"Reviewer A" responds

So he is in fact as cliamtegate and his later actions show him to be:
Deceptive and untrustworthy.

“Reviewer A”. He also complains that he wasn’t allowed to see the final draft.

He shouldn’t have been allowed to see the first draft either. I’ve had reviewers respond with one or two pages of critique or recommendations but “Reviewer A” responds with a total 88 pages? That wasn’t a review, it was a filibuster intended to stonewall the paper.

It looks like the Journal of Climate editors aren’t up to jury selection for a traffic ticket.
Does anyone believe this was not intentional?

Anthony says …

“This whole incident illustrates exactly why authors of competing scientific papers should not be reviewers of other papers critical of their own.”

But this is how it has been … Nothing is real. The whole peer review process is being bastardized to promote the hoax. It’s how you develop credibility from none.
The real scientists need to stand up, NOW!

Broccoli in the tank.

Their ego is certainly like their temperature model… it is anomalous.

Interesting…Will Ryan publish a retraction of his previous allegations? From what I read at RC ES is considering sueing for libel (??) (See comment #4, reply from Stieg).
IMO Stieg simply attempts to exacerbate the row with his “denier” drivel.
No attempt is made to simply put the record straight (yes, I read the RC post and the first few paragraphs appear to me to be obligatory attempts to ‘get off the hook’), he goes way beyond that in the closing paragraphs:
“To those that still don’t get this — and who continue to believe that these people can be trusted to present their scientific results honestly, and who continue to speculate that their may be truth in the allegations made over the years against Mike Mann, Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Stephen Schneider, Andrew Weaver, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa, Gavin Schmidt, Darrell Kaufmann, and many many others, just because they ‘read it on a blog somewhere’ — I’d be happy to share with you some of the more, err, ‘colorful’, emails I’ve gotten from O’Donnell and his coauthors.” (RC post)
…which begs the question; Eric, and how have you and the above named responded to said “allegations? By being forthright and open, or obfuscating and closed? If you need help with the answer please refer to the recent goings-on with the UVA FOIA requests and the VA response…it speaks volumes on the Team’s intent and how the Team really operates.
In closing I see your “O’Donnellgate” comment at the end of your post as ludicrous: beyond ridiculous. Was it a vain attempt at redirection due to the heat the Team has taken over Climategate? How patheitic…

Sorry for cross-posting (Bishop Hill)
It just struck me, and has been touched upon several times before:
It seems quite conceivable to me that designated reviewer A (Eric Steig) indeed wrote and sent his review comments by himself, but that he communicated with other Team-members while doing so, possibly asking for their input and even help.
Both langage and delay-tactics and the multiple and inconsistent requests to address issues and moving goal posts at least suggest that as a possibility.
What I mean to say is that it is fully possible that Steig as reviewer both ‘recommenden to ues iridge instead’ and at RC cirticized the very same practice. But unaware of the contradiction (duplicity?). It has been suggested that this might have been a mistake, a memoryslip etc, and not intentional.
It might also have been the result of him relaying other persons opinions through his review comments, points that he did not completely understand himselft.
Again, this is his own responsibility, and he can blame noone else. But it also makes more sense.
Reading though the defence speech at RC, Steig does not strike me as to versed in statistics or at regarding methodology. In fact, my impression is that he still doesnät comprehend what O’Donnell et al is really about. He keeps talking about different points, about the warming he believes is to come, about O’Donnell not reafuting what he thinks was his ‘bigger picture message’ etc. And of course complaining about people not being nice enough to him.
I have read though his (their?) review comments and it is very hard not to get the impression that the main effort was to thwart the paper, and if that failed delay it as long as possible, and finally to minimze the harm it did to ‘the bigger picture’. Possibly even prepare it for an ‘easy rebuttal’, at least in the public eye.
It was obvious from the outset that this was a very hostile review, and obviously Steig is still more interested in toeing the party- (Team-) line, than conceding that O’Donnel et al have som valid points.
On the other hand, he also strikes me as quite human, with many responses more out of petulance and pique, as from somebody a bit out of balance, than adressing the criticism and defending his version of ‘facts’. Obviously he doesn’t have Gavin’s routine, and I think it shows to more than thos who already knew what is RCs main purpose …
And that is good!
Feb 10, 2011 at 4:29 PM | Jonas N
As to Eric Steig being chosen as a Reviewer:
I would actually expect that to happen, either him or somebody in his vicinity (eg former co-author). I don’t think this is a bad practice. Rather that it would be a bit naïve if the submitting authors expected to go free from scutiny from that side/camp.
But I would also expect the editor to be aware of this and treat it fairly. As Broccoli did here, finally. The criticism there is mainly that it seemed to take so long for him to get a fourth reviewer, and that he should have realiszed what’s going on much earlier. Well, maybe he did!? Actually I would be very surprised if he were completely unaware both of the Team, its reputation, and earlier controversies. And also would I expect him to have been pressured (or at least atempted to influence him) through other channels than the formal review process.
And I agree with those who said that he got it right in the end, and should be commended for it.
(And Steig’s pouting comment at RC, that it was a ‘lousy paper’ and more of the same, might in the end have the opposite effect, as it well should among decent and competent scientists)
….
As to Eric Steig being chosen as a Reviewer:
I would actually expect that to happen, either him or somebody in his vicinity (eg former co-author). I don’t think this is a bad practice. Rather that it would be a bit naïve if the submitting authors expected to go free from scutiny from that side/camp.
But I would also expect the editor to be aware of this and treat it fairly. As Broccoli did here, finally. The criticism there is mainly that it seemed to take so long for him to get a fourth reviewer, and that he should have realiszed what’s going on much earlier. Well, maybe he did!? Actually I would be very surprised if he were completely unaware both of the Team, its reputation, and earlier controversies. And also would I expect him to have been pressured (or at least atempted to influence him) through other channels than the formal review process.
And I agree with those who said that he got it right in the end, and should be commended for it.
(And Steig’s pouting comment at RC, that it was a ‘lousy paper’ and more of the same, might in the end have the opposite effect, as it well should among decent and competent scientists)

I’ve just left the following comment.
In, Borehole or Oblivion?
Adam Gallon says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
10 Feb 2011 at 12:18 PM
Maybe this whole episode shows that a reviewer shouldn’t be selected, who has a profound conflict of interest with the material they’ve been asked to revue?
The O’Donnell et al paper, is statistically based, so wouldn’t it have been better for a statistician to be the reviewer.
The fact that Dr Steig’s review comments, appear to exceed the length of the paper, does suggest that it was rather more than a review to pick up grammar, spelling & mathematical errors

Let’s see if I’ve gotten this straight: Steig looks for Antarctic warming using a flawed statistical technique and finds (presumed) warming. O’Donnell sees the flaw(s), analyzes the data with an improved technique which corrects certain spatial artifacts introduced by Steig’s somewhat naive approach, and his work still shows some warming, albeit with a markedly different distribution. Moreover, O’Donnell tests his method against a number of modified data sets and verifies that it performs as one would expect it to. Steig happily comments that they found warming as well.
But [Correct Answer]+[Wrong method] = [Bad Science]. (Well, unless you’re a post-modernist.) O’Donnell’s paper wasn’t about ‘climatology’ but rather the misuse of statistics in Steig 2009. Steig’s response at RC misses this crucial point and goes on about the ‘climatology’ as if methods didn’t matter, only results.
Steig states that he is not a statistician. Indeed, no one expects him to be. But we do expect that any serious researcher will consult with competent statisticians before attempting to analyse data (if not before collecting it) and will heed their advice. Apparently that was not done in this case. Anecdotal evidence leads one to suspect that, as a rule, climatologists do not feel a need to involve statisticians in their research – which strikes me as peculiar inasmuch as said research depends on statistics.
I’m only a clown and no one need listen to me, but it appears Steig and the rest of the climatology community should be thanking O’Donnell for pointing out a serious flaw which has the potential to invalidate a number of papers in their field.

