pear shaped (slang)
A British expression used to indicate that something has gone horribly wrong with a person’s plans, most commonly in the phrase “It’s all gone pear shaped.”The OED cites its origin as within the Royal Air Force; as of 2003 the earliest citation there is a quote in the 1983 book Air War South Atlantic. Others date it to the RAF in the 1940s, from pilots attempting to perform aerial manoeuvres such as loops. These are difficult to form perfectly, and are usually noticeably distorted—i.e., pear-shaped.
Dr. Richard Tol writes about a new revelation coming from an analysis of Cook’s climate publications volunteer raters, conducted by Brandon Shollenberger:
My comment on Cook’s consensus paper has at last been accepted. It was rejected by three journals — twice by Environmental Research Letters and once by two other journals for being out of scope. Fifth time lucky.
As these things go, my comment is out of date before it is published.
One of my main concerns was the partial release of data. The data that was available suggests that all sorts of weird things were going on, but without the full data it was hard to pinpoint what went on. Cook’s resistance to release the data, abetted by the editor, the publisher and the University of Queensland, suggested that he may have something to hide.
Brandon Shollenberger has now found part of the missing data.
Unfortunately, time stamps are still missing. These would allow us to check whether fatigue may have affected the raters, and whether all raters were indeed human.
Rater IDs are available now. I hope Shollenberger will release the data in good time. For now, we have to do with his tests and graphs.
His comment of May 10, 1:16 am shows that individual raters systematically differed in their assessment of the literature. This is illustrated by this figure; the circles are aligned if the raters are the same.
This undermines Cook’s paper. Theirs was not a survey of the literature. Rather, it was a survey of the raters.
Source: http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-97-consensus.html
Of note is the comment “Brandon Shollenberger has now found part of the missing data.”. While I don’t know for sure, it seems that the SkS kidz have left another gaping security hole wide open which allowed Shollenberger (and likely anyone, as we’ve seen before with their forum fiascos) to have a look at that rater’s data. Cook has been resisting requests to provide it.
Shollenberger writes in comments at his blog:
I’ve sent John Cook an e-mail alerting him to what material I have, offering him an opportunity to give me reasons I should refrain from releasing it or particular parts of it. I figure a day or two to address any potential privacy concerns should be enough.
His response will determine how much information I provide. No obligations were placed upon me regarding any of the material I have, but I don’t see any compelling reason to provide information about how I got it either. I’d need a better reason than just satisfying people’s curiosity.
…
But we’ll see what (if anything) Cook says. I said I’d give him the weekend. If I don’t hear anything tonight, I’ll try contacting him via Twitter/Skeptical Science. I may try having someone else from SkS get his attention for me. I don’t want him to simply overlook the e-mail I sent.
By the way, there is some value in associating ids and names. We have comments from many of the people who participated in the study. It could be useful to try to match up biases in the ratings with people’s stated views.
Tick Tock.
I have seen Steven Spielberg’s name misspelled in newspapers – the last place you’d expect to see such a misspelling.
mem, I wouldn’t know anything about companies that might analyze something like this. If there are companies that’d do what you suggest, I wouldn’t know anything about how to get one involved.
Eamon Butler, did I spell my name wrong somewhere?
Everyone else, the blogger Anders wrote a post which sought to rebut the argument I raised about rater bias (read my response). Initially he argued the bias I showed only existed in the pre-reconciliation stage, even though I had explicitly stated I was displaying the data from the post-reconciliation stage (and the scales on the two data sets are different so they’re impossible to mix up).
He’s since moved on from that made up claim. He now says:
Leaving aside the humor of him suggesting it doesn’t matter he had no idea what I was showing when he claimed to rebut it (and consequently had to walk his argument back), I find this quote amazing. He claims the image I show because we knew raters disagreed with one another. This completely ignores the point of the image I showed. That image didn’t just show raters disagreed. It showed they disagreed in systematic ways that’d bias results.
