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 is a tempest in a teapot. Data in Antarctica is too sparse to get a really clear picture of what is going on in the areas where station data is non existent. Different methods of analysis are giving different results. Unless and until we get more surface stations there, we won’t get a real answer for some time to come.
Charges of duplicity and have turned the scientific dispute into something personal and tribal, and ugly. The impact of this dispute on the overall scientific issue of global warming is really tiny.
The ice core records of Greenland and Antarctica show that in the past temperatures changes in the area have often been out of phase, and climate models indicate that Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere in general, is slow to warm as the rest of the earth gets warmer, because its land masses are smaller relative than the area of sea surface.
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.
Hahahahahaha, Joel Shore thinks his side has actually had the courage to step up to a debate, hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
A special thought for sharperoo
ZT says:
February 10, 2011 at 6:15 pm
@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(?)
The initial submission to which the reviewers responded was 45 pages long plus 51 pages of supplementary information. Hardly surprising that a detailed review might be rather long (14 pages by reviewer A).
Note that on first review all the reviewers said that material from the SI should be included in the main text (B said that the original paper wasn’t understandable without reading the SI).
Jan says:
February 10, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Perhaps I am misreading but in trying to gain understanding, I thought this was significant. It seems clear to me that a change to the paper was made based on a reviewers request and that all reviewers had been made aware of this change in response to that request.
And the authors agree that this is “the most appropriate choice”, note that it was not based on the choice of method, rather than which were the ‘most likely’ reconstructions.
“Toward the end of the review, the reviewer suggests that the editor should require us to display the “most likely” reconstructions in the main text, which the reviewer correctly assumes would be the ridge regression results. We agree that this is the most appropriate choice, and the manuscript has been revised to show the ridge regression results in the main text.”
This is a tempest in a teapot. Data in Antarctica is too sparse to get a really clear picture of what is going on in the areas where station data is non existent. Different methods of analysis are giving different results. Unless and until we get more surface stations there, we won’t get a real answer for some time to come.
Charges of duplicity and have turned the scientific dispute into something personal and tribal, and ugly. The impact of this dispute on the overall scientific issue of global warming is really tiny.
The ice core records of Greenland and Antarctica show that in the past, temperatures changes in the two areas have often been out of phase. Climate models indicate that Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere in general, is slow to warm, as the rest of the earth gets warmer, because its land area is smaller relative to the area of sea surface. Consequently a low rate of Antarctic warming isn’t going to be a surprise.
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.
Izen says:
“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.”
Strong criticism is desirable. But you never mentioned that Steig’s ox had been gored, and he was obviously out for revenge. There are plenty of other reviewers, some of whom have the necessary statistical background to provide criticism. Why did Steig insinuate himself into this particular review? Obviously, to get even.
And where are the strong skeptical critics in climate peer review?? By your own reasoning there should be people like Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, and many other skeptical scientists reviewing submissions from Mann, Briffa, Steig, etc. But in the pal-review world of climate journals, skeptical scientists [the only honest kind of scientist] are deliberately barred from the process.
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?
>> eadler says:
February 11, 2011 at 9:52 am
Charges of duplicity and have turned the scientific dispute into something personal and tribal, and ugly. <<
… and not the duplicity itself?
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.
Joel Shore says:
“…this is an example of the losers in a scientific debate…”
What “debate”??
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!].
I challenge Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann and Al Gore to debate Prof Richard Lindzen, Dr Ross McKittrick and Lord Monckton in a neutral venue, with a moderator and rules mutually agreed. Preferably televised.
To make things interesting I’ll offer a prize of $1,000 to the charity of the winning side’s choice.
But I suspect the alarmist side will behave as usual: tuck their tails between their hind legs and slink off without comment, rather than actually engaging in a real debate.
RDCII says:
February 11, 2011 at 1:31 pm
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.
Actually it’s you who’s not getting it, the reviewer didn’t suggest a methodology, he said that the editor should require them to display the “most likely” reconstructions in the main text rather than in the SI. Why hide the ‘most likely’ results away and present less likely ones, it makes no sense. If they thought that the methodology used to give those ‘most likely’ results was dodgy then that would be a reason?
Theo Godwin says:
Hmmm…Maybe it would taste good with a little barbeque sauce.
As has been pointed out here by others, the reviewers likely to be most knowledgeable are ones who, by your standards, would tend to have some conflict of interest. Furthermore, an editor often especially wants to hear the response of those whose work is being criticized by the paper under review, even if he will weigh it with the knowledge in mind.
The first paper that I ever was asked to referee for Physical Review was when I was a grad student and some authors sent in a manuscript and essentially said, “Shore and [co-author] are wrong” in the abstract of the paper (which was talking about the work that formed my graduate thesis). And, I was able to explain very clearly why the authors of the manuscript were largely mistaken. The final version of their paper essentially said, “Shore and [co-author] were largely correct although there is one aspect where they were incorrect” and included an argument from me supporting and amplifying the discussion of the point where they had disagreed with what we had originally said. The result was a better science than either their original manuscript or our paper alone and less of embarrassment for them than publishing their original manuscript would have been.