“David Ball says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:13 am
“…the damage is done, and we are relegated to the back of the hall to fight it out where the general public is unaware that there are any problems with the original S09 paper. I am sooo sick and tired of this BS happening over and over again…”
I know exactly how you feel…but dude: ‘Finalist in the Bloggies!’, many, many people that never even post come here to stay current, laypeople. This is the best place for these discussions to take place. Public opinion on CAGW is low and I believe that Anthony, Jeff, Steven, and Willis et al (and that’s a BIG ‘et al’) are making the difference along with all the other pragmatic (skeptic? OK) people and blogs out there.
To quote an applicable phrase: Fight the Good Fight! Of course this means going beyond just blogging to educating our government leaders, communities, friends and families. An AMAZING amount of progress has been made, but still much more to do. We all have sphere’s of influence we circulate in and by asking one question, planting one fact, or exposing one falsehood is like dropping a pebble in a pond. The ripple expands out of our sphere and impacts (interference) with others. It’s unstoppable and we are watching / participating in the effects…IMHO; that’s a good thing!
Yea…I know, there are a multitude of arguements that might negate what I wrote above. A couple might be: human nature, cognitive dissonance, and confirmation bias but the ‘glass is half full’…from us…here…doing this.

Don’t take your eye off the ball by engaging in debate over who should or should not be a reviewer. Focus on the flawed methodology employed by S09 and Dr Steig’s apparent inability to understand why it is important. The team have no defence for this and are trying to change the subject. See Bishop Hill’s pictorial explanation for excellent clarity on the subject.

“This whole incident illustrates exactly why authors of competing scientific papers should not be reviewers of other papers critical of their own.”
What, even Steven McIntyre?

He confirms in the latest RealClimate essay that he was in fact “Reviewer A”.

I see no such admission in that article.

“But IMHO, Dr. Steig bears responsibility too, he should have said “no”, realizing what a conflict of interest this was.”
How is it a conflict of interest? It’s upto the editor to decide the merit of the reviewer’s comments and ultimately nobody is going to know the paper better than the original author. From the comments the editor paid special attention to issues where multiple reviewers agreed, this seems entirely sensible and appropriate.
“o it seems Dr. Steig’s complaint is empty, and the situation mostly a result of his own doings. Still it points back to the failure of peer review at JoC. They should not have invited Dr. Steig to be a reviewer in the first place. “
You keep repeating this but it’s not clear what you think the actual problem is.
“In the meantime, the Journal of Climate editors should probably be made aware of the mess they created by allowing this conflict of interest to occur in the first place.”
Again with the conflict of interest.
The central part of O’Donnell’s claims was that Steig was being “duplicitous” both by introducing and recommending a method as “Reviewer A” which he later criticised publicly and by asking for a copy of a paper which as reviewer he already had.
It’s now clear that “Reviewer A” suggested a method which was already being used by the authors as being something to try, the comment “Reviewer A” wrote was
“My recommendation is that the editor insist that results showing the ‘mostly likely’ West Antarctic trends be shown in place of Figure 3. While the written text does acknowledge that the rate of warming in West Antarctica is probably greater than shown, it is the figures that provide the main visual ‘take home message’ that most readers will come away with. I am not suggesting here that kgnd = 5 will necessarily provide the best estimate, as I had thought was implied in the earlier version of the text. Perhaps, as the authors suggest, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead. The authors state that this “yields similar patterns of change as shown in Fig. 3, with less intense cooling on Ross, comparable verification statistics and a statistically significant average West Antarctic trend of 0.11 +/- 0.08 C/decade.” If that is the case, why not show it? I recognize that these results are relatively new – since they evidently result from suggestions made in my previous review – but this is not a compelling reason to leave this ‘future work’2
It’s now clear (or at least claimed) that Steig never received a final draft hence the reason he had to ask for a copy later.
It seems now all that’s left is to make vague and unsubstantiated allegations of “conflict of interest” while blaming Steig and the journal editors for an incident that was created entirely by O’Donnell’s misunderstanding (to put it charitably)
The classy thing to do would be to retract the allegations and accept nothing untoward happened at all.

Isn’t it “interesting” to see how people behave when there is $100 BILLION in government funded research rants at stake? That’s just the figure to date — more to come.
Of course, none of that pure-as-the-driven-snow science has been corrupted by politics — oh, NO — not at all!
All this, of course, is chump change compared to the $45 TRILLION in government slush funds proposed to “fix” a “problem” which is CLEARLY not a problem.

Crusty the Clown says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:35 am
……… But we do expect that any serious researcher will consult with competent statisticians before attempting to analyse data (if not before collecting it) and will heed their advice……
I’m only a clown and no one need listen to me, but it appears Steig and the rest of the climatology community should be thanking O’Donnell for pointing out a serious flaw which has the potential to invalidate a number of papers in their field.
=======================================================
Apparently, they have an aversion to statisticians. I beginning to think it involves some cellular response related to IgE. But that’s just a working theory. In the Orwellian world in which the climatologists live, good news is the new bad. They’ve no desire to be correct, they simply have the desire to be alarming and churn out the next pal reviewed paper without the hindrance of someone actually checking their work. Evidently, it is easier to operate in this manner.

@yguy,
from the article…“Some months ago, O’Donnell cordially (though quite inappropriately) asked me if I was one of the reviewers, and also promised not to reveal it publicly if I didn’t want him to. I told him I was, but that I would prefer this not be public since the ‘opportunity for abuse’ was simply too great. Talk about prescience!”
Sounds like an admission to me

sharper00 says:
“How is it a conflict of interest?”
There is none so blind as one who will not see.

Some of the more recent comments makes me think that the Team is stepping in with a a can of white wash and a roll of wall paper to attempt to cover over Steig’s mess.

sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:10 am
@Smokey
“The entire climate peer review system has been corrupted, as was made clear in the Climategate emails. “
Climategate eh? What is it about this incident that reveals a conflict of interest? O’Donnell’s claims of “duplicity” on Steig’s part were simply wrong so what’s left? Please be specific and reference either “Review A”‘s or Steig’s comments.
=======================================================
He insists on a specific method to be in the study (as an anonymous reviewer) and then publicly criticizes the method at RC.
Duplicity—: contradictory doubleness of thought, speech, or action; especially : the belying of one’s true intentions by deceptive words or action
Seems a pretty tight case for duplicity from where I’m sitting.

sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:54 am
How is it a conflict of interest? It’s upto the editor to decide the merit of the reviewer’s comments and ultimately nobody is going to know the paper better than the original author. From the comments the editor paid special attention to issues where multiple reviewers agreed, this seems entirely sensible and appropriate.
========================================================
Right, so lets see how this “entirely sensible and appropriate” situation panned out. Let me see……… an unheard of ……dare I say unprecedented 88 pages of obfuscation and handwaving from reviewer A. A fourth scientist being forced to mediate the logjam of obstruction. I’d never heard of anything like that either.
Here’s a question for you. Do you think science was best served in this manner? The way I see it, an alleged scientist hindered the furtherance of science. But then, truth and discovery aren’t in the “top ten” list of priorities for alarmists.

There can be no excuse for the editor of the journal. What he did in accepting a review of 88 pages is waaaaay out of the ordinary for an editor proves that he was making an accommodation for a reviewer who is a fellow fanatic. There can be no excuse for using a reviewer who is likely to write a rebuttal to what he his reviewing. Clearly, the peer review process for climate science has been captured as planned by Jones, Mann, and others. Steig is another participant in this capture and he is out there either pretending or delusionally protecting his sacred honor as scholar of climate science.

@James Sexton
“He insists on a specific method to be in the study (as an anonymous reviewer) and the publicly criticizes the method at RC.”
I’ve already quoted it twice now, if you’re going to rest your claim on the supposed strength of “Reviewer A”‘s recommendation then you have no argument.

AJ Abrams says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:29 am
sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:10 am
‘Climategate eh? What is it about this incident that reveals a conflict of interest? O’Donnell’s claims of “duplicity” on Steig’s part were simply wrong so what’s left? Please be specific and reference either “Review A”‘s or Steig’s comments.”’
No editor in his right mind would assign as reviewer someone who adamantly believes, and rightly so, that the paper he is reviewing has major negative implications for a paper he has published. How could conflict of interest be more clear?
Steig is duplicitous. Number one, he did not volunteer to O’Donnell that he would be reviewing his submission. That is duplicity. Number two, Steig asked for changes and then criticized the results of those changes. Reviewers should never engage in writing the essay that they are reviewing.

@Sam Parsons
“No editor in his right mind would assign as reviewer someone who adamantly believes, and rightly so, that the paper he is reviewing has major negative implications for a paper he has published. “
The editor is free to completely disregard everything the reviewer produces if they think it has no basis.
You’re all acting as if Steig was put in control of whether the paper would be published. He wasn’t.
He was asked to review the paper and identify flaws. He did so, the flaws were corrected and the paper was improved. Consequently the published paper was better.
This is somehow being spun as a failure of peer review despite the fact that the original claims this was based on have been shown to be incorrect. Now all we’re left with is some sort of vague “feeling” that there was a “conflict of interest”.
“Number one, he did not volunteer to O’Donnell that he would be reviewing his submission. That is duplicity.”
No it isn’t. There’s no reason at all he would volunteer himself and he was under no obligation to do so. This is a standard of behaviour you’ve simply invented and applied to Steig.

sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:22 am
“remember the purpose of peer review is to determine if a paper has any obvious flaws”
Hmm, it seems to me that the “flaws” that reviewer A (supposedly) found weren’t so “obvious” if it took 88 pages to explain them.

