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.
bobl wrote “Given that this was a new Journal and has a limited list of reviewers,”
Journals do not have lists of reviewers, the editors can invite anybody they like to review a paper if they think they have suitable qualifications and could provide a useful review.
The reason that editors need to be very experienced, eminent researchers in their field is so that they know the different branches of research within the field well enough (in addition to ther own specialism) to be able to identify suitable researchers, or at least well enough to know how to find them. These days it is much easier as tools like Google Scholar would help; for instance if you have a paper on planetary resonance to review, you could look up “planetary resonance” on google scholar and see who has published papers on the topic that have been well recieved by the research community, e.g.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=“planetary+resonance”
And related searches such “orbital resonance” that a competent referee will know to perform. You might even find some that have a direct bearing on the paper to be reviewed, but which do not appear in the reference list.
Looking at the references of the paper is also a good place to look for possible reviewers, provided the paper is of sufficient quality that the reference list contains the papers that it should (i.e. it doesn’t ignore papers that cast doubt on the argument the paper puts forward). Naturally, a good editor would not rely on this apporach alone, without investigating further.
Prof. Svalgaards’ comment “None of the papers were of any technical or specialized sophistication. There would be tens of thousands of physicists capable of being referees.”
is essentially correct, from what I have seen of the papers included in the special issue. For instance on the topic of planetary resonance, there will be thousands of astronomers and astrophysicists that could competently review that topic, it appears to be a fairly basic topic that is covered at undergraduate level.
There are a number of issues that have been raised in this post. Firstly I agree that the resulting accusation of ‘pal review’ was an inevitable outcome of a small group of, mainly skeptics, collaborating on a peer review journal in a small field of science. I also respect the right of the publisher to withdraw the journal, whatever the reason – yes they do have a reputation to protect. I agree with most of Anthony’s post and Richardscourtney’s comments.
One area where I disagree is that it has resulted in damage to the entire community of climate skeptics – no it has resulted in damage to the editors of the journal. This fact seems to have been lost on some people. Yes you may argue that it was self inflicted but imagine how you would be feeling now if you had spent all that time and effort, with good intent, for the right reasons and your journal is pulled?
I will go further and say if it had happened to me (or most of you) and I then felt that the post or commenters were at this time ‘rubbing my nose in it’ then I am likely to get angry and make comments I later regret.
The other issues are double standards, both in respect of ‘skeptics’ not doing something (pal review) we accuse others of but also comparing a clearly defined intent at corrupting the scientific process (climategate) with the mistake of choosing the peer review avenue for the publication of their work. I accept, if the accusations are correct they broke the rules and the journal was withdrawn, better now than later.
The other issue of double standards is what we do if the rules are broken – how many journals have been withdrawn after climategate showed some alarmists censoring work critical of the ‘settled science’ or even getting editors sacked for not following the mantra? No, it was all brushed under the carpet, slapped wrists at most. If this had been a CAGW sympathetic journal it likely wouldn’t have been brought to anyone’s attention.
Yes, some will use the opportunity to accuse all skeptics of being unscientific – what’s new? It will only give an opportunity to point out the ethical standards they aspire to. The game of ethical ‘Top Trumps’ is not exactly a winning formula for them.
No I am not aware anyone is arguing two wrongs make a right, I am not arguing the indefensible, on the contrary I agree, break the rules face the consequences it is just a shame some of the CAGW crowd don’t follow the same standards, as such we are left with both scientific and press censorship in the UK.
They made a mistake, let’s not have personal attacks.
Anthony and Richard S Courtney, it is time to get over sanctifying “peer review” — they no longer are sacred “rules of the game”. They have been utterly and forever falsified. There no longer is any sacred value to which we must bow down or any “necessity to the scientific method” that belongs to peer review. Too many scientific criminals have hidden and continue to hide behind it. Not only in these fields, but in many, many more.
This issue is telling here because of the hatred and vindictiveness directed towards a group of scientists — who are not considered scientists by others (not even of undergrad quality) — who are trying to present a perspective. There is way too much ridiculing of “resonances”. This is pure splitting and projective identification of the kind that demands all opposition being sterilized, euthanized, exterminated, or disappeared. Take a good look.
Any idea that “all” AGW skeptics will be tarnished is bunk. Anyone who says so is terrified of his/her own scientific positions and the free enterprise of free and open discussion.
pyromancer76 Nobody is ridiculing resonances, per se, Pluto *is* in 2:3 resonance with Neptune. However, many of the other relationships between orbital parameters are not nearly close enough to the claimed ratios to be due to genuine orbital resonance. There are plenty of papers in the litterature on possible influences of the planets on the sun, so nobody is trying to prevent scientific discussion of this in the journals.
