Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
The subject matter of the paper, examining the decline effect in the field of Ocean Acidification (OA), particularly in studies on the effects of OA on fish behavior, is itself interesting. I have written about OA and OA science many times here at WUWT.
There are two parts to this story about the decline effect. 1) The specific case of the decline effect in OA studies claimed in the Clements et al. paper. 2) The general case of the hypothesized causes of the decline effect in the sciences.
This essay will address the first issue: the decline effect in OA studies.
The decline effect in OA science:
As for the specific OA case, part of that story, featured in the Clements et al. paper, has been well-covered by Steve Milloy at JunkScience in his article “Climate fish scare turns out to be just a fish story”.
There are several obvious potential causes of a decline effect in a field. They are: publication bias, citation bias, methodological bias, and investigator effects.
As part of the review process of the new Clement et al. paper, each of those potential causes was investigated – and all but one were eliminated as a major cause. It is that last cause that I write about today.
The missing parts in Steve Milloy’s coverage are something that I have written about before and is left under-said Clements et al. (2022):
“….we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.”
This was followed a year later with an article in Science:
From SCIENCE magazine — 6 May 2021 — an article titled “Sea of doubts — Dozens of papers linking high carbon dioxide to unsettling changes in fish behavior fall under suspicion” by Martin Enserink:
This same Science article goes on to say:
“What few researchers know is that in August 2020, Clark and three others in the group took another, far bigger step: They asked three funders that together spent millions on Dixson’s and Munday’s work—the Australian Research Council (ARC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)—to investigate possible fraud in 22 papers.”
“The request, which they shared with a Science reporter, rests on what they say is evidence of manipulation in publicly available raw data files for two papers, one published in Science, the other in Nature Climate Change, combined with remarkably large and “statistically impossible” effects from CO2 reported in many of the other papers. They also provided testimony from former members of the Dixson and Munday labs, some of whom monitored Dixson’s activities and concluded she made up data.“
NB: “Clark and three others in the group” in the above report are together the four authors of the decline effect paper under discussion in this essay.
Naturally, those funders asked to investigate cannot and will not discuss the matter until their investigations are completed and they are ready to issue a final report.
Clement et al. do not make accusations of fraud or any other scientific malfeasance in their latest paper but phrase their findings this way:
“Investigator effects.
“It is important to note that the early studies published in 2009 to 2010 [8–10], and some subsequent papers from the same authors, have recently been questioned for their scientific validity [31]. Indeed, these early studies have a large influence on the observed decline effect in our analysis. At the request of the editors, we thus explored the potential for investigator effects, as such effects have been reported to drive decline effects for the field of ecology and evolution in the past (e.g., fluctuating asymmetry [32])”.
When all papers authored or coauthored by at least one of the lead investigators of those early studies were removed from the dataset (n = 41 studies, 45%), the decline effect was no longer apparent from 2012 to 2019 (Fig 5). While conclusions regarding the potential roles of invalid data await further investigation [31], our results do suggest that investigator or lab group effects have contributed to the decline effect reported here.”
Citations [8-10] referred to in the text are as follows:
8. Munday PL, Dixson DL, Donelson JM, Jones GP, Pratchett MS, Devitsina GV, et al. Ocean acidification impairs olfactory discrimination and homing ability of a marine fish. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009; 106:1848–52. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0809996106 PMID: 19188596
9. Dixson DL, Munday PL, Jones GP. Ocean acidification disrupts the innate ability of fish to detect predator olfactory cues. Ecol Lett. 2010; 13:68–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01400.x PMID: 19917053
10. Munday PL, Dixson DL, McCormick MI, Meekan M, Ferrari MCO, Chivers DP. Replenishment of fish populations is threatened by ocean acidification. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010; 107:12930–4. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1004519107 PMID: 20615968
and [31]:
31. Enserink M. Sea of doubts. Science. 2021; 372:560–5. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.372.6542.560 PMID: 33958459″
[the last paper cited as [31] is quoted in this essay above– kh]
The Bottom Line:
1. In the field of OA, nearly half (45%) of all studies suitable for use in the meta-study (or “systematic review”) of OA/fish behavior science were authored or co-authored by Philip Munday, DL Dixson, or other members of Munday’s or Dixson’s respective lab groups. (Note that Munday was Dixson’s PhD advisor.)