Adam Gallon says:
February 10, 2011 at 9:20 am
I’ve just left the following comment.
In, Borehole or Oblivion?
__________________________________
Most likely oblivion. Don’t feel bad. Your posts are in the company of many great posts, including most of mine. Oblivion is the only feature better than the “borehole” at the rc website.

Perhaps the journal editor believed Steig would behave in a more honorable and less partial fashion as a reviewer than he did. After getting an 88-page filibuster in response, he then may have tried to ride it out and hoped his participation could be salvaged. In retrospect he may have hung on to Steig’s participation too long, but did eventually make it better.
Here’s hoping this episode of “As the Climate Turns” will teach editors the dangers of selecting reviewers with too much of a stake in the outcome of a paper. It will require a degree of ‘political’ savvy that I bet is not widely available in the journal editor population.

sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 11:04 am
The editor is free to completely disregard everything the reviewer produces if they think it has no basis.
_____________________________
He is apparently also free to disregard good judgement.
The basis? This is a field of science so complex that you could argue that almost anything has no basis as long as you make an effort. They keep confirming every suspicion that arose from the climategate scandal. Luckily they have people like you out there to rationalize every little suspicious piece of information. Mind you, I’m not a “denier”, but a scientist who is furious with the attack on the scientific process “the Team” is responsible for.

Afraid I’ve lost all faith in institutions like science and peer review and one of my degrees has science in its name.
I have to read a lot of journal articles each week but I now take all of them with a grain of salt.
The CRU climategate scandal showed the fluff piece peer reviews written by The Team on papers that supported them but, as noted in the emails, “went to town” on those they disagreed with and tried everything they could to suppress dissenting perspectives.
The JoC can not be taken seriously when it requested Steig to review the opposing paper – no conflict of interest there.
I have no opinion positive or negative on Eric Steig or Ryan O’Donnell, et al. My comments are that the peer review process itself is utter rubbish at this point and the journals are publishing rubbish. This mess was created by the editor of JoC.

Reading about this got me thinking about the book “A brief history of nearly everything”. It has many stories about corrupt scientists cheating, hindering criticism, and just, in general, breaking ethics in science. I predict that the revised edition in the year 2080 will include a biiig chapter on “Team Hockey Stick”. Steig et al. is no doubt going down in history as important people to learn from – much in the same way we are told to learn from Lysenko and others like him.

It strikes me that Steigs reviewing and his subsequent comments have been deflections away from the nub of the matter – which is that he was in error. No shame in that – it happens – get over it!

@ sharper00
” sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:51 am
@James Sexton
“I’ve already quoted it twice now, if you’re going to rest your claim on the supposed strength of “Reviewer A”‘s recommendation then you have no argument.”
======================================================
That’s horse $hit. Ok, insisted or recommended or suggested…….however you want to frame it.
Read this and tell me what it means to you….“Yet at least two independent groups who have tested the performance of RegEM with iridge have found that it is prone to the underestimation of trends, given sparse and noisy data (e.g. Mann et al, 2007a, Mann et al., 2007b, Smerdon and Kaplan, 2007) and this is precisely why more recent work has favored the use of TTLS, rather than iridge, as the regularization method in RegEM in such situations. It is not surprising that O’Donnell et al (2010), by using iridge, do indeed appear to have dramatically underestimated long-term trends—the Byrd comparison leaves no other possible conclusion…..”
Later…….“The choice of kgnd that yields the best agreement with the iridge calculations (which, remember, is already known to create problems) happens to be kgnd = 7, and it just so happens that this yields the minimum trends……”
========================================================
So, did he know his suggestion would lead him to state this later? Or did he have an epiphany after he was done reviewing? Because if he “knew” his suggestion carried these inherent criticisms, then it would be entirely disingenuous to suggest it, without so much as a warning about its use.
Duplicity.

Although this ongoing controversy has provided some valuable insights into the many flaws in the peer reviewed publication process for scientific literature, it has seemed to me from the beginning to be a colossal waste of time and effort. The temperature data from Antarctica has always been so sparse and unreliable that even if, by some unimaginable miracle, you could get the entire statistical community to agree on a set of “best practices” on how to deal with it, you still couldn’t produce anything more meaningful than a statement that Antarctica is colder than a Wiccan’s mammary and is likely to stay that way, no matter what global mean temperatures do in the next couple of centuries.
As I tried to point out when Steig’s work first surfaced, this effort is analogous to trying to construct long term temperature trends for the continentalU.S. by taking data from stations in the Florida Keys and the Everglades, combining it with data for the other 47 states from a handful of randomly scattered stations which were some of the worst rated in Anthony’s surface station survey, and producing a nicely scarlet swathed map of the lower 48. The only real difference is that Antarctica is actually twice the size of the lower 48.
I realize that dedicated number crunchers have a psychological need to believe in the efficacy of their efforts. A realistic assessment of the true uncertainties of their efforts would likely subject them to profound existential doubts about the meaningfulness of their life’s work. The rest of us shouldn’t feel compelled to share their delusions.

sharper00 says:
February 10, 2011 at 11:07 am
@Sam Parsons
“The trolls are in. This comment could be written only by a troll or slipping in and out of consciousness. Anthony should ban them.”
Oh goodness yes! People who disagree with you are trolls who should be banned!

“Goodness” indeed!
Hasn’t it occurred to you that not one of your contributions would ever have seen the light of day at the temple of your oracles – Real Climate.
As somebody once said – “Goodness has nothing to do with it”

Obviously, Steig was a poor choice of reviewer as he doesn’t have the necessary expertise in the field(s) in question (i.e. statistics and methodology). Further, in the performance of his duties as reviewer he displayed a greater allegiance to protecting his reputation than actually engaging with the submitted material.
All in all its a rather amateurish outing for Prof. Steig.

@AJ Abrams
“Because you can copy and paste what is over at RC does NOT mean you read the reviews, or at the least you are cherry picking”
Er ok but you just quoted precisely the same section I did. Is your one better somehow? So the recommendation starts with
“My recommendation is that the editor insist that results showing the ‘mostly likely’ West Antarctic trends be shown in place of Figure 3.”
And then later (third time I’ve quoted this now)
“Perhaps, as the authors suggest, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead.”
Does the “insist” from several sentences previously somehow leak into this one? The use of iridge and Steig’s subsequent criticism of it is the basis for the “duplicity” charge.
Maybe O’Donnell interpreted it as insistence but then I already pointed out in my first comment that this is a misunderstanding, not a failure of peer review.
“So smarty..if he insists they replace figure three with something else, but says not to use a different K_gnd number in place of 7, then says hey why not iRidge you mentioned..how on THIS earth is he not insisting on iRidge given he’s given NO OTHER CHOICES here????”
It’s not the job of the reviewer to write the paper! He identifies problems with the figure, wants it replaced and offers suggestions about what could be used instead. It’s upto the authors to replace it with something else.
Now this apparent crisis in peer review apparently boils down to how forcefully you can interpret “Perhaps, as the authors suggest, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead.”.
This is an extremely weak argument.

Couple of factual points.
1. Steig / Reviewer A wrote 24 pages of review, an utterly proportionate amount, the ’88 pages’ comes when you include the author’s reply.
2. Montford’s ‘Jesus Paper’ essay, a putative demolition of peer-review, is hilarious. He rants on (and on) about the occlusion of r-squared stats:
And he therefore now knew that Wahl and Amman’s work suffered from exactly the same problem as the hockey stick itself: the R2 number was so low as to suggest that the hockey stick had no meaning at all, […] McIntyre’s first action as a peer reviewer was therefore to request from Wahl and Amman the verification statistics for their replication of the stick. Confirmation that the R2 was close to zero would strike a serious blow at Wahl and Amman’s work. [….]. (etc etc,)
You’d think someone wanted to be regarded as credible would have checked what the NAS panel on paleo-reconstructions had to say about the usefulness of r-squared in the context of assessing proxy skill.
They said ‘it is not in itself a useful indication of merit’ (Page 93).
Not in itself a useful indicator of merit. Take away this meat from the Bish’s flight of fancy and you’re left with a thin soup indeed….

