Two developments suggest that Cook et al 2013 Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature may be soon be headed for “retraction watch”, since serious problems with the data are becoming evident, which when accounted for bring the 97% consensus figure into question.
First, there are new issues with the search system used to gather the papers, as Shub Niggurath explains at Bishop Hill:
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The climate change literature comprises well over hundred thousand articles and books. Cook et al’s strategy was to focus on papers directly related to “global warming” or “global climate change” in Web of Science. Here’s how they describe it:
In March 2012, we searched the ISI Web of Science for papers published from 1991–2011 using topic searches for ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’. Article type was restricted to ‘article’, excluding books, discussions, proceedings papers and other document types.
A Web of Science search performed following the authors’ description to the letter actually returns 30,940 entries, not 12,464. Excluding the ‘Arts and Humanities Citation Index’ (A&HCI), this becomes 30,876. This is when search phrases are not enclosed in double-quotes (i.e., ‘global warming’ instead of “global warming”).
Scopus is an academic database covering technical, medical, and social science disciplines. Surprisingly, when Scopus is searched using the correct search phrases, a total of 19,417 entries are retrieved. A Web of Knowledge search returns ~21,488 records. These figures are 7473 records (Scopus) and ~9544 records (Web of Knowledge) greater than what Cook et al eventually analysed.
More here:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/landmark-consensus-study-is-incomplete.html
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Second, more authors are now reporting that their papers were categorized improperly:
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Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
“Certainly not correct and certainly misleading. The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC.” – Dr. Morner
“I am sure that this rating of no position on AGW by CO2 is nowhere accurate nor correct. Rating our serious auditing paper from just a reading of the abstract or words contained in the title of the paper is surely a bad mistake.” – Dr. Soon
“No, if Cook et al’s paper classifies my paper, ‘A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change’ as “explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize,” nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper.” – Dr. Carlin
more here: http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2
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Anthony, shouldn’t your title be “… continues to fall apart”?!
The very fact that such a paper exists in such sloppy form points to the insecure desperation of the whole damn cult. Desperate to bolster their standing as scientists with an axe to grind, er, consensus, they’ll resort to full-on garbage science, a.k.a. too damned lazy to do the actual research.
Sizzling science from the very best. Cook et al. 2013 cites Lewandowsky et al. 2012.
It really can’t get any more rigorous than that can it?
Odd to search for “global climate change” but not the more common “climate change”. There should also be a problem in omitting synonyms for “global”.
Someone tweet Obama please…
Whoa, papers from Morner and Soon were classified as supporting AGW? you don’t have to read the abstract, let alone the content, to know these papers likely completely reject the notion all together.
For papers from the rest, you might want to read the abstract once to confirm it’s not supporting AGW.
Cook is finding it much harder adjusting the opinions and conclusions of scientists, than adjusting the data.
What do you mean “starting” to fall apart? I don’t think anything was ever built by this. I wouldn’t give Cook et al Lego to play with, they’d just choke on it 😉
“Nobody is more qualified to judge a paper’s intent than the actual scientists who authored the paper. ”
-John Cook.
Anonymoose,
Cook et al admit that a search for “climate change” in Web of Science will bring up more papers. For instance, they say they found 43,650 papers in Web of Science. Searching Scopus with the same phrase, (1991-2011 range, English language, document type ‘Article’, published in journals) returns 55,606 articles. A search in Web of Knowledge returns 63,213 entries. Repeating the authors’ exact search terms on Web of Science brings up 46,797 papers. As can be seen, *all* these results are thousands to tens of thousands more than what Cook et al report, This is evidence for a systematic bias/deficiency in the authors’ search. Their searching misses enormous swathes of literature that are fully qualified to be included in the study, which did not get included simply because the authors don’t know how to use and report academic literature database searches.
It appears Dana Nuccittelli has admitted on Twitter that they did not use Web of Science but Science Citation Index which is a subset of Web of Science.
Cynically, does this really matter? The headlines have been published, which is all they really wanted, whos going to headline a retraction?
Even if someone wrote the story, somehow, I can’t see any editor in the MSM running with
SUPPORT FOR CLIMATE CONSENSUS RETRACTED, SCIENTISTS FUDGED DATA
Nice though that would be!
Their Web of Science search is very poor as it only searches the title and abstracts of the papers for those key phrases not the entire body and excludes scientifically valid ‘review’ papers by using the ‘articles’ document type.
Every single response I have received has been that the author’s paper was falsely classified.
Ric, the Morner and Soon papers were falsely classified as “No Position on AGW”. Carlin’s was falsely classified as “Explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize”.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2
I am sure Dana will be along to tell us that he knows more about the papers than the authors.
I saw the title and wondered why this was re-posted.
