UPDATE: 1/19/14 2;30 PM PST
There is an update to this post here:
Comments on this thread are now closed, continue there. – Anthony
While a journal is forced to self destruct by external pressure from “team climate science”, history and a new paper show us why due process would have been the right way to approach the issue. The phrase “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” comes to mind.
This story by Jo Nova is making the rounds today:
Science paper doubts IPCC, so whole journal gets terminated!
While the shutdown of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics that published a special edition on planetary tidal influence on climate is likely a bit of overkill, rebuttals would have been the right way to handle it rather than the Climategate style strong-arm gang tactics exhibited against journal editors as seen here from James Annan:
Kudos to Copernicus for the rapid and decisive way in which they dealt with this problem. The problems at the journal were was first brought to my attention by ThingsBreak just last night, I emailed various people to express my concerns and the journal (which was already under close scrutiny by the publisher) was closed down within 24h.
…I will say that some of the papers in that special journal edition really aren’t any better than curve fitting exercises. That said, I think they are entitled to the due process afforded any peer reviewed science publication. Certainly, we’ve seen some ridiculous examples of “team science” that should have never been published, such as RealClimate co-founder Eric Steig’s overhyped claim to a warming Antarctica that was dealt with effectively via the rebuttal process.
As many WUWT readers know, while years ago I expressed some interest in planetary tidal force effects on climate, I have long since been convinced that there’s zero planetary effect on climate for two reasons: 1) The gravitational effects at distance are simply too small to exert the forces neccessary, and 2) The methodology employed often results in hindcast curve fitting a theory to data, where the maxim “correlation is not causation” should have been considered before publishing the paper.
While the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics self-destructed rather than deal with rebuttal process (apparently at the direction of higher-ups), this paper just published in the journal Solar Physics shows that journal does in fact take the rebuttal process seriously.
Critical Analysis of a Hypothesis of the Planetary Tidal Influence on Solar Activity
DOI 10.1007/s11207-014-0475-0
S. Poluianov, I. Usoskin
Abstract
The present work is a critical revision of the hypothesis of the planetary tidal influence on solar activity published by Abreu et al. (Astron. Astro- phys. 548, A88, 2012; called A12 here). A12 describes the hypothesis that planets can have an impact on the solar tachocline and therefore on solar activity. We checked the procedure and results of A12, namely the algorithm of planetary tidal torque calculation and the wavelet coherence between torque and heliospheric modulation potential. We found that the claimed peaks in long-period range of the torque spectrum are artefacts caused by the calculation algorithm. Also the statistical significance of the results of the wavelet coherence is found to be overestimated by an incorrect choice of the background assumption of red noise. Using a more conservative non-parametric random-phase method, we found that the long-period coherence between planetary torque and heliospheric modulation potential becomes insignificant. Thus we conclude that the considered hypothesis of planetary tidal influence on solar activity is not based on a solid ground.
…
Conclusions
We analysed the procedure of planetary torque calculations from the paper by Abreu et al. (2012) and found that their results can be be affected by an effect of the aliasing distortion of the torque spectrum. We provided torque calculations with different sampling frequencies and found that the spectral peaks claimed by A12 are likely artefacts of the spectral distortion and do not have physical meaning. Then we repeated the analysis by A12 of the relation between heliospheric modulation potential and the planetary torque. We showed that the results of Abreu et al. (2012) are not statistically significant. Thus, the proposed hypothesis of planetary influence on solar activity is not based on solid empirical evidence.
The final draft of the paper can be read in entirety here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.3547.pdf
(h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard for the link)
================================================================
A rebuttal was also published in Solar Physics simultaneously, but it is entirely behind a paywall, so I can’t elaborate any further than providing a link to it: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-014-0473-2
But, unlike Copernicus, that decided to pull the entire journal rather than allow the rebuttal process of science occur, Solar Physics saw no need to self-terminate for having published the rebuttal by Abreu et al. authors, and the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. continues to exist despite publishing the questionable and now shown to be flawed Abreu et al. paper http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2012/12/aa19997-12/aa19997-12.html
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Nick Stokes:
Your post at January 18, 2014 at 2:24 am says
Meanwhile alarmists proclaim that only information published in peer reviewed journals should be considered.
I am reminded of a climate gate email from Pittock to the rest of the ‘team’ when they were discussing how to stop Chris de Freitas (who was Editor of Climate Research) from publishing papers which did not promote their agenda.
