I noted a link to WUWT in this NYT essay by Andrew Revkin titled: When Publicity Precedes Peer Review in Climate Science (Part One). I liked Andy’s bit of artwork to go with it, seen at right below.
I was surprised to learn the the Norwegian press release about climate sensitivity (carried on WUWT here on 1/25/13 without commentary) was not peer reviewed. That said, I did look when it first became known to me.
I generally try to locate the papers when I publish Press Releases (if the papers aren’t cited), and add the paper abstract and citation to the bottom of the PR carried at WUWT, but I am occasionally thwarted by the fact that the press releases sometimes come out before the journal early editions have a chance to update, and I thought that was the case here when I couldn’t find a paper in a journal to go with it.
The state of science PR is rife with problems like this, with many PR’s not even giving the name of the journal nor even the paper. Regular readers surely have noted times when I complain about these important details that aren’t included.
The problem is exacerbated by the science PR system, most notably Eurekalert, which is where I sourced the Norwegian PR from. You can find it here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/atmospheric.php
Public Release: 25-Jan-2013
Global warming less extreme than feared?
Policymakers are attempting to contain global warming at less than two degrees Celsius. New estimates from a Norwegian project on climate calculations indicate this target may be more attainable than many experts have feared.
Contact: Thomas Keilman thke@rcn.no
The Research Council of Norway
I don’t know how good or bad the science is in that press release, much like we couldn’t tell (at the time) much about the quality of the science produced by the PR blitzes from the folks at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Time eventually did tell us almost two years later, as we learned that BEST got rejected from a major journal and wound up in a Volume 1 issue1 of a brand new journal mill.
Back to the current situation, I think what is really needed now is some sort of standards for science PR, as I wrote about at WUWT previously. When Eurekalert presents what “looks like” peer reviewed science right next to other actual peer reviewed science, some sort of delineation is needed, especially when we have loose standards for including the name of the journal, name of the paper, and pre-press releases before even the journals get the papers in the early editions.
See this, where I found myself in rare agreement with Dr. Gavin Schmidt:
A relevant excerpt of it is repeated below:
Here, in my opinion as 30 year TV/radio/web media reporter on science is what should be in any professionally produced science press release:
- The name of the paper/project being referenced
- The name of the journal it is published in (if applicable)
- The name of the author(s) or principal researcher(s)
- Contact information for the author(s) or principal researcher(s)
- Contact information for the press release writer/agent
- The digital object identifer (DOI) (if one exists)
- The name of the sponsoring organization (if any)
- The source of the funding for the paper/project
- If possible, at the minimum, one or two full sized (640×480 or larger) graphics/images from the paper/project that illustrate the investigation and/or results.
Yet, if you go on the world’s leading science press release aggregation service, Eurekalert, right now and examine the press releases there, you’ll find few if any that have all these features.
Given this latest incident, I think the need for basic standards in science press releases are even greater.
Andy promises a look at the BEST “press release before publication” debacle in part two. That should be interesting.
Anthony, I share your reservations about journalism and press releases. What you’ll see FAR too often in some areas out there are press releases about “New Scientific Findings” which are actually released through activist channels/funding and simply report, usually with a strong bias in wording, something that was presented at a conference held by some group or other. The “Findings” may never make it a journal, or, if they do, they make it with a great deal of the initially hyped claims greatly toned down and qualified.
Not sure if I’ve seen it here… the term “churnalism”? Where a press release gets picked up by a wire service and then repeated practically verbatim through all sorts of news outlets. It’s noticed when a particularly colorful phrase (e.g. “the candidate outfit looked like he’d been wrung through a paper mill) gets repeated in the story from every outlet.
– MJM
There’s hope for the boy yet.
Well Anthony, you should have remembered the golden rule. “If it’s Fenton, it’s fact!” You should only trust consensus approved climate information sources like Real Climate.
/sarc….is this really required here?
Bring it on!
This is turning into trench warfare, unfortunately.
The lay public is more confused than ever, having been told up till now that the “science is settled”.
Surprise: excellent, qualified scientists actually DISAGREE with one another quite often (particularly regarding postulates w/o measured data, or in relatively new fields).
