After reconsideration of my original story, I find that there is more than enough blame to go around on both sides and that there were warning signs that were ignored.
Last Friday while at work, my Inbox exploded with news about a “climate skeptic journal getting canceled”. It was news to me, because I didn’t even know there was one in existence. This post is an update that post I made on Friday: The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better. Today’s post is done with the benefit of more detailed information and more time than I had then.
Much of the mail I received Friday centered around this post by Jo Nova: Science paper doubts IPCC, so whole journal gets terminated!
Jo’s post details that a particular phrase in the announcement seemed to be the reason for the termination of the journal. The editor’s announcement (the first version) is reproduced below, bold, Jo’s:
Termination of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics
Copernicus Publications started publishing the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics (PRP) in March 2013. The journal idea was brought to Copernicus’ attention and was taken rather critically in the beginning, since the designated Editors-in-Chief were mentioned in the context of the debates of climate skeptics. However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics.
Recently, a special issue was compiled entitled “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts”. Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013).
Copernicus Publications published the work and other special issue papers to provide the spectrum of the related papers to the scientists for their individual judgment. Following best practice in scholarly publishing, published articles cannot be removed afterwards.
We at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP. Of course, scientific dispute is controversial and should allow contradictory opinions which can then be discussed within the scientific community. However, the recent developments including the expressed implications (see above) have led us to this drastic decision.
Interested scientists can reach the online library at: www.pattern-recogn-phys.net
Martin Rasmussen
January 2014
Initially, this looked like another case of suppression due to the anti-IPCC message conveyed in the PRP Special Edition, much like we’ve seen in Climategate where an email campaign was used to pressure editors, and if the editors didn’t kowtow, “the team” would work to remove them. The Phil Jones email “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow” immediately sprang to mind.
My view was that the journal editor got “team” pressure, such as we witnessed James Annan crowing about, and they caved.
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 pointed out that the best way is to let due process take its course:
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…
But then later, after my piece was published, I learned there was far more to the story, and that Copernicus had changed their statement, adding this paragraph:
“In addition, 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.”
That seems like some post facto CYA to me, or, it could also be just sloppiness due to what appears to be the “panic” they were under after getting hit with an email campaign from James Annan’s “various people”.
Jo wondered in her update:
Copernicus is a large publishing group which also publishes many other journals. I wonder if “nepotism” is the word for pal-review which occurs all the time…
It turns out that “pal-review” was indeed a problem, and that both sides should have seen this showdown coming well in advance. Had either made some effort to head it off, you wouldn’t be reading about it now.
First, let me say that it takes a lot of courage and effort to put together a special edition for a journal, and I admire the people involved for doing that, even though I disagree with much of what was presented.
Secondly, it takes a lot of work to do it right. Doing it right means getting it done where any contestable items of special interest, pal-review, and other biases aren’t part of the publication. That’s where it went wrong.
Third, if the climate skeptic community became aware of a pal-review issue like this in climate science, we’d be all over it. We should hold our own community to the same standards.
In his post about the affair, Roger Tattersall, who was both an editor and an author of a paper in the special edition, responded to William Connolley in this comment with a [Reply].
William Connolley says:
“In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing…”
Oooh you bad boys. RT: are you in favour of nepotism in review? Come on, don’t be shy.
[Reply] I asked for reviewers from outside our discipline, but with it being a small field, there was crossover. But because the papers are open access, anyone can download, review and comment, so I don’t think it’s a big problem. Let our scientific work stand on its merit, rather than impugning the honesty of the scientists.
Climate science itself suffers from the small field crossover problem to an extent, but as we saw in Climategate emails, often they turn a blind eye to it.
I have no problem with their work in the PRP Special Edition standing or failing on its own merit, but I do have a problem with the way they went about this. For example, in WUWT comments we have:
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.
Basically, they asked to play in the peer reviewed sandbox at Copernicus, then didn’t abide by the rules of the sandbox for peer review. That was the recipe for disaster everybody should have seen coming.
Which is confirmed:
Poptech says:January 18, 2014 at 3:56 pm
tallbloke says:
I’m surprised Poptech fell for the Rasmussen ruse. In his first email to the editors he said he was shutting down PRP because it had allowed sceptics to publish heresy about the IPCC dogma. Only later did he realise the own goal and cook up the unsubstantiated smears about “potential” issues with review.