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/0332.txt
It contains this concerning papers presenting ideas they did not like
and this
There is no Editor to destroy if the journal is destroyed.
Richard
PS I add that I am not convinced by hypotheses of planetary effects on climate and I am not supporting them.
“As many WUWT readers know, while years ago I expressed some interest in planetary tidal force effects on climate, I have long since been convinced that there’s zero planetary effect on climate for two reasons: 1) The gravitational effects at distance are simply too small to exert the forces neccessary, and 2) The methodology employed often results in hindcast curve fitting a theory to data, where the maxim “correlation is not causation” should have been considered before publishing the paper.”
Kudos to you, Mr. Watts!
Nicola Scafetta says:
“The methodology employed at least in my papers is equivalent to the methodology used for predicting the ocean tides on Earth.”
Not really with the beat frequencies involving the “theoretical” periods that you are using.
“At least my models are tested on their hindcasting forecasting capability and are successful for centuries, and are supported by several physical arguments.”
I don’t think that your 115yr component does hindcast the solar minimum’s, the period is too long. And maybe one physical argument would be better than several.
The quality of your work has probably made it harder to get the planetary ordering of solar activity to be taken seriously.
Man Bearpig says:
January 18, 2014 at 1:29 am
“This is very disturbing, it is a warning to other journals not to publish papers that support skeptic arguments, OR ELSE.”
The Göttingen publisher doubtlessly has similar delusions of grandeur; but Göttingen these days is a maoist backwater, not a hotbed of cutting edge science; who cares; the publisher even missed that their deity, the EU commission, just abandoned CO2 reduction goals.
They’ll go with the new program; it might take a few months given their slow information processing though.
The edict/revenge was taken against Galileo rather than a scientific or theological statement and to believe otherwise is exceptionally naive – these people couldn’t have cared less whether the Earth was round square or flat,whether it was stationary or did the hula insofar as the main point
is that the Pope did invite Galileo to discuss the issue with the understanding that it would be a
discussion among equals rather than the Pope demanding that Galileo withdraw the scheme of Copernicus from his perspective. When Galileo came back and wrote a book where the Pope took the appearance of a fool through a fictional character ,do you think the Pope and everyone else wouldn’t notice !.
Did anyone here ever hear of Leona Helmsley ?. when she said “only the little people pay taxes” they not only send her to jail,they rubbed it in by starting her sentence on April 15th or tax day in the States !.
I wish the present Church was aware just what it started by that act against Galileo because the main issue went unresolved and when the guys in the late 17th century picked up the and ran with an error arising from the unresolved issue it created the present mess.
Presently the mathematical modelers refuse to accept the arguments which Copernicus proposed for the motions of the Earth by following a false version conjured up in the late 17th century.
To Anthony Watts says: January 18, 2014 at 2:56 am
**********
Dear Anthony, let us put the things straight first. You have misunderstood quite a bit the entire issue and improperly used it to promote your personal aversion against the planetary theory of solar and climate variability.
Let us clarify the issues:
1) Contrary to your claims advocated in your main post above, the termination of the journal does not have anything to do with the planetary theory of solar variations. As clearly stated in the email sent by Copernicus to Morner and written in their web-site the motivation was quite different.
Their argument started from this very fist sentence: “We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating “This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project”.
From there they built their entire argument. Thus, the incriminated issue was about the questioning of the validity of the projections of the IPCC models for the 21st century that they religiously believed as the “truth” that was put in doubts because of the existence of a natural variability not properly modeled by the IPCC models.
Note that the planetary theory of solar and climate variability gives only a physical background to the natural climatic oscillations. But similar conclusions also derive from those who claim that the oscillations are due to an internal variability alone although they do not have a theory to explaining it.
In fact, as you know well, there are a lot of studies that have pointed out that the models of the IPCC have overestimated the warming and, therefore, their projections for the 21st century needs to be questioned as correctly written in the incriminate sentence.
Also their accusation about the validity of the review process derives from their initial statement. Essentially they claimed that the review process was flawed because it allowed the secondary conclusion expressed in the incriminate sentence that they believe to be scientifically wrong while a lot of studies have supported it.
Essentially, their entire argument is based on the ignorance of the publisher on the current scientific research.
As richardscourtney noted the strategy of the IPCC advocates is to remove debates by means of
” It could be through boycotting the journals, ….Pressure or ultimatums to the publishers might work, or concerted lobbying by other co-editors or leading authors.”
