by Dr. Roger Pielke Senior
There is an informative article by Ross McKittrick
McKitrick, Ross R. (2011) “Bias in the Peer Review Process: A Cautionary and Personal Account” in Climate Coup, Patrick J. Michaels ed., Cato Inst. Washington DC.
This article appears in the book
Michaels, Patrick J., 2011: Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives. Cato Institute. ISBN: 978-1-935308447
with the summary of its content
“A first-rate team of experts offers compelling documentation on the pervasive influence global warming alarmism now has on almost every aspect of our society-from national defense, law, trade, and politics to health, education, and international development.”
With respect to Ross’s chapter, Pat Michaels writes
“The second chapter in this volume goes to the core of what we consider to be the canon of science, which is the peer-reviewed, refereed scientific literature. McKitrick’s and my trials and tribulations over journal publication are similar to those experienced by many other colleagues. Unfortunately, the Climategate e-mails revealed that indeed there has been systematic pressure on journal editors to reject manuscripts not toeing the line about disastrous climate change. Even more unfortunate, my experience and that of others are that the post-Climategate environment has made this situation worse, not better. It is now virtually impossible to publish anything against the alarmist grain. The piles of unpublished manuscripts sitting on active scientists’desks are growing into gargantuan proportions…..”
Pat is correct that the peer reviews process and, also, the funding of research, has become very politicized and biased.
Ross starts his article with the text [highlight added]
“Showing that the IPCC claim is also false took some mundane statistical work, but the results were clear. Once the numbers were crunched and the paper was written, I began sending it to science journals. Having published several against-the-flow papers in climatology journals, I did not expect a smooth ride, but the process eventually became surreal. In the end, the paper was accepted for publication, but not in a climatology journal. Fortunately for me, I am an economist, not a climatologist, and my career doesn’t depend on getting published in climatology journals. If I were a young climatologist, I would have learned that my career prospects would be much better if I never wrote papers that question the IPCC. The skewing of the literature (and careers) can only be bad for society, which depends on scientists and the scientific literature for trustworthy advice for wise policy decisions.”
His conclusion has the text
“Some people might be tempted to defend climatology by saying that normal scientific procedures have broken down due to the intense policy fights and political interference. But in my opinion that confuses cause and effect. The policy community has aggressively intervened in climate science because of all the breaches of normal scientific procedures. The public has lost confidence in the ability of the major institutions of climatology, including the IPCC and the leading journals, to deal impartially with the evidence. It doesn’t have to be this way. My own field of economics constantly deals with policy-relevant topics with major public consequences. Of course, differences of opinion exist and vigorous disputes play out among opposing camps. But what is happening in climate science is very different, or at least is on a much more intense scale. I know of no parallels in modern economics. It appears to be a profession-wide decision that, due to the conjectured threat of global warming, the ethic of scientific objectivity has had an asterisk added to it: there is now the additional condition that objectivity cannot compromise the imperative of supporting one particular point of view.
This strategy is backfiring badly: rather than creating the appearance of genuine scientific progress, the situation appears more like a chokehold of indoctrination and intellectual corruption. I do not know what the solution is, since I have yet to see a case in which an institution or a segment of society, having once been contaminated or knocked off balance by the global warming issue, is subsequently able to right itself. But perhaps, as time progresses, climate science will find a way to do so. Now that would be progress.”
Both Pat and Ross are correct that a prejudice exists in the climate science community with respect to publication and in funding. My experiences have been similar to theirs.
I have posted on this subject in my posts. Several examples are
My Comments For The InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC
Is The NSF Funding Process Working Correctly?
Invited Letter Now Rejected By Nature Magazine
Comments On The Peer-Review Journal Publication Process And Recommendations For Improvement
It is important that policymakers become aware of the inappropriate control on the peer review process and in the funding of research by the NSF and other agencies. I have summarized this for policymakers most recently in my testimony
Pielke Sr., R.A. 2011: Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation. Testimony to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power
where I wrote with respect to the CCSP assessment process [which is one of the source of information for the 2007 IPCC]
“The process for completing the CCSP Report excluded valid scientific perspectives under the charge of the Committee. The Editor of the Report [Tom Karl] systematically excluded a range of views on the issue of understanding and reconciling lower atmospheric temperature trends.
The Executive Summary of the CCSP Report ignores critical scientific issues and makes unbalanced conclusions concerning our current understanding of temperature trends.”
Ross’s article and Pat’s experiences document further that the exclusion of research papers in a number of major journals and research funding by the NSF and other agencies is a systematic and serious problem that has compromised objective scientific inquiry into climate science.
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Am I being hysterical when I say the danger to our freedom is much greater than I see here? When Ross tells us ‘But perhaps, as time progresses, climate science
will find a way to (right itself)’, why am I unconvinced?