Gail, maybe you did not read the previous discussion either,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/the-planetary-tidal-influence-on-climate-fiasco-strong-armed-science-tactics-are-overkill-due-process-would-work-better/
If you read Anthony’s article, on multiple papers you have the authors and editors in this special edition listed as reviewers. Then it gets worse, while the “anonymous” reviewers were not so anonymous as Ian Wilson admitted to,
That speaks for itself.
This is a common misconception with journals, they do not have a “pool of referees” – anyone can be a reviewer (you just have to convince them). So it doesn’t matter how new or small your publication is, you can tap any qualified person to review the papers. So your argument is meaningless.
Failure to get independent reviewers is a problem with the editor not being resourceful enough or trying hard enough.
Poptech,
Was the evaluation (review) undertaken by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and are they considered qualified for the review process?
WTF? Willis and Anthony have done nothing here but rationally argue their points. It gets rather tedious when people repeatedly fail to address the actual arguments being presented and instead choose to argue strawman arguments.
Apparently people are not reading what is being said, so I have to say it again.
Reply to Willis Eschenbach @ur momisugly January 20, 2014 at 6:44 pm: “And how is that different in any detail from what the reviewers and editors of the special edition did?”. I don’t know. I don’t know if pal review resulted in poor papers in Pattern Recognition in Physics or great ones. The point is, as Joanne says, evaluate the papers according to science and logic, not procedure.
Strawman, I already stated they were qualified which does not address the pal-review argument. As per the journal publication rules, reviewers cannot have even a perceived conflict of interest (to prevent pal-review). Are you even familiar with skeptic arguments of pal-review and the hypocrisy of endorsing this now?
Is Phil Jones of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and is he considered qualified for the review process of a paper by Michael Mann?
pyromancer76:
I do not understand your post at January 21, 2014 at 5:59 am.
I know of nobody who “sanctifies” peer review and/or claims it is “sacred rules of the game”. Clearly, you have not read my posts in this thread.
And I have not directed “hatred and vindictiveness” at anybody. Indeed, I pointed out that personalities are “not relevant” to the issue. But one of the “group” you mention did try to smear me. Again, I can only assume you have not read the thread.
And you are stating demonstrable nonsense when you write
I am not “terrified” of anything you mention. And all AGW-skeptics are being smeared by association with the group: this is happening at alarmist blogs across the web. But it is clear that you did not not read this thread before posting your untrue comment so I suppose it was to be expected that you would not check facts elsewhere.
Your retraction would be appreciated.
Richard
That argument has been forfeited by the journal’s failure to follow the rules of the publisher for peer-review. Anthony, already addressed this,
“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.”
I have been debating this issue on more websites on the Internet (hundreds) than just about everyone here, for over 7 years and I can guarantee you no one and I mean no one is going to take anything published in these papers seriously because of these failures in the peer-review process. You can sit there and argue until you are red in the face but will never get past the irrefutable evidence that supports “pal-review” charges. I don’t know how much clearer I need to be.
Anthony and Willis both have had papers published in journals were they can actually have a discussion about the science because they don’t have to worry about defending the peer-review process.
In case you’re still there,
Willis says:
“So I hate to break the sad news to you, JC, but I don’t hang on your every word. I don’t sit by
my computer breathlessly awaiting your next post. As a result, I didn’t see either your
content-free answer, nor your ultimatum a whole 21 minutes later …”
Ah Willis, let me set your mind at ease. I don’t think that you hang on my every word but since you responded to my first post so quickly I just assumed you were still reading and as I had to get up early this morning I went to bed. My bad…
I’m not sure what ultimatum you’re referring to in your response. As you are fond of saying “quote me”. Unless you are referring to the first post, then that was more of a comment than an ultimatum. After all there are no consequences real or implied if you ignore my advice as I’m sure you will.
In fact, since to date your stock in trade seems to be insults, and you haven’t raised a single
substantial objection to anything, I fear I pay little attention to your posts.
So far I’ve only offered a single insult but IMHO one that is well deserved.
Since I’m sure that others do understand my objection and as I’ve said verbal sparring with you is pointless, I will leave your words as an answer… you do pay little attention.
Exactly, and as I stated above, with no effort you can find 10,735 Ph.D. level members of the IAU alone, http://www.iau.org/about/ and that does not include all the other qualified scientists from relevant disciplines. The only hard part is convincing them but with enough effort you should have no problem locating independent qualified reviewers.
“Was the evaluation (review) undertaken by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and are they considered qualified for the review process?”
This is being a little more precise in the specification of “peer” than is warranted.
If Prof. Enid Gumby sends a paper to the Lancet on “The Effect of Brain Surgery on Flower Arrangers”, it would be O.K. if it were reviewed by Prof R.J. Gumby, rather than a qualified brain surgeon?
Ideally, as an author, you want to have your papers reviewed by someobody who is smarter and better qualified than you are. The less qualified you are, the more important this is.