In fact, their letter to Morner ends with this statement ” Copernicus Publications cannot risk losing its excellent reputation in the scientific community.”
So what likely happened is that the publisher was intimidated.
2)
About the problem of censorship, also here you are wrong. It was not me to say that. The censorship intentions are clearly written in their motivation letter. They state
“PRP was never meant to be a platform for climate sceptics.”
So the message is that people who questions the IPCC AGW even as a secondary implication of their scientific research should not be allowed to publish on Copernicus journals. Moreover, the wording is offensive and demonstrates that the publisher does not consider what he calls “climate sceptics” as true scientists.
This is a clear indication of censorship not too much different from that suffered by Galileo.
About Galileo it is not true that after the condemnation he could not publish anything. He could publish everything he wished, but not on astronomy related issue concerning the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. That was the only limitation he had, and indeed he published a lot of important works during his home arrest period.
In the same way, for Copernicus publisher it is ok to publish on everything including the planetary theory that they did not question at all (contrary to your insinuations), but not on the IPCC projections of the 21st century. And journals that publish even a single sentence that questions the IPCC dogma should be shut down.
This is their message. This is censorship.
Let us hope that you, dear Anthony, understand these clear things.
Gkell1 says:
January 18, 2014 at 12:23 am
” … with not the slightest trace of the hype and novelties that pass themselves off as astronomy and terrestrial sciences today. ”
—-l
I have to admit that I have never imagined astronomy and the terestrial sciences as they are taught at most educational institutions to be “hypes” or “novelties”. Definitely an unusual perspective 🙂 At the risk of going off topic, would you care to elaborate and enlighten with one or two examples of the hype and novelty? In the interest of not irritating everyone, please keep it short, simple and to the point.
Charles the Moderator,
You have committed libel by posting the following statement:
“It is obvious the editors, authors, and reviewers colluded to attempt to make this into a curve fitting skeptics coup d’état.”
As one of the authors in this special edition. I will give you an opportunity to withdraw this libelous statement.
Ian Wilson,
Oh, get off your high horse. What has Charles the Moderator written that is not true from his perspective? He wrote, “It is obvious…” and “I believe…”. Those are personal opinions.
A U.S. Appeals Court ruled just this week that commentators’ opinions are protected speech. Rather than make impotent threats, why don’t you try to defend your position? Or is it that you actually did get together and engage in curve fitting — and then called it science?
Negrum wrote –
“At the risk of going off topic, would you care to elaborate and enlighten with one or two examples of the hype and novelty? In the interest of not irritating everyone, please keep it short, simple and to the point.”
Turns out that the moderated 21st century forums are far more twitchy than the 16th century Catholic Church ever was even though I would consider it a normal discussion using all the advantages of present imaging,graphics and what have you.
Sure I will give you an example but it is one of these things where it is not possible to check the description with limitations,after all,that was one of the main points here – the shortening of the historical and technical details to make it appear that the Church required an Earth centered view as a theological necessity doesn’t mesh with the actual history of the time,including the words of Galileo himself. Furthermore,the unresolved issue expands out to our century so neither excusing the Church or blaming Galileo,the effects arising from personal insult were very expensive for everyone.
From experience,very few can even handle the arguments which Copernicus proposed even when visual demonstrations put it easily within reach of high school students so it is not just an issue of 16th century incomprehension but also ours. If I am to give you a clean and clear example of where it went wrong and why it is crucially important then I would have to do so without restrictions . If you want to see what hype and novelties actually look like compared to the genuine insights of Copernicus and Galileo then you shall have them.
In response to dbstealey:
January 18, 2014 at 7:51 am
I for one did not collude with anyone. I treated the submission of my paper with all the scientific gravitas that is required in these situations. I did the same with any paper that I was asked to review. I did my best to respond in full to any modifications or clarifications which were requested by my referees. I did not hold back if I felt that modifications or changes needed to made before an article was suitable for publication.
As a reviewer I gave what I considered was my best scientific advice to the Editor so that they could collectively evaluate whether or not a given manuscript was suitable for publication in the Special Edition.
Above all else, I believe that the Editor that I dealt with at the PRP Journal maintained the high professional standards that are required of this difficult job. I have nothing but praise for the way in which he dealt with my submission and my reviews.
P.S. You said: Or is it that you actually did get together and engage in curve fitting — and then called it science?