Yes, ‘leftism’, or ‘progressives’ dominate(s) intellectual life. Yes, it is unusual for a ruling paradigm to go without a fight. But the parallels with Lysenkoism (and the Deutsche Physik argument with Einstein) are much too close for comfort. Since WW2 we have been building up the State to be our lord above all others, taking ‘care’ of us from the cradle to the grave. (The ‘march of God’ according to Hegel). In order to do this, it needs to claim an authority based on absolute truth, and as such employs ‘perverted science’ in Churchill’s graphic words.
So far, it is mainly the social scences which have been used in this way, and the pitiful results are everywhere – failing education, junk economies, high crime etc. Natural science has made progress, albeit entirely within the ruling paradigm (it refuses, for example, to examine Chinese medicine or discuss weaknesses in evolution – see Dawkin’s collected works).
However, the AGW case represents a huge shift – away from the of dissent within the ruling paradigm, towards its elimination. To the best of my recollection, this is the first time this has happened in natural science in the West – all the other scientific frauds have been remarkably small-scale and ill-funded by comparison.
For me, science is primary. It has given us the age of the individual, beaten the priests at their own game (‘truth’) and led to prosperity. In the natural sciences, it possessed the self-correcting mechanism of criticism. If AGW succeeds, it will be the end of this. So my question is: How can we stop this ever happening again?
Solution? Tricky one as it’s a cosy circular argument. Scientists push climate-change research because that’s where the Government money is. Government puts money into climate change because “that’s what the science says” and because it gives them an excuse for taxation (and for people to make fortunes in carbon trading). And both say “la-la-la we’re not listening” to anyone who questions this cosy situation.
There is a fundamental problem. I refer to Newtons comment about “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Science advances by building on a foundation of prior work. The problem is to determine which prior work consists of the “shoulders of giants” and which prior work consists of the sands of the Nile. Peer review and “respected” journals are supposed to help sort that out.
Others have pointed out that the current problems of peer review are not limited to Climate Science. My limited understanding of history suggests that there have always been periods where orthodoxy has grabbed science by the throat and strangled it.
In any field there will be crackpots and fools that need to be weeded out. The challenge is to provide a vehicle that will foster reasonable alternatives to orthodoxy without drowning in a sea of nonsense.
Economics may provide some insight. There are clearly defined alternative schools of economics. Keynesian and Chicago are two that exist in contrast but with respectful dialogue. For example see “Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy: A Dialogue, Milton Friedman and Walter W. Heller, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York (1969)”.
There are enough respected scientists concerned with the current state of climate science to form an alternative “school” Perhaps WUWT could establish a thread restricted to those academics who would like to publish there, using others of the same group as online peer reviewers. It would greatly increase the respectability of such a thread if you would keep crackpots like me off of it.
”Now, do you want to work in a place full of insanely clever people who are also insanely cynical and determined to do everything to get on top of you? If so, you can do top level science.
t’s not all, of course. Top level science requires also an absolutely mind-boggling determination and, overall, confidence in yourself. To properly do science you must be absolutely sure that, whatever you have in mind, you will do it, no matter what, and that you’re doing it right, to the point of almost self-delusion. This is so important that who wins in science is regularly not the most brilliant but the most determined (I’ve seen Nobel prizes speaking and half of the times they didn’t look much more brilliant than your average professor. Most of them were just lucky, and overall were incredibly, monolithically determined). Combined with the above, this means working 24/7, basically leaving behind everything in your life, without any doubt on your skills and abilities and most importantly on your project, while fencing off a competition of equally tough, confident and skilled guys.
…
You can imagine yourself what does it mean also for research in general: Nobody takes risks anymore. Nobody young jumps and tries totally new things, because it’s almost surely a noble way to suicide your career.” – Massimo Sandal, Cambridge, England
http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/
1) Federal grants are framed as seeking proposals to study the negative impacts of climate change, never the positive. Even the names of many of the RFPs show this.
2) Over my career, I have had hundreds of reviews of my 127 papers. The only times I have gotten angry and nasty reviews is on the climate change topic. It is interesting that in the 1990s I published 2 papers in GRL that would today encounter angry reviews, but the emotional level then was not so high and they sailed right through review.
—> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Church_of_God#Death_of_Armstrong_and_doctrinal_reform
This is not an AGW example, but it can and does happen. I can’t speak for how common/rare it is. That said, the truth is yes, sometimes large groups of humans actually do regain true curiosity and shed faith. It does not happen overnight, and in that one example I linked to above, it required the death of a founder and lots and lots of group-splitting.
You cannot stop it from happening again. As long as society can advance to a stage where there are pure takers, there will be and they will take. That is what is happening. The takers will take as long as they are able, and justify it with slovenly work. Eventually society reaches a breaking point where there is nothing to take (they have killed the golden goose), and the takers will die out due to starvation. But the cycle will repeat itself as the society rebuilds and creates excess wealth (defined as that above the need for subsistence).
And then you see posts like these over at SS from another peer review drone, today,
Provide a link to your peer reviewed assessements. Since it takes about a year for work to be peer reviewed I am interested in your sources for events that only happened 9 months ago. James Hansen has a long record of being right.
