I’m remiss in getting this up until now, as Leif sent it back on May 12th. Prep, travel and recovery for ICCC4 took up quite a bit of my time, but I’m pleased to be able to offer this from Dr. Svalgaard now.
Cartoon from community.acs.org
Dr. Svalgaard writes:
Back in October WUWT had an article about my paper ‘Heliomagnetic Magnetic Field 1835-2009‘.
The paper has now gone through extensive peer review. I promised to let people in on the review process and can now do that. They contain a mixture of arcane technical points and general whining. The review history may be of general interest, at least as far the ‘flavor’ and tone of the reviews are concerned.
The entire review is condensed into a PDF file, which can be viewed below:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
….ahhh, yes, the perils of “publish or perish!”
Since my BS tolerance level is very low, I rarely publish in peer-reviewed journals and have no aspirations for faculty tenure.
The university tenure system is badly broken anyway, and probably contributes to some of the “scientific consensus” aspects of AGW, since young associate professors have to play the game and tailor their research & publications towards the mainstream if they want full professorship appointments.
This momentum is so powerful, I really doubt if we’ll find true scientific dissent in the literature regarding warming. Dr. Lindzen does a great job swimming against the tide, but he’s really an exception.
It is a long academic tradition that, after the first publication of results by data “producers” (e.g., the present authors), the original data is made public for independent verification and analysis.
It is painfully clear that reviewer #2 has never worked with “climate scientists” particularly Mann, Jones, Briffa, Santer, Hansen, Schmidt, et al.
This will take me a while to absorb since I am the catfish on the bank in this field.
Way, way, way over my head, but Reviewer #2 did say:
….”It is a long academic tradition that, after the first publication of
results by data “producers” (e.g., the present authors), the original data is made public for
independent verification and analysis.”
A tradition being challenged by some climate scientists?
It’s a pity that the IPCC report’s review was so incredibly superficial by comparison :
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR4/SPM_REVIEWS/SPM_FGR_comments.pdf
… but of course there’s billions of dollars at stake. If Pachuari and his mates at CRU, GE and elsewhere, could find a way to make a buck out of Svalgaard, I’m sure Leif would have no problems.
I used to have to worry about “publish or perish” in a field where their were two “camps” who disagreed about some basic science. Publishing was always a crap shoot as you never knew which “camp” you needed to write for.
The ivory tower is made of paper, and someone lit a fire when big money came to research…
Well done Leif! The second reviewer certainly spent a lot of time accusing you of having an agenda, and hiding data or results. Why it makes one think that this would be common in his circles. I think I’ll remain quite far removed from them.
It is fascinating to read and try to pick up on the physics of the solar system. Were I younger, I’d be tempted to join in the hunt.
Again, Well Done.
The process exemplified here was contentious, but civil. I would expect no less on research topics that are not well known and have competing theories. Actually, despite what might seem like wasted effort entailed in review and response, it’s good to see that it was neither a rubber-stamping on one hand nor a dismissive rejection on the other. While not understanding anything about the topic, I still can see that improvements were made and the field advanced. The use of an independent adjudicator is a wise element in the process and keeps the editor’s role cleaner.
A favourable peer review does not cause reality to support a mistaken or incomplete hypothesis.
Nor does an adverse peer review discredit a hypothesis that matches real world observations.
Any hypothesis that disturbs the subsisting majority view is likely to receive an adverse peer review even though a peer review is supposed to relate to methodology rather than content.
I would support Dr. Svalgaard in ignoring ‘general whining’. I have noticed that ‘arcane technical points’ are usually resorted to when there is no more substantial objection.
Of course, peer review should be a two way street. Often, those who dislike the process have no qualms when they get the opportunity to operate the process from the other side of the fence.
Then there is the problem of defining a ‘peer’ when the basic science is as immature as climatology. I do not accept that there are currently enough scientists with a sufficiently broad and detailed multidisciplinary knowledge base to provide adequate peer review in relation to matters climatological.
Brad says:
May 29, 2010 at 3:23 pm
The ivory tower is made of paper, and someone lit a fire when big money came to research…
When do we start burning books?
Following a more detailed reading of the article forming the basis of this thread and noting the comments going to and fro my primary reaction was that any data derived from pre the satellite era is pretty unreliable as to scale and timing as far as potential climate effects are concerned and even since the commencement of the satellite era great caution needs to be exercised due to a whole raft of calibration and other issues.
Perhaps we should just look and learn as we observe day by day rather than excluding potentially fruitful possibilities on the basis of past ‘iffy’ and so flawed observations and assumptions.
Interesting to see confirmation that Leif has to take it as well as dish it out 🙂
Leif Svalgaard: Quite a read. I get the impression reviewer #2 was envious and wanted to write the paper himself. It has always been my view that review panels should be no less then three. I think your experience partly vindicates that view. While the review process worked this time one can easily see how it can easily be abused.
Balanced article on sunspots and the current solar minimum:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solar-minimum-forecasting
Good read. My money is on this being a very interesting minimum…
I’ve often wondered how Leif could be so patient with blog commenters asking the same questions or making the same stupid mistakes over and over. Now I know. Rarely do blog comments on WUWT begin to approach the level of snark of some reviewers.
Megalomanic???
