Climate contrarian backlash - a difficult lesson for scientific journals to learn

[caraher]

From the Guardian, a nice summary of the publisher's retraction of the Lewandowsky paper linking conspiracy thinking and climate contrarianism as well as other ways contrarians distort the academic literature.

[intaglio]

1. It isn't just climate contrarians

Yesterday had someone link to "peer reviewed" papers proving homeopathy works. Of course they were garbage but I had to spend 30 minutes finding that out.

[caraher]

2. Sounds like a whole lotta #4 from the graphic

It's always easier to predict the outcome for ideas that lack initial plausibility. The trouble in the climate case is that there's nothing unreasonable, prior to examining the scientific literature, about supposing human activities are not on a large enough scale to affect climate, or to reason that changes observed might fall within the range of natural variations. You really need to look at the data to rule such things out, in a way that you don't need to when evaluating something that challenges most basic tenets of chemistry and biology.

[Nihil]

3. Note that methods 1, 3 & 4 are facilitated by deep-pocket supporters ...

... and there are a lot of very powerful people/groups in that category who simply
see such "donations" as straightforward investments to support their primary
business profits.

They've bought politicians, regulators and entire blocks of governments so a
comparatively minor outflow of funds for the above will sufficiently muddy the
water so that there is even less of a backlash against their crimes.