views. God forbid that a scientist should feel harassed if an opponent wants to check their work, or worse yet someone on the internet ‘attacks’ them. This essay from Brendan O’Neill is superb: The violence of the Safe Space.
Being human, some individual scientists will try to pervert the norms for personal gain. This wouldn’t be a particular problem if there is sufficient diversity of perspectives in the academy, which there clearly isn’t, and there are appropriate checks and balances in the institutional systems. The problem is made intolerable when the institutions that support science start perverting these norms, such as Nature has done in publishing the paper by Lewandowsky and Bishop (and then deleting ‘inconvenient’ comments), and Science has recently done with Marcia McNutt’s op-ed.
The 21st century institutions of science need to adapt because of the following externalities:
- blogs, twitter and the internet, that enable a much wider community to engage in the discussion of scientific research
- growing interdiscisiplinarity, i.e. making the traditional disciplines and credentialed expertise less relevant
- the rise of independent scientists that are not associated with the traditional institutions, and many of whom are self taught or switching fields
- the growing political relevance of scientific research in the environmental and health fields
However, the solution to adapting to these externalities is NOT to overthrow the norms of science.
From Barry Woods: Perhaps a follow up article could be written: Academic Integrity – Don’t let Activist Academics Damage Science.
Postscript
An article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine: Data Sharing [link], raises concerns about ‘research parasites’ that use data collected by others to try to replicate the original results or for purposes that were not intended by the original investigators.
Several responses:
Pingback: Violating the norms and ethos of science – Enjeux énergies et environnement
In my view, this situation has came about and was well explained by Iaian Murray
“In a world increasingly devoid of moral authority, the supposed impartiality of science provides a seemingly objective source of authority. That authority is a major threat to the environmental movement.”
Iain Murray , “The Really Inconvenient Truth” P. 51-52.
Call it interference by a socio-political movement that can not allow accuracy in work that may or my not achieve their goals’
How are these norms:
Communalism all scientists should have equal access to scientific goods (intellectual property) and there should be a sense of common ownership in order to promote collective collaboration, secrecy is the opposite of this norm.
Universalism all scientists can contribute to science regardless of race, nationality, culture, or gender.
Disinterestedness according to which scientists are supposed to act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for personal gain.
Organized Skepticism Skepticism means that scientific claims must be exposed to critical scrutiny before being accepted.
Maifested in what Iain Murray writes for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Judith’s blogroll ?
They belong to Merton, and “but Merton” goes with “but Feynman,” “but Popper,” “but Galileo” and other but’s.
The contrarian community does not have exclusivity over these brand names.
Any Denizen can use them regardless of their own characteristics.
Anyone can use to fight for Freedom the last disinterested value.
All these buts are organized so that in the GRRRROWTH wins.
Challenge met.
But isn’t Willard Watts first name ?
Wott’s this? An Anthony Watts stalker one-ups-mans-hip contest?
Made me immediately think of this
Never fear, Geo – Willard Tony’s of little concern to me.
Keep telling yourself that, Willard because you are the only one who can pretend to believe it.
You should ask Russell that one, Geo.
Well Willard, we got no denial from Russell, you are the one whom can’t keep a poker face
Click on my name, Geo. Follow the bread crumb.
My character was a friend of Russell. Russell convinced me to change my avatar’s look.
Language is a social art.
Thanks for the Hurlingham Python skit- too bad they didn’t cast Monckton as himself..
But isn’t Willard Watts’ first name ?
I’ve never seen them in the same room at the same time Russell but one of then eschews obfuscation in his lie-telling and the other employs obfuscation in his truth-telling so they could not be more different.
Touche, Russell. The truth will out.
Follow crumbs, Willard? I’d have to care about your backstory. Physical activity and silence is a social craft, language is mostly an audible mask of FUD…
The article is bad enough, but the fact that it was written by Lewandowsky is mind-blowing. Lewandowsky’s “research” violates pretty much all the norms of scientific inquiry:
His results always confirm his pre-existing biases.
His methods and data are chosen to produce the desired results.
The results are presented in a misleading manner with no discussion of any methodological problems.
If I were a reviewer of his work, none of it would be publishable. I guess that standards are different in physics than they are in his world.
duh, just duhsn’t suffice.
Some of his earlier work, before he jumped off the deep end into the climate domain and conspiracy ideation, seems very reasonable, and incidentally fairly mainstream too. In fact it’s reasonable to the degree that this work (with other authors) describes many of the bias mechanisms that occur within the climate consensus. I think it’s this clash of sensing the ugly truth within the climate domain, and yet not being able to consciously acknowledge that truth (presumably he was idealistically committed before he ever got a chance to investigate objectively), which is leading to his desperate attempts to paint black into white and white into black, thereby avoiding a terrifying collision with reality.
P.S. my 3 part series at WUWT described some of those bias mechanisms as warned about by Lewandowsky and colleagues. Part 1 is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/06/wrapped-in-lew-papers-the-psychology-of-climate-psychologization-part1/
That was my thought too and it goes beyond Lewandowsky. Just about every accusation of improper conduct leveled at the other side by him and his ilk describe what they routinely do.
Yep—climate psychologists, like climate scientists, are clearly much better at projecting than predicting.
(Har har. No slight intended to our gracious hostess—my sweeping generalization was for comic, rather than literal, purposes.)
When one is the goat, the unfairness of Strawman / Poisoning the Well Argumentation is particularly obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating
”Violating the norms and ethos of science” IS CALLED ”CLIMATOLOGY”
We are witnessing an implementation of Herbert Marcuse’s plan.
From A Critique of Pure Tolerance:
— Herbert Marcuse: Repressive Tolerance
Speaking of frightening things, did you know that a Chief specialty editor at the troubled open-access (OA) publishing company Frontiers resigned in the wake of the retraction of Recursive Fury?
Bad enough that it was published at all, but resignations over its retraction? This is tribalism at its worst.
This is just unbelievable. It is the complete opposite of science.
Bingo. It’s time for a Professorial Chair in Ecneics to be endowed for the exclusive use of Lewandowsky and his heirs (John Cook and whatever male sons Cook may have).
Irresistible conclusion:
Nature is a total rag. It’s for the big flush.
Sadly this Lew don’t flush.
In this case the passive voice might be more appropriate.
Terrific post. Horrifying that Nature published it.
OTH, Nature Climate Change published Fabricius on PNG corals (2011), comprising academic misconduct by omitting to mention toxic H2S in the Dobu water seep noted in the water sample SI. Ebook essay version of Shell Games. And Nature Geoscience published O’Leary’s sudden Eemian SLR paper, where his figure 3 is a clear misrepresentation of tectonically disturbed Quobba Ridge. Guest post and ebook essay By Land or by Sea.
So the Nature stable of formerly respected science publications has provided more than enough evidence as to how it has been thoroughly subverted by warmunist anti-science forces.
This episode merely ‘seals the deal’. A very sad day for science. Sadder for Nature.
Science advances in specific areas for various reasons like of the quality and number of scientists in that area, resources available to them, the maturity of an area, contributions from outside areas (relatd and not) and serendipity. It seems like changing norms to protect the focus, feelings and motivations of some practioners will only have a small impact considering all the other factors tied to scientific advancement.
Seems like a big price to pay for a small gain. Or did I miss the point of how science might be harmed by openness.
I think this issue is a very big deal. Science will not be harmed by openness; petty scientists more interested in careerism and activism may however feel thwarted by openness. The potential for harming science is colossal; we are seeing Lewandowsky’s philosophy at work in the mess that climate science has become.
By big price – I meant giving up the traditional science norms. By small gain – I meant protecting the feelings me motivatins of some scientists. I thnk its a huge deal too.
Judith, spot on. This Lew episode is absolute proof positive for the Nature stable of science publications. McNutt’s piece previously did the same for Science, as did her staff reponse to my Marcott paper formal complaint.
And there went the two most famous old school science publications. Down a dishonest rathole.
Just when I think I could not be any more disappointed in the institution of climate science, another episode proves me wrong. The problem is that all the mirrors have been thrown in the trash.
isn’t it plainly simple?
huge money and political effort was poured into an hypothesis that isn’t holding up
this kinda of stuff is the last gasp from people who can’t face up to being wrong
they’re not threatening science
science is threatening them
.
That was a fantastic line.
I’m committing that to the arsenal.
It would be nice see some data to support this particular conclusion. I don’t think taking your word for it is going to be sufficient.
Joseph,
But you willingly take the word of the consensus. A consensus that exists only if you take the word of a few people who try exceedingly hard to push that line.
To me the consensus is that the science finds that there are a number of significant risks associated with climate change. I don’t think the position statements of almost every major scientific organization in the world and the IPCC reflects the views of a few people. I also believe that the fact most nations have agreed that climate change is a problem is evidence that there is shared view in the science community.
To me the consensus is that the science finds that there are a number of significant risks associated with climate change
Don’t engage in ‘consensus creep’ ( wait, that’s a good moniker ).
There is a consensus that GHGs impose radiative forcing which, all else being equal, leads to warming.
There is not a consensus ( among people that understand the general circulation ) that increased CO2 or increased global average temperature cause significant change to the general circulation ( because neither does ).
Much less is there consensus about the benefits versus risks versus risks of temperature change and CO2 change.
TurbulentEddy, that sort of statement will get you in trouble at WTFUWT! Never concede anything. Don’t you know the first rule?
While it is irritating to have ones comments deleted on sites that are run by political hacks, everyone has come to expect it. But there is another level of conduct that should be expected commensurate with the prestige conferred to that organization. Doesn’t a publication supposedly being a paragon of science owe it to all scientists to conduct itself with a little more class than Huffington Post.
Seems to me that having an intermediary to contact for the data avoids the sense of harassment that may occur with some scientists. An ideal intermediary would be the journal where the paper was published. The lack of direct contact between the requester and the scientists’ university/lab would be a very effective filter, and the scientists would be left unbothered by personal requests, some of which may be insincere and just harassment attempts, which surely exist. A potential harasser would find it far less rewarding to be interacting only with a journal office, and a scientist would make the data available to the journal, and just need to do it once instead of for each request.
Jim D, your proposal about paper archiving has been ‘official’ at many leading journal’s policy for quite some time. Honored only in the breach. See McIntyrye for recent examples. Another wrong Polyanna head in sand utterance.
Here, for instance.
If that is so, why are people still harassing the scientists and not the journals? This Nature Comment piece says that there is a lot of harassment going on using data access as an excuse. Maybe you would be allowed to add Comments that dispute that too, if you can make a case. Perhaps you can tell them about McIntyre too, if that has any relevance to this issue.
Perhaps because the data isn’t archived with the journal, and when somebody asks the journal they’re told to ask the author?
Or perhaps the whole “harassing the scientists” is a straw man based on the past?
Does the article offer any recent examples of such “harassing the scientists”?
I am sure they have a whole litany of examples that led them to write this Comment. As I said, someone who thinks not should write an opposing piece that this is not going on. That is how discussions are done.
You mean data? I wonder if they’ve archived it. Perhaps it’s only available to “credentialed” researchers.
Based on past performance, that’s to hide the fact that it’s nothing but a handful of anecdotal reports, most of them old and mis-interpreted.
IMO that should be the default assumption until they make their data available.
AK, so you don’t believe those people have harassed any climate scientists, despite all the stuff they write on blogs about them? They may get in trouble if they release names of people making blog conspiracy statements about them, because apparently those people think their blog statements should be private even with their real name on them, so it is more trouble than it is worth to name names. I am sure they do get some interesting emails from some regular keyboard warriors, but it won’t prove anything to you that you don’t already suspect from reading them on blogs.
Nice work, yimmy. The usual knee-jerk defense of the indefensible, with the usual obfuscation. Maybe you should not be allowed you to comment, unless you can make a case that scientists being “harassed” for data is a problem. Consensus climate science is corrupt and the knee-jerk defenders of consensus climate science are corrupt.
What Jim D misses completely, is that responding to requests for data takes seconds if the data is organized.
If the data and code is archived properly as many journals officially require but do not enforce, then the few seconds to respond to requests would become unnecessary.
It is the refusals, the crying foul, the rending of clothes, the self-styled whining over victimization, of the activist researchers which causes this to rise to the level of FOIA requests and coordinated efforts to obtain data, which are then become the self-fulfilling prophesy of “harrassment”.
charles the moderator,
It does seem to reek of what Robert Hughes called the “culture of complaint”:
“What Jim D misses completely, is that responding to requests for data takes seconds if the data is organized.”
The little dishonest rascal may also be missing the fact that having the FOIA officer at the institution of employment deny a request for data, or getting a freaking email or ten asking for data that the sighentists have no intention of complying with is harassment only to the most sensitive of little cybabies. What’s next? Whining in Nature about spam emails from acne medicine peddlers?
A good suggestion Jim.
However I doubt it actually works, particularly if journals don’t require authors provide data files and code.
Also I would point out that archiving data doesn’t solve the problem the skeptics have because some data may have been thrown away and not been part of the publication, and that would also escape archiving. The only way to check results is not replication, which is just checking they did the sums right, but collecting your own data and seeing if your results agree. This is why science works more via independent studies rather than by replication using identical data.
I think the best way to avoid transparency and openness is to not publish at all, Lew :)
Carefully there, some of Climates most sacred of cows is based on papers that were never published. Or even better, later retracted.
This is totally disgusting, but a lot of our (US) values are being eroded to accommodate socialism and centralized control.
Exactly right. See my comment above.
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it!.
Science needs to be practised by consenting adults in public!
Sorry, COMPETENT consenting adults ….
Hi Beth. The issue of competence only came up because in medical research it is important for consent (for treatment or to participate in a trial) to be informed and not clouded by any form of intellectual impairment. These rules seem to also apply to climate scientists themselves IMO :)
Hi Peter,
Couldn’t agree more. Fergiv a serf’s facetiousness.
I liked version 1. )
Lewandowsky had reported that age didn’t correlate with
his variables though it did. He had a 32,757-year-old,
a 5-year-old, and several other minors in his data. What
of open society evolution of knowledge if closed society
‘hide yr workings’ becomes the thing? Anything goes.
Academia, at least those institutions with which I am familiar, have become a club. Harvard, club uno numero has had some recognition of this issue with regards to its admissions process and is making efforts to make changes. We will have to see how earnest Harvard is in this endeavor and the importance of being earnest, that is the appearance of making change but not making changes.
Club membership devolves into linage relationships ala The Daughters Of The American Revolution, and important designation for prep school and marrying prospects.
Science clubs are no less predicated upon linage, as, research funding flows to those who know…the power brokers. Glad-handing at the specialty conferences and snubs and outright rudeness carries the day. “My studies outrank your studies.” Academic sniping becomes more intense the higher the institutional rank.
