A Black Day For Science – PNAS publishes a paper based on a skeptic blacklist
It doesn’t get much uglier than this. A stasi-esque master list of skeptical scientists and bloggers, with ratings put together by a “scientist” that rants against the very people he rates on his blog. Meet the author, Jim Prall here. And he uses this for a peer reviewed paper. What next? Will we have to wear yellow badges to climate science conferences?
We don’t need no stinking badges. Here’s a sample of coverage:
Scientists who believe in man-made climate change are more esteemed than those who actively oppose the concept, according to a new paper. But experts said the paper divides scientists into artificial groups, does not consider a balanced spectrum of scientists, and is inherently biased due to the nature of the peer review process.
…
Judith Curry, a climate expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology – who was not part of the analysis – called the study “completely unconvincing” while John Christy of University of Alabama claimed he and other climate sceptics included in the survey were simply “being blacklisted” by colleagues.
–Nick Collins, The Daily Telegraph
So what does this new paper measure exactly? Hell if I know. But it is clear that in the climate debate there are good guys and there are bad guys, and to tell them apart, it is important to have a list. A black list. — Roger Pielke Jr at his blog
It is a blacklist. It’s also hilariously wrong. It is a black day for science and shows that there are people more stupid than Ken Cuccinelli. — Thomas Fuller, Environmental Policy Examiner
Olen says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:27 am
From WUWT’s Anthony Watts to Lubos Motl, you can check it at:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/skeptic_authors_table.html
This “blacklist” has been mentioned in the Daily Telegraph. Skip the article and go straight to the comments below it. There’s a strange unanimity to them!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7845662/Climate-change-sceptic-scientists-less-prominent-and-authoritative.html
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
~ Mohandas Gandhi ~
First they ignored us, and then they derided us, now they are fighting us …
I came across a copy of this which has Prall’s name on it. Since it is not a list at all, how can it be a blacklist?
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html
This is a very popular blog, I believe, but the number of hits does not a scientific consensus make. Nature is not a democracy, and the scientific consensus has to be the starting point for any subsequent development.
Smokey says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:32 am
I see on Ms Weasel’s blog it is mentioned that each spruce tree soaks up 11 lbs of CO2. Well, I planted over a million of them in Scotland back in the eighties so I reckon I’ve done my bit.
Richard S Courtney says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:02 am
“Can any of you think of an appropriate badge for those of us on the list to wear so we can proclaim that we have received the honour?”
====================
Maholy created a striking image of an out of focus letter “Q” questioning a focus on Quality for his students.
Perhaps an out of focus satellite image of the Earth to honor Scientific exploration and an honest focus on the question Earth?
Tongue-in-Cheek might be fun as well, how about a “not symbol” over a question mark to symbolize the Alarmist tendency to not question the assumptions.
A magnificent list of open-minded scientists from around the world. A list one should be proud to be on, (no matter one’s views), and I only wish I was clever enough to be included.
I would love to wear a discrete lapel pin to show my allegiance with those on the “list”, a golden sun or a glistening water droplet perhaps. Anthony could sell them on his site to help with finances!
I believe that similar peer-reviewed work was done in Germany in 1939. It showed that less than 1% of published scientific papers had been produced by Jewish scientists in the previous three years.
Actually I made that up but in order to produce a reasoned paper it would have been necessary to consider the number of papers submitted but rejected as well. Even that would not produce a valid statistic, since a number of scientists who might have submitted a contrarian paper could have been put off doing so in the knowledge that it (a) would not be accepted for publication and/or (b) might damage their chances of obtaining funding and/or promotions.
While the paper’s authors, William R. L. Anderegga, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider may all hold senior posts in the scientific world, it is clear that while they do not understand statistics. It would be useful to remind them that no statistics are valid unless the sample from which they are derived is an unbiased selection of the whole population being studied.
As an essay in statistics which is what this paper purported to be it should have been reviewed by statisticians and would have been rejected by any competent statistical reviewer.