Colin K at Bishop Hill got it:
“Surely Eric Steig has admitted defeat:
– He concedes he might be wrong;
– He states that the “technical aspects of the methodology are completely legitimate subjects of discussion” but doesn’t go on to discuss and defend them;
– Earlier in his post he agrees “I am not a statistician”;
– Since the entire basis of the paper is a statistical analysis of data that supposedly demonstrates alarming warming across wide areas of Antarctica, but the author agrees he’s not a statistician and might be wrong, why should anyone attach any weight to this particular piece of work?”
ColinK
That’s the meat in Steig’s post: “With respect to O’Donnell’s lengthy discussion of the technical aspects of the difference between our papers, I’m not complaining. ”
The rest is noise.

I’ve not read through all the comments to see if this is old news, but according to Andrew Revkin, O’Donnells planning to apologize. Distressing if so…From D.E. below
“That was then. Civility evaporated in a series of blog posts on Realclimate and Climateaudit that crested a few days ago when O’Donnell lobbed a heap of accusations against Steig. (O’Donnell has, in e-mail exchanges between the combatants that I’ve been copied on, said he recants the worst of them and plans to post an apology.)”

So…Eric’s reply, “Some thoughts on Personal Responsibility and the Peer Review Process”.
Firstly:
“First, I never suggested to the authors that they use ‘iridge’.”
Yes, Steig unquestionably did, in one of the reviews:
“Perhaps, as the authors suggest, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead.”
“Perhaps” makes it a suggestion. It’s not debatable.
What Steig could have said that would make his first statement above a truth is that he did not raise the idea in the first place, but encouraged it. But what Steig says is that he never suggested they use iridge, and that’s patently untrue.
Steig’s assertion is to try to avoid the duplicity charge. The duplicity charge does not actually come from his criticizing the choice of the iridge procedure; he could have, in fact, changed his mind in the interim. People are allowed to do that. BUT…having made the suggestion in “secret”, he would have a moral responsibility, when going public with his criticism, to ‘fess up to the fact that he influenced this choice in the first place; to publicly state that, at the time, he suspected it did provide better results and, for that reason, he recommended it.
That’s where the duplicity comes in; he influenced that choice in “secret”, and then criticized it in public without revealing his secret influence.
If Steig really does not see this as duplicitious, then it does highlight a flaw of the Peer Review process. If scientists really believe that it’s ethical to influence changes to a paper in secret, then later criticize those changes, then the Peer Review process is flawed.
Secondly, if scientists really believe this next Steig quote:
“But once they have signed off on the paper, it is their paper, and blaming someone else — reviewer or editor — for its content is simply passing the buck.”
…the Peer Review process again has a serious problem.
The way the Peer Review process works, the reviewer becomes a co-writer. To the extent that their suggestions are ignored, the reviewer isn’t responsible; to the extent that their suggestions are accepted and the paper is changed, they become co-responsible. If scientists don’t get this, if scientists are not willing to take personal responsibility for the effects of their reviews, then the Peer Review process is again hopelessly flawed.
Thirdly, a conflict of interest is not inherently a problem. A SECRET conflict of interest is, indeed, a problem. It doesn’t help that the editor knows, or makes the final decision, if, when the reviewer makes public criticisms, the public doesn’t know. I think the editor/publisher enabled this tempest with a poor choice.
And lastly, Steig admits he’s not a statistician. Think about that for a minute. Let that bounce around inside the head for a bit.
If he’s not qualified to be a statistician…what is he doing writing S09, which defined and applied new statistical techniques? Why is someone asking him to review Ryan’s paper, if he’s not qualified to understand the stats? What is he doing recommending one technique over another, especially when, as a “secret” person, the authors have no way to determine whether his advice comes from an amateur statistician or an expert? And lastly, what is he doing criticizing iridge at all?
It really, really bothers me that so many of these papers are based on Statistical analysis without there having been a statitician involved. If there’s no other reason to suspect that AGW is a paper boat, it’s this: these Scientists produce their “Science” using tools they don’t understand, and they really resent it when someone notices.
Ryan, if you really do intend to “retract allegations”, think carefully. The only thing I can see to retract is the assertion that Eric asked for a copy of the paper when in fact he had already seen it…if Eric didn’t see the final draft, then he wasn’t being manipulative. But that’s it; Eric’s outrage is unfounded. Eric was duplicitious, as in two-faced, recommending “X” over here as secret persona A and attacking “X” over there as public persona B.
However, all that said…it never pays to lose your temper. A good public relations firm (and I’m convinced that Eric’s response was written mostly by a public relations firm; it’s just too good) can work it against you.
And thanks for all your hard work, and for bearing the frustrations inherent in getting anything “skeptical” published. You have no idea how much I admire you folks.

Phil Clarke says:
February 10, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Couple of factual points.
“1. Steig / Reviewer A wrote 24 pages of review, an utterly proportionate amount, the ’88 pages’ comes when you include the author’s reply.”
Laughable. Absurd. Have you no common sense whatsoever? What do you think journal editors do? If the average review were 24 pages long, no journal editor would finish reading half the reviews sent him? So, why would he ask for them?

Since by his own admission ES is not a statistician, what was he doing writing statistical papers without a statistician co-author in the first place?
Since that paper was show to use poor statistical methods, which invalidate the results, how did it pass peer review?
Who were the reviewers of the original ES paper, and why were the poor statistical methods not highlighted during it’s review?
What the climate science community needs to ask it’s self is, how did a flawed paper make it onto the front page of the global media, and why has it not been retracted already?
Until the original ES paper is retracted by the journal, the journal, and climate science as a whole has zero credibility IMO.

Eric is not just duplicitious, he’s a liar. Take a look at blog entry 84 from RC:
———————————————————————————–
84BPW says:
8 Feb 2011 at 7:44 PM
Did my questions get snipped/moderated and if so, why? I should have kept a copy of my questions in case they failed to make it through. They were perfectly legitimate questions giving you a chance to explain this issue from your side rather than letting folks like myself simply take O’Donnell at his word that you acted in an unprofessional and potentially dishonest manner. Simply asking you to clarify your position.
1) Were you, as he states, one of the referees on his paper?
2) If so, do you think that the conflict of interest that would seem to come from that being the case is meaningful and if not, why not?
3) Did you, as part of your review, ask that they change their method only to later criticize that method?
Like it or not, if you don’t directly address these accusations, the impression lay people are left with is that the whole thing smacks of dishonest use of peer review.
I am not qualified to suss out the science, but i am qualified to understand O’Donnell’s accusations. I am willing to accept that there is something lost and that he is misrepresenting the situation, but if you waive away these type of questions and quash those who try to ask, what are we left to think?
[Response: Perhaps you should try thinking, instead of asking me what to think. Let me turn this question around on you: why do you take O’Donnell at his word? And now he’s my word: His allegations have no basis in fact. Now you have my word against his. Now try thinking,-eric]
———————————————————————————-
The link is here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/west-antarctica-still-warming-2/comment-page-2/#comments
Note Eric’s evasive answer. It is a lie by omission. He didn’t actually deny that he was a reviewer but the wording is intended to convince the blogger that he could be trusted (ie, I wasnt a reviewer and my comments are not conflicted).
I tried to post messages to RC seeking clarification because it was clear someone was lying. None of my posts made it past the moderator.
Aside from the fact that nothing Eric says can be relied upon, the folk at RC are behaving as though they are Gods that cannot be questioned.
RC and the Team cannot be trusted until they allow their opinions and their science to be critiqued by people outside their clique.

There are several points that I feel should be emphasized for clarity.
1. Eric Steig did not write 88 pages of review as some have mistakenly claimed, the 88 pages covers the entire review process including the author’s responses.
2. Eric Steig IS reviewer A, he has publically stated so.
3. Steig did not insist on iridge being used, however he encouraged it, and after it was used commented favourably upon that use in his 3rd review. If he had clear criticisms of the sort subsequently expressed at RC then either he has had a complete change of heart on the matter (which he should explain publicly), or he is being underhand. If he has objections, then he most certainly should have said so as a reviewer, and having not done so as a reviewer he should not do so subsequently without explanation. Simple ethics I suggest.
There are other points at issue, but these are three that seem to be widely misunderstood.

