Global warming alarmists suffered a big hit this week in their effort to deify shoddy “peer-reviewed” climate papers.
Stanford University medical professor John Ioannidis, in an interview with Agence France Presse (AFP), blew the lid off the trustworthiness of the peer-review process.
When the alarmist community seeks to push a new argument or messaging strategy in the global warming debate, they first have one of their pseudo-scientists write an article for publication in a compromised peer-reviewed journal.
The political left has infiltrated and taken over most science journals that address political hot topics, much as they have taken over most of the “mainstream” news media.
This is especially the case regarding global warming issues. As the leaked Climategate emails revealed, editors of science journals typically are prominent alarmists or deliberately coordinate with prominent alarmists in the selection of articles and messaging.
The “peer-review process” typically involves the editor sending a submitted article to a team of reviewers who are outspoken climate activists.
After the paper is published, global warming activists and their media allies typically cite the peer-reviewed nature of the paper as evidence that its conclusions are infallible.
Any who question the methodology or alarmist conclusions are then labeled science deniers.
According to Ioannidis, the peer-review process guarantees little in terms of trustworthiness even before political agendas compromise the issue.
“[W]hen studies are replicated, they rarely come up with the same results. Only a third of the 100 studies published in three top psychology journals could be successfully replicated in a large 2015 test,” AFP reported, summarizing Ioannidis’ findings.
“Medicine, epidemiology, population science, and nutritional studies fare no better, Ioannidis said, when attempts are made to replicate them,” according to AFP.
When only a third of peer-reviewed studies reach the same results when they are replicated by outside authors, this is a serious problem.
Regarding climate change papers, the peer-reviewed papers are likely even less reliable – before even considering the inescapably political nature of the topic – because many papers address predictions and models for which it is impossible to test the paper’s conclusions against objective evidence.
For example, when a scientist invents a climate model predicting rapid global warming or seriously negative future climate impacts, and when a paper summarizing the results of his or her model appears in a peer-reviewed journal, there is no way at the time of publication to compare the climate predictions against real-world observations.
This adds an additional level of doubt to the accuracy of global warming predictions published in peer-reviewed science journals.
And this is before taking into consideration the inherently political nature of the global warming debate and the political agendas of journal editors and their carefully selected article reviewers.
The lesson to be learned is the liberal media engage in laziness or deliberate misrepresentation when they cherry-pick certain peer-reviewed studies and claim that anybody who questions them is “attacking science,” “attacking scientists,” or being a “denialist.”
Sound science requires critically testing theories and predictions – including those published in peer-reviewed science journals – against objective evidence.
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“…because many papers address predictions and models for which it is impossible to test the paper’s conclusions against objective evidence.”
Perhaps the objective evidence is the number of different models required, all modeling the same process, yet so numerous and disparate in resulting ‘projections, differing so much from each other that they must be used in an averaged, aggregate ‘ensemble’ .
That is the objective evidence and the test which implies they are not as yet trustworthy models of the real processes producing modern and future measurements.
Not to mention the “grand” largess of the past 10 years focused almost exclusively on the ephemeral “human signat”. When you tie a post grad’s or “scientist’s reputation and funding to a desired result, whala -you get what you are looking for, and paid for. Any contra research is dismissed as corrupt. Billions open billions paid to keep the AGW machine humming and greased.
A peer review case study
https://chaamjamal.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/peer-review-of-climate-alarmist-research-by-climate-alarmists-a-case-study/
Oh my —- the AFP piece is a Fake News Story. There is no news in it….AFP did publish something. There is no evidence that there was an interview of John PA Ioannidis — except that AFP “quotes” Ioannidis but the statements are repeats of previous statements in published papers. There is no statement in the much-flogged AFP article that says an interview took place — or who did it, or where, or when.
The article is simply a review of previous work by Ioanidis — and hits his highlight papers from the last few years.
His most recent paper is:
“A manifesto for reproducible science” by Munafò1, et al. and John P. A. Ioannidis — January 2017 — DOI: 10.1038/s41562-016-0021
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021.pdf
The subject of peer review is covered in this paper.
If AFP actually interviewed him afresh, they certainly fail to tell us what questions they asked that resulted in the quotes.
Readers might like this paper by JPAI:
“Hijacked evidence-based medicine: stay the course and throw the pirates overboard”
https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(17)30144-0/fulltext
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2017.02.001
A list of all JPAI’s papers is at Google Scholar (warning:ore than 800)
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=A9e6sPYAAAAJ&hl=en
“Oh my —- the AFP piece is a Fake News Story”
Well, yes. But it isn’t AFP who claimed there was an interview – that was CFACT.
