Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. recently submitted this paper to Geophysical Research Letters (GRL):
A homogeneous database of global landfalling tropical cyclones
Jessica Weinkle* and Roger Pielke, Jr.
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, 1333 Grandview Ave, Campus Box 488, Boulder, Colorado 80309
Abstract
In recent decades, economic damage from tropical cyclones (TCs) around the world has increased dramatically. Scientific literature published to date is strongly suggestive that the increase in losses can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to tropical cyclone landfalls. However, no homogenized dataset of tropical cyclone landfalls has been created. We have constructed such a homogenized global landfall TC database. We find no long-term global trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling TCs for the period with reliable data, providing very strong support for the conclusion that increasing damage around the world over the period(s) of record can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls, and adding confidence in the fidelity of economic normalization analyses.
Seems straightforward enough. It came back with two reviews, both with some corrections, one reviewer suggesting publication without major caveats, the other grudgingly suggesting publication to the editor, Noah Diffenbaugh, and asking for revisions. So far so good (you’d think). But it starts getting weird from here. Pielke Jr. asks this set of questions:
As the editor what would you do?
A) Provisionally accept the paper pending a revision that meets the editor’s judgment of responsiveness
B) Provisionally accept the paper pending re-review by the two reviewers
C) Reject the paper
D) Reject the paper and tell the authors that any reconsideration of the paper would have to be accompanied by a detailed response to the two reviewers followed by selection of new reviewers and a restart of the review process
If you picked (D) then you too can be an editor at GRL.
Read the whole bizarre peer review story here.
I have published papers in my field which is healthcare. As late as last week, I received a comment from the editor of a good journal in this field about one of my papers, saying that this could not be published, stating what were the changes expected and stating that the paper would be publishable if the specific changes were met. It was as simple as that, professional, clear, courteous and stating what was needed to be done so that science could be advanced.
Obviously, Climate Science seems to follow a different set of rules, devoid of any fairness, logic, scientific method or due process.
Leif – September 29, 2011 at 4:15 am – whatever lies beneath you, the extremely weak point of mentioning the words as there is much work needed has now disappeared from your reasoning. Good to know.
Still no word from anybody why would an editor not reply to a rejected author’s request of clarification.
Poptech says:
September 28, 2011 at 9:22 pm
“No it was NOT! The second reviewers comments can be interpreted as requiring a ‘major revision’.”
I would go further and say they couldn’t be interpreted any other way, the following; “claims of a new homogeneous database (based on JTWC outside of the US) are grossly over-stated as there is much work needed before that can be genuinely claimed. This is especially so in regard to intensity, which the authors treat fairly simplistically in any case. I would like to see that aspect down-played”, is clearly asking for changes to be made to the content and conclusions of the paper.
Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says:
September 29, 2011 at 7:24 am
has now disappeared from your reasoning. Good to know.
Having said that repeatedly, there was no need to keep harping on the same. Good to know that you have partly heeded the further explanation of the facts, although your attitude is still not up to par. But, I guess, somebody will have to occupy the lower rungs of the scale.
Still no word from anybody why would an editor not reply to a rejected author’s request of clarification.
Because [for the gazillionth time] it is not the editor’s job. The referee reports are what the authors should respond to. And the editor did reply with an explanation of GRL’s policy. Everything is what it should be.
Venter says:
September 29, 2011 at 7:10 am
Climate Science seems to follow a different set of rules, devoid of any fairness, logic, scientific method or due process.
If you care to look, referee #2 did explicitly point to three areas where changes were needed. What seems to be different is the extreme sensitivity and paranoia displayed by the authors.
No Leif, what IS different is that non-climate editors appear to be able to behave professionally, exchange emails with authors, explain their position even with as little as a “Read reviewer #2’s comments”.
Climate editors instead can always do a wagner, or get somebody like you to defend the indefensibile “because it’s not their job”. What isn’t their job? To explain the unfathomable ways of their reasoning?
Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says:
September 29, 2011 at 7:58 am
Climate editors instead can always do a wagner, or get somebody like you to defend the indefensible
The treatment the climate editor gave Pielke is no different from the treatment I and many of my colleagues have gotten from non-climate editors. It is standard procedure and editors [of any stripe] never clarify or expand on the reviewers. What is different is who was at the receiving end.
