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14 Responses to “Peer Reviewed”

1. Dave Budge says:

   November 27, 2009 at 9:57 am

   Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
2. Craig Moore says:

   November 27, 2009 at 11:25 am

   In terms of guarding the guards and holding peer reviewer accountable, there is this about the clique world of peer review: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/27/told-ya-so-more-upside-down-mann-in-his-latest-paper/#more-13277

   Told ya so – more upside down data in Mann’s latest paper

   I mentioned yesterday in the press release thread:

   So here’s the question, the press release below mentions sediments. Place your bets now on whether the Tiljander sediment series remains inverted or not.

   Peer review doesn’t seem to catch the problem of using inverted data. That’s a good question for science and the peer reviewers. I suggest those who have contact put the question to them, because the results will look different when the data is used properly. In case anyone doubts this. The inversion was confirmed by the principal researcher that gathered the data, Tiljander, who confirmed this in an email to Steve McIntyre. – Anthony
3. Big Swede says:

   November 27, 2009 at 11:27 am

   Eddiebear of doubleplusundead has the best rant ever in response to these emails.

   Don’t open if your offended by the “F” word, in appears over twenty times.

   Pretty much sums up my feelings with the exception of the fallacy of creation, but that’s an argument reserved for a later time.

   http://doubleplusundead.mee.nu/another_lefty_sees_his_world_collapse_around_him#more
4. Craig Moore says:

   November 27, 2009 at 11:48 am

   Swede, I don’t think Eddibear should fool around by sugaring coating his feelings.

   What we have learned from the Climate Gate e-mails is the how PR has been manipulated by those with an agenda who fit the facts to the narrative and discard inconvenient truths. Roger Pielke, Sr. speaks to this: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/e-mail-documentation-of-the-successful-attempt-by-thomas-karl-director-of-the-u-s-national-climate-data-center-to-suppress-biases-and-uncertainties-in-the-assessment-surface-temperature-trends/

   Notice, he resigned rather than compromise his integrity.

   The props are knocked out from under the alarmist PR process by failing to follow the scientific process. Here’s how it is suppose to work: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole%E2%80%A6/

   Falling back on debunked Borg Collective mantra points just doesn’t cut it now. I hope congressional subpoenas start flying to preserve the “public records. The cabal was on the clock and receiving the public dime for their efforts. Their body of work is public, not private.
5. Big Swede says:

   November 27, 2009 at 1:26 pm

   Inhofe seems to be the white knight leading the charge in all of this.

   Strassel WSJ.

   Cap and Trade is Dead

   So declares Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, taking a few minutes away from a Thanksgiving retreat with his family. “Ninety-five percent of the nails were in the coffin prior to this week. Now they are all in.”

   If any politician might be qualified to offer last rites, it would be Mr. Inhofe. The top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee has spent the past decade in the thick of Washington’s climate fight. He’s seen the back of three cap-and-trade bills, rode herd on an overweening Environmental Protection Agency, and steadfastly insisted that global researchers were “cooking” the science behind man-made global warming.

   I hope he’s right.
6. Mihalis says:

   November 27, 2009 at 4:48 pm

   Gregg Smith:

   Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t one of the problems revealed by the climate emails an attempt to game the peer review process?

   You’re wrong. Actual scientists have gone over these results, and found “scant evidence of data abuse.” The science is sound. The fact that scientists that didn’t do the original research have corroborated their findings makes it “peer reviewed.” No gaming involved. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop people who are unqualified to analyse the data from making uninformed guesses based on incomplete email conversations.
7. Craig Moore says:

   November 27, 2009 at 4:57 pm

   When “real” scientists like Pielke, Sr. committed to the scientific method step back and look at how the data has been both ring fenced to exclude inconvenient truths and supplemented with speculation to support a narrative, they take a dim view of such “actual” scientists.
8. Craig Moore says:

   November 27, 2009 at 5:16 pm

   Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote a recent editorial about peer review and the Climategate scandal: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/redefining-peer-review.html

   Now back to the CRU emails. The emails show a consistent pattern of behavior among the activist scientists to redefine peer review in accordance with their own views of climate science. In doing so, they sought to turn the entire notion of peer review on its head.

   The emails show a group of scientists frustrated with the peer review process, seeking to change how it is practiced. How so? The emails indicate concerted efforts to reshape the peer review process by managing and coordinating reviews of individual papers, by putting pressure on journal editors and editorial boards, by seeking to stack editorial boards with like-minded colleagues, by arranging boycotts of journals and other actions involving highly questionable ethics. But we might wonder why these scientists would take such steps to change peer review if, as Schmidt and Mann explained at Real Climate — “peer review usually does work in the end.” Why depart from a process that works? The answer is obvious: the short-term politics of climate change.