I don’t understand how someone could simply make things up in order to criticize a person, feel no shame when they find out they were wrong, then claim their mistake doesn’t matter by ignoring the entire point of what they’re responding to. It’s dumbfounding.
Talking of RAF pilots, in 1972, at Biggin Hill Areodrome (Called an “airport” now – UK), an RAF Vulcan took off, busted my ears (My already busted ears), flew past, and then landed. The pilot was someone called “Leslie”.
One thing that is becoming clear is that Mr. Cook’s claims about being an excellent internet professional is dubious at best.
“Mike T says:
May 11, 2014 at 4:13 am”
You are right and wrong.
When I was a Medic in the U.S. Army I read that when mortally wounded people lie on their back (belly up/tits up) wheras when people are wounded in a non mortal way they lie on their belly.
@Brandon Shollenberger
“Does anyone happen to have the e-mail address for authors of the Cook et al paper?”
Try these:
shameless@skepticalscience.com
snake-oil@skepticalscience.com
liar.liar.pants.on.fire@skepticalscience.com
often-wrong-john@skepticalscience.com
– – – – – – – – –
Poptech,
If you think the rater’s names have been for some time in the public domain, then why can’t you just post a web link to where the raters names and IDs were previously published?
John
John, the raters’ identities were available. I’m not sure data linking volunteers to their ratings was available.
I think the greatest weakness of the Cook paper is that it is being used to promote a premise for which the survey questions were not designed: ie that 97% of scientists believe in global warming. 1) they didn’t quantify authors, but they did quantify published papers, and more importantly 2) the rating questions (or statements) were not designed to distinguish between CAGW and plain old “CO2 warms the planet.” Yet the statistic is used BY THEM to promote the idea that 97% of scientists believe in CAGW. I unfortunately debated this with the SkS true believers last summer on their site shortly after the consensus paper was published, and they were forced to concede that I was correct, ie that their marketing claims exceeded their study design. Lots of snipping of valid arguments, and probably all deleted from their site now. DO NOT attempt to make a distinction between AGW and CAGW with this crowd or you will be branded a “Denier” a “Troll” and many other nasty names. They are not nice people and really not reasonable. After that experience I have been enjoying good solid information at this site.
– – – – – – – –
Shub Niggurath,
Thanks for pointing out the possibility.
John
Brandon Shollenberger :
Sorry Brandon, I was being very naughty. I deliberately wrote ”Brendan” like the Irish Saint, who discovered America.
Can’t wait to read what you have to say about the notorious 97%. The more nails driven into this coffin the better, I say.
Btw, my spell checker tells me I’m spelling MY name wrong. It prefers the double N at the end.
Kind regards,
Eamonnn.
Poptech’s comments:
Are interesting because while a lot of people thought Ari Jokimaki did the most ratings, he actually didn’t.
Lucia had a chart on her site (rankexploits.com) last year that had a chart that showed the list of names and the number of papers they read over time. It was on May 14, 2013. If you Google tcp_raters.gif and look at the images in Google you will see the chart.
Jim Imboden, indeed. As far as I know, I was the first person to find that image (there are actually two). I think the first time anyone linked to them was in this comment:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/u-of-queensland-application-for-ethical-clearance/#comment-112937
So, do you English folks have Harry Potter?
“So, do you English folks have Harry Potter?”
The Author lives 1 mile from me, so I suppose we do. We also get to watch her ruin a nice house…
P.S. The Harry Potter Author lives in Edinburgh, or as it is said here “Embra”. I’m English, here on missionary work to civilise the Scots. It is obviously taking longer than Africa and India due to the natives.
I understand that the full analysis hasn’t been released and is still being compiled as information – hopefully – becomes more available, but can someone explain the circle chart in a way that a layman can comprehend? I consider myself a fairly intelligent non-scientific mind, but the chart could look like just about anything to me right now.
