# Skeptical Science Founder fakes posts from real pepole. Uses posts in his own studies **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 23, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012 "2015-07-23T23:52:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/1 "2015-07-23T23:52:48Z")
The Skeptical Science website (which, incidentally, some of the more hysteric climate change believers seem to love so much) was founded by a guy named John Cook. John Cook got to be somewhat famous for his 97% paper that caused a ton of controversy, and [rightfully so](http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/ignore-climate-consensus-studies-based-on-random-people-rating-journal-article-abstracts). Now for the latest bit of intellectual dishonesty from the Skeptical Science founder. It seems that Cook started posting on the Skeptical Science Forums as user Lubos\_Motl. In the real world Lubos Motl is a physicist who strongly rejects the science behind CAGW. Motl went to Rutgers and was an assistant professor at Harvard before moving back to the Czech Republic. Motl does string theory and is quite outspoken. So Cook posted on Skeptical Science as Lubos\_Motl, which is questionable as all hell. However, that isn’t all. It appears that Cook posted as Motl and then used the fake posts from Motl in ‘research’ papers that Cook himself and apparently Stephan Lewandowsky\* published. Motl has some quotes from Cook and a couple others on the Skeptical Science forum. [Link](http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/07/identity-theft-thief-of-lubosmotl-turns.html) > [@](#): > > John Cook: … If a few more agree with the idea of this blog post (noting it won’t directly engage Watts or even mention him, it’ll be a general discussion post) and the direction I propose we go with the d-word issue, I’ll have a crack at writing it over the next day. > > EDIT: sorry, accidentally posted this under my Lubos\_Motl username, sorry for any confusion ☹ > … > Tim Curtis: would you please stop posting as Lubos Motl. There is reason to doubt his sanity, so I don’t like seeing his name. Further, it is his name, and therefore one you are not entitled to use. > … > Rob Honeycutt: John… You freak me out every time Lubos Motl’s name pops up! > … > John Cook: Sorry about the Lubos thing. Was posting some Lubos comments for the UWA experiment and forgot to log back in as John Cook. Note, the ‘UWA experiment’. Cook posted as Motl to use in an ‘experiment’. Besides the clearly unethical behavior of posing as someone he is not, faking data for a study appears to be straight up fraud. Additionally, it appears that the folks who run the site knew about the fake posts, and besides on rather weak admonishment that Cook wasn’t entitled to use Motls name, nothing apparently was done. Not surprising since Cook is the guy who founded the site. Now, who cares, you ask. Well, the 97% paper has been cited by President Obama among others. What is truly funny is that Cook also got a lot of notice for a paper claiming that those who disagree with climate alarm ism also believe that climate scientists are faking information in a conspiracy. [Recursive Fury](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3600613/). Yet at the same time Cook himself was faking information for his own study in an apparent conspiracy as the other Skeptical Science members knew of the fakes. The Recursive Fury paper was torn to shreds and retracted. However this makes it appear even more worthless. Simply amazing. Slee \*Still in the process of tracking all this down, however it appears that the study referred to is Recursive Fury. It may be another. I will update as if I find out which paper this was used for. \*\* An additional note. Cook wrote Recursive Fury about conspiracy ideation while \*\*\*\* TA DA \*\*\*\* \*\*conspiring \*\*with other folks on Skeptical Science to label those that disagree with CAGW as deniers. Gotta love that. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/2 "2015-07-24T02:37:06Z")
Man, it sure was hot today. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/3 "2015-07-24T02:51:12Z")
I don’t know who any of those people are but I read the link and… am I getting this right… he posted under a fake name in 2011 when the message board was shut down to the public and only open to him and his friends? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/4 "2015-07-24T02:53:07Z")
Wait, does this mean I can’t believe everything I read on the internet? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/5 "2015-07-24T02:58:01Z")
> [@Tangent](#): > > Man, it sure was hot today. No, it was a _good_ day. A _very_ good day. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/6 "2015-07-24T03:47:25Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Wait, does this mean I can’t believe everything I read on the internet? Of course you can! Just don’t believe anything you read in science journals. I think the take-away point here is that climate science is wrong about everything. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/7 "2015-07-24T04:20:22Z")
