Here There Really Be Tygers

Institutional Review Boards, commonly known as IRBs, are the here there be really Tygers of research, no sensible bunny wants to go there if it can be avoided, and the Human Subjects IRB, aka those fuckers, are a particularly vicious and confused sub species.  This brings Eli to the current version of Clint Eastwood addresses a chair in the climate blogs, with an on leave Stephan Lewandowsky sitting for the examination in advanced parsing.

So, young bunnies ask, what do IRBs have to do with all this?  Well, Australia, where Stephen resides and works, is not the US, where Eli is in residence at least this month, but for the purpose of blogging, let us pretend that the Earth is round.  The bright lights of lukewarmerism and worse have decided that there is a conspiracy yea verily, when Stephen said that he wrote to a number of the denialaty asking if they would post a request to take his survey designed to ascertain the prevalence of conspiracy theory predilection among the various types inhabiting science blogs.  Prof. L also wrote to a number of the other type blog owner operators.  The resulting manuscript was based on response from readers of the later, which L listed and, as shown by the current hoo ha, showed that why yes, climate change denial is associated with a fair degree of belief in the various Illuminati.

Now Lucia, for the sake of argument, has, as is her wont, had a half bright idea of writing to the various proprietors of the Climate Audits, Bishop Hills, WUWT, asking if L. had written to them would they object to it being made public.

Bottom line:  In doing so, the divine Ms. L. has guaranteed that just about all US IRBs would forbid Prof. L. from making public  the names of those he wrote to.  Why the little hares ask?  Well, IRBs are very worried about social pressure being brought onto any subject involved in a study.  She just did.

But despair not, the whole rigamarole can be (Eli suspects is being) written up for a second publication demonstrating the truth of the hypothesis put forth in the first.

Willard Willard (not Willard Anthony) is going to have a lot of fun with this.

UPDATE:  Stephan L. IS having fun with this.  

It has been pointed out that the major association in the Lewandowshy paper was between the Ayn Randies and the denialists.  Eli wishes to point out that most of the Ayn Rand fans, when not running sub three marathons spend their lives wondering what conspiracy kept them holed up in the attic and not, as their destiny insures, becoming stinking rich.  The few who make it spend their lives holed up in their cellar protecting their wealth from those who conspire to steal it.

Same thing