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.
Richard and Rattus (and Leif etc) – Maybe you are right, and maybe RP should have just ignored the editors reference to “major revision”, fixed the “relatively minor issues”, and the “13 specific suggestions for punctuation, wording or emphasis”, and resubmitted. That would have been simple, and maybe it would have worked. But RP has published papers too. Maybe less or maybe more than you, but does that really matter? It seems unlikely that he has not in the past been through the processes of rejection, reacting to reviewers, etc. In this case the editor did not even reply to RP’s query about the discrepancy between the reviews and the rejection on “major revision” grounds. Is it really normal for an editor not to reply at all to a query? The chief editor then said that GRL did not actually use “major revision” and that the editor had simply issued a standard rejection. At this stage, it does seem confusing that the standard rejection, which is not based on “major revision”, says that it is based on “major revision”. Actually, to a lay person, it seems to be getting past confusing into kafkaesque, with neither the editor nor chief editor prepared to say what the “major revision” (which wasn’t actually a “major revision”) was, yet condemning RP for it. Again, is this really normal? Given that RP does have publication experience, ie. is not a lay person, it appears that even if you may think it normal, in RP’s experience it is not. Was it really so unreasonable of RP to pick up that there was a problem with “major revision” and try to sort it out?
Now maybe it was all because GRL is a “quick turnaround journal”, but then wouldn’t it make sense for the editor, in the interest of getting the desired quick turnaround, simply to answer RP’s question? Or maybe just point out to RP that that particular standard GRL rejection isn’t a real rejection because it is aimed at the turnaround statistics (it resets the clock), not at the author? Now to be fair, it does seem to me that the chief editor really was trying to put RP on the right track, by telling him obliquely to ignore the “major revision” thing. But unfortunately in the very same sentence he referred RP to a document which, among other things, advised (three times) that GRL has a policy of rejecting on “major revision” grounds – thus undoing all the good work.
No wonder RP was confused. Probably the best for him at that stage would have been to drop GRL and try a different paper ….. but of course, that is what he did.
@Mike
GRL is a high volume journal. They’ve already published 776 papers this year, and published 853 papers last year. I don’t know what got into Pielke, but someone of his experience should know that the editor of a journal like that has neither the time nor the desire to engage with any author in that way.
A number of commentators here and elsewhere seem to think that an editor has a duty to help authors. That’s not the case. The editor is duty-bound to treat every one in the same (often shitty) way. Helping an author to interpret referee comments may in fact be seen as favoritism and prejudicing the next decision.
Richard Tol: and that one should distinguish experts from punters.
Historically, important contributions have been made by people whom the “experts” considered “punters”. It’s the quality of the work and the evidence that matter, not the “expertise”; in climate, consider the work of Steve McIntyre and Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley: considered “punters” by the “experts”, they have done good work that the “experts” ought to have taken much more seriously from the start.
Your comments on the review process I heartily support. Besides the published papers of GRL, consider also the much larger number of total submissions; the editors could not possibly do what the supporters here of Pielke Jr. think they ought to have done in all those cases.
Secondly the sparseness of my scientific publishing career makes the quality of my editors even more startling”.
“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 …..”
A quick google scholar/Web of science search on “Maurizio Morabito” as “author” reveals zero papers in any serious peer-reviewed journals. Web of science simply says 0 papers found, while google scholar reveals some mentions in acknowledgements in the journal “Energy & Environment”, which is generally and widely regarded as a joke. Surely, nobody with a modicum of scientific training and half a brain would praise the quality of editors like Sonja Böhmer-Christiansen who let through papers like those of Ernst-Georg Beck claiming that CO2 had risen and fallen by 100 ppm from one year to the next.
Mr. Morabito, as far as I can see, you have never had the pleasure of interacting with any reviewers or editors on a professional level. If this is supposed to pass for a “scientific publishing career”, “sparseness” sure does seem to be quite a big word indeed. With friends like you, Dr. Pielke hardly needs enemies.
As far as you can see, you “Christoffer Bugge Harder” search-challenged waste of a Saturday!
Christoffer Bugge Harder says:
“…the journal “Energy & Environment”, which is generally and widely regarded as a joke.”