When it comes to Government review of research applications, the ranking of such applications is in no small measure a function of who has been invited to the review board.
If one is looking for “fairness” or quality of the project or quality of the researcher or quality of the institution from whence the application comes, “who you know is more important than what you know.”
Back when, in the Neolithic age of Morbidity and Mortality conferences at hospitals as an outgrowth of the Flexner Report on Medical Education at the turn of the last Century, when autopsy was the norm and surgeons and some medical staff deaths and complications were reviewed, and in a transparent forum, there were no spared feelings. Screw-ups, missed diagnosis, missed opportunities were identified.
Alas, no more. Back then, bad behavior, incomplete evaluation, arrogance, were open and fair game as well.
I have been enlightened by the Climate Science community. First, they are a bunch of wimps. Whiners.
Next, their science is dependent upon the approval of others; i.e., the consensus.
Third, their research begins to mimic rather than address issues that are not “quite right.”
And fourth, they are beholden to the media which fawns upon their utterances. Such verbiage becomes the litany of the political types, repeated and repeated as one does a rosary on knees up the cathedral’s steps.
I have seen and heard some giants in medicine.
Climate Science has no such stalwarts.
Nature’s amazing “openess” and “transparency”!
Are Nature’s editors and reviewers not able to withstand scientific scrutiny?
Judith
Would Nature accept a < 300 word summary of your post as a formal comment?
My guess is NO. It would go against the Plan: “To be successful the cultural institutions must be infiltrated. Theatre, the arts, schools, universities, seminaries, and newspapers become prime targets and eventually succumb to the invasion.”
Clicking on Browse/Company Information/NPG Board yields “Nature.com error: Page not found”.
It is ironic that properly practised science is poison to “The Science”.
Well put. The Science is clearly antonymous to science. One is a dead corpus of doctrines, the other an organ that lives to destroy doctrine.
Surely this has gone on long enough. And why shouldn’t a person or scientist of the political left not have to agree completely with the scientific method? These people and institutions are either junk scientists or morally bankrupt. Politics and political agendas shouldn’t be involved in science at all.
Exposing NASA data
Do the efforts of AnonSec assist in data transparency and NASA?
Hackers Allegedly Hijack Drone After Massive Breach at NASA
I call for the incineration of all copies of Nature, and I also wish to call for complete freedom of speech for Nature.
And don’t dare cherry pick the above statement as evidence of me being kinda dumb.
I don’t see anything wrong with what Stephan Lewandowsky & Dorothy Bishop are advocating. 😊
There are, after all, historical precedents they are following, such as that of William Tyndale and his famous English translation of the New Testament:
Darned printing presses.
Plus ça change…
I think it’s particularly remarkable Stephan Lewandowsky wrote this as if people hadn’t been able to access his data, they’d never have been able to see how he created spurious correlations to label global warming skeptics as conspiracy nuts who believe the moon landing is a hoax out of data which doesn’t show anything of the sort (if you haven’t seen how this was done, here is a good explanation).
This is basically a guy leading a charge against openness while saying, “People pointed out my work was complete rubbish, and that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had to give them my data!”
News flash
If you do research that in ANY way is funded by the public dollar in America ALL your raw data is considered a RECORD. A record is public property and is required to be accessible to anyone who is an American citizen.
Read that twice and let it sink in.
Judith – I’m interested in your postscript: “An article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine: Data Sharing [link], raises concerns about ‘research parasites’ that use data collected by others to try to replicate the original results or for purposes that were not intended by the original investigators.”.
For others to use the data to try to replicate the original results is EXACTLY one of the ways that science is supposed to progress. As for “purposes that were not intended …..”, that seems excellent science too. Data is data, and others may well have seen uses that the original user had not seen and/or pursued.
The who Climate Crisis will one day be remembered as the best thing that could have happened to science. Nothing less then the extremely public crash and burn of such an influential science could have so vividly exposed just how far science in general had fallen. Papers like Lewandowsky’s will be presented for generations as examples of warning signs that science is being turned into an intolerant religion that accepts neither criticism nor disbelief.
some examples of the norms and ethos of science
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291833573_ozonePaperResource
and
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2459086
JC – “Why are such obvious scientific norms/values being eroded away? …. a combination of ‘careerism’ and public policy activism/advocacy….It is clearly the case. This goes back at least to the Rio conventions / UNFCCC’s declarative objectives and mandates setting the direction of careerism and climate activism. I believe this resulted in the paradigm shift from “normal” scientific progress to “revolutionary” scientific progress, in the Kuhnian sense. If you have vested your career going down a certain path, you will stay on that path, because you have made a personal commitment to it. Having done that people make the leap from this is not just the right thing to do (personally), it is the right and correct thing. It then become a social science shaped by ideology and belief. You see such things as IPCC assigning probabilities and “likelihoods” of manmade this and tipping points which are actually Delphi polling hand counts of the report writers; and activists issuing papers on such things as “97% of scientists believe in global warming,” which is deeply flawed by selection bias.
.
The only counter to this is to focus on the data and science in the traditional sense. But policies are the result of politicians and sway of public opinion and this will require “strong scientific evidence” to overcome. I would be happy for and fully expect the outcome to be that the climate “movement” (an ordered process to create change) has been overstated, overhyped and the answer is that climate is affected by humans but this is only a part of the problem and the prescribed solution.
.
This is why it is important to understand the real science and reveal cheating, bias, etc. including selection bias and flaws in analyses. Current examples being Steve McIntyre’s recent work to decode the selection bias in the “…absolutely breathtaking example of biased ex post picking in the D’Arrigo et al 2006 CNWT chronology” http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/29/cherry-picking-by-darrigo/ and the work of the likes of Nic Lewis re recent climate sensitivity analysis and his recent related work re the Marvel et. al. report http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/21/marvel-et-al-implications-of-forcing-efficacies-for-climate-sensitivity-estimates-an-update/. Also why it is important to assure that access is given to both data and related information, for example as in the recent letter to congress signed by 300 scientists re questions about the Karl et. al. restatement of historical data http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/28/300-scientists-tell-chairman-of-the-house-science-committee-we-want-noaa-adhere-to-law-of-the-data-quality-act/.
I believe you’re wrong. The “climate science” of the IPCC and massive (mis-)use of GCM’s is actually continuing the prior paradigm.
For revolutionary paradigms, it would (IMO) be better to look at the work of people like Anastasios Tsonis. Who, BTW, was involved in the Stadium Wave hypothesis.
The hard working consensus climate scientists are our altruistic heroes on a secular mission to save the planet. They need a large safe space to protect them from the slings and arrows of outrageous scrutiny. Nature and most other journals are down with that. Let’s all please stop invading their privacy.
Don I can’t believe I am reading this and my sincere hope is that this is sarcasm
You must be new here.
Sorry about that
– B
Thanks, Brian. You are a good sport, unlike many of the sourpusses here. Here are some of our skeptic team, also on a mission. Hockeypuck and Springer:
Donny, Donny, Dondon…
This was written with you in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
P.S. I have a print, on metal, of that Blue’s Brother clip hanging on the wall over my computer. No joke you miserable slug!
I’m always amused by the power of Lewandowsky’s whiskers to sniff out “bad faith” in others without ever noticing the stench of bad science emanating from closer to home.
I think it is important, in his regard, to remember that Lewandowsky belongs in a padded cell. viz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8wVfxoPqPA
Tis a nice clip.
I like to show it to people who quote Lewandowsky’s work.
They seem to come away a little disturbed by the experience.
Seems the New England Journal is backing away from their statement. NEJM Editor Backtracks on Data-Sharing ‘Parasites’ Editorial
“How on earth can you justify corrigenda as being ‘unwelcome’?” Hi, Judy. This struck me as odd at first, too. Then I read it as referring to the ‘unwelcome’ need of corrigenda. That is, it isn’t the corrections that are unwelcome, but the need for them; and if corrigenda exist, then one can infer there must have been (unwelcome) mistakes in the original paper. Anyway, I think that’s what they meant.
BTW – thanks for another excellent post. -t
Scientist: I want to save the world we need to tax your energy.
Citizen: Let me see your data and see if I think the world needs saving.
Scientist: I feel harassed when you ask to see my data.
Citizen: I feel harassed when you want to make my energy more expensive.
Citizen’s well informed friends …
“Hey, give me the raw data as required by the 1999 Shelby Act”. If you don’t give me the data, I’ll be forced to sue you. Suing you and you organization will likely involve criminal prosecution if you have destroyed those records. I’m also pretty sure your institution will not appreciate their tarnished brand”.
There is a push toward getting universities excluded from the FOI act. Lewandowsky’s article occurs in this context. If universities want to be exempt from FOI they should be willing to their output – academic papers, books and speeches – to not be employed in politics and law-making.
It’s even simpler. If research facilities don’t what to be held accountable to the Shelby Act of 1999, they should stop using taxpayer funds. Once taxpayer funds are used in any fashion, their work becomes a public record as they are acting as public servants.
Simple but powerful stuff.
This is an even bigger issue given the recent spate of unreplicatable results in many field. Most people at least admit there is a problem. Those who do not are mostly activists masquerading as scientists, such as Ken Rice who is a perfect example of special pleading and dishonesty. Judith has posted here on many of these recent editorials such as in Nature and a particularly telling one in the Lancet recently. If perhaps 50% of research is just wrong, we need reform to at least start to address this problem, and it is serious, where human safety and welfare are involved. That is true of climate science especially.
The most striking thing about the Lew & Bish article is that it has some parts of medical research up in arms. Where medicine goes, the other sciences often follow, so let’s hope this is a spectacular own goal.
What is annoying Loo-and-doubtsky is that his bs ideas about climate are being decisively smashed by the real data thus showing we sceptics were right all along. The “Data-python” is growing. With each passing year the amount of real world data grows so that the crazy ideas have less and less wriggle room. They are finding it increasingly difficult to claim their bonkers beliefs based on short run cherry picked data are supported by any real world data.
Hence, the increasing prevalence of the “data-free” theorists like Loo as those held firmly in the grip of the data-python struggle to find any wriggle room to push the global warming BS.
Of course the public have the right to access tax payer
funded information.
http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/redact-obama-cartoon.jpg
Transparency is rarely given freely. It takes a fair amount of intestinal fortitude to make it happen. It’s messy and can become a bitter battle but at some point even the serfs rise up and demand to see proof.
The tools for it exist.
The current CAGW movement that depends on consensus is unintentionally creating a mass movement that demands transparency. It’s rather normal that serfs begin to demand such things when unreasonable demands turn into difficult sacrifices.
So you are interested in “the norms and ethos of science. “Climate Science” is a relatively new issue. Consider the two following models of the electronic structure of a atom. Which do you think is the current version?
http://pages.swcp.com/~jmw-mcw/Curry_spd_MCAS_Models.jpg
If you are interested, you will find the two models discussed at:
http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Chemistry/Download/5032
You will not find one of them in the open literature!
And side-by-side at: http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Quantum%20Theory%20/%20Particle%20Physics/Download/5000
The title of the Nature article is poor, but the article itself is clearly not arguing against transparency. The very next paragraph is
To all of those who think the article is wrong, is that because you think that harassment is acceptable, or did you not bother reading the actual article?
Herewith … har-ass-ment’s a diversion:
https://politicalsciencereplication.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/getting-the-idea-of-transparency-all-wrong/
…
By order Head Cli-Sci Philosopher King:
When entering the portals of the laboratories of the Cli-Sci
-Public Institute of Research, lab capes of secrecy MUST
be worn.
When discussing appropriate methodologies for task,
Cone of Silence MUST be in operation.
“Whether you obtain the data or not, you are welcome to submit a Comment on the article, which I would send out for review by at least three highly qualified, arms’-length reviewers plus to one of the LOG authors if they agreed.” – Prof Stephan Lyndsay – Chief Editor of Psychological Science
correspondence in the comments under Dr Paul MAtthews article:
http://cliscep.com/2016/01/29/nature-on-research-integrity/
I have now also been refused Lewandowsky’s extended data, by Bristol University, and yes I advised them it was for he specific purpose of submitting a comment to Psychological Science, at the invitation of the Chief editor of the journal. My comment would be treated in exactly the same way as anybody else (as he describes)
The VC of UWA also previously refused my data request for the specific purpose of submitting it to a journal..
————————-
From: Paul Johnson
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2014 8:08 AM
To: Barry Woods
Cc: Murray Maybery ; Kimberley Heitman
Subject: request for access to data
Mr B. Woods
Dear Mr Woods,
I refer to your emails of the 11th and 25th March directed to Professor Maybery, which repeat a request you made by email dated the 5th September 2013 to Professor Lewandowsky (copied to numerous recipients) in which you request access to Professor Lewandowsky’s data for the purpose of submitting a comment to the Journal of Psychological Science.
It is not the University’s practice to accede to such requests.
Yours faithfully,
Professor Paul Johnson,
Vice-Chancellor
———————
look what he is doing, numerous requests. (harassment, vexatious, red flags?) he copied UWA chief legal counsel, bit intimidating) if Prof Lewandowsky had sent it out when I requested it in July 2012, when I pointed out to him that he might have made an error, I would not need to make numerous requests!
I have made the following direct requests, one to Prof Lewandowsky, in July 2012, then to Psychological Science (2013), then again to Prof Lewandowsky and his co-authors, copying Dept heads( 2013), then one to the head of the School of Psychology(,2014) Then in 2015 when I found Prof Lewandowsky had archive 4 datasets at Bristol University.– plus an equal number of reminders (of the have you seen my email type)
I asked Prof Lewandowsky for his data at Bristol, it was only via a press officer that I got a response, that as he did the work at UWA, that I should contact UWA. I contacted the head of Department at UWA, received no reply, when I chased up with a polite did you get my email, I was met with the response above from UWA VC of research
I and Climate Audit have been critical of another Psychology paper – Dead and Alive, I requested the data and material from Dr Wood, and his response was immediate, and with the survey data and the material I requested, I cannot fault Michael Woods conduct in his willingness to make his data available, whilst I might query his findings. (Dead and Alive was cited by Moon Hoax)
http://climateaudit.org/2013/11/07/more-false-claims-from-lewandowsky/
That data is fascinating, he surveyed 2nd yr psychology students,
54% expressed a belief that Diana death not an accident,
24% governments are supressing the existence of aliens, and get this
34 % (of 2nd yr psychology grads, av age 20.3, 83% female) believe – “Scientists are creating panic about climate change because it is in their interests to do so.” – 34%!
and
18% thought the moon landings were fake (vs 0.8% Moon Hoax)
Lewandowksy continues to make the claim that no blog critic has ever submitted a comment to peer review, which is of course technically correct.
(I can’t get his meta data!, nor the extended dataset he archived at Bristol in September 2015)), It is not for want of trying to submit a comment
How did Stephan Lewandowsky collect the data in the first place?
