Over the past few weeks I have had several communications with Dr. Lewandowsky regarding his wonderful contribution to science very appropriately titled:

MOTIVATED REJECTION OF SCIENCE

NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:

An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

“MOTIVATED REJECTION OF SCIENCE”

Think about that. Who could reject the truth of “science”?…. It must be one who has such powerful beliefs on something that scientific fact, real proof, even unequivocal evidence has no effect on their opinion. How much more Orwellian a title could be written? As we have learned at Climate Audit, from the content of the paper the irony is difficult to overstate.

As you unfortunate victims readers know, I have a naturally acerbic personality which is even more poorly contained in blogland. The very title of the Lewandowsky article attacks the open discussion on which science is necessarily based. A more biased attack on reasoned skepticism is hard to fathom.

The Air Vent blog isn’t exactly a great life achievement in my point of view but it is one of the far too rare science-first blogs skeptical of <b>catastrophic</b> anthropogenic global warming. I didn’t imagine that a conservative engineer who started a free blog under a pseudonym complaining about political and monetary pollution of climate science would extend to being banned by climate blogs, being outed by the British press, surprise phone calls on Sunday morning, hacked email drops, being contacted by the anti-terror squads of the British government and then recently being libeled with accusations of being an anti-science denier and advocate of conspiratorial whatever in Psychological Science..

You have to love liberalism in all of its wonderful forms. Does anyone wonder now why I published under “Jeff Id” ?

Here is what Lewandowsky wrote under the guise of science:

Thus, AIDS denial has been linked to the belief that the U.S. Government created HIV; the tobacco industry viewed lung cancer research as an \oligopolistic cartel,” and climate deniers believe that temperature records have been illegitimately adjusted to exaggerate warming (e.g., Condon, 2009).

The article in the references is the lone Internet link of any kind in the references:https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/global-temperature-records-above-the-law/ (Accessed 6 May 2012). Certainly the post is argumentative but it is about the collusion by Jones and UEA officials to ignore legal freedom of information requests. Unlike Lewandowsky, it seems obvious that nobody really knew what data was used in CRU ground temperatures at that time. Now we know even Phil Jones was a bit confused on the matter. Fortunately, after climategate, Dr. Phil became a lot more open to releasing the data and I believe tAV was the first blog to reproduce his results after code became available.

The accusations by Dr. Lewandowsky were allowed by the editorial review of the Journal of Psychology Psychological Science yet claims that I’m a climate change denier and that I believe temperatures were illegitimately adjusted are clearly false. I wrote first to Lewandowsky regarding the error and received an automated reply about his travel so I wrote to his coauthor. After some time, I was told that Lewandowsky didn’t believe he was in error using this rather cute bit of sophistry:

I don’t believe I cited you inaccurately given the context of what I was saying and referring to—although I agree that your name was listed in a sentence with the noun “denier,” thereby creating a tacit association that was in fact not intended on my part.

So even after telling him of his error, Lewandowsky is still saying that I have accused someone of illegitimate temperature record adjustment for the explicit purpose of exaggerated warming but apparently I’m not a denier. I have not made either claim of course, however, on a similar vein there are some UHI based embarrassments by the climate change extremist community that I could happily detail for him. The funny bit is that Lewandowsky proposed to replace the Condon reference for climate change deniers with a “google search” that would include my blog amongst others:

I therefore suggest that I remove the citation “(e.g., Condon, 2009)” and replace it with “(see supplementary material for sources).” The supplementary material can then contain a set of links to 10 or so sites making claims about illegitimate adjustments, presented in an order based on Google-rankings, so that other than entering search terms, no human intervention is required in selecting citations. (Of course, that’s how I got to your post in the first place, so there is no guarantee that your link might not pop up again; I hope you can accept that because I don’t want to re-introduce human selection.)

I told him that listing my blog in any manner as supportive of his claim was clearly false at this point and it would not be acceptable. I received no more replies from Lewandowsky after that point.

So I contacted the editor of Psychological Science….

