Stephan Lewandowsky
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lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky
@lewan.bsky.social
20K followers 1.9K following 4.7K posts

Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Bristol. Homepage: https://www.lewan.uk

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Stephan Lewandowsky is an Australian psychologist. He has worked in both the United States and Australia, and is currently based at the University of Bristol, UK, where he is the chair of cognitive psychology at the School of Psychological Science. His research, which originally pertained to computer simulations of people's decision-making processes, recently has focused on the public's understanding of science and why people often embrace beliefs that are sharply at odds with scientific evidence. .. more

Neuroscience 23%
Sociology 19%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

ninajankowicz.com
Nina Jankowicz @ninajankowicz.com · 11h
As news of investigations into X break and a certain tech mogul has temper tantrums, remember that Musk lashing out at global internet regulators is nothing new.

open.substack.com/pub/wicziped...
Dispatch from Down Under: Keeping Australians Safe Online
Inside Australia’s pioneering efforts to hold tech companies accountable—and the campaign of conspiracies that followed.
open.substack.com

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

victinibcn.bsky.social
Luca Migo ❌👑 @victinibcn.bsky.social · 21h
Terry Reintke, German politician and co-president of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, invited Europeans to be the beacon of hope for those who believe in the rules of law and democracy. Let’s work together against Trump and the tech billionaires.

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky, Christina Pagel

chrisgrey.bsky.social
Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 22h
Excellent and informative as ever from @chrischirp.bsky.social: christinapagel.substack.com/p/ice-under-...
ICE under the radar, plus attacks on Canada, environment & health
What happened that you might have missed in Trump's America last week
christinapagel.substack.com

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Ismael Peña‐López

jeremycliffe.bsky.social
Jeremy Cliffe @jeremycliffe.bsky.social · 22h
The Sánchez 🇪🇸 government has

- built Europe's boom economy
- hiked minimum wage from €736 to €1221
- cut insecure work from c.30% to c.13%
- regularised, not demonised, migrants
- stood up for human rights
- refused to humiliate itself before Trump

No wonder Musk hates it.

Reposted by Christina Pagel

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 1d
Just your average winter morning in a democracy.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d
happening this morning in Minneapolis -- ICE agents drawing guns on observers. I reiterate again that it is only a matter of time before DHS kills more innocent people in Minnesota. Congress needs to shut this shit down right now.

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky, Joe R. Feagin, Brendan Nyhan , and 25 more

atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d
happening this morning in Minneapolis -- ICE agents drawing guns on observers. I reiterate again that it is only a matter of time before DHS kills more innocent people in Minnesota. Congress needs to shut this shit down right now.

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 1d
When the imaginary of a "cancel culture" turns into an actual cancel culture by the people who screamed about being "cancelled": pen.org/report/ameri...
Expanding the Web of Control
Government censorship of free speech and academic freedom has reached unprecedented heights on U.S. campuses as lawmakers extend a web of political and ideological control over the sector.
pen.org

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Stephan Lewandowsky, Linda J. Skitka , and 4 more

froomkin.bsky.social
Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News @froomkin.bsky.social · 1d
Haiti’s TPS continues for now!!!!! And zowie: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.283214/gov.uscourts.dcd.283214.124.0_1.pdf
VII. CONCLUSION There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that. By accompanying Order, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' Renewed Motion for a Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705. Ara C. Regr

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

lincolnproject.us
The Lincoln Project @lincolnproject.us · 1d
This is what happens when the guy who promised growth and peace delivers violence and poverty.

Reposted by Rebecca Solnit, Stephan Lewandowsky, Iain Davidson , and 1 more

maddow.bsky.social
Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 1d
I know you've heard that a federal judge ordered the release of 5 year old Liam Conejo Arias and his father, and that they're now home.

But did you look at the judge's order?

It's less than 2.5 pages and well worth a minute. "Jesus wept."

Link to pdf: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 2d
I dunno but if there was an Olympics for misleading headlines, this would be a contender for the gold. Distributors "breathing a sigh of relief" because it took in £212 per cinema over the weekend? that means like 10 people on average per showing?
www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...
Melania debuts at No 29 at the UK box office
Distributors breathe a sigh of relief as the documentary defies the disastrous opening many anticipated to land a screen average of £212 on its first weekend of release
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Simon L. Lewis, Stephan Lewandowsky, Andrew Scott , and 5 more

georgemonbiot.bsky.social
George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 2d
It's rare to see how lobbyists operate. But the Epstein-Mandelson correspondence shows us what happens all the time: plutocrats and government ministers conspiring against the public interest. This is why all lobbying should be in the public domain, but despite Labour and Con promises, it's not. 🧵

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

zackpolanski.bsky.social
Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 2d
It's dangerous and irresponsible to be putting our national security in the hands of Donald Trump and not be considering alternatives to NATO.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
Trump's threat to Greenland must be a wake-up call for Britain
For too long our politicians have toadied to a dangerous president
www.newstatesman.com

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

sethabramson.bsky.social
Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 2d
The suffering this illegal Trump-Miller scheme—executed by Noem and Lewandowski—has caused is beyond measure.