Thanks to Gail Combs and Alexander Feht for their excellent clarity.
If scientists must rely on getting help from from peers, who will help the peerless? Or are we not bothered about involving them in our discussions?
We are to be content with hearing the discourse of Poptech, are we?
I notice that on the Popular Technology blog page, there is a comprehensive takedown of Willis Eschenbach, which asserts that he is no more than a carpenter and not an engineer, or a computer scientist or any other relevant ‘-ist’. and that moreover, he has repeatedly failed to correct the mistaken impression that he is some kind of qualified person.
Is this correct? And if it is, in what sense is he even a peer? Are pals allowed here, but not at the PRP journal?
Gail Combs says:
January 21, 2014 at 5:04 am
Disinterested?? “Science advances one funeral at a time.” ~ Max Planck
I am reminded of the lady who was turned down for a job in a doctor’s office because she did not have a ‘Certificate” stating she had been ‘Trained” on the medical equipment she had invented. (Note it was her signature on the certs.!) Of another professor with only a masters teaching phd students in the field he invented. When a bureaucrat raised a fuss because he was “Un-qualified to teach because he did not have a phd in the field” his answer was “But who will examine me, my students?”
I see the peer review as a necessity of the journals to ensure a certain quality check. What has a journal of value except the value of its papers?
If it allows for low quality papers – which are obvious bogus to a specialist – then the quality of the journal itself decreases rapidly towards zero.
People would not be happy to have papers published in a journal that publishes rubish, that is bad PR.
So it is in the interest of the journal to have good quality check, to continue to gather good papers in the future, and from all methods the peer-review quality check seems to work best.
It could be even pal-review if it works properly.
If it can be maintained otherwise people should not bother, but this is the problems with pal-reviews, kind of friends do not want to be the “bad guys”.
We have seen that even quality check through peer-review fails many times.
Now for the PRP journal – do we really have a good quality check of the papers and good quality papers?
I have had a brief look at one of the papers which was criticised by Willis above:
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 19, 2014 at 3:18 pm
First, the special edition proposes a number of fairly extraordinary ideas. Hans Jelbring is among the contestants, saying inter alia:
and it does not really look as a quality paper at first sight. Ok I work full time and do not really have much free time (will look at it at the week-end) – but even such short glance raises alarm signals.
This is something that a proper peer-review should find.
And I perfectly understand Anthony’s pain: Copernicus cancelled the journal on the wrong reasons. If the papers are garbage, they now justify the wrong reasons, and that’s the dilema. Copernicus can say: see the reasons are not wrong, it is garbage.
Well even if the papers are garbage, the reason is wrong, however now we should make the proper analysis of those papers as we did for the warmista ones, to see if they are worth fighting for.
Will try to have a look at the week-end to proper appreciate for myself, as I think many people will do now with all the PR the paper’s received.
Would it have not been fabulous with stellar papers?
Well this my 2 cents.
Anthony, an excellent, thoughtful post. You are right to feel as you do; the team and their minions are aggressively labeling all skeptics as unethical, despite it being a case of the pot calling the kettle black and we should not turn a blind eye to the situation. And I am sure that any “evolving field” in science, engineering and other areas of research will have the same challenge. In this case, the editors likely owe a public apology to quite a large audience.
I daresay it would be interesting to see the actual comments; in my experience some people are much better than others in shelving personal bias when examining the work of others. If the peer review comments were heavily laced with “attaboys,” then the process was a total and abject failure, and it’s best the Journal has been terminated. On the other hand, if the comments were largely solid, probing, thoughtful, and ultimately helped make the papers and their conclusions more understandable — that is, solid constructive criticisms — then that’s not as bad (though it doesn’t eliminate the underlying problem nor the many perceptions associated with what we now know as pal-review, thanks in no small part to “the team,” of course). The fact that there were apparently only two reviewers, only one of which was apparently unaffiliated, is also problematic to me. Had the editors sought additional reviewers with adequate basic knowledge to grasp the fundamentals of the papers, and adding at least one (for a total of three or more reviewers) would have helped allay some suspicions.
But in the end, the conundrum, I believe, is that in such evolving areas of science (and engineering, etc.) there are limited numbers of “expert” practitioners who can most effectively serve on peer-review teams. Eventually, perhaps even quickly, they become “personally” or “professionally” familiar with many or most others in their own field due to discourse at conferences, via professional collaboration, as former students and professors/mentors, and so on.
So how do the scientific and engineering fields effect change in the peer review process? It seems that, somehow, there needs to be a larger pool of potential reviewers. But if they have not the expertise to be “peer reviewers,” how can they actually review “peers?” This assumes, of course, that the need for professional publication is valid as a basis for recognition, and thus leading to tenure, pay and benefits, grant awards, etc. On the flip side, if such people can be found and recruited, and do have the potential expertise but have not been active in that specific area, will existing researchers welcome them as reviewers? Such “less than expert” reviewers could develop adequate expertise to compete for grants and other funding (as well as recognition), or they could be malicious with their comments. And, in any case, increasing the pool of reviewers is great in the abstract, but they all still typically serve on a voluntary basis and given that they receive no renumeration, their availability is limited.
