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)
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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
Ipso Facto says:
January 18, 2014 at 1:41 pm
Loehle and Scafetta 2011, penned in 2010, has successfully forecast global average temperature in the four years since they wrote it. Evidently hypothetical
An equally good prediction would have been that the temperature does not depend on sun or the planets and has simply been constant for 12 years and would continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
[snip – leave out the defamation claims and you can comment again, otherwise take a hike Nicola. I’ve changed my opinion on this entire affair and will be updating this post in the next day to reflect what I have learned. – Anthony]
With the original version I agree with you and on these grounds alone I consider this censorship but that is not the whole story.
My problem is with the process of using authors, editors and known skeptics as reviewers. This is not an unsubstantiated smear but verifiable,
Here are two examples:
Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming
“Reviewed by: N.-A. Morner and one anonymous referee”
Dr. Morner is qualified to review this paper but he is an editor and a known skeptic with a potential conflict of interest in that he is sympathetic to Dr. Scafetta’s arguments.
The Hum: log-normal distribution and planetary–solar resonance
“Reviewed by: H. Jelbring and one anonymous referee”
Hans Jelbring is again qualified but an author in this edition and a known skeptic with a potential conflict of interest in that he is sympathetic to your arguments.
And the reason I am told they published their names, was because they were concerned with having a conflict of interest! Thus, by the publishers own rules they should not be reviewing these papers. The saving grace is that one of the reviewers was anonymous but this is still going to lead to wild speculation for many reasons, especially since the editors were skeptics.
Why give alarmists the ammunition of Pal-Review? I don’t understand this.
Regardless, unless the papers get retracted I will list them, so people can read them and make up their own minds, but I will not be endorsing them nor defending the review process.
Negrum wrote –
“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.”
There are people,and they are rare it must be said, who enjoy the widening of historical and technical perspectives which in this case is a more intricate treatment of the Church/Pope and Galileo and especially in the technical details so it wasn’t simply a case of an unenlightened Church versus and enlightened scientist as many here would like to believe. You see,the individual with the wider perspective allows information to flow the way it should so it is never a case of throwing good information after bad or curtailing the information for people who can’t process the information correctly,it is an expanding view which defeats inadequate or erroneous views as the proper historical or technical view is extremely satisfying to mind and heart.
Okay,this statement of Galileo is only partly correct –
“Now what is said here of Jupiter is to be understood of Saturn and Mars also. In Saturn these retrogressions are somewhat more frequent than in Jupiter, because its motion is slower than Jupiter’s, so that the Earth overtakes it in a shorter time. In Mars they are rarer, its motion being faster than that of Jupiter, so that the Earth spends more time in catching up with it. Next, as to Venus and Mercury, whose circles are included within that of the Earth, stoppings and retrograde motions appear in them also, due not to any motion that really exists in them, but to the annual motion of the Earth. This is acutely demonstrated by Copernicus . . ” Galileo
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html
If you want to know what went wrong later in the late 17th century then you will need to know what went right in the 16th and early 17th.
Contemporaries love to throw the names of Galileo,Copernicus and Kepler around without actually know what they did and how they did it so this is your chance to correct the great Galileo using imaging and graphics.
lsvalgaard says:
January 18, 2014 at 2:37 pm
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Dr. Svalgaard,
I would agree with much of what you write at WUWT about problems with “Cyclomania” and insufficient evidence for actual mechanisms for solar influence on climate. At WUWT you are communicating with sceptics even if you would consider some of them to be “fringe”.
But the problem for solar science is no longer sceptics, “fringe” or otherwise, it’s former AGW believers and promoters.
It is looking increasingly like AGW will not survive 2014. Many of the fellow travellers are now looking for an exit strategy. In particular the BBC.
The BBC have the megaphone. The BBC have a fistfull of tax dollars. And they want to keep it.
They cannot have an end to AGW that shows CO2 was never a problem. That would bring 28Gate and the collusion with the “Team” evidenced in Climategate2 too much public attention. Compulsory UK TV licensing, their money stream, would be under threat. They need an exit strategy that involves some “new science” big enough to outweigh all the claims about CO2 disaster they have made to date. Heat hiding in the oceans or Aerosol masking are not going to fly. The BBC have made their choice and they are going with “it’s the sun”.
From late 2013 the BBC have produced a sudden flurry of documentaries and news items for TV, radio and internet discussing possibility of an extended solar minimum, mentioning the Maunder minimum, the little ice age and showing pictures of ice fairs on the Thames. Conclusions started low key, “it won’t offset global warming”. Then to “it may slightly reduce global warming”. Then “it’s hard to say”. Now “the planet may not cool, but Europe could expect harsher winters”.
