For those unfamiliar with the name of Prof. Stephan Lewandowsky, late of the University of Western Australia (UWA) and currently with Bristol University - just up the road from me, perhaps I ought to pay him a visit - he is a 'psycho-babbler' in cognitive psychology at the School of Experimental Psychology. He is also a mouth-foaming 'warmer' - amongst other things, as we shall see, but first I wish to express my thanks to my e-pal A K Haart who first tipped me off to the developing story and, yet again, to Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit who at vast trouble (and expense, I guess) has conducted a forensic investigation into Prof. Lewandowsky's behavior at the UWA. To be fair, which I am not inclined to be in this instance, it is the ethical authorities at the UWA who should now face intense interrogation.
In essence (and you can read the whole thing in detail on McIntyre's site), 'Light-foot Lew', as I shall call him, arranged with his university ethics authorities a plan to undertake some esoteric research:
[...] under which pedestrians in Perth were interviewed about their “understanding of statistical trends in time series data”. The original ethics application included an ethics checklist, which, according to Australian policy, included the following question whether the research involved any deception or concealment: “Does the research involve active concealment of information from participants and/or planned deception of participants”. To which Lewandowsky answered “NO”.
But by August 2010, 'Light-foot Lew' had lost interest and wanted to undertake another investigation to prove his suspicion/prejudice (you choose) that global warming sceptics were conspiracy theorists. Having obtained permission from the UWA ethics authorities to keep certain information back from those being questioned, he simply used the permit already provided for the former 'research'. However, in addition, he slipped in his requirement that his own name be kept of the questionaires which were to be addressed to various AGW skeptic sites because, of course, his name would have instantly been recognised and raised questions with his targets.
In due course his paper was published which more or less accused sceptics of being swivel-eyed conspiracy theorists but a follow-up paper published in a 'scientific' magazine, Frontiers in Psychology, was subsequently withdrawn when doubts were cast as to its probity and complaints were made to the UWA ethics authorities. In an amazingly short time the UWA issued an absolutely clean bill of health not only on the 'research' paper but also on 'Light-foot Lew', himself. All is well, they said, nothing to see here, move along!
But by now McIntyre had his fangs firmly locked into the seat of Lew's pants. He has now discovered that a good part of the clearance of all complaints and suspicions issued by the UWA were - wait for it! - written by 'Light-foot Lew', himself! I suppose the only good thing to come out of this as far as 'Lew' is concerned is that this particular skeptic is now a confirmed conspiracy theorist, and having read the details of his machinations you can hardly blame me!