By asking his friends at Skeptical Science to fake some up? Oh, but pointing out the Lew’s data is mostly fraudulent is considered ‘conspiracy ideation’ by Lew. So is catching him at it. ^¿^
Relevant post
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/02/01/peer-review-make-no-damn-sense/#comments
shy guy: Relevant post
Thank you for the link.
You should have more respect for a future Royal Society member, and, if everything goes well, even The King!
To apply rules about “harassment” you have to manufacture a “consensus” about what harassment is. As L. describes it anything may qualify. Then you have to appoint someone to apply those rules endowed with the necessary authority.
Because this is about the psychological effect on the fragile souls of scientists a psychiatrist or related may be a good idea (L. himself?).
Everyone who actually has CFS may legitimately regard the mentioned PACE-Study and its possible consequences a slap in the face. But of course their suffering is nothing compared with that of the study authors facing some criticism’s souls. Lewandowsky said so. He published something peer reviewed in Nature. He’s an expert.
So please ignore some hundred thousand CFS-sufferers who must be psychopaths. Why else would they raise some criticism?
Some further discussion of Bishop/Lewandowsky and the PACE trial:
https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/pace-trial-and-other-clinical-data-sharing-patient-privacy-concerns-and-parasite-paranoia/
“An open letter to The Lancet, again”
“Today, therefore, we are reposting the open letter and resending it to The Lancet and Dr. Horton, with the names of three dozen more leading scientists and clinicians, most of them well-known experts in the ME/CFS field.”
http://www.virology.ws/2016/02/10/open-letter-lancet-again/
“vexatious”
I know this is a serious subject, but I can’t help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of researchers claiming intent to harass. Evidently it’s harassment when you asked to be transparent concerning your experiment.
I guess lawyers will be hawking their skills to provide safe spaces in ivory towers.
Ironcially, we as a culture appear to have created demigods. We value smarts then put them on an untouchable pedestal.
The whole scientific avocation is in big trouble folks.
I suspect that Lewandowsky’s and Bishop’s idea of ‘harassment’ consists of ‘illegitimate’ requests for data/methods of working. Illegitimate in that they come from individuals known to be sceptical of mainstream consensus (ergo ‘settled’) science who thus should be automatically considered to be acting ‘in bad faith’. Obviously, attempts by such individuals to gain access to data must per se be considered vexatious in that they can only ever amount to ‘nit-picking’ in an attempt to discredit ‘inconvenient’ Science, especially if the person making the request is ‘unqualified’ to do so. In this age of political correctness, it is a relatively straightforward step to personalise such attempts at vexatious nit-picking of settled science, thereby transforming them into ‘harassment’ of specific individuals – the particular motive for which (race, gender, political affiliation etc.) can be dreamt up in retrospect or left to the interpreter’s imagination. True openness and transparency requires a willingness to be universally open and transparent, even to those people who may be perceived to be lacking academic authority or to be acting in bad faith.
+1
‘I suspect that Lewandowsky’s and Bishop’s idea of ‘harassment’ consists of ‘illegitimate’ requests for data/methods of working.’
Jaime, you’re more right than you know. Google ‘Lewandowsky illegitimate insertion’—that’s precisely the name under which he first tried to foist this abortive misosophy on the world.
I’m sure we haven’t seen the last incarnation of this teratoma either.
Good grief; only Lew could come up with such a phrase which makes you wonder if he’s talking about academic harassment or a serious form of sexual abuse!
Lewandowsky even wrote an article on exactly the themes you’ve guessed: namely, how the respectable world can protect itself from the attentions of the ‘illegitimate’ one, which is a bit rich coming from an utter b@stard.
Yes, well, Lew is admirably transparent in his motives; I’ll give him credit for that.
Transparently obfuscationist.
Love it.
“True openness and transparency requires a willingness to be universally open and transparent, even to those people who may be perceived to be lacking academic authority or to be acting in bad faith.”
+ 100
Yes, of course, and I don’t think that the Bishop & Lewandowsky paper is really suggesting otherwise. The point, as I see it, is that it is possible to be as transparent and open as you think is possible and still be accused of not being so. Hence, it is worth considering how to deal with situations where there is a dispute about this kind of thing. Simply because one party is accusing the other of not being transparent, or not releasing all their data, does not mean that the first party should be assumed to be in the right.
Gobbledegook …
fffttttttt!
The responses are absolutely brilliant. Thanks.
Qu’est que c’est ATTP?
Joe Duarte (@ValidScience) says:
January 31, 2016 at 1:04 am
Lewandowsky had a 32,757-year-old, a 5-year-old, and
several other minors in his data. He had falsely reported
that age didn’t correlate with his variables, when in fact it
did — the 32,757-year-old had blown open his deviation
scores and snuffed out the correlation. When he was
informed of the presence of a 32,757-year-old, a 5-year-old,
et al in his data, he did nothing. He didn’t run a correction,
didn’t clean his data — he literally did nothing and let his
false paper just sit there in the literature as though it were
true. More than a year passed. When I reported all this to
PLOS ONE, they made him run a substantial correction: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/minors-lewandowsky-and-
ceremonial-ethics
His 2012 Psych Science paper is comprehensively false.
The titular effect turns out not to exist — only three people
held those beliefs. And look at Table 1. He and his
collaborators gave uniform and false factor loadings for
their main conspiracy variable. This somehow slipped past
everyone, much like the sadness and color perception
paper: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/05/got-the-blues-
you-can-still-see-blue-after-all-paper-on-sadness-and-color
-perception-retracted/
Every factor loading on that index is false and inflated (and
uniform, which would necessitate falsity). I think by briefly
saying that they were doing this in the footnotes (but not
explaining why), they got people to ignore it. No one has
ever done this before as far as anyone knows — no one
has ever presented identical factor loadings for every item
(which, again, would necessarily make them false for any
realistic psychometric instrument.)
He also engaged in post hoc DV removal — he had an Iraq
conspiracy item endorsed by liberals, which he deleted from
his conspiracy index. He did not disclose this in the paper.
The paper is comprehensively false anyway. The items he
retained didn’t hang together, but the reader didn’t know
this because he gave false and inflated factor loadings.
There was no conspiracy factor as described in the paper.
2016
As far as I can tell, that illustrates some of what was being highlighted in the Lewandowsky & Bishop article.
You think it is possible. Anything is possible. But we haven’t seen an instance in the real world. Not the climate world. Those who have been open with their data have not been accused of being otherwise. Those that have not been open with their data have been justly called on it.
You have a theory, ATTP. The real world belies your theory. What will you do?
What theory? All I suggested is that we should consider how to deal with situations where there is a dispute about this. If you’re suggesting that there have never been any disputes about data sharing and transparency, then you haven’t been concentrating. Did you, once again, not actually read what I wrote before responding?
Well, let’s concentrate on the climate debate. Who has falsely been accused of not providing access to data?
attp, “As far as I can tell, that illustrates some of what was being highlighted in the Lewandowsky & Bishop article.”
You have to admit that the 32000 year old respondent was pretty funny.
ATTP’s (Kenny Rice) response with feet held to the fire:
[crickets chirping]
here
JCH:
Not sure why you are linking to Lewandowsky’s PLOS ONE correction. beththeserf already linked to Duarte’s demolition of Lewandowsky’s “correction”. In particular, he catalogs the continuing refusals to release the data that would allow others to replicate the study’s results.
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/minors-lewandowsky-and-ceremonial-ethics
Even if some of the particulars allow for debate, honest observers should admit “Conspiracist Ideation” is an embarrassingly bad paper to defend.
Simply because one party claims harassment….
> The responses are absolutely brilliant. Thanks
There is no doubt that the English are the best in the world at satire and mockery
I used to wonder if that was because they had so much innate material to practise on
You seem to confirm that … it’s sweeter because you are so unaware
ATTP: The point, as I see it, is that it is possible to be as transparent and open as you think is possible and still be accused of not being so.
As transparent and open as you think is possible? What a clever attempt to divert the discussion! Points to ATTP for obfuscation, but deductions for the inherent dishonesty..
Transparency in science is exceedingly well-defined. It is the provision of all information necessary to replicate the results. That does not include giving people commercial software, but it does include giving them all custom software used to process the data, or the equivalent pseudocode.
And it necessarily requires dissemination of all raw (not processed) data, along with a detailed explanation of all data manipulation.
If you don’t do all of that, then you’re not being transparent. So, for example, if you are a paleoclimate researcher who decided ex post facto to eliminate some data series from your final result, and you don’t share those series, then you are not being transparent. So instead of providing the information that would show your questionable statistical practices you cry “harassment” and pretend you have the moral high ground.
“As transparent and open as you think is possible?”
I saw that too. Really tricky. Got to give the poster credit at his craft.
That last bolded phrase is called lip-service, kenny. Put together with the other bolded part, it’s called talking out of both sides of the mouth. Thank you for being so disingenuous. We don’t like surprises.
This went astray. Has little kenny hacked into our moderation here?:
That last bolded phrase is called lip-service, kenny. Put together with the other bolded part, it’s called talking out of both sides of the mouth. Thank you for being so disingenuous. We don’t like surprises.
Hmmm.
http://judithcurry.com/2016/01/31/violating-the-norms-and-ethos-of-science/#comment-761891
Forced choice
ATTP
I teach a thing for a living.
I beg my students everyday to assume every assertion I make is wrong.
I want them to make me defend my stuff at all times.
Over and over.
Every nook and crack.
Harass me.
Maybe the meek shall inherit the Earth.
I say aim higher.
Fragile little scientists will never conquer the heavens.
@rebel ronin:
What an awesome comment!
Pingback: El nuevo escándalo de Lewandovsky salpica a Nature | PlazaMoyua.com
Translation to plain English of selected portions of Longo and Drazen’s NEJM editorial on data sharing:
http://jonathanpeelle.net/blog/2016/1/22/translation-to-plain-english-of-selected-portions-of-longo-and-drazens-editorial-on-data-sharing
This is brilliant. I encourage everyone to read it, and the follow-up article linked at the end. Thanks Ruth.
+1
perfect
Thanks Ruth
It was a fun read.
The issue of sharing PUBLIC data funded by PUBLIC money is confounded by the fact that researchers actually think that it’s theirs to withhold from the PUBLIC.
The fundamental principle of science is that it is a system of knowledge that can be verified by data. In other words it is knowledge bolted down to reality and subject to test to ensure it is bolted down to reality.
Climate BS – is “knowledge” that rejects the real world data in favour of “consensus”, Liberal and eco politics. And as for Lewandowsky – he’s a comedian.
Here is the text of my comment that was deleted at Nature:
——————————————————————–
Perhaps a follow up article could be written: Academic Integrity – Don’t let Activist Academics Damage Science – I’d recommend Prof Lee Jussim.
Prof Lewandowsky has experienced a number of calls for retraction of I think 4 of his papers. Frontiers In Psychology did in fact retract one paper, and it is clear from the original retraction statement that they tried to let the authors go gently. When Prof Lewandowsky went to press saying the journal gave in to bullying and harassment, the journal responded twice saying this was not the case. And Prof Markram the co-founder of the journal went as far to publicly state that Professor Lewandowsky and his co-authors (including John Cook) actions were – to quote – “activism that abuses science as a weapon”
———————————————————————
How are other academics, or the public, or journalists to know whether a scientist is being harassed, or shouting harassment, because that is the last refuge of a fraud, or someone’s misconduct? – best way, make the data available.
Here are references to my comment above:
to the original retraction notice,
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00293/full
and the 2 subsequent refutations by Frontiers of Professor Lewandowsky’s cliams that the journal gave into bullying and harrassment.
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Retraction_of_Recursive_Fury_A_Statement/812
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
The quote of Markrams – where he describes Lewandowsky’s actions (that resulted in the retraction) as – “activism that abuses science as a weapon”, is from a personal comment of Prof Markram, made in the comments of the last link.
And I’ll put here the comment that I deleted after yours was deleted (or what I remember it to be).
The article says
You say
Yes – and one paper was retracted – Recursive Fury –
Prof Henry Markram (the founder of Frontiers) who I suspect knows more about what happened than Ken Rice (astronomer, theresphysics)
described Lewandowsky (and Cook, Marriotts actions)
as – “activism that abuses science as a weapon”
Barry,
The article, quite rightly IMO, points out that retractions are typically for grave errors or fraud, but suggests that there are increasingly calls for the retraction of papers from people who don’t like a paper’s conclusions. You respond by highlighting that there have been calls for the retraction of numerous papers by Stephan Lewandowsky. You don’t get the irony of this? Maybe you were intentionally trying to illustrate the point being made in the article, but my suspicion is that you were not. That one of Stephan Lewandowsky’s papers has been retracted does not change this.
Theresphysics –
Lewandowsky is special pleading, he has made public claims people are bullying and harassing journals, where in one case he cliams they caved in to ‘threats’, to retract his work
The editors of the journal of his paper that was retracted- said that his was nonsense,
“…As we published in our retraction statement, a small number of complaints were received during the weeks following publication. Some of those complaints were well argued and cogent and, as a responsible publisher, our policy is to take such issues seriously. Frontiers conducted a careful and objective investigation of these complaints. Frontiers did not “cave in to threats”; in fact, Frontiers received no threats. The many months between publication and retraction should highlight the thoroughness and seriousness of the entire process. ”
Costanza Zucca, Editorial Director
Fred Fenter, Executive Editor
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Retraction_of_Recursive_Fury_A_Statement/812
and the founder of the journal said that his actions were abusing science…. (he added a personal comment)
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
Henry Markram:
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.”
Perhaps Prof Lewandowsky is not the best person to be championing for this topic? When an academic peer describing his actions as
– “activism abusing science as a weapon” – might any reader think his motives are to protect himself from actually sharing his disputed data?
And as you can see Markram is very concerned about climate change (certainly no sceptic) he is making a case for the standards of psychology to be upheld
Oh Ken, give it up. If you really have a problem with people calling for the remainder of Lewandowsky’s pseudoscholarly hate speech to be retracted from the literature, take it up with the people on “your” “side”—Tom Curtis and Jose Duarte spring to mind—who’ve explained why such a step is necessary for the basic hygiene and good name of science.
Brad,
I didn’t actually say I had a problem with it. I was simply highlighting the irony of responding to an article that suggests that some are now asking for the retraction of papers the results of which they don’t like, by pointing out that there have been calls for the retraction of a number of the author’s papers.
Lewandowsky’s errors were grave. Fatal, actually.
Don’t expect Ken Rice to acknowledge the point. The respondent in Lewandowsky’s database with an age of 32,585 ruins any age correlations he made. That’s a pretty grave error. Kenny just skipped right over it like it didn’t exist in his knee jerk reaction to rise to the defense of a fellow hockey team member.
