From Climate Audit, more on the ongoing Antarctic kerfluffle.
By Ryan O’Donnell
Subsequent to my post on Feb 7, 2010 here, Eric Steig informed me by email that he had not seen our Response to his Third Review, as I had previously assumed. I apologize for my misunderstanding on this point, which was, however, incidental to the major concerns expressed in my post. A more detailed response on matters raised in Steig’s most recent RC post and other issues will be forthcoming.
My misunderstanding over whether Steig received the Response to the Third Review does not alter the fact that Steig acting as Reviewer A, in his Second Review, had asked the editor to “insist” that we present the “most likely” West Antarctica trends, specifically proposing iridge, although, in an email yesterday, Steig expressed “total surprise” that we had complied with his iridge proposal and, in his Feb 1 RC post, even criticized us for complying with his proposal. We will have more to say on this near the future, as his explanations remain insufficient.
Nor do I agree that the criticisms in his RC posts of the methodology have any merit. In his Third Review, Steig had raised similar points against iridge, notwithstanding his Second Review proposal of the approach and his Third Review comment that “use of the ‘iridge’ procedure makes sense to me, and I suspect it really does give the best results”. We responded fully to these concerns in our Response to his Third Review, although we were unaware until Feb 8, 2011 that Steig had not received a copy of our Response.
In any event, Steig knew or ought to have known that our response must have satisfied the editor of Journal of Climate and should have familiarized himself with our response before condemning the method that he had previously encouraged. Had Steig informed me that he had not seen a copy of our Response to his Third Review, I would have been delighted to send it to him. Instead, he chose to publicly disparage our paper using arguments that were both irrelevant and satisfactorily addressed – which was, unfortunately, no different than the tactic he used during review.
Steig’s recent outbursts are merely his most recent effort to obfuscate the underlying point of our critique: that whatever was original in Steig et al 2009 was based on faulty mathematics; and that whatever was correct in Steig et al 2009 was already known.
… disparage our paper using arguments that were both irrelevant and which we have satisfactorily addressed … ” would make things completely clear, perhaps.
TedK, Place “which were” in front of “satisfactorily ” and it clarifies the writer’s remark.
@ThinkingScientist
February 11, 2011 at 12:51 pm
“Steig makes the mistake on RC of trying to assert that his reconstruction is better by comparing to some measurements.”
Restrained and diplomatic language there! Not sure about the ‘mistake’ part though. Deliberately miscasting any criticism of their statistical methods as an attempt to prove an alternative ‘climate hypothesis’ is a tried and tested deflection tactic of these gatekeepers. It is poisoning the well; playing to the home crowd; whipping up a frenzy of bleating over demonstrative points in order to distract from the proof that their statistical gymnastics are no better at determining climate trends than tea leaf divination. The same thing was seen when the McShane and Wyner paper was revealed here – pro AGW commenters went out of their way to attack an imaginary new ‘hockey stick’ with such single minded determination that their motivation, and knowledge of the real purpose of the paper was obvious.
What baffles me is that I’m their target audience. I’m no scientist or statistician, but I have some intelligence, and would be perfectly willing to accept the AGW hypothesis if skeptical criticisms were squarely addressed and refuted. However this constant misdirection, fingers-in-ears wailing, obfuscation, attacking and squashing of legitimate questions and their questioners leads me to believe the folk at RC are doing everything in their power to hide the fact that they ultimately have nothing to say and nothing to offer; that they might even be aware themselves that the emperor is stark naked. I can think of no other explanation as to why they would need to so thoroughly patronize and alienate people they should be trying to persuade.
BTW, thanks for your brilliant and articulate post.
@geronimo:
I felt a bit spooked by the Norman Bates commenter too. D.Nyall, FFS..
WOW. Spiders. Webs. Weaving. Climate Science scores a big minus again!
That last is as wrong as wrong can be. The correctness or accuracy of a conclusion is utterly irrelevant to whether the method was sound. If the statistics was worthless, as in this case it seems it was, it should be ripped apart and every flaw demonstrated, because the conclusion, correct or not, doesn’t follow from an unsound method. Any agreement with the truth is accidental, and leaving such a bad paper unrebutted gives the illusion that it provides extra evidence for the conclusion, which it does not, even when the conclusion is true.
Kev-in-Uk says:
February 11, 2011 at 9:13 am
“….I would like to remind all that open/public criticism is generally not considered to be good form amongst actual scientists. With this in mind, I don’t feel that scientists should stay behind the parapet (so to speak) but also I don’t feel that bloggers (of either/any AGW stance) should be actively derogatory or trying to encourage hasty discussion – this simply introduces more errors and misunderstandings….”