   The activist scientists decided that the peer review process would work better in service of their political agenda if it used “truth” to determine whose views would be allowed to be published in the literature and reflected in assessments. In this case “truth” simply means the views deemed acceptable among the activist scientists and their close clique of colleagues. In an interview with NPR Real Climate’s Gavin Schmidt defended this very backwards view of peer review:

   Journals are supposed to be impartial filters that let good ideas rise to the top and bad ideas sink to the bottom. But the stolen emails show that a group of scientists has decided that’s not working well enough. So they have resorted to strong tactics — including possible boycotts — to keep any paper they think is dubious from reaching the pages of a journal.

   “In any other field (a bad paper) would just be ignored,” says Gavin Schmidt at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “The problem is in the climate field has become extremely politicized, and every time some nonsense paper gets into a proper journal, it gets blown out of all proportion.”

   Most of the papers Schmidt and his colleagues object to challenge the mainstream view of climate science. Schmidt says they may be wrong or even deceptive, but they are still picked up by politicians, pundits and businesses who are skeptical of climate change.

   So Schmidt suggests that in order to short circuit the ability of their political opponents to cherry pick and blow out of proportion studies that the activists scientists did not agree with, they saw a convenient short cut: Simply reshape the peer review system such that those papers don’t ever appear or go unmentioned in scientific assessments.

   The problem with this strategy, of course, is that many climate scientists (and presumably others inside and outside of the scientific establishment) are unwilling to cede ownership of the “truth” to a small clique of scientists. In fact, peer review exists in the first place because there are no short cuts to the truth, and any such short cut will inevitably fail. Consider that the efforts revealed in the CRU emails to manage the peer reviewed literature went well beyond efforts to prevent so-called “skeptical” papers from being published, but included a focus on papers that fully accepted a human influence on climate, but which offered views that differed in some degree (e.g., here) from those preferred by the activist scientists. The emails reveal activist scientists busy extolling the virtues of peer review to journalists and the public, while at the same time they were busy behind the scenes working to corrupt the peer review process in a way that favored their views on the science and politics of climate change. Here we have a case study in the politicization of climate science by climate scientists.

   Dr. Pielke Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I also have appointments as an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at Oxford University’s Said Business School and as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. Since 2008 he has also been a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute, a progressive think tank.
9. Big Swede says:

   November 27, 2009 at 5:23 pm

   One article from a biassed scientist writing in the new republic is certainly good enough for Millie.

   Must mean these 300 other articles don’t cut the mustard.

   http://www.climatedepot.com/
10. Mihalis says:

    November 27, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    Bull Shit Says:

    One article from a biassed scientist writing in the new republic is certainly good enough for Millie.

    Big Swede! Hm, I think I might have that backwards. Regardless, it remains a fact that most scientists agree that man made global warming is real. I don’t feel the need to justify this stupidity by actually going out and finding my own reputable website with the Death Star on the front page, but that doesn’t change anything.

    Don’t worry, this is the last comment I’ll make in this particular thread. Feel free to come up with another collection of articles. Maybe you can find one with a beautiful elven princess or something as equally geeky as the Death Star. It must add to the believability of any “science” web site.
11. Ken Thornton says:

    November 27, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    The consensus doesn’t come from 3 or 4 scientists or works , it is hundreds of works over decades with earlier worsks being vindicated by later results. There have always been science whores and morrons that can twist the trueth and use a few suspect papers to try and taint the whole body of truth about climate change . The science is standining on its own merit. Anyone in Montana that has a clue has seen the change begining firsthand.

    Craig , you are just spewing the same old sceptic obfuscation.
12. Craig Moore says:

    November 27, 2009 at 9:00 pm

    Ken, if you understood anything about Dr. Pielke, Jr. you would know he is not a skeptic.

    And Ken, you write: “worsks…morrons…trueth.” Been nipping the jug a little?
13. Gregg Smith says:

    November 27, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    It’s right even when it’s wrong, and if you don’t see it, you’re just blind.

    This sounds like a religion.
14. Big Swede says:

    November 27, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    Not religion Gregg, but tribalism.

    Professor Hulme of U of E. Anglia comes clean, blames it on tribalism.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/27/uea-climate-scientist-possible-that-i-p-c-c-has-run-its-course/#more-13291