2. The three early papers from Munday and Dixson found very high effect levels on fish behavior from increased CO2/lowered ocean water pH and established expectations for a decade of subsequent follow-up research.
3. The Munday/Dixson early results led to wildly exaggerated adverse effects from OA being reported endlessly in the international media, and are still being used in climate reporting today, despite having failed replication and currently being investigated on suspicion of scientific malfeasance: fabrication, falsification, or other misconduct.
4. Refer to Jennifer Marohasy’s most recent post “Most Published Studies Exaggerated the Effects of Ocean Acidification – and Covid, Etc.” (or my earlier OA posts here at WUWT) for details on the other things OA research has gotten wrong.
5. This is a prime example of Investigator or Lab Group Effects; how a research field can be confused or corrupted when a research is confined to a handful of scientists related by shared authorship, working in the same lab, same working group, same department of the same agency, same academic department, or groups at several locations that all share data, methods and co-authorships. Labs, lab groups, academic departments and co-authors are extremely prone to sharing the same biases, political and world views, and tend towards enforced consensus building.
I will cover the other causes of the decline effect (and other ills of scientific research) in Part 2.
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Author’s Comment:
The inevitable slight lowering of ocean surface water pH due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 may have some effect on something in ocean waters – for better or for worse. Properly done research by responsible scientists without axes to grind and agendas to push so far haven’t found any strong effects either way.
Bad science doesn’t always result in a decline effect situation. Sometimes it goes the other way. Bad results from prestigious sources start a field down path that leads to findings that are less and less grounded in reality until the field spins out of control. It can take decades for the science to correct itself.
The type of incestuous science exhibited in the OA/fish behavior field is found in many other fields as well. Sea level rise acceleration is one that comes to mind – centered at the Nerem’s CU-Boulder sea level group, which is closely associated with NASA’s satellite sea level altimetry group, and with the sea level group at Hawaii — these two prominent sources of SLR acceleration papers have led sea level research down a path to non-physical results – results that don’t show up in the Real World. The latest NOAA “2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report” predicting a U.S. East Coast sea level rise of 1 foot by 2050 is a result of this.
Readers can supply other examples of fields, narrow and broad, that suffer from “Investigator effects” – fields in which the results depend chiefly on who is investigating, not on the realities of the physical world.
If not just leaving a general comment, please remember to state to whom you are speaking – for instance, if addressing me, please start your comment with something like “Kip, can you explain….?”
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I may be a bit naive, but if a finding is associated with certain investigators, what comes to mind is N rays. A French researcher found results that were very closely related to whether one was French or German.
Tom ==> Ah, the old N-rays….thanks for the suggestion.
Does anyone smell a Nobel Prize?
Yeah, apparently Nobel Prizes do stink now. This olfactory signature can be traced back to a rogue’s gallery of recent recipients, and even includes many fake Nobels. Oddly the prizes in CrackerJack^тм have increased in value and stature at the same time.
I remember reading about them. An American visitor demonstrated that they still ‘worked’, even when the prism had been removed.
Even better was when he stuck a hunk of wood into their apparatus (they had already “observed” that wood didn’t emit their imaginary N-Rays).
Something like putting a weather station smack in the center of a huge “homogenation” area…
That was Michelson, of Michelson-Morley Experiment fame. Amazingly, Blondlot still maintained the reality of N-Rays even after the fact, a bit like CAGW believers.
