Thursday
Dec022010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Steig in the dump
Dec 2, 2010 Climate: Surface A team of Climate Audit regulars have finally had their paper refuting Steig et al's headline grabbing Antarctic temperature record accepted by Journal of Climate. The big story is not that Steig has been dumped but that the team are still moving heaven and earth to keep critical papers out of the literature.
Update on Dec 3, 2010 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Ryan O's take on it is in a guest post at Jeff Id's.
Reader Comments (29)
Again this episode makes Nature look bad, tricked not once, not twice but many times by the Team. It cannot be blind stupidity on the part of Nature. It illustrates that Nature is more acceptable towards CAGW propaganda than actual climate science.
George Monbiot seems tobe able to trick himself
A fantastic comment from Cif that made it past the mods (maybe they've had enough - all though I still can't get a comment on)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/dec/02/cancun-climate-change-summit-monbiot?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
oakwood
2 December 2010 8:30PM
George
I hope you have your skates sharpended and ready...
Jan 2009: "THE SCEPTICS ARE SKATING ON THIN ICE
I have spent the last two evenings skating. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. All of us knew that this time might be our last. With every year the chances of another skating party recedes.The thought that I might never skate outdoors again feels like a bereavement. I pray for another cold snap."
Oh dear...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/climatechange-weather
Jan 2010: "BRITAIN'S COLD SNAP DOES NOT PROVE CLIMATE CHANGE WRONG
This is called weather, and, believe it or not, it is not always predictable and it changes quite often. It is not the same as climate, and single events are not the same as trends. Is this really so hard to understand?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/06/cold-snap-climate-sceptics
Nov 2010: Earliest cold snap in years
George says:"When heatwaves strike, climate scientists and environmentalists tend towards caution, explaining that though such events may be consistent with predictions they cannot be used as proof that climate change is taking place:" Er, yes, of course they do.
I disagree with the main point in the post.
If a reviewer or (group of reviewers) gives a paper a dificult time for legitimate reasons then for me that is entirely reasonable because it will help to prevent bad papers being published. There are plenty of examples in other Science fields where there are strong divergent views where this could happen.
At this point all we know is that one reviewer generated a lot of comment/correspondence. So far we do not know if any of that comment could be considered unreasonable by creatng artificial barriers to publication or gaming the review process. Steve refers to an abusive peer review process and suggests the level of comment was OTT but does not provide details. Objections were obviously not strong enough to prevent publication..
The issue which Steve M quire correctly raises is the asymmetry of the review process prior to Climategate where papers possibly including some that were known to be flawed get an easy ride from carefully selected friendly reviewers.
clivere
What you say is true, but the impression remains that reviewer x was intransigent and determined. Yet the paper passed review. This isolates reviewer x and begs the question of motive.
I don't think that Team members realise that their continuing obstructionist behaviour is what leads more and more neutral people, especially scientists and engineers, to become sceptics. Just like Pachauri, Bob Ward, Muir Russell and many others, we couldn't ask for a better Team, as revealed by HSI. They have learned nothing. It will be interesting to see what RC make of this. Or will they ignore it and hope none of their loyal band of acolytes notices?
Even more importantly, how will this, and the growing number of peer-reviewed sceptical papers, be kept out of AR5?
Steve M was pretty clear that the reviewer was the Team. Pal review, peer review, obstructionist review. The Team go in for the first and last.
BBD - I am quite happy to accept the description of the team as intransigent and determined and think it highly likely that the reviewer in question was one of the team.
I would expect a strong review process to allow them their say but at some point call it a day by bringing in a further expert reviewer who can comment on the areas in dispute. For me the review of this paper appears to be an example of good peer review practice by the Journal on a controversial subject.
I agree with the general point clivere is making. I made a comment at CA, somewhat relating to this point as well
In climate skeptics publishing, I realize there are two broad issues at play. But one hopes a certain pernicious kind of logic that was evident with the Soon and Baliunas paper does not play out. If skeptics are coming up with a paper, it can only mean two things. One, their paper is a bombastic and foolish attempt at a grand debunking and this obviously should be,wrong (because the consensus is so against them). The other, their paper is a collection of chicken scratches and nitpicks that is being smuggled in for the sole purpose of marking off publication notches on the skeptic treestump, which ought to be morally resisted.
See the discussion on 'the Air Vent' for an example of obstructionism by a reviewer, and also a response from Eric Steig welcoming the new paper but claiming it backed up his main finding
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/doing-it-ourselves/
Peer-review in Climate Science has become an Asymetric process.