Kevin, I agree and disagree. Normally I would agree 100% with you. In the case of climate science, with intense policy reprecusions, the “behind the scenes actions of the players are important because they speak to the process of peer review and how the science is presented to the media. In this case it is essential to know when the game is not being played in an open and honest manner. That being said it is important to keep all theses complaints separate from the science, in order to protect the science. I used this as an example here, ”
“… Steig informally defended his paper, and O’Donnell wrote an informal rebuttal to Steig’s defense. (In my view a very persuasive one at that.) Very unfortunately O’Donnell made a critical error. He did not separate the personal human elements from the science he was discussing. This has unfortunately led to deeply muddied waters where the valid scientific points O’Donnell was making became lost in the humane elements. He should have done a separate post on the issues of peer review and possible disingenuous actions of Steig, unfortunately he commingled the two.
The science was not protected or kept isolated from the human elements. Now any time one attempts to address the science, it is easily led astray in the human controversy. Blog hosts in my opinion should set up a separate post where all the human elements of such controversy can be discussed, and another separate post where only the scientific questions can be discussed. Policy makers should likewise demand that the two are kept separate, yet become inclusive and accommodating of multi faceted view within the separate disciplines.
Dear Ryan,
When you place links such as here, “as Reviewer A, in his Second Review, had asked the editor to “insist” that we present the “most likely” West Antarctica trends, specifically proposing iridge,” and here, “Steig expressed “total surprise” that we had complied with his iridge proposal and, in his Feb 1 RC post, even criticized us for complying with his proposal.” please consider telling where to go spcifically, as these links encompass many pages.
Thanks.
PS. I also hope that in any future controversy you will separate the science from the misconduct and encurage all bloggers to do the same. We do appreciate both and thank you for all your hard work.
David says:
February 11, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Yep – I agree with that and it is always preferable to separate emotion and science. But I do think it is specifically a modern issue (i.e blogging) – and also far more emotionally charged in the climate science area. I suppose that’s the big trouble with blogging and practising science at the same time! Personal choices and preferences will always influence ‘casual’ writing – whereas in a science paper, these should not creep in as much (though when one reads various AGW papers it is clearly present!).
I agree it would be far better to have separate posts/threads to avoid such comingling as you put it.
I agree wholeheartedly with JJB MKI. I get an odd feeling, when I occasionally visit RC, that they are so busy defending something indefensible with quite nasty tactics that they have no time to engage with intelligent and thinking non-scientists (and there are legions of us) and perhaps persuade us of AGW with clear proofs that come from good and honest science instead of shouty hand-waving. They are becoming an adult version of ‘Lord of The Flies’.
@ur momisugly Germonimo 2/11 at 3:50 p.m. Whew! That D Nyall character is creepy indeed. Stuck. It emits no light. It does not grow. It cannot learn.
When this whole issue started I made two posts, and it is perhaps confirmation of the accusation of others that I am unable to alter my views that I still regard them as correct.
1) The data are sparse, noisy and discontinuous. The basic information that can be got from the data is that it is definitely warming on the peninsula; it is probably warming an uncertain amount over the WAIS; the data is insufficient to determine a trend on the Eastern part of the continent, any warming or cooling is too small to show in the available data.
2) Shorter O’Donnel et all
‘You may be right, but your methods are wrong.
(and if our methods are wrong it because you told us to use them)’
To add some detail.
Steig et al took the available data including the satellite data and applied some math processing to try and make a better defined statement on the underlying basics of peninsula warming, WAIS warming a bit and the rest uncertain.
O’Donnel et al critique the math used by Steig et al and claim the methods are flawed so that the distribution of the warming given by Steig et al is not reliable.
The implication taken by some is that the basic underlying pattern of large peninsula warming, some WAIS warming… and toss a coin for the rest; is all doubtful.
But O’Donnel et al state their paper is purely a critique of Steig et al’s math method, NOT an attempt to provide a better defined warming map.
Steig et al seem to be responding that while the criticism of methodology may have some merit, the map of warming O’Donnel et al have produced is so little different from theirs that whatever the flaws found in their methodolgy the results are still supported by the O’Donnel et al paper.
So far so usual in science…
But then comes the peer review dispute.
Much seems to have been made of giving Steig a role of reviewer of a paper critical of his work. And it has been suggested that 88 pages of review2 response is excessive and evidence of intentional obstructionism.
But when a paper is a direct critique of another it is usual and considered best practice to give the target a reviewer role. It is expected that in defending their POV they will improve the critical paper – or show why it fails as a falsification of the original results.