??? According to my reference, it was Robert Wood, not Michelson. (That is per Wikipedia, so…)
Kip
From your quote
“When all papers authored or coauthored by at least one of the lead investigators of those early studies were removed from the dataset (n = 41 studies, 45%), the decline effect was no longer apparent from 2012 to 2019 (Fig 5).”
This isn’t a “decline effect”. It is a story of a couple of scientists who went off the rails, and got some attention for a while. But not much. As the quote says, hardly anyone else was talking about fish behaviour. Almost all of the other scientists that you quote are debunking their work. And it didn’t take all that long.
Their 2009 paper on OA and fish olfactory discrimination had over 800 citations; it was picked up by 22 news outlets, 17 blogs, referenced in 7 policy sources, etc.
A lie circles the globe before the truth even has time to put on its shoes.
News travels fast, but nothing travels faster than bad news!!! Nothing ever changes!!!
Scissor ==> Yes, that is exactly the problem — those papers are still being cited repeatedly today.
Kip, wasn’t there a well respected oceanographer who wrote a paper criticizing lab tank experiments re OA?. He claimed that virtually all lab tank studies were badly done and he offered a number of guidelines for doing this properly. Don’t recall the name.
Gary ==> Yes — see here and here.
don’t worry, this is probably the only time any sort of alarmist bias ever snuck into climate science
Nick ==> In a way, you are right, of course. One of the prominent causes of the decline effect is “Investigator or Lab effects”. Which is exactly what we see in this field. I have been following and writing about this topic for many years –and your assertion “Almost all of the other scientists that you quote are debunking their work” is only true because those are the one I quote….not because there was no “Band Wagon effect” in OA studies on fish. There was. But the more researchers and more labs that got involved, the smaller the effects they could find.
In no case concerning the decline effect is there an actual change in the physical universe that makes the effect decline.
I’ll do a Part 2, which covers the other causes of the decline effect and also the opposite of the decline effect — effect inflation.
Didn’t take all that long to debunk the “SLR acceleration.” Or the “98% consensus.” Or any of the first five IPCC “Summaries for policy makers.”
Yet those are still running around loose…
The above linked wiki article about the decline effect doesn’t quite describe the problem.
The simple version:
1 – A prominent scientist publishes research findings that are have a big effect size but are wrong.
2 – A less prominent scientist tries to replicate the results and can’t. She could interpret her data to show that there is no effect. She doesn’t have the confidence to do that, so she writes a paper that shows the effect size reduced by 25%.
3 – The third scientist nibbles away at the second scientist’s effect size.
4 – And so on, and so forth.
The replication crisis is bad. As many as 90% of published research findings are false.
I was googling to find the source of the above statistic and then I stumbled over this:
link
🙁
commie ==> Thanks for supplying the Richard Smith quote and link! He of course references Ioannidis’ “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False“.
Really fraudulent?
I once heard a radio interview with a guy who used to write for the tabloids. His boss advised him that he should never fact-check himself out of a good story.
So we look at published research findings where the scientists can’t even reproduce their own experimental results when pressed to do so. It’s like they didn’t even make the tiniest effort to make sure their research was solid because that might have deprived them of a publication.
When I read court verdicts, the phrase “knew, or should have known” occurs fairly often.
So, if a scientist knows, or should know, that his experimental results are dodgy, and publishes them anyway, that goes beyond negligence. It sounds like fraud to me. It also amuses me to think of it as tabloid science.
commie ==> Doing good science is hard. Doing perfect science is impossible.
In the Adjustasine Age of data, how can science expect to be replicated?
Whenever the narrative takes a hit, wiki corrupts their own articles to salve the effect. I wrote an article for WUWT some years ago (don’t know how to find it) and numerous comments on the Le Châtelier principle (LCP) in chemistry and how it is directly applicable to the atmosphere but no one seems to be aware of it in the climate field. I quoted wiki as a link because they had a beautiful, succinct explanation. They’ve ruined it making it ann effect only at equilibrium which is simply incorrect. Yes it ultimately shows a new equilibrium but its effect begins the instant change is initiated.
