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.
Poptech, that job advert appears to be for an editor in the publishing sense (i.e. like the editor of a magazine), not an academic editor who oversees the review of papers. Note the advert does not mention anything about overseeing review. It is also a full time job, which would prevent them from doing much in the way of research themselves. I suspect it is for someone who will produce the editorials etc.
Academic editors are normally unpaid and are appointed rather than hired, and are normally eminent people in their fields, and normally still active in their research field. Look up the editors of top journals and compare their h-indicces with Ouadfeul’s. This is not a criticism of Ouadfeuls, he is just not at the point in his career yet where he is ready to be an EiC.
Stephen Fox, you seem rather annoyed you are unable to actually debate the actual arguments so you introduce red herrings as distractions. Since it is shown you are a frequent commentator at the Talkshop it is not surprising you are engaging in more logical fallacies.
dikranmarsupial, It does not say that at all but rather,
“We are seeking to appoint a new Editor for Trends in Cognitive Sciences, […] As Editor of Trends in Cognitive Sciences…”
It does not say “an editor” or some other lesser title. If you look on their website they have listed an “Acting Editor” implying that they are filling in until a replacement is hired,
http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/home
There is not such requirement to be an Editor of a journal. This is purely your invention.
What the heck is dikran doing here, by the way? I’ve never seen him criticize a single aspect of the behaviour of his minders at Skepticalscience. Heal thyself.
poptech, as I said, look at a range of leading journals (not just a job advert for one journal), look at the h-indices of the EiCs, compare with Prof. Ouadfeuls, let me know what you find.
“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
offensivedefensiveand wanted to sex up the original letter.”
Thank you Martin A. This is but an another attack from both side because it has to do with the force gravity. Every other time gravity is even mentioned in their work… Miskolczi, Nikolov-Zeller, Tattersall, etc the same attacks have occurred. It stinks with agenda and “sides”. Any time “which side” gets involved, good possible science gores out of the window.
goresgoesI am not sure how you misread that but those were just two examples of what will be accused of as “pal-review”. There were more than two reviewers in PRP. However, all those named by the journal were authors and editors in the same issue and the “anonymous” reviewers were not so anonymous as Ian Wilson confessed to,
Ian Wilson says:
January 18, 2014 at 8:33 am
…I treated the submission of my paper with all the scientific gravitas that is required in these situations. I did the same with any paper that I was asked to review. […]
As a reviewer I gave what I considered was my best scientific advice to the Editor so that they could collectively evaluate whether or not a given manuscript was suitable for publication in the Special Edition.
That does not look good against charges of “Pal-Review”.
I have no idea why people believe this. Reviewers are not supposed to be what most people would consider “the best in their field” (I am sure that is great if you can get them) but rather having relevant qualifications. Astrophysics is not a field that has only a handful of qualified professionals.
dikranmarsupial, the job advert destroys your entire argument.
Shub wrote “What the heck is dikran doing here, by the way? I’ve never seen him criticize a single aspect of the behaviour of his minders at Skepticalscience. Heal thyself.”
agreeing with Anthony?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/19/the-copernicus-prp-fiasco-predictable-and-preventable/#comment-1542433
being rational about how this affair reflects on the skeptic community as a whole?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/19/the-copernicus-prp-fiasco-predictable-and-preventable/#comment-1543062
It is a shame that discussions on climate degenerate into this sort of partisan sniping. It is generally an indication that further rational discussion is unlikey, so I think I’ll leave it at that.
Gosh. Are you now or have you ever been a commenter at the Talkshop?
You don’t know how sick you sound.
wayne:
Your post at January 21, 2014 at 12:42 pm supports Martin A in his disagreement with my understanding of why the Special Edition was withdrawn; i.e. the publisher wanted to protect its reputation by stopping publication of a journal usurped by ‘pal review’.
It says
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As evidence, I quote a post I made on the site of Jo Nova. Read it and see which “side” you think I am on and if I am open-minded about the science. Please note that it is a reply to one of the contributors to the withdrawn journal
And this is a link to that post
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/science-is-not-done-by-peer-or-pal-review-but-by-evidence-and-reason/#comment-1375943
Richard
How the original letter was worded is irrelevant to the fact they had legitimate grounds for what they did based on publishing rule violations regarding the peer-review process.
Why do you need to ask someone if Jelbring reviewed Tattersall’s paper? You can see it by reading the damn paper!
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/185/2013/prp-1-185-2013.pdf
Do I need to take screenshots because people cannot click on links?
Stephen Fox:
At January 21, 2014 at 12:56 pm you ask
I answer, YES, and I have an article there.
I have answered your question so can you explain its relevance because I fail to see that.
Richard
Unlike so many here I for one do not rule out gravity’s possible influence on climate. Judith Curry and her Stadium Wave and Bob Tinsdale and his El Nino and La Nina and the harmonics Tattersall thinks he finds may all have a commonality in guess what, gravity and the length of the instantaneous “day” length so i don’t just toss any of their works out of the window or attack any of them. What causes the Pacific to slowly slosh from the Asian shores to the Americas shores seeming with yet unfound harmonics to help explain this phenomena?
When ever there is bounded liquid (edges) with distances (space) and differences in the forces and timing ruling their existance there can possibly be harmonics involved and the periods are probably at the decadal scale.