I am thrilled and honoured to be on the list. I agree with the point that it explodes the consensus argument, but IPCC member Mike Hulme recently confirmed this was always a myth. The question is why didn’t he speak about it earlier when it was being used to sideline skeptics?
I don’t know about others but there are errors and omissions in my entry. For example, I am listed as being with the National Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), but this organization was not a think tank as listed, lasted less than two years and has been defunct for a few years now. I am listed with a PhD, which is correct, but no date (1982) when it exists for others. A simple search of the University of London doctoral candidates would have provided this information.
The most egregious idea is the limitation of 20 for publications to qualify as a climate researcher. It is an extension of the consensus argument. Quality is not in quantity and consensus is not a scientific fact. There are other reasons why it is wrong and clearly chosen to push pro-AGW people above skeptics. One of the practices of publications by people at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was listing multiple authors on each paper to the point where it was clearly contrived to pad resumes. (They were not alone in this practice as it has become part of the academic promotion and advancement game.) Look at the 42 people Professor Wegman identified in his investigation as a coterie all of who had published with Michael Mann and how many of them appear on these multi-authored papers.
A second problem made abundantly clear by the CRU emails was the degree to which they controlled the peer review process to guarantee publication of their own work, but also to ensure skeptical works were rejected. They did this to the point were they had editor- in- chief of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) James Saiers fired for publishing an article they did not like. (1106322460). This is interesting to me because I recall when GRL came on the climate scene. Up to that point there were very few journals publishing climate articles and very few universities offering courses or programs in climate. The only centres of climate were Reid Bryson’s at Wisconsin and Hubert Lamb’s at East Anglia. Climate was ironically a subset of meteorology when the reality is it is the other way around. Climate data was only published by government agencies as monthly and annual summaries. Most climate articles were published in meteorology journals such the Royal Meteorological Society Journal. The first mainstream climate journal was Climatic Change whose editor, Stephen Schneider, is probably among the longest surviving editor in any journal. Neither “Science” nor “Nature” were interested climate research or publishing climate papers. GRL was important because it was interdisciplinary, an essential item that acknowledges the generalist nature of climatology.
I am not complaining because I am on the list but in my early career climate publishing opportunities were limited because it was not a subject of concern. The when it became of concern the ability to publish was controlled by those who took political control and manipulated the process.
All this fuss for a guy who clearly gets his kicks by pulling the wings off flies.
Much ado about nothing.
Why the focus on a single list? Prall has several:
all 619 IPCC AR4 wg 1 contributing authors
3000+ climate scientists and signatories of public declarations on climate (including AR4wg1, skeptics, and others; stats done on over 2300)
246 female climate authors (includes 79 AR4wg1 authors; 93 activist and 6 skeptic signers)
496 climate skeptics who signed any of twelve skeptics declarations, or appeared in TGGWS
40 listed authors of the 2008 ‘summary for policymakers’ and/or the 2009 report from the so-called “Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change”
Within the lists it’s clear which side Prall has assigned people to, and the bad colors in things like “IPCC AR4 wg 1 contributing authors” certainly stand out. (E.g. Landsea, with special mention at the top, and Christy.)
Ultimately, it may be that the black list / white list nature of the tables is really just how Prall has assigned people as skeptic/warmist and the ranking discloses little information.
Thats quite a master list, but I thought that no scientists felt that way, how is it there is such a huge list of skeptics? Climate activists are amusing especially this guy, I read that blog and Romm for comedic relief lol
BTW I give the PNAS paper an A for demonstrating Google Scholar illiteracy.
People should only be on lists they choose to sign on to, otherwise it’s STASI.
The number of publications on a topic tells you nothing about the scientific “consensus.” It is really revealing a bias in funding…he who has money can publish. The paper also make mention in the conclusions about ‘cliques’ as a source of bias. If the authors had read the Wegman(?) report they would know that this has been shown by accomplished statisticians to be the case with climate scientist.
Extraordinary list. I thought there would be maybe 10 names on it. There are almost 500. It completely debunks any notion that there was ‘ a consensus about the science’.