Essentially LCP states: in any multi component interactive system, say, chemical composition, pressure, temperature, etc., if one component is changed the whole system reacts in such a way as to resist the this change. We see this in the buffering effect of carbonates in the ocean that resists acidification when CO2 dissolves in the seawater.
Similarly, I see LCP in Willis Eschenbach’s governor/ emergent phenomenon that resist an increase in air temperature or SSTs. I see it in the Great Greening, enthalpy changes, etc. The Team doesn’t like LCP
Gary ==> WUWT’s new search tool is pretty good — easier if you remember the title.
Anyone who uses the term “Ocean acidification” is hopelessly biased in their choice of chemistry terminology before any research can be done.
The ocean is not acidic, has never been acidic and never will be acidic.
But the IS what it is called. Making up your own label, in opposition to what everyone else calls something, is tiresome and pointless.
But it is OK for the researchers to make up the incorrect and misleading term “ocean acidification”?
How’s about, “Ocean Alkalinity Modest Reduction”??? 😉
“Ocean Alkalinity Modest Reduction”
Accurate, but not very catchy and certainly not scary, Alan. It would never do.
Yeah, I suppose you’re on the nail there. I tripped over a stone on the beach the other day, can I claim compensation due to Climate Change, as I know it wouln’t have been there without CC, I’m guessing the bloodsucking lawyers are drafting lots of proposed legislation whereby they can make even more bucks for themselves in the name of public service & duty, I was banking (sorry) on a couple of £million to ensure a very comfortable retirement plan???!!! Sarc off!!!
Dr. Ken Caldeira coined the phrase, and freely admits he invented the term for it’s “shock value”
RHS – Exactly. You can’t generate alarm in the public about sea shells and corals dissolving unless the water becomes acidic. At least some people know that mild acids like vinegar or lemon juice dissolve lime deposits. News articles on OA never mention that the oceans are in no danger of actually becoming acidic.
Rick and RHS ==> OA science never finds that the oceans will become acidic and never claim that living coral or living shellfish will dissolve. The problem comes when University Press offices or the popular press re-write the studies outcomes for propaganda purposes.
Rarely, an actual working scientist will get in on the propaganda end for self-aggrandizement.
@Kip – I would differ on that. Once they start down that path, they are no longer describable as an “actual working scientist.” They are “actual working demagogues.”
Rather large difference.
WO ==> Opinions vary —
The name is crucial to the narrative. When you adopt a name that mischaracterizes the truth, you’re playing by their rules; playing defense in a hopelessly rigged game. Think “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice”, “climate denier” vs. “climate skeptic”, “ocean acidification” vs. “ocean pH decline”. The latter is shorter, has fewer syllables, is easier to say, easier to understand, scientifically accurate and clearly illustrates what’s really happening. “Ocean acidification” is the modern “acid rain”: ridiculous hyperbole (very) loosely based on scientific truth.
Calling it ocean acidification is what used to be called ‘propaganda’, but is now known by the PC term ‘marketing’.
Climate science is racist because it’s against black and brown carbon. Further, no climate scientist has ever come out to denounce white carbon.
That’s my new message Andy, and I’m sticking to it.
The correctness in the use of WORDS is a reflection of the correctness of the work of MINDS. (and, as corollary: it is a reflection of the correct assimilation of scientific concepts).
I note that these OA merchants of doom never actually point out that when something becomes slightly less alkaline, it doesn’t mean that said something is not necessarily becoming acidic, especially when it hasn’t reached anywhere near PH neutrality!!!
Don’t ever drink Perrier as it’s literally 10,000% more acidic than sea water.
I’d rather use an old Soda-stream for my sparkling water!!! I remember a few years back that the US EPA took thousands of Perrier Water bottles off the market, because someone in the Perrier factory forgot to change the water filters on time, you know Perrier, all that “naturally” sparkling water, they remove the natural CO2 before processing as it is impossible to bottle fizzy water, then after they’ve chlorinated the water to remove all the nasties, they pump it back into the bottles & add the natural fizz back at the last minute!!! All a great “natural” process!!! Ha, ha!!!