Birds of a feather flock together, eh Kenny? LOL
David:
“Don’t expect Ken Rice to acknowledge the point.”
That goes without saying. The denial is strong with this one.
You go first, Brad:
http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830
You can insert whatever you please in your response.
Willard, once again you’re aiming over my head and hitting your target. I can’t tell what you’re saying: is it your contention that by attributing denial to Ken Rice without his permission, I’ve violated the rights of a research subject? No, that doesn’t even make sense when I say it. Help me out here, please.
Willard’s obviously not playing with a full deck.
> Help me out here, please.
The emphasized bit needs to be acknowledged, Brad: Markram explicitly states that he’s trying to protect his journal from lawsuits.
Add to that the fact that editors resigned over his overinterpretation of what’s usually applied to diagnoses, and Barry’s peddling is not that clear-cut anymore. As far as I am concerned, I can live with the possibility that both sides deserve a pox in their houses. I already warned Lew in pers. comm. how I felt about his project.
The only relevance of Barry’s peddling is that they illustrate Bishop’s point a bit too well: after a few years of more or less the same copy-pastes, his concerns are don’t appear to be about INTEGRITY ™ anymore.
Which is one of the reasons why I am thankful for Barry’s peddling, and always am thankful for this kind of concern.
Hope this helps,
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When my data request was refused by the VC of Research at UWA, I wrote to the then editor of Psychological Science – Prof Erich Eich.
Prof Eich had also previously invited me to submit a comment, and suggested make another request for the the data from the authors.
Here is my email and his reply:
From: Eric Eich
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2014 6:27 PM
To: barry.woods
Subject: Re: Data Request – to allow a comment to be submitted to the
journal Psychological Science
Dear Mr. Woods–I appreciate your position, but I have zero influence on
UWA’s policies (on sharing data or anything else, for that matter).
Best regards,
Eric Eich
On 2014-03-29, 7:37 AM, barry.woods wrote:
> Dear Professor Eich
>
> FYI
>
> I have written to the Head of the School of Psychology (UWA) requesting
> data for the ‘NASA faked the Moon Landing’ paper, if you recall Professor
> Lewandowsky referred all requests to UWA. I have attached my UWA
> correspondence to this email.
>
> I have now received an email from the Vice Chancellor of of UWA, refusing to supply the requested data.
>
> I am a little surprised by this, not least because this data may provide
> evidence that I am wrong, (if it included referring URLs from Skeptical
> Science) though I think it is very unlikely given the wayback machine
> evidence, the FOI correspondence between John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky and Tom Curtis’ testimony.
>
> UWA’s refusal to release this data, makes it harder for me (or any
> researcher) to submit a comment for peer review, and I imagine UWA’s
> refusal may put the journal of Psychological science in an awkward
> position.
>
> Will you consider re-investigating this, in light of UWA’s response.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Barry Woods
1. Most science is bad (not reproducible) perhaps as much as 89%.
2. Attempts to get data for older studies have had a 77% failure rate.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982213014000
Only 19% of the data was actually received, 4% was still in use and could not be shared.
3. The government can cure the problem,at least in climate science for which government grants seem to be virtually the only funding source.. The government can require that the data, methods, and info covered by FOIA from any government funded study must be uploaded to a publicly available government servers as a condition for final payment, and access to future grants.
Requiring that everything that might be requested be uploaded to a government server eliminates the harassment, the FOIAs, etc. etc. and any perceived compliance cost would be included in the grant funding.
There is simply no reason there is even a problem. The fact that there is a problem is easy to solve in the next budget authorization. Scientists should be given the choice of keeping their data or their grant money.
Elegant solution.
I’m sure Georgia Tech would love to be a backup repository. It would also make for the beginnings of the Climate Science Research International Library.
Only IF I ever get the data, my comment would be submitted to the Cheif Editor of Psychological Science,
Only IF the Chief Editor thinks it worthy of being considered, will he then send it out to three independent peer reviewers.
Only IF they review it, and only IF they don’t suggest rejection/modification will it ever actually be published..
What on earth is Lewandowsky scared of, the odds are totally stacked against me.
The Committee on Public Ethics is holding a webinar on these issues on February 12th.
They write that
“Most recently, questions about the legitimate requests for and re-use of data have been explored systematically and thoughtfully by Lewandowsky & Bishop (2016).”
After I picked myself up off the floor, I submitted a comment, now in moderation.
HT Barry Woods on twitter
Only academics can contribute to that webinar (public excluded)
Maybe, maybe not. My comment is still under moderation.
no the webinar, not the comments (probably very slow moderation, ie they don’t get many comments,
you have to be a member of COPE to join the webinar
http://publicationethics.org/join-cope
“Scientists who are harassed often feel alone. Universities do not tolerate harassment based on race or gender, and neither should they tolerate harassment based on contentious science. They should provide training and support to help their researchers cope.”
What they’re attempting to do here is invent a new form of ‘harassment’ based on ‘contentious science’ – contentious, not in the fact that it is genuinely contentious, but that it is disputed by individuals acting in bad faith whose ulterior motive is to try and illegitimately discredit True Science. Thus, ‘pseudoscepticism’ becomes a ‘hate crime’ consisting of personal attacks by anti-science individuals whose main motive is to roll back scientific progress purely because they find that ‘progress’ politically unappetising or ‘inconvenient’. Why else would they continue to question a mature science whose conclusions are uncontested by all but a tiny minority? Guilty by default.
Articulate.
A fine post.
Excellent detached view of what is occurring.
Since the science is settled any questioning of it becomes harassment. That harassment is deemed to be bad for the greater good.
For those who missed it, Lewandowsky explains how to deal with harassment* here. The guy is almost beyond parody.
*Note: May not work for actual harassment. Advice is provided for entertainment purposes only.
Internet law concerning those beyond parody:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Michael Mann presents himself as a nerdy scientist who is being hounded by a well funded campaign by the fossil fuel industry. To someone not familiar with him, it seems plausible and he even looks the part. Lew comes across as a left wing academic version of Jimmy Swaggart.
“Climate science is badly in need of a more catholic (universal) definition of universalism in terms of participants in the scientific debate. God bless the internet.”
I hadn’t been aware that “catholic” had a meaning other than a member of the Catholic church. Thanks for using it in sentence!
About the internet… you’re welcome. I’m not always pleased with myself for inventing it but it certainly does help to level the playing field between academicians and normal people. To be fair it’s not the internet, per se, but search engines that have made the larger difference. I remember using every one of these starting with Archie in 1990,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_web_search_engines
and the decade before that I was using UseNet and CompuServe as online information resources along with sometimes near residency status at local brick & mortar Barne’s & Noble. Good times.
The universalism is probably Jewish in origin, but Christians certainly took the ball and ran with it.
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called it “the best” of Judeo-Christian thought (since, as Albert Einstein, even though a highly religious man himself, acknowledged that religion operates on many levels, from the basest to the most transendental and sublime):
Here’s how the Rev. Martin Luther King put it:
My impression is that theclimate researchers don’t understand the mathematical tools that they’re using in the first place. Fake adjustments hardly matter if the implications of the results are misinterpreted regardless.
You’d have to pique the curiosity of a researcher outside the field to get the right skepticism.
An amusing change would be to eliminate all best fit straight lines from publications and substitute a best-fit portion of a 1000-year cycle. The graph would be unchanged but the caption be healthier.
The feeling of being harassed occurs because you don’t want to give someone the data but you know you have to, based on the norms of science, the university rules of data-sharing, and the law. You know these people are out to find something wrong with your work, you know there might be something that could be wrong, but you don’t yet know what it is. You … feel the distress. It is self-inflicted. It is the consequence of having performed an analysis with your data that would come apart on closer examination.
It’s like ATTP not being able to delete comments at his own blog.
Huh?
Think you you’d feel if you
couldn’tweren’t supposed to delete comments at your blog without getting approval from a committee that included Steve McIntyre.Okay, I think I see the point. The corrollary to that is the behaviour of those who complain about me deleting comments on my blog while ignoring the deletion of comments on blogs that say things with which they agree. That would, in a sense, be related to some of what the Lewandowsky & Bishop article was highlighting.
Publishing a paper but having no control over the data is losing control over the narrative. The point of research is to paint, and establish a certain narrative. You give the data away, the whole purpose is defeated.
Shub,
I have no idea what you’re getting at. Anyone who publishes a paper that cannot be replicated/tested is not doing research in a manner that is consistent with good scientific practice.
Anyone who publishes a paper that can be replicated/
tested has no fear of releasing the data.
Thank you. Testing and attempts at replication cannot be performed without availability of raw data and meta-data.
If requests for data are labeled ‘harassment’, science loses one of its methods of establishing good practice.
“Anyone who publishes a paper that cannot be replicated/tested is not doing research in a manner that is consistent with good scientific practice.”
Indeed. Please tell your mate Cook.
Richard,
Are you really telling me that you can’t redo an equivalent analysis? Don’t you have access to Web of Science?
Tested, Wottsy, tested.
Replicating a pointless study is pointless. In this case, it is doubly pointless because Cook has replicated his own study already. As the replication results have not been triumphantly released, we can guess its success.
If you already know the answer, what more do you need? Do you actually know what replication means? Cook et al. suggest that 97% of abstracts that take a position with respect to AGW, endorse the consensus. Replicating, or not, this does not require anything from them. It simply requires you to do some actual work. You could easily have done this in the time you’ve spent on social media claiming that their study is pointless.
Ken:
simply put, youre a censorious prat.
Legitimate questions that dont fit in your narrative are deleted from your site.
Then you have the gall to come to other sites and clog their threads with your effluvia.
You dont even have the integrity to post under your own name.
To call you whale excreta would be to insult whale crap.
It’s nice of you to illustrate why many scientists wouldn’t waste their time interacting with various people in blogs (people like yourself, in case that isn’t obvious). It’s also useful that you illustrate that evidence isn’t required for you to draw conclusions.
Been following the repartee.
You launch a contorted and disingenuous pretzel of a reason to not be totally transparent. Someone calls you out on your pretzel. You demean him for harshly calling you out.
Fascinating microcosm.
Serve the bait. Reel in the takers.
Claim umbrance if they fight back.
Oh, kenny! Would you please quote that part of the 97% paper defines the consensus and how many abstracts allegedly explicitly endorse it? And also tell us who the impartial researchers were who decided on the classifications of the abstracts.
If the 97% BS papers are supposed to alarm the public about the alleged existential threat posed by ACO2, they don’t appear to be having any significant effect:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/01/poll-91-of-americans-arent-worried-about-global-warming/
Ken: you’ve demonsstrated your lack of knowledge regarding applied statistics numerous times; you’ve also demonstrated you lack of integrity by both polluting others sites and by posting anonymously.
Now, that we all know what your name is, and we know how intolerant you are of others who have the temerity to pose some reasonable questions to you, why dont you just crawl back into your anonymous nom de asshat using hole and leave the thread to adults?
ATTP…and then theres pissante cowards.
A pitiful excuse for a scientist.
BTW: wheres your degree in “climate science”?
Oh yeah, your background is in astronomy….
Hey Ken (Rice)
Heres a sample of your idea of a polite interchange…this one was with Richard Tol:
“Back it up Richard, or f*ck off”
Of course Dr tor isn’t qualified to have an opinion about stuff that your background in astronomy fails to qualifie you to opine on.
Yeah, youre prince….. among polished turds you are.
David,
Seriously, you’re the last person to lecture me on that type of behaviour.
Thank you. Testing and attempts at replication cannot be performed without availability of raw data and meta-data.
If requests for data are labeled ‘harassment’, science loses one of its methods of establishing good practice.
You, of course, need access to data, but there’s no need to necessarily have exactly the same dataset. All you need is an equivalent dataset. Of course, if you cannot generate the data in any way, you would of course need access to the data from the original study, but if you can generate your own data, then that’s an entirely reasonable way in which to advance our understanding of that topic.
Good thing this isn’t what’s being suggested then.
Yes, you do!
I’m guessing you’ve never done real software testing. Do you think a vague verbal description of what was done and the data it was done to could really suffice to validate a researcher’s methods?
“All you need is an equivalent dataset.”
What’s an equivalent dataset?
Andrew
And how do you know it’s equivalent to a dataset you don’t have access to?
Andrew
I’m talking about science. Is that what you’re talking about?
Okay, seems that you’re not really talking about science. If you want to discuss software testing, you should have said so.
No, but if someone simply provides a vague verbal description then that’s not a very good paper. Plus, I’m talking about replicating – or not – a result, which is the cornerstone of science. You seem to be talking about something else.
If someone describes how they generated the data, then – in many – cases it is entirely possible to generate equivalent or, in some cases, the same data. A database search term. A survey. An experiment. If your goal is to try and understand a topic, it’s more about establishing if a result is credible than checking whether or not someone elses’s calculation was actually correct using exactly the same dataset and code.
“in many – cases it is entirely possible to generate equivalent”
Got an example?
Andrew
If your idea of “science” is sciency sounding BS in pursuit of a political agenda.
Were software runs involved in the research? How did they test their software?
If their research involved software runs, so does the replication.
ATTP has a narrow point about equivalence. A lot of analyses require random data. In that case it’s okay to describe how it was generated rather than keep a record of every set used.
“A lot of analyses require random data.”
You guys keep throwing around terms like you know what they mean. What’s random data?
Andrew
I wonder if kenny would be OK with drug companies using lame excuses for not turning over all the data and precisely describing the methods used in their double blind clinical trials.
Perhaps. I’d say not.
What about when you need to make sure your process duplicates the original, then tweak it? You need to verify that you can exactly replicate the original run with the original data.
For instance, what about when you generate a new random sequence, and want to verify that the process you’re running is identical to the original?
…and Then There’s Physics: “You, of course, need access to data, but there’s no need to necessarily have exactly the same dataset.”
Utter, arrant nonsense Rice, you arrogant, patronising little fraud.
You’re really getting desperate in your attempts to defend the indefensible now.
No surprise there!
Say you’ve got a database with a billion items in it. You want to do some statistical analysis on it with a thousand different analytical permutations. A single run with one permutation on all one billion items takes 3 hours on a high end workstation. Do you wait 3000 hours for the results? Usually not. What you’ll likely do is process 1 million randomly selected items which reduces the processing time by 1000 and you have a result in 3 hours. Typically you won’t keep a record of a thousand million random selections you’ll just note the method of generating the random selections.
Thanks for asking.
“What you’ll likely do is process 1 million randomly selected items”
I asked what random data was and you used random again.
You haven’t answered the question.
Anyway, your hypothetical response uses data already in your database. That’s not random data.
Andrew
it could also be like the feeling one gets after computing the r-square for a regression, and purposely concealing the results when you publish…or it could be that nasty knot in your stomach when you look at the R-square and see a number like 0.02….