I’ll suppose you’re ignorant, and not a fool to give you the benefit of the doubt. To understand the problem you need to get educated. I recommend A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, available on the right sidebar.
The climate journal system has been completely corrupted, as Montford shows in well documented detail. The Climategate emails also show how the climate journals have been corrupted through threats and intimidation. It is reprehensible that internationally esteemed climatologists such as Prof Richard Lindzen are forced to wait a year or more for publication, and others are never published, no matter how excellent their work – while error-filled papers like Dessler’s have a one day turnaround. If you believe that most mainstream climate journals are anything other than propaganda outlets for the “Team”, you are simply mistaken.
It is not widely regarded as any such thing. Alarmists have simply desperately attempted to smear the journal.
Energy & Environment is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary scholarly journal (ISSN: 0958-305X)
– Indexed in Compendex, EBSCO, Environment Abstracts, Google Scholar, JournalSeek, Scopus, Thompson Reuters (ISI) and WorldCat
– Found at 173 libraries and universities worldwide in print and electronic form. These include; Cambridge University, Cornell University, British Library, Dartmouth College, Library of Congress, National Library of Australia, Ohio University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, University of California, University of Delaware, University of Oxford, University of Virginia, and MIT.
– Thompson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI) lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
– EBSCO lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
– Elsevier lists Energy & Environment as a scholarly peer-reviewed journal on their internal master list. (Source: Email Correspondence)
– The IPCC cites Energy & Environment multiple times
– “E&E, by the way, is peer reviewed” – Tom Wigley, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
– “I have published a few papers in E&E. All were peer-reviewed as usual. I have reviewed a few more for the journal.” – Richard Tol Ph.D. Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands
– “All Multi-Sciences primary journals are fully refereed” – Multi-Science Publishing
– “Regular issues include submitted and invited papers that are rigorously peer reviewed” – E&E Mission Statement
I guess the IPCC is a joke then for citing Energy & Environment?
Dr. Böhmer-Christiansen is a credentialed scientists, B.A. (Hons) Geography (Thesis: Geomorphology), University of Adelaide (1962), M.A. International Relations, University of Sussex (1971), D.Phil. (Ph.D.) International Relations (Thesis: Limits to the International Control of Marine Pollution) (1981); Lecturer in Geography, Flinders University, Australia (1963-68), Research Assistant, Institute for Public International Law, Ludwig-Maximillian University, Germany (1982-1985), Consultant, Acid Rain Project, Chatham House, UK (1986-1987), Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1985-1987), Senior Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1987-1993), Member, Working Group on Global Environmental Change, International Political Science Association (1991-1994), Referee, Environmental Research Programme, European Commission (1992), Member, Working Group on Environment and Society, International Sociological Association (1992-Present), Reader of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (1993-2007), Consultant, Climatic Impacts Centre, Macquarie University, Australia (1994), Member, International Geographical Union (1998-Present), Editor, Energy & Environment Journal (1998-Present), Reader Emeritus of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (2007-Present), Expert Reviewer, IPCC (1995, 2001)
As for the Beck paper – 180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 2, pp. 259-282, March 2007)
– Ernst-Georg Beck
There has only been one published criticism by Harro A.J. Meijer and Ralph F. Keeling which was rebutted by Ernst-Georg Beck,
Comments on “180 years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods”
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 641-646, September 2007)
– Ernst-Georg Beck
It is falsely claimed that this paper was never peer-reviewed,
“…this paper was reviewed by a retired research director (of environmental sciences) from a country deeply involved in climate research; and a professor of radiation chemistry, as well as a number of experts mentioned in the paper” – Daniel C. Goodwin, Comment at RealClimate.org
Theo Goodwin — “Nope, sorry, this does not wash. You do not offer an excuse for the editor but suggest that the editor is above excuses, that the editor has no duties in this matter, and is something like a god whose whims must be accepted.”
Or perhaps a simple physical reality is in play, where people are not necessarily tied to their desk 24/7 in case something crops up and a subset of the population feel their demands must be promptly satisfied?