Journal policy on the privacy of the review process varies greatly among the different publications. There has been some suggestion that in revealing the reviewers, and that he knew who they were O’Donnel has broken a rule of anonymity. In further making public the reviewers comments he has broken another rule of privacy in that it is usual for review comments NOT to be made public so that reviewers can be as candid as possible.
I Don’t know what the policy is of the Journal in question, but some journals have a completely open review process. ALL comments and responses are published along with the final paper making the peer review process transparent.
For those that wish to see what a peer review process looks like, although in another field than climate science, the field of microbiology has an open journal, the EMBO. This helpfully provides links to a record of the full review process for certain controversial papers. It is a long read, Steig’s 88 pages is not quite as exceptional as some here may suppose. And while the tone is very correct and polite;… well you have to know ‘science-speak’ to understand that when one reviewer says-
“This concept is hard to accept for both structural and thermodynamic grounds. The data presented do not support this conclusion for at least two reasons.”
It roughly translates as – ‘ this is a dumb idea and they should have known it was dumb because there are lots of obvious reasons its stupid.’
Here’s a link to one of the peer review and response exchanges for those who would like to get the flavor of the process –
http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v28/n21/extref/emboj2009261s2.pdf
Damn…travel for a few days and a new troll shows up? When did THAT happen?
I realize they’re ever so much fun to play with, so I understand the urge to feed a new one, but really? Who’s on the other end of this one’s leash?
JimB
Izen
You left out some important points. One, the O’Donnell paper specifically makes no case for what the actual warming may or may not be. It does show major problems with the methodology of the Steig paper which throw into serious doubt the agility of the Steig paper to ascertain weather the artic as a whole is warming or not.
Your assertions of what the actual warming is, or is not, would require a new paper of your own, subject to peer review. They are not relevant to the discussion and prove nothing, so no one needs to try to disprove them. They are assertions without evidence and not relevant to the issue.
In regard to your statements that it is not unusual to have an author selected as a reviewer in a paper that is essentially dedicated to invalidating his work, I have to somewhat disagree. From reading the comments of many scientist here it IS unusual in an instance such as this, but NOT unheard of. It IS very unusual however to have such an author remain hidden from the author of the paper he is reviewing.
Also in the case of Steig, he apparently made public statements at RC which further indicated that he was not a reviewer, when he was. He also made recommendations as a reviewer which he later complained about as wrong. (This is quite serious.)
As to your link showing that the 88 pages of correspondence between one reviewer and the author is not unusual, well, your link fails to support your claim. It is 20 pages in total and includes comments and responses from three reviewers and the editor. Several scientist with many years of peer review have looked at the actions of reviewer A (Steig) and come to the conclusion of these being primarily OBSTRUCTIVE, not constructive.
And lastly, when it comes to a science with trillion dollar policy decision and world wide social structure issues involved, ALL RIGHTS TO ANY PRIVACY GO OUT THE WINDOW NOW, PERIOD, END OF STORY.
Sorry for the caps, but this crap of secrecy in CAGW has to end.
Ron House says:
February 11, 2011 at 8:29 pm
“The correctness or accuracy of a conclusion is utterly irrelevant to whether the method was sound. If the statistics was worthless, as in this case it seems it was, it should be ripped apart and every flaw demonstrated, because the conclusion, correct or not, doesn’t follow from an unsound method.”
That presupposes that a statistical method can be dismissed as worthless from first principles rather than derived from its utility as a method in infering the actual from partial data.
When faced with two math processes for deriving an accurate version of the full data from partial data one test method is to use an arbitary ‘Gold Standard’ of full data and test how well a method recaptures the full data from a sparse, noisy and discontinuous subset of that data.
If a method reliably derives a good facsimile of the full data from a partial set then any ‘A Priori’ objections to the mathematical purity of the method are irrelevent.
I see no evidence of that argument in the O’Donnel et al paper.
izen
This shows you do not understand the head or tail of what you are speaking about.
It is generally a good idea to keep within what you know about.
This is what Andrew Revkin wrote on his blog a few days ago concerning O’Donnell’s at the time, upcoming response…
“In December, I noted what appeared to be a hint of civility and the prospect that longtime antagonists (one of O’Donnell’s co-authors was Stephen McIntyre, a freelance critic and auditor of climate research) might be able to push knowledge forward — even if in the same ugly way that a rugby scrum moves while fighting over the ball.
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.)”
Well the response has came, and there’s but one apology for an issue O’Donnell regards as tangential…
“Subsequent to my post on Feb 7, 2010 here, Eric Steig informed me by email that he had not seen our Response to his Third Review, as I had previously assumed. I apologize for my misunderstanding on this point, which was, however, incidental to the major concerns expressed in my post. A more detailed response on matters raised in Steig’s most recent RC post and other issues will be forthcoming.”