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.
One of the PRP editors, Morner, published his own paper in the edition. The other editor reviewed it. And, Morner reviewed other papers. No clearer example of circular review exists.
And then there’s this:
richardscourtney says: January 18, 2014 at 9:04 am
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.
And so, the perception of the pal-review has trumped any science that was presented, and few people will hear of the reasons behind that problem.
The problem the PRP authors and editors have is existence in a small like-minded universe, yet they don’t see the problem that presents to outsiders looking in. The situation reminded me of a Star Trek TNG episode “Remember Me“ where Dr. Beverly Crusher gets trapped in a “static warp bubble”. The pool of people she interacts with keeps shrinking as the bubble shrinks, and she keeps trying to convince the remaining people of this fact while they look at her like she’s crazy. She finally ends up alone, and doesn’t realize the reality of her isolation until she asks the ship’s computer “What is the nature of the universe?” and it answers:
“…the universe as a spheroid structure 705 meters in diameter.”
That’s about the size of the PRP Special Edition universe, and like the static warp bubble in the TNG episode, it is collapsing in on itself. The big problem with this event is that while that PRP Special Edition universe is collapsing in one place, it has exploded elsewhere, and that explosion has painted all climate skeptics with a broad brush.
Some news coverage of the event:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/01/18/0036252/alleging-malpractice-with-climate-skeptic-papers-publisher-kills-journal
It was easy to predict what kind of coverage we’d see.
Note there’s no distinction here of a “subset” of climate skeptics, or even “a few climate skeptics”, no, ALL climate skeptics are being painted with this fiasco. That means people like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, the Pielkes, Curry, Singer, Happer, and many others are being lumped into this even though they had nothing to do with it. I doubt any of them even knew about it, and I daresay that if they did, they’d have similar objections to what has already been voiced on WUWT about the process.
And that, makes me upset. What makes me even more upset is that this mess was wholly preventable if either Copernicus or the PRP Special Edition group had realized what was at stake and done something about it before it became the next target of “the team” looking to pressure an editor like we saw in Climategate. Had I known about it before it exploded. I certainly would have voiced objections about the use of a small and specialized universe of editors and reviewers. Almost any reasonable person looking at this from the outside can see this pal-review issue would eventually blow up, because no matter how careful they might have been internally to prevent such issues, the appearance from the outside of bias is what gets written about, as we’ve seen.
And, there were clear warnings.
Steve Mosher writes to me with this
A while back I happened upon the Tallbloke journal (comments from Tallbloke’s Talkshop)
Steven Mosher says:
cool. not only did you review each other papers ( where the reviewer had the ethical courage to identify himself) but you referenced your own papers that were simultaneously submitted but un published.
wow, way better than the CRU scams.
Of course Ian wilson chimed in
when he knew what I said was true
more
Steven Mosher says: (bold mine)
“Ian:Three years ago at Lisbon, Mosh told me I needed to provide some numbers to back up our solar-planetary hypothesis. Now we are able to do that, he’s falling back on insult by comparing us to people who bent data and stats methods, intimidated journal editors, removed adverse data, hid sample sizes etc.
It’s standard fare from the people who have lost the plot on what the scientific method is. They play the man rather than the ball, because their threadbare theory has failed.”
No Rog, I’m hold [sic] you to the same standard that we hold mann [sic] and others to.
1. Your [sic] the editor of a journal and you publish your own papers. In the climategatemails we found similar problems; we found authors who selected journals because they had a guy on the inside.
Second, we complained because IPCC chapter authors were referring to their own work. Self interest. I can hardly complain about this practice WRT the IPCC and Mann and then let you slide simply because you are a friend. Further, when I was asked for a list of journals to submit to I eliminated all journals where our authors served as editors or as emeritus editors.
2. We complained about climate scientists citing papers that had not yet been published. Look through your references you’ll find the examples. Again, integrity. And yes, you’ll note for example that our AMO paper ( that confirms some of scaffettas work) was held back from publication until all the other papers it cites were published. To do otherwise is to build a house on quicksand.