Eric Eich didn’t respond at all at first. So I threw a bit of a fit with him and got the reply that they were looking into the matter and ‘promised’ to get back to me when they had a decision. I thanked him and provided these examples as to why the claims were false:

Not a denier of climate change:

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/it-is-what-it-is-and-the-god-of-physics-will-have-it-no-other-way/

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/radiative-physics-yes-co2-does-create-warming/

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/radiative-physics-simplified-ii/

No claim of illegitimate adjustments to temp records:

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/global-land-temps-cru-style/

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/111/

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/thermal-hammer-part-deux/

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/cru-howto/

The links were sent with a few other details as well, so I waited another week without reply. I wrote again asking what decision was made and received this a couple of days ago from Eric Eich:

Mr Id: Dr. Lewandowsky has agreed to remove your citation not because it was misleading–he does not believe it was–but because I think it is best replaced by a source other than a blog post. Any other blog post cited in the manuscript is also being replaced, for the same reason. … Eric Eich

Eric refused to use my last name during any of our communications despite the journal’s reference being to “Condon” and despite me signing all of my correspondence “Condon”. I even pointed out the discrepancy in name after his first reply to no avail. His repeated inability to use my name, made it quite obvious that that the Editor of the Psychological Science is in no way emotionally detached from this issue.

Now some of the sophistry of the reply is due to the fact that they cannot admit libel even by accident but I found this resolution to be rather humorous. Lewandowsky is claiming his false claims are not “misleading” but Eric Eich believes that all references to blog post must be removed for some unexplained reason.

Below is a complete list of the references with ALL of the blog references bolded:

Abt, C. C. (1983, September). The anti-smoking industry (Philip Morris internal report).

Available from http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vob81f00 (Accessed 6

May 2012) Allison, I., Bindo, N. L., Bindschadler, R. A., Cox, P. M., Noblet, N. de, England, M. H.,

et al. (2009). The Copenhagen diagnosis, 2009: Updating the world on the latest

climate science. (University of New South Wales) Anderegg, W. R. L., Prall, J. W., Harold, J., & Schneider, S. H. (2010). Expert credibility

in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107 ,

12107{12109. Bale, J. M. (2007). Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between

bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics. Patterns of Prejudice,

41 , 45{60. Bogart, L. M., & Thorburn, S. (2005). Are HIV/AIDS conspiracy beliefs a barrier to HIV

prevention among African Americans? Journal of Acquired Immune Deciency

Syndromes, 38 , 213{218. Boyko, M. T. (2007). Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic

climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006. Area,

39 , 470{481. Brulle, R. J., Carmichael, J., & Jenkins, J. C. (2012). Shifting public opinion on climate

change: an empirical assessment of factors in

uencing concern over climate change

in the U.S., 2002{2010. Climatic Change. Condon, J. (2009, November). Global temperature records above the law. Available from

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/

global-temperature-records-above-the-law/ (Accessed 6 May 2012)

Motivated rejection of science 18 Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Grin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life

scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49 , 71{75. Diethelm, P., & McKee, M. (2009). Denialism: what is it and how should scientists

respond? European Journal of Public Health, 19 , 2-4. Ding, D., Maibach, E., Zhao, X., Roser-Renouf, C., & Leiserowitz, A. (2011). Support for

climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientic

agreement. Nature Climate Change, 1 , 462{466. Doran, P. T., & Zimmerman, M. K. (2009). Examining the scientic consensus on climate

change. Eos, 90 (3), 21{22. Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2008). The hidden impact of conspiracy theories:

Perceived and actual in

uence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana.

The Journal of Social Psychology, 148 , 210{221. Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2011). Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of

conspiracy theories is in

uenced by personal willingness to conspire. British Journal

of Social Psychology, 50 , 544{552. Dunlap, R. E., & McCright, A. M. (2008). A widening gap: Republican and Democratic

views on climate change. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable

Development, 50 (5), 26{35. Dunlap, R. E., & McCright, A. M. (2011). Organized climate change denial. In

J. S. Dryzek, R. B. Norgaard, & D. Schlosberg (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of

climate change and society (pp. 144{160). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Fan, X. (2003). Two approaches for correcting correlation attenuation caused by

measurement error: Implications for research practice. Educational and

Psychological Measurement, 63 , 915{930. Feygina, I., Jost, J. T., & Goldsmith, R. E. (2010). System justication, the denial of

global warming, and the possibility of “system-sanctioned change”. Personality and

Motivated rejection of science 19

Social Psychology Bulletin, 36 , 326{338. Freudenburg, W. R., & Muselli, V. (2010). Global warming estimates, media

expectations, and the asymmetry of scientic challenge. Global Environmental

Change, 20 , 483{491. Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15 , 731{742. Goertzel, T. (2010). Conspiracy theories in science. EMBO reports, 11 , 493{499. Gosling, S. D., Vazire, S., Srivastava, S., & John, O. P. (2004). Should we trust web-based

studies? A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about internet questionnaires.

American Psychologist , 59 , 93{104. Hamilton, L. C. (2011). Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence

for interaction eects. Climatic Change, 104 , 231{242. Hanson, F. (2009). Australia and the world: Public opinion and foreign policy (Tech.

