John Cook (of the inaccurately named Skeptical Science blog) sent me a link to a new survey. The survey has been discussed around the internet for the last couple of days because John was involved in the last Lewandowsky paper which combined poor methodology with libelous remarks directed at the “subjects” being “studied” to justify the authors pre-determined conclusion personal attacks. Lucia’s blog has an interesting discussion on the survey. She decided that she would not to link the new survey at all. It is an understandable decision as we can be certain that this new survey will result in another propaganda piece attacking those of us who live in reality.
I am so certain of the pending result, that before providing the link at this blog, you will be mirandized — Skeptical Science style:
- You have the right to remain silent.
- Anything you say WILL be misrepresented to your detriment in the court of public opinion.
- You have the right to consult an attorney before the survey and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future.
- If you cannot afford an attorney, you are on your own.
- If you decide to answer any questions now, without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney.
- Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer John’s questions without an attorney present?
Survey link here: http://survey.gci.uq.edu.au/survey.php?c=A5YD100J37CL
I will not take the survey myself, because of my certainty of the authors biased motivations but it still might be fun to guess their conclusions so I think we will have a contest. Guess the title of John’s new paper! After the paper is released, I will categorize the results of our contest and we will vote on the best guesses for both creativity and closest match. To guess right, we need to find some clues!!
First, a clue as to where the survey conclusions are going on the first page:
Please read each title and abstract then estimate the level of endorsement that is expressed in that paper for anthropogenic global warming (e.g., that human activity is causing global warming).
It is hard for me to understand how you “rate” a scientific paper based on its acknowledgment of a completely uncontested fact like CO2 based temperature change. It seems a bit like rating a paper on its acknowledgment that the sky is blue. Fortunately there is more detail to work with on the survey page:
Survey of Peer-Reviewed Scientific Research
Below are listed the titles and abstracts (summary) of 10 randomly selected scientific papers; mouseover each title to read the abstract (summary). Please read each title and abstract then select from the drop down to categorize each abstract. Your rating should be based on the abstract text. Your submission will be anonymous. The drop down indicates indicates the level of endorsement within the abstract for the proposition that human activity (i.e., anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is causing global warming (e.g., the increase in temperature).
Note: AGW is Anthropogenic Global Warming or human-caused global warming.
Options are:
- Explicit Endorsement with Quantification: abstract explicitly states that humans are causing more than half of global warming.
- Explicit Endorsement without Quantification: abstract explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a given fact.
- Implicit Endorsement: abstract implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gases cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause.
- Neutral: abstract doesn’t address or mention issue of what’s causing global warming.
- Implicit Rejection: abstract implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly. E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming.
- Explicit Rejection without Quantification: abstract explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming.
- Explicit Rejection with Quantification: abstract explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming.
NOTE: These papers have been rated by the scientists who authored the papers. After submission, you may view a comparison of your ratings with the ratings by the authors of each paper. –MY RED
In order to compose a title, we have to guess the results he will find. A reader at Lucias noted that the abstracts the reader sees are “randomized” based on the proxy address you are using and that repeated abstracts at different proxy addresses are common. That suggests a low pre-selected paper count which is confirmed by the additional fact that the survey answers can be compared to the authors own answers. Of course not every author would participate in the study, they can only have a small set of abstracts. It is also possible that in order to gain cooperation, some authors were aware of the intent of the survey. This may have been justified in John Cook’s mind, since they are oft represented by his Skeptical Science blog as unimpeachable.
So here is what I am guessing will happen. Some skeptics will give low ratings for the papers because their obviously biased support of catastrophic warming and the pervasive poor level of science in climate change. Those who are advocates for climate catastrophe science (including the authors) will be biased toward giving 1′s (top ratings) for their endorsement but will slide on papers which are less extremist in the abstract. We already know that the Climate Science field is comprised nearly universally of politically left advocates, so the authors your answers are compared to will be biased in the same direction as the advocate blogging crowd.
The opening page of the survey notes a “proven consensus” paper coming out, so adding to that conclusion is unlikely to be the point.
This survey mirrors a paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, to be published soon in Environmental Research Letters, that analysed over 12,000 climate papers published between 1991 to 2011.
Additionally, those who link from skeptic blogs or from advocate blogs will probably be sorted by their links (I am guessing). So with that little bit of guesswork, here are some of my predicted titles:
Skeptics Deny Science Literature
Motivated Denial of Scientific Literature
Skeptics are so stupid! — I am formally registering the exclamation point as an integral part of the title.
Skeptics Reject Scientific Consensus
Scientific Rejection, A Manipulated Manifestation of Morons.
It is possible that those taking the survey will be unsorted, but I doubt it. That does lead to a whole slew of other potentially winning titles!


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