Lindzen-Choi ‘Special Treatment’: Is Peer Review Biased Against Nonalarmist Climate Science?
by Chip Knappenberger
[Editor’s note: The following material was supplied to us by Dr. Richard Lindzen as an example of how research that counters climate-change alarm receives special treatment in the scientific publication process as compared with results that reinforce the consensus view. In this case, Lindzen’s submission to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was subjected to unusual procedures and eventually rejected (in a rare move), only to be accepted for publication in the Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.
I, too, have firsthand knowledge about receiving special treatment. Ross McKitrick has documented similar experiences, as have John Christy and David Douglass and Roy Spencer, and I am sure others. The unfortunate side-effect of this differential treatment is that a self-generating consensus slows the forward progress of scientific knowledge—a situation well-described by Thomas Kuhn is his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. –Chip Knappenberger]
From Dr. Lindzen…
The following is the reproduction of the email exchanges involved in the contribution of our paper (Lindzen and Choi, “On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications”) to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The editor of the PNAS follows the procedure of having his assistant, May Piotrowski, communicate his letters as pdf attachments.
full story here
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Similar things happen in other scientific circles! Reads like a carbon copy …. Consensus, groupthink, exclusion.
“Globalink: A Forum for Global Groupthink in Tobacco Control
Today, I am going to put forward the argument that Globalink (the international tobacco control list-serve) would be better called GlobalGroupthink. It is a perfect example of the groupthink phenomenon which has gripped the tobacco control movement and which I believe threatens the integrity and scientific credibility of the movement.”
Prof. Michael Siegel, Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health. in http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/06/globalink-forum-for-global-groupthink.html
“Special treatment.” That phrase has a sinister ring to it.
Anyone surprised by this?
Anthony, check out this article by Scientific Computing. It’s an article about what the scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have produced. A groundbreaking global map that we taxpayers have spent countless millions of dollars on just to discover that plants grow best in the summer, barley at all in the winter, and that for some reason plants don’t grow as well in the dark. Without admitting it, they are basically saying that their new fluorescence global map proves global warming is actually beneficial to plant life on earth.
Why political repercussions have an influence on the science at hand?
Drs. Susan Solomon, Kevin Trenberth, Gavin Schmidt
Not worthy of reviewing Dr. Lindzen’s anything, let alone climatology work.
Pretty damning. One of the reasons given for rejection was politics!! And Gavin Schmidt “independent”? I wonder of Schimdt would be happy with Svensmark reviewing his papers?
I have a climate-related peer-reviewed “comment” approved by both peers for publication on “Nature”. It didn’t see the light of the day because the Editors overruled the reviewers.
I also have a climate-related letter to the Editors approved by one Editor for publication on “Nature” (paper edition, not just website). It didn’t see the light of the day because a more senior Editor overruled the previous one.
I think that’s enough experience with dishonest editing at that political rag, a waste of space formerly known as a prestigious scientific journal.
That the peer review process is biased towards the consensus is beyond doubt, especially in climate science. However, that a scientist requests specific peers to review his paper is not the solution.
Science without advocacy and propaganda is no longer allowed and if the advocacy and propaganda does not support the agenda, then it is not worthy of publication.
It appears theat the Team is in complete control of NAS publication. Gauging from what they have been publisheing the last few years, this is not a a surprise.
Well, of course disqualify reviewers that have worked with each other in the past. In fact, let’s start retracting all papers that were reviewed by past collaborators. More sandbagging hypocrisy.
Am I correct in reading that Lindzen requested Chou review his paper, and Chou was rejected by Dr. Scheckman because Chou was too closely involved with Lindzen? (Lindzen states he hadn’t worked with Chou in seven years.)
What hypocrisy! As if Hansen and Mann and Briffa and so on are not reviewed by people they are closely associated with! And as if they invite review by anyone who might be even remotely critical!
The double standard Alarmists work by has been obvious for years, but recently it seems to becoming glaring.
I do find it breathtaking that one of the world’s top climate scientists, writing a contribution on perhaps the most important aspect of the science, gets this kind of run around.
But never a week goes past without Anthony reporting the publication of at least a couple of fully “peer reviewed” papers, often on trivial minutiae relating to secondary or tertiary scare stories, which a reasonably bright undergrad could easily debunk.
These ‘editors’ are real pieces of work.
For those who may have missed it, this is an example of the corruption in the climate peer review process:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
I wonder, do you think Steve Schneider had such a critical review when he published his hit piece in the PNAS shortly before he died? You remember… the one where he rated the qualifications of climate scientists by the number of papers each had written. As I recall, that paper, which was utter rubbush, was full of erroneous information.
Of course, the answer to my rhetorical question is no, he didn’t.
