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.
TB,
There are criticisms of what you guys did that originate in an idealized notion of the value of peer-review. Ignore them. There are criticisms of what has happened from a perspective of conflict because you are skeptics. It is a softer point, but, in the end, you should let go of these too. But, there are criticisms from a perspective of conflict of interest that stem from authors being reviewers of each others’ papers. These are not easily beaten back. Whatever else poptech and ctm might have had to say, this have a point when they say this. The outside world depends on appearances to determine merit and validity and we all know it.
For the folks supporting the orthodox view of science, the adversarial nature of science ends with peer-review. They heave a sigh of relief when their paper is finally ‘published’. We know this is not the case and real debate, if your paper is worthy of any, begins when a paper is disseminated to the wider world. But the reason for peer-review holding some value is that some of the adversarial elements in science are built into it.
When you publish a paper that has fellow authors listed as reviewers, it gives the appearance that the adversarial element has been taken away. It appears as though you might have been given an easy pass. Now, mind you, I’m repeating this because I believe this is the only problem area and the point is lost on the myriad of other charges and counter-charges, and the history that is present between the players. Not because I think this needs to be stressed.
I checked the papers. There are about 12 of them. The ‘author-of-special-issue who’s also a reviewer’ thing affects only 5. So, it’s not even a ‘circle jerk’, only an arc, if you will.
The issues are clouded by this being a ‘special issue’ of the journal. As Paul points out above, people might be surprised to know such reviewing and co-ordination between authors happens in special issues. Secondly, one of Scafetta’s papers is a review. For journals to handle invited reviews to be rigourously reviewed is just as common as where the editor mainly screens through reviewer comments and lets the article through direct, as the invited author is an expert in the area.
negrum says:
January 20, 2014 at 3:45 am
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.
————————————————————————————-
Tit for tat is a actually a friendly strategy.
It is nice, forgiving, non-envious but also penalizes non friendly players.
Better, it fosters the evolution of fairplay and cooperation, while altriusm and unconditional forgiving would leave the task of dealing with unfriendly players to the rest of the society.
Though, moral judgement in the real world is always up to those who control media and history.
Manfred says:
January 20, 2014 at 4:18 am
“… Tit for tat is a actually a friendly strategy.
It is nice, forgiving, non-envious but also penalizes non friendly players. …”
—–l
As long as it is a game. In real life the consequences can be a bit more serious.
—-l
” … They use Pal Review and Editor “shopping”; then so ought we until such time as THEY agree to give up the tactic and return to civil behaviour. … ”
—–l
Not a good idea. There are other options.
Peter Miller says:
January 19, 2014 at 4:45 pm
I agree with Anthony that this subject of planetary influence on the Earth’s climate is an exercise in futility.
The only influence the planets could have is by gravity. You have to remember gravity is subject to the inverse Square Law which means that Jupiter, despite its enormous size, only has a gravitational pull on the Earth about 1% of that of our moon. And that is at its closest point to the Earth, so normally it is a fraction of 1%!!!!!
============================================================================
So when Willis in his recent series of fine posts about the thermal regulation of earth is looking for very small changes, say a watt or so which could cause our warming or cooling, your Peter say a 1% change in gravitational effect is not even worth exploring!
I feel we should all be able to agree that the earths temperature is finely balanced and that currently unknown forces cause a change from time to time. With Willis’s work on the CERES data set showing promise, why would you just junk a potential influence?
Manfred wrote –
“Though, moral judgement in the real world is always up to those who control media and history.”
Maybe somebody should write this in large capital letters – ‘Its the education system, stupid !’
If you own the education system and the peer review process is embedded in that system since the day students walk into a classroom then you ain’t coming out without a struggle. Which one of you wants to hand back your doctorates for the sake of freedom of expression ?.
I see grown men who believe the moon spins,can’t match all the effects within one day with one rotation of the planet,can’t grasp the main arguments for the Earth’s motions as though this is the most normal of situations.
Presently they should rename the planet ‘Dystopia’ for a people who have lost that most treasured of human gifts – common sense.
“Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. […] The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened”—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs […]” Orwell
Another legitimate complaint, I do not see what qualifies Tallbloke [Roger Tattersall] to be an editor of a physical science journal,
Roger Tattersall, HNC [Higher National Certificate] Mechanical and Production Engineering, Leeds Metropolitan University (1985); B.A. History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds (1988); Customer Services manager, Vital online Ltd. (2000-2004); Fundraising Coordinator, Yorkshire Air Ambulance (2006-2008); Digital Content Manager, School of Education, University of Leeds (2009-2013)
Were editorial appointments also nepotistic?
This is a very difficult one.
Firstly, I agree with Jo Nova that peer review is too often held up as the ne-plus-ultra of scientific credibility, which is self-evidently rubbish.
Secondly, it appears clear to me that the publisher over-reacted by shutting down the journal, and that their initial reason does seem to have more to do with the pro-sceptic position of the papers than the problems with the peer review that was carried out.
However, those preparing the papers had agreed to play by the publisher’s rules, and once they had done so could not then decide to ignore the rules in the way they seem to have done. Claiming that alarmists (and sometimes scientists in other fields) do the same thing all the time is no excuse.
If you agree to the rules, you must expect that they may be enforced.
Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.
Julius Caesar
Tallbloke, you not only needed to be virtuous, but needed to be seen to be virtuous. You failed.
Jonathan Abbott:
Your post at January 20, 2014 at 5:07 am nails it.
Richard
Heh, special issue, special review. Has anyone found anything specially wrong with the review?
============
For the record,
HNC [Higher National Certificate] is a 1-year vocational certificate not a degree.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121015000000/http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/QualificationsExplained/DG_10039026
We decry pal review when it produces bad science, and we expound on the brilliance of the pals when it produces good science.
I repeat a thought from an unfortunately closed thread: We discovered pal review in consensus science because it produced bad science. Those in the consensus are a group of pals, and they believe they’ve produced good science, and most of the world still believes them. So focus on that, not on this peerless group of adventurers. Until the science of this special issue is debunked, this bandwagon has the cart before the horse.
Anthony seems embarrassed by the seeming own goal to the skeptic cause. ‘Cause’, where have I heard that word before?
==============
This journal was doomed to failure. If you have an idea that challenges the consensus you do not dress up like the consensus in attempt to make your case. You wander the desert with papyrus scrolls and dusty robes begging anyone to listen to you. You do this until finally someone within the consensus listens and has the presence of mind to invite you in. Once inside you become the new consensus with one foot on the head of the old consensus and the other foot on those wandering the desert begging to be heard. But you don’t start your own journal. That is what the consensus does.
I find Anthony’s behaviour over Pattern Recognition and Cyclic Science to be quite bizarre.
He has Banned Jeff Sharpe from posting and the discussion of this subject.
Many others on here have rubbished the science as well.
Jeff Sharpe has continued the work of Carl Smith who kept alive the work of Theodor Landscheidt, so let me remind you from his biography of who and what they are rubbishing.
Theodor Landscheidt was a much respected and multi-discipline Scientist who held the following positions
Elected member of the American Geophysical Union, the New York Academy of Sciences, the European Science and Environment Forum,
the European Academy of Environmental Affairs, and the Wittheit zu Bremen.
Director of the International Committee for Research in Environmental Factors of Brussels University.
In 1992 recipient of the. Award of the Edward R. Dewey Institute of Cycle Research, California, in recognition of “outstanding accomplishments in the field of Solar Cycle Research”,
and for “many contributions to the study of solar-terrestrial cycles.
He worked on the nature of solar activity, the solar – terrestrial relations, geophysics, climatology and research of solar cycles,
long-range forecasts of energetic solar eruptions, strong geomagnetic storms, drought periods, maxima and minima in global temperature anomalies, ENSO events, climate trends.
His studies cover the long-term forecast to solar activity, strong geomagnetic storms, drought periods, minima and maxima in global temperature anomalies, climatic change.
Some of his Cyclic Science predictions confirmed later by other scientists include
A forecast experiment covering the period 1979 – 1985 was checked by the Space Environment Center, Boulder, Colorado, and the astronomers Gleissberg, Wohl, and Pfleiderer.
The forecasts reached a hit rate of 90 % even though solar eruptions occur at very irregular intervals.
A forecast in 1984 that the sunspot activity would get weaker past 1990 also turned out to be correct.
The current 23-th sunspot cycle reached only mean level – although a panel of experts had predicted a sunspot maximum as high as in the preceding cycles.
Dependable forecasts of the Sun’s activity, based on solar cycles, made it possible for Landscheidt to correctly predict climatic phenomena years ahead of these events.
His forecasts include the end of the great Sahelian drought; as well as a period of drought in the U.S.A. around 1999 , confirmed by a maximum in the Palmer Drought Index;
the last five extrema in global temperature anomalies; the last three El Niños; and the course of the last La Niña.
Extreme River Po discharges, beginning in October 2000, were predicted 7 months before the event.
His work continued by others also predicted that Cycle 24 would be even lower.
So, the posters on this site are all happy to discuss Cycles, PDO, Enzo, Milankovic to name but a few.
But rubbish the work of others trying to extend the work already done on cyclic phenomena.
Thanks, Steve, there’s Barbara Streisand wandering the desert with papyrus pipes and dusty robes. No one will listen to her.
==================
Fictional scenario,
Michael Mann starts a journal called “Pattern Recognition in Physics”, brings in Gavin Schmidt and John Cook as co-editors. Mann then invites Phil Jones. All publish and review each other’s papers in a special edition called “Hockey Stick patterns in proxy records and their terrestrial impacts”. Cook says Mann gave him an honest 12-page review, starting with “I’m sorry, this is really going to piss you off, but…”.
Skeptics believe everything and embrace this new era of peer-review science integrity! All Hockey Stick arguments triumph from this point forward. The end.
Paul Matthews:
We’ve always been careful to get independent reviewers. I wouldn’t have been difficult here either, since there are certainly many people who are competent to review these papers.
Just look at the papers referenced for each article, pick first authors from each of those papers that are not also publishing articles in this special issue. Not very hard.
My guess is the real problem is few of the papers from that special issue were publishable, and had they opened up the reviews to a larger segment of the community, few or none of them would have been recommended for publication.
Poptech says: January 20, 2014 at 5:41 am
For the record,
HNC [Higher National Certificate] is a 1-year vocational certificate not a degree.
Perhaps you should be more diligent in your research, you do of course have to do the Ordinary National Certificate first, which takes 3 – 4 years.
So you are correct that no it is not a UK degree. it is more akin to a “Practical” or “Applied” degree.
Poptech says:
January 20, 2014 at 6:23 am
Fictional scenario,
BUT, if they actually did good SCIENCE would other scientists complain?
After all they did all that you say and much worse and hardly any other scientists complained.
I tried posting the following at JoNova’s site but it is being censored,
Since people may not be reading the comments at WUWT,
Comments from the Talkshop joking about “Pal-Review”,
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/lucy-skywalker-graeffs-second-law-seminar/comment-page-1/#comment-25781
“The really interesting bit [paper to be published when it gets past pal review] is that the end of ice ages is caused by massive melting of the Antarctic ice pack due to the tsi increase and a reduction of local cloud albedo, no CO2 involved.”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/is-the-earth-a-cosmic-feather-duster/comment-page-1/#comment-25915
“It’s a cracking read – another good scientist fails the pal-review test, with good humour and insight.”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/emissivity-puzzle-energy-exchange-in-non-vacuums/comment-page-2/#comment-40407
“Happy also to pass it by Wayne before publication for a bit of pal review 🙂 if you think that would be helpful.”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/caption-competition-cook-mann-and-lewandowsky/comment-page-1/#comment-54323
“Cook ‘I still can’t believe the pal review was so easy’”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/is-this-where-the-missing-heat-is-going/comment-page-1/#comment-58621
“I’ll leave the other errors until later, possibly a monograph to bypass the corrupt pal review process, possibly by assembling the sub arguments to peer review in other venues with a final paper that assembles it all.”
Comment by Roger himself,
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
WordPress Tag from Tallbloke,
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/tag/pal-review/
[REPLY: The large number of links will automatically trigger the spam filter, as it did for WUWT. Your comment is on Jo’s – Anthony ]
Steve Richards says:
January 20, 2014 at 4:41 am
You have to remember gravity is subject to the inverse Square Law which means that Jupiter, despite its enormous size, only has a gravitational pull on the Earth about 1% of that of our moon. And that is at its closest point to the Earth, so normally it is a fraction of 1%
Tidal effects depend on the Inverse Cube of the distance, so Jupiter’s effect would be less than one tenth of one percent…
At first glance it would appear to be a complicated issue, but it’s not. “Peer-review” is the modern equivalent to “Aristotle said”, that held back science for centuries.
”The Highest Authority in Science is the Data
“The way the climate change debate will eventually be resolved is that the traditional primacy of data will be re-asserted, if only because by the middle of the century people will have noticed that it isn’t several degrees warmer.
How else can skeptics get published if the review system is gatekeeping?
Do you dismiss Principa Scientifica (sp?) because of its review system or because it’s bunk-um?
Indeed, it will always be the data that speaks. Unfortunately at the moment we only have the adjusted data but the real data is trying to get out. Just a little longer to wait.
Anthony, I think there is (way) too much emphasis on “the rules”. Peer review, as it has been masquerading, fails to produce “good science”. So does “pal review”. There must be a middle way. Follow peer review when all current-scientists have their minds closed to different ideas (Svalgaard re the Sun’s influence on Earth — limited to TSI — although he seems profoundly brilliant and renowed as to the physics of the Sun) and alternative views do not get published. Tallbloke might have invited — and included — an alternative view denouncing as hogwash the science in the “Resonance” volume with the requisite principles and math, but “peer review” as it is structured today would have made this volume and any other outside the mainstream in this area unpublishable. This issue needs more thoughtfulness and more inclusiveness. Peer review has given us criminal fraud in the current era.
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.
…..
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.
…..
===============
I don’t agree with this point. Sympathy for one’s beliefs does not establish a conflict of interests.
A conflict of interest exists if one is an author in the same edition, not because one is a “known skeptic”.
In point of fact, the “known sceptic” argument is ad hominem, a logical fallacy. If true, it would mean that only skeptics can review non-skeptic papers, and only non-skeptics can review skeptic papers.
Peer review is not replication. Hostile reviewers are appropriate for replication. They are not appropriate for peer review because nothing would ever get published, or if it did it would be so watered down as to be meaningless.
Yes, it is a conflict for an author in the same issue to be a reviewer. No it is not a conflict simply because the reviewer holds similar opinions to the author.
A lot to digest here. Whether skeptic or alarmist science, pal-review and gatekeeping have been the scourges of climate science. Whatever becomes of this, skepticism will remain the essential ingredient of climate science progress as without it there can be no science. And skepticism where Copernicus is based, Germany, continues facing an increasingly hostile environment.