Bushbunny, the weather keeps changing, go figure. Not too much of the wet stuff this weekend. I know Cobh well, I have some friends who work in The Roaring Donkey (a pub) i’m in Cork City centre. If you make it here some day check out Sin é, they have trad music sessions almost every night. You’ll want to slam some jorums and then switch to meejums or the Langers will gawk like a ripe shower of pizawns. Remember, no knawvshawling on the premises. Follow those rules and you’ll be in dutch. Tell the bar staff that I sent you and you may well receive an immediate, forceful ejection. I’m mockeyah, you’ll be welcome.
Morph, do you speak Glaswegian? Even with my advanced degrees in Gibberish and Cork Slang*, I just can’t grasp their language. The locals who speak English like to joke with the tourists and tell them that everyone is speaking English.
*yes, it is redundant
Cold in Wisconsin: “I think the greatest weakness of the Cook paper is that it is being used to promote a premise for which the survey questions were not designed: ie that 97% of scientists believe in global warming.”
Although I don’t quite agree with that statement of the paper’s main defect, I do agree that a principal problem is that the survey questions were singularly ill-suited to distinguishing those who believe that humans have some effect on climate and those who think that it is humans who caused more than 50% of the recent warming. And on that question is not clear to me that Mr. Shollenberger’s showing of bias makes a large difference one way or the other.
Moreover, even if the survey had been well-designed to measure the positions that the published papers reflect, it still would likely have found that, among papers that take a position on how much warming man has caused, a clear majority toe the “most of it” line. Writing papers is principally province of academics, and one obtains tenure by exhibiting the ability to attract enough grants to support one’s lab and post-docs–whereas being a “denier” is how not to get grants.
For that reason, even a study well designed to measure papers’ contents would be misleading. But it would be misleading for an even more-important reason. Specifically, a lepidopterist or other practitioner of one of the “stamp collecting” sciences is unlikely to be positioned any better than–or even as well as–the next, say, civil engineer at the bar to make an informed judgment on what has caused warming. So even if such scientists–and that’s no doubt most of them–truly believe the theory and not just piously recite the appropriate global-warming catechism verse in order to attract funding, it would be more a measure of how good the CAGW evangelism (or kakangelism if there be such a word) has been rather than of how compelling the science is.
Anyway, I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying that, although I respect the many here who see the importance of Mr. Shollenberger’s inquiry, at least one of us out here doesn’t get it.
Carl, you should look at the post I uploaded a few hours ago. It’s the first post I’ve written with the purpose of actually explaining the point. The previous ones were just to drum up interest.
http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/introduction-for-the-upcoming-tcp-release/
Joe Born, the point of raising this issue isn’t to establish the paper’s conclusions are wrong. It’s to get people to start thinking about what the paper actually shows. Once you accept bias affected the raters’ results, it’s easier to accept the raters rated papers as “Endorse AGW” for the flimsiest of reasons.
If you want something more substantial, give it a little time. I already have a post written in which I highlight how meaningless the “consensus” the paper found actually is.
John, besides other known information prior to the paper being released, the top raters were listed in the paper as authors and in the acknowledgements;
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Authors
John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to James Powell for his invaluable contribution to this analysis, Stephan Lewandowsky for his comments and to those who assisted with collecting email addresses and rating abstracts: Ari Jokimäki, Riccardo Reitano, Rob Honeycutt, Wendy Cook, Phil Scadden, Glenn Tamblyn, Anne-Marie Blackburn, John Hartz, Steve Brown, George Morrison, Alexander C Coulter, Martin B Stolpe (to name just those who are not listed as (co-)author to this paper).
The top raters were:
3000+ Papers Rated:
– Ari Jokimäki
2000+ Papers Rated
– Sarah A Green (2500+)
– Andrew Skuce
– Riccardo Reitano
1000+ Papers Rated
– Peter Jacobs (logicman at SkS)
– Mark Richardson
– Rob Honeycutt
– John Cook
– Dana Nuccitelli
500+ Papers Rated
– Bernard Walsh
– Rob Painting
Sarah might have eventually rated more than Ari since they had to rate the papers twice but it is still all a big Yawn and not news. Acting like this information has to be withheld is ridiculous.