Nick ==> My main interest is the journalism part of “science journalism” — AFP “quotes” JPAI using: “said John Ioannidis” ; ” he says”; “Ioannidis said.”; ” professor Ioannidis added”; etc. It is very clever use of language if they didn’t interview him….but AFP never says explictly that these quotes come from a live interview.
Nasty little piece of news “spontaneous generation” — news derived from an event that didn’t take place.
Ioannidis did say all those things in his various papers — which are very good by the way. If you haven’t read them, you should. I wrote about two of his studies at https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/06/is-much-of-current-climate-research-useless/-
But we end up with “blew the lid off the trustworthiness of the peer-review process”, and post after post agreeing because of bias confirmation in their narrow idealogical delusion. This sort of echo-chamber garbage is appalling and needs to be thouroughly condemned.
Shame on Watts for using his platform to white-ant trust in the scientific method like this – the very thing he accuses climate scientists of doing.
Disgraceful hypocrisy.
See here’s the thing, and there’s really no way of getting around this. I don’t give one damn what you think. Especially when you comment under a screen name.
If you want to shame me, put your name to your words. Otherwise it’s just noise.
One constant with z and the other trolls. They are completely incapable of recognizing the logs in their own eyes.
Once again, Z declares that those who disagree with him are all guilty of confirmation bias. Then he declares that only scientists that agree with him should be considered scientists.
He calls this place an echo chamber, despite the fact that he and the other trolls are freely allowed to participate and even invite others to join in if they so choose.
On the other hand, those places typically listed as not being echo chambers are sites that routinely ban anyone who disagrees with the host.
PS: I love the way Z declares that exposing the dirty little secrets of climate science is bad for the scientific method.
On the other hand, absolutely ignoring the scientific method as he and his routinely do is apparently good for the scientific method.
Perhaps they believe that if the scientific method is over used, it will wear out.
How many ways can you repeat the same puerile nonsense?
Why do you troll?
Scientists publish under their real name because the buck has to stop somewhere and somebody has to take responsibility, and credit, for what’s written. Why would I take a troll seriously?
Troll? You mean disagree.
What’s your name Zazzle and how old are you?
Tony McLeod, 55. But I prefer Rudi Zazove.
Nice to meet you, I’m shocked though. Many of your posts don’t appear to be written by someone of your age. I was sure you were in your 20’s based on the rhetoric and frequency with which you employ ad hominem. I’m glad you are here regardless of our differences on the topic.
Mark has a very good point about transparency and freedom in this site. Comments only get snipped when they are egregiously offensive, unlike pro warming sites who don’t dare let facts from commenters persuade the faithful
Only one can be your REAL name, why the deception?
zazove ==> My — another “angry ‘tweenage troll” makes his appearance, apparently fails to read any of the material relevant to the topic, and slings monkey-poo at people due to his own misunderstandings.
Come back after you’ve read the pertinent Ioannidis papers. Use a dictionary, they contain big words.
Read my 2016 piece on Ioanndis’ research at:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/06/is-much-of-current-climate-research-useless/
If you have any questions after doing your homework, I’ll be glad to answer them.
My – how adult.
Either intentionally or through misapprehension you ignore my point. Which is Watts’ pattern of treating the scientific process: “blew the lid off the trustworthiness”, merely as collateral damage in his mission to monger doubt.
It needs to be pointed out for what it is: white-anting science for political ends. In other words anti-science.
zazove ==> Still didn’t do your homework….if you had, you’d realize that the “doubt” is the results of the “science on science” being done by Ioannidis (and many others in the field of Meta-Science). The “doubt” raised by Ioannidis and others is very much mainstream science, very much in the mainstream science news, and pervasive across fields of science.
This movement, which is revealed in what is being called the “replication crisis” or “crisis in science” has been surfacing for several years: see this in Nature from 2016:
https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970
If you are not aware of this crisis, you haven’t been keeping up on your journal reading.
A list of studies on the topic is available at the end of this Wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
Do try to keep up — when someone is referencing mainstream science, it makes you look foolish to accuse them of “mongering doubt”.
I noticed in the replies to the CFACT article someone quoted Discovery magazine who in their reply to someone else cited Skeptical Science as a reputable source. I didn’t bother reading after that point.
The game where publishing scientists want to be published in the most prestigious, “high impact” journals = Hollywood = the Kardashians
One of my dear former colleagues wrote an engineering textbook a few years ago. He sent the pre-pub draft to several “experts” in the same field. Got back trivial comments. After publication, I spoke with one of the reviewers. He said that he and at least one other, found big mistakes but didn’t mention so, as they didn’t want to embarrass my friend. So much for peer review!