Omnologos: I suggest you do the search yourself, rather than (by your own admission) wasting your saturday complaining about things you have not even bothered to investigate. As also pointed out by Richard Tol, Maurizio Morabito has been authoring zero papers in any scientific journal covered by google scholar or Web of Science.
Smokey: I will restrain from speculating about your background for making such sweeping statements, and since you have chosen not to put your name on your postings, probably for a very good and easily understandable reason, I have no way of verifying it independently.
However, you may want to at least try to consider the possibility of actually examining the scientific content of papers having trouble getting published? It may, of course, be some kind of grand, e-e-eval conspiracy keeping the truth from getting out, but have you ever thought about, just briefly, that papers like Beck, Soon & Baliunas 2003 or Lindzen´s last paper rejected by PNAS simply might not have been very good with respect to the basic scientific work? 🙂 FYI, the purpose of peer-review is to weed out bad science. I remember you having claimed in earlier comments that CO2 was mostly a result of warming, or suggesting that volcanos might be a major source for atmospheric CO2 – if you are seriously thinking that this is true, then it is little wonder that papers you find excellent have a hard time in peer-review.
Poptech: I´m in genetics and ecology, I can assure you that E&E is indeed widely regarded as a joke among the natural sciences – that is, for those ever having heard of this “journal”.
As Böhmer-Christiansen herself has said:
“By the way, E&E is not a science journal and has published IPCC critiques to give a platform critical voices and ‘paradigms’ because of the enormous implications for energy policy, the energy industries and their employees and investors, and for research”.
For Böhmer-Christiansens background, see this
http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/thoughts_on_energy_environment.php
– you may be swayed by her fine-sounding membership of diverse committees, but her real science training appears to be one year of undergraduate geography. According to ThomsonReuters, she has published just 6 articles in her 40 years as a “scientist”, and none of those within natural sciences. If you have any idea about daily scientific work, you certainly know that this is not a resumé to boast too much about.
However, the issue is not whether she has any credentials, but her qualities as an editor. If you let papers with basic schoolbay errors thorugh simply because you like some specific viewpoint – as she by her own (and quite foolish) admission does – then you just are not qualified to be an editor for a scientific journal. Alarmist or not – Beck´s CO2 paper simply shows such a ridiculously poor understanding of the carbon cycle with respect to sources, sinks, and isotopic and a near-complete ignorance of all the work by people like Süss, Keeling, Revelle or Sabine in the last 60 years that almost anyone of the 1-year student I teach in fundamental ecology could spot the errors. It has been completely debunked in many climate blogs, even by Eschenbach and Engelbeen on WUWT (!). The obvious reason why there has been no replies is that it is not worthwhile as this paper crumbles all by itself – and since it was not published in a scientific journal anyway, there is frankly no need to bother (as opposed to e.g. Khilyuk & Chilingar 2004, which was equally poor, but managed to get into a serious journal, Environmental Geology, and prompted a reply).
No offense, but if you honestly think that papers like Beck, or Eschenbachs letter from Tuvalu or Archibald (2006) has any scientific merit, then you simply do not understand the background. Sorry, but that is the harsh truth………
CBH – no surprise there. You haven’t understood my comment, you have wasted your Saturday, and you don’t know how to search for my work. Good luck with all that.
Omnologos/Morabito: I have no idea what other work of yours you might refer to, and nor do I care about it or where to find it (iprovided that it does exist at all). The issue here was scientific work and published research papers in peer-reviewed journals – I.e., the kind of work that gives the experience with the scientific publication process and responding to editors you boasted confidently about,
I have, like Dr. Tol, searched for any kind of such scientific work from your hand through all the scientific databases, where such work is found – to no avail. This is indeed as far as I can see – and as far as I, and every single natural scientist with remotely aqquainted with serious scientific research processes, care to see.
Given your bold, confident assertions about anything and everything about scientific publishing, I find it a little sad to discover that you have zero experience within any kind of issues related to the topic of this post. In a way, I do feel sorry for you, but on the other hand, this self-inflating behaviour is quite typical of many self-appointed “sceptics”.