Thank You
fantastic Blog
Good luck
}”}”
I know, I will create and online survey, and not host it as Skeptical Science, then claim I hosted it at Sceptical Science, then this will prove John Cook/Lewandowsky is lying or not… that would be an equivalent dataset? ;-) LOL
I need Lew’s data (meta data) to see if anybody saw the survey at Skeptical Science. ie it would prove me wrong, and that Cook and Lew are not lying about it. The referring url for each participant will show their entry point..
This is important, because Cook/Lewandowsky say a content analysis (undosumented) for skeptical science sow, a 20% skeptical audience.. viewable to several hundred thousand visitors in the month of September 2010 and support the diverse audience claim in the paper.
Tom Curtis (Sks moderator/contributor says the survey never happened) and waybck machine show this to be impossible as well..
I actually found a more obvious demonstration of the falsity of the claim the survey had been posted at Skeptical Science. The Skeptical Science website numbers all of its blog posts, meaning one can look at the number assigned each post to see if any are missing. Doing so shows no post is missing during the time of the survey, meaning it is impossible for the survey to have been posted there unless John Cook intentionally hid evidence of it (which he would have had no reason to do).
> I need Lew’s data (meta data) to see if anybody saw the survey at Skeptical Science. ie it would prove me wrong, and that Cook and Lew are not lying about it.
More generally:
Less generally, and more specifically, proof that Lew posted the survey at Skepticalscience, as he claims in his paper, is needed.
Even more specifically an uptick in the indicator that Barry peddles Lew stories every time he reads the word “Lew.”
Willard – no, and I’m not positing multiple theories.
I wrote to Prof Lewandowsk in July 2012, and suggested he had made an error, SkS had not been surveyed, I’ve been asking for his meta data ever since – ie referring domain, for each response.
Just one response in that dataset being referred form Sks would prove me wrong.. (that it had been posted, at least long enough for somebody to click on a link there. But as we know Cook (as Tom Curtis OF SkS confirmed) did not post thesurvey..
so, I’m not changing the subject, not moving on, I’m just asking him to prove what he says he did, in the methodology of his own paper, or correct it.. I’m not taking his word for it, he told me he had the link, but could not find it now (August 2012)
As the clam of a diverse audience, high traffic and audience for the survey, and the prevalence of sceptics (cook’s undocumented 20% content analysis) he can’t admit his ‘mistake’ without being forced to drop that claim for the whole paper,
> I’m not positing multiple theories.
Stories, Barry. Stories. As in “peddling stories.”
There’s also the shirt ripping that comes with the peddling, but it’s oftentimes included in the stories themselves.
Please own your schtick.
“The way in which, in the end, with few exceptions, her [Germany] scholars and scientists put themselves readily at the service of the new rulers is one of the most depressing and shameful spectacles in the whole history of the rise of National Socialism.
It is well known that particularly the scientists and engineers, who had so loudly claimed to be the leaders on the march to a new and better world, submitted more readily than almost any other class to the new tyranny.”
Hayek, Serfdom
Treason of the Intellectuals by Benda (1920) went on my reading list; it is about this.
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I would like to highlight another one of Brad’s deleted Keyments:
As far as I am concerned Lewandowsky is a stain on “science” (and any other endeavor involving “reason”), and so has become the “journal”, “Nature.”
Absolutely nothing is going to change Lewandowsky, he suffers severe delusional disorders apparently as a result of religious zealotry, and I wouldn’t bother discussing anything he has to say
““Scientists who are harassed often feel alone. Universities do not tolerate harassment based on race or gender, and neither should they tolerate harassment based on contentious science. They should provide training and support to help their researchers cope.”
Ya they need a safe place.
What’s considered harassment? Got any examples?
Andrew
“What’s considered harassment? Got any examples?”
Asking questions or requesting data.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/19581480492
UNtopia, the land of Almond milk and organic honey. Last refuge of the truly noble scientist and world saver. No scientist left behind and all scientific concepts are treated equally.
ATTP
“You, of course, need access to data, but there’s no need to necessarily have exactly the same dataset. All you need is an equivalent dataset. ”
This is so wrong I dont know where to start.
You need the data AS USED.
The perfect example is Ross McKittrick’s paper on UHI.
He gives the URLS for some of his data, but the links are dead.
Thankfully he posts his data AS USED.
That allowed me to find mistakes in his paper. Best of all I didnt have to bother him with requests and he didnt have to bother with searching around the internet to see if I was a bonified researcher.
Let me put it this way.
1. You have the data otherwise you could not write the paper.
2. There is NO RATIONAL REASON FOR NOT SHARING THE DATA
or think it about it this way. the pre cautionary principle argues for releasing the data. All of our experience shows that holding back on the data leads to all sorts of catastrophic results. Ahem.. climategate.
Open science denier!!!
Steve:
Kudos for your unambiguous stance.
Of course a guy who won’t post under his own name probably wouldn’t understand the virtue of making one’s data available to others…
Oh yes, its “bona fide” not bonnfied”..
as you probably are aware, that phrase is latin… not the past tense of some imaginary word.
Just trying to help.
“a noble sprit embiggens the soul”
Hey now, a lot of us prefer to go by net handles. Usually because they can be a lot more individual then the 1001st ‘Mike’ or ‘Jones’. And it’s not like it’s hard to find the real name behind a handle that someone uses for a lot of net related items. GOOGLE is your friend, and the mortal enemy of anyone who really wants anonymity. (Srsly, a five minute search could easily find my full name, city, occupation, political affiliations, favorite blogs, reading list, recent game downloads and probably preference in porn.) ^¿^
As for ATTP, he’s using the name of his blog. It’s hardly a huge secret who’s behind the name here. It’s not like he’s making anonymous blog comments under silly made up names like Village Idiot, A Fan, or Sou.
(the above should in no way by taken as any kind of endorsement of the opinions or positions of ATTP. guys a total jerk, and an embarrassment to science)
+10
Not if your goal is replication. If someone makes a claim, then you can often test that claim without their data.
Excellent, but it doesn’t invalidate what I said.
I didn’t say otherwise.
If we want to gain understanding of a system (whatever that system might be) then we really want to be able to do research that allows us to present an understanding of that system and others will want to test that understanding. This does not require having access to precisely the data that they used and precisely the code that they used. It might if there was no way to access that data otherwise, but it is not universally true – or, rather, not having access does not necessarily prevent this from happening. (I’ve bolded the necessarily intentionally).
I’m not arguing against open data, I’m arguing for the scientific method. Open data aids the scientific method, but science can still progress without it. Open data is not some kind of panacea.
Read harder!!!
Reproduction and replication are two different things
Well, okay, maybe the comment I was responding to meant exact replication using the exact dataset and codes. However, my basic point still stands. If someone publishes a result, it is not always necessary to have their data/codes in order to try and determine if the result is credible. This isn’t an argument against open data, though. It’s simply pointing out that checking other people’s results does not necessarily require their exact data/codes. On the other hand, if you really want to check their precise calculations, then you would. Those are, however, two different things.
ATTP: Open data is not a panacea quoth the Phillip Morris cancer researcher.
aTTP:
This doesn’t have to be a theoretical discussion. We have actual cases of researchers trying to reproduce the results of a climate study by using the published data but finding it impossible. McIntyre is the most obvious example.
Generalized arguments about partially revealed data and code being “good enough” (my words) for the scientific method are, effectively, a smoke screen for bad behavior.
That isn’t what I said or was even implying. I’m simply pointing out that there are circumstances where checking a published result doesn’t necessarily require the earlier study’s data/codes. It’s neither an argument against open data, nor a suggestion that there have never been occasions when people have had trouble probably checking other people’s work. I’m also not even excusing those who don’t provide all their data.
What I am suggesting, though, is that if people really thought a study’s result was flawed and had had trouble getting the data they thought was necessary from the original authors, there might be a point at which redoing things themselves would be more productive than spending years complaining about the behaviour of the original authors. If it’s that important, surely that would ultimately be worth the effort?
Generally speaking, denying access, diverting from the point or supplying confusion is an excellent method for giving cover to a lie. It allows the lie to gain ground among the bobbleheads.
I guess you’re not familiar with the history of Steve McIntyre’s efforts to duplicate the “hockey stick”.
Dumb, or just disingenuous?
“…checking a published result doesn’t necessarily require the earlier study’s data/codes.”
“…there might be a point at which redoing things themselves would be more productive than spending years complaining about the behaviour of the original authors.”
Who is going to fund the redoing?
You do the redoing on your own dime, you get a different result and the original authors dismiss you by saying you couldn’t be expected to get the original/correct/consensus supporting result with different data and methods.
Really lame stuff, kenny. Are you proud of yourself?
Yes Don, it’s very hard to see what ken is saying here. Further, what did Lew say in Nature that can stand up to scrutiny? It all seems to be based on resentment that a very bad paper has subjected its authors to “abuse” for their obstinate refusal to acknowledge the most obvious problems
ATTP, it is certainly possible to replicate a study yourself, collecting your own tree rings, doing your own analysis. It might indeed take less years than trying to get the other researcher to give you his or her data.
On the other hand, that is a pathetic idea. The second researcher should waste years of his time, and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding, trying to replicate something that is completely imaginary, was based on a mistake in statistics.
Science isn’t perfect. Various issues can make it less perfect. You are describing one of them, but there are many others. Some are really hard to avoid. Not this one – it’s a completely avoidable mistake.
For goodness sake, when I took an beginners’ online class in analysis using R, homework had to be turned in via a turnkey R script. There is _nothing to it_.
Thirty years ago, it was hard to provide all your data and calculations. Today it is trivial. It is so trivial that the burden of proof should be on any researcher who doesn’t provide his data and code: Show all your work or the rest of us have the right to ignore you.
ATTP, you talk a lot about the vital importance of only listening to peer review publication, even though much better crowd review is available today. Same problem: months and years pass before we can settle controversial questions that way, and it’s completely unnecessary. An avoidable mistake.
Please stop speaking up for practices that are based on issues from the past that no longer exist. Please stop speaking up for practices that make science worse. If climate change is important, let’s support practices that don’t take years before we can sort out the truth.
Michael,
Indeed, that would be pathetic. I haven’t suggested otherwise.
Indeed, I have in the past pointed out that one response to a paper that is almost certainly wrong is to simply important.
No, I don’t think I’ve said this.
Please stop telling me to stop doing things when you haven’t really bothered to think about what I’ve been saying.
aTTP and Michael Aarrh:
However, compare:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/what-a-surprise-not/#comment-70534
Any one else get the impression that no one claims they are misread, or misunderstood more than Ken Rice?
Must be a conspiracy here to intentionally misrepresent what he says.
Or it’s due to Ken’s habitual practice of saying something and either claiming that’s not what he said or changing the point whenever he gets called out.
Since I am among those who question the validity of claims we are all doomed from a changing climate, I have to go with the first theory.
ATTP, given that you said it to me directly:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/10/appraising-marvel-et-al-implications-of-forcing-efficacies-for-climate-sensitivity-estimates/#comment-757368
it’s a little hard to grasp your denial. You were pretty clearly saying that the world of peer-reviewed papers has no need to take note of stuff published on blogs – even by peer-reviewed published authors, even if the first paper was a response to a peer-reviewed paper by that same author. Blogs don’t count.
That’s what you were saying. Others have provided similar references, and I’ve seen you say it a number of times.
“Indeed, I have in the past pointed out that one response to a paper that is almost certainly wrong is to simply important. [sic – I expect you meant, ‘simply ignore it.’] That doesn’t address my point. It’s nice to able to ignore a paper that is ‘almost certainly wrong’. That’s a little different than being able to ignore a paper published in a major journal, and you can’t tell if it’s right or wrong because they didn’t provide the information necessary to know one way or the other.
You said, ignore papers that are almost certainly wrong.
I said, ignore papers that don’t include documentation.
Not the same thing.
Are you willing to ignore Marvel et al? Are you willing to say, Lewis’s published work on sensitivity may be right or wrong, but it is currently the last word, because nothing documented has been published to contradict it?
Michael,
Well, what I said to you directly wasn’t what you claimed I said, so maybe you should consider that all you’re doing is grasping at straws. I’ve never said you should only listen to peer-reviewed papers, and there are certainly interesting things on blogs. However, if someone wants to be taken seriously they will typically have to get published in something more formal than a blog. Maybe this will slowly change, but I suspect it is currently still largely true (there may be exceptions).
Okay, true, they’re not the same thing. However, I was simply agreeing that you have the right to ignore work, if you so choose to do so. However, if the published work suggests something interesting, researchers may wish to address it even if the original work doesn’t include documentation.
No, but I’m not necessarily convinced that it’s right either. I just think that what they did is worth doing. I suspect that forcing efficacies may well play in role in why some estimates differ. It may not, however, be as great a role as Marvel et al. suggest.
I’ve no idea what you’re getting at. I think Nic Lewis’s published work is very interesting and, from what I’ve seen, very thorough. I found nothing to make me think he’s made some kind of mistake. However, there are plenty of papers that suggest that his best estimates may be too low, for various reasons. I don’t think that makes his published work right or wrong. It still adds to our collective understanding.
“I’ve no idea what you’re getting at. I think Nic Lewis’s published work is very interesting and, from what I’ve seen, very thorough…” ATTP, that’s backwards from what I was asking. I am asking, are you willing to completely ignore anything published in a peer-reviewed journal, if it doesn’t include the documentation necessary to check the work? [Not claiming that about Marvel et al, as far as I know they documented well. Lewandowsky and Cook’s work is a much better example.]
Your comment to me made it clear that you think that Marvel has the right to ignore Lewis’ response, since he hasn’t published it (yet) in their preferred fashion. (Still not sure why you’re denying that you are saying that.) I think the opposite: a quick response on a blog is a good thing; it will help science get to the truth faster. If Marvel et al ignore it, when I know they saw it, when I know that the author is a competent opponent to them, I will tend to assume that they have no good answer. Saying “not peer-reviewed!” just looks like a way to buy time.
And in the other direction, if something is published in the best peer-reviewed journal in the world, but without proper documentation, the rest of us should say, Please get back to us when you have organized your work. In the meantime we will ignore it, as you are making it look like you’re hiding something.
I don’t know why a dr. prof. who has spent his academic career trying to figure out how stars and planets are formed would put up with the abuse he suffers here. Stars and planets are big and contain a lot of useful elements. Figure out how to form stars and planets and you make a freaking fortune. He must not be very good at it, or he wouldn’t be wasting his time arguing with the 3 percenters, on a little ole climate blog.
Don
From what I see, most posters of the science variety use the blog network to float a pov. In olden days floating balloons was done by think tanks in more pedestrian ways. Nowadays I see many using the blogs, twitter, blah blah to gauge reactions.