More lies ahead, once ICE invades Ohio to hunt for Haitians.

And that’s what it is: illegal, warrantless, post-apocalyptic, neo-Nazi *people hunting*. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
DHS Illegally Ended Venezuelan Migrant Status, 9th Cir. Says (2)
The Trump administration’s termination of humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian immigrants violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, a federal appeals court ...
news.bloomberglaw.com

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 2d
Good point. I thought it was all too quick, too undifferentiated, and too blindly passionate. Despite being a good idea in principle of course.

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

johnmashey.bsky.social
John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 2d
Agreed. You likely know (and @lewan.bsky.social certainly does) of Steve Milloy & The Advancement if Sound Science Coalition (TASSC): tobacco, fossil, etc, but followers may not:
www.desmog.com/steve-milloy/
www.desmog.com/advancement-...
Steve Milloy
Steven J. Milloy Credentials Background Steve Milloy joined the Heartland Institute’s board of directors in 2020. He previously worked as director of external policy and strategy at Murray Energy Corp...
www.desmog.com

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

forbetterscience.bsky.social
Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 2d
At least I got the publisher to retract a paper by Kirkegaard and Dutton while all these Scandinavian editors didn't give a toss.
forbetterscience.com/2025/04/04/s...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Schneider Shorts 4.04.2025 – Give people the benefit of the doubt
Schneider Shorts 4.04.2025 – cancer center director in USA and university rector in Austria need to check their papers, Egyptian geniuses recycle a spectrum 12 times, with amazing corrections…
forbetterscience.com

Reposted by Stephan Lewandowsky

olivia.science
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 2d
more tobacco parallels h/t @lewan.bsky.social

> In the 1990s Philip Morris implemented a 10-year “sound science” public relations campaign to create controversy regarding evidence that environmental toxins cause disease.

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10....

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 2d
Nice post, It doesn't surprise me. Nothing surprises me any more.

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
Of possible interest to:
@briannosek.bsky.social
@richarddmorey.bsky.social
@jbakcoleman.bsky.social
@michaelemann.bsky.social
@naomioreskes.bsky.social
@caulfieldtim.bsky.social
@jagolinzer.bsky.social
@profsanderlinden.bsky.social

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
As Dorothy Bishop put it, this is "One of those instances where the pleasure of being proved right is counteracted by the awfulness of what right is...." People deserve to be protected as much as data deserve to be open -- in a carefully managed and risk-aware way.
10/10

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
I went through the background in a recent piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie...
9/10

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
The original status of the data, whether open or (badly) secured, is irrelevant to the point that data can -- and will -- be abused for nefarious commercial or political purposes. After all the tobacco industry was instrumentally involved in writing open data legislation doi-org.bris.idm.ocl...
8/10

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
Precisely as Dorothy Bishop and I anticipated -- with one important difference: we talked about the risk of data being open for subsequent abuse, whereas in this case the data were not open but obtained by, umm, indirect means:

7/10
Members of the research group were ineligible to obtain data from the ABCD project. But one of them gained access through an American professor who was already being investigated by the N.I.H. over his handling of another child brain study.

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
Notwithstanding promises of confidentiality, the genetic data of 20,000 children were abused for racist pseudoscience:

6/10
A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the National Institutes of Health and gained access to data from thousands of children. The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart.

Reposted by Matti Vuorre

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
Fast forward 10 years and this example is no longer hypothetical: www.nytimes.com/2026....

5/10
Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’ The National Institutes of Health failed to protect brain scans that an international group of fringe researchers used to argue for the intellectual superiority of white people.

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
Here are some of the slides from that talk which make this point with an hypothetical example:

4/10
Ms. Jones consents to participate in an experiment that observes the effect of WM training on IQ Suppose Ms. Jones was black did she realize what she consented to? would she have given consent if she knew this could happen? given what happened, would she ever consent again? note that anonymity is not the issue

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
"Researchers also need control over how data is to be used if it goes beyond what participants agreed to (for example, analysis of ethnic, race or gender differences in data collected for different purposes)." I made this point during a keynote at: www.wcrif.org/confer...
3/10
5th WCRI Amsterdam (2017) - WCRIF - The World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation
The World Conferences on Research Integrity were organized to promote exchange of information and to further discussion of ways to promote research integrity
www.wcrif.org

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
The basic thrust of our piece was that "The progress of research demands transparency", but that it also demands a balanced view at the risks arising from transparency. We proposed several measures to mitigate those risks, for example by stating that:
2/10

Reposted by Michael E. Mann, Dorothy Bishop, James M. Bullock , and 2 more

lewan.bsky.social
Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · 3d
🧪 It's been 10 years since Dorothy Bishop and I published a commentary in Nature about the risks of transparency. doi.org/10.1038/529459a

1/10
Don’t let transparency damage science Stephan Lewandowsky and Dorothy Bishop explain how the research community should protect its members from harassment, while encouraging the openness that has become essential to science.