I do, however, thank you for your considerations for my spare time. Be not too worried, though – it hardly takes too many precious saturday early noon minutes to dispel with whatever you have offered so far.
Your “assurances” are meaningless rhetoric. I have spoken to many scientists who do not share your view. The only ones who claim it is a “joke” are those few desperately trying to attack it. You have failed to respond to my point that if it was so widely regarded as a “joke”, why then was it cited multiple times in the IPCC report?
So? This is a strawman argument as no claim is made by the journal or anyone endorsing it that it is a natural science journal.
Why would I go to a four year old inaccurate blog post for someone’s background? I gave you her background,
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, B.A. (Hons) Geography (Thesis: Geomorphology), University of Adelaide (1962); M.A. International Relations, University of Sussex (1971); D.Phil. (Ph.D.) International Relations (Thesis: “Limits to the International Control of Marine Pollution”) (1981); Lecturer in Geography, Flinders University, Australia (1963-68); Research Assistant, Institute for Public International Law, Ludwig-Maximillian University, Germany (1982-1985); Consultant, Acid Rain Project, Chatham House, UK (1986-1987); Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1985-1987); Senior Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1987-1993); Member, Working Group on Global Environmental Change, International Political Science Association (1991-1994); Referee, Environmental Research Programme, European Commission (1992); Member, Working Group on Environment and Society, International Sociological Association (1992-Present); Reader of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (1993-2007); Consultant, Climatic Impacts Centre, Macquarie University, Australia (1994); Member, International Geographical Union (1998-Present); Editor, Energy & Environment Journal (1998-Present); Reader Emeritus of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (2007-Present); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (1995, 2001)
This is a strawman argument. Who is arguing she has extensive natural science credentials? Editors do not review the papers, the reviewers do. All that matters is the reviewers have appropriate credentials for the paper being reviewed.
She doesn’t let anything through as peer-reviewed without it passing peer-review. She has made no such admission as you dishonestly state. Again E&E makes no claims that it is a “natural” science journal.
Again that paper was peer-reviewed,
“…this paper was reviewed by a retired research director (of environmental sciences) from a country deeply involved in climate research; and a professor of radiation chemistry, as well as a number of experts mentioned in the paper” – Daniel C. Goodwin, Comment at RealClimate.org
Blog postings do not “debunk” peer-reviewed papers, you should know better. Unless of course you endorse everything posted at Climate Audit and WUWT?
I did not say no one commented on it, I stated that there has only been one comment that was rebutted by the author.
I am very disturbed if you are using blog posts to teach students natural science. The published debate on this paper has resulted in exactly one published criticism with a rebuttal. People are free to come to their own conclusions on it’s validity.
Should a journal not be taken seriously for publishing a controversial paper?
CBH says – “Omnologos/Morabito: … I have, like Dr. Tol, searched for any kind of such scientific work from your hand through all the scientific databases, where such work is found – to no avail.”
Dear oh dear, all that wasted time when the information (well, enough of it) was right here on this post.
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.
I suspect that there are more. Certainly there are plenty of presentation papers. And it took me no time at all – a quick search and up they came – just as it took no time at all to find two papers with Richard Tol’s name on them.
Thank you Mike. I suspect even if I listed the lot, it’ll be claimed as the wrong kind of papers or the wrong kind of journal or the wrong kind of topic or whatever else deemed necessary to deny me the right of expressing an opinion.
Mike Jonas: Here´s the search in google scholar:
http://scholar.google.dk/scholar?hl=da&q=forfatter%3A%22maurizio+morabito%22&as_ylo=&as_vis=1
It returns one (1) book chapter by one Maurizio Campolo and Francesco Morabito – but nothing, nothing at all, authored by a Maurizio Morabito. Go figure.
ThomsonReuter (ISI) Web of Science requires subscription, but I can tell you that a search for “Morabito Maurizio” reveals one (1) paper with some somewhat far-fetched speculations about “When will the human race go back to the moon”?, but no research – that´s it.
And interestingly, the two papers you cite DO NOT have Morabito as co-author. Here is the first:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l44751212840k087/
MEG characteristics of spontaneous alpha rhythm in the human brain,” Brain Topography, vol. 11, pp. 211-222, 1999.
with only “Carlo Ciulla*, Tsunehiro Takeda*, and Hiroshi Endo” credited as authors.