Poptech,
I asked an honest question, which I also put to Roger himself, he replied with a direct and honest answer, without all the hand-waving, asking a question isn’t a straw-man argument or an endorsement of the review process, but it should be noted that reviewers were asked for from outside their discipline.
I think its silly to compare such a small area of non-paid research with the enormously well funded climate cabal that you mentioned above.
Was the evaluation (review) undertaken by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and are they considered qualified for the review process?
richardscourtney says:
January 21, 2014 at 2:38 am
Friends:
The discussion is becoming bizarre. People are trying to talk about any imaginable irrelevance instead of the issue at hand. And the issue is clear; i.e.
The publisher (Copernicus) of a small-circulation peer reviewed journal (PRP) enabled publication of an unusual opinion on cause(s) of climate change by inviting a group of people who espouse that opinion to provide a Special Edition of PRP, but the group flagrantly broke the rules of peer review so the publisher decided to protect its reputation by stopping the Special Edition and discontinuing publication of PRP, and this has resulted in damage to the entire community of climate skeptics.
That’s not my reading at all. The original letter to the editors announcing the closing down of the journal stated very clearly it was because of the climate skeptic views expressed by the editors. Issues with reviewing were not mentioned in the original letter.
They were announced later – as if the publishers were on the offensive and wanted to sex up the original letter. And they were announced only in the vaguest way, and apparently without previously asking the editors for their response to the allegations. A very seedy way of handling things.
I have to say I find the tone of the discussion on this thread on WUWT quite surprisingly nasty, with many of the characteristics I have hitherto associated with some AGW websites. I’d characterize this thread as having a whiff of lynch mob character to it.
offensivedefensiveMartin A:
At January 21, 2014 at 11:28 am you quote me then conclude saying
I assume that means you were offended at the attempted smear of me by one of the miscreants. I can see no other reason for your associating my name with assertions such as “a whiff of lynch mob character”.
Richard
sparks, as I wrote above, “peer review” doesn’t mean having your papers reviewed by somebody just as incompetent or as competent as you are. It means getting your papers reviewed by somebody that is competent to determine whether the paper is basically correct and if so give constructive advice on improving it. That is not at all the same thing, which is wht the question as posed:
“Was the evaluation (review) undertaken by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and are they considered qualified for the review process?”
is based on a misconception of the purpose of peer review. Authors should want their papers reviewed by people who are smarter and better qualified than they are, the more so, the better. The correct question ought to have been:
“Was the evaluation (review) undertaken by one or more people of sufficient competence to review the work, and are they considered qualified for the review process?”
Maybe those who are posters at Tallbloke’s blog not to everyone else. They refuse to acknowledge why this would even be considered a problem (some continue to), then Roger falsely accused me of intellectual dishonesty.
Not when he says to me, “…you know jack sh1t about astrophysics, so why would we care?” and started calling me childish names. So I asked a legitimate question and provided evidence to support my argument.
I agree on his lack of a background in pattern recognition, but Dr. Morner also well qualified in Geology and Geophysics,
Nils-Axel Morner, Fil. Kand. [B.A.], Stockholm University, Sweden (1962); Fil. Lic. [M.A.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1965); Fil. Dr. [Ph.D.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969); Associate Professor of Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969-1971); Associate Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1971-1980); Secretary, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1977-1981); Editor, Bulletin of the INQUA Neotectonics Commission (1978-1996); Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1981-1991); President, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1981-1991); Chairman, Nordic Historical Climatology Group (1989); Professor and Head, Department of Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005); Co-ordinator, INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1999-2003); President, Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, INQUA (1999–2003); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Professor Emeritus of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (2005-Present); Golden Chondrite of Merit Award, University of the Algarve, Portugal (2008)
This argument is baseless, career length and popularity is irrelevant to be an editor in charge,
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/jobs/358965-editor-trends-in-cognitive-sciences
“The minimum qualification is a PhD in neuroscience, cognitive science or a related field. Post-doctoral training is an advantage. Previous publishing experience is not necessary – we will make sure you get the training and development you need.“
No asking a question is not a strawman, the question asked was – go look up “strawman argument”. The charges of “pal-review” has nothing to do with the qualifications of the reviewers. It is like arguing that medical malpractice is good because the doctor was well qualified. One argument has nothing to do with the other. By not addressing the actual argument, you are arguing a strawman. You never answered my question,
Is Phil Jones of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers) and is he considered qualified for the review process of a paper by Michael Mann?
Do you not understand what “pal-review” is?