Michael,
I’m not quite sure what you’re really suggesting. If someone in my field were to publish something that appeared really interesting, then I would probably want to try and check if it made sense. I can probably do that even if they haven’t provided all the documentation, as long as they’ve explained what problem they were trying to address, how they did so, and what result they claim to have got. If there was no documentation and it appeared to not make any sense, I might simply ignore it, but I wouldn’t have some kind of blanket rule that went “no documentation, ignore”.
I think they can ignore it even if he did publish. My original comment, that you highlighted, was partly related to calls for the paper to be retracted (which I think is almost always silly unless you have evidence of actual misconduct) and partly to do with the expectation of a response (which noone can expect). Nic can write on a blog, or publish in the literature, the others can choose to respond, or not.
All of what you say has some merit, but I think it somewhat misses the basics of the scientific method. We gain understanding by doing more experiments or making more observations, collecting more data, doing new analyses, running models that we aim to improve as our understanding changes and our computational resources get better and better. Along the way, we’ll have good papers, bad papers, mediocre papers, papers that follow an interesting track that turns out to be wrong, papers that seem boring but make incremental improvements, etc.
However, eventually we would hope that our collective understanding will improve and converge on an understanding that appears robust. Sometimes it might seem worth actually trying to work out whether or not something was wrong with a specific paper. Sometimes we might decide to simply ignore it. The goal should be to gain understanding.
Well, ATTP, here’s a nice example.
http://climateaudit.org/2016/02/02/picking-cherries-in-the-gulf-of-alaska/
Comment?
Of course, it would be easier to comment if _they had archived all their data_ – took most of a decade and some is still not to be found.
McIntyre is someone who does put in the kind of time that you describe, reverse engineering all these paleo studies. Doesn’t raise my opinion of the other authors that he has to do that. What is the matter with these people?
“What is the matter with these people?”
These people know that it takes 10× the effort to unravel the lie and even longer when u have to play detective in the dark. Appreciate the tactics of the opponent in order to understand them.
I’d add, ATTP, that the authors of Wilson et al don’t have to respond to McIntyre on his blog. They can ignore him. But the result is that skeptics the world over will assume that their study is garbage. On the other hand, if they respond directly and forthrightly on his blog, especially if they provide clear answers, most of us will come away with an impression that their work is righteous.
That was what happened with Cowtan and Way, for instance: Robert Way showed up at climateaudit and judithcurry and gave clear compelling answers to all points – he has continued that practice – and gained a lot of respect.
If Global Warming is important, I would think that the ones who think it’s important should be in the forefront of insisting that the scientists producing it do whatever is needed to back up their work. Coming here with claims and excuses instead, “why should they have to answer some silly blog”, just means, you’ve chosen to lose this argument in front of a large audience. Lose the argument, lose respect in the eyes of many. Unforced error.
Only reason I can see to make this error is that the work is wrong. There is literally no other reason I can see.
Michael,
Two things. I didn’t really say that they shouldn’t interact on blogs. I was suggesting that there is no obligation for them to do so. I will add, though, that given the typical tone of most of the blogs we’re probably referring to, I wouldn’t if I was them. Additionally, you can of course judge some scientific topic any way you like. If you think that the behaviour of those involved is such that you don’t trust what them and lead you to conclude that they’re probably hiding something and are, hence, wrong, that’s your choice. Scientists, however, are typically trained in marketing and reality really doesn’t care.
Sorry, should have been “Scientists aren’t trained in marketing”.
“Or it’s due to Ken’s habitual practice of saying something and either claiming that’s not what he said or changing the point whenever he gets called out.”
truer word was never spoken
there are, of course, cases where you do not need all the data to replicate a result or check whether it is correct
those cases are rare in general, and particularly rare in climate
Ken’s main point seems to be that, because there is a theoretical possibility that data need not be shared, his mates are justified in not sharing their data
Richard,
Nope. I’ve never said anything remotely like that, or that could be interpreted in this way. Maybe if you stopped saying things that are patently untrue, you’ll stop having your comments deleted on some sites? Have you ever considered that?
Thanks Ken
So you do think that Cook and Lew should share their data? All their data? With anyone?
Richard,
Do you think you should stop saying things that aren’t true on blogs?
“I will add, though, that given the typical tone of most of the blogs we’re probably referring to, I wouldn’t if I was them.”
Sorry, then. Unforced mistake. They have a right to make that mistake, as long as what they’re doing isn’t all that important. Don’t blame the rest of us if we think that they’re charlatans. Don’t blame the rest of us if we think that you as well don’t really think their work is good enough to stand up to inquiry. That is the natural conclusion.
“Scientists aren’t trained in marketing”. Dana is trained in marketing. Lewandowsky is trained in marketing. John Cook is trained in marketing. If it were really important, and if the work were actually good, they would be screaming at anyone who lets his work be dissed in public. They know what is happening as a result.
Instead, you show up here – more power to you – to excuse why they aren’t coming.
They, and you, have chosen instead to let the scientists hide out in their fiefdoms, and let the skeptic blogs convince many people that the work is bogus. That’s a choice, but there are consequences.
Michael,
Well, I come here and express views, many of which you seem to not like. That’s your choice, but not a reason why I should hold other ones.
The only person responsible for what you say and believe, is you. The only people responsible for what is said on skeptic blogs is those who say it. There are consequences, but passing the buck, like you seem to be doing, seems rather disingenuous.
If you were really interested in understanding something, you could email a scientist and ask them a question. In many cases, they would happily respond.
Steven Mosher | February 1, 2016 at 11:52 am | Reply
“a bonified researcher”
Where and/or how did you get an undergraduate degree in English?
Ah northwestern. English degree with honors. Philosophy degree with honors. Phi beta kappa. A few fellowships. Accepted one to ucla. Quit the PhD, folks didn’t get the idea I had for my dissertation. Information theory and stylistic novelty. So I went to work in operations research for advanced design at Northrup. Three functions : using war gaming to market the f20. Then crew systems design and then man in the loop simulation.
In the past it was difficult to explain to people how you could use math and stats on language. Now it’s common place. In the 80’s it was just a dream and too much jcl
Appealing to your own authority and rubbing Springers nose in your Curriculum Vitae is beneath even you, Mosher. I always admired an impression of you having the personality of Wally Plumstead with the intellectual depth of Chance from Being There. It’s like the world has quit it’s mooring.
marketing?
figures…
hah
Wow. An undergraduate degree in English, with honors, from one of best universities in the world, yet you still wrote bonified instead of bona fides. Amazing. Perfect example of how even the best schools turn out intellectual duds.
Unworthy comment. You should know better.
He doesn’t. There is a reason why English majors almost always employ proofreaders. The best proofreader I ever encountered was a guy who was considered a genius in high school. In fact, he competed head-to-head with a kid who became a billionaire. The two boys took turns winning honors in this and that. After high school one boy went off to fame and fortune, and the one I knew enlisted in the Army. He got shot in the head in Korea. He was never the same again. He retained one skill at which he had no peer: proofreading.
Ha ha. I didn’t even tell the part where springer was my bitch and bought my products.
hear hear
I would add that the best time to make the data available is at the same time as you submit the paper. The referees can look at it (although only a few will) and the location of every file is still fresh in your memory.
Actually a better way to present the data is to allow skeptics to view its collection in real time and to have a robust debate as the experimental design is being executed.
Imagine THAT kind of science.
I wrote my Cook commentaries in interactive mode, sharing all data and results as they developed.
On the one hand, that helped me to sharpen the argument. On the other hard, early drafts are typically full of mistakes and there are a number of people who can’t tell a corrected mistake from an actual mistake.
Rational reasons for refusing to give out data used in a paper are legion.
The problem is that none of them follow the Mertonian norms of science.
It appears to be a true dichotomy: make data available without prejudice or violate the guiding principles of good scientific research.
Legion?
I have yet to read one
Springer tries beating down an English major about science using the theories of a Sociologist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Merton
@Mosher
With bonifieds (ROLF) like yours I’d presume you might be able to think of how refusing to give out data could be rational just not following CUDOS,
Consider the infamous Phil Jones response:
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Perfectly rational reason. Just not copacetic with accepted practice in science.
Or consider Tony Watts et al refusal to give you his station selection data on an in-press paper because you’re known to have no integrity and will misuse it to suit your own purposes. That’s rational too.
How is it rational to undermine your own standing as a scientist? It’s not.
Nice try springer have another try.
Steven, “How is it rational to undermine your own standing as a scientist? It’s not.”
Watts’ case is a bit more interesting. A large portion of his data is legally “unique” meaning is has copyright protection. That data was purloined and used in a preemptive publication by a team that has much more lenient access to the publishing path. So by Watts not sharing data until they have completed their intended publishing using that data is justified because of less than ethical behavior of other “scientists”. Once Watts has published everything “publishable” based on his data, then he should release his data, but not until then unless he wants to since he isn’t government funded.
Saying that Watts is somehow violating some code of scientific ethics after everything that has happened is pretty much political BS.
Anthony’s case is unique.
However: He has published his paper online. He requested review.
1. Its reasonable for him to want first rights to publish something.
2. I offered to licence his data with severe restrictions, even penalties
if required.
Steven, “2. I offered to licence his data with severe restrictions, even penalties
if required.”
And he turned you down, that is his right. Nothing sinister or unethical there..
Mr. Mosher is correct. Most studies aren’t reproducible. You must assume studies are incorrect and have the information to reproduce them. The additional FOIAable information would help indicate why the non-reproducible study escaped captivity.
To correct one point: there are rational reasons not to release data:
1. Conceal incompetence..
2. Hide deliberately improper activities used to produce the study result.
3. Territorial
4. Careerist (don’t want to assist others).
5. Sensitive to criticism.
6. Lazy (don’t want to bother)
7. Uncommunicative by nature.
8. Narcissistic/Sadistic tendencies (enjoys frustrating others)
Further the students at premed programs prove on a regular basis that some people will do anything to win at the expense of others.
The rational reasons for not releasing the data are rational reasons for debarring these people from future climate grants.
Attp,
Why would anybody have to generate their own dataset in order to replicate a study using a certain dataset (which should be properly filed and available for replicating said study)?
It sure seems like you are trying at any cost to defend the unavailability of said dataset…
That isn’t what I said. Do you want to try reading it again?
hey Ken:
dont you mean something like;
“That isn’t what I wrote”?
Actually replication means that if you do what I did you should get the same results. Handing over my data is not part of it. That is an audit, not a replication.
But how can I check that I got the same results doing what you did if I cannot do what you did because the data you did it too is unavailable for me doing to it what you did?
Reproduction and replication are two different things
What is the difference between reproduction and replication. They sound like synonyms to me. Cells reproduce by replicating, for example.
Huh, I thought I knew until I looked it up.
These two definitions contradict each other.
“Replication, using author-provided code and data, and independent reproduction work hand-in-hand. We can reserve the term “replicability” for the regeneration of published results from author-provided code and data.
Reproducibility is a more general term, implying both replication and the regeneration of findings with at least some independence from the code and/or data associated with the original publication. Both refer to the analysis that occurs after publication.”
http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2011/07/01/trust-your-science/
“A study is reproducible if there is a specific set of computational functions/analyses (usually specified in terms of code) that exactly reproduce all of the numbers in a published paper from raw data.
But just because a study is reproducible does not mean that it is replicable. Replicability is stronger than reproducibility. A study is only replicable if you perform the exact same experiment (at least) twice, collect data in the same way both times, perform the same data analysis, and arrive at the same conclusions. The difference with reproducibility is that to achieve replicability, you have to perform the experiment and collect the data again.”
http://simplystatistics.org/2012/04/18/replication-psychology-and-big-science/
Jesus. Google reproduceable science.
Jon clarbout. Victoria stodden.. Sweave.
Or read climate audit I talked about this for ages.
When Mac talks about turn key code this is what we are talking about.
Many scientists can’t reproduce their own work.
In empirical tests of reproduceablity
Where I come from reproduction is the white man’s word for doing the nasty and replication is the unwanted result.
good one Don,
“Bona fide,” from Latin, “bona fides,:” “Good faith.”
I used to make the same rookie mistake writing it phonetically “bonifieds” until someone corrected me about 25 years ago. I took two years of latin in high school 40-some years ago which makes it even more embarrassing to admit.
Personally, I always felt content was more important than form.
When there’s neither content nor form, however, it’s the pits:
You do not qualify as a bureaucrat.
Instead of Disinterestedness how about:
◾Uninterestedness according to which scientists should care whether anyone gives two schitts –e.g., how much do we want to waste on the scientific enterprise of global warming when EPA documentation accompanying proposed greenhouse gas emission regulations states that it’s regulations will reduce the average global temperature by 0.006 to 0.0015C by 2100
Regarding data, has anyone mentioned that the US Government has a Public Access program in full swing that requires the data from all federally funded research to be made publicly available? Here are the marching orders, from Feb 2013:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf
Here is the key order: “…digitally formatted scientific data resulting from unclassified research supported wholly or in part by Federal funding should be stored and publicly accessible to search, retrieve, and analyze.”
The resulting agency plans are listed here:
http://www.chorusaccess.org/resources/us-agency-public-access-plans/
Note that EPA is one of the few agencies to fail to file a plan.
I track this program via a weekly (subscription) newsletter — http://insidepublicaccess.com/.
I have heard of a few isolated cases here of members of the public not getting access to data that they think they are entitled to, but what evidence is there that this a widespread or systematic with all of climate science? Maybe some universities or authors have overly rigid standards for releasing data and code. That is far cry from saying this a serious problem with climate science.
Should read “widespread or systematic problem”
Perhaps you should ask Lewandowsky & Bishop. Their first paragraph suggests the “scientific community” is concerned about a lack of transparency. Or perhaps you believe climate researchers are not part of the scientific community?
Footnote 1 is citing Nosek, et al. (2015):
What is now being done to science is a replay of what was done to the arts several decades ago.
Twenty years ago a number of books were published which talked about how the goverment and universities had debauched and vitiated the arts. One was Culture of Complaint (1993) by Robert Hughes, who was then art critic for Time magazine.
Does any of the following rhyme with what is now happening to science?
On the quality of art being produced:
On censorship in the arts:
On the task of democracy when it comes to the arts:
On how the universities have let their students down:
Another hard-hitting critique was rendered by Alice Goldfarb Marquis in Art Lessons.
She concluded that the government
Disinterestedness according to which scientists are supposed to act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for personal gain.
It’s easy to understand personal gain in modern times ( funding, media exposure, prestige at the AGU meetings or from network television coverage, etc. etc. ).
But I’m thinking about Wegener. Opponents of his theory ( which shut down the truth for half a century ) didn’t gain directly so much as they protected against loss of life’s work.
“If we are to believe in Wegener’s hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again.”
