It's another conspiracy! Is Anthony Watts going to be incarcerated and forced to have psychiatric treatment?

Poor old Anthony Watts, who runs a science-bashing blog WUWT, is suffering another bout of conspiracy ideation, this time of the paranoid kind.  His brain melts when he sees certain names and words, like NASA, conspiracy, moon-landing, global warming, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Shaun Marcott, John Cook, or Michael Mann.

This time he posts part of an "essay" by some climate science denier or other called Ben Pile, who objects to the finding that conspiracy ideation is a weak predictor of science denial.  In response, Anthony Watts goes full on into paranoid conspiracy ideation, posting a reference to a Wikipedia article on "Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union".

The Wikipedia entry describes how opponents of Leonid Brezhnev were incarcerated in psychiatric medical institutions.  It describes "political abuse of psychiatry" as:

...the misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society.

Diagnosing, incarcerating and treating conspiracy-theorising Anthony Watts

Anthony is scared he's going to be diagnosed, incarcerated and treated because he rejects climate science or maybe because he's a conspiracy theorist.  I don't think so, Anthony.  It's a nice idea, however if everyone who ever entertained a crackpot idea about anything were detained, the outside world would be a pretty empty place.

Watts frequently springboards into his world of paranoid conspiracy fantasies.  Ironically it often seems to be brought on by any discussion linking conspiracy ideation with rejection of climate science.  But really, almost anything can bring on an attack.  Here are just a few of the examples that I've picked up in the recent past:

• Here he promotes a fantastical mix of conspiracy thinking by Alec Rawls
• Here Anthony assumes skulduggery behind a simple internet survey
• Here he supports a "Lysenko" theory that climate science is a hoax
• Here Anthony promotes various conspiracy theories about a paper on conspiracy theories
• Here Anthony develops a conspiracy theory to explain the 97% consensus on AGW
• Here Anthony promotes Christopher Monckton's Orwellian conspiracy theory
• Here's another WUWT conspiracy, this time in an article by justthefactswuwt that the world's weather bureaux are in cahoots in a giant global conspiracy
• There are lots more, like the WUWT article by a chap called Coleman who thinks there is a conspiracy to "adjust" the global temperature record.

Conspiracist ideation - WUWT just can't let it go!

Updated with screenshots of comments about "human subjects".

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On WUWT today, there's a guest post by Brandon Shollenberger about the paper "Recursive Fury" by Lewandowsky et al (2013) (accepted for publication).

This brings to 25 the number of WUWT 'protest' articles (tagged "Stephan Lewandowsky") since September last year, after his first paper became public.

It's a conspiracy, a hoax, a nefarious plot!

After some digging, Brandon has concluded that Foxgoose's conspiracy theory was not that he thought the respondents to the survey were not "Human Subjects".  His theory was that the 'skeptic' blog owners were not "Human Subjects".

Here are screenshots of the exchange.  (Click the screenshots to enlarge.) Eli Rabett refers to a tweet exchange and indicates the Ethics Committee (Human Subjects folk)** would have concerns about revealing identities without the permission of said identities.  Foxgoose responds:

To which Eli Rabett wryly notes:

Whatever, Brandon goes to some length to support his finding that Foxgoose's conspiracy theory was that skeptic blog owners weren't "human subjects" - that, despite all the evidence including from said blog owners themselves, Foxgoose didn't believe any 'skeptic' blogs were approached to take part in the initial survey for the paper "NASA faked the moon landing therefore (climate) science is a hoax - An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science".

Some conspiracy theorists can't let go of their theory - despite evidence to the contrary

In the comments section, Foxgoose agrees that Brandon interpreted his conspiracy theory correctly.  He also demonstrates that, despite the 'skeptic' blogs being subsequently named and the blog owners acknowledging they'd been invited, Foxgoose still hasn't let go of this particular conspiracy theory of his, referring to "improbable defence" (of first contacting the Ethics Committee) and "hypothetical sceptic blog proprietors".

The point being?

Brandon also brought up the conspiracy theory circulating at the time that IP addresses were being blocked.

I guess Brandon was hoping to bring out yet more evidence to show that while some conspiracy theorists will adapt their theories as facts emerge, some cling onto their 'theories' despite evidence to the contrary.