I find the reviewing of Tatterall adequate and even though I too, as Anthonny, still cast a leary eye on whether there is enough forces involved to physically perform these feats at the planet scale, on our planet Earth, I refuse to join the chorus to figuratively hang his work out to dry and I have yet to read any of the papers mentioned here, but I will over time, and give them my critical review. It’s called science.
This was a witch hunt from both sides.
Stephen Fox, so far my engagement with most (not all) who are commentators from the Talkshop, has been rampant logical fallacies. Maybe if people would actually read Anthony’s article or our comments. He even mentions an eco-chamber analogy from Star Trek, yet you guys don’t seem to read anything. We are aware you are upset, you still have to address the actual arguments presented.
wayne says:
January 21, 2014 at 1:11 pm
Whenever there is bounded liquid (edges) with distances (space) and differences in the forces and timing ruling their existence there can possibly be harmonics involved and the periods are probably at the decadal scale
Tattersall’s ‘paper’ contains the following lapsus:
“The coincidence of peaks in the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) curve with multiples of the Carrington Rotation (CR) period indicates a resonant effect of this frequency (27 days)”
which immediately dooms the paper to the dustbin. Any reviewer worth his salt would know that the 27-day recurrence period in cosmic rays is simply the result of the sun rotating with a period near 27 days giving rise to co-rotating interaction regions scattering cosmic rays and not of any ‘resonance’ of anything.
wayne:
I took issue with your supporting Martin A in associating me with his assertion of “a whiff of lynch mob”.
At January 21, 2014 at 1:11 pm you have responded and concluded
That is a demonstrable falsehood!
Our host initially supported the miscreants and so did I because we thought there had been censorship. Anth0ny posted an article which criticised it and you can read that article here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/the-planetary-tidal-influence-on-climate-fiasco-strong-armed-science-tactics-are-overkill-due-process-would-work-better/
In that thread I made a series of strong posts which also criticised the apparent censorship; e.g.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/17/the-planetary-tidal-influence-on-climate-fiasco-strong-armed-science-tactics-are-overkill-due-process-would-work-better/#comment-1540048
But then I learned of the ‘pal review’ and reversed my opinion (as reported in the above article).
Subsequently, Anth0ny reversed his opinion for the same reason (and he provided the above article).
Trying to spin this as a “witch hunt” is demonstrably untrue propaganda.
Richard
Go ahead Richard, do everything your group do so well, where is Poptech and Eschenbach? It was my opinion as I see it.
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
Richard, please re-read my words carefully and see if you still think they can reasonably be interpreted as applying to you in particular, rather than to this thread in general. This is what I said in my final paragraph:
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.
Martin a and wayne:
I am replying to both of you in this thread for convenience and not as an insult to anyone.
Martin A:
I understood your comment to be directed at me because it cited me.
Clearly, the subsequent posts from wayne indicate that he had the same understanding. However, I acknowledge that his understanding is not much of an indication of anything.
So, I thank you for clarifying that you were not directing your post at me although it did quote me.
wayne:
At January 21, 2014 at 1:40 pm you say
My “group”? Do you ever read anything?
Poptech and I have had severe disagreements.
My post to you at January 21, 2014 at 1:01 pm quoted (with a link) a post I made to Jelbring (one of the contributors to the withdrawn journal) and it referred to the assistance I gave him to obtain publication of his hypothesis which Willis reviles (and I don’t accept).
Your “opinion” has no relationship to reality and I see no reason for me to accept your untrue and insulting comments.
Richard
I don’t understand why the two most central issues, indeed the elephants in the room, keep slipping off the radar here. First, could anything be more central and threatening than the original claim for cancelling PRP?
‘ . . . . . ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” ‘
This is like your kid making the excuse that he is philosophically opposed to having to do homework. That, however tactlessly presented by the publishers, is the overriding issue. The fact that they came back with peer-review issues (your kid adds that, anyway, the dog ate the assignment sheet) is indicative of additional insecurity of position, but a secondary issue.
The second elephant is that peer-review, IN GENERAL, has in fact failed. It morphed from a marginally useful tool to a weapon. It is broken, but like a broken hammer, its fractured parts are still useful as bludgeons, just not for pounding nails.
So does this great parting of the ways improve the chances that “solar” article comment threads here at WUWT wont get almost completely distracted by Jupiter pixies and other cosmic curve riding phantoms? This would be a good thing.
However, it’s often the case that the removal of a pathogen opens up the field for others to thrive. Which seems like a good opportunity for me to introduce my theory about the influence of the Great Pumpkin on TSI…
“Poptech and I have had severe disagreements.”
Richard, I did not say you are complaining on the same points as Poptech or even Willis’s, each is different, it is the general whiff that Martin seems to have also detected that I was speaking of. You got your point over long ago, same for the others. Have you not said enough?
And no, I have not read all 400+ comments completely here, many hurt my soul so I don’t need to, the tone blares out just by skimming through it.
But this is my last comment here.
richardscourtney says:
January 21, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Trying to spin this as a “witch hunt” is demonstrably untrue propaganda.
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Its not. The reason for termination was criticism of the IPCC.
This thread failed to make this clear..And this is a shame.
You may, of course, add (as the journal did), that “in addition”, the papers were reviewed poorly or improperly, likewise similar cases of most influential warmist papers or even the whole IPCC reports.
You may also cirtizise the content / missing data / missing code likewise possibty in hundreds of other cases of warmist papers and then conclude, the articles should not have been published.
You then may have a point, but this is not what happened here.