I’m reading the enthralling ” Western Canon” by Harold
Bloom.”After a lifetime spent in teaching literature” at
Yale University, Harold Bloom writes, “I have very little
confidence that literary education will survive its current
malaise.” “We are destroying all intellectual and esthetic
standards in the humanities and social sciences, in the
name of social justice.” “The Balkanization of literary
studies is irreversible. . . . I do not believe that literary
studies as such have a future.” The responsibility for
this previously unimaginable catastrophe lies with
“all six branches” of what he terms “the School of
Resentment: Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New
Historicists, Deconstructionists, Semioticians.”
Bloom on Chaucer and Shakespeare, Cervantes,
Wordsworth and Austin. )
beththeserf,
This is consistent with my observations that whatever coherent, unifying belief system existed before, it is now being torn apart. And the problem is ubiquitous, as it spans the culture, polity, society and academy.
I know it all sounds very Nietzschean, but I can’t help but believe we are living in times similar to what he did:
I’m currently reading Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind.
Robin uses Ayn Rand’s tortured cherry-picking of Nietzsche’s oeuvre to conclude that Nietzsche, along with Hobbes, “was the greatest philosopher of counterrevolution.”
What a grotesque bowdlerization of Nietzsche’s philsophy.
Glenn,
I’ve read Nietzche’s ‘On the uses and Disadvantages
of History for Life’ arguing that human life needs to
adopt both an historical and ahistorical perspective if
we are not to regard ourselves as latecomers to life
Peceptive stuff and so well written
https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=History+as+Filth+Nietzche+Untimely+Meditations
Haven’t read Corey Robin’s book, I’ve just set out my
own thoughts on conservativism andtrial and error on
my blog, Magna Carta and such. )
read “a map a of misreading”
Okay.
Research Integrity.
Stephan Lewandowsky and Dorothy Bishop have published a comment in Nature about Research Integrity, arguing that we shouldn’t let transparency damage science.
It’s a complex issue?
Defending this comment and commentator is a complex ethical issue for some.
Good to see some people trying to “defend the indefensible”.
It is walking on eggshells though.
Arguments in support sidetrack to
1. some people abusing freedom of information legislation
This ignores the fact that the legislation is there in the first place. Fix the legislation.
Most of the time all of us agree it is a good thing exactly because transparency is seen as an extremely important principle.
2. Scientists are subject to threats and abuse.
Not really relevant to the question of transparency of scientific data.
Negative points for using this one.
3 Code/Data can be intellectual property.
One can keep all the code and data one wants secret.
By a Government act.
By not engaging with people.
Once you engage and communicate people are entitled to ask for your data and code where relevant. Volkswagen, Vioxx, Thalidomide, Tree rings.
You can refuse to give it.
You can be annoyed at cranks asking like “what are the risks of this operation” or “what are the side effects of this drug”.
After all you “know” how the code works and they don’t.
4. Stephan is a good guy, he makes McIntyre look like a bad guy, lets try to support his comment.
Is this called Cognitive dissonance?
Nature Magazine made a decision.
” a number of the usual suspects were most put out when some of their comments were later deleted”.
So they voted against transparency.
It is nice to note that almost all commentators here acknowledge that transparency is vital for science and ethics to progress.
Sent this message.
The incongruity of Nature magazine removing civil comments that disagree with the article in question shows the hypocrisy of the article which in my opinion should not have been published. Nature, in deleting comments by respected people is making a itself a potential laughing stock.
Nature is dedicated to science and communicating science with transparency. The article is ridiculous anti science propaganda and in deleting sensible comments Nature is doing exactly what an anti science article would do.
Please bring this message to the attention of the editorial complaints staff.
The article itself seems to be closed to further comment.
Perhaps they are waking up to themselves.
Greenhouse science is violated science.
All the IPCC, Trenberth and NASA energy budget diagrams (and the computer models) clearly imply that back radiation can be added to solar radiation and the total (after deducting non-radiative losses) used in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to obtain the surface temperature.
We can see that this conjecture is false just by considering a location like Singapore which is close to the Equator and has a tropical rain forest climate with more than twice the average concentration of the greenhouse gas water vapor.
On a clear day around noon in April or September the solar radiation reaching the surface could be easily two-thirds of the Solar constant – let’s say at least 800W/m^2. We’ll deduct about twice the average loss by non-radiative processes, reducing the net to about 600W/m^2 for which the black body temperature is 52°C. This could easily on its own explain the maximum temperature (which is virtually always less than 34°C) because the average solar radiation during daylight hours is a little less. But, if we add the backradiation (which could easily be another 600W/m^2 because of the high humidity) we get temperatures above 100°C. Hence it’s totally wrong to do so, and physicists have explained why such back radiation is mostly just pseudo scattered.
Discussion of another BS Lewandumpsky propaganda effort is amusing, but the action is in the political arena. Since we don’t seem to be having “Week in review – politics and policy edition” in this critical election cycle, I will risk OT scorn by touching on the yuuugely important election that is just getting to some live voting.
Iowa voters are about to do that goofey caucus thing. I was there 2000, 2008, 2012. Those Iowa participants in the first in the nation voting are really proud of themselves. It’s amusing that half of them claim they haven’t made up their minds, while they are gathering at the caucus sites to vote, after having been bombarded by sales pitches from the candidates, for years on end. Anyway, it’s a small bunch with demographics unrepresentative of the national electorate. Largely irrelevent, except for being first.
The demo should favor Cruz, but it looks like The Donald has outsmarted and out talked ole Ted. I give the former the edge with probability of about 70:30. If Cruz can’t win with the crowd predisposed to favorable to him in Iowa, he is in trouble. Rubio should come in a strong 3rd. He seems to be running parallel campaigns for Pres. and V.P., at the same time. Avoiding conflict with Trump, while lambasting Cruz. Trump-Rubio ticket very possible.
I believe that the Bern will singe the hilly&billy tag team would-be dynasty: chances of Bern narrow win 55:42:3. O’Malley for third, unless there is a lower rung he can occupy.
If The Donald lives up to our very realistic and well-informed expectations, he will keep rolling over the also-rans.
Hilly-billy have some deep troubles with the FBI. Trust me on that one. Chances of Biden getting his grin and shuffle act back in the game 40:60.
I will be in South Carolina. There is a blizzard coming in Iowa. And I don’t like blizzards. New Hampshire is small potatoes.
If Sec of Defense is already promised, maybe The Donald will reactivate me and let me carry the nuclear football, for a few downs. I don’t really want a job.
You couldn’t tear yourself away from your job being the Barney Fife of Climate Etc. long enough to hold a real job. Who are you kidding?
Makes sense in a backlash continuum.
Reagan was backlash to Carter.
Clinton to Reagan/Bush
Bush backlash to Clinton
And of course Obama to Bush.
It is well within the natural variability of the backlash theory for Trump to win.
He’ll be handed a pile of dog doo. A bloated and extended economy going on 35+ years of overall growth. Trump will be uniquely challenged by a likely deflationary global economy.
Well, I told you that Iowa is goofey. I got Rubio and O’Malley right. And the Bern and hilly-billy are in essentially a dead heat-Bernie being the heat and hilly-billy the dead.
At last count, the oddball voters of Iowa only very slightly prefer the inveterate liar with jail time hanging over her head, to the elderly utopian commie, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
OMG! Cruz turned out more of the evangelicals (little springy’s snake kissing brethren) than expected and got a big percentage of the flock. Carson, Huckabee and Santorum, under-performed. Cruz has been praying with those Iowa evangelical folks for years and had 12,000 shepherds to herd them to the caucuses. The margin of victory was 1/2 little evangelical sheep dragged to the voting place, by each minder.
Just kidding. Ted did the work and had the good sense to have prepared his massive ground game. He deserved the win. You take votes where you find them. The Donald was too dependent on air power and neglected the trenches. He’s still learning. And still rolling.
I liked Rubio’s victory speech. No one told him he came in third. Good for him. He is now leading in the contest for V.P.
Cruz towers over both Trump and Rubio, 7 delegates to 6 each. If the Iowa voting were a few weeks later, nobody but Cruz and Carson would have bothered to show up. Huckabee and Santorum would have gone home by then.
The Republicans had a record turnout. If not for the commie in the race, all the enthusiasm would have been on the Republican side. It’s looking good for the skeptic side, boys and girls. The FBI has some big shoes to drop. On to New Hampshire, wherever that is.
Don Monfort said:
Skeptics pick a side?
In Political Ponerology Andrew Lobaczewski speaks of how language succumbs to symptomatic deformation in a pathocracy:
In your case, when you use the name “skeptic,” the meaning apparently is similar to that described by Massimo Pigliucci here:
Try quoting yourself occasionally, Glenn. We are wondering what you have in your own little head.
I was addressing the boys and girls on this here climate blog, who are mostly skeptical of the CAGW story. Their views and policy preferences are totally disregarded, even ridiculed and vilified, by the present administration. With me so far, Glenn? Any of the Republican candidates will be more aligned with the climate skeptics than is the self-proclaimed king with the mighty Constitution wrecking pen and phone. You can quote me on that.
Now, do you have anything relevant to say about my prescient predictions on the Iowa voting, or the implications of the outcome on the race as it continues? Have you heard anything from Lobaczewski? I didn’t see him on the telly, last night.
Don Montfort,
Let me see if I can write mathematical equations which reflect your logic.
Now let me put my logic in mathematical format:
Unbridled partisanship and unabashed electioneering ≠ skepticism
Don Monfort,
You don’t understand how the real-world political system operates, glennnnn. I was merely pointing out the reality of the politics. Any group with any particular interest, climate skeptics/whatever, who want to have a say in public policy should think about voting for those who will look out for their interests. One who lives in an italicized fantasy world, where nothing really matters but getting in plenty of navel gazing time, couldn’t care less. Are you a librarian? Another Canadian?
Your attempt at logic and your mathematical format BS is not related to what I actually said. Ask willito to tell what logical fallacy you have committed there, glennnny.
You are lost in the high philosophical weeds, shorty. Poke your pointy little head out and look around, once in a while. Stand on a rock. Read harder, comment less.
Don’t subject the scientists to whoreassment. Not that they aren’t already.
Prof. Lewandowsky complains of “Endless information requests.” An old story about two friends comes to mind:
– Joe, I got married, but it is horrible. I wake up, my wife wants money. I leave for work, my wife wants money. I come from work, my wife wants money. I am at my wit’s end.
– Nick, I feel with you. It must be horrible. What does she do with all that money?
– I don’t know. I never gave her any.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonified
Hilarious.
The retraction of Lewandowsky’s Recursive Fury paper hits several points on this post. Here is the reasoning of the Frontiers journal for the retraction. “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.” All he did was quote some people writing on blogs such as this, but because someone had posted under a name that could be identified, and that person was also identified in the context of symptoms of an illness, it was not publishable. Maybe this is a fair reason, but it shows the limits to which identifying data can be freely available too, especially when dealing with psychology or medicine. Alternatively, if you really want Lewandowsky’s data, you better be aware of what you are asking for, given the types of behavior he researches.
Jim – he even mangled quotes, other people comments were attribute to the wrong people!
plus, they were supposed to observe, NO participation of any sort, the reactions to the Moon Hoax paper. John Cook was personally interacting with Geoff chambers, via email / his blog with, where Geoff was questioning him about his role in the Moon Hoax paper – the very subject of the Fury research, whilst Cook was collating Geoff comments about Moon Hoax.
Geoff ended up with 6 pathological traits identified with him by name in the paper (some of ‘his’ quotes were made by other people!) this looks like punitive psychology, this was a major breach of the ethics protocol.
Marriott a co-author was goading people named in the paper, asking them about conspiracies, whilst writing a dozen blog posts attacking Lewandowsky’s critics, by name and had a long history of publicly abusing the very people (ny name) he was researching on his own blog, before , during and after the research period.. is this really ‘normal’ for psycholgy research.
Do you wonder why Frontiers pulled it, when Marriott’s and Cook’s actions were pointed out. The ethics approval was NO interaction of any sort.
I can see that it is very difficult writing about conspiracy thinking on the web, because on the one hand there is a lot of it, and you can just go and read it for yourself, but on the other he can’t quote it due to protection of the privacy of people making those quotes especially if they are using their own names. So Lewandowsky ends up with one set of people saying he is refusing to provide evidence while another set threatens lawsuits if he does.
JimD:
You need permission to write about people by name in a science paper.
This is true whether you are talking about a heart condition of a particular patient or their mental condition (or even their cells).
Especially if you are going to single out particular bloggers by name and then call them crazy (which is what Lewendowsky did – in so many words).
So yes – it would be pretty tough to get permission.
Would you give permission for a social psychologist to diagnose you with a mental condition and then publish it in a science paper?
I wouldn’t.
Which is maybe why Lewendowsky didn’t bother even trying.
Or he could have used anonymous data (no names) – which he did in the redo of the original retracted paper.
But what is the fun of not being able to demonize and name call people without naming names – eh?
I think it really tickled his fancy to call certain bloggers crazy – and even more so to write a scientific paper trying to show his “enemies” are crazy.
Hence the motivated reasoning which gave rise to the entire pile of garbage he called a paper.
It is the worst kind of science – nothing more than propaganda in my opinion.
It was correctly retracted.
His field will be analyzing his own brand of crazy for years as they study all the many many ways he erred in order to reach his predetermined conclusion.
It is not so clear as the doctor/patient confidentiality you assume when people write things under their own name on public websites. It seems that leaves their writings open to analysis in a public forum too. Where do you draw that line? Just because someone is a professional psychologist, are they somehow disqualified from making their assessments public when others are free to respond to bloggings with amateur assessments.
Barry, his papers may be flawed and such thinking might not apply outside the climate domain. But I don’t think there is any doubt that there is a lot conspiracy related thinking among skeptics when it comes to climate scientists and policy
JimD asks “Just because someone is a professional psychologist, are they somehow disqualified from making their assessments public when others are free to respond to bloggings with amateur assessments.”
There is nothing stopping the professional from emailing me privately and offering his opinion that I am crazy and should seek help.
It is publishing his opinion to 3rd parties (everybody in the world) without my permission that is a problem.
The ethics which govern the professional control the professionals actions – and those same ethics do not apply to the amateurs. That is what comes with getting the degree.
Joseph said “But I don’t think there is any doubt that there is a lot conspiracy related thinking among skeptics when it comes to climate scientists and policy”
Conspiracy ideation is in the eye of the beholder.
I see the same sort of thinking coming from the other side – what with the Koch brothers and Exxon conspiracies.
His research topic relates to what types of people hold anti-climate-science positions. He has a lot of evidence that certain sub-classes exist in this pool of people. As an academic he is entitled to publish his research, and it should not be suppressed just because it makes some people angry to be classified in certain ways. It adds to knowledge and adds to the debate to know about its participant categories. If other people have research that it is mostly kind and friendly people who are against climate science they can publish that too. Let the chips fall where they may, but let the research be published not suppressed.