I am not surprised. I recently offered a paper about Arctic warming to Science, Nature, Climatic Change and BAMS. None of them could find any errors. Nature just sent a form letter rejecting it. Science told me they did not want it because it belonged in a more specialized journal. Climatic Change gave totally asinine reasons by a jerk named Oppenheimer. And BAMS told me it was revolutionary and they just published papers that reviewed current science. Publish it elsewhere and then we will quote it was their advice. Fact is that the paper opposed global warming dogma and these editors are all either true believers or under orders to reject anything opposed to global warming. It’s easier to reject an upstart then to reject Lindzen who is well known but they do it whenever their dogma is threatened. How else do you think is it possible that Naomi Oreskes could not find one article opposed to global warming among more than 900 articles she reviewed?
This may be the reason why Warmists keep harping on about “the overwhelming scientific research blah, blah, blah.”
Here is an absolute travesty from the Climategate emails:
I’ve read, I believe, all of the Lindzen/Choi papers, including a pre-print of this one. (I’ll note that I haven’t seen the publication version as of yet.)
Given the reviewers comments (http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Attach3.pdf), I find myself in complete agreement with them. This paper fails to address extra-tropical heat transport (ENSO, anyone?), using a simplistic factor of 2 to extend tropical results to the globe – that was a major point in all of the critiques of earlier versions of this work, and L&C don’t even discuss it. Given that extra-tropic heat transport is an order of magnitude larger than the sensitivity measures they are discussing, that’s a very serious issue.
No explanation of time period selection was presented in that pre-print: it’s been shown in their earlier papers (Lindzen and Choi 2009) that changing time period selections to what might be rather more reasonable periods (such as peak-to-valley) will produce entirely different results (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Staff/Fasullo/refs/Trenberth2010etalGRL.pdf).
The discussion of lead/lag are really thin (almost non-existent), and the lack of inclusion of volcanic forcings in the model runs they use means that their computations are lacking major forcings. Their method discussion is insufficient to replicate the work, which is a terrible lack.
This paper is a _fail_, and I would agree with the reviewers and the editors that it shouldn’t have been published. Lindzen’s complaints that he couldn’t get the hand-picked sympathetic reviewers he wanted (as opposed to people in the field familiar with the data and the issues) are rather petulant.
It is much, much worse when you think that the same reviewers decide on the allocation of funds for research proposals.
If this happens to Lindzen, imagine the fate of junior researchers that dare to be critical. No wonder there is a consensus, disenters have been exterminated.
Special treatment under the liberal dictionary obviously means censorship, the crippling of science and the support of a political agenda through selective publication of research. Special meaning for two special words.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences impact factor: 9.432
Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences impact factor: 0.355
For comparison:
Energy and Environment impact factor: 0.42, less than one citation every four years.
My impression is that Lindzen and Choi shopped the article out to a journal needy enough to publish it despite it’s flaws.
So, should we listen to KR, who is doing his level best ad hominem attacks against the internationally esteemed head of MIT’s atmospheric sciences department? Or should we accept the fact that Prof Lindzen knows what he’s talking about, and KR is simply cherry-picking hostile sources in order to fling mud? [scroll down Lindzen’s CV]
Somehow, I think KR lacks Lindzen’s credibility.
KR says:
Well duh. It’s really hard to get published when you don’t toe the party line. The behavior of publishers of all kinds has been well documented by none other than Noam Chomsky. He wrote books on the press coverage of the wars in Viet Nam and Cambodia. He conclusively proved that the mainstream American media had no interest whatsoever in the truth unless it supported the aforementioned party line. In fact Chomsky had to shop his work out to an obscure foreign publisher because nobody in the USofA would publish it.
I may be the only person on the face of the globe who admires both Chomsky and Lindzen so I’m at least sort of neutral. Based on what Chomsky showed me, I would guess that, on the balance of probabilities, Lindzen’s work was rejected less on its merits and more on the fact that it supports an unpopular opinion.
Smokey – Well, then, Smokey, read some of the critiques of his earlier papers (I linked to just one above, I believe there were at least three, see also http://news.cisc.gmu.edu/doc/publications/Chung%20et%20al%202010.pdf and http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042911.shtml among others), read the L&C paper itself, and read the reviewers remarks – all of which I have done. See if you can detect _any_ addressing of the major problems with Lindzen’s earlier works.
I’ll note that an Ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) attack involves dismissing an argument based upon insults to the person making it. I have not done so – I’ve stated issues with Lindzen and Choi’s work, and where it got published, not personal attacks whatsoever. You, on the other hand, are presenting an Argument from Authority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority), a notable logical fallacy.
I think Lindzen and Choi’s work stands on it’s own. And, likewise, fails on it’s own.