Patrick Moore has stated that ocean acidification is “one big fabrication”.
Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr. Patrick Moore: 12 Invisible Eco-Catastrophes & Threats of Doom That are Actually Fake | Climate Depot
Bill ==> Moore only points out that it is not a disaster or a catastrophe and unlikely to ever become one — it is the strong adverse effects that are not physical.
And that leads back here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/03/twelve-invisible-eco-catastrophes-and-threats-of-doom-that-are-actually-fake/
Further proof of the limitations of peer review, vs fully independent replication. The culture in research needs to shift to being one of new phenomenon being labeled as provisional until such time as others can get the same results. Perhaps peer review could become peer replication instead. Just think, researchers could get their publication quota by doing confirmation work.
Peer Review is politics not science.
peer review is most accurately described as a publication standard
the marriage of the thing that nearly always lies with the thing that almost never lies was bound to create problematic children
For a political purpose.
Research when and who first required peer review (Hint: they were not scientists).
Science works by replication not by review.
No Name ==> Many solutions to the problems of research have been proposed and some implimented. Including pre-registration of all aspects of the proposed study and pre-study peer review….peer review of the purpose, question, methods, data handling, etc — all before the study begins.
Nobody pays for replication or for refutation. Only “new” research is deemed to be in demand. More government bureaucracy fiddling!
Jim ==> Publishing bias — to be covered in Part 2.
Quite right though….
There is no ocean acidification. The ocean is at 8.1pH, water doesn´t get acidic until below 7.0pH. If it drops from 8.1 to 8.0 it´s called neutralization, not acidification. In freshwater it doesn´t get problematic until it´s below 6.0pH. A drop of 0.1 is not a problem for the oceans, and I doubt that measurements can even accurately determine an average pH for the oceans covering 70% of the surface and being +3500m deep in average.
Sea water is caustic not acidic.
Ocean caustication not acidification
In my opinion, the whole “Ocean Acidification” issue is pure propaganda.
https://holoceneclimate.com/ocean-acidification.html
That’s because lowering the pH of the ocean is impossible until all the solid carbonates have been dissolved. Something that will never happen. The pH of the ocean will slowly continue to increase indefinitely as it has always done.
When I make up my hydroponic solution I add an an acid (citric) to bring the pH from a typical 7 to about 5.5. After some time the pH drifts back up to 7 because of the solid carbonates in the water dissolve and neutralizes the acids. Only when there are no solid bicarbonates and carbonates to dissolve can the pH stabilize.
Ocean acidification is nonsense.
See below
Ocean pH all surface readings
Is there a cycle in that data depiction?
Dave ==> The graph presented by “Mike” is worthless…claims tp show ocean pH since 1920 — it is only in the last couplke of decades that we could measure salt water pH reliably at all, and early in the period, it required a lab.
Just because some “data source” lists a bunch of numbers doesn’t mean there is a scientific records of a metric.
Thanks for the information, Kip.
Thanks for your input ”Kip”.
Forget the graph. Tell me why the ocean is alkaline.
Mike ==> Didn’t mean anything by the quotes — but we have a lot of Mikes commenting here.
I am a bit priggish and prefer that commenters use their full (ish) real names. Opinions vary on that issue.
Bingo!….it’s almost like they don’t know what a buffer is….and have no clue where that carbon in their carbonate comes from….you can’t lower the pH…until you deplete the buffer
We all know that, but it’s a great scary story though, & we all know that scary stories & fear has been used to control people for thousands of years, just like today!!! 😉
Money talks……and very loudly, it seems, with these two!
if the oceans are warming wouldnt they be capable of holding less co2 ? fact is there is no way of measuring the highly variable and changeable ocean ph . it is highly affected by local biological activity in short time frames . researchers from WHOI found very healthy coral and ecosystems in very low ph ocean environments near undersea volcanic activity , much to their disappointment.