Bart Verheggen says:
February 10, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Pielke Sr. regarding Watts not being a referee on Menne et al.:
“it is completely normal, or expected even, that authors whose paper is being critized are one of the reviewers. They are most familiar with the issues, plus it enables the editor to hear both sides.”
IF EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT AND AGREES TO IT, INCLUDING THE OTHER REVIEWERS. DUH!
If there is one other person in this forum who has worked for an editor of an academic journal, they are doing a fine job of hiding that fact. People are talking about the work of editors as if they existed in Ivory Towers with a staff of 200. Editors live from hand to mouth and are constantly begging for help. They are the hardest working people in academia and they truly sacrifice their lives for their journals. An editor’s journal lives through his editorial practices and they are a direct expression of his personality. If an editor permitted a conflict of interest then he knew about it and he endorsed it. Sorry, it just does not work any other way.
Again, I am responding to a troll. If editors routinely select reviewers who have a conflict of interest then I will eat my hat. That is just plain stupid. It is another example of Ivory Tower thinking. The job of an editor is to ensure that the article is well written, will be of interest to some readers of his journal, and make no blunders that will embarrass the journal. Any editor will tell you that 80% of what is published in journals is worthless. It is published to let people show their stuff and get promotions. Editors do not have the means to determine the quality of the contribution made by an article. To suggest that they do is akin to confusing a lonely little academic office with the Pentagon.

xyzlatin says:
February 10, 2011 at 3:29 pm
What xyzlatin said. They are a pit of vipers.

The real trouble is the damage is done, Steig’swork has been BBC news , it’s been on the front page of Nature its entered the dogma of AGW. The fact it’s been proven to be rubbish does no matter unless this proof receives the same exposure, and with gate keepers on these that make Cerberus look like the Andrex puppy can anyone see that happing?
So although they have lost the science argument, and you do need to keep in mind that the ‘Team’ regard it has impossible for them to be wrong, they actual won the more important argument. All that is left now is some ‘pissing into the wind ‘exercises.

Bart Verheggen says:
February 10, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Pielke Sr. regarding Watts not being a referee on Menne et al.:
“it is completely normal, or expected even, that authors whose paper is being critized are one of the reviewers. They are most familiar with the issues, plus it enables the editor to hear both sides.”
Whether or not it was appropriate for Eric Steig to review the paper is one thing, the fact that he criticized the paper at RC without declaring he had been a reviewer was nothing more than deceitful. The article at RC was an attempt to protect his credibility which would have been utterly ineffective had his reviewer status been known when the article was posted.
Moreover, until he had been caught red handed, he acted deceptively to prevent his reviewer status from being revealed (see my post above).
People who lie have something to hide.
When is the Team and RC going to understand that an honest debate cannot be had without transperancy?
How many times do they have to be caught out before the media and our political leaders get it?
When will the moderators at RC stop acting like they are Winston Smith from George Orwells 1984?

KnR says:
February 10, 2011 at 4:18 pm
The real trouble is the damage is done, Steig’swork has been BBC news , it’s been on the front page of Nature its entered the dogma of AGW. The fact it’s been proven to be rubbish does no matter unless this proof receives the same exposure, and with gate keepers on these that make Cerberus look like the Andrex puppy can anyone see that happing?
———————————————————–
Well the BBC and Nature are going to look like right royal idiots by the time this is over.
Steig’s credibility is shot and news of his behaviour will eventually filter out.

There is very little Steig can say about this matter to remove the egg from his face and re-establish any shred of credibility he thought he had. He has been well and truly discredited as a modern snake-oil salesman…

@Phil Clarke says:
@February 10, 2011 at 4:56 pm
“Both incorrect. You haven’t actually read the documents you are describing have you?”
Well, if you define ‘read’ as looking at pictures – you might have a point. If you define ‘read’ as something that you can do with written text, then you’ll find that the O’Donnell pdf that you link to is considerably shorter that ‘Reviewer A’s initial comments. The linked O’Donnell pdf is double spaced text, about 25 pages or so, ‘Reviewer A’s comments are 14 pages single spaced.
But, then what are simple facts to those of a climatological inclination(?)

Phil Clarke says:
February 10, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Part of it was written by Steig. He began with a review of an 8 page essay that was 24 pages long.
“Both incorrect. You haven’t actually read the documents you are describing have you?”
I do not have to read it. I am corresponding with good old Real Climate Pit Bulls. I know you well. You will sit on the computer endlessly throwing up every possible detail to keep from discussing the actual issue. I explained that issue to sharper00 in great detail. He cannot find the strength to address it. Can you? Here it is:
sharper00, why do you quote me and fail to respond to the quote? Do you not understand the concept of “conflict of interest?” Let me explain. Being a reviewer means being an impartial judge. Being an impartial judge means having no personal interest in the fate of the essay that you are judging. However, the essay of O’Donnell’s that Steig judged was a criticism of Steig’s work. Given that fact, Steig should have said to the editor that I have a conflict of interest. If the editor replied that it does not matter, then Steig had a responsibility to ask if O’Donnell agreed. These questions were not answered because O’Donnell did not know that Steig was a reviewer. Therefore Steig had a conflict of interest. So, do you understand now that Steig had a conflict of interest and was morally wrong not to reveal it to all other interested parties? If this practice is common among climate scientists, then all of them are morally wrong, should admit their malfeasance, and accept the punishment. You do not engage in this practice, do you?

The bottom line that has been lost in the fog of this war is that Antarctica isn’t warming as much as is claimed, and most of the statistically significant warming is confined to the peninsula.

Correct me if I am wrong, but (except for the south pole) isn’t the peninsula where all the western scientists are? Leading me to. . .
…a legitimate question: Any chance this is UHI of some sort? Has anyone considered this possibility, if for no other reason than to rule it out?

The bottom line that has been lost in the fog of this war is that Antarctica isn’t warming as much as is claimed, and most of the statistically significant warming is confined to the peninsula.

Actually that’s not correct, as I understand it. The O’Donnell et al paper simply points out that the Steig et al paper’s methods are wrong/misleading. They make no claim as to the correctness of what the climate down there is actually doing.

Theo Goodwin says “this exchange goes on for 88 pages”.
Come on people – this on its own sounds the alarm bells. Do all global warming papers create such nonsense?
If I was responsible for the review process I would quickly go to plan b because plan a sucked.

Joel Shore sez:
“When your team loses, blame it all on the referees!”
The team which is losing is the one which:
A) Fraudulently invented The Laughable Hockey Stick
B) Has been thoroughly discredited
C) Has utterly failed to get the public to fall for their ruse
D) Does NOT have the science on their side
So, Joel — I get it…
I guess all you have left is to blame the referees — we, the unpaid volunteer scientists who participate in open and honest forums such as WUWT (as opposed to the — of necessity — heavily censored forums such as the laughable joke known as RealClimate.org).
But, you see, Joel, it’s too late…
Your totalitarian political religious cult is already dead and buried — you just don’t know it yet. But, you’re sorta blind that way.

racookpe1978
I agree completely with you.
May I quote you?
There is a much larger issue at stake here and that is – “how should articles submitted for publication be handled?”
I am not a scientist but nevertheless am attempting to draft some rules for journal of record.
I intend to publish these on the web for critism and improvement.
I nievely hope that in this way the situation can be materially improved.
My blog is called most imaginatively – wait for it – “ausiedan.com”
My tentative launch date is 1st March, but I confidently predict that the actual date will be later.

Eric Steig has totally lost it, mentally and emotionally. I really hope he recovers…I’m sure some of his peers are appalled and concerned by his erratic behavior.
Meanwhile, as congress looks to cut back the federal budget by $100 billion, I can see the climate ca$h beginning to evaporate. Unfortunately, the politically-connected “scientists” at place like NOAA and NASA-GISS will still manage to get their funding to carry on their wasteful and redundant projects…How much are we paying for the IPCC AR5 work, for example??

The fact that the Team at Real Climate now feels compelled to engage with the far larger, more educated and better informed WUWT community, says to me that the forces of enlightenment are beginning to win the war. The pernicious AGW movement is dying…but let’s not underestimate the amount or the toxicity of the venom left in this viper.
Jack

To a non-scientist but with many years of involvement in various professional and community organisations, I find the attitude and actions of ‘The Team’ and those who administer the ‘Real Climate’ blog to be both utterly and stunningly self-serving and dishonest. It takes very little research among the many easily-available sources of information about the topic of conflicted interests to realise that the rules are very simple and easily understanable. The first rule is that if you merely even suspect that you may have a conflict of interest in any proceedings, you walk away from that conflict while stating clearly why you are walking away.
The Team and its apologists have a continuing history of behaving disgracefully – no amount of verbal sleight-of-hand can excuse inexcusable behaviour.