3. I missed your policy on archiving data and code. I did note some people giving links as references. Sad. bare minimum would be link with the date accessed.
Finally, I looked for your numbers. they are still missing. At a minimum I should be able to go to the SI, get the data and run the code to make sure that the charts presented actually come from the method described.
Since you’re the editor perhaps you tell us how you plan to practice the things we agreed on long ago. Don’t feel bad, folks who think its not the sun get pissed when I tell them to share data and code.. to basically show their work. But you should not be surprised that I would argue that everybody, not just Mann and Jones, should aim for reproducable research. I’ve been advocating it since 2007. Why would I listen to any special pleading from friends. For example, see my comments in july of 2012 on steve mcintyre’s blog where he and Anthony get an earful from me.
It’s a principle for me.
Did Tattersall or Wilson then do anything about this? It doesn’t seem so, but then again I’m, not privy to what went on behind the scenes, like everybody else, all I can do is look at their universe from the outside and note the clearly evident problems they seem unable or unwilling to see.
And the warnings went back even further, from RetractionWatch:
But scholarly librarian Jeffrey Beall noticed some…patterns in the journal back in
SeptemberJuly:The journal’s editor-in-chief, Sid-Ali Ouadfeul, who works for the Algerian Petroleum Institute, started publishing his research in journal articles around 2010, but he’s only been cited a couple times, not counting his many self-citations.
Co-editor-in-chief Nils-Axel Morner is a noted climate “skeptic” who believes in dowsing (water divining) and believes he has found the “Hong Kong of the [ancient] Greeks” in Sweden, among other things. These beliefs are documented in Wikipedia and The Guardian. Morner has over 125 publications, but pattern recognition does not appear to be among his specialties.
Moreover, speaking of “pattern recognition,” my analysis revealed some self-plagiarism by editor Ouadfeul in the very first paper the journal published, an article he himself co-authored.
Did he ask Copernicus to do something about it? Unknown, but it seems likely they would have been made aware of it. Again Copernicus is a seasoned publisher, they should have solved the problem well before it detonated into the science landscape.
So, in summary:
- While the idea of a special edition is fine, and certainly what science was presented in it should stand or fail on its own and have the opportunity for due process, but now that has been made next to impossible.
- The papers are still available at this link. I urge readers to examine them and draw their own conclusions not only about the science, but about the review and publishing process.
- The public perception problem of pal-review could have been prevented had either the journal itself or the people in the PRP Special Edition universe recognized and corrected the pal-review appearance that their small PRP universe presented to outsiders.
- At multiple blogs, including WUWT and Tallbloke’s Talkshop, some people are now defending the process of pal-review as a “more productive form of collaboration to produce a better result”. I’m sorry, that’s just not only wronger than wrong, it’s FUBAR.
- Copernicus and Rasmussen appeared to be indifferent to the appearance of a pal-review issue until they started to get pressure from “the team” spurred on by James Annan. They panicked, and in their panic, presented a sloppy argument for closure, which had to be revised.
- Knowing of the increasing sea of science journals and choices, Copernicus did what they thought they had to do to protect their brand, but they did it ham-handedly, and invited the Streisand effect.
- Copernicus and Rasmussen aren’t newcomers to this arena, they are considered professionals by the science community. They should have recognized this problem and acted on it long ago. Had they done so, we’d not be reading about it today.
- That said, with warning signs present that we’ve seen before in Climategate, and with the people in the PRP universe aware of those things, they should have been able to see the problem and make corrections themselves. Ideally, they never should have fallen into the trap in the first place.
- When warned about the problem, Tattersall and Wilson should have done something to head it off. They may have, I don’t know, but I see no evidence of it. Likewise it seems almost certain Copernicus/Rasmussen would have been made aware of the problem in July 2013 by Beall, and should have done something if they were aware. If Beall did nothing, he’s culpable.
- The coverage of the affair paints all climate skeptics unfairly, since only a small group of climate skeptics operated within the PRP universe, mostly unknown to the larger body of climate skeptics.
- Skepticism is about asking skillful questions to examine if a claim is true or not. In this affair we have a small group of people who think they have the answer, and they browbeat people who think their answer isn’t accurate or representative. A good skeptic (and scientist) practices doubt, and should embrace criticisms, looking to see where they may have gone wrong.
