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the the Norwegian press release about climate sensitivity (carried on WUWT here on 1/25/13 without commentary) was not peer reviewed.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.
Why would a press release be “peer-reviewed”? It is a press release. That tells us something.
Who are the peers? News organizations, universities, etc have line managers and editors who are paid to perform such functions. They may, or may not, have internal guidelines and policies which are made public at their discretion.
————-
(is “evening” a typo?)
Much has changed in the “academic” world since I started in the mid-60’s. Most of us were teaching professors first and researchers second. Over time the number of graduate students began to exceed the market for “professors”. Universities were funded by provinces/states, with funding usually related to enrolments. As costs escalated faster than funding, universities began to look for research monies to expand the cash flow. The glut of grad students fed the workforce needed to staff the research institutes. These institutes, however, often were soft funded, relying on continuing grants for their existence. Universities helped secure the funding because they could “skim” profits off the grants. We now have a huge share of “academia” and many “government” research institutes that operate completely outside of the “old” university structures.
The need for continuous temporary (project) funding necessitates rapid production of results. The established peer review system does not support such a system. I published many papers in the top journals in my field. Most of them took months, if not more than a year to clear the review process, a time lag that is non-functional for securing new grants just to stay alive. There also usually was a second lag between acceptance and actual publication. Hence, the established research/publication structure mitigates against proper peer review, and the press release and other pre-publication activities become absolutely essential to continued employment. Because “government” has become the major soft-funder, and often sets the research agenda, the entire system has degraded to a “fast-food” “prove-me-wrong” scenario. Can you imagine how many “scientists” would be unemployed if the Canadian and U.S. federal governments greatly reduced their current research funding. Good scientific research takes time.
richardscourtney: 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….
In a word: paywalls
Thanks for posting this, Anthony. I use EurekAlert often in my reporting, so the warning is welcome. Perhaps EurekAlert could include a prominent disclaimer that press releases are no substitute for the actual study.
My reply to Mr. Mosher is above. I suggest Mr. Mosher think very carefully about his response, unless of course its another one of his famous drive by shootings where he never returns to the scene.
Policymakers? Yeah, they used to be called solons, after the Athenian statesman. A statesman from after the Ancient Greeks forgot their brilliant solution to elites and experts that is Sortition, that incorporated VoterID as Pinakion, and voting machines Kloterion. I am sure that any intelligent skeptic, randomly drawn, could do as well as a “policymaker.”
Lessons easily learned – or not learned, mere tradition – are as easily forgotten. The Ancient Greeks bought their lessons with blood, as for instance, of the 300 of King Leonidas I at Thermopylae. Leonidas said, “Having come this far, try to take! MOLON LABE!”
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/01/breaking-new-york-times-dismantles-a-department.html
The disbanding of the NYT environmental desk reaches the far corners of the blogosphere… LOL
As I young bohemian I hung out with artists, (or perhaps con-artists,) who were always trying to get stuff accepted without producing evidence or data. However we at least had the decency to explain we actually didn’t have any evidence or data, but would surely find some, if only we had the money, which would allow us to quit our jobs as dishwashers and be (supposedly) “truly productive.”
We called it “getting an advance.” (I never got one.)
By the way, any time one of us did get our hands on a bit of extra money, we were “truly productive,” but only in terms of whooping it up.
Why it some of these young scientists remind me of my younger self?
Establishing a standard for science press releases is long overdue. Press releases in the days of print were used to clean windows. Editors and reporters knew that most of the release progenitors sat with a trumpet in their free hand blowing false notes on the paper. The best release writers could be trusted to give the details necessary for a reporter to follow up, to define the actual newsworthiness and context of the announcement, but these writers were few. (If you’re a PR guy working for a corporation, your daily job is to write these things, or at least have a rollout ready. You jazz it up to keep your job.)
Gavin Schmidt’s list above is the minimum that should be at the bottom of every science press release as a simple listing. But there needs to be another category for those who can’t get their papers peer-reviewed, or published, because the content rocks the status quo, the vaunted ‘scientific consensus’ the public has fallen for. A Giordano Bruno Index (GBI).
You need only read what Agence France Presse (AFP) does reporting climate science–check out climate stories on rawstory.com and the profoundly ignorant comments–to understand the necessity.
