Bishop Hill IPCC reversion
May 16, 2012 Climate: IPCC We learned a couple of days ago that the UK government had noted that the amendment of the IPCC's procedures, which appeared to prevent reviewers seeing the other review comments, had been made in error.
The text deleted was this:
All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process
Now, Marcel Crok is able to confirm that this deletion will indeed by reversed, pointing to this document, which proposes a reversion to the original text be made at the next IPCC meeting at the start of June.
...the deletion of the first part of the original sentence was erroneous. The IPCC-33 decision only pertained to the open availability of drafts, comments and responses, and not to the availability to reviewers on request. Hence, the erroneous deletion of the “All written . . . review process” should be corrected.
In an email, David Holland notes that it remains unclear as to whether the reviewers will be able to see the lead authors' responses.
Reader Comments (15)
progress
Hope springs infernal...
Isn't this all pointless? In normal science, authors submit to editors they have nothing to do with, editors ask reviewers and on the basis of the reviews decide to publish. Papers come out in the authors' names
In post-normal science, authors submit to editors who are actually super-authors, editors ask for reviews, authors write down meaningless responses to reviews such as we've seen in AR4, then editors proceed to publish the original regardless. Chapters come out in the editors' names.
In not uncommon circumstances, last-minute editing is done long after reviewers have given their opinion, and no chances is given to anybody to review the text that goes into print.
It was no drafting error - just a due diligence error.
The whole purpose of the Jones-Stocker confidentiality decision at the IPCC 33rd Session was to pave the way for the decision at the 34th to withdraw the right of reviewers to see all the comments. The Secretariat sent out this document IPCC-XXXIV/Doc. 9 some time after 20 October 2011, inviting government comments by 11 November 2011. I do not see any comments.
If you search IPCC-XXXIV/Doc. 9 for 'confidential' it appears on pdf page 4 line 1 as one of the decisions on procedures from the IPCC 33rd Session. The second time it appears is on pdf page 18 line 31 where the confidentiality decision is added in to Appendix A. Just above it, highlighted in green, you will see where they deleted the rule that reviewers get to see the comments on demand.
On pdf page 14 line 10 it tells you that stuff highlighted in green is to be deleted. So it seems that 169 governments or their officials who attend these jamborees all failed to spot what was going on.
@David
"So it seems that 169 governments or their officials who attend these jamborees all failed to spot what was going on."
I'm sure they did:-)
@David
"So it seems that 169 governments or their officials who attend these jamborees all failed to spot what was going on."
I'm sure they did :-)
Isn't this a standard way of bureaucracies increasing their power/achieving their ends: make minute changes to the miniutiae, which those charged with overseeing them can't be bothered about, changes which in the end turn out to have quite significant consequences?
David, thanks, it's good to see at least one person is following what's going on even if the IPCC attendees aren't. Following this a bit further, p 14 of your link says that stuff that is affected by IPCC 33 decisions is highlighted in green and replaced by text in green. This includes the deleted statement "All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process".
But they also provided a link to the IPCC 33 decisions, and in that document there isn't anything about deleting that sentence, only (p 6, heading 8.) a section about inserting the confidentiality wording.
If I correctly understood, the earlier change contemplated a review process in which the reviewers would not see the comments of other reviewers, nor the responses and actions of the principal authors until after publication. Avoidance of dialogue, possible unwitting absorption in the final report of changes and influences known (strongly suspected) to be erroneous by another reviewer seemed to completely invalidate any possibility that the publication could be relied upon.
Is it really possible that the divisors of that scheme hadn't realized that this would be a result?
Perhaps Richard Betts has another angle on this.
Paul, you spotted it! Funny that 169 'focal points' did not.
On 25 February 2011, I asked DECC for the the Task Group on Procedures Report for the 33rd Session and their comments. They refused stating:
There was no point in appealing because the the stuff was always going to be published before I could get a result. Maybe some public spirited citizen somewhere in this world will have the time to take on DECC and appeal their refusals to establish that DECC must publish proposed decisions at the IPCC in time for the public to express their views to their political representatives.
Perhaps we are reaching the point at which only the authors and their sceptic critics actually bother reading any of it.
Interesting post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting.
http://bderm.com/
Getting back to how things were before the last assault on transparency is not progress.
Since the welfare of the general public is at stake here, the general public needs total transparency at every stage. Anything less is a whitewash.