Dot Earth is a good site, because of the following:
– NYT ensures a broad potential audience
– NYT doesn’t engage in censorship of differing opinions
– Most commenters stay on topic & reasonably civil
– There is a good mixture of skeptics and agw apologists
I recommended recently that Revkin’s should carry out an on-line debate regarding “What we know” and “What we don’t know”. Revkin could choose two “experts” to take point and counter-point on a subset of the “Great Anthropogenic Global Warming Debate.”
My thoughts, anyway.
Kurt in Switzerland
Anthony:
I would be grateful if anybody could tell me why a press release about a scientific paper needs to include more than or less than
(a) the title of the paper
(b) the author(s) of the paper
(c) the publication date of the paper
(d) the journal which contains the paper
(e) the abstract from the paper
(f) contact information so journalists can interview the paper’s author(s).
Richard
Would the above warning logo apply to publishing a summary for policy makers before the detailed findings?
Yes, I’m looking at you IPCC
Very good article, excellent points; I agree fully. My only quibble is with the acronym PR, which can mean Peer Review, Public Relations, or Press Release, to name only three expressions relevant to this discussion. May I suggest PeR, PuR, and PrR as abbreviations for the three choices?
with many PR’s not evening giving the name of the journal nor even the paper Speech recognition glitch alert, or was it late at night?
I appreciated “churnalism”.
I briefly used Eurekalert, but it did not offer the ability to comment that does the execrable PhysOrg.asm. (Execrable means ‘of the lowest quality,’ to me recalling excrement.)
As with all profiteering, churning, a.k.a. skimming, follow the money. If it is free on-line, you’re not the customer, you are the product. Eschew click-throughs.
richardscourtney says:
January 29, 2013 at 2:52 am
….I would be grateful if anybody could tell me why a press release about a scientific paper needs to include more than or less than….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Because it is no longer science but instead is propaganda. BEST and Mueller the Janus-faced comes to mind.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky et all paper
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf
NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:
An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science
Stephan Lewandowsky University of Western Australia
Klaus Oberauer University of Zurich and University of Western Australia
Gilles Gignac University of Western Australia
(in press, Psychological Science)
had broad press releases and media coverage… last JULY!
yet it still is not published in the journal Psychological Science –
yet he feels able to quote his ‘research’ in the media frequently.
is it withdrawn, still pending or just abandonment… you would think the journal would care about this sort of thing…
see comments here about why it was so bad.. (but I’m sure regulars will remeber it)
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/
Nice one Dr John
There could also be PR (purely rhetorical) as in the global press pointing out that the Australian BOM added 52 and 54 C colours to their prediction charts . Theses temperatures where not reached anywhere and have not since the 60’s . But hey prediction is so much better than reality.
Maybe like all things reverse them and gain truth ie: RP becomes …….
Recent Prediction (fail) RPF
Reality Prevails always RPA
Recreates poorly because? RP?
The problem isn’t what’s included in the press release. The problem is the press release itself. Any paper that is trumpeted by a press release should be treated with deep suspicion.
This wouldn’t have been problem it seems, had it been an article about melting glaciers from a climbing magazine.
The common use of the term “PR” in the field of medicine seems it may be most appropriate here…..per rectum.
I agree with Dr Ware above. I work for a sports team in media and press. I’m usually referred to as ‘the PR guy’ by people who don’t know me well simply because if you want press releases I’m the guy. It’s often confused by people thinking I’m some kind of public relations officer which is very far from the case given my grumpy disposition 😉
Has anyone tried writing to Eureka Alert to see if they have a policy of standards and a comment on this?
The anatomy of the motivated rejection of science; the more hyperbolic and hysterical the narrator, the more polarized the audience in the direction of their (Bayesian) naive priors. (Jaynes’ Probability Theory, §5.3)
The study has not been peer reviewed does not mean that it’s wrong??? We have seen peer reviewed papers withdrawn. The IPCC uses grey literature and screams out its findings like the Himalayan glacier melt in 2035.
Does anyone know if the study has been submitted for peer review?