You want to submit an "Establishment friendly" piece. No problemo!
You are, of course, welcome to offer contrarian views. No pressure!
Honest....
(other than the evidence of my own lying eyes, this past four years, I have no doubts about the trustworthiness of the establishment Climate Boffins in playing the straight bat)
Honest!
I heard one reviewer's comments and questions bulked out at 10 times the paper's weight.
Musta been a "team" player.
clivere
Again, I agree in essence. I'm not having a go at J. Climate because I suspect the editor was put on the spot - for months and months.
That's why I think that the EGU policy of making reviews public (although reviewers can be anonymous) is a very good policy, fellow scientists can even comment on the reviewers' comments.
EGU journals
BBD - we probably dont disagree significantly so this will probably be my last post on this thread. I still object to the basic thrust of the original BH post which implies the team should no longer defend their own position when reviewing papers. I believe they should be able to "move heaven and earth" as long as their objections are reasonable and they operate to the basic rules of the review process.
However I do object to an unfair pre Climategate playing field which allows new novel findings based upon obscure and probably invalid statistical techniques to be published without full and proper review.
Finally I quote the following from Ryan O who appears to be reasonably satisfied with the review process.
"The review process unfortunately took longer than expected, primarily due to one reviewer in particular. The total number of pages dedicated by just that reviewer alone and our subsequent responses – was 88 single-spaced pages, or more than 10 times the length of the paper. Another contributor to the length of time from submission to acceptance was a hardware upgrade to the AMS servers that went horribly wrong, heaping a load of extra work on the Journal of Climate editorial staff.
With that being said, I am quite satisfied that the review process was fair and equitable, although I do believe excessive deference was paid to this one particular reviewer at the beginning of the process. While the other two reviews were positive (and contained many good suggestions for improvement of the manuscript), the other review was quite negative. As the situation progressed, however, the editor at Journal of Climate – Dr. Anthony Broccoli – added a fourth reviewer to obtain another opinion, which was also positive. My feeling is that Dr. Broccoli did a commendable job of sorting through a series of lengthy reviews and replies in order to ensure that the decision made was the correct one."
Sounds like Dr. Broccoli had his concerns that the third reviewer was perhaps not acting in 'fair' manner so brought in a fourth to break the dead lock. Of course we would love to know who the third reviewer is , but Ryan and Broccoli better watch out as its clear the Team nether forgives nor forgets.
If one side has to handle run a gauntlet resulting in a review file of 88 pages, as compared to a Jones puffball review saying that the results will be welcome in the next IPCC, the process is not working equitably or reasonably,
In my opinion, Reviewer A was not acting as an unbiased reviewer, but had other motives;
IN my opinion, Ryan O is being overly deferential to Broccoli, who, in my opinion, appears to have permitted a biased reviewer to obstruct and delay publication, Ryan is fair in recognizing that Broccoli ultimately did the right thing. However Reviewer A's conduct, in my opinion, was not consistent with an unbiased reviewer. Reviewer A would have suppressed someone less determined than Ryan O, as has happened in other cases, e.g. Ross and my comment on Santer et al 2008, where obstructionist reviewers unchecked by a passive editor blocked a simple and clean comment overturning Santer results that are untrue but continue to be cited in the literature.
"it will help to prevent bad papers being published"
Clivere needs to read, and then re-read, John Stuart Mill. What is going on here is a usurpation of the role of the market of ideas. There is no benefit to preventing so called 'bad' papers being published, and that is not the role of science journals. What we have now is censorship of disagreement. It is not too much different from Soviet journals which would not publish objective studies of Lysenkoism. Or for that matter, objective histories of the purges.
Michel,
Interesting word 'Lysenkoism' - its use seems absolutely guaranteed to get posts censored on the Guardian's CIF. Too close to the bone, clearly.
I shouldn't have used the abbreviation there on reflection - I meant the Guardian's 'Comment Is Free' columns.
What is the point of the peer review process?
1) To ensure a paper is of a high enough standard to be included in the publication with no obvious gaping flaws and includes enough background detail to allow the work to be built upon/ challenged.
2) To ensure the paper is correct in it's conclusions.
?
Nial.
Michel
Couldn't agree more.
The team has brought science and the peer review process into disrepute and the (non climate) science community has sat back and benignly let the team get on with it, pausing only to give their strong support when any criticism has been made (and certainly without bothering to seriously consider whether the team's work meets even basic scientific standards).
In part this is because the cAGW hoax plays directly to the personal prejudices of many in academia, all the 'environmental' and 'anti-big-business' and 'peak oil' and 'overpopulation' and '(champagne) socialist' agendas being endemic there.