In another case, several years later, a paper was written in which they showed that something that I and a colleague had found in one model and had conjectured was true quite generally did not in fact appear to be true for a particular alteration of the original model that we looked at. Again, their paper was sent to me to review and I basically wrote a long review saying that the paper should be accepted but in which I also made several comments, queries, and optional suggestions for revision. I even wrote in the review essentially that I did not find the evidence that the authors presented to be completely convincing but that, since I was not an objective reviewer, my standard on that matter was particularly high and I thought objectively they had in fact presented strong enough evidence to warrant publication. The authors responded with a statement thanking the reviewer for his very thorough and comprehensive review and then a comment that still makes me chuckle to this day, in which they said something to the effect of, “…and in fact we are quite sure that we have never seen such a long positive review.”
Note that both of these papers were in Physical Review journals and had nothing whatsoever to do with climate science. So, the claim that people here seem to be making about climate science having unique issues such as the use of reviewers who might have a conflict of interest is utterly without foundation.
Smokey says:
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.
Joel Shore says:
Thank you for acknowledging that the winners of the few debates that have been held are scientific skeptics.
The cowardly alarmist crowd refuses to stand and deliver. Why? Because they know that their CAGW conjecture will be promptly debunked – as it has been repeatedly debunked in previous debates.
Based on the scientific method, the CO2=CAGW conjecture has been debunked by Ma Gaia herself: as CO2 rises, there is no “tippimg point” in evidence. But frighten yourself all you want, even as Reality intrudes on your fantasies: nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. Nothing. It’s natural climate fluctuations all the way. Try to prove me wrong. If you can.
Smokey says:
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,
Beclowing yourself again, I see. You were the one who instigated the discussion about debates, by wrongly claiming that skeptics were the “losers in the scientific debate.” Now you’re sniveling about being set straight. FYI, skeptics routinely kick ass when they debate climate alarmists. That’s why you don’t keep track of the leader board.
The alarmist contingent hides out from any further debates because they lose. Your boy Abraham is a prime example of the alarmist tactic of taking pot shots from the safety of the ivory tower while refusing to engage his superior mano a mano.
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.☺
The malady of cognitive dissonance is a terrible burden. I pity those who are saddled with it.
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).
Alan February 10, 2011 at 9:51 am: “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).”
That’s funny, because I quite vividly recall sitting outside at Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square on a nice afternoon with some friends about 25 years ago, and I asked one guy who was a [discipline?] science grad student at B.U. what was all the hubbub about global warming and was it true? (I think it was being played-up in the Boston Globe.)
Anyway he chuckled and said “Well, that’s where all the research money is these days.”
He did not seem to care or know whether it was or wasn’t “true,” but he did think the grantsmanship was amusing.
Definitely sometime in the mid- to late-1980’s.
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.
SBVOR says:
SBVOR: It is really hard to know where to start.
First of all, someone who is impressed by a poll just because the number of respondents is “is far, FAR larger than the average polling sample” has an ignorance of statistics that is too deep to cure easily. The hard part of doing an accurate poll is not getting a large enough sample size but getting a representative sample. The Sci Am poll was not scientific in any way….It was a poll that was very amenable to stuffing the ballot box…i.e., who could motivate their supporters to vote.
Second of all, there was no attempt to restrict the poll to scientists, let alone scientists with credentials in the field. Properly-designed polls of scientists have revealed much much different results.
Finally, I was not talking about polls at all. I was talking about the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Smokey says:
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.
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:
“someone who is impressed by a poll just because the number of respondents is ‘is far, FAR larger than the average polling sample’ has an ignorance of statistics that is too deep to cure easily.”
Should I seek a refund from the professors who taught me statistics as a graduate student studying Environmental Science?
“The hard part of doing an accurate poll is not getting a large enough sample size but getting a representative sample. The Sci Am poll was not scientific in any way….It was a poll that was very amenable to stuffing the ballot box…i.e., who could motivate their supporters to vote.”
I agree, this was not a scientific poll. The fact is that Sci Am readers have been heavily propagandized by the likes of David Appell (apologist for the infamous Hockey Stick). So, one would think that readers of that rag would tilt in your direction (not mine).
Do you have any evidence of ballot stuffing? Or is that just your knee jerk reaction to any and all evidence which runs contrary to the creed of your totalitarian political religious cult?
“Second of all, there was no attempt to restrict the poll to scientists, let alone scientists with credentials in the field. Properly-designed polls of scientists have revealed much much different results.”
Oh…
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).
Fine, you want the opinion of scientists, chew on this. When you’re done, chew on a whole lot more.
As for “scientists with credentials in the field”…
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?
Just come out and say it — the only poll you REALLY trust is a poll of the so-called “Hockey Team” — those tiny few scientists in the world who STILL refuse to accept the infamous Hockey Stick for the blatantly obvious fraud that it is.
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!
“Properly-designed polls of scientists have revealed much much different results.”
How curious (or NOT) that you did not cite even ONE example. SHOW ME!
Finally…
How about addressing the science which proves you wrong!
I know…
That is an overwhelming amount of evidence to deal with. 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!