I lean more towards free speech and freedom of the press to report anything and everything. That mean there should be no standards. Reporters can judge on their own whether they think it’s news, and we can judge on our own if we agree. I think this applies with science as much as any other field. Now, if the paper has been published, then by all means it’s great if that information has been added as well, that’s just good reporting. I think modern life already has generally too many standards and licenses and regulations and barriers and red tape and the like (like the requirements that interior decorators are accredited and licensed in Florida), I really don’t think we need more of that when it comes to the press, I think we need less.
So what are the chances of the Norwegian paper surviving peer review?
Only slightly off topic, but I wonder if I might solicit some help with this. A recent NY Times article makes this claim:
“In the Northern Hemisphere, snow coverage this past December was the greatest since records began in 1966, Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab reported. But Dr. David Robinson, a climatologist at Rutgers, warns that year-to-year fluctuations and regional differences can deceive casual observers. In general, he says, there has been an “overall decline in snowfall.”
I don’t believe it’s true that there has been an overall decline in snowfall. Can someone help me dispute this?
Dear Anthony
The following is on Real Climate and really is beyond parody but who is the mysterious graduate student is it our Gav :-).
I tried to post in tips and notes? So please delete but preferably devote a post to it so we can go beyond parady?
Regards
S
I recently got an email from newly graduated Math(s) major (mildly edited):
I am someone with a deep-seated desire to help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through. I’d like to devote my career to this cause, but am young and haven’t chosen a definitive career path yet. My bachelors is in pure math and I am considering graduate study in either applied math or statistics. I’m curious what you would recommend to someone in my position. Between getting, say, a PhD in statistics vs. one in applied math, what positions me best for a career in the climate science community? What are its acute needs, where are the job opportunities, and how competitive is it?
My response was as follows (also slightly edited):
As you may know I too started out as a mathematician, and then moved to more climate related applications only in my post-doc(s).
I can’t possibly give you ‘the’ answer to your question – but I do suggest working from the top down. What do you see specifically as something where someone like you could have maximum impact? Then acquire the skills needed to make that happen. If that seems too hard to do now, spend time on the developing your basic toolkits – Bayesian approaches to statistics, forward modeling, some high level coding languages (R, python, matlab etc.), while reading widely about applications.
One of the things I appreciated most in finding my niche was being exposed to a very large number of topics – which while bewildering at the start, in the end allowed me to see the gaps where I could be most useful. At all times though, I pursued approaches and topics that were somewhat aesthetically pleasing to me, which is to say, I didn’t just take up problems just for the sake of it.
I’ve found that I get more satisifaction from focusing on making some progress related to big problems, rather than finding complete solutions to minor issues, but this probably differs from person to person.
But what do other people think? How should people prepare to work on important problems? Are there any general rules? What advice did people give you when you were starting out? Was it useful, or not? Any advice – from existing researchers, graduate students or interested public – will be welcome.
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87 Responses to “What to study?”
here is a test of peoples principles
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
In this case the paper lasted a day or two before two amatuers pointed out the main issue.
Now, of course, perhaps we want to talk about how a lead skeptic, mcintyre was coaxed into doing last minute analysis….
pot kettle etc.
REPLY: Mr. Mosher, my gut wants me to tell you to go to hell. My brain says this:
1. The draft was accelerated due to me being told that your study buddy, Muller, was going to be in front of Congress yet again with his dog and pony show paper. I wanted the members to have a second opinion, just as I did during his first circus.
2. I made it very clear the paper was not peer reviewed. Note that it said DRAFT.
3. The TOBS issue was one we didn’t see as all that important initially because of the way we were doing the analysis, that said we embraced the criticism and have a new analysis that specifically deals with that.
4. Mr. McIntyre sent me an email, totally unsolicited, two days before I planned to release the draft. He asked “can I help?”. I accepted his offer and told him how he could, and he agreed. Your insinuation is not only wrong, but emotional.
Now, if you have a problem with any of this, you know how to reach me. – Anthony
There’s that word again, “Policymakers” … do they have names?
.
Any science that can be found in an AP wire story isn’t, with two or three nines certainty.