In the modern age there’s no reason why hardcopy journals must rule the peer review scene. In fact the online world offers an ideal forum for peer scrutiny, but it would be necessary to create a rigid framework and limit participation.
I think Keynes had the same problem with the ideology of his day,everyone was told that governments could do nothing about economic recessions and they believed this,we are told that humans are responsible for global warming and must be stopped and we are expected to believe this.I see similarities between people like Dr Roy Spencer and Keynes.In the UK between the wars we had a socialist government led by Ramsay McDonald who did not attempt to interfere with the economy because of the dogma of the day.
noaaprogrammer says:
April 20, 2011 at 11:56 am
“One expensive solution would be to start publishing a rival journal in climatology that is indeed fair and balanced.”
The founding of a new journal has already happened in another academic field that had become hopelessly suffused and mal-laden with tendentious academic bullies that were controlling what views and subjects would see the light of day. Charlotte Allen in the WSJ wrote an article about scholars rising out of the fetid swamp that Middle East Studies has become:
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http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj_bernard_lewis_takes_on_political_correctness.htm
“What to do if you are a college professor and the academic society that represents your field has been overrun by political correctness? One answer is: Form your own organization.
That is how, six months ago, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (Asmea) came into being. Now claiming 500 members and gearing up to publish its own scholarly journal, Asmea is meant to be a corrective to the 2,600-member Middle East Studies Association, the premier professional society for scholars of the Middle East. That organization is now regarded by many as stiflingly politicized. Institutionally, it engages in nonstop Israel-bashing and seems to blame America for every economic and geopolitical wrong on the planet.
Interestingly, both the Middle East Studies Association and the new Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa were founded by the same person: Bernard Lewis. Now 91, Mr. Lewis is the eminence grise of scholars of Islam. His 60-year scholarly career encompasses more than two-dozen books and decades of teaching, first at the University of London and then at Princeton, where he is now a professor emeritus. He gave up on MESA to found Asmea last fall because he wanted there to be “a truly open academic society.”
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Princeton Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis, founder of both Middle East journals, desires “a truly open academic society.” What a quaint, primitive, has-been notion by a very elderly man! Professors Lewis, McKitrick, and Pielke are way behind the times: Bronze Age Nestorian artifacts lying amongst bygone ruins, foolishly longing for the hopelessly outdated nobility of the Golden Age when censorship and cooking the books were actually grounds for academic censure. These misguided primitives are resistant to the ways in which scholarship, science, and peer review have progressed.
Seriously, the similarities between climate science/Middle East Studies are manifest. Both disciplines suffer/suffered from serious censorship, and peer review that encourages/encouraged and allows/allowed sloppy, tendentious, book-cooking scholarship with the “Correct” message to populate the pages of journals. In both cases, the Message Thugs emanate from exactly the same Orwellian far left sources that think that they have carte blanche to suspend Golden Rule-based fair play if such fair play gets in the way of their agenda to change the world. Sadly, in recent decades it has been the most politically febrile academics that have maneuvered assiduously to get themselves into positions to exercise censorship and control of the Message. It is not lost on the most politically-oriented, amoral academics that a Right and Just Orwellian oligarchy that controls the Right and Just Message will also have a good chance of implementing Right and Just public policies.
The Internet came along at a very opportune time to thwart the oligarchic Message Thugs of the academy. Now that their Machiavellian machinations can be publicly exposed to a wide audience, the stench is simply overwhelming to fair minded people, regardless of political affiliation. Lewis, Watts, McIntyre, McKitrick, Pielke and all the seekers of the truth too many to mention are to be highly commended. The academic process of peer review and publication should be performed to lead to the best approximation of the truth. It should never be performed to lead to a politically motivated outcome. Science and scholarship should be about using the scientific method and fair play in academic scholarship to find the truth simply for the sake of the truth.
To repeat a post from Alexander Feht a year or so ago:
I wonder if we would ever hear Beethoven’s symphonies if they were subject to the peer-review process? Some Salieri would opine that “from both a musicological standpoint, and the very marginal “harmony” involved in Beethoven’s scores…they are pure crap.” His peers would applaud, because, you see, they couldn’t hope to be Beethoven’s peers, could they?
I suspect that Mozart was peer-reviewed by Salieri and his peers. It is known that a second-rate composer Hasse remarked that “if Mozart is to live another 10 years, we all shall end up penniless.”
Franz Schubert was also peer-reviewed to oblivion during his life. He always submitted his compositions to all kinds of competitions, and never won. Anybody remembers the winners, by any chance? His namesake, professor Franz Schubert from Berlin, even threatened to sue him for the insult of attributing “that crap” to his noble, peer-reviewed name.
Wonderful thing, this peer-review process! It eradicates talent and daring thought in embryo, and perpetually protects the well-being of the well-connected mediocrity. You want to kill something — science, music, art, culture, education, anything? Institutionalize it, make it dependent on government subsidies, and make any publication subject to peer review.
Et voila! It’s dead.