“Still no word from anybody why would an editor not reply to a rejected author’s request of clarification.”
There are many authors per editor. Editors simply do not have the time to answer every question. In this case, the question was too silly to warrant an answer. The comments were clear. The author wanted to be lead by the hand, but that’s not the editor’s job. A journal like GRL is not short of papers, so authors that are not self-starters should try their luck elsewhere.
Thank you Richard for reminding me of that Blues Brothers scene with John Belushi and Princess Leyla. Yes, there’s almost no limit to what we can rationalize post-facto.
I guess it must’ve been my charms that made me always interact with professional editors, outside of climate science. Lucky me!
Rational Debate wrote: So by definition, all whistleblowers or anyone factually reporting how an agency, company, journal, government, policeman etc., treats them, are to be despised as whiners throwing temper tantrums.
No, not all. Only the whiners.
re post by: Leif Svalgaard says: September 28, 2011 at 10:42 pm
Yes, you’ve made it perfectly clearly that you agree with the editor. In the past, I’ve been heavily involved in developing highly technical complicated verbatim compliance procedures, and the one thing you very quickly learn is that different people can very easily come away with very different understanding of identical wording. The only way to minimize that is with very careful literal wording.
So you say: “the editor was crystal clear and provided a supporting link” and if you are so utterly certain, then you tell me; In order to meet the requirements of both editor and reviewer #2 such that the submission would be moved out of category #3 and be fully publishable by GRL, would it have been sufficient to change the title to “towards…” and likewise do the easy and quick revision throughout the document to downplay the idea that this was a fully homogeneous database? Or would it have been necessary to actually re-present only after significant additional work and development of a ‘less simplistic’ (whatever that means) treatment, such that no one could possibly gainsay that a fully homogeneous database was being presented?
A literal reading of reviewer #2’s comments leaves open either option (or any degree in between). Either the answer that only a fully homogeneous database etc. would be sufficient, or that the work was important enough that a paper “toward a homogeneous database” would be sufficient.
It’s easy to be biased towards whatever your first impression and opinion was on reading about this, but not so easy to admit that otherwise fully reasonable people could read the exact same thing and come away with a very different understanding than you did.
Now, I can’t speak one way or the other about whether Peilke is a serial whiner threatened by conspiracy theories or not – I have no idea. I can easily that that plenty of people who fit neither of those labels would want a bit of simple clarification regarding what was being requested given the way reviewer #2 worded things, and the editor replied. It also would have taken the editors no more time to provide that simple clarification than it did for them to reply as they did, even if it meant a quick call to reviewer #2 to find out. Whichever revision they required, the result, according to both editor and reviewer, would have been of interest to GRL – so a simple clarification by the editor stood to gain them a paper they’d want. Rude or cursory or ambiguous treatment, label it what you will, lost them the paper which doesn’t benefit the journal in any way.
@Maurizio
You regularly refer to your experience with publishing academic papers. Unfortunately, the internet thingy allows one to look up your publication record. It is not the most impressive I’ve seen.
You may return the favour: http://www.ae-info.org/ae/User/Tol_Richard/Publications
Rational Debate says:
September 29, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Whichever revision they required, the result, according to both editor and reviewer, would have been of interest to GRL – so a simple clarification by the editor stood to gain them a paper they’d want. Rude or cursory or ambiguous treatment, label it what you will, lost them the paper which doesn’t benefit the journal in any way.
The standard policy is not to scrutinize the wording and try to parse every possible interpretation. If more than just minor changes are required [and I have shown that at least two non-trivial changes were requested] the paper is always summarily rejected with the possibility of resubmission if the paper ‘has promise’. The editor never [in my experience] tries to clarify what the reviewers mean, and should not [as he usually is not an expert on the subject]. I’ll label the treatment as fair, standard, and polite.
Here is what GRL says about the policy:
“For example, manuscripts are routinely declined if the reviews point to a need for
additional analyses, simulations, or other significant changes to support purported
high-impact results or implications. However, for those submissions that show promise of reaching GRL’s criteria, authors are encouraged to resubmit following necessary revisions.”
This is crystal clear and not rude, cursory, or ambiguous.
