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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IMPOSTERS
KR, Rattus Norvegicus and Phil would like to give the impression that they are fearless fair minded people.
They give the impression of weighing up the pros and cons and are forced by the evidence to agree with the not to publish position.
In fact they are “ideological hacks” so their position is predictable.
If some e-mail correspondence between the referees was leaked, showing organised biased collusion not to publish, what would they say?
The same three would return posting to defend the usual corrupt practices.
KR says:
June 11, 2011 at 6:57 am
“Lindzen and Choi got their paper published elsewhere – good for them. But claiming that the paper was rejected at PNAS due to bias, when even one of the reviewers Lindzen suggested indicate it was rejected due to poor quality – that’s just sour grapes.”
Either you have not read Professor Curry’s analysis of the matter on her blog or else you have not understood a word of it. Professor Curry’s comments on the matter are clear, concise, and To The Point. Lindzen was treated differently and treated badly. The editor’s treatment of Lindzen and participation by The Team supports criticisms that PAL Review rules. Professor Curry has spoken clearly and authoritatively. She calls for policy changes at PNAS. If you do not address her points then you will have taken yourself out of the debate, once again.
In addition, you continue to focus on issues of content. As I have explained earlier, the quality of the content was never a legitimate issue and has been exploited by those trying to cover wrong doing by editors and reviewers. Professor Curry explains the same thing. If anyone doubts that you are a troll, these points should convince them that you are.
Theo Goodwin – “…the quality of the content was never a legitimate issue…”
Au contraire, Theo – the content is the issue itself. This paper was rejected once by GRL, twice by PNAS, with reviewers including Lindzen’s hand-picked people concluding that it lacked quality.
Statements such as your make it very difficult to take some skeptics seriously. Science is all about the content, and upon those grounds this paper fails. To claim otherwise is, well, rhetoric. Not science.
One of the biggest problems in this area, is matching up the ERBE and the CERES datasets (they are in anomalies relative to different baseline/measuring periods).
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6278/erbeceres.png
To be consistent with all other climate indices, I would moves the CERES LW radiation up about 2 Watts/m2 and the CERES reflected SW radiation down about 2 Watts/m2. This would put them back on the same baseline.
The LW radiation is mostly as an ENSO signal. It should be higher in the 2000 to 2007 period since this was dominated by El Ninos.
The SW reflected radiation varies mostly due to the Pinatuba eruption which initially reflected more radiation and then less as the sulfate aerosols destroyed Ozone which resulted in less absorption/reflection of UV radiation. It should look much like the stratosphere temperature signal which would result in CERES reflected SW radiation being moved down.
But I would also use a different dataset than reflected SW at the top-of-the-atmosphere as CERES measures. The SW solar heating of the Earth’s surface is affected by cloud cover, volcanic aerosols, ozone levels, cloud thickness, human aerosols, human aerosols impact on clouds etc. Taking all these impacts together, the data indicates there has been almost no net change in the total SW radiation getting to the Earth surface over the period. Zero or a +/- 1 W/m2 (A short downturn during Pinatubo but little change after this effect dissapated).
Putting those adjustments into the numbers, we would find that Lindzen propositions in the paper are actually correct. Temps are up a bit, LW went up as if the sensitivity value was very low, and the ENSO is the big player in these changes.
As the La Nina impact has been fully incorporated now, outgoing LW is back down to near Zero anomalies as is the temperature. Not much GHG induced reduction in LW as proposed in the theory.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/olr-5b-pg.gif
KR says:
June 11, 2011 at 8:02 am
“Au contraire, Theo – the content is the issue itself. This paper was rejected once by GRL, twice by PNAS, with reviewers including Lindzen’s hand-picked people concluding that it lacked quality.”
It is a rare occasion that I get to quote myself.
‘KR, if you find yourself stating your unsupported opinions, especially stating them as a response, go look in the mirror and say these words: “Dude, you are full of yourself, everyone can see it, and no one will take you seriously until you get over it.”’
You are not going to address Dr. Curry’s points, are you? You might a well tattoo “Warmista” on your forehead. Doing so would help you focus as you look into the mirror.
KR is spreading disinformation by talking about Lindzen’s handpicked people. NAS policy is authors can choose two referees of their own choice as long as it complies with the stated policies. That is applicable to every author. So firstly by refusing to accept Lindzen’s choice of referees, which complied with their own requirements, they violated their own principles.
Secondly, Lindzen put forward Abert Arkins as a possible second reviewer also.
Lindzen did not choose any of the 4 selected by PNAS as referees. These were chosen by PNAS themselves. Lindzen had no choice here.
So KR is as usual putting a deliberate false spin not supported by facts. And as far as evaluation of content is concerned, it is utter BS to expect that any skeptical article would be allowed to be published by a reviewer panel consisting of Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Trenberth and Susan Solomon who are demonstrated dishonest AGW proponents of the first order with no scruples or morals. They are part of the Climategate clique and will do anything possible without any regards to truth, scientific method or ethics to stop any skeptic paper from being published anywhere. They are scientifically, and ethically untrustworthy.
Dr Curry states: “PNAS violated its own guidelines in the treatment of the LC paper.”
The apologists for the unethical behavior by PNAS are getting a well-deserved b!tch slapping here because of their failed attempts to justify disparate treatment of skeptics, while turning a blind eye to the same pal review that hand-waves through fatally flawed papers by Michael Mann.
The same journals refuse to retract Mann’s debunked papers, particularly MBH98 and Mann08. Those papers have been so thoroughly discredited that there is no legitimate excuse for not retracting them. Yet they remain as part of the ‘litrachur’ because the self-serving Mann and his pet journals are all on the same alarmist team, peddling their debunked globaloney conjecture for personal gain and aggrandizement at taxpayer expense.
Dr Lindzen has never been a complainer. He is simply pointing out the different treatment he recieved compared to the alarmist goons, who have discarded their professional ethics in order to keep their snouts in the taxpayer trough. Dr Lindzen knows how the peer review system works, he’s been through it hundreds of times, and when he says he is being treated differently, rational folks accept his accusation because it is based on long experience.
The enablers of the PNAS shenanigans ignore the fact that the Climategate emails specifically document this kind of unethical behavior. They will do anything to keep skeptical views out of the journals in order to keep the taxpayer loot flowing into their pockets, and the comments by the PNAS apologists demonstrate their lack of ethics.
“PNAS violated its own guidelines in the treatment of the LC paper.” Playing favorites is truly despicable in a professional journal, especially when it is used to extort taxpayer funds. But it’s what they do. And the desperate attempts by the few PNAS apologists here can not cover up that wrongdoing.
Theo, thanks for your comments. It’s just a coincidence, the name.
Its welcome that KR posts on such a one sided issue.
In doing so he exposes himself as an unthinking propagandist.
If he posts again on an issue where there is perhaps a more evenly balanced case to be made, don’t give him the benefit of the doubt.
If science is working like it is supposed to each side would peer review the other sides paper. But science is broken now special interests fund each side and it is almost impossible to have unbiased research. I hope science will eventually be fixed. I am 18 and plan on going to college to become a atmospheric scientist and I am sick of politics intruding into science already. I can’t imagine dealing with it the rest of my life.
And still no one can explain why GHG ‘forcing’ will be amplified by over 400% when solar forcing is only amplified by about 60%.
Yet they vehemently object to a negative feedback of about 40% from Lindzen and Choi. I think the peer review process is seriously broken.