- This fiasco pretty much dashes any chance of any sort of climate skeptic or citizen science based journal coming into existence, because should such a journal be started, no matter how careful, no matter how exacting, no matter how independent, this fiasco is going to be held up as an example as to why nobody from the larger science community should participate.
It’s a real mess, and instead of apologizing for creating it, what we are seeing from the PRP Special Edition universe is indignant rhetoric because nobody is paying attention to their ideas.
All around, a tragedy, and a wholly preventable one.
All this hand waving and pissing and moaning is pointless and irrelevant (not to mention giving me a head-ache). The warmists proved long ago just what peer review was worth. To ignore the science because someone who reviewed it was on your side is asinine and just shows the elitist “only an expert can understand” mentality that has brought the scientific method to its knees. With the internet and science blogs that act as a grist mill for scientific advancement, we no longer need “peer review”. It should be relegated to the ash heap where it belongs.
I always dismiss strawman arguments.
A skeptic having a skeptic as a reviewer is no more illegitimate than a warming-consensus author having another warming-consensus person as a reviewer. If it is a double-standard, it is not a standard.
Neither is there any inherent problem with some contributors to the special issue reviewing the work of some others. All that indicates is that they have similar expertise, not that they have any conflict of interest. To avoid conflicts of interests, scientists can only review work in areas they are unfamiliar with? No way.
In grad school 40 years ago I saw careers spent in computational clouds detached from the essential math which showed them to be pal reviewed Ptolemaic epicycles . As an APL programmer , I only understand that which I can compute . So far , that’s only to present the computations for the equilibrium temperature of irradiated uniformly colored opaque balls based on the most experimentally tested and testable classical physics . But even that I have found to be very poorly , at best , understood on all sides of this endless , never converging , debate . I know of no public website which goes thru this non-optional basic quantitative physics other than my own . If someone knows of one , please send me a link . We may be able to collaborate on fleshing our a succinct web accessible quantitative model .
We are about 3% warmer than the approximately 279k of a gray ball in our obit and have seen a variation of about 0.3% since the invention of the steam engine . So we are seeking to understand effects on the order of the 2nd and 3rd decimal places .
Of all the parameters of our temperature , that which is known by far the most accurately is our distance from the sun . Our temperature is inversely proportional to the square root of our distance from the sun . Yet I have never seen even an analysis extracting even the precisely known in both phase and magnitude variation in our temperature due to the 3.3% annual variation in our distance from aphelion to perihelion which must produce a 1.6% variation in our equilibrium temperature , all else being constant . If such an effect , tho largely confounded over the short term with our hemispheric asymmetry , cannot be extracted from our temperature record , I have little care for more subtle and speculative orbital effects .
I had hopes that Dr Scafetta had a rigorous orbital model which could flesh out the long term variations in our orbit , eg , the relationship between our seasons and our solar distance , but it seems he is off in speculative clouds rather than analytically removing the most certain orbital effects first .
From my sampling of a couple of hundred journals, all the editors had a Ph.D (or equivalent) relevant (otherwise relevant employment) to the topic of the journal. Qualifications were somewhat less stringent on the editorial boards I reviewed. I am sure there are journals that do not but they are likely to be the exception rather than the rule. The rational behind this would be the same reason for having peer-review Richard Courtney mentioned – as an added insurance policy.
I would not select Steve McIntyre as an editor either (I suspect he would not be interested) but he would make a great reviewer. While, I would consider his frequent colleague Dr. McKitrick to be an excellent choice for an editor. I agree with you on Mann.
The reason this was brought up is Roger made the comment, “you know jack sh1t about astrophysics”. Which led me to ask, what qualified him to be an editor of a physical science journal? It is not a question I wanted to ask until he made that statement. From what I can tell he was chosen because he supported a certain viewpoint. This can be used as another charge of nepotism or cronyism.
If I made a factually untrue statement let me know and I will correct it.
If people refuse to admit to an irrefutable argument, I will provide enough evidence as is necessary to make my case. You can clearly see me repeatedly stating that I do not want to post more damning evidence but they don’t want to act rational, they want to keep defending an indefensible position. The only implications I am trying to show is a hypocrisy with “pal-review”..