I presume that when Steig’s response is drafted and submitted, Ryan O’ or Jeff Id etc. will be invited to take up that Reviewer A spot.
N0, you don’t think so?

Officer: Sir, I saw you run the stop sign and kill the pedestrian whose body lies beneath your car.
Steig (Mann, Jones, Hansen, Schmidt, any of ’em): Officer, you say that like it is a bad thing.

KenB: February 11, 2011 at 4:00 am
Excuse the pedantry but a petard is a small bomb used for blowing in doors and similar applications by engineers or sappers so no thrusting involved.
‘For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon:…’

Nigel , yes this is the definition of petard, yet in these climate wars the small bombs are the papers, formal and online, so the metaphore is fine is it not. The more these team members, as identified by the Wegman report, own work is brought into the light of day, the more their own work condems itself, and it is clear they do not like the light. (self goal is perhaps another metaphore)
Joel Shore for example, after attacking and making assertions without evidence, has run away from the thread without response to the rebuttal posts, really I am sorry to harshly say, much like a child.

A special thought for sharperoo

The assertions being made that –
“This whole incident illustrates exactly why authors of competing scientific papers should not be reviewers of other papers critical of their own.”
Seems to indicate an egregious, and somewhat ridiculous, unfamiliarity with the way scientific papers are reviewed and published.
It is common practice, and considered good practice, if a paper contains controversial elements to find a reviewer who takes a critical and opposing view of the matter.
If the paper explicitly or implicitly addresses the work of another researcher and takes a critical view of that work then it would be considered BAD practice NOT to invite that researcher to be one of the reviewers
The comments here implying that reviewers should be impartial or that it is somehow like jury selection represent a fundamental error in understanding how scientific publishing and peer review operate.
The last thing an editor is looking for are neutral reviewers, the whole point of the process is to expose the potential paper to knowledgeable and strong criticism.
Given that the O’Donnell et al paper was explicitly critical of the Steig et al paper it would have been a grave error NOT to have one of the Seig et al paper authors as a reviewer.

I presume that when Steig’s response is drafted and submitted, Ryan O’ or Jeff Id etc. will be invited to take up that Reviewer A spot.
N0, you don’t think so?
Oh I doubt it, given the contempt with which O’ Donnell et al have treated the accepted journal publishing conventions, and Ryan’s “flexible” ethics. Here is John Nielsen-Gammon:-
“Announcing the identity of the anonymous reviewer was wrong in and of itself. The seriousness of the offense deepens to the extent that the author also reveals some of the content of the review. Revealing the identity of the reviewer while simultaneously publishing the complete content of the reviews makes this particular ethical violation as bad as possible.”
More here http://blogs.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/02/on_revealing_the_identity_of_reviewers.html
And as private mail is now apparently fair game, here is a mail from Ryan to Eric Steig:-
“Thank you for your candor, and I will not violate the confidence of the review process. … I give my word that I will not quote from the reviews. I will only paraphrase ”
Remind me, the all-important issue here is Eric Steig’s alleged duplicity? Have I got that right?

Phil,
You’re not getting it. Ryan isn’t saying “We were tricked into making a bad choice in using iridge”; Ryan is saying it is unethical to suggest a methodology as a private reviewer, then attack that methodology in public.
This makes Eric wrong on two counts, really; duplicity, and publicly attacking a statistical method that he isn’t enough of statistician to understand.

Smokey says:

The promoters of the catastrophic AGW conjecture usually run and hide out from any debate. On the couple of occasions that they argued their case in a real debate, the alarmist side was soundly spanked by their skeptical opponents [and speaking of poor losers, Gavin Schmidt blamed his debate loss on the fact that his opponent, Michael Crichton, was taller than him!].

You are just proving my point. The folks that I linked to in my previous post argue the exact same thing: Another common tactic of losers in the scientific debate is try to move the debate out of the scientific journals and into the public venue where the “winners” are generally those who have the best debating skills and are willing to be most cavalier with the truth, not those who have the science on their side. This is another lesson gleaned from studying other ideologically-controversial scientific theories such those about human origins.
Really, you guys who are climate change skeptics ought to read what “evolution skeptics” write just so you don’t blindly repeat all of their same arguments. It does your cause little good with anyone even slightly acquainted with how things have proceeded in these other areas. I suggest you rent the movie “Expelled”…I am sure you can get it on DVD now.

Smokey says:

Thank you for acknowledging that the winners of the few debates that have been held are scientific skeptics.

I haven’t kept track of who has “won” or “lost” but I thought it might give you pause that you are advocating a technique of adjudicating scientific disagreements that would lead to the conclusion that the evolution conjecture has been debunked. Maybe I overestimate you?

Joel Shore originally said:
“When your team loses, blame it all on the referees!”
More recently Joel suggests he is among those “who have the science on their side”.
Hey! Joel! I’ll challenge you AGAIN with the FACTS:
Click here and tell me which team — despite the self-described propaganda from so-called “journalists” — is CLEARLY losing (because they do not have the science on their side).

Garry (February 12, 2011 at 9:36 am),
When chasing research money (an age old game which I too have witnessed first hand), it is very, very, very clear that the climate charlatans just stick their collective fingers in the (flatulent) breeze and make it up as they go.

Smokey says:

You were the one who instigated the discussion about debates, by wrongly claiming that skeptics were the “losers in the scientific debate.”

I was talking about the scientific debate that occurs in the scientific literature, which is where real scientific debate actually takes place. And, as for who has won and lost, basically every serious scientific authority on the planet has weighed in on that, ranging from the IPCC, to the NAS and the academies of all the other major industrial nations, the various scientific societies like AGU, AMS, APS, etc., etc.

Now you’re arguing the evolution red herring – something I’ve never expressed an opinion about. Kill that straw man, Joel! Kill it! Then declare victory.

What I am trying to illustrate to you is that if your method of adjudicating scientific debates would tell you that both evolution and AGW are “debunked hypotheses” then your method is not a good one (unless you believe that both of these statements are correct…and then, frankly, there’s nothing I can do). Is there something about that which is difficult for you to comprehend?

Joel (the arrogant elitist) Shore sez:
“And, as for who has won and lost, basically every serious scientific authority on the planet has weighed in on that, ranging from the IPCC…[blah, blah, blah]”
Really? Seriously? You STILL consider the utterly, thoroughly and entirely discredited IPCC to be a “serious scientific authority”? Well, there goes any credibility you ever imagined you had.
As for the rest of the purely political bureaucrats purporting to represent the scientists who are members of their various organizations, click here and bust the single biggest LIE in the entire CAGW fraud.

SBVOR says:

Should I seek a refund from the professors who taught me statistics as a graduate student studying Environmental Science?

I don’t know because I have no way of knowing if the problem was with the teacher, student, or some interaction of the two.

Do you have any evidence of ballot stuffing?

One very strong piece of evidence that such things occurred is by comparing the numbers from this screen capture: http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/26/scientific-american-jumps-the-shark-online-polls-judith-curry/ to the final numbers. There is no way that such differences could be accounted for by random fluctuations…It shows that the distribution of the underlying population participating in the poll changed dramatically.
Of course, given the nature of the poll, there is no reason to take it seriously whatsoever. As you admit, it did not attempt to be scientific in any way. Worse than that, it is not even clear what underlying population they were trying to represent… Was it scientists themselves, was it Sci Am readers specifically, or was it anybody who found out from postings on various blogs etc. that such a poll existed and felt motivated to take it?

Heaven forbid that we should consider the opinion of the average American! I forgot, you so-called “Progressives” favor a dictatorship of the elite (presuming to speak for the proletariat).

Democracy does not mean the everyone’s opinion on every matter is worthy of carrying the same weight as everyone else’s opinion. If you get sick, do you submit your symptoms to a website and have the public vote on what they think your medical problem is?
The idea behind democracy is everyone should have an equal vote in deciding things that are matters of competing values and interests. To suggest that democracies should not have policy decisions also informed by expert scientific judgment is a strange idea that I doubt you would accept across the board.

Fine, you want the opinion of scientists, chew on this. When you’re done, chew on a whole lot more.

You think that the Oregon petition is a serious poll? Strange that a conservative would endorse a poll in the style of an old Soviet-style election: Bombard people with propaganda and then only count the votes of those who vote YES in agreement with it. (And, make no attempt to determine the qualifications of these people to weigh in on the subject.)

How curious (or NOT) that you did not cite even ONE example. SHOW ME!