My reaction was not based on first impression, but with my experience with the process having a paper of my own rejected in just this way a few months back. I did the proper thing: revised the paper and resubmitted.
Richard – I was hoping we were long past the “my (publication list) is bigger than yours” stage. Congratulations for keeping up with the teenager in you!
Secondly the sparseness of my scientific publishing career makes the quality of my editors even more startling.
Finally I know how several editors behave as I’m acquainted with the long and prolific publishing of a senior scientist, a person I have known very well for two decades.
Bah, fiddling while Rome burns.
==========
And then the larger plants take up even more …Future plant C=P(1+150/P)^t
reply to: Septic Matthew says: September 29, 2011 at 11:25 am
Nice meaningful clarification there /sarc
Oops that is carbon and instead of 150 it should be 150*12/44 (C:CO2)
Well, a quick search shows up a couple of published papers (and lots of presentation papers) by a Maurizio Morabito, just like it showed up a couple of papers for Richard Tol a while ago …..
Carlo Ciulla, Tsunehiro Takeda, Maurizio Morabito, Hiroshi Endo, Toru Kumagai, and Ruiting Xiao, “MEG characteristics of spontaneous alpha rhythm in the human brain,” Brain Topography, vol. 11, pp. 211-222, 1999.
Hiroshi Endo, Tomohiro Kizuka, Tadashi Masuda, Tsunehiro Takeda, Toru Kumagai, Tatsu Kobayakawa, and Maurizio Morabito, “Simultaneous estimation of motor and sensory activities during a finger movement,” Peter Peregrinus for Int. Fed. Med. & Biol. Eng. Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing, vol. 34, pp. 201-2, 1996.
….. but why am I doing this? Is WUWT now at the level of counting papers to see whose arguments are best?
Some respectable arguments appear to have been put forward by both sides in this debate, but in my perhaps over-simple way of looking at things I am struck by the attention given to the idea that the word “Toward” should be added to the title. This is how I see it:- The title was “A homogeneous database of global landfalling tropical cyclones” and the paper presented exactly that. The database may not have included every single tropical cyclone, and it might not have had every possible piece of intensity data, but as far as I can tell it really was what it said it was.
The objections to the paper may have been based on the statement that they found no long-term global trends in the frequency or intensity of landfalling TCs, but the obvious way to rebut this is to find some.
Mike Jonas,
Did you read the comments by reviewer #2? He did not object to the content of the paper (in fact agreed with it) but felt that the case was not made (thus the request for more analysis or to tone down the claims w/a change to the title).
And has been pointed out numerous times by people who have published in GRL, any need to change the content of the paper means it is rejected with an invitation to resubmit if the paper, as they say, “has promise”. It’s just the way a quick turnaround journal, such as GRL, works…
@Mike Jonas
Maurizio claimed authority by referring to his substantial experience in getting papers published in academic journals. I just confronted him with the facts. It’s his unidentified brother/wife/friend_he_meets_for_dinner_every_other_year who has that experience, rather than Maurizio.
I have published 191 papers in 80 different journals, review about one paper a week, am on the editorial board of five journals, and have published 946 papers (and rejected another 2000) as editor of Energy Economics.
I think that the behaviour of the editors of GRL is perfectly normal and perfectly fine. On the other hand, Pielke Jr’s behaviour is most peculiar. I have never encountered an author like him, which suggests that he’s in the 0.3% tail. I will use this as an example (of what not to do) next time I teach my class on “how (not) to publish”.
Richard Tol – Maurizio claimed authority
Since that’d be a first, I would like to know where and when I did it. You know, to record the event for posterity.
@Maurizio
Sep 29 04:04 am
Sep 29 10:44 am
In both cases, you argued that Pielke’s experience is different from yours, and drew inference.
Perish the thought I sport an opinion, uh, Richard?
Perhaps I might ought to start possibly writing in a probably less likely to be considered a tad judgemental way 🙂
@Maurizio
You may want to read Pielke Jr’s book, An Honest Broker. It’s excellent.
The bottom line recommendations are that one should distinguish facts from opinions, and that one should distinguish experts from punters.
You pretended to be an expert talking about empirical facts.
You are of course entitled to your opinions and free to express them.