Reviewer #2 wrote:
5. As to the title, I opposed to give the impression that the HMF is now estimated reliably. The authors say they followed my advice with the new title. Nothing could be further from truth. The present title is untruthful and megalomanic, leaving out any doubt on the correctness of the estimated HMF. Rather, the title should include some more fairness and judgment, and should be revised to something like “Geomagnetic based estimate of HM [sic] since 1835” or similar.
Megalomanic? Of Leif’s posts here I’d say he can be remarkably assertive, but I’d note he deserves the right to be thus. Of course, if “Heliospheric Magnetic Field 1835-2009” is megalomanic (how can I argue with a real scientist?), I will have to revise my opinion of Leif’s comments.
Reviewer #2’s comments probably resulted in more improvements than reviewer #1’s, but if you took to heart everything reviewer #2 wanted you’d have had to make him a co-author. 🙂
All in all, you handled it well and the editor was fair, at least from my point of view. Maybe you can convince her to include a DVD in every copy of the paper journal!
The customary way to flog a bad paper is to pawn it off on a worse journal.
There are, after all , some 50,000+ deservedly obscure scholarly periodicals in the world. I wish I were kidding, but this university alone has some 30,000 on its library shelves.
Failing this , you can pad the paper with copious irrelevance, amplify its jargon level and add some caveats to the Conclusions. If reformatted as a Review Article. and fired off to ten or more randomly selected B, C, and D- list journals with titles beginning in Reviews Of , or Progress In , it will likely see print within a year.
If, as is often the case, the overworked editor’s boredom threshold stops their reading on page one, and their reviewers are mostly ambitious associate professors whose first language is Mandarin, you can traduce thermodynamics to your heart’s content on pages 5 though 15 , serene in the knowledge that, just as no one will read your obscurely published effusion without provocation, neither will your colleagues seek out the outraged rebuttals the poor editors are obliged to publish months or years later.
With such a rich informational ecology waiting to be colonized, it’s a wonder mythogogues bother to blog.
There is still the unresolved question about how much material:
1: our original tables
2: all the gigabytes of station data that ref#2 wanted
3 GB, Ouch. If you wanted to be mean, you could have emailed him 10Meg zipped chuncks.
“Interesting to see confirmation that Leif has to take it as well as dish it out :)”
I think it is confirmation that Leif made it clear he would not back down.
At least he didn’t have to go through this.
How happy am I to see this report from you Dr Svalgaard (not because I understand it) but because there have been 2 events in the past week which I seek your understanding. Today there was a geomagnetic storm with NO SOLAR WIND and the proton flux was nil. How is this possible? Where the heck was the storm coming from ~ the interstellar fluff/ribbon cloud or was it coming from the core of the hollow Earth (admit it Dr Svalgaard, the Earth IS hollow).
The second thing is a few days ago, USGS was showing all the seismographs in USA getting hit at the same time ~ it was confirmed that this was a “plasma wave” ~ but again, how is this possible?
All this happening while the Sun is having a lengthy snooze? (Aside from its ongoing filament blobs bursting off like nobody’s business.)
Is all this weird behaviour owing to the heliosphere changing its character somehow?
Thank you,
Skylurker Suranda
I do agree on one point with Reviewer #2 and that the data no matter the size or complexity should be freely available for reproduction.
Dr Svalgaard, you used “robust”
And I thought convincing my mother to let me borrow the car was difficult!
She even used many of the same circular arguments! I had nowhere near the patience of the Authors though, and often was forced to walk my dates home. 🙁
Although I am pleased the CRU fiasco has spooked everyone.
I’ll have to traipse over to your site for a boo. Thanks Dr S.
As for the wave that hit the Earth:
For some time before the event, the SOHO EIT imager had been picking up increasing strikes on the detector, most visible in 284
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2010/eit284/20100524/20100524_0706_eit284_1024.jpg
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2010/eit284/20100527/20100527_1921_eit284_1024.jpg
And afterwards:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2010/eit284/20100529/20100529_1906_eit284_1024.jpg
I think we should start to use the guillotine again. For liberty and science bring forth the guillotine!
You see the hole in that oversized cleaver contraption over there? Right, that’s where your head goes if you’re math is wrong.
Congratulations Leif!
I marvel at how polite you were when the #2 reviewer displayed such intelligent diversion and obstructive defense to his own beliefs. Very reminiscent of the combined mindset I have seen employed at Real Climate and Desmog. And what bitterness and irritation from that “biased” reviewer misdirected in a personal way towards you and your fellow scientists.
We are indeed fortunate that [Post CRU email disclosures], at least one Editor has the ability to recognize scientific bias and refer the paper for adjudication and in my view, with the correct result.
The sad thing is of course, how many valid scientific papers advancing new and exciting facts, never saw the light of publication due to reviewer bias ? and even sadder, how many keen and questioning scientists were rejected and crushed by the comfortable inner circle of reviewers revealed by those emails.
Good will and willingness to change, especially on storage and sharing of data and electronic programs to compare results, will hopefully usher in a “new era” for climate science.
Leif you are a gentleman of science – thanks for posting and I hope the #2 reviewer takes a long hard look at where “they” stand in this new open era of scientific discovery.
One further question if I may.
You (Dr Svalgaard) state;
“You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.”
Where then is it? Have you been hiding it? I refuse to accept anything you say until you not only produce this “missing” page, but provide the names and addresses of everyone in the continental US. Oh, and the names of their dogs too. (No cats allowed! I hate cats)
😉