Category: climate change

Co-author of retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper addresses apparent contradictions

Lewandowsky
Lewandowsky

We — and others — have been scratching our heads about the real reasons for the formal retraction on March 21 of a Frontiers in Psychology paper since the journal issued a statement on the subject on Friday that seemed to contradict the retraction notice and that certainly differed from accounts on some blogs. Today, we learned a few more details about what happened in the year between when the paper was provisionally removed and then formally retracted from a post by Stephan Lewandowsky, one of the co-authors of the paper.

The March 21 statement, writes Lewandowsky, Continue reading Co-author of retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper addresses apparent contradictions

Journal that retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper says it did not “cave into threats”

frontiersFrontiers in Psychology, which last month formally retracted a controversial paper linking climate skepticism to conspiracy ideation, says it did not cave in to threats from skeptics, contrary to what a lot of news reports and commentary implied or claimed.

For example, summarizing a number of those reports this morning, before Frontiers had issued its statement, co-author Stephan Lewandowsky wrote on his blog:

By and large, the mainstream media coverage seems to have picked up on what’s really at issue here, namely academic freedom and editorial intimidation by a small band of vociferous individuals.

Here’s the statement, in which Frontiers stresses the rights of the people Lewandowsky and his colleagues wrote about:

Continue reading Journal that retracted conspiracy ideation-climate skepticism paper says it did not “cave into threats”

Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted

frontiersA year after being clumsily removed from the web following complaints, a controversial paper about “the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science” is being retracted.

The paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” was authored by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriott, and published in Frontiers in Psychology: Personality Science and Individual Differences.

Continue reading Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted

Where’s the line between scientific post-publication peer review critiques and libel?

Mann4
Michael Mann, via Wikimedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mann4.jpg

One of the issues that comes up frequently when we’re moderating comments here on Retraction Watch is the distinction between “I think these images look strange” and “this researcher committed fraud.” That’s a pretty important distinction, because potentially actionable cases of libel live somewhere in between, probably closer to the latter — as Paul Brookes found out the hard way last year when Science-Fraud.org was shuttered by legal threats.

We may have some new legal precedent to follow on the matter soon, it turns out. Climate scientist Michael Mann sued The National Review in 2012 after the conservative magazine published a Competitive Enterprise Institute statement as follows: Continue reading Where’s the line between scientific post-publication peer review critiques and libel?

“Climate skeptic” journal shuttered following “malpractice” in “nepotistic” reviewer selections

prpThe publisher of a journal apparently favored by climate change skeptics has shuttered it, saying that the editors changed the aim of the title and committed malpractice by using a peer reviewer selection process based on nepotism.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading “Climate skeptic” journal shuttered following “malpractice” in “nepotistic” reviewer selections

Update: Lewandowsky et al paper on conspiracist ideation “provisionally removed” due to complaints

frontiersLast week, we covered the complicated story of a paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues that had been removed — or at least all but the abstract — from its publisher’s site. Our angle on the story was how Frontiers, which publishes Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, where the study appeared, had handled the withdrawal. It happened without any notice, and no text appeared to let the reader know why the paper had vanished.

Today, Frontiers posted a note to readers on top of the paper’s abstract: Continue reading Update: Lewandowsky et al paper on conspiracist ideation “provisionally removed” due to complaints

Why publishers should explain why papers disappear: The complicated Lewandowsky study saga

frontiersLast year, Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues posted a paper, scheduled for an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, with a, shall we say, provocative title:

NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax

An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

In an interview last year with Lewandowsky, NPR gathered some of the reactions to the paper — which was formally published two days ago — from those it profiled: Continue reading Why publishers should explain why papers disappear: The complicated Lewandowsky study saga

Australian government-funded study of deforestation, climate retracted for intellectual property conflicts

In circumstances we haven’t quite sorted out, an Australian climate researcher has retracted a paper because he didn’t have the right to use data from a now-shuttered government program.

Ravinesh Deo, of the University of Southern Queensland, published “A review and modelling results of the simulated response of deforestation on climate extremes in eastern Australia” in Atmospheric Researchin May of this year.

Last week, this retraction notice appeared: Continue reading Australian government-funded study of deforestation, climate retracted for intellectual property conflicts

Updates: Journal of Climate adds info about withdrawn hot temps paper, chemistry journal corrects retraction notice

We have a few updates on stories we’ve covered.

In June, we wrote about the withdrawal of a paper claiming that temperatures in the last 60 years were warmest in the last 1,000 years. At the time, we reported, following posts by others, that the authors had been made aware of errors in their work and were withdrawing it to correct their calculations.

For several months, the page housing the Journal of Climate study read:

The requested article is not currently available on this site.

It still does. But another page that should house the paper now reads, as commenter Skiphil notes: Continue reading Updates: Journal of Climate adds info about withdrawn hot temps paper, chemistry journal corrects retraction notice

Noteworthy: Journal posts all the corrections it wanted in a climate change paper after authors refuse most

In a case of refreshing transparency, a journal has published a detailed list of corrections it requested from authors of a paper on the costs of climate change, even though the authors declined to make most of them.

Earlier this year, the journal Ecological Economics published a paper that cast some doubt on the FUND model, which, as the article explains:

The FUND model of climate economics, developed by Richard Tol and David Anthoff, is widely used, both in research and in the development of policy proposals. It was one of three models used by the U.S. government’s Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon in 2009 (Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, 2010). The Working Group’s “central estimate” 1 of the social cost of carbon (SCC), i.e. the monetary value of the incremental damages from greenhouse gas emissions, was $21 per ton of CO2.

The paper concluded: Continue reading Noteworthy: Journal posts all the corrections it wanted in a climate change paper after authors refuse most