Better propaganda

Nature wonders how to make green propaganda more effective.

Revkin on Steig and O'Donnell

Andy Revkin looks at O'Donnell et al's recent improvement on/rebuttal of Steig et al, the 2009 paper that suggested that the whole of the Antarctic was warming. Revkin sees the appearance of the rebuttal as reinforcing his faith in the peer review process, a marked contrast to the views of Richard Smith, which were discussed here a couple of days back.

Richard Smith on peer review

I cite Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, a couple of times in The Hockey Stick Illusion. Smith was a pioneer of the formal study of peer review and his work has led him to believe that the technique is well past its sell-by date. He has recently published a very cogent summary of his views. Although Smith speaks naturally of the medical sciences, `Classical peer review: an empty gun' applies equally to other fields.

The article is full of good quotes. Take this for example:

Doug Altman, perhaps the leading expert on statistics in medical journals, sums it up thus: 'What should we think about researchers who use the wrong techniques (either wilfully or in ignorance), use the right techniques wrongly, misinterpret their results, report their results selectively, cite the literature selectively, and draw unjustified conclusions? We should be appalled. Yet numerous studies of the medical literature have shown that all of the above phenomena are common. This is surely a scandal'

Read the whole thing.

Classical peer review: an empty gun

More on Nature's data policy

Last week I looked at Nature's data policy and was corrected by Eli Rabett on the existence of a formal policy. ER pointed to Nature's advice to authors at the time of Phil Jones' 1990 paper on urban heat islands:

Nature requests authors to deposit sequence and x-ray crystallography data in the databases that exist for this purpose.

As he notes, this paltry sentence doesn't support the idea that there was a formal policy in place requiring authors to make data available. However, Shub Niggurath has been doing some research, and I think his findings put this lone sentence in some perspective, which is quite interesting.

Click to read more ...

Competing interest?

Updated on Dec 1, 2010 by Bishop Hill

There has been quite a degree of interest in the Louise Gray article in the Telegraph the other day - the one in which we were led to believe that a variety of scientists were calling for a halt to economic growth and the introduction of rationing.

Donna Laframboise is one person who has been taking a look at this story. She notes that Louise Gray is not presenting an accurate picture to her readers:

Click to read more ...

Phil Trans A gives up on science

Just in time for Cancun, the Royal Society's premier journal for the physical sciences, Phil Trans A, decides to devote an entire issue to environmentalism. What a remarkable coincidence on the timing!

"Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications" is the not-very-sober title for the journal's outpourings, the first product of its new editor, Prof Dave Garner.

I wonder if any of the articles will look at how warming of four degrees per century compares to actual temperature rises since theb turn of the millennium?

Still, the good news is that Prof Garner has opened his door to reader feedback:

I wish to continue to develop a community of readers and authors who interact constructively. Therefore, I invite suggestions for ways in which we can enhance the scientific quality and value of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

Erm, how about not acting like the house magazine of the Green Party?

Update on Nov 29, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Reader Oakwood points to the Anderson and Bows paper in particular, as being "not science". It is certainly not written in a scientific style.

The scenarios developed in this paper are relatively contextual and as such complement the wealth of scenarios from more non-contextual integrated assessment models. However, while it may be argued that the latter approach benefits from greater internal consistency and more theoretically coherent parameters, the outputs are typically removed from the political and empirical reality within which responses to climate change are developed.

Nature editorial on Climategate

Nature has an editorial on the Climategate anniversary to add to its recent profile of Phil Jones.

For critics of CRU and their, sometimes legitimate, complaints about data access to be taken seriously, they must be more specific about who should be more open with what, and address their concerns at the correct target. It remains the case that many of the data used by CRU scientists are covered by agreements that prevent their wider distribution. This is not ideal, but it is hardly the fault of the CRU researchers — even if they did seem reluctant to share.

This is an extraordinary thing to say. Jones et al 1990 was published in Nature. Nature requires authors to make data available on request. How can they argue that it was restricted by confidentiality agreements?

Judy C in Scientific American

There is a major profile of Judy Curry in Scientific American. Read it here.

Update on Oct 23, 2010 by Bishop Hill

WUWT is reporting that the current issue of SciAm has more sceptic friendly coverage as well. They'll be reviewing The Hockey Stick Illusion next!

UKRIO on retractions

The UK Research Integrity Office has issued new guidelines on retractions of journal articles (H/T COPE). I thought it was interesting to compare the guidelines to the events surrounding Phil Jones' 1990 paper on urban heat islands, which is now of course the subject of a fraud allegation from Doug Keenan. Keenan's claim is that Jones continued to cite the paper even when he knew that some of the underlying data could not be relied upon. Jones' defence is that a subsequent paper he published has shown the findings to be broadly correct.