With the second “paper” you list it gets really puzzling. It is supposedly published in the journal “MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING” in 1996, volume 34, on the pages 201-2.
However, if you look up this journal for the year 1996, volume 34, you find this paper
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y7505l034nj45058/
about cardiopulmonary research from three Finnish scientists (I. Korhonen, R. Takalo and V. Turjanmaa) – in Volume 34, covering the pages 199-206.
So what we have is one existing paper with no Morabito, and another mystery paper that appears to be nonexistent (and once again – no mention of a Maurizio Morabito).
Where have you found these “papers”? Are they some kind of conference abstracts or talks which mistakenly – accidentally or not – have been listed as real papers? Can you or others point me to any places where they can actually be found – and in this case, provide an explanation why these papers cannot be found in any databases, when the journal allegedly having published it is indeed listed?
If not, it sure looks like somebody have simply made up some links to nonexisting “papers”, which could make the case even worse.
Mr. Morabito: Given the above post, where your alleged publications appear either not to have you as coauthor or not exist at all, I would actually be very interested in seeing the lot with appropriate links to the peer-reviewed, indexed papers where you have allegedly published your “research”. If you are right, this should not be too hard. And please, no conference abstracts or presentations – these things do not require interactions with editors, which is the issue here.
And just for the record: Nobody here is denying you the right to express your opinion (I certainly neither would like to do it, nor would I be able to do so). However, when you make overconfident claims about your enormous experience, yet appear to have, at best, a very limited experience or none at all, then you should not expect readers with half a brain to take your freely expressed opinions seriously.
CBH – very interested in seeing the lot with appropriate links
I would be doing that if you had been seriously interested indeed. But I can’t see how you could…apart from your deluge of denigrating remarks about my work, obviously my research areas are not yours (so you’ll simply disparage the topic and the results), your research specialty is not researching somebody else’s (old) papers via the internet (otherwise you’d have found some stuff already), and nobody has given you the right to argue if and when I can express my opinion.
If you don’t believe I have experience with scientific journal editors, you will not believe it anyway. So please go away with your comments about somebody else’s work being a “paper with some somewhat far-fetched speculations [and] no research“. Yeah, right, no research at all.
Perhaps you are a teenager living some kind of Freudian conflict within, after all.
“Dr”. Morabito: I am willing to believe your experience with scientific publishing IF you are able to provide me with a functional link to a publication of yours, based on some kind of serious empirical research, which is published in a peer-reviewed journal indexed in ISI/ThomsonReuter. This should not be hard at all – that is, IF you actually have publishing experience you claim.
FYI, I´m a mere PhD student whose publication record is limited to three papers (one in press) with another in review, so I make no claim to have any extraordinary experience with scientific publishing. I do, however, know how it generally plays out, and I also know very well how to find appropriate scientific literature in the relevant credible databases. This completely noncontroversial searches revealed nothing truly scientific work from your hand – that is the harsh truth.
I quoted directly from your “paper” about settlement on the moon – or perhaps re-settlement? 🙂 If it (quite understandably) appears ludicrous to you looking at it again, then please do not blame the messenger.
And once again: I do not claim any right whatsoever to tell you if and when you can argue whatever opinion you may have. All I am saying is that when you boast about experiences and qualifications you obviously and utterly lack, then you really should not be surprised when nobody with half a brain takes your opinions seriously.
CBH – Curious. The link you ask for is http://staff.aist.go.jp/kumagai.toru/Publications.html
I looked for papers, and looked no further on finding them. I only wanted to establish that MM had some experience of publishing papers. I had no interest in the quality of the journal(s), the subject matter, etc. I assumed, on finding them, that they did exist.
Given your pursuit of this matter, I note that the website linked belongs to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo and Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki, so I presume the link is valid. If the information has indeed been made up, then it appears to have been made up by a Kumagai Toru. Kumagai Toru does appear to actually exist http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/search/aist_google_search_e.html?cx=004983608496508821980%3Aavdsyoeo0bu&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kumagai+Toru&sa=Search#1135
CBH comes across as a fatuous jerk only interested in denigrating someone whose ideas are different. The last thing we need is another wet behind the ears know-it-all with no real world experience, attacking someone else’s CV.