Kip, en liu humidity always being saturated relatively to pressure and temperature, ocean and atmosphere CO2 concentrations behaves the same, being saturated according to pressures and temperatures (plus salinity):
Having regard to
-the carbonate species being in a delicate balance, it is physically impossible to shift any one of them as they will all adjust to maintain their relative 90-9-0,9-0,09 percent concentrations,
-Dalton, Henry gas laws:
How much temperature increase in our oceans do you need to release 100 ppm? What would happen to pCO2? Which way would pH go if you reduce the nominal amount of bicarbonate (90% of the species)?
Oddgeir
One could do those calculations for an in vitro situation quite readily. In reality though, life, as in living things, make this complicated, in addition to the fact that layers of the oceans are stratified and mix slowly via thermocline, rotational, wind, etc. driven mechanics. On top of that, water cycles all the time from ocean to land via weather, moving carbon dioxide and carbonates about.
next you’ll tell me Fauci funding bioweapons research that is still killing millions of people might have been the sort of ethical problem that should have been pointed out by his chief of bioethics — oh look it’s his wife
There are OA decline effects and then there is provable OA scientific misconduct. NOAA’s PMEL and NFSC got caught concerning the Whiskey Creek oyster hatchery on Netarts Bay, and Fabricius got caught concerning corals at Milne Bay, PNG in Nature Climate Change. Both explained in essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Rud ==> With the OA/fish behavior replication failure, coupled with the calls for investigation, the Munday/Dixson studies will eventually fall.
Note that the early Munday/Dixson studies are still being widely cited as valid underlying science in research this year (2022).
It is NOT enough that we (the good buys, in our view) know about it — it must be erased from the body of scientific knowledge by retraction — and then removed again and again until it no longer influences research.
Kip, heartily agree.
A personal anecdote about the Marcott hockey stick paper in Science in 2013. I was able to prove his academic misconduct at the time simply by comparing his prior PhD thesis to his later Science paper. Posted the proof over at Judith’s at the time.He provably redated dozens of core tops to fabricate the hockey stick but explicitly said in Science he had not.
I wrote Marcia McNutt, at the time the Science top editor. Her assistant acknowledged receipt of my irrefutable evidence, but nothing was ever done. Even tho I warned her I would publish it. Paper never retracted. The misconduct proof became essay ‘A High Stick Foul’ in my ebook Blowing Smoke. I wrote a footnote in it about the Science non-response.
Rud ==> Bad science sticks like super glue and is devilishly hard to eradicate — especially if it forwards a “popular cause”.
There is also an inclining interest in those that never ‘inclined.’ OA never inclined until recently except for those on the real acid. Even then not so much except for pollution–Defining and identifying Sleeping Beauties in science–PNAS June 16, 2015 112 (24) 7426-7431– https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1424329112
H.D. ==> Thanks for the reference and link to the Sleeping Beauties paper. For readrs:
‘A Sleeping Beauty (SB) in science refers to a paper whose importance is not recognized for several years after publication. Its citation history exhibits a long hibernation period followed by a sudden spike of popularity. Previous studies suggest a relative scarcity of SBs. The reliability of this conclusion is, however, heavily dependent on identification methods based on arbitrary threshold parameters for sleeping time and number of citations, applied to small or mono-disciplinary bibliographic datasets. ”
Lots of Morner’s papers will appear as SBs when the sea fails to rise to expectations.
it’s not an “investigator effect” … its a “fraudulent con artist effect”
Dark Lord ==> Things are probably not that black and white in the real world of working scientists. Almost all scientists try really hard to find the truth. almost all scientists are biased in some areas of study. Almost all scientists make mistakes. Almost no scienist likes to admit to mistakes….(this goes on for quite sometime…) Me included. (though I’m a journalist, not a scientist….I have been know to error.)