UKRIO says that papers should be retracted

when there is clear evidence that the reported findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct, such as fabrication of data, or honest error, for example. miscalculation or experimental error;

I think on the basis of this statement, Jones would still argue that the findings were reliable since they were backed up by his later study. However AFAIK, there was a gap of several years in the middle when Jones knew of the problems with his 1990 paper, but hadn't yet published his new findings. This suggests that his conduct at the time was not up to the standards required by these new guidelines (although I am not aware of what rules applied at the time).

The guidelines also make the interesting point that one of the reasons for retraction is so as not to bias future meta-analyses:

A retraction can help reduce the number of researchers who cite an erroneous article, act on its findings or draw incorrect conclusions, such as from ‘double counting’ redundant publications in meta-analyses.

It is therefore interesting to consider the effect of Jones 1990 on any metaanalysis of UHI papers. One assumes that such a study would still pick up Jones 1990 because it has never been retracted. It therefore seems to me that it is incumbent upon Jones to retract the paper, even at this late stage.

Nature on sceptics

Nature has published an opinion piece on the subject of the BBC's science review and in particular the way it handles global warming sceptics.

In reality, perhaps the most common complaint from scientists about the corporation's coverage of global warming is the exposure handed to sceptical non-scientists, such as former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson. This is the source of the long-standing 'false balance' problem. The BBC Trust, which is running the review, should take a stricter line here. If BBC staff want to use non-experts to criticize widely accepted science, they must explain this lack of expertise to the audience, and why the BBC has invited them to participate.

UEA on the New Scientist editorial

A few days back I linked to a New Scientist editorial on the Russell review, noting that it was surprisingly critical of CRU. (It's behind a paywall now, so you will have to take my word for it.) I noticed the other day that UEA have issued a rebuttal of sorts, which is, frankly, weird.

The editorial pointed out, quite correctly, that neither Oxburgh or Russell had looked at the science:

After publishing his five-page epistle, Oxburgh declared "the science was not the subject of our study". Finally, last week came former civil servant Muir Russell's 150-page report. Like the others, he lambasted the CRU for its secrecy but upheld its integrity - despite declaring his study "was not about... the content or quality of [CRU's] scientific work"

So this doesn't appear to be something that can reasonably be debated, I'm sure you would agree. Not so the University of East Anglia, whose response begins thus:

It is depressing that the New Scientist follows parts of the blogosphere, and some other sections of the press, in asserting that of the three independent investigations into Climategate "none looked into the quality of the science itself".... Our hope was that New Scientist would have a more informed understanding of the method of science research.

There follows a bizarre argument that a search for blatant dishonesty is the same thing as an assessment of quality. It then gets even stranger, with UEA first noting Oxburgh's statement that 'he Panel was not concerned with the questions of whether the conclusions of the published research were correct', and then, with a rhetorical flourish, asking 'New Scientist, when do science conclusions become “correct”? as if they were quoting from the editorial rather than the report they had commissioned. The editorial didn't discuss the question of the science being correct at all.

Quite the strangest document.

JG-C on code availability

John Graham-Cumming argues for the availability of scientific code.

New Nature climate change journal

Nature is launching a new cross-disciplinary climate change journal.

Nature Climate Change will publish original research across the physical and social sciences on a monthly basis and will strive to forge and synthesize interdisciplinary research. As such, it will be the first Nature branded journal to publish peer-review content from the social sciences community.

I've left a comment asking if they are going to require authors to submit data and code with their manuscripts.

Keep on gatekeeping

Ross McKitrick shows plainly that, despite the furore over the emails and the frantic issuing of denials, mainstream climatologists, are still determined to keep sceptic views out of the literature.

This is the story of how I spent 2 years trying to publish a paper that refutes an important claim in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The claim in question is not just wrong, but based on fabricated evidence. Showing that the claim is fabricated is easy: it suffices merely to quote the section of the report, since no supporting evidence is given. But unsupported guesses may turn out to be true. Showing the IPCC claim is also false took some mundane statistical work, but the results were clear. Once the numbers were crunched and the paper was written up, I began sending it to science journals. That is when the runaround began. Having published several against-the-flow papers in climatology journals I did not expect a smooth ride, but the process eventually became surreal.

This is simply astonishing stuff. Read the whole thing.

False alarm

New Scientist in 2005:

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.

The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.

The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The American Geophysical Union press release 2010

New measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

Update on Mar 26, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Doug Keenan in the comments gives some of the backstory to the Bryden paper that was the source of the original New Scientist piece:

A scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory noticed that the paper had a simple error in arithmetic—and that when the error was corrected, there was no evidence of slowing circulation. The scientist, Petr Chylek, published his criticism of the paper in the popular journal Physics Today [2007]. I asked Chylek why his correction was not published in Nature. Chylek replied: "Although they [Nature] did not deny that my criticism was correct, they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers".