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.
AndyG55 says:
January 20, 2014 at 12:51 am
Andy, you’re misunderstanding what Anthony, I, and others are saying. Here is what the policies of the publisher of the journal, Copernicus, have to say (emphasis mine);
Simple stuff, you’d think … but noooo, the editor and the referees of this “Special Edition” not only ignored those rules, they smashed them dead and then danced on their corpses. For that, they got the journal taken away from them, and rightly so. If you sign up for something, you have to sign up for it root and branch, not just the parts you like.
Anthony’s antagonism, like mine, has nothing to do with the papers. It has to do with the foolishness of the authors and the editor in thinking that such malfeasance would go un-noticed.
w.
W,
“Anthony, and Mosher, and I, and others are all saying that if we’re going to have peer review, that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
And so the sauce for the gander should be first? I see evidence of pal review for the alarmists all the time just reading WUWT (and in many other places to boot) and this may be the first time I have ever heard of any “skeptical” papers accused of being “pal” reviewed. Were are the disclaimers that the Team is doing this all the time?
Or did I just imagine that “pal review” of the orthodoxy of the day is standard operating procedure?
— Mark
This is just great,
http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1vfwrl/on_pattern_recognition_in_physics_on_the_other/cerxs0n
“Funny how deniers always claim problems with peer-review, and when you look closer you see that most of the major AGW-denial papers (including this new crap) fit perfectly in that category”
http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1vfwrl/on_pattern_recognition_in_physics_on_the_other/cerz110
“It really is the height of hypocrisy for contrarians to complain about how the peer-review system is broken, then flock to such “journals” that are actively undermining the peer-review system. What a bunch of frauds.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1vj143/eli_rabett_on_the_pattern_recognition_in_physics/cet0153
“Please, enough with your paranoid conspiracy bullshit. The “journal” wasn’t shut down because “inconvenient” science had to be suppressed, it was shut down because it had been created under false pretences by a bunch of misinformers who planned on using it to rubber-stamp climate science denial.”
Thanks for the help!
It deserved to die because of poor standards and methods. Just one of those things, now let’s get back to understanding stuff.
Leif wrote –
“Gkell1 says:
January 19, 2014 at 10:14 pm
“. If the orbital period, T, is measured in years and the semi-major axis, a, is measured in astronomical units (AU, the average Sun–Earth distance), Kepler’s third law takes the
simple form of T 2 = a3. ”
That is not what Kepler stated ,this is what is said –
“The proportion existing between the periodic times of any two planets is exactly the sesquiplicate proportion of the mean distances of the orbits, or as generally given,the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the mean distances.” Kepler
Which is exactly the same.”
You wish !,Sir Isaac was trying to use the predictive convenience of the equatorial coordinate system (Celestial sphere of fixed stars) in an attempt to force through the idea that observations seen from Earth (relative space and motion) transfer into observations seen from the Sun (absolute or true space and motion). That is how you read his absolute/relative time,space and motion despite the hoopla of the early 20th century when they made a bad situation even worse ,go ahead and read it again and you begin to see something all your heroes in the early 20th century couldn’t –
“That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean distances from the sun.This proportion, first observed by Kepler, is now received by all astronomers; for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or the earth about the sun ” Newton
Poor Sir Isaac,he thinks if you plonk the Sun in the middle of Kepler’s representation of the Earth’s motion and the motion of Mars that retrogrades disappear hence his absolute/relative space and motion creation –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kepler_Mars_retrograde.jpg
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3252/2321581337_8c61b45e3c.jpg
It would be funny if it were not taught as mainstream education and some sort of human achievement when it represents an aggressive assault on astronomy and the major characters which pushed through those major discoveries
Peer review is like cigarette smoking – the damage is done by the previous cigarette insofar as in respect to academia ,the whole point of the exercise is to protect the salaries and reputations of the reviewers rather than any original work. The poor slaves have to write papers that will not offend the reviewers otherwise they don’t get their doctorates so present peer review is the most uncompetitive endeavor out there,the other option of crowd review is equally unattractive as it dissolves into a babel situation.
The IAU is an empirical vehicle and its hilarious attempt to ‘define’ a planet is an indication that there is no authority out there presently to handle the really important stuff which has now come to the fore with so-called climate modeling and especially where astronomical inputs mesh with terrestrial sciences.
I don’t suffer the hero worship of Newton and his agenda which created the modeling mania by distorting and manipulating information to suit his conclusion and nobody here today can afford to either unless they truly want to remain with voodoo,bluffing and pretense while remaining part of the same clownish hypocrisy that emerged at the expense of climate research.
AndyG55 says:
January 20, 2014 at 12:51 am
Anthony, sorry, but I think your attitude to this is misdirected.
Your antagonism toward these papers leaves me wondering about your agenda.
Are you trying to push your OWN ideas, or are you truly an OPEN scientific blog..
I am really beginning to wonder. 🙁
No, Anthony is not trying to push his own ideas. And no, this is not an open scientific blog. Discussion of our solar-planetary theory is banned, except when Anthony thinks Leif has come up with a slam dunk refutation of it.
This is because Anthony knows tidal effects of planets on the Sun are tiny, and he knows that ‘Barycentrism’ is crackpottery. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a whole established branch of astrophysics out there which studies the energy transferred in stellar-planetary systems by harmonic resonance. If he did, he wouldn’t toss out the baby with the bathwater, because he’s a good guy under all the misunderstandings and grievances that have built up around this subject over the last 5 years here at WUWT. I’m responsible for some of them, Leif is responsible for a bunch of them too.
My dearest hope is that I can make the breakthrough with the science which will bring us all back together. I’m working hard to achieve that, along with a couple dozen talented and intelligent researchers.I’m tremendously grateful for their input and for the support displayed by many people on this thread.
Best wishes to all, and bye for now.
I think that what Anthony, Poptech, and others fail to take into consideration is why PRP and other scientific journals have rules against conflicts-of-interests (aka “pal review”). It is because in the world of scientific journals, the name of the reviewers, along with their reviews, are kept strictly confidential. As such, the reader has no way of knowing if a reviewer has a conflict and is unable to give any weight to that fact when reading the article in question or when deciding whether to cite it in some future work.
The only reason we know that some of the articles in the PRP special edition were reviewed by persons with a potential conflict-of-interest is because the journal told us so by publishing their names. Had PRP kept their names confidential and it was later discovered that there had secretly been “pal review”, then that dishonesty would be worthy of being considered scandalous and such “malpractice” would warrant closing down the journal. What makes what the “Team” does regarding “pal review” so abhorrent is that it is done in secret and, but for the Climategate emails, the practice wouldn’t be known.
It seems to me that if articles published in peer reviewed journals are to be held in much higher regard by the scientific community than those which have not been peer reviewed, then in the interest of full transparency, the names of all reviewers (and preferably their reviews) should be fully disclosed. That way each reader can judge for him or herself whether there is a potential conflict-of-interest and whether the reviewer has sufficient expertise to evaluate the article.
Perhaps a change of process should be implemented. If the reviews of the papers are also posted would this help defuse the cries of nepotism?
No, you are being intellectually dishonest as I specifically said, “Comments from the Talkshop“, I never said they were from you. But in case you missed it, I posted the WordPress Tag you used on your site,
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/tag/pal-review/
If you don’t understand the hypocrisy here and want to think it is a “smear” that is of course your right.
What Anthony and many others don’t seem to realise is that it’s standard practise when there is a ‘special issue’ of a journal, often arising from a conference, for papers to be reviewed by other contributors to the same special issue. Normally this isn’t visible because the reviews are anonymous, but PRP got caught by their own openness.
Lukewarmerist,
“While we were all marginalised, it didn’t matter, we were on the same side. but now it is counter-productive to keep all the swivel-eyed amongst our ranks.”
I’ve always felt it was counter-productive, but that was just me.
I hate being accused of intellectual dishonesty and putting words in people’s mouths, which is why I let them speak for themselves,
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=12706&nid=145170&print=1&id=sTo7STin:68.83.112.211
“Long held belief in veritable institutions such as the peer review process (more like pal review process in the case of the climate clique) need a makeover in the internet age, where a greater number of well informed and able minds can be quickly brought to bear on the fruits of new research.” – Rog Tallbloke
I said I didn’t want to do this.
Sigh, I don’t know guys. I do think this is a bit of over-reaction. Look, skeptics come in all shapes and sizes. Yes, we get painted with the same brush, but we needn’t wear the paint. Just because one skeptic is skeptical for reasons we don’t agree with doesn’t mean we should wail and moan because of something they did or said. We’re not all on the same team just because we all disagree with a bunch of ideological maniacs babbling about the earth overheating.
Yes, I’m a bit disappointed in some of the things which were done. But, TB, nor anyone else involved owes me or anyone else an apology. They’re their own men and as far as I can recall, they never vowed to me to act in a manner which was acceptable to me. I’ll keep looking for those signed personal contracts, but, I just can’t find them! Or, was I absent when we had the skeptics ethical contract “circle jerk”? I certainly don’t recall signing one.
I rather look at this as a positive development. Look, they shut down a journal because of circular editing, refereeing, and submissions. Okay, so a new standard was set because of skeptics!! Of course, the lunatics won’t abide by that standard. They’ll just keep doing what they do. Yes, there were written rules, but, we all know that’s not how it’s played, not by alarmists, and apparently, not by some skeptics. So what? I haven’t regarded “peer/pal reviewed” articles as holding any more merit than a blog post for years, and neither should anyone else who’s spent any amount of time reading journal articles. I would have thought this to be especially true here.
Yes, I wish it was different, and I wish the fellows involved had gone about things differently. But, they didn’t. And, regardless of what they did or didn’t do, or lent an appearance of doing, nothing changes the fact that most peer/pal reviewed crap is just that.
I wouldn’t waste my time wringing my hands about how this will cause skeptics to be perceived. It won’t harm the general public view one iota. Outside the very small world of people who actually read science papers, no one will hear about it, and if they do, they won’t understand what the tempest is about. To the small world of us who do read and engage, both on the alarmist and skeptic side, this will do nothing to change opinions, anyway. They’ll still call us deniers. And, even if the papers were reviewed by Hansen, it won’t change their misanthropic ideology/religion.
I suppose it comes to a matter of priorities. I engage in climate skepticism, not because I give a crap about planetary waves, or if the earth has warmed 1/2 degree or if the oceans are eating all of our warming. I engage because there’s a bunch of lying scumbags out there seeking to humanity real harm. The institution of peer review is beyond redemption. As is climate science. There’s no getting it back. So some skeptics ran out of the boundaries of an imagined reservation. The horrors. Now, if there were people still clinging to the unreasonable notion that we can somehow turn around the science of the lunatics to where they’d accept real science, then this might seem a bit worse for them. But, for years, they’ve demonstrated they have absolutely no interest in engaging in actual science. Yes, we can expect quotes like what Poptech just quoted. But, that’s easily rebutted and one can use that to hold up over the lunatics (goose/gander thing) …. if one was feeling like arguing with an alarmist. Well, I’ve rambled long enough and turned my 2 cents into 3 or 4. Sorry about that. Stay of good cheer.
suyts
Poptech says:
January 20, 2014 at 2:20 am
I hate being accused of intellectual dishonest and putting words in people’s mouths…
=================
If you don’t like being called for it, don’t do it. We can all see you snipped the name and first two words of MDGNN’s comment to encourage people to think it was my comment.
So far as your claims of hypocrisy on my part go, this is actually the nub of the whole issue:
There’s a big difference between ‘pal review’ which aims to get a sub-standard paper under the wire of the IPCC deadline, ‘pal reviewers’ who aim to keep sceptical papers out of mainstream journals, and ‘pal review’ which aims to improve a colleagues paper and honestly criticises it to do that (CF Jelbring’s 12 page “this is really going to piss you off” review of my main paper in PRP).
Your problem is you fail to differentiate between the integrity and intentions of the various actors.
It is never a good thing for a journal when you look at the list of articles and see that the editors are also the authors of over half of them. Open access journals live on their reputations. To me this one looks half dead already. I wouldn’t call it murder. More like a mercy killing.
I don’t get a lot of this stuff about peer-review – especially I don’t get the idea that it provides some sort of acid test of the conclusions of a paper.
It has always seemed to me that climate science’s trumpeting that work has been ‘peer reviewed’, with the implication that it was therefore not open to dispute, was ridiculous. Indeed the term ‘peer-reviewed’ seems to have come into use via climate science. I imagine it was originally intended to exclude, for example, popular magazine articles from the IPCC’s consideration.
Over the years I have published a good number of papers (in refereed engineering journals – nothing to do with climate) and I have myself reviewed many papers. My understanding has always been that the role of the reviewer is to uphold the standards of the journal. A reviewer should certify:
– That the work appears to be original. This requires that the reviewer is familiar with the literature of the field.
– That it is in an area of interest to readers of the journal.
– That it is nontrivial and it represents a significant advance.
– That is makes adequate reference to prior work in the area.
– That its presentation is satisfactory (use of language and terminology, explanation of symbols, follows in logical sequence and so on).
– That the work makes sense, there are no obvious errors and so on.
Some issues (eg lack of originality or triviality) result in a recommendation that the paper should be rejected. Other issues (problems of language, inadequate details of experimental equipment, or inadequate reference to relevant prior work) result in recommendations for the paper to be revised and resubmitted.
Although a reviewer should check mathematical derivations and apply ‘sanity checks’ to results, I have never considered it part of a reviewer’s role to verify the work.
Friends:
In the above article, Anth0ny quotes a comment I made in the previous thread. I now write to make some observations on this thread. First, I explain why I reversed my view in the previous thread because it goes to the heart of discussions in this thread.
In the previous thread where I made a series of posts opposing withdrawal of the journal starting with this which quotes a climategate email to explain behaviour of the ‘Team’
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-1539900
Anybody who reads that post see the strength of my then stated view; for example, it includes this
But, as Anth0ny reports in his above article, I completely reversed my view and said my earlier posts were wrong and mistaken. My reversal is because of the revelation of ‘pal-review’ in the PRP Special Edition.
This is important because as Scott Balfour says in his post January 19, 2014 at 7:26 pm
And the nature of that “wrongdoing” is stated by charles the moderator who says at January 19, 2014 at 9:36 pm
Exactly.
And the present disaster would have been worse if the Special Edition had not been withdrawn from publication because its existence would have been proclaimed as being,
“This is what skeptics call peer review so ignore what they write!”
And that reality raises two issues which have been discussed in this thread; viz.
(a) Opposing alarmism
And
(b) The value and nature of peer review.
The issue under discussion is publication of information: it is NOT about opposing alarmism.
Hence, references to Sun Tzu and the like are misplaced because our objective is furtherance of truth and scientific rigour.
AGW-alarmists have adopted the philosophy that ‘The Cause justifies the means’. We hand victory to them if we adopt the same philosophy because that philosophy rejects the search for ‘truth’ which is science.
Our end purpose is to protect and promote science. If we achieve that purpose then one effect of our victory will be the destruction of alarmism. There are times and places for political battles, but the field of science is NOT the place to fight them because the battles will destroy the battlefield.
And that brings us to the other issue and it is stated by john robertson when at January 19, 2014 at 8:36 pm he asks
And the answer is, Yes, but that begs the question of’ ’useful to whom?’
The ONLY purpose of peer review is to protect journal Editors.
This is explained together with the nature and limitations of peer review in my comment at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/29/peer-review-last-refuge-of-the-uninformed-troll/#comment-1522700
In my comment in that link I say (with following explanation)
That comment is in a thread which discusses an excellent article about peer review provided by David M Hoffer. However, he goes too far in this thread where he writes at January 19, 2014 at 8:53 pm
Indeed, he seems to have admitted he went too far when at January 19, 2014 at 9:15 pm he replied to a rebuttal from Poptech by writing
I agree that the web medium is “evolving”, but it has yet to reach maturity.
At present there are two systems for publishing scientific information; i.e.
