In February 2013,
Frontiers in Psychology published a
study by
Stephan Lewandowsky and co-authors which analysed the
conspiracy theories offered by the climate blog readers who responded to his
2012 paper about public opinion on climate change. In March 2014, Frontiers retracted the study, indicating that while they "did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study" they believed that "the legal context is insufficiently clear".
DeSmogBlog said that the main legal concern was whether it was potentially defamatory for the paper to link climate change denialism to conspiracy theorists. On 4 April 2014, Frontiers said they retracted the 2013 Lewandowsky article because the authors did not sufficiently protect the rights of people analyzed and named in the article: "Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics." An
Ars Technica article discussed the controversy, including "apparent contradictions" between Frontiers' March 2014 retraction and their April 2014 statement. Due in part to this incident, Frontiers Media was included in
Jeffrey Beall's list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers" before Beall decided to shut down his website, though both the
Committee on Publication Ethics and the
Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association have stated that they have no concerns with Frontiers' membership of their organizations. ==References==