The two most bizarre people in the climate debate have now had the most bizarre thing happen to them and their garbage science paper that basically become a peer reviewd smear of Dr. Susan Crockford.. Retraction watch notes:
Caught Our Notice: Climate change leads to more…neurosurgery for polar bears?
What Caught Our Attention: There’s a lot going on here, so bear with us. (Ba-dum-bum.)
First, there was the paper itself, co-authored by, among others, Michael Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky. Both names may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers. Mann is a prominent climate scientist who has sued the National Review for defamation. A study by Lewandowsky and colleagues of “the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial” was the subject of several Retraction Watch posts when it was retracted and then republished in a different form. And the conclusion of the new paper, in Bioscience, seemed likely to draw the ire of many who objected to the earlier work:
By denying the impacts of [anthropogenic global warming] AGW on polar bears, bloggers aim to cast doubt on other established ecological consequences of AGW, aggravating the consensus gap.
Indeed, there was the predictable reaction to the paper. Judith Curry referred to it as “absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published.” And Susan Crockford, one of the bloggers referred to repeatedly in the paper, and now in the correction, raised questions. (In several blog posts, natch.) Crockford reported last week that the journal would be issuing a correction. Which it now has.
But what really caught our attention was that the correction appears not in Bioscience, but in another journal from the same publisher (Oxford University Press), Neurosurgery. If you’ve ever tried to perform neurosurgery on a polar bear — and hey, we’d like to hear from you! — then perhaps you can understand the mixup. We, however, are chalking it up to a typo in the DOI for now.
more here
Meanwhile, Dr. Susan Crockford has this to say:
An embarrassment to science: BioScience editor formally rejects retraction request
After four long months of waiting, late last week I finally received an official response from the editor of BioScience regarding my retraction request for the Harvey et al. paper (Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy), which I sent 5 December 2017.
From the sounds of it, the wait took so long because the paper went through a tedious process of parsing words just so among the 14 co-authors (akin to that used by the IPCC in constructing the Summary for Policy Makers), to convey the authors meaning and retain as much of the original insult as possible. In reality, we know the decision was made barely two weeks after I sent the request (16 December 2017) because that day, BioScience editor Scott Collins told a reporter he had no intention of retracting the paper.
In the end, the authors were compelled to make two small word changes. The editor insists that:
“…prior to publication, the article was peer reviewed by highly reputable scholars with expertise on the topic as per our standard procedures.”
So he says.
Michael Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky should just give up. Their credibility on this issue is hosed.
“expertise on the topic”
…of polar bear brain science?
That’s gotta be a pretty small sub-set of “climate science”…
Neurosurgery that went horribly, horribly wrong would pretty much explain Mann and Lewandowsky’s work, particularly the ‘Nature Trick’, and ‘Hiding the Decline’ kinda stuff not to mention the ‘Hockey Stick’ itself. ‘97% Concensus’ starts to be explained as well as the strangely overacted facial expressions in Lewandowsky’s video clips.
It is also interesting that these effects are not noticed by their ‘peers’. Is neurosurgery perfromed by a climate science believer a prerequisite to publication? You know it makes sense folks, you know it makes sense. 🙂
Actually, their shoddy work can basically be blamed on laziness and political activism.
That they think they can get away with it, however, does describe some sort of brain issue.
“That they think they can get away with it, however, does describe some sort of brain issue.”
How so? They’ve obviously been getting away with it for many years so far.
Perhaps Neurosurgery published it because they thought the authors were frontal lobotomy patients?
where else would you publish if you were a nobel prize winning brain surgeon?
…..as long as you have to pay to publish…might as well use Cosmopolitan or Teen Vogue….might save them
The nerve of those people!!!
There’s my paper: “A Ballistic Method for the Removal of Brain Tissue from Ursus Maritimus”.
Is Lewandowsky in need of neurosurgery, which accounts for the place of publishing the retraction?
Not sure if you can repair a lobotomy
!
+1
There might be some functional rewiring but not much.
Maybe they can try a brain transplant. Try out Prime Minister Socks Zoolander. He obviously has one that has never been used.
They should be nominated for the Cat Ass Trophy. The Trophy goes to the most insane, ridiculous, and scientifically untenable claims that are attributed to AGW. These geniuses are out in front, but competition will be strong this year.
Yes, and it’s only April.
Doesn’t say much for the article, but it sure doesn’t say much for the publication, either. Not much value in either place if you are willing to publish such “off topic” material as this article would be to the world of neurosurgery, unless you headlined it as ‘April Fools Day Article” or “joke of the month article.” Then you could forgive the publication for accepting it.
Tom,
My point exactly: http://polarbearscience.com/2018/04/03/correction-notice-for-harvey-et-al-bioscience-paper-retracted-due-to-error/
“When the “highly reputable scholars” that supposedly reviewed the paper couldn’t catch a few major spelling mistakes and the editor couldn’t be bothered to correct them when these were brought to his attention (see version downloaded 3 April 2018 here, check “Refereces cited”), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that BioScience couldn’t get the corrigendum right.
Too busy trying to make names for themselves as climate action heroes to do their actual jobs, from the looks of it.”
Spelling errors in the paper still not corrected when I downloaded it this morning.
Susan Crockford
They mis-spelled “re-feces”?
Not surprising they didn’t notice major spelling mistakes when the authors don’t know their Uranus from their Olecranon! ; )
Our surgeons practising on Polar Bears?
We, however, are chalking it up to a typo in the DOI for now.