But when it comes down to the scientific debate, CBH is outclassed by the other commentators. So he takes the usual way out : personal, ad hominem attacks. Despicable.
The juvenile CBH says: “…you may want to at least try to consider the possibility of actually examining the scientific content of papers having trouble getting published?” Apparently everyone except CBH understands the alarmist hijacking of the climate journals:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Also see this total deconstruction of CBH’s claim:
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/upload/2009/08/how_to_publish_a_scientific_co/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20Comment.pdf
When Dr Dessler gets a paper accepted in one day, while MIT’s Prof Richard Lindzen is forced to wait a year or more for publication, there is a problem right here in River City: corruption in the climate journal industry.
Mike Jonas: Just to avoid confusion, I certainly did not think that you had made anything up or did anything but present what you had found in good faith. And thank you for the civil response. I agree that it is likely to be Mr. Morabito´s japanese friend having screwed up – however, Mr. Morabito certainly does not appear too busy correcting those mistakes he must be well aware of, to say the very least. It thus does seem that Morabito still has zero experience with publishing research results in peer-reviewed articles.
The take-home message must be that If one wants to look for scientific contributions and minimise the risk of people trying to trick you, you will help yourself by looking in the relevant databases. Books, presentations or conference abstracts do not necessarily go through peer-review (and certainly do not necessarily require interactions with editors) – and almost every new discovery in the natural sciences since WWII has been published in peer-reviewed research articles. It is all too easy to make up stuff or grossly inflate someone´s achievements on the internet; there are many people out in the blogosphere like Mr. Morabito bragging about their groundbreaking results that will overthrow Einstein, Arrhenius or Bohr on some blog or homepage, and almost inevitably, there is hardly a trace of these people´s “work” when looking in scientific databases. Best regards, CBH
Smokey: When Mr.Morabito confidently flaunts his CV and his experience with scientific publishing as some kind of argument in this process, then how on earth could it ever be an ad hominem argument to point out that he has, in fact, just about zero experience in this business? In contrast to Morabito, I do, in fact, have at least some experience – which I, however, am not flauting as any kind of argument. But forget about me: Richard Tol pointed the same out, too. Is Tol also a wet-behind the ears with no experience?
“When Dr Dessler gets a paper accepted in one day, while MIT’s Prof Richard Lindzen is forced to wait a year or more for publication, there is a problem right here in River City: corruption in the climate journal industry”.
No. It may come as a surprise to someone completely ignorant about the scientific process, but the purpose of peer review is actually to keep bad papers from getting published. That some papers sail through review while others have a hard time happens every day, and thank God for that. Have you ever considered the possibility that Lindzen´s paper just is not very good?
Besides, I can inform you that I had to wait 4 months just for getting the first reviews back when I submitted my first paper, that my father has just had a paper accepted after 4 years of review, and that two friends of mine from my department have just had an (in my opinion, excellent) paper rejected by PNAS after three months of review – and they received quite a shitty treatment (e.g. they even had to hear from someone else that their paper had become rejected). These things happen all the time simply out of sloppiness, carelessness, lack of time etc. There certainly was nothing politically inconvenient about any of these mentioned papers.
However, let us look at the specific case you mention: Lindzen and Choi´s´s original paper (http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0916/2009GL039628/2009GL039628.pdf) was reviewed within a months, and published within two months – that is about as fast as things could possibly go. This was susequently criticised by Trenberth, Fasullo et al., who pointed out that L&C had apparently chosen their data points subjectively, and that a computer pick would produce points yielding a positive, not a negative feedback as claimed by L&C. L&C then tried to submit a new paper, which was rejected first by JGR – and subsequently by PNAS within just two months, despite having many back-and-forths between editor, reviewer and authors. Lindzen got into trouble because a) he tried to pick some reviewers of which one (Will Happer) had no competence in the relevant field but was simply chosen because if his political support of Lindzen, and b) all four reviewers pointed out that Lindzen and Choi failed to answer the earlier published criticism from Fasullo, Trenberth et al. about subjective choice of data points. Two of the reviewers even stated that if L&C did that, and the results still held, then the paper would meet the top 10% of PNAS. Instead, they failed to do so and instead submitted it to an obscure Asian journal which apparently let it through without having considered the obvious problem: Why does Lindzen choose some points apparently arbitrarily when estimating his feedback?