Looking through the comments to his article, his efforts were not in vain. He's even managed to generate at least one new 'conspiracy ideation'.  Update: in relation to that new 'conspiracy ideation':

@soubundanga deniers will be unhappy to learn I'll be posting at *both* @skepticscience & @guardianeco & I find Recursive Fury fascinating
— Dana Nuccitelli (@dana1981) March 10, 2013

(One commenter even calls for more letters of protest to UWA.  So the University will probably have to deal with still more emails from rabid conspiracy theorists.  Will UWA's responses amplify the theory documented in Lewandowsky et al, in which UWA is involved in a broad-based nefarious conspiracy with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and possibly the Australian Government?)

**Note: In Eli Rabett's first comment above, he is referring to the Ethics Committee when he refers to Human Subjects folk (ie the committee that determines ethics when it comes to research involving human subjects).  Foxgoose responds with: "The current premise is that there are no "Human Subjects".  There are apparently differing interpretations of just what he meant by that. Was it conspiracy theory 1 or conspiracy theory 2?

What makes fake skeptics tell such Whoppers?

A body of research is building to try to determine what it is that motivates some people to make stuff up, particularly about topics like climate science.

A lie is different to a mistake.  Mistakes can be corrected.  When people deliberately tell lies they generally have to dig deeper holes for themselves as aspects of the lie are revealed. (In a similar vein, later in this post I make reference to a paper that deals with attempts to construct fantasy conspiracy theories, and how the theories are altered as facts become too obvious or contradictory.)

For example, what drives someone to tell a whopper as blatantly false as this, referring to global surface temperatures and claiming they aren't rising :



Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Does he even know he is telling fibs or is he lying to himself as well as to everyone else?  It can't be called a simple mistake.  The youngster has to be aware that the science shows that global temperatures are rising.  Even though he has often boasted (on a science forum!) that he refuses to read science from scientific sources (eg Nature, CSIRO etc), he can't help but have seen one of the dozens of global temperature charts posted on HotCopper similar to this one from NASA (with my markings showing the temperatures of 100 years ago).

Incidentally the lad's promise to not post as much in the future may or may not be a lie.  It might be classed as a broken promise or might even be true.  He still seems to be posting an awful (sic) lot, but the posts are not worth counting (or reading, except for entertainment value.  They are of similar caliber to the above (and these).)

Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues have been doing some related research, particularly on how some people have a tendency to lie to themselves; and how they find comfort and support in building on each other's lies - a group approach to fabricating Whoppers.  This paper on motivated reasoning drew considerable attention from fake skeptics, many of whom manufactured complex conspiracy theories in an attempt to reject the findings.  In doing so they helped prove them.  So much so that it spawned a follow-up paper (by Lewandowsky and different colleagues), which has just been accepted for publication.

There are some revealing comments on related articles on Shaping Tomorrow's World and elsewhere.  (Unfortunately many of the silliest responses to those articles were removed.)

The recent Lewandowsky paper proposes conspiracist ideation may go some way to explaining how people kid themselves and others and includes some interesting analyses, using the examples in the blogosphere to break down the processes involved in developing conspiracies.  It reveals how those conspiracies change shape (or not) when irrefutable contradictory evidence emerges.  The authors also include some provisos, such as:

Although there appears to be ample evidence to classify the response to LOG12 at least in part as conspiracist, one must guard against overextending this conclusion: There are other streams of science denial that are detectable in the response to LOG12. For example, the repeated re-analysis of data, involving the elimination of \inconvenient" subsets of data points based on fairly fluid criteria, has a long-standing history in other contentious arenas.

Fake skeptics often lack self awareness.  Ironically, a blogger called Watts last week posted an article about the Lewandowsky follow up paper on conspiracy ideation immediately after posting an article about the attempts by ATI to uncover what they believe to be a fantastic conspiracy (which they 'believe' will be uncovered in scientists' emails).

Watts is not quite as bad a conspiracist as Jo Nova and her partner David Evans, who subscribe to anti-semitic conspiracies involving gold and fiat money among other weird ideas.  Or the peer Monckton, who is a self-confessed 'birther' (and who has such 'batshit crazy' ideas that even the hard-boiled science denier, Andrew Bolt, distances himself).  However Watts continues to publish articles by the mad monk and supports Jo Nova.

Many people who reject climate science will try to tell you about the giant world-wide conspiracy that presumably began about 200 years ago.  According to them, scientists are perpetrating a 'hoax'.  This 'hoax' must involve not only thousands of scientists throughout the world, past and present, but engineers, manufacturers and all humankind who make use of or benefit from the knowledge that CO2 absorbs radiation of particular wavelengths.

Humans as a species are quirky.