Rep.). Sydney, NSW: Lowy Institute. Heath, Y., & Giord, R. (2006). Free-market ideology and environmental degradation:

The case of belief in global climate change. Environment and Behavior, 38 , 48{71. Inhofe, J. (2012). The greatest hoax: How the global warming conspiracy threatens your

future. Washington, DC: WND Books. Jacques, P. J. (2012). A general theory of climate denial. Global Environmental Politics,

12 , 9{17. Jacques, P. J., Dunlap, R. E., & Freeman, M. (2008). The organisation of denial:

Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism. Environmental Politics, 17 ,

349{385. Kahan, D. M. (2010). Fixing the communications failure. Nature, 463 , 296{297. Kahan, D. M., Jenkins-Smith, H., & Braman, D. (2011). Cultural cognition of scientic

consensus. Journal of Risk Research, 14 , 147{174.

Motivated rejection of science 20 Kalichman, S. C., Eaton, L., & Cherry, C. (2010). \there is no proof that HIV causes

AIDS”: AIDS denialism beliefs among people living with HIV/AIDS. Journal of

Behavioral Medicine, 33 , 432{440. Lahsen, M. (1999). The detection and attribution of conspiracies: the controversy over

Chapter 8. In G. Marcus (Ed.), Paranoia within reason: a casebook on conspiracy as

explanation (pp. 111{136). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Farrell, S., & Brown, G. D. A. (in press). Models of

cognition and constraints from neuroscience: A case study involving consolidation.

Australian Journal of Psychology. Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Vaughan, S. (2012). Climate science is not alone: The

pivotal role of perceived scientic consensus in acceptance of science. Manuscript

submitted for publication. Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2009). Misinformation and

the War on Terror: When memory turns ction into fact. In W. G. K. Stritzke,

S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, J. Clare, & F. Morgan (Eds.), Terrorism and

torture: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 179{203:). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press. Lewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2005). Memory for

fact, ction, and misinformation: The Iraq War 2003. Psychological Science, 16 ,

190{195. McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2003). Defeating Kyoto: The conservative

movement’s impact on U.S. climate change policy. Social Problems, 50 , 348{373.

McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2010). Anti-re

exivity: The American conservative movement’s success in undermining climate science and policy. Theory Culture &

Society, 27 , 100{133. Motivated rejection of science 21

McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011a). Cool dudes: The denial of climate change

among conservative white males in the United States. Global Environmental

Change, 21 , 1163{1172. McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011b). The politicization of climate change and

polarization in the American publics views of global warming, 2001{2010. The

Sociological Quarterly, 52 , 155{194. McKee, M., & Diethelm, P. (2010). Christmas 2010: Reading between the lines how the

growth of denialism undermines public health. British Medical Journal, 341 ,

1309{1311. Michaels, D., & Monforton, C. (2005). Manufacturing uncertainty: Contested science and

the protection of the public’s health and environment. American Journal of Public

Health, 95 , S39{S48. Mooney, C. (2007). An inconvenient assessment. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 63 (6),

40{47. Nattrass, N. (2010). Still crazy after all these years: The challenge of AIDS denialism for

science. AIDS and Behavior, 14 , 248{251. Nattrass, N. (2011). Defending the boundaries of science: AIDS denialism, peer review

and the Medical Hypotheses saga. Sociology of Health & Illness, 33 , 507{521. Nyhan, B. (2010). Why the \death panel” myth wouldn’t die: Misinformation in the

health care reform debate. The Forum, 8 (1). Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt. London: Bloomsbury

Publishing. Scruggs, L., & Benegal, S. (2012). Declining public concern about climate change: Can we

blame the great recession? Global Environmental Change, 22 , 505{515. Somerville, R. C. J. (2011). How much should the public know about climate science?

Climatic Change, 104 , 509{514.

Motivated rejection of science 22 Stocking, S. H., & Holstein, L. W. (2009). Manufacturing doubt: journalists’ roles and the

construction of ignorance in a scientic controversy. Public Understanding of

Science, 18 , 23{42. Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2009). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal

of Political Philosophy, 17 , 202{227. Swami, V., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2009). Unanswered questions: A

preliminary investigation of personality and individual dierence predictors of 9/11

conspiracist beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24 , 749{761. Swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., Pietschnig, A., J. Furnham, Rehim, S., & Voracek, M.

(2011). Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a monological

belief system and associations between individual psychological dierences and

real-world and ctitious conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology, 102 ,

443{463.

At this point, one thing is clear. The content of this study in the Psychological Science told us more about the Psychology of the Journal than anything purported to be studied. 😀



