The row over the issue of Antarctica warming continues. After a number of articles appeared at the Air Vent, Lucia’s, and Climate Audit, Dr. Steig responds at RealClimate with some accusations of his own. I offered Dr. Steig a guest post here, with no caveats, so that he could get maximum exposure, twice. He didn’t bother to respond.
This whole incident illustrates exactly why authors of competing scientific papers should not be reviewers of other papers critical of their own. This failure of peer review falls squarely into the lap of the Journal of Climate for allowing such nonsense in the first place.
But IMHO, Dr. Steig bears responsibility too, he should have said “no”, realizing what a conflict of interest this was.
He confirms in the latest RealClimate essay that he was in fact “Reviewer A”. He also complains that he wasn’t allowed to see the final draft. This is due to the fact that JoC had to bring in another reviewer to break the 88 page log jam created by “Reviewer A”.
The analysis of the difference between the 3rd and 4th (final) drafts at Climate Audit reveal this:
MrPete
Posted Feb 9, 2011 at 10:06 PM | PermalinkHere is a comparison of Rev 3 and Rev 4. All text changes are marked up — including totally minor changes. I hope this works for the reader. (Personally, I would primarily trust this to provide pointers to areas of change as it is not obvious how to reliably discern exactly what the old/new text was.)
To my admittedly inexperienced eyes, the changes appear relatively minor.
Perhaps one of the authors can speak authoritatively on a) whether Wm C’s question (about round 4 reviews) has any standing, and b) whether Eric Steig’s disclaimer (based on not having seen these changes) is appropriate.
So 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. had they not, this whole ugly row would be non-existent.
At CA, this commenter sums it up pretty well:
movielib
Posted Feb 9, 2011 at 5:03 PM | PermalinkEric Steig has replied to Ryan:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/odonnellgate/
There seems to be a lot of arm waving about O’Donnell being wrong about… well, everything.
There is what I’d call a personal attack against “O’Donnell, Condon, and McIntyre,” comparing them unfavorably with such “legitimate, honest commenters” as “Susan Solomon or J. Michael Wallace, or, for that matter, Gavin Schmidt or Mike Mann or myself [i.e. Steig].” You see, he thinks people like O’Donnell and McIntyre are not legitimate honest commenters. The compulsory word “deniers” is also thrown in.
Steig claims O’Donnell is going to “retract [his] allegations” against Steig. It’s very vague and I sure don’t know what he’s talking about.
He says he was a reviewer for the first three drafts of the O’Donnell et al. paper but not for the “markedly different” fourth draft so he hadn’t seen it before publication.
Curiously, Steig does not address the point that is the subject of this thread.
I’ll carry ODonnell’s statement here when he completes it, including making whatever changes/retractions he sees fit.
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.
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.
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“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?
“This is due to the fact that JoC had to bring in another reviewer to break the 88 page log jam created by “Reviewer A”.”
Got caught Logjammin’, the Dude does not abide.
Honestly though, how could he possibly think that tactics like this help his cause? We live in the Internet Age, this stuff is going to be exposed and dissected across forums, blogs and comment boards. They desperately want people to listen and believe in their message and yet their attempts at PR are often sad and embarrassing. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot. The whole subject of climate is getting harder and harder for me to take seriously. How am I, an average person supposed to take anything a scientist or academic tells me seriously when stuff like this happens? Most people have faith in science in general. They have faith that science will find the truth eventually and without bias. That faith is going to start eroding.
I see no such admission in that article.
Flashback 25 years ago. I was then a graduate student in earth sciences, when the whole man-made CO2-driven global warming theory was building up within the field, as well as at my university (that’s where most of the grant money was). It reminds me of the nightmare… Cliques. Ideologies. Toxic competition. Personal grudges. All over the field. Nothing seems to have changed. Scientists are also humans, but the laymen don’t seem to know that and regard them as demigods. A little “consensus” with that?
“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.
mpaul says:
February 10, 2011 at 8:44 am
May I steal your words and make just one substantive change?
The Team has created a myth that no one, save a small cadre of climate scientists, have the intellectual heft necessary to understand their complicated sophistry.