1. The recent but accepted peer review process
And
2. The immature web (e.g. blog) publishing process.
Anybody can choose which process to use when publishing. But people who wish to use the peer review purpose have no right to corrupt that process. Acceptance of corruption of any publication process would destroy both the peer review process AND evolution of any other publication processes.
In conclusion, I repeat something I wrote on the previous thread and Anth0ny quoted above
And it seems likely because publicity about the malpractice could demean the reputation of other journals published by the publisher.
Richard
PS Tallbloke, I have only just noticed your request for me to email you. I have lost your address so I ask you to email me, instead.
Wow!
Judging by comments, auto-moderation seems to be the norm for this thread. I can’t imagine why my post has gone in the bin; perhaps it is too long. Anyway, it is d*mned annoying!
Richard
[I have read the post several times and I cannot see why it fell into the moderation bin except for , perhaps, length and number of references. Either way please be patient as it doesn’t happen very often at all and the process is proving itself to be efficient and very useful and is in no way an indictment on your goodself, thanks . . mod]
“Turn off the Sun and then check out the correlation with climate ! To dismiss external factors is the same as worshiping the Co2 (as driver) altar.”
That’s what it gets down to, how much does the temperature drop now when it is just turned off at nighttime?
Jo Nova has posted on the issues.
Quote where I said the comments were yours. I clearly linked to the full comments.
Why do you not understand this is an unwinnable argument? Your comment from Jelbring shows that he was concerned with hurting your feelings and supports the “pal-review” argument against you.
I do not believe it was malicious, which is irrelevant to the perception by those you are trying to convince. Intentions cannot be proven so do not trap yourself in unwinnable arguments.
tallbloke says:
January 20, 2014 at 2:49 am
Oh, please, Roger, this is not your usual audience, we’re not dumb on this site.
Poptech clearly said that what he quoted were COMMENTS on your site. He neither said nor implied that they were your comments, and although perhaps you didn’t understand what he meant, I certainly wasn’t confused by it. He described exactly what he did. I assumed from what he said that none of them were your comments, although didn’t check to see if that was correct … nor (as it turns out) did I need to check.
One thing’s for sure … they’re not my comments, I’m banned from posting on your site.
w.
Comment left at Jo Nova’s site:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/science-is-not-done-by-peer-or-pal-review-but-by-evidence-and-reason/#comment-1375092
Bravo Jo! A cracking post, well said!
“As far as dashing “…any chance of any sort of climate skeptic or citizen science based journal coming into existence…”. I would say, No. Not at all.”
After this debacle it will be our pleasure to wrest Pattern Recognition in Physics from the dead hand of Coppernickers control and set it up as an independent journal with open peer review along the lines Jo suggest in her excellent post.
Lord Monckton has indicated that he will help with this, so god help anyone who tries to prevent, thwart or denigrate it. Martin Rasmussen is on thin ice legally.
I have a feeling good honest scientists will be queuing up to submit papers to it, partly as a clear signal to the corrupt and shoddy controllers and gatekeepers of the overblown and over the hill mainstream big hitters such as ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’. They are already being boycotted by many scientists who are sick of their approach to real science and real scientists.
E.M.Smith says:
January 19, 2014 at 6:28 pm
There is a logic trap here, IMHO. It is the demand to do battle on an asymmetrical field.
—-l
This is not an attack on your morals, but I would say that this is how those whom we consider criminals and terrorists justify their actions.
When you start lying, even your own group will stop trusting you (one of the reasons why politicians should be scrutinised very closely to keep them on the straight and narrow – theirs is a high risk job :))
Self-discipline and good planning wins more battles than over-eagerness and subterfuge (any professional soldier/strategist on this thread is welcome to correct me if I am mistaken.)
The cry: “I can do this because they did!” sounds like an eye for an eye, but in reality it is a sign of desperation which an efficient enemy can easily exploit. I do not recommend meekly submitting, but I would recommend following the example of the host of this blog – you could do worse.
Gkell1 says:
January 19, 2014 at 10:14 pm
Nicola wrote –
—-l
I don’t think Nicola will respond to your points on this site. But if you post at http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/ you might get a response.