OK, I understand not jumping the gun, but a suspicious fellow might think it was done purposely to escape attention…
I see Lewandowski’s contribution in the title “….CC Denial by Proxy”. How precious and commanding. I remember psychology students in my day having this tendency to try to be overly jargonistic to seem erudite and sciency. It’s gotten worse since it stopped being a mental health service to individuals and became a rubber stamp for the marxy Alt Left agenda. The addition of ‘Social Psychology’ to support the long lefty politically corrupted sociolology where the plight of the poor, criminals, and a host of new post normal ‘stakeholders’ was the fault of capitalism and albescent male folk.
Thanks for that…
Taking the Mick, just a bit.
However, the more these ridiculous fiascos are conducted, the more scientists begin to question their own institutions and hitherto reliable publications.
Perhaps we are heading for an unexpected tipping point, one out the book of unintended consequences.
I suppose I should have also asked what in the world is Mann contributing to a study of Polar bears. Probably his expertise in smearing female scientists.
Has anybody ever seen Mann & Griff at the same time?
I didn’t think so…
Former-prominent scientist is a better description.
Yet changes were made.
So is the editor questioning whether these highly reputable scientists really had expertise on the topic? It can’t be. They are highly respected.
So is he admitting that the journal’s standard procedures are inadequate?
There need to be a follow up on the corrective actions taken by this journal in its crisis of confidence.
It is wrong to assign equal culpability to Mann and Lewandowsky.
Mann is clearly an opportunistic fraud; while Lew is a twisted, but useful idiot. Both are an embarrassment to Science, but at least dull-witted Lew believes he is saving the planet.
This amounts to flying off the cliff at 90 mph with ones profession. They must have been influenced by news of a recent family plunge that is still under investigation.
OK, I’m confused. Has the paper been retracted or not. I saw the corrected text and I’m still confused.
It’s not been retracted.
They have been forced to change their wording to make it (slightly) less blatantly untrue.
Even the new wording is unscientific – attacking the person not the facts or the interpretations.
But as they haven’t got any facts on their side what options do they have? Forcing them to tell fewer lies is a win.
The new text is in response to complaints from Dr Crockford; this is what they think they can get away with.
Yet they are clearly still confused.
A) The original paper itself is a journal response to Dr Crockford’s work on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. They are doing the peer review themselves. And the only counter-argument they can make is that they are the first (among their literature search).
B) Being paid for work does not mean you are being paid for selected answers. It means you can earn a living. Nor do they claim that this work was paid for by the Heartland Institute. They admit that previous work was funded; previous work is not this work and so not relevant.
It’s a slow retreat. A humiliation. A retraction would be amore merciful; a quick kill.
Not sure why this is in moderation but as it is, Mods please fix “amore” to “more” in the last sentence.
My guess would be the “D” word in the quote.
S’not!
Only “corrected” several egregious errors; some of which were pointed out by Dr. Crockford.
Co-Authored by Mann and Lew. Says it all. Never mind the quality feel the width. It’s all about getting their names linked to a paper count. Improves their hit-rate on Google scholar.
Pretty soon, their paper count will exceed my Puppies on a roll Andrex – at 200 sheets per roll (and that’s sheets!!). Still, not a useful.
The real Sin is anonymous ‘peers’/experts of the Journal who’s credentials are secret and their inputs, comments and critiques (if any) are not-transparent. They don’t even need to take responsibility for either their inputs or lack for ‘review oversight’. One of the achilles heels of the contemporary ‘peer review process’,.. not to mention ‘stacking the review board’ and activism bias by the editors. Unfortunately, it usually takes decades for Journal incompetence, malfeasance or bias to be addressed or even acknowledged. In Science, this is the dirty little secret — “scientists” and science- reviewers don’t want to be held accountable for their gate-keeper actions or lack there of. Next gen peer view should be completely open, transparent and visible by the scientific community and interested public at large – else it becomes the focus for targeted political infiltration, manipulation and group think.
And when a serious flaw of a study is found, it’s usually the fault of that “invited researcher” who went back to his university…
How the world can still take academia seriously is difficult to understand.
I’m not at all sure that the world does take academia seriously any more. Or even that a large proportion of it ever did.
Scientific research used to be applauded but increasingly even that is attracting cynicism as more money is ploughed into discovering marginal improvements in medicine while the pharmaceutical industry tries to enhance its bottom line by medicalising half the population with drugs of dubious efficacy, climate scientists demand ever more funding to investigate a science that is (reputedly) settled, and physicists appear to spend an inordinate amount of time and public money searching for ever smaller particles of matter which they are “damn sure must exist” even though there is little evidence that they actually do.
And the Left has politicised (and in the UK at least infantilised) university education to the point where a degree is more likely to be seen in “the world” as a liability rather than an asset.
Seems racist or at least resulting from white bear privilege. Where is the concern for bears of color, like black or brown bears?
It is really unusual that a journal devoted to neurosurgery should involve itself in such a poorly argued retraction on another subject.
Could automatic layout have popped it in to the wrong journal?
Next we will have an article on AI meets Neurosurgery, Polar Bears, the new paradigm.
Seems racist or at least smacks of white bear privilege. Where is the concern for bears of color, like black or brown bears?
this is why Americans have the second amendment
One can leave comments at Retraction Watch: just saying.
Obviously, there is working gray matter, as Dr. Crockford uses.
Then there is the cottony non-functioning gray matter; as Manniacal and Lewsandsowsky and the editor of not bioscience display so well.
Neurosurgery on working gray matter risks great damage.
Neurosurgery on non-functioning gray matter is unnoticeable to that gray matter’s owner/user.
Manniacal’s neurosurgery version is a sad echo of science.
History will not be kind to these destroyers of science. Just as piltdown man lives on in infamy, so too will manniacal and lewsandowsky’s abuse of science along with the PBI pretenders.
Reviled forever!
Has a nice ring to it.