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.
I think that you are being too hard on the Journal of Climate. Steig had a clear conflict of interest. Comparing his ‘reviewing’ with the other reviewers comments indicates that he ‘went to town’ (in the vernacular of the team) by an order of magnitude more than the other reviewers, in order to stymie and twist the publication of a paper critical of his own. Steig clearly had a conflict of interest, and ethically should have excused himself from the reviewing process.
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.
What strikes me as strange in this whole mess is why did Steig comment again on the O’Donnell paper. Steig commented at RC when the paper was released. Steig et al 2009, S(09), was not damaged that much (IMO) by O’Donnell et al 2010, O(10)….
S(09) is remembered, thanks to the Nature cover, O(10) is mostly forgotten… why kick a sleeping dog? This whole mess gives more coverage to O(10) – not sure why Steig started this round.
sharper00 says:
“How is it a conflict of interest?”
The entire climate peer review system has been corrupted, as was made clear in the Climategate emails. It is rife with conflicts of interest. Michael Mann repeatedly threatened journals that didn’t toe the alarmist line. And sadly, they caved.
The result of the corruption is evident in Mann ’08, where his paper was hand-waved through peer review by his tame referees, despite his using an upside-deown proxy that he knew beforehand was no good.
If you naively believe climate peer review is on the up-and-up, read this:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
@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.
@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
yguy: Steig himself says “Second, I was the reviewer of the first three drafts of O’Donnell et al submission.” in his O’Donnellgate post. The only reviewer that reviewed the first three drafts was “Reviewer A”. Therefore, he is admitting that he was Reviewer A.
sharper00 says:
“How is it a conflict of interest?”
There is none so blind as one who will not see.
I meant to say:
“government funded research grants“
not:
“government funded research rants“
But, my error may have been somehow Freudian. 😉
Peter H says:
“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?”
Peter, there is a difference between an external reviewer of a published paper writing a rebuttal paper (or blog), and a peer reviewer preventing publication of a paper they are reviewer of because it disagrees with their personal opinion. The external reviewers of published papers are how incorrect papers are corrected. Otherwise the published papers would be the last word even if they proved to be wrong.
@Allen
“There is none so blind as one who will not see.”
It would help if you’d explain it – remember the purpose of peer review is to determine if a paper has any obvious flaws. If one paper is a critique of another then what’s exactly is wrong with using the author of the original as one of many reviewers?
Steig had no power to control the publishing path of the paper, he could only make his best case for flaws (if any) and then it was upto the editor to decide whether they had merit or not.
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.”
Please be current on events before trying smoke and mirror manure here. In the first review Eric strongly recommends that Ryan use iRidge. By the second submission Ryan had in FACT done so – he put the TTLS version in the supplemental section. Eric knew this…knew for a fact that his issues with the TTLS version where moot because the entire paper was no longer based on it and STILL went after the TTLS version in second and third review. Have to wonder why don’t we? Since it was his recommendation as review A, and his praise of the change, his then going on RC and criticizing it was duplicitous. Period.
It was not relevant that he never saw the final addition of the paper and he knows it. It was a red herring that you are now chasing because you are too obstinate to look at the actual exchange between the two of them yourself – instead believing everything that was said. Contrast that to myself upon hearing what Ryan said, I went to the evidence to see for myself. Some of what Ryan assumed was incorrect, but on this point, he has dead on.
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.
James Sexton says:
February 10, 2011 at 10:04 am
“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. ”
___________________________________________________________
Pretty funny! Elevated levels of IgE are seen in allergic response or parasitic infections.
They may be allergic to statistical validity or respond to it as a parasitic infection.
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.
If any of these purely political scientists want to get me excited about Antarctic warming, they can start by replicating at measuring stations of their choosing the data already available via ice core studies and contemporaneous instrument measurements at Vostok — data which demonstrate an on-going, uninterrupted 10,000 year cooling trend wherein the latest warming is demonstrated to be not even close to being outside the bounds of natural variation.
I will, of course, expect them to fund all this useless crap through private donations — not through money stolen from taxpayers at gunpoint.
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.