Over the weekend I was sent a prospective guest posting by Lüdecke et al - this was the same one that has now appeared at Judith Curry's and Matt Briggs' sites. Given that it is widely available elsewhere, I don't see any point in reposting here. However, there has been a rather remarkable reaction to the posting, which looks like it will keep the climate blogs busy for a while.
Richard Tol has pointed out what he says is an error in their statistics (I am not qualified to comment here but his criticisms sound plausible to me). He then goes on to say that Judith C's posting the article then transforms this error into disinformation. I must say I'm struggling with this somewhat. For Judith to be criticised for posting an article based on a peer-reviewed paper seems to me to go too far. It seems to me that you either have to trust in peer review (and only post things that have received its imprimatur) or alternatively you distrust it and to allow post-publication peer review to do its work. Either way, it's hard to criticise Curry for posting the Lüdecke et al article.
Richard Klein meanwhile says that Judith has lost the plot and is posting the work of "politically motivated stats amateurs". Again, this seems quite overwrought to me. I'm sure readers here will recognise the motivation fallacy in action too.
Some of the readers on Judith's blog are also very excitable, one muttering darkly about the outlet for the paper:
I do not know this journal, except that it has previously accepted work by Gerlich and Tscheuschner.
How disreputable.
Judith, meanwhile, just seems to "get it".
If something is wrong, shine a light on it, don’t hide it in a corner. The jury is still out on Ludecke’s papers, they have not been adequately discussed and examined. Perhaps that will happen here.
Bishop Hill
Has the irony of Judith being criticised for posting a critique of a paper on which she is a co-author struck anyone?
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.