I will take that as an unintended joke in relation to relevant qualifications for editing a physical science journal.
The most telling comment at Tall Blokes
My goodness, the sensitivity to criticism is quite astounding, and still they all seem to think it was OK to not follow the rules of the journal.
Lack of communication and poor marketing by PRP. I was aware of Dr. Scafetta’s sea-level paper in PRP in May but was unaware there was anything special about the journal outside of it being a new open access journal, since there was only a handful of papers listed at that time (while the current listings would have caused me to investigate further). New open access journals appear every year, so I did not find it unusual.
Anthony Watts says:
January 20, 2014 at 5:08 pm
————
Yes rule #1.
Do not critizise the IPCC.
They could have spared that sentence – but then Cook would have probably counted them as a 97% consensus paper.
Their whole behavior is mind boggling. Who do they think is going to support their (IMO baseless) arguments for not following the rules? Since when did not acting like a hypocrite become “doing wrong”?
This reminds me of the Hockey Team’s defense of the word “Trick”. I actually read things before I quote them and it is directly mocking actual “pal-review” in a sarcastic way by applying it to something else, emphasized by the smiley face. This quote is even better because Roger directly responds to the comment and cannot claim he was unaware of it.
Strawman, I never claimed it was. I specifically said, “Comments from the Talkshop…”
Wait, the quote was not from the reference linked? So the commentator at Roger’s TalkShop did not mockingly use the phrase “pal review”?
I intentionally only posted those comments as examples (and I thought a very obvious hint) since I did not want to post Roger’s actual comment but no one wanted to back down. I said I was not bluffing.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/science-is-not-done-by-peer-or-pal-review-but-by-evidence-and-reason – “Bureaucratized Peer review is highly flawed, doesn’t prove a thing scientifically and works to the advantage of those who are already in the game.”
Joanne points out that she has never criticized the hockey team for pal review. It’s not the pal review – it’s not that they redefined what peer review means. It’s that the team promoted unscientific theories, pretending it was peer reviewed according to high standards, and pretending that this gave credibility to the AGW hypothesis. It wouldn’t matter if Darwin’s Origin of Species had been favorably reviewed by all his friends. Joanne is right, and Anthony wrong.
Manfred says:
January 20, 2014 at 1:42 pm
Thanks, Manfred. That is indeed what Copernicus said.
The irony is that by their deliberate flouting of the normal rules of review, the editors, authors, and reviewers of the special edition turned it into exactly that—a platform for what I see as the far fringe of climate skeptics to propound their ascientific views without hindrance or restriction. (I say “ascientific” because the papers I’ve read so far are not really anti-science so much as they are simply science-free.)
How is that not a bad thing? You don’t want a scientific journal to be a platform for any specific point of view on scientific questions, it’s the curse of the times.
w.
Poptech,
you are not following rules 4 and 5.
The rules say, It is not up to you to judge wether there appears to have been a conflict of interest, but up to the referees to decide by themselves .
That is what the rules say and that is what they did.
They may have concluded for themselves, that despite their interaction, they still would be able to deliver a proper review.
And they may have decided for themselves, that this would not appear to be a conflict of interest for others, because others did not mind similar practise elsewhere and particularly at the IPCC.
Probably a poor decision, but within the rules.
Having said that, it is still a side show and the letter from Copernicus surprisingly open about the real motivation..
The main point is the German Angst to allow free speech and to critizise authority. Which now is – as reported by Cowtan in the secret sceptical science forum – a global Angst, where even professors at US universities do not dare to speak up any more.
pdxrod says:
January 20, 2014 at 6:25 pm
And how is that different in any detail from what the reviewers and editors of the special edition did?
w.
Wrong, it is further reinforced when you read the editor rules,
http://publications.copernicus.org/for_reviewers/obligations_for_editors.html
7. Editors should avoid situations of real or perceived conflicts of interest if the relationship would bias judgement of the manuscript. Such conflicts may include, but are not limited to, handling papers from present and former students, from colleagues with whom the editor has recently collaborated, and from those in the same institution.