(To whom it may concern - that is, anyone who might have been too scared to post a comment: I expect to rarely have to resort to deleting comments from this blog. Nor would I expect to ever 'disappear' entire threads, especially not ones in my honour :D. The blog doesn't attract many comments.  It's mainly just a bit of fun.  So far some comments have been remarkably revealing, others comical, others informative, others correcting my errors (both real and imagined) and some - thanks people - personally supportive; and some all of the above.)

Climate science denier (knee) jerks

Stephan Lewandowsky does research in one of the more fascinating areas of science - human cognition.  In this article on independentaustralia.net, he writes about two different modes of reasoning: rapid reasoning and deliberative reasoning.

Rapid reasoning "relies on relatively shallow analysis of stimuli, which allows us to respond in situations in which time is at a premium".

Deliberative reasoning "requires slow deliberation but is guided by more complex rules".

Lewandowsky writes that: "Arguably, the former may be triggered by emotive stimuli, because emotion may serve as a “stopping rule” for reasoning — in a nutshell, the more emotion, the less deliberation."

Now that's not to say that emotion can't play a useful role in reasoning.  What Lewandowsky was writing about was the tricks some people play to confuse.  For example by triggering an emotion using some word or phrase quite unrelated to the subject at hand in proximity to the topic.  (Many deniers will say they don't accept climate science because of taxation!)

An example of 'rapid reasoning'

I'll stick my neck out here and say that when it comes to some topics, like climate science, there are people whose emotional triggers are so sensitive that they don't get to exercise their 'deliberate reasoning' capability. Here's an example of an emotive reaction - Hanrahan confuses a critique of a book with the 'assassination' of a character. 

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

(Tin - or tinnitus, is one of the mildest-mannered most polite contributors to the S&M forum.  He rarely lets the trolls rattle him.  To deniers he's a bad guy because of his science background - and to make things worse, he has an economics degree as well.)

Rapid reasoning vs no reasoning

Using 'rapid reasoning' seems to me to be different to having limited reasoning.  For example, Moondoong in a recent comment here uses the argument that human species survived the last glacial maximum therefore humans will survive global warming.  That's not an uncommon argument from science deniers.  Moondoong goes further than most and talks blithely about humans surviving constant 47C without plants and animals and almost no rain, as if all humankind could still be fed, clothed and housed!

Moondoong is probably right that the human species would survive - albeit in small refuges on the planet - even if the average global surface temperature goes above 4 degrees of warming.  Humans as a species are very adaptable.  But although our species may survive as it survived climate change in the past, most of the world's population probably wouldn't just as it didn't in the past.  (That becomes a 'definitely wouldn't' if we let the earth warm six degrees or more.) 

The argument of 'we'll adapt' is neither rapid reasoning nor deliberate reasoning.  Maybe it's self-deception - trying to rationalise the irrational.

Deliberative reasoning

The average science denier who comments on websites generally leaves their deliberative reasoning behind.  Some professional deniers use it to great effect.  Anthony Watts uses deliberative reasoning, though often too transparently, to tweak his readers' emotional response and get a knee jerk reaction to his latest 'bombshell'.  Many of his readers are so well trained their emotional response acts as a block preventing deliberative reasoning whenever Watts mentions leading climate scientists by name. 

Believe it or not, I didn't even have to search the site.  The latest WUWT article is in response to a post by Greg Laden who listed the top climate stories of 2012.  (Eli Rabett has a poll going on this.) 

The WUWT article is a guest post by Joe Bast of the Heartland Institute in which he tries to justify his equating serial killers with acceptance of climate science, among other things. The article is headed with an image of Peter Gleick's name and uses Gleick's name in the title. (Peter Gleick exposed some of the shenanigans of the Heartland Institute.)  To make sure he gets the 'right' response, Anthony adds a postscript, interpreting Greg Laden's 'about' page as illustrative of a "strange and hateful mind". (If you read Greg's page you'll see Anthony's comment is more an indictment on WUWT readership than on Greg Laden. Greg doesn't pull his punches and his dry humour is lost on climate science deniers.) 

Back to knee jerks.  Here is the second comment to Bast's article - classic WUWT.  Exactly the sort of emotional response Anthony and Joe were hoping for:

The article, the title, the image at the top and Anthony's post script are an example of deliberative reasoning aimed at evoking an emotional response.  In this instance my guess is that it would only work with true denialists.

Further reading

If you want to read more on the subject of emotion and its role in reason, this paper by Muramatsu and Hanoch to which Stephan Lewandowsky linked looks interesting. Neat title: Emotions as a mechanism for boundedly rational agents: The fast and frugal way.

PS Happy 2013 - the millennium has hit its tumultuous teens!