I keep hearing about how fair A.R. is, and I’m sure that’s true, relatively speaking. But it’s been two days and he still hasn’t changed his post, and hasn’t responded to my question as to why. This bothers me a great deal, because it leaves intact the false impression that O’Donnell is conceding he’s wrong on the major points.
In fairness, maybe he’s busy. But seems to me he’s got a responsibility to keep up with the facts. I also don’t understand how he could have misinterpreted the emails he references, the ones he claims he was copied on…
Something doesn’t add up here…Of course, what else is new?
Climate Audit is as bad as RealClimate as Steve just deletes comments at will from people on his side! I can’t stand posting there.
Kev in UK said:
” I would like to remind all that open/public criticism is generally not considered to be good form amongst actual scientists.”
————————————————————————
Kev, if a few plant biologists are squabbling about taxonomy, I (and the rest of the world) are not remotely interested. Even if they wanted to take it public, they would have difficulty in doing it. No-one much cares.
While ad hominem attacks are rightly deplored, and this principle is enshrined in WUWT, the point of this discussion is that deception and obstruction and conflict of interest issues arose in a field where crucial public policy decisions and vast amounts of money are at stake. It is simply naive to expect climate science to operate like a private gentlemen’s club. That is akin to expecting the debates of the late 1930s and early 40s about nuclear weapons to be kept under wraps. Irrespective of the merits, or outcomes, these sorts of critical topics, with immense consequences for the world, are not (and should not be) an in-house discussion among so-called experts.
izen said:
“If a method reliably derives a good facsimile of the full data from a partial set then any ‘A Priori’ objections to the mathematical purity of the method are irrelevent.”
—————————————————————————
What an extraordinary statement. This is the kind of thinking that informs bad modelling – because a model happens to produce the ‘right’ result, the fact that it is full of incorrect assumptions and/or data doesn’t matter. Utter nonsense.
Your last line reminds me of a poorly constructed limerick a senior editor of a math journal whom I knew used to keep posted on his door. It went something like this (long time ago I saw it):
There was a mathematician from Purdue
Whose theorems were both new and true
But the new wasn’t true
And the true wasn’t new
So what was the editor to do?
art;
AR has a reputation as being fair? Really? It must be a rep among those he consistently favors (AGW Believers). Outside that circle, he’s better known for eye-popping distortion.
David;
That’s right on. The INSTANT your work is used–especially with your approval or even advocacy–as a justification for a public expenditure or policy decision, your proprietary and (work and issue-related) privacy rights go to zero. Whether you wish them to or not.
Not that there is such a thing as “privacy rights” in published science.
@Phil
Their quote is clear as day; there’s no ambiguity or misleading about it. People claiming what they are haven’t read the original quote and suffer from grape-vine effects. That, and or reading comprehension has gone way down in this day and age.
This whole sorry incident is covered thoroughly here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/01/skeptic-paper-accepted-on-antarctica-rebuts-steig-et-al
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/09/a-helpful-note-to-dr-eric-steig
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/05/some-interesting-thoughts-on-antarctic-peninsula-warming
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/08/coffin-meet-nail-more-on-steigs-reconstruction-issues
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/10/reviewer-a-responds
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/11/o’donnell-responds-to-steig
And here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/13/a-viewpoint-on-the-antarctic-warming-debate
Put yourself in Dr. O’Donnell’s place, and Eric Steig comes off badly. Very badly.
Climate peer review has been thoroughly corrupted, there can be no doubt:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Dr Steig is a member of the climate scare establishment. His job security depends upon his aligning himself with the climate alarmist meme: CO2 is going to kill us all with runaway global warming. The fact that there is zero empirical evidence of climate catastrophe is immaterial; the lie endlessly repeated is the tactic.
What is distressing is the fact that NO global harm as a result of CO2 has ever been established. But the crowd of climate alarm charlatans with both front feet in the taxpayer trough keeps beating the dead CO2 horse.
With several $billions in unwilling taxpayer largess in play every year, the continuing CO2 scare is not surprising. But the fact of the matter is that nothing unusual is happening with the climate. It has all happened many times before throughout the Holocene, in exactly the same way; the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified, and the harmless and beneficial trace gas CO2 [“carbon” to scientifically illiterate] is constantly demonized by those with a personal financial stake in promoting climate alarmism.
That is how scientific skeptics see it [and skeptics are the only honest kind of scientist]. The rest is all baseless propaganda, with $billions in grant money as the motive.
So Steig gets his job security – and the hard-bitten taxpayer unwillingly pays for the ongoing climate alarmist fraud.