The team and their (active and passive) supporters have sown the wind. When the cAGW scam eventually crashes and burns (still some years away IMHO), they will reap the whirlwind.
Slightly off-topic but has Steve Mc. got a mole inside the Team? As we all know Steve's a very thorough kind of guy, and certainly has the ability to get to the bottom of the story, what he never does, at least to my knowledge, is speculate. Yet on one or two posts recently he's made assertions without the supporting evidence very unlike Steve. Today's is:
"There’s no question in my mind that Steig was part of the Team that constituted “Reviewer A” and that he participated actively in trying to suppress our article."
Note that he is sure that Steig was part of a team, he could be guessing, but again, he's not a man given to guessing and I've been reading his excellent blog for 5 or more years. He's saying that there was more than one reviewer posing as Reviewer A, it's difficult to see how he knows that unless he's noticed differences in presentation styles or something of that nature.
This, of course, is just speculation on my part, but it does form part of a mysterious number of positive assertions made without evidence (how did he get the Bradbury letter?) by the most cautious, and indeed courteous, man on the planet.
Nial What is the point of the peer review process?
1) To ensure a paper is of a high enough standard to be included in the publication with no obvious gaping flaws and includes enough background detail to allow the work to be built upon/ challenged.
2) To ensure the paper is correct in it's conclusions.
I always believed it was the former (in my reviewing of engineering research papers) - including verification that the work was original (ie not already published), made adequate reference to previous work on the subject and contained no obvious errors.
Obviously if the conclusions of the paper are inconsistent with its reported results, the review should point this out. But, short of repeating the experiments/measurements/observations and the processing of the results, there is no way that a reviewer can fully ensure that the results and therefore the conclusions drawn are correct.
The correctness of the conclusions and the results from which they are derived will be confirmed later, when researchers in the area, with the necessary facilities, attempt to reproduce the results or to improve on the methods used.
Your Grace
Congratulations on another wise and witty headline. I suspect that we might be contemporaries. I read the original book at junior school in the year it was published..or very soon afterwards.
It was good practice for my subsequent excursions into climatology as it was placed in the 'fiction' category.
clivere's comments are correct.
Steve Mc is also correct to say that reviewer A was not unbiased.
Since the paper is essentially a criticism of Steig et al it was quite appropriate that one of those authors was asked to be a reviewer. The editor of course was well aware of the natural bias of reviewer A when assessing the reviewer comments and when making his decision about whether to publish the paper. I have tried to make this point before.
In this instance the editor seems to have acted fairly.
(I agree that this has not always been the case for some previous papers).
The bottom line is that the paper was published - hooray - and the claim of widespread warming across most of Antarctica has been shown to be false.
I have to admit I do actually move books on warmism to the fiction section in bookshops.
Dec 3, 2010 at 11:28 AM | Justice4Rinka
Need to clean my keyboard now LOL
Nial
What is the point of the peer review process?
1) To ensure a paper is of a high enough standard to be included in the publication with no obvious gaping flaws and includes enough background detail to allow the work to be built upon/ challenged.
2) To ensure the paper is correct in its conclusions.
Part of the problem is that many reviewers don't really know the answer to this; or, at least, their view of their responsibilities changes markedly depending on whether they are 'pro' or 'anti' the conclusions of a particular paper. This is not a problem that is confined to climate science, obviously.
Peer review is just a mechanism for setting a (very low) quality bar on published papers. It does not, cannot, define what is true. The process of science itself works that out over time. Peer review does not even define what is original (that's an unrealistic demand to place on reviewers in many fields). Without peer review, how many more papers would be published each year? 10 times the current number? 100 times? How terrible would they be? (Anyone who reads a lot of papers for a living, like me, knows that most are pretty awful right now).
One of the things I really object to in the 'warmist' camp is their conflation of 'peer-reviewed' with 'true'. This is obvious nonsense to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history and philosophy of science. Unfortunately most people who work in the media, and many working scientists, for that matter, don't really understand how science actually functions.
88 pages of review text from a single reviewer is absurd and (almost certainly) in itself evidence of partiality. The correct answer from the editor would have been 'you don't seem to be able to judge this impartially, so we've brought in another reviewer; please feel free to submit a comment on the paper for publication'. That should have been done early on in the process, before Reviewer A revealed himself to be an obsessive compulsive by writing 88 pages. (As a reviewer, your job is to perform a smell-test, nothing more; otherwise the process of reviewing a paper would take too long and it would be impossible to find reviewers - it's difficult enough now).