Michael Nielsen, a leading quantum computing researcher wrote an article on his blog in 2009 on “Peer Review;”
Three myths about scientific peer review.
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific-peer-review/
And did you know that Albert Einstein published more than 300 papers and articles but as far as is known only one of those papers were ever peer reviewed.
And Einstein when he found out that the editor had sent that paper on to another scientist for peer review objected in very strong terms to his doing so.
Likewise Darwin’s ‘origin of species’ was published in book form and never formally peer reviewed. A good idea doesn’t need to be peer reviewed to still be a good idea. The thing is, the AFP article has nothing to do with peer review.
So-called peer review is all about professionals donating free time to publishers, for reasons best known to them, to improve the profit of the publishing companies. Without the volunteers, the publishers would have to hire more editors, or take a chance with submissions by unknowns. It isn’t so much about improving the quality of research papers as it is about assuring the profitability of publishers of research.
Incidentally, for what it is worth, I think that the link provided by ROM, above, is well worth reading.
Because peer review can be corrupted does not mean the process is bad. Because a review is corrupted, does not mean the results are actually wrong. Review by pals does not mean the advice was incompetent, it just means you know the reviewer who has agreed to help you. Help is not corruption. Science runs in fads, so to change direction in a big way takes more evidence. Science overall seems to work best with itsy bitsy, incremental changes, but those are not always warranted. The most common problem is just overgeneralization from undersampling so the conclusions are not fully supported by the data.
The change, in climate sciences, to worshipping climate models, and catastrophe predictions took no evidence at all. There’s never been any evidence of CO2-induced catastrophe.
The Pons and Fleischmann debacle tells us all we need to know about the peer review process. The argument of the peer reviewers was that since THEY couldn’t replicate the results the findings must have been invalid.
That’s like saying that because I can’t run a 4-minute mile, it must be impossible for anyone else to do so. Argument from ineptitude, proves nothing.
There was also a strong element of confirmation bias since the textbooks say that the process in question only occurs at high temperatures. The same could definitely apply to climate science, where the confirmation bias is in the direction of proving anthropogenic warming.
When examined in more detail it was found that the peer reviewers were not bothering to accurately follow the instructions. When the instructions were followed, the experiment worked.
This is my biggest problem with climate science.
As we know from Ioannidis, RetractionWatch, the replication project and just normal science. a large proportion of published papers are somewhere between wrong and fraudulent. A large percentage have basic errors that, when corrected, change the conclusion.
This is across all science. not just the softer stuff like sociology and psychology.
Yet every single paper in climate science is right. Not a single one has an error. Not a single one is fraudulent. Not a single one is retracted. That simply cannot be right. So Alarmists, retract, correct, condemn for fraud, admit the error, in say 50% of everything that has been published, because otherwise YOU are denying the science.
Whenever I hear “peer reviewed,” I involuntarily burst out into unstoppable laughter. I don’t allow myself the luxury of sipping a coffee when reading WUWT.
Skeptics have been saying this for decades. Only the sycophants & perps kept denying it.
Back in the stone age when I studied modern science in the university, peer review wasn’t even mentioned as part of the scientific method. So how did this practice not even mentioned become the gold standard by which science is measured?
There was, and is, the “publish or perish” aspect of academia. In the rush to get published, often short cuts are made. For example, one subject with which I’m familiar, there is a methodological consensus that is over 200 years old—but in my experience often leads to some rather flaky results. Using that methodology, a professor can crank out papers in months to a couple years, a book maybe in two to five years, accompanied by a list of citations. The careful research that refutes those papers takes decades. Rare is the researcher in that field who has mastered the source material well enough to do that original research.
The late Thomas Gold in his essay “The inertia of scientific thought” mentions peer review as a major impediment to science.
Then there’s the problem of perverting peer review to pal review to push an agenda.
I suspect that peer review and publishing are being pushed precisely to push an agenda, first in one field, which then bled over into other fields. Would not science be better served if fewer papers were written and published, but based on better research?
Recommend HIGHLY, a juicy book on all of the errors and bad research design, mistakes, sloppiness, ‘contamination of cell lines, UNWILLINGNESS to THINK or challenge what they do; and LACK of ‘reproducibility’ in most ALL of science/medical research today. See ‘RIGOR MORTIS’, John Ioannidis is featured in a few places. Just seeing how rigid entrenched thinking is, even being faced with bald truth. Thousands of poor studies all aid in wasting funds and misdirecting other research. I might just buy my own copy to keep! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34799271-rigor-mortis
Quite the bun fight over at the CFACT site. The trolls are out in force.