Here http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html is a poll that was done reasonably scientifically, although there are still issues with exactly who the sample is composed of. (In particular, it is scientists who are members of one or the other of the AGU or AMS but are not necessarily experts on climate science specifically.) It was also done by an organization that has a reputation of tilting toward the right.
Here is another study that was done with more of an attempt to ascertain the expertise of those polled http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf and to see how the opinions correlated to the expertise.

By this, you mean to say you only trust the opinion of those parasites who are cynically robbing the rest of us while feeding at the boundless gravy train of this particular government trough — are you such a parasite?

Yes, because it is perfectly logical to believe that the entire scientific enterprise has been corrupted and that climate scientists are just in it for the money and that we can’t trust any of the respected scientific organizations but have to instead to our trust over to right-wing and libertarian-think-tanks and advocacy groups (and the few scientists who agree with them that they promote), who the only ones willing to speak the truth.

Fine, start with this one item — the obvious explanation for the rise and fall of BOTH the global cooling fraud AND the global warming fraud. Sometimes — unlike CO2 simplicity — the natural cycle explanation really is JUST THAT SIMPLE!

Short answer: Correlation is not causation. In this case, AMO contains information about the global average temperature that linear detrending cannot eliminate. So, what the data is telling you is that the Atlantic is warmer when the global temperature is warmer, not the direction that the correlation goes. (See here for more: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/amo/ )

Joel (the arrogant elitist) Shore sez:
1) “There is no way that such differences could be accounted for by random fluctuations”
A) Are we talking about temperatures or polls? LOL!
B) When the notorious propagandist Joe Romm posted his (possibly doctored?) screen captures, 738 people had allegedly responded and 56.1% indicated the IPCC was corrupt. That, in itself, is damning enough. But, as usual, your own “evidence” destroys your own case. One would think that after Romm alerted his lemmings to the poll that the ballot box would be stuffed by like-minded lunatics.
Instead, once 7,028 responded, the final tally indicated 83.8% thought the IPCC was corrupt. Now, if you think 10% of the vote can predict what the remaining 90% will say, then I cannot even begin to overcome your ignorance of statistics. LOL!
2) “Democracy does not mean… [blah, blah, blah]”
A) Ours is a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Democracy.
B) Your tyranny of the utterly corrupt elite is already in full swing (for now). The Far Left EPA bureaucrats are tyrannically imposing upon the American people what even a Far Left Dim Senate was unwilling to impose.
3) “You think that the Oregon petition is a serious poll?”>
You still playing that tired old smear campaign propaganda card?
Obviously, you did not bother to read the thorough debunking of your pure unadulterated CRAP!
You can lie and lie and lie until your teeth fall out — it will NEVER change the FACT that the overwhelming majority of scientists around the world do NOT support your tyrannical move to regulate CO2. I am one such scientist.
4) “Here http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html is a poll that was done reasonably scientifically”
The primary conclusion (in the very first sentence) is that “eight out of ten American climate scientists believe that human activity contributes to global warming”. I’m surprised it is that low. As I indicate in my post on the subject, I agree with that conclusion. The problem with purely political propagandists such as yourself is that this conclusion is typically conflated to presume that each of these scientists ALSO believe CO2 should be regulated. I notice your poll did not even ask that most critical question — the Oregon petition addressed precisely that (and, that is precisely why you purely political propagandists are so inclined to dishonestly smear the Oregon petition and anybody who gets near it).
5) “Here is another study that was done with more of an attempt to ascertain the expertise of those polled http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf”
Once again, the polling did not address the central question — should CO2 be regulated. See my comments in the previous section.
6) “Yes, because it is perfectly logical to believe that the entire scientific enterprise has been corrupted”
Not the entire scientific enterprise, primarily climate science. Isn’t it amazing what $100 BILLION can buy?
If only Exxon could have matched that purchasing power — alas, they were NEVER even remotely close to being in the same ballpark. You see — Exxon provides humanity with an enormously useful product. The Climate Science cabal is — for the most part — a blood sucking vampire threatening to destroy and enslave all of human civilization.
7) “So, what the data is telling you is that the Atlantic is warmer when the global temperature is warmer”
Are you seriously arguing that AGW drives the AMO? If so, you’re nuttier than I thought!
8) “Yes, because an authority summarizing the scientific literature is discredited if you can find any paper in the scientific literature that reached a conclusion any different than what the authority [the IPCC] reached”
Typical propaganda — characterizing a preponderance of evidence (there are currently 36 posts under that link) as a one off mistake.
HELL! The so-called “leader” of the IPCC has NO academic background in ANY branch of science!
9) “Yes, because it makes more sense to believe that all the major scientific organizations in the world have been taken over by bureaucrats that say things diametrically opposed to the rank-and-file”
Sorry…
As a scientist, I rely upon data. And, there is no data to the contrary. The only available data indicate that the bureaucrats issuing the various (all over the map) statements regarding AGW do NOT represent the views of the scientists who belong to their organizations. If you have evidence to the contrary, SHOW ME!

SBVOR says:

No…
I think it is a serious petition. If you don’t know the difference between a poll and a petition then I don’t know where to begin in even assessing the profundity of your level of ignorance! LOL!

And, yet you have used this petition to somehow conclude that “the overwhelming majority of scientists around the world do NOT support your tyrannical move to regulate CO2”. How exactly did you get from the petition to your conclusion?

Again, petitions — by DESIGN — only count those who sign it! Are you seriously suggesting that every petition is “Soviet-style”? You would be hilarious if you weren’t so damn scary!

Well, what I would say is that petitions are pretty much meaningless. However, when they solicit signatures by a mass-mailing of the petition along with a letter signed by a former very elderly head of the National Academy of Sciences along with a “paper” that is formatted to make it look like a paper from the Proceedings of the NAS but is in fact just a bunch of deceptive propaganda that would never be published in a serious journal, then yes, I think that “Soviet-style” is an apt description.
Below is a discussion of the process by which the Oregon petition was circulated written by Robert Park in his “What’s New” column read primarily by fellow physicists. Park is the founder of the American Physical Society’s Office of Public Affairs, author of the book “Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud” and, while certainly opinionated, his opinions are motivated by a desire to defend science wherever he sees it attacked and he regularly takes on both conservatives and liberals.

One of the purported abuses cited in the minority staff report involved the insertion into an EPA report of a reference to a paper by Soon and Baliunas that denies global warming (WN 1 Aug 03). To appreciate its significance, we need to go back to March of 1998. We all got a petition card in the mail urging the government to reject the Kyoto accord (WN 13 Mar 98). The cover letter was signed by “Frederick Seitz, Past President, National Academy of Sciences.” Enclosed was what seemed to be a reprint of a journal article, in the style and font of Proceedings of the NAS. But it had not been published in PNAS, or anywhere else. The reprint was a fake. Two of the four authors of this non- article were Soon and Baliunas. The other authors, both named Robinson, were from the tiny Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in Cave Junction, OR. The article claimed that the environmental effects of increased CO2 are all beneficial. There was also a copy of Wall Street Journal op-ed by the Robinsons (father and son) that described increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as “a wonderful and unexpected gift of the industrial revolution.” There was no indication of who had paid for the mailing. It was a dark episode in the annals of scientific discourse.

(from http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN03/wn080803.html )

Joel (the purely political propagandist) Shore sez:
“And, yet you have used this petition to somehow conclude that “the overwhelming majority of scientists around the world do NOT support your tyrannical move to regulate CO2″. How exactly did you get from the petition to your conclusion?”
First, let’s remember that the question is whether a majority of scientists favor the regulation of CO2.
Again, as a scientist, I rely upon data — not conjecture, rhetoric, propaganda, bureaucrats dishonestly purporting to speak for scientists, etc.
The fact is that the preponderance of data support my conclusion (as does the absence of data to the contrary).
You see…
If you had data to the contrary, you would cite it. Lacking such data, you resort to cheap smear campaigns in a pathetic attempt to discredit the unassailable (and enormously “inconvenient”) data which demolish your purely political propaganda.
Furthermore…
If you truly believe that the cream of the crop of American scientists can be as easily duped as you suggest, then you must have a pretty low opinion of your fellow scientists — an observation which only serves to further confirm your arrogant elitist attitude (typical of all so-called “Progressives”).
Click here for some basic climate change science.
Click here to debunk the hysteria topic by topic.

