Heitman
Many complaints were filed at the University of Western Australia about the appalling research techniques employed in the Moon Landing Denier paper and the subsequent Recursive Idiocy paper, and yet the UWA has staunchly defended Lewandowsky, and has repeatedly refused to take any action against him.
In a recent post on Lewandowsky’s Shaping Tomorrow’s World blog, UWA general counsel, Kim Heitman, jokes about the ‘confected outrage’ of those making complaints about the Recursive Idiocy paper:
Given its popularity, and given that approximately 29,300 viewers did not complain about our work, it would be a shame to deprive the public of access to this article. Because the work was conducted in Australia, I consulted with the University of Western Australia’s chief lawyer, Kim Heitman, who replied as follows:
“I’m entirely comfortable with you publishing the paper on the UWA web site. You and the University can easily be sued for any sorts of hurt feelings or confected outrage, and I’d be quite comfortable processing such a phony legal action as an insurance matter.”
— Kimberley Heitman, B.Juris, LLB, MACS, CT, General Counsel, University of Western Australia
A little googling reveals (Webcite) where Heitman’s sympathies lie:
I support human rights and environmental activists and I am a supporting member of Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
I like to read news articles online, and subscribe to a number of news services including The New York Times [left – Ed], The Guardian [very left – Ed], The Nation [oh, very left again – Ed], Al-Jazeera [oops, and again – Ed], Matilda [and yet again! – Ed] and The Onion.
No further comment required…
Hietman’s blog homepage is here.
Australian Climate Madness 
It would be news if he didn’t…
The left are all through the public service – including education
Pity he can’t spell.
From his blog homepage:
“Kimberley Heitman is a Company Director and Lawyer practicing (sic) in Perth, Western Australia.”
[snip – let’s keep it civil, cheers – Ed]
He was chairman of Adult Shop dot com [snip – let’s not stray too far from the issue at hand, cheers – Ed].
This is an example of Alinsky’s long march through the institutions. The public purse is the teat that nurtures these shirkers.
I have just made a long comment at “Shaping Tomorrow’s World”, that tries to summarise why Prof Lewandowsky is not just wrong, but undermines democracy and academic freedom. As it will be probably be removed, I hope you do not mind my re-posting here.
Stephan Lewandowsky,
As a professor, you should be my intellectual superior. As a scientist you should be able to provide novel explanations about your subject area that go beyond what the non-specialist would find out for themselves, but at the same time accommodate the basic understanding that the non-specialist.
Your “Hoax” paper ignored the obvious conclusion of the data. The vast majority of respondents did not believe in the cranky conspiracy theories, regardless of their views on “climate science”. Any “conspiracist ideation” revolves around differences in the small proportions that do. That means that the vast majority of “skeptics” who do not understand will feel insulted. Morally you should have clearly stated that any conclusions only apply to a small minority. The first part of the paper’s title inferred the opposite.
“NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax”
Out of 1145 respondents, just 2 strongly rejected “climate science” and strongly supported that faxed moon landing theory. The question was not asked of those two people if they followed that path of reasoning. Unsurprisingly, when you smear people with ideas that they find insulting they express outrage. There is nothing “confected” about this.
There are three things that make this beyond the pale of academic freedom
First, you do not advance knowledge, but to repress the obvious empirical statement (the vast majority do not believe in cranky conspiracy theories) with the opposite.
Second is that the smears is to deny a group of people who you disagree with a voice.
Third, is that you use false allegations of intellectual inferiority to evaluate climate “science”, to prevent a voice in matters of public policy. Yet the voices that you seek to repress often have far greater understanding and knowledge of economics and policy implementation than you and your fellow-travelling academics.
Academic freedom must be protected so that ideas and knowledge that challenge society’s established beliefs can be nurtured. But that must be accompanied by a deliberate policy of pluralism, for there are none so defensive of their protecting their beliefs or ideas as those who spent their lives developing them. Professor Lewandowsky, your work in the last three years should become a textbook example of the attempts and consequences to suppress that freedom.
Yes, I went to the blog with the thought that perhaps he was able to understand that his paper was, without the appropriate qualifications, insulting to a number of serious scientists who have reasonable doubts in regards to the overall human induced global warming meme. I got to the front page with all that insulting cr*p about “denialists” and then the mind numbingly stupid thing about the number of hiroshima bombs and I very quickly realised that it was actually his full intent to insult and slander anybody who didn’t agree with him and his non-scientific view of global warming – after all he is not a scientist in any way shape or form so how would he know whether what he promulgates in such a smug self serving manner is any more fact than a Walt Disney film – come to think of it that’s probably where he got most of his information.
The man is an utter disgrace and with that in mind, I would warn all free thinking people away from his blog. Don’t give him credence and certainly don’t give him numbers. His is a particularly vile form of thought facism.
See today’s article at The Conversation by Elaine Mckewon – one of the reviewers of the Lewandowsky paper. A third year journalism phd student found “Recursive Fury was theoretically strong, methodologically sound, and its analysis and conclusions”.
Hmmmm