Pure spin, those rules in not way allows for the use of a reviewer with a perceived conflict of interest to simply be excuse by stating their name. The whole point of those rules is so editors do not use such reviewers. Reviewer rule 4 explicitly states,
“If in doubt, the referee should return the manuscript promptly without review, advising the editor of the conflict of interest or bias.”
Editor rule 6 says,
6. Editorial responsibility and authority for any manuscript authored by an editor and submitted to the editor’s journal should be delegated to some other qualified person, such as another editor or an associate editor of that journal. Editors should avoid situations of real or perceived conflicts of interest. If an editor chooses to participate in an ongoing scientific debate within his journal, the editor should arrange for some other qualified person to take editorial responsibility.
That is three times so far the publishers emphasized avoiding a conflict of interest. I am beginning to suspect that the publishing rules were never read.
Manfred says:
January 20, 2014 at 6:41 pm
As I read it, the decision is not up to the referees. All they are required to do is notify the Editor(s) if there is, not just actual conflict of interest, but also the appearance of conflict of interest. It is then up to the Editor(s) to make the call.
But the issue isn’t who made a ludicrously bad call. The issue is that the bad call was made, and what that means and brings in train.
Specifically, they were enjoined from reviewing people with whom they have a “personal or professional connection” which would give the appearance of a conflict … ya think they might have broken that rule? The resulting furor says yes …
To me, it’s simple. If you want to play, and you agree to follow certain rules, then follow them. If you don’t, you have no one to blame but yourself.
w.
Hi Willis,
it is not hard to see a difference here. Which is that one team got terminated and the other got a Noble Price.
Anthony Watts says:
January 20, 2014 at 5:08 pm
The most telling comment at Tall Blokes
Ian Wilson says:
January 20, 2014 at 6:04 am
I have deleted all of my URL links to WUWT. I will never visit that site again. My only hope is that Anthony Watts will live long enough to know that what he has done is wrong.
My goodness, the sensitivity to criticism is quite astounding, and still they all seem to think it was OK to not follow the rules of the journal.
Anthony, this “pissing contest” does no credit to anyone, or to science, or to the scientific method. Apologies and forgiveness are needed here. Rules don’t work when “criminals” are making them; nor do elections work when those who will use voter fraud to win then destroy democracy. Stop it! Bow out of it. Find another way. Do not give in to the insanity that is driving this “whatever-it-is” destructive conflict. We can all agree to disagree and live together. We do not have to like each other, but we can listen.
Poptech says:
January 20, 2014 at 5:12 pm
..PRP in May but was unaware there was anything special about the journal outside of it being a new open access journal, since there was only a handful of papers listed at that time..
——
I was doing a sort of cross ref on Morner when I first considered it. During searches it would come up with the rest of the journals. And it kinda creeped me.. as maybe not being on the up..
Now..well, we find out the other side of the story and who is at the top of the heap? Oh my my, Oh my my. lol
Ok back to work..
Vortexs and gravitational influences inside and outside of the solar system..
@willis, @poptech,
this is not what the rules say. They leave the decision to the referees and the editor and nobody else. If they decide, they complied with the rules, they complied with the rules.
It is not relevant if anybody else thinks their judgement was poor. That would have required an additional rule such as an “expectation test”. Here’s an example
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/23/section/5
So Copernicus Publications are criminals?
Manfred, keep spinning no one is buying it.
NOTE: I have not read any of the papers. However I took a look at the other sites on this topic and the one thing that stands out is from Jo Nova’s site.
Also the excuse:
Tallbloke is saying that some of the reviewers were anonymous.
With a reply:
AND THERE I AGREE
Everyone is condemning Prof. Mörner, a man with 580 peer reviewed papers to his name based on a frecking AFTER THOUGHT that has now been removed. Martin Rasmussen’s comment has already disappeared from the PRP website. http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/special_issue2.html
I think we need to wait until actual evidence is presented and not smears and mudslinging.
Has anyone ever consider that this was a set-up to smear skeptics from the get go? Because this thread has done a dandy job of it.
Gail,
With respect, I’m honestly puzzled by your response. I ask that you read my essay again.
Thanks.
Gail, you obviously did not read Anthony’s post. Please do so before commenting with things that have already been addressed or are a strawman to the actual argument.