Two years ago, a group of researchers published a paper with a provocative title: "NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax." In the paper, they noted that a subset of the community that has a hard time accepting the evidence for human-driven climate change tends to more generally believe conspiracy theories.

Ironically, the community responded with... conspiracy theories. Which some of the original authors then analyzed in a paper that was accepted for publication in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. But shortly after its appearance, the article was pulled from the journal website and has existed in an unusual academic limbo since. Today, Frontiers has confirmed that the paper will be pulled permanently—not due to any flaws in it or misconduct by its authors, but because its "legal context is unclear." All indications are that lack of clarity involves some of its subjects threatening defamation suits.

The initial paper produced results that weren't entirely surprising. By surveying visitors to climate blogs, its authors found that free-market fans tended to reject scientific findings that had potential regulatory implications, something that's been found by a variety of other researchers. But it also found that there is a population of people who doubt scientific findings simply because they tended to doubt nearly everything, ascribing a variety of things—the Moon landings, the World Trade Center attacks, etc.—to conspiracies. This might seem surprising, but the results held up when the same authors extended the study to the US population in general.

What's probably less surprising is that some of the subjects of the initial paper responded with a new set of conspiracy theories, focused on the paper itself. A number of parties (including some that run popular climate contrarian blogs) suggested that the researchers never actually contacted their study's sources, or that nefarious parties had faked answers in order to make the climate contrarians look bad. (You can see similar things in the comments on our coverage of the paper.)

So, some of the same authors got together and analyzed these responses, putting together a paper entitled "Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation." In the paper (Table 3 specifically), they ascribe specific conspiratorial beliefs to a number of popular contrarian bloggers, including Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. The paper was accepted for publication by the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology and appeared briefly on its website.

But then, as noted, it disappeared. In its place was a notice that stated, "This article, first published by Frontiers on 18 March 2013, has been the subject of complaints. Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated."

Today, however, news broke that the paper wouldn't be coming back. The publisher, Frontiers, referred our questions to its lawyer, Michael Kenyon. Kenyon confirmed that the paper would be permanently removed and replaced with the following notice:

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.

Kenyon told Ars separately that Frontiers' investigation had found that there were no issues with the paper itself or the research ethics of its authors. "Frontiers is concerned about solid science," he said, "and it's obviously a regret when you have to retract an article that is scientifically and ethically sound."

So, what is the unclear legal context? That seems to have been provided by the climate activist site DeSmogBlog, which obtained a large trove of documents through Freedom of Information requests; it has now placed these online. There are many, many allegations of misconduct sent to both Frontiers and the University of Western Australia, where the lead author, Stephan Lewandowsky, was based at the time.

Although the identities of those making the complaints have been redacted, the authors can sometimes be inferred by the details of the complaints.

A number of the complaints are couched in legal terms, such as "defamatory," "malice aforethought," "intent to deceive," and "reckless disregard for the truth." At least one mentions consultations with a lawyer, all of which suggests that the legal context involves fear of a lawsuit filed by one or more members of the contrarian community.

Although Frontiers has decided it wants no part of this legal environment, Lewandowsky has consulted with the lawyers at the University of Western Australia, where he was based during the research. They are apparently willing to deal with any legal complaints; as a result, "Recursive Fury" remains available from a UWA server.

When asked for comment, Lewandowsky forwarded Ars a letter he received from the staff of the Australian Psychological Society. In it, they note they are "concerned about the possible reasons behind Frontiers’ decision to retract the article, particularly given that their investigation has not identified any significant issues with the academic and ethical aspects of this study. It is concerning that some scientific journals feel sufficiently threatened by potential liability fears to not publish articles with ‘inconvenient information’ about climate change."