Guess it is a new post.
But they will still show up and say we have screwed things up, Dana/Cook rated the abstracts, authors were asked to rate their own papers, we are conflating things by having authors complain about the abstract ratings, not the paper ratings. Or something like that.
To get it out of the way early, what is the solid defense against such bloviating?
One of the main issues with the paper hasn’t been properly addressed.
What is the consensus ?
The funny thing is, that the word “consensus” is found a gazillion times on the project website, but nowhere a defintion of the consensus as used in the study.
You will find that definition only, if you do the test by yourself, or from somewbody else who did it.
The highest class of consensus (which was actually barely populated) is an explicit statement of some sort “that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).”
Actually, this is NOT the IPCC consensus.
It is IPCC consensus, that AGW has caused almost 100% of warming on all timescales since 1750.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/ScreenShot2012-12-13at43419PM_zps4a925dbf.png
(e.g. subtract the 1750-2011 and 1750-1980 bars to get “recent” 1980-2011)
Further, if you anyone attributes 40% to the sun and 60% to AGW he will certainly be labelled a climate change denier but at the same time in the highest AGW endorsing group. .Same story for 40% to ocean currents.
I can’t think ever of a supposed “study” in an area of physical science which amounted in effect to little more than an opinion poll, based on subjective standards at that. Continuing to resort to PR tactics such as this, ultimately must alert more and more thinking individuals to the true political nature of so-called the so called “science” behind AGW
Please accept my apology for the unacceptable editing error above.
It’s pretty useless doing those searches in the first place. If a paper is about, for example, the Indian Ocean Dipole, it is unlikely to contain the words ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’, yet its findings may have a bearing on AGW. A quick search for “indian Ocean Dipole” listed several papers. The first was neutral on AGW, although it was based only on climate models. The second was http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Paper/12324824, which identified inter alia a negative cloud feedback. So although it expressed no opinion on AGW (why on earth would it?) its findings nevertheless may indicate that AGW theory (which depends on positive cloud feedback) is incorrect. I didn’t look at any more papers. I am sure that other searches would often yield similar results.
What this indicates is that John Cook’s searches and paper are a waste of time, his figures are unreliable, and in any case they are meaningless. In the final analysis, only the scientific evidence matters.
This was post re scepticism was going so well on Randi’s site until the mention of Sceptical Science.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/2129-science-communication-is-about-knowing-who-youre-talking-to.html
James Randi’s site is not about skepticism if the topic is climate change.
If the science is settled and there is a massive consensus for CAGW then why is so much money being spent on researching it ?
Surely, if the science is settled, there is nothing more to research ?
Shub Niggurath said on May 27, 2013 at 10:58 pm:
For those unfamiliar with those:
http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/science_citation_index/
Looks like you’ve got to be attached to a university for online access, staff or student.
I’m getting wonderful flashbacks from the 1980’s, of wandering through the university libraries, pulling out the massive tomes of citations on the main floor, hoping that this was the right search word to provide relevant info, then scribbling down the info on a slip from the many small piles of scrap paper, followed by heading off to the periodicals or perhaps other stacks, through the narrow passageways, the many flights of steps, hoping the reference is there, is relevant, while guesstimating the photocopying charges…
Today people do a Google search and call it good. If you ask them to search more rigorously, they’ll also check Bing.
Any polling of scientists should segment them into three groups:
1. Actively practicing whose publication record is always on the side of warming and whose funders fund ‘warming’ studies to a far greater degree than ‘skeptical’ studies.
2. Actively practicing whose publication record is skeptical or even handed and whose funders either fund ‘skeptical’ science to a far greater degree or fund both sides of the argument in a dispassionate, even-handed manner.
3. Retired scientists not in need of grant funding to continue their careers.
A fourth group could also be surveyed, namely those with sufficient expertise to judge the matter professionally but whose career is not intimately linked to funding of climate science.
That would be an illuminating survey, wouldn’t it??
I wonder who is scientific enough, rigorous enough, dispassionate enough, honest enough and financially strong enough to carry it out correctly??
Today people do a Google search and call it good. If you ask them to search more rigorously, they’ll also check Bing.”
Hey, that works… if you are into ‘trivial pirsuit’.. ! 🙂
And AW, how can something that is as tenous and thin as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, fall any further apart ?
The survey should be narrower and deeper. I.e., it should survey only a random sample of the literature (say, papers whose #1 author’s name begins with a certain letter or pair of letters), and it should look at the content of the article, not just the abstract.
Second, papers dealing only with impact and mitigation should be excluded, or at least scored separately. It is those papers, whose non-expert opinion is nearly universally warmist, that contribute so much to the “97%” figure that’s bandied about.
And totally off-topic.. where does that black line think its going ??
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png