If you actually look at my paper you will realize that it is not an exercise in curve fitting. It is actually a genuine attempt to give a rational scientific hypothesis to explain the observed periods in the proxy Be10 and C14 records of the level of solar activity that were observed by Abreu et al. [2012]. That these periods are observed in the proxy record are not in question. What is in question is whether or not they are observed in the amalgamated planetary torques.
My papers shows that the periods are intrinsically present if the consider the Venus-Earth-Jupiter-Saturn Spin Orbit Coupling model.
Ian Wilson says:
January 18, 2014 at 8:33 am
observed periods in the proxy Be10 and C14 records of the level of solar activity that were observed by Abreu et al. [2012]. That these periods are observed in the proxy record are not in question.
It is in question whether the proxies show just solar activity and how much is actually due to climate influence on the deposition rate.
My mistake. All claims in science are open to genuine debate. The point I was trying to make
was the paper that this post is referring to was not questioning that the periods were present in the proxy record, the paper cast doubt on the claim that they were present in the amalgamated planetary torque.
Ian Wilson,
“I treated the submission of my paper with all the scientific gravitas that is required in these situations. I did the same with any paper that I was asked to review.”
You were both an author and a reviewer on Volume 1 issue 1 of the journal, the Special Editon and you don’t see what’s wrong here.? It appears most of you were both authors and reviewers.
People are missing the key point,
http://www.pattern-recognition-in-physics.net/
“…the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.”
http://publications.copernicus.org/for_reviewers/obligations_for_referees.html
“4. A referee should be sensitive even to the appearance of a conflict of interest when the manuscript under review is closely related to the referee’s work in progress or published. If in doubt, the referee should return the manuscript promptly without review, advising the editor of the conflict of interest or bias.
5. A referee should not evaluate a manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the referee has a personal or professional connection if the relationship would bias judgment of the manuscript.”
The problem is obvious, the papers list in many cases one of the reviewers as an author in the same edition and in some cases a known skeptic. While this is no different than what alarmists do all the time, skeptics will be held to a much higher standard and should not allow themselves to fall into these traps.
This makes what would be a clear censorship argument irrelevant.
Ian Wilson,
“I treated the submission of my paper with all the scientific gravitas that is required in these situations. I did the same with any paper that I was asked to review. ”
In this Special Edition, the first edition of this brand new journal, you were both an author and a reviewer, as were most of the authors and reviewers. This does not pass the smell test, even if you did not notice the impropriety. Our side can suffer from Noble Cause Corruption as well.
It is likely this Journal was created at the urging of some of the authors or editors under false pretenses. This wasn’t the cancelling of a Journal with any history, this is pulling the hand back after it was bitten.
Friends:
I withdraw the suggestions in my earlier post at January 18, 2014 at 1:58 am.
When I made that post I was not aware that the journal used the same people as authors and reviewers for the papers of each other in a Special Edition on a stated subject. Such a practice is a clear example of pal-review.
The Special Edition should not have been published when its peer review procedures were a clear malpractice. Whether the reasons for withdrawal of the Special Edition also warranted closure of the journal requires additional information but it seems likely.
Richard
It is, after all, called “Pattern Recognition in Physics”. The paired societal principles “rights AND responibilities” and “correlation is not causation BUT lack of correlation means lack of causation” share a similar abusage – both have the second half of the duality unstated. The lib_eral machine has conveniently dropped “responibilities” from the idea to our great detriment. Murderers and other malefactors are victims under this politically correct dogma. Some one who shoots up heroin “made a mistake” – no a mistake is when you were trying to do something and you did it wrong. Although I understand the need to make clear the first half of the correlation statement, I haven’t heard its other half (like “responibilities” in the societal analogy) in 40 years. The uninitiated may take this one sided “correlation” guide too much to heart. Correlation is usually the first “pattern” recognized in data that leads to a theory. What else is there?
The paper, may be a total load of malarkey and perhaps should not have passed peer review (although we don’t know all there is to know about gravity – witness the “excess” G of outer edges of galaxies – this embarrassing underestimation lead to the embarrassing “dark matter” patch, or the Pioneer anomaly which has been explained away as differential heating effects – which I view as the same thing climate science does to repair a tired, deficient theory – change SSTs because they don’t agree, add “rebound” factors onto sea level etc. etc.). It is up to authors to make a convincing case and for critics to assail the case if it isn’t convincing.
Nicola Scafetta says:
January 17, 2014 at 7:20 pm
The methodology employed at least in my papers is equivalent to the methodology used for
predicting the ocean tides on Earth
=======================
Tidal prediction from first principles remains a hopeless failure. It should be no surprise that climate models, which attempt predict climate from first principles are also a failure.
