Thursday 12 June 2014

Why won't John Cook reply to my simple questions?


Strangely or not so strangely, having been 'redirected' to send my letter's questions directly to the author, John Cook, I have received a response, but no attempt to respond to my queries about his study's methodology.  John Cook simply asked if I was one of many people 'that referred to Skeptical Science as "That Propaganda Site”?'.

I fail to see what my opinion on John Cook's website has to do with him answering some very simple questions about his study's methodology.  Perhaps Dr Cook should just answer the questions or is there a reason why he cannot?  Here are the questions that John Cook chooses to ignore for whatever reason:

"I read the study by Cook et al with great interest (1).  Firstly the study used levels of endorsement of global warming as outlined in their Table 2, however I can see no mention as to how these levels were created and how reliable they were in terms of both inter-rater and intra-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa); would it be possible for the authors to clarify?  Secondly the authors ‘simplified the analysis’ by breaking down ratings into three groups, however they have not included the data breaking down the results into the original 7 categories: would it be possible to see this data?  Finally the study showed that 62.7% of all papers endorsed the consensus, but it does not mention how what proportion of these studies actually provided primary evidence to support the consensus: did the authors gather this information? "


1 comment:

Unknown said...

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