The BBC have chosen their exit strategy, “it’s the sun”. Where the BBC lead, the ABC (Australia) and CBS (Canada) will follow. How much air time did these government broadcasters give to AGW sceptics? How much online comment did they allow from AGW sceptics? Are they likely to give any solar scientist who stands in the way of their “it’s the sun” exit strategy a voice?
Gkell1 says:
January 18, 2014 at 4:20 pm
—-l
Focus. One sentence. An example of hype in modern astronomy.
If you cannot do that, don’t expect to be taken seriously here.
Dr. Svalgaard,
Further to my previous comment, I have just seen another confirmation. This news item just got top spot on news.com.au –
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/scientists-baffled-as-sun-activity-falls-to-century-low/story-fnjwlcze-1226805090679
“The Sun’s activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists and possibly heralding a new mini-Ice Age.”
While news.com.au is a Murdoch owned site, the editor is a fervent AGW believer. I say it’s a definite. The fellow travellers is have chosen “it’s the sun” as their exit strategy.
As I say, the problem for solar science is no longer sceptics, it’s now the full might of the BBC, ABC, CBS and every activist, journalist and politician of the Left now desperate to save their hides.
This also casts a new light on events discussed on this thread. For the exit strategy to work, it needs to be “new science”. A group of sceptics who have been discussing the solar possibility for years may be a bit of a problem.
Negrum wrote –
“Focus. One sentence. An example of hype in modern astronomy.If you cannot do that, don’t expect to be taken seriously here.”
Sure,want to see total and absolute mindless junk,here is your one sentence and even show the correct resolution using contemporary imaging –
“For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are always seen direct,…” Newton
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120809.html
Now,I did mention in the last post of throwing really good information after novelties and hype and that Sir Isaac is the odd one out in the usual spiel of Copernicus,Kepler,Galileo. I well understood that empiricists never understood their own system and especially Newton’s silly modeling based on absolute/relative time,space and motion.
Seriously indeed !, I only said that Galileo was partly incorrect but as for Sir Isaac and his version,well,that is best left for his cult following who know no better.The answer,of course,is that retrogrades are a consequence of the faster Earth overtaking the outer planets and the faster inner planets veering out from and in towards the central Sun and nothing so stupid as a hypothetical observer on the Sun as Newton imagined
What do you lot know of the works of Copernicus and Galileo ?, just enough to create havoc..
Konrad says:
January 18, 2014 at 5:19 pm
“The Sun’s activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists
And that is also propaganda, as [solar] scientists are not ‘baffled’. The low activity was predicted a decade ago and has recurred several times at about every hundred years.
Gkell1 says:
January 18, 2014 at 6:06 pm
“For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are always seen direct,…” Newton
And Newton was absolutely correct about this.
Wow, this is a popcorn thread par excellence. Pity that so many are being so unscientific about it – but then maybe that’s why it’s a popcorn thread.
Anthony – You have unscientifically jumped the gun a bit when you say “the questionable and now shown to be flawed Abreu et al. paper “. The paper has not yet been shown to be flawed. A rebuttal to the paper has been published, but we don’t yet know whether it is the paper or the rebuttal which is correct. As Ian Wilson points out, there is an Abreu reply coming. I understand there there is also a new paper coming out which develops the Abreu idea further and has the potential to overthrow the last 150 years of mainstream solar theory. Leif, for one, will no doubt continue to fight it tooth and nail. In time, we will see which ideas prevail – maybe Abreu maybe Leif maybe neither – and hopefully the outcome will be determined by the scientific method not by who has the loudest voice or controls the gate.
Leif – Your :A paper has to have merit in order to earn a rebuttal. The papers in question do not.” is unscientific too. If a rebuttal is appropriate where any part (“x%”) of a paper has no merit, then a rebuttal is still appropriate if the whole paper has no merit (“x=100”).
re Vukcevic – Vukcevic’s papers are, AFAICT, curve-fitting exercises, aka wiggle-matching. As jorgekafkazar has pointed out, wiggle-matching is ‘a form of scientific observation, albeit with limited utility’. The point about curve-fitting (to use its politer name) is that it can lead to scientific discovery, but only when the underlying mechanism is found.
I would now like to point out the obvious error in my last sentence : in a sense the theory of gravity has only reached the wiggle-matching stage (to use the more insulting name) because we still have no mechanism.
returning to Vukcevic – the claim that his curve-fitting predicts 4 years accurately is no endorsement of the method. With any curve-fitting, it is to be expected that the immediate future will continue to be quite a good fit, but that without a mechanism or a very good fit over a very long time, the fit will deteriorate in time. IMHO if there is any value in V’s work it is in the fact that there are such curves (not in the exact parameters) and that they suggest that there is a mechanism worth finding.
Mike Jonas says:
January 18, 2014 at 7:50 pm
If a rebuttal is appropriate where any part (“x%”) of a paper has no merit, then a rebuttal is still appropriate if the whole paper has no merit (“x=100″).