The ocean tides on earth far exceed what is predicted from gravitational forces alone. Gravity is simply the pumping action of a child on a swing. What starts out as a small motion over time becomes very large.
Early humans learned to predict the season through curve fitting the shadow cast by the sun, thousands of years before they understood the cause. Tidal prediction on earth is a curve fitting exercise and it provides remarkably accurate predictions years in advance.
Modern science has made a fundamental wrong turn in insisting on a mechanism as a condition of prediction. To this date no one has discovered the mechanism behind gravity, yet we make very successful predictions about its actions.
In the end there is only one measure of science that has any meaning. Can the science outperform a dart board in predicting the future. We may never fully understand the role of orbital mechanics in regulating the solar system, or the mechanisms by which this occurs. This didn’t stop early humans from making successful predictions and it should not stop us.
Are you suggesting that famed scientists, of the past, had something special that cannot be reproduced today? Can there not be such scientists today? These “giants” were men like you and I and put their pants on “one leg at a time”.
I think you are indulging in some “hero” worship which is somewhat disconcerting… coming from a scientist who I greatly respect. Examine the science not the man… please. GK
Ian, do you not see the problem with the authors and editors of this special edition reviewing each other’s papers? Instead of having people focus on the science as was the intention you simply gave your critics ammunition to easily dismiss your papers as “pal-reviewed”.
Regardless, I will still consider them technically peer-reviewed under the assumption that the anonymous reviewer for each paper was not another author in this issue. Though there is no way to avoid this criticism now that it has been factually established and I will not be defending the use of the other authors and editors for this special edition as reviewers. Who thought this was a good idea?
G. Karst says:
January 18, 2014 at 9:18 am
Are you suggesting that famed scientists, of the past, had something special that cannot be reproduced today? Can there not be such scientists today?
I take a dim view of people that claim they are in the league of Copernicus, Newton, etc when their papers clearly show they are not.
charles the moderator says:January 18, 2014 at 8:56 am
******
Before questioning the review process you need to find errors in the papers. Only then you can argue that the review was unprofessional. Which errors did you find so far? None that I can see.
The reviewers are not supposed to be people without experience in the field and/or people adverse to the authors.
In the past the reviewers were colleagues of the authors that could provided objective and scientifically valid comments. The editor is supposed to use reviewers only to help his decision.
As Ian Wilson states the reviews of the papers were quite professional and highly accurate.
In fact, do you think that when Ian Wilson reviewed papers of other authors did he had some interest in providing a poor review? If the papers contained factual errors, people could find them quite easily and reject the entire planetary theory.
Thus, tell me, which interest had Ian Wilson or Morner to provide a poor review of the papers that he reviewed? On the contrary he had the interest in providing the best review that he could.
Morner is not stupid. He knows that real scientists read papers before deciding whether they are relevant and free of errors. They do not just believe a paper just because it was published.
Do you get the subtle point, dear Charles?
So, find scientific errors in the papers before talking.
One of the simplest examples of a very small force applied over time is the rotation of Venus. Surprisingly, Venus always present the same face to earth at the point of closest approach. There are those that argue that this is simply coincidence, that the force of gravity between Venus and Earth is much to small to regulate the rotation of Venus. And no doubt that are learned papers that prove this in great detail. Yet it remains a fantastically unlikely coincidence.
Everywhere you look in the solar system these sorts of coincidences are found, which strongly suggest that they are not a coincidence at all. How much force is required to set a star in motion, if applied over billions of years?
Gkell1 says:
January 18, 2014 at 7:53 am
“I would have to do so without restrictions . If you want to see what hype and novelties actually look like compared to the genuine insights of Copernicus and Galileo then you shall have them..”
—-l
Brevity is the soul of wisdom (with apologies to master Shakespeare :))
I agree that Galileo and Copernicus had remarkable insight, but I work very slowly, so let’s keep it simple and start systematically: if you can give just one example of what you perceive as hype in modern astronomy, it would be much appreciated. Just a verbal description one sentence long will do. Following that step, motivations, proofs and authorities for your statement can be examined – links to sources are usually fine and do not clutter up the post. This might also enable you to avoid the accusation from unkind posters that you are trying to baffle with verbosity or cannot back up your statements.
Is this your first time posting here? If such is the case, I can recommend reading the policy guidelines.