Wait, so both sides are faking everything? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/8 "2015-07-24T06:34:35Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > The Skeptical Science website (which, incidentally, some of the more hysteric climate change believers seem to love so much) was founded by a guy named John Cook. John Cook got to be somewhat famous for his 97% paper that caused a ton of controversy, and [rightfully so](http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/ignore-climate-consensus-studies-based-on-random-people-rating-journal-article-abstracts). Nope, more like unrightfully so. > **[Denier weirdness: 97% irony - deniers deny the science about the science](https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/08/denier-weirdness-97-irony-deniers-deny.html)** > > Global warming & climate change. Eavesdropping on climate science deniers, their weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy theories. > [@](#): > > Science rejected on political grounds > > Most HotWhopper readers know that deniers who frequent fringe conspiracy blogs like Anthony Watts’ WUWT are utter nutters. They’ll do and say anything to reject science. It doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent. > > The quotes above are from abstracts that were collated by John Cook and his colleagues in their search of the Web of Science database to see what was in the research papers about climate change and global warming. > > Anthony has found some wacky PhD candidate from somewhere in Europe the USA, who’s supposedly studying psychology, and who is an ideological denier of climate science (archived here). José Duarte is an extremist right wing ideologue. Not just a libertarian but a nutty libertarian. He quotes a bunch of papers, including the above, and cries “fraud”, “retraction” (archived here). > > José’s excitable and irrational. He was most irate that “The editor of ERL, Daniel Kammen, personally promoted the paper [Cook13] on his blog”. He hilariously claimed that “The people doing the reading were militant political activists on the issue of AGW”. Militant…political…activists. What a nutter. Here are the affiliations of the authors of Cook13: > > ``` > Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia > Skeptical Science, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia > School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia > Tetra Tech, Incorporated, McClellan, CA, USA > Department of Chemistry, Michigan Technological University, USA > Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK > Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada > Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, USA > Salt Spring Consulting Ltd, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada > > ``` > > Not an army, navy, or airforce affiliation among them 🙂 I’ll venture to guess that to the young denier activist Jose, it’s not just every climate scientist on the face of the earth who is a “militant political activist”, it’s everyone who accepts science - that is the majority of people who know anything about the subject are all “militant political activists”. (If only there were more people taking action to mitigate global warming.) > > I’ve listed below the papers José complains about, together with the category they were put in and the level of endorsement. The link goes to the paper in each case. The details are from the page on [SkepticalScience.com](http://SkepticalScience.com) that has the abstracts and other details about the papers. > > Remember, the researchers were only categorising the abstracts of the paper and did not see the title, the authors, the journal name or the full paper. [Fixed: I’m told by a very reliable source that the researchers did see the title. Sou 31 Aug 14] Therefore, before you decide whether you’d agree with the category or the endorsement level, read the abstract in isolation of everything else. I’ve added a link to the paper after the title in each case. So. so much for that blogger. As very close levels consensus has been found in other studies it is very clear that deniers are even denying that there is very little controversy among the scientists. As for Lubos Motl: [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Luboš\_Motl](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl) > [@](#): > > He is widely believed to have originated the “global warming stopped in 1995” skeptic meme . He calculated from UAH figures that warming over a 15 year timespan was below the 95% statistically significance level if one took 1995 as the base point and published this in advance of the BBC interview with Dr Jones.[4] The interview by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin was in the form of Q&A with “several [questions] gathered from climate sceptics”. Whilst the BBC report was accurate this was then misreported [5]by numerous media organizations without the “statistically significant” explanation.[6][7] The Economist described this episode as ‘Journalistic malpractice on global warming’.[8] This looks very familiar, taking into account the many times debunked “climategate” I have to doubt that the contrarians are correct on this. Lubos Motl also shoots himself in the foot by claiming that the consensus paper was debunked, sorry, it was not, in fact the critics are the ones that are pushing fraud to make their sorry points. > **[Anthony Watts is in Serious Trouble with a Whopper of a Lie of 'Epic...](https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/05/anthony-watts-is-in-serious-trouble.html)** > > Global warming & climate change. Eavesdropping on climate science deniers, their weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy theories. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2015, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/skeptical-science-founder-fakes-posts-from-real-pepole-uses-posts-in-his-own-studies/726012/9 "2015-07-25T05:40:15Z")
Thank you.