I make no claim to expertise in this, but If you fail to answer specific questions from reviewers that affect your core conclusions, then you run a high risk of having your stuff rejected. And then you can only blame yourself. By blaming others, going public, screaming like hell and embarassing yourself as Lindzen did, you just appear silly and ready for retirement.
And finally, while submitting a commentary might be difficult, and many papers have simply stopped accepting comments, then one can always submit a new paper to a different journal where the authors do not have the holding ground, where there is no 1.00 page limit, and where the editor has no interest in protecting somebody having published in his journal. This happens all the time, too.
P.S. As an aside, most people with an IQ of 70+ would most likely realise that complaining about ad hominem attacks while simultaneously using words like “juvenile” “wet behind the ears”, “fatuous jerk” might appear somewhat inconsistent. And if you really want to engage in that kind of arguments, you should at least have the courage to put your real name on your ravings. I´m quite sure that Mr. Watts would agree with me on this one.
CBH: many people out in the blogosphere like Mr. Morabito bragging about their groundbreaking results that will overthrow Einstein
The take-home message is that you are a sad bully who knows nothing about me, hasn’t read anything written by me (the sentence above is beyond ridicule), hasn’t been able to do a proper search even when trying to do so and has serious issues in relating to fellow human beings.
“Poptech”: If we can agree that E&E is not a natural science journal, then we can stop every other argument about it´s validity or relevance for climate science here. If you want to seriously engage in natural science research, don´t publish your papers in a politics journal. I furthermore doubt that the IPCC WG1 has relied on any results published in E&E.
I have seen Böhmer-Christiansens CV before – no need to post it again as this does not change the fact that she has no relevant background for editing or reviewing science papers. The she does that anyway hardly speaks to her credit, does it? She has herself stated that she is “following her political agenda – a bit, perhaps”, as I said, and furthermore that she likes sceptical points of view – no dishonesty here, at least not on my part.
As for Beck´s “paper” – I did not say that it was refuted by blog posts. It is refuted by research having been carried out 40-50 years prior to its publication. Beck´s measurements from 1800-1950 show atmospheric CO2 rising and falling by more than 100 ppm from one year to the next, which is physically impossible, and this is refuted by research carried out more than 50 years ago by Suess, Keeling and Revelle – actually, Keeling set up Mauna Loa because everyone already back then realised that the old measurements were useless because of local contamination and poor techniques.
The problem is not that Beck´s paper was controversial, but that it simply ignored all research on the carbon cycle since the 50ies and brought about needless confusion – it is equivalent to publishing a paper about heredity discussing whether DNA or protein contained the genetic code, and ignoring all work from Watson & Crick and onwards. There was also a journal publishing a paper suggesting some supernatural influence some years ago, and this did not lead to a long heated debate between evolutionary biologists as this was self-evidently ridiculous.
The reason why nobody bother to engage in scientific debate over this is exactly because Beck´s claims can be easily debunked by average 1-years students. You may not understand this, but this merely shows that you have no idea about the carbon cycle.
“When Dr Dessler gets a paper accepted in one day, while MIT’s Prof Richard Lindzen is forced to wait a year or more for publication, there is a problem right here in River City: corruption in the climate journal industry”.
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“No. It may come as a surprise to someone completely ignorant about the scientific process, but the purpose of peer review is actually to keep bad papers from getting published. That some papers sail through review while others have a hard time happens every day, and thank God for that. Have you ever considered the possibility that Lindzen´s paper just is not very good?”
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LMAO!!!! Sis, have you bothered to read some of Dessler’s offerings? In fact, his last one was destroyed so quick I didn’t have time to read it all before it was entirely discredited. So, come again about this process that filters the bad papers out?