COGNITIVE science is about the action and process of knowing, that is about intelligence and rational and non-rational intellectual processes. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a professor of Psychology specialising in cognitive process. He thinks the cognitive processes of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) sceptics is deficient and on the same level as “truthers” and other “conspiracy theorists”. Furthermore, he is not backward in telling anyone who will listen that sceptics are “damn liars”.
Lewandowsky’s fulminations against sceptics continues a sinister trend in the AGW debate with a number of prominent AGW supporters casting aspersions about the moral legitimacy of scepticism and calling for sceptics to be jailed or prosecuted or at the very least banned as Senator Bob Brown advocates for leading sceptic Andrew Bolt. However, Lewandowsky’s diatribes go beyond legal and political action and calls into doubt the sanity of the sceptical position.
This is serious, for merely questioning the ‘science’ of AGW one now faces the opprobrium of having one’s mental ability questioned.
Lewandowsky has been very active, having several articles published at the ABC’s Unleashed. His most recent one is cunning. Apparently realising that the old stand-by of arguing from authority is not having any success in converting an increasingly cynical public, Lewandowsky has attempted to directly involve the public in the scientific process of validating the evidence for AGW. This process is described in his latest ABC article:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43020.html
Because Lewandowsky is an award winning statistician and uses statistics in this latest paper another award winning statistician, Dr David Stockwell, thought having his sanity queried was worth the risk of highlighting the egregious statistical errors of Lewandowsky’s article.
While prepared to publish Lewandowsky’s offensive opinion, the ABC refused to publish the following rebuttal:
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.