Joel (the purely political propagandist) sez:
1) “First of all, who said that they are the cream of the crop?”
Answer: Lawrence Solomon of the National Post (as reposted in the Financial Post):
“Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who’s who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity.”
2) “That seems only to have become THE question [do a majority of scientists favor regulating CO2] because I haven’t found a scientific poll of scientists that asked that specific question.”
Uh, no…
As it happens, that is the 45 TRILLION dollar question — by FAR the most relevant of all! But, count on that estimate being low by at LEAST a full order of magnitude.
Didn’t we waste ENOUGH money on the Kyoto insanity? Hell! Even the New York Times admits Kyoto was an abysmal failure.
And now, you MORONS want to utterly, totally and completely WASTE $45 TRILLION in the ludicrous belief that we can micromanage climate change? Are you NUTS?
Face facts! Your totalitarian political religious cult is DEAD & BURIED! The AMO created it and the AMO killed it!
3) “Nonsense. That data doesn’t support your conclusion at all. That you think it does just reveals how utterly divorced some conservative ideologues like yourself seem to have become from the reality-based community.”
Still resorting to your pathetic smear campaign? I have presented my data as well as the quantitative debunking of the typical bogus claim from your team.
WHERE is the data which proves YOUR case? Oh, sorry, you’ve GOT NONE! That is why time after time after time you stoop to the pathetic, childish smear campaign — it’s ALL YOU’VE GOT!

Joel (the purely political propagandist) sez:
“The poll also shows that ‘41% of [climate] scientists believe global climate change will pose a very great danger to the earth in the next 50 to 100 years, compared to 13% who see relatively little danger. Another 44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous.’ Do you agree with this?”
1) These are absurdly meaningless questions. The climate is constantly changing and those changes constantly present challenges (aka dangers). But, relative to the last 423,000 years or the last 600 million years, the next 50 to 100 years will — without a doubt — be one of the most climatically STABLE periods in the history of the planet. Whatever climate change will be witnessed will be entirely beyond our control — Kyoto proved that.
The AMO cycle ensures that the flat temperature trend of the last 16 years will continue roughly through 2018, at which point we will see a substantial multidecadal cooling trend similar to the period from 1945 through 1979.
And, yes…
That multidecadal cooling trend will present challenges and dangers.
2) Again, this poll deliberately ignores the 45 TRILLION dollar question — should government regulate CO2? Why do the pollsters ignore the single MOST important question? Because they KNOW the answer — NO! All of the available evidence points in that direction.
3) Click here to understand why climate scientists (supposedly) respond as they do. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Again, the ONLY scientists qualified to OBJECTIVELY evaluate the climate science are those who are NOT financially dependent upon perpetuating the single greatest fraud EVER perpetrated upon the human race!
Click here for some basic climate change science.
Click here to debunk the hysteria topic by topic.

SBVOR says:

1) These are absurdly meaningless questions. The climate is constantly changing and those changes constantly present challenges (aka dangers). But, relative to the last 423,000 years or the last 600 million years, the next 50 to 100 years will — without a doubt — be one of the most climatically STABLE periods in the history of the planet.

Well, the latter is your own opinion, apparently not shared by most of the scientists, who believe the change will present moderate to very great dangers.

The AMO cycle ensures that the flat temperature trend of the last 16 years will continue roughly through 2018, at which point we will see a substantial multidecadal cooling trend similar to the period from 1945 through 1979.

Nonsense…from beginning to end, including the temperature trend being flat for the last 16 years.

3) Click here to understand why climate scientists (supposedly) respond as they do. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yes, because people go into climate science for the lucrativeness of it. They don’t care about the science and will gladly falsify it so they don’t have to do something less lucrative like be a doctor, lawyer, or CEO of a multinational corporation.
Fortunately, there are the coal companies and right-wing think-tanks that have only our best interests at heart and can be relied upon to give us the scientific truth when the scientists won’t.

Joel (the purely political propagandist) sez:
“Nonsense…from beginning to end, including the temperature trend being flat for the last 16 years.”
That (and more) is proof positive that Joel is a fringe lunatic denier.
Phil Jones (chief charlatan of the CAGW cult) is my source from right at a year ago and the current satellite data confirm — now that the 2010 el Niño is history — the flat trend continues.
Will you also deny the report from NOAA:
“The trend in the ENSO-related component for 1999–2008 is +0.08±0.07°C decade, fully accounting for the overall observed trend. The trend after removing ENSO (the ‘ENSO-adjusted’ trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade.”
Peer reviewed science suggests that (owing to the AMO) the trend will remain flat through about 2018.
More peer reviewed science supports my multi-decadal view.
That’s (probably) my last comment for this thread. Joel is simply regurgitating the same tired old unsubstantiated purely political propaganda/rhetoric. There is no point in wasting any more of my time on a fringe lunatic denier of peer reviewed science and even the proclamations of the leader of his own cabal.

SBVOR: Your last post is an extremely impressive example of how people who desperately want to believe something will produce junk science by cobbling together stuff in ridiculous ways! It is worth preserving for the simple purpose of being such a splendid example of this technique.
You basically misquote and take out-of-context a statement by Phil Jones, combine it together with a statement taken completely out-of-context by NOAA and then produce something that is diametrically in contradiction to the larger point that either one of them was making. You quote the part where NOAA discusses the 10-year trend and then leave out the part where they note that simulation with climate models forced by greenhouse gases show this same sort of variability in 10-year trends to be a common feature of the models. They conclude that:

The simulations also produce an average increase of 2.0°C in twenty-first century global temperature, demonstrating that recent observational trends are not sufficient to discount predictions of substantial climate change and its significant and widespread impacts.

The NOAA folks do say that the models don’t predict zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more and you seem to think that this along with Jones’ statement means that the data contradict the model predictions. However, you have completely misunderstood what Jones has said….He has not said that the data show zero trend over 15 years, which is good, since they very clearly do not show that. Here are plots of various data sets (over 16 years, so as to be consistent with your earlier claims):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1995/trend/plot/uah/from:1995/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1995/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend
All of them, including UAH show a serious warming trend. All that Jones is saying is that, due to the necessarily large errorbars in trend analyses over such short time periods, this positive trend has large enough errorbars that a zero trend cannot quite be ruled out at the 95% confidence level. (Although others like tamino have pointed out that it probably can be with somewhat more sophisticated data analysis techniques.) However, neither can a trend of presumably about double the amount observed, which would put us on a quite terrifying warming course. It is just a statement about the large uncertainties associated with trends in such data sets.
If you don’t understand the distinctions here, then you are utterly incapable of having even the rudimentary statistical understanding to analyze the data and yet that doesn’t seem to stop you from making ridiculous pronouncements on your blog.
I also love how you selectively use Keenlyside to support your point of view without an understanding that their whole paper (which, by the way, has received a skeptical reception by scientists in the field for excellent reasons) is predicated on the basic notion that the significant AGW is occurring and will continue to occur. However, you have uncritically accepted the part of Keenlyside that you like and discarded the rest, in the typical fashion of someone who is promulgating junk science.
You still haven’t answered my question of what field you are actually a practicing scientist in. Your posts have really made me question if you are at all…Certainly, it can’t be in one that requires any sort of serious quantitative data analysis.
It is really sad to see people with such ideological blinders that they find it necessary to attack science with nonsense and voodoo (as Bob Park would call it) in order to further their ideological ends.
Smokey says:

Fortunately, scientific skeptics are largely immune from CD,

Smokey,
Frankly you wouldn’t know what true skepticism is if it came up and bit you in the behind. You are the furthest thing from a true scientific skeptic as one could possibly be and your abuse of the term to describe yourself is painful for any serious scientist to see.
I’ll give you this though…Cognitive dissonance is something that you must be a world renowned expert on from personal experience!

SBVOR: You are just repeating again the nonsense that you had in your previous post. Alas, it doesn’t get more sensible on repetition.
So, here I’ll try to keep it simple: The NOAA statement is a statement about the ***best-fit trend*** not being zero over a 15-year period. The Jones statement is a statement about whether the 2-sigma error bars in a quite strongly positive best-fit trend are nonetheless still not quite small enough to completely rule out a trend of zero. That is not a statement about what the best fit trend is…but a statement about the error bars surrounding that trend. You can’t equate one to the other…not even remotely. It is statistical nonsense.
By the way, computing the error bars for trends in correlated data is not trivial…and whether you can get better trends by trying to factor out some of the factors contributing to the “noise” on top of the trend is another thing. So, one can quibble about whether Jones’ statement about not being able to rule out a zero trend at the 95%-confidence level is even correct. However, even assuming that it is, you can’t cobble together what Jones said with what NOAA said to produce the conclusion that you have; Your conclusion is entirely an artifact of your poor understanding of statistics.