The ‘appropriateness’ and certainly my interest decrease sharply as x increases to 100%.
the theory of gravity has only reached the wiggle-matching stage
The criterion for being beyond wiggle-matching is if consistently correct predictions are made. In that sense, the theory of gravity is WAY beyond wiggle-matching. In science we have the strong notion of an ‘efficient theory’, namely one that within its domain always produces correct [to an appropriate level of precision] results.
Any thoughts on the temerity of a publishing house calling themselves Copernicus?
I’ve always wondered, and maybe one of you in this collection of worthies can give me an answer.
Is it colder, relatively to the equator, at the sun’s north and south pole?
It seems to me there are at least three things (which really should be kept separate) going on related to the PRP issue of this thread:
(1) The publisher discontinued PRP stating that their reason was because it disputed the “party line” of the IPCC (or milder words to that effect). Lame, but possibly this is within their assumed purview. This should have been the only issue for us here.
(2) They also (later) said that there was nepotism in the PRP peer-review process. SHOCKED! This is not unlikely, and not unusual in today’s peer-review/pal-review/censorship state of publishing affairs. This is a much larger issues than the one in just this current PRP backdrop/dustup.
(3) Apparently the actual pattern recognition notions of some recent PRP papers have upset some here as being ill-advised. Possibly an issue worthy of a careful analysis.
That’s the points – here are some NOTES:
(A) With regard to (2), apparently the publishers of PRP did pen the cancellation notice with just the single reason in (1). Jo Nova relayed this original accurately, shortly thereafter specifically noting that reason (2) had been added. That is, they amended their excuse without notice of that update. Why? Because the first reason was not very honorable? Typical.
(B) For our amusement, William Connolley (the reputedly ousted Wikipedia editor/censor) attacked Jo, accusing her of trying to hide reason (2). But we know her – she just would not do such a thing. (It would likely be part of his MO.) In the event, Willy Soon verified the existence of the original version that she relied on. She had already noted the curious supplement even before WC came along to be a pest. Totally uncalled for. Likely it was another slow, disappointing day for him.
(C) Peer-review does not, in general, work well. There is nothing wrong with having your “pals” review your submissions, especially as they act openly, and with integrity. If they are truly your friends, they will provide feedback far better than an anonymous reviewer is likely to feel obliged to do. (When an author thanks reviewers and then takes full responsibility for any remaining errors, he does not REALLY mean he is going to forgive his friends.)
(D) With regard to factor (3) of my list, it would be a mistake to justify the cancellation of PRP and the ham-handed termination notices based on anyone supposition of a flawed scientific approach. “Curve Fitting” IS dangerous as I learned from a physics professor 45 years ago. But it is better to have a curve that has real-world data points ON it rather than a hockey stick with no real-world blade! If the data does not match the theory, the theory is wrong (Feynman) but if the data matches what at first-blush seems an unlikely model, well we have Asimov’s “that’s funny!” to consider. Nature may speak to us sotto voce.
Michael Jonas:
Einstein’s theory of gravity predicts the deviation of the orbits of Mercury, Venus and Mars to better than 10^-8.
How much better do you need?
Hmmmm, pal review was discovered, and sneered at, in consensus climate science because the papers were wrong. That’s not necessarily the process here.
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Alternatively, pal review is not necessarily poor review. There’s a cart before the horse feel to this bandwagon.
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Gary Pearse says:
January 18, 2014 at 9:17 am
You repeated “responibilities” twice. Does that mean you think it’s a real word?
Yet more alternatively, pal review could be said to have caused bad papers in climate science, which was also subject to tremendous nonscientific pressures. In this case, bad papers have not yet been shown, and the nonscientific pressures pales in comparison to those in consensus climate science.
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Ya, velly intellesting, Konrad. The Cheshire Cat sunspots wink at us.
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If these papers are good, Cornucopia’s pulling off the Streisand Effect will be a rich, rich irony.
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Bernie @ur momisugly 9:46, honest, I hadn’t read your comment when I made some similar points. Good stuff you’ve got there.
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WTF, we now have multiple people defending “Pal-Review” as acceptable? Likely the same people who would argue peer-review is meaningless. So in which case why go through the trouble to have the papers appear to come from a peer-reviewed journal, just have your colleagues review them and throw them up on your website.
Connolley’s Wikipedia crimes deserves him an auto-ban at any skeptic site. Jo should not take his abuse and just delete his comments and ban his IP address. Do not even debate the lunatic who has smeared countless skeptical scientists and done everything in his power to censor any information no matter how well sourced on Wikipedia.
Poptech says:
January 18, 2014 at 11:04 pm
why go through the trouble to have the papers appear to come from a peer-reviewed journal, just have your colleagues review them and throw them up on your website.
Actually not such a bad idea….