Jim D said “but let the research be published not suppressed.”
It was – twice.
If he had done it without naming names the first time there would have been no retraction.
This isn’t about suppressing research.
It is about violating his own protocol.
He had to obtain permission to use names – and he did not.
Simple as that.
Personal information should be redacted and housed in a protected location. And yes, even those locations get hacked. It’s not a perfect world.
Jim D | February 2, 2016 at 2:13 pm |
His research topic relates to what types of people hold anti-climate-science positions.
What part of what of Lewandowsky’s “studies” resemble research?
As long as it is not about suppressing research, I am fine with this, but I think some have said that such work should never be published. When he found that people who believe in the moon-landing conspiracy are also (unsurprisingly) more likely to believe in a climate conspiracy, people read it backwards, and all heck broke loose. It was just a big misunderstanding in the first place, but it becomes hard to explain statistical correlations to the general public, so now there is a red mist around the whole thing.
knutesea, if someone uses a quote from a blog as evidence of a line of ideation, even if the name is redacted, a Google search quickly reveals the source. That is not a solution for every case.
If you strive for a perfect system you will lose the opportunity to make what is a very bad situation better.
Richard, I don’t think being suspicious when vested fossil fuel interests are spending millions of dollars on funding think tanks and politicians is engaging conspiracy related thinking.I don’t think there is any doubt that money given to politicians influences positions and policy. On the other hand, speculation about the motives of scientists and related organizations is definitely not on as firm a ground.
Except when scientists receive millions of dollars for research that MUST produce positive results to get published (typically a requirement of grants) and then the scientists refuse to reveal the data that produced those serendipitous results.
Nope, nothing to see here. Everyone move along.
Joseph said “On the other hand, speculation about the motives of scientists and related organizations is definitely not on as firm a ground.”
Thank you for proving my point – that conspiracy ideation is in the eye of the beholder.
Of course I do not agree with you. I see things from a different perspective.
No speculation is required. All I have to do is read the climategate emails to see actual conspiracies of gatekeeping, retaliation against errant editors, conspiracies to cover up (delete the emails) conspiracies to spin the science (hide the decline) to advocate for pet policies and so forth.
One can see the noble cause corruption spring full blown into being. After all – these scientists were only looking out for the children and grandchildren. The ends justifies the means.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
But what has all the “spinning” and advocacy wrought?
Most Americans could care less about climate change.
That is because most Americans no longer trust the climate scientists on the issue of climate change.
It is to easy to see they are not truth tellers (just the facts ma’am) – but advocates with a personal interest in their desired outcome.
No wonder no one trusts them.
Excellent summary. Most Americans increasingly are questioning the authority of the medical field for the same reasons.
They should have been doing it long ago as the patient/physician relationship is a team so perhaps there is a silver lining in the erosion of answers via authority.
Good things will come of the eroding credibility of various fields. It will be messy but in the end, we may just attain a smarter general populace.
Speaking of Merton – Lewandowsky et al 2015 left out point 4 when he referenced it in “Seepage.” We welcome comments on our rebuttal “Infiltration.” http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Infiltration2015.pdf
Michelle Stirling: We welcome comments on our rebuttal “Infiltration.” http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Infiltration2015.pdf
Thank you for the link to your paper.
Useful paper :) Thanks. While ‘Seepage’ is indeed wrong on more than one level, it contains a profound admission about mechanisms via which the climate Consensus itself came about:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/07/03/a-key-admission-regarding-climate-memes/
Is this a scientific paper or a dystopian short story?
scientific method exists , but what is a scientist?
Lewandowsky’s data…what is it? Just the usual lazy inferences, biased speculation and slovenly push-polling we expect from his branch of “science”?
Who would want it?
Lewanclownski chose notoriety over integrity quite a while ago
He decided the rewards are better … and he’s obviously right
Bishop Hill has connected a few dots
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2016/2/2/foi-coyne-ridiculous.html
Is this economic behavior (revealed preference over stated preference) or social/psychological behavior (empathy vs self-interest)?
Perhaps researchers could be convinced to study this phenomenon among Lewandowsky and his ilk. After all, many researchers already have experience studying rats.
This is beginning to look more and more like Animal Farm every day:
The trouble is, joining a few dots is liable to get yourself labelled a conspiracy theorist.
Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com and commented:
Judith Curry gives a brilliant and thorough critique of a recent paper…
Off topic info : Nature has a new Publication, “Nature Energy”. Here’s a link to the first editorial
http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201526
Great, another Nature journal. Another subscription fee for university libraries. Ker-ching!
I think Nature should produce a new journal, Nature Bullshit.
This could be full of articles by Mann, Lewandowsky, Oreskes, Rahmstorf, and things like this so-called analysis recently tweeted by Judith, that reads like a very amateur blog post.
Makes me wonder — will become a new soapbox for Mark Jacobson?
The Burden of Proof and the Null Hypothesis
Dr. S. Fred Singer applies the scientific method by testing Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) against the null hypothesis of natural variations. ACC models are unvalidated and ACC predictions are rapidly diverging from reality of observed global temperatures. The clarifies the real danger is from cold and famines.
Climate Change: The Burden of Proof, By S. Fred Singer, January 29, 2016, American Thinker
i>The real threat to humanity comes not from any (trivial) greenhouse warming but from cooling periods creating food shortages and famines. …
That is so alarming. Scares me to death. I’m converting half of my house into a food storage facility, and both stalls of my garage are going to be full of cheap coal.
You’re doing a pretty good job of pointing out how ridiculous the global warming alarmist panics are.
Times change and global obesity is now a bigger problem than malnutrition, coincident with rising temperatures.
Looking past your sarcasm, you must be afraid of something since you keep performing your Cassandra impression here.
The greater danger is how soon we would naturally descend into the next glaciation and how to generate sufficient global warming to prevent that.
JCH
Plan instead of panic. PS no need to fear.
It’s also interesting to read the Baloney Detection Kit from Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World in contrast to how the AGW advocates operate:
https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/A%20Good%20Atheist%20Secularist%20Skeptical%20Book%20Collection/Carl_Sagan_The_Fine_Art_of_Baloney_Detection_sec.pdf
All good reminders of how people used to think about science before it became a tool for political activists.
For your entertainment, here is Sou’s take on my post
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/02/judith-curry-attacks-open-data.html
Mann et al are gleefully retweeting
It appears that Hotwhopper is a native of Bizarro World.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World
Despite her arm-waving obfuscation, “Slandering Sue” does make a couple interesting points: Lewandowsky was a co-author of this paper strongly favoring public depositories for data (& code, etc.).
She also points to this paper, which appears to me to be suggesting that industries threatened by conclusions based on data should not be allowed access to that data to perform their own alternative analyses.
Sou’s nasty propaganda is the worst I’ve see in this debate. It is reminiscent of an earlier era of political diatribe when “gentlemen” refused to engage in politics. One thinks of Andrew Jackson and his crude supporters. Sou would be at home there.
I recalled my exchanged with Ken Rice — Ken being in favour of sharing data for testing until he realized Cook and Lew don’t share theirs — and got a sneer about my native language in return.
> until he realized
Data and code for this claim, pretty please with sugar on it.
This is why I never read Sue.
Sue believes that data, paid for by the taxpayers, can be hoarded and used as a weapon. That scientists can act as data “gatekeepers”
This is wrong.
There seems to be a misunderstanding that data acquired under a government contract is the property of the scientist. This is wrong.
The grant language could be very easily be amended to require the grantee destroy any all copies of the data in their possession at the end of the contract. The grantee does not have a special right to the data.
Requiring by statute that government grantees to post their data, methods, etc. on public servers provides a level playing field since everyone has equal access. Science advances fastest when accurate information is broadly accessible.
By statute the government can make unelected scientific “gatekeepers” extinct.
Clearly you don’t read Sou, because the case being made was the exact opposite of the one you attributed to her.
No new statute required. It’s called the Shelby Act of 1999. As you correctly pointed out, the big pink elephant in the room is that scientists think the data is theirs. As soon as you take public money, you are acting as a public servant. All raw data under the above scenario is public record. Period.
Rather simple and straightforward.
Which is why Lamar Smith long ago had all of the data, of which nobody so far has found anything substantive to be wrong.
How many times on Climate Etc. have people referenced this/a similar study:
Controlling for age, weight, occupation, education, and other factors, researchers found that the Northeast cities nearest to coal-burning plants had higher mortality rates.
“Judith Curry might support the repression of academic research and promote people who spend all their time defaming scientists.”
I would like to know if Sou’s use of the word “might” as opposed to “does” avoids slander suits?
I guess if you get good at this sort of journalism as Sou apparently has, one learns to couch one’s words with a well placed qualifier to provide a defense against legal repercussions.
Sou is chanting, four legs good, two legs better!
Suppose your a scientist. You write a paper. You send it to a publisher. The publisher is willing to publish and has no additional demands. It is published. Afterward other scientists start asking for more proof like data and code. At that point you have to decide will this help my case or hurt it? If it hurts it why would you bother, unless of course, you’re honest and want a true scientific reading.
We all know the primary example of this is that Mann started to give his data to McIntyre until he realized what he was doing with it. Lewandowsky is just trying to solidify a authoritarian view of science. The publishers are complying. One could argue that these people are dishonest. As long as publishers are not accountable these practices will continue. Simple like that.
Correct. Especially when the rules of the journal require the data needs to be archived and made available (like Nature and Science).
It is especially bad when such journals don’t actually require what they say they require.
One could argue that these people are dishonest.
No need to argue. They are dishonest. You could add unethical to the list as well. An honest person is fully transparent, if you aren’t fully transparent, well, res ipsa loquitur.
Here’s an interesting story that indicates science may benefit from being irrational.
This is about investing, not physical theory, but the truth benefits from dissenters, and not faked dissent, because the emotion of dissent leads to the energy of discovery.
And rather than seek consensus, Bridgewater seeks dissent because it uncovers new ideas and broader truths with which they exceed.
This whole thread reminds me that there is an amazing business opportunity to do this business the correct way. Imagine the credibility that would be created for such a company.
Jim D says above:
This brings up an interesting question:
Can a researcher do a survey/study of published work without getting permission from the authors? What about self-published? Why should blog posts and comments be any different?
In principle, anybody who publishes on the Web is offering anybody who surfs there the opportunity to read, and analyze, their writing.
Is that really what the retraction was about? I’d understood it involved arbitrary classification of on-line statements as “conspiracy ideation” in ways that could have constituted libel/slander.
Question is: when a classification scheme is actually objective, does the same risk of legal action still apply?
it was more than that.
Recursive Fury even mangled quotes, other people comments were attributed to the wrong people!
another major factor, was their ethics aproval, where they were to to observe comments criticising Moon Hoax, NO participation of any sort, no interactions of any sort (and approval was given for this low risk activity)
Cook and Marriott were brought in to be independent of Moon Hoax (despite Cook providing material and analysis for Moon Hoax (a lie in itself) and Marriott ran a blog – called Watching the Deniers, where he really hates sceptics ( a librarian with a history degree), could they not find any PhD students, post docs to do the donkey work?
John Cook was personally interacting with Geoff Chambers, via email / his blog with, where Geoff was questioning him about his role in the Moon Hoax paper – the very subject of the Fury research, whilst Cook was collating Geoff comments about Moon Hoax.
Geoff ended up with 6 pathological traits identified with him by name in the paper (some of ‘his’ quotes were made by other people!) this looks like punitive psychology, this was a major breach of the ethics protocol.
Marriott a co-author was goading people named in the paper, asking them about conspiracies, whilst writing a dozen blog posts attacking Lewandowsky’s critics who were criticising Moon Hoax, by name during the research period and Marriott had a long history of publicly abusing the very people (by name) he was researching on his own blog, before, during and after the research period.. Is this really ‘normal’ for psychology research?
Psychology is the study of human subjects and its standards and ethics of the field are really concerned about their even a perception of a conflict of interest between researchers and the human subjects of their study
Do you wonder why Frontiers pulled it, when Marriott’s and Cook’s actions were pointed out. The ethics approval was NO interaction of any sort.
It sounds as though open availability of the data was actually in everybody’s interest except the “researchers” who, basically, committed libel?
Here is a contemporary example of the result of the risible waffle that Rice, Jiminy Doodlebug etc carry on with:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/2/2/foi-coyne-ridiculous.html
Authors of a paper published in a well-known journal with a firm policy that data must be released when requested (a condition of publication) are sooling their lawyers onto the journal for daring to try and carry out said policy
1. Accept publication conditions
2. Reap the publicity reward
3. Use lawyers to avoid 1. above
Absolutely contemptible
“I recall giving lectures in the past when there would be one person who would disagree with something or all I said in an invited talk. The internet has allowed all these people to find one another unfortunately.” -Prof Phil Jones, Climategate email #2621
“God Bless the internet”-Prof Judith Curry.
God Bless Judith Curry.
No amount of education can overcome Liberal stupidity.
http://mynewsla.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Abe_Vigoda_Fish_19771.jpg
Outstanding analysis Ms. Curry.
Skepticism—it was drilled into my head in college.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
A truly experienced scientist is skeptical of HIS / HER own results and welcomes scrutiny and fresh perspective in order to get at the TRUTH. Allegiance should be to SCIENCE as an enterprise and not to a pet theory.
I fondly remember a respectable magazine Scientific American from the 70’s. What a pile of drek it has become. Nature and Science are simply following suit.
I recommend Popular Mechanics, their articles may not be as interesting, but at least they are honest.
In which I argue against communality and universality in some cases, after a detour through pharma economics.
Pharma profits are not pulling companies into much development. Rather the reverse. The Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook tells us a new biochemistry Ph.D. commands no job in that line. Probably. And if there is, compensation prospects are poor. Layoffs may happen during a career.
Developing and marketing new treatments is fabulously costly and risky. After the mean FDA approval time, the patent term protects briefly. Not against scofflaw countries. Or against your molecule tweaked into another drug “of the same class.” The frightful tort and regulatory systems will only get worse. Government monopsonies or cartels depress prices, including now in the United States. Would you–do you–invest in development under these circumstances?
So either (a) privately funded un-communal un-universal secret development of secret results–temporarily secret, because no secret lasts forever, or (b) less or no privately funded development. What’s the argument for (b) over (a)?
From the article, “THE MIDDLE AGES ARE
OVER. You can either be priests or scientists. Not both.”
Gonna be a surprise to this guy http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_lemaitre.html
Much organised consensus resists calls for more data, often with the aim of protecting analysis methods that bring forth the desired results.
Tension may arise if researchers fear requesters do not trust their good faith, and suspect that researchers have cherry-picked data to support unreasonable conclusions.
Lordy yes, corrigenda can only harm consensus. Keep to a bare minimum.