Amazing. Whenever someone says that there’s the science is settled and that there’s a consensus, I’ll send them to that site.
The National Academy is just America’s science lobby (their specific lobbying arm is the AAAS). This kind of organization is bound to view science in terms of keeping the funding flowing. Cogent arguments that AGW is not a “problem” threaten the funding stream, and must be silenced.
I just read http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html and find it a remarkable piece of back-patting. They consider Number of Publications and Number of Citations as their sole metrics for scientific credentials.
Good scientific research includes looking at all possibilities, but this group did not consider two well discussed ones, namely funding available for research, and obstacles on the path of publishing. Without looking at these and others, then Judith Curry’s summation “completely unconvincing” is the only reasonable conclusion.
In other words, they’re just trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
I think the pressure is being applied through the UN is by the OIC. All I can see now is Jizya by ‘globull warming’ stealth. Many folks are now waking up to the islamofascism alliance with our marxofascists (Greenologists).
From Dr. Roy’s link about the Inquisition…
“But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences. ”
Now traditional muslim belief {snipits}
“There is no separation between the religious and the political in Islam; rather Islam and Sharia constitute a comprehensive means of ordering society at every level. While it is in theory possible for an Islamic society to have different outward forms — an elective system of government, a hereditary monarchy, etc. — whatever the outward structure of the government, Sharia is the prescribed content. It is this fact that puts Sharia into conflict with forms of government based on anything other than the Quran and the Sunnah.
The precepts of Sharia may be divided into two parts:
1. Acts of worship (al-ibadat), which includes:
Ritual Purification (Wudu)
Prayers (Salah)
Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan)
Charity (Zakat)
Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)
2. Human interaction (al-muamalat), which includes:
Financial transactions
Endowments
Laws of inheritance
Marriage, divorce, and child care
Food and drink (including ritual slaughtering and hunting)
Penal punishments
War and peace
Judicial matters (including witnesses and forms of evidence)”
====
“It is from such warlike pronouncements as these that Islamic scholarship divides the world into dar al-Islam (the House of Islam, i.e., those nations who have submitted to Allah) and dar al-harb (the House of War, i.e., those who have not). It is this dispensation that the world lived under in Muhammad’s time and that it lives under today. Then as now, Islam’s message to the unbelieving world is the same: submit or be conquered.”
“Islam’s persecution of non-Muslims is in no way limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered “People of the Book” — historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims — the dhimmi — prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Quran spells out the payment of the jizya (poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29), which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him the superiority of Islam.”
===
Green is also the colour of islam… How convenient.
It’s perfect, a ‘science’ that islam can embrace because it hits all the requisite sharia marks.
A tax on our society for doing better because we are non-muslim. An effective religious science that purports apocalyptic visions in keeping with traditional religious views. An effective attack on our infrastructure which, as the enemy, we deserve because we are disbelievers.
The push for Cap and Trade and the acquiescence to building a mosque at Ground Zero are not coincidence.
The Maldives practice al-taqiyya by crying to the West.
Do you really trust the information coming from countries that must hate us?
We can’t even trust the information coming from our own government institutions anymore.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam-101.html
link to snippets.
Wow, I’m honoured to see my name on that list. Now what do I need to do to raise myself from #460 to somewhere a bit higher? 😀
I’m insulted (I’m not on the black-list!)!
Just another sign of increasing desperation as the science, public opinion, and even the politics move against proponents. More to come.
Richard S Courtney says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:02 am
“Can any of you think of an appropriate badge for those of us on the list to wear so we can proclaim that we have received the honour?”
===============
Hope this works Richard, first time attempting to post an image.
Larger Version
DandyTroll says: June 22, 2010 at 11:16 am
“People should only be on lists they choose to sign on to, otherwise it’s STASI.”
Opening it up to just any scientist that wanted to sign up would also be a very heavy load on their server and the backups could take hours. Also they need to keep it to a manageable size, not everyone has high speed broadband access.