Steven Mosher says:
January 29, 2013 at 6:11 am
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.
Uh-oh… it’s the Emotional (AKA, “Bad”) Mosher again. Clearly he hasn’t moved past his perceived problems. Don’t type angry, as your spelling and grammar go to pot, Mosher. Oh, and get over it.
I really don’t know why you put up with Mosher any longer. I know that you are not one for censorship Anthony and you welcome the debate from all aspects but Mosher no longer debates. he’s back firmly in the “we must save the world for our grandchildren at any costs even if the science won’t stand up ” camp. ( a camp I might add, that he and Fuller never left in my opinion )
His posts here are no longer debate but clearly hostile to both the host and the commentators below the articles. His posts appear to be nothing but disruptive and contrary. Adding nothing to the value of the site.
I’d cut him adrift and let him bloviate in the echo chambers of the usual suspects.
Midwest Mark says:
January 29, 2013 at 5:58 am
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?
===================================
They never tell you what time line they cherry picked do they?
Yes, it has decreased from 2002, and there has been a steady increase since 1966…..
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/2012-finished-with-record-snow-extent/
They need to either be willing to be in the dock or thrown off it. If they don’t want to be peer reviewed, they should be pier reviewed like witches of old (I note that burning them stopped the Medieval Warm Period) who were thrown into deep water and if they didn’t drown they were obviously witches.
Don’t forget Wahl and Ammann’s press release of May 10, 2005 announcing that all our results were “unfounded”. One of their two papers was rejected; the other wasn’t published until over two years later (and its SI wasn’t published until three years later.)
The press release did not accurately describe their findings. On every empirical point, they got results nearly identical to ours (tho they spun matters differently.)
Anthon
Mosher’s been selectively quoting you and deliberately misrepresenting you at Lucia’s blog. Check out below comment I made on the blog
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/a-defense-of-the-ncdc-and-of-basic-civility/#comment-108972
This was Mosher’s comment
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/a-defense-of-the-ncdc-and-of-basic-civility/#comment-108871
He represented as if you were upset about Greg Laden and wanted to sue because Greg Laden showed you in bad light. He deliberately hid the bit that you were upset because Greg Laden lied about your post on the meteorite thread and spread deliberate falsehoods about that post
Mosher’s just doing the same thing at Lucia’s blog with the above post I showed. And he claims to be a friend of yours, in the same blog. Some friend he is! Probably has ” adjusted ” the meaning of friendship in line with his beliefs.
Richard Courtney asks:
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).
I agree that all this information should be included on press releases, and I would be surprised if it is not. But Press releases should not be confined to this information.
This information is published regularly in periodicals like Current Contents. The trouble is there is an absolute avalanche of publications coming out every week. They are presented using highly specialised language for understanding by scientists in specialist fields. That is true for the papers abstract, or summary of the papers findings.
The overwhelming majority of research papers are of limited or no interest to the general public.
If authors or an institution feels the publication is “newsworthy”, that is of interest to the general public, it is entirely appropriate and helpful that they issue a press release.
The press release will have a description of the project that is in more general language than that of the abstract, so its significance can be understood by non specialists. Press releases are, or should be, as the name implies, released to the press, so that scientifically literate journalists who are thereby alerted to the research can then make use of all the information Courtney describes, and more, to asses the claims made in the release, and write a story that is both interesting and understandable by the general public.
The problem comes when no such checking is undertaken and the release is uncritically served up to the public.
Institutions issuing relases prior to peer review run the risk of a repeat of the infamous cold fusion debacle of the 80’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
I do get some enjoyment from reading Mosher’s comments because I like seeing him exposed when he recirculates old and rehashed misinformation. I think his ilk only strengthens the case for rational exchange. His posts reveal that he’s a man lost in time who cannot appreciate the new revelations of science. At his age, he’s too invested in many youthful years of getting in wrong.
In a way, it’s sad, but I think we can all learn from the responses, here on WUWT, to Mosher’s drive-by and old-in-the-tooth comments. After all, he’s still not alone in his belief of what soon will be yesteryear.
Mosher, please correct me if I am in any way out of line here. I’d love to read your response. You quite are interesting my friend. (I mean friend in the same context of which Mosher claims friendship.)