Assuming that “skeptics” are by and large nutballs, I can’t say that this seems like a surprising admission. For instance, if some group came together to bombard zoology journals with requests for publishing information of Bigfoot, I would expect to see people in the zoology field talking about how to change the regulations so that the crap could be dismissed without wasting a bunch of people’s time.
Huh? It seems to me that your take on this is exactly backwards. AFAICT, the author of that quote isn’t saying that climate “skeptics” will never be allowed to publish in legitimate peer reviewed journals.
Instead, he seems to be saying that because the “skeptics” frequently couldn’t pass peer review in legitimate journals, they just took over the editorial board of one of those journals and lowered its peer review standards to allow more “skeptic-friendly” papers to be published.
Now, I’m not personally familiar with the journal Climate Research, and I have no idea whether this allegation about skeptics “taking it over” and damaging its credibility is in fact true. But it is the sort of thing that can happen with scholarly periodicals.
I know of research journals in my own field whose reliability as credible sources has fluctuated widely over the years, depending on whether the person serving as editor was a conscientious scholar or a crank. And when there’s a crank at the helm and the journal starts publishing kooky stuff, responsible scholars do exactly what the author of this quote is advocating: they stop submitting papers to the journal or citing papers that appear in it, and they resign from its editorial board if they happen to be sitting on it. This is because they don’t want to continue to lend the journal an appearance of legitimacy once it has fallen into the hands of kooks.
Has this story be broached by any other sources? Besides the fact that this reporter seems a little short on the non-bias (his prose has the tell-tale marks of someone having multiple orgasms while typing…), his sources appear to be solely “denier” blog sites. Has this earth-shattering news been suppressed by the Soros-ACORN-Pelosi juggernaut?
And who the heck would ever want to hack into such a database, anyway? Or more importantly, why? To sell the info to the Russians? If they did it out of sheer malice, well, thats one thing. But if paid to, by whom? Such an entity must have money, be in a position to benefit from such a scandal, and bereft of a moral compass. Nope, can’t think of anybody like that…
Most of this doesn’t make a lot of sense, and what does make sense smells of rodent. As of this moment, Fox has nothing on this. Free Republic, however, is all over it. Associated Press not clued in yet…
Two bits says its a hoax.
Dude, I so own that quarter of yours. Why would it be a hoax? This is exactly the sort of thing that climate “skeptic” activists* do: they comb through the output of actual scientists, with all the disagreements, caveats, gray areas, disputes and contradictions that it entails, and selectively present isolated statements out of context to promote a carefully engineered image of what the scientists are saying.
- Note that I’m not using this term to refer to responsible climate scientists who publish papers legitimately criticizing genuine flaws in various aspects of current climate science theory. Those people have no trouble getting their research published in serious journals and don’t need to resort to lying and smearing to get attention.
But the emails isn’t saying anything like that. It’s saying that even when the science does pass muster, the journals that publish it should be shunned to lower their impact factor and reduce submissions and pressure should be brought to bear directly on the editors to force then to refuse publications.
It’s not a case of dismissing crap. It’s a case of declaring that anything that is written by a skeptic must be crap regardless of quality and, worse yet, perverting the scientific publication system by colluding to artificially manipulate impact ratings of any journal that dissents.
IOW we know the skeptics are wrong because there is no dissent in the literature. And we know there is no dissent in the journals because we have pressured journals into not publishing dissent. And we have pressured journals into not publishing dissent because we know that the skeptics are wrong.
I’m sure you can see how outrageous that is. And how antithetical to the principles of the modern scientific community.
But again, this is assuming it’s true.
That’s exactly what it’s saying. It says outright that a journal that publishes skeptic’s positions shall be declared non-legitimate.
IOW it’s advocating that simply publishing skeptic’s positions will reuslt in a journal being non-legitimate. By definition skeptics positions are never going to be able to be published in legitimate journal because any journal that publshes them can be declared non-legitimate.
The problem with that of course is that it is not a scientific finding. It’s opinion.
Let’s assume the skeptics arguments are perfectly true and perfectly worthy of publication. Why couldn’t exactly the same argument and tactics be used to suppress them to the same degree?
And that is why the behaviour is so shocking. It makes evaluation of the truth impossible because we have an admission that one side is being suppressed solely because it is that side. The only way to know the truth is because the winning side tells you what it is.
No doubt. Some skeptics have made similar allegations against journals. Does that mean it would be a good thing if they brought influence to bare against those journals to force them reject proponent articles?
Now do you see why this is so shocking?
Uh huh. And who gets to define “crank” and"kook"? :dubious:
The whole point of science is that the arguments on both sides should be presented and should stand on their own based on the evidence. As soon as you start demanding suppression of articles because f the viewpoint they express (as that email does) your actions are totally antithetical to the practice of science.
As for the why, your seeing the results now. People dont have to defeat the science of the climate people, they just have to discredit the institution. The Russians already most likely have the same climate data as the rest of the world, so they dont need it, thats on the govt side, most likely it was dropped onto a Russian FTP server simply cause Russian ISP’s are lax about who and what people can do with the internet. Quite a few million spams are sent out through Russian mass emailers every day.
What does this do today, nada. But it will be brought up everytime someone makes a climate based argument, regardless of if this data base is nefarious or simply a matter of just looking bad.
Declan
I generally agree with Declan, though I’m more inclined to say that if this is true as presented it has exposed some serious reasons to doubt the scientific consensus. IOW it’s not a case of not having to “defeat the science of the climate people”. It’s a case of the evidence itself seriously calling the into question whether any valid scientific consensus exists.
Given that the consensus is invariably the lynchpin in any proponent’s argument on climate change that’s a pretty significant issue.
If…
I’ve only read what you quoted, but to me it reads as saying that X politically motivated group has taken over (purchased?) journal Y and hence journal Y is unlikely to continue acting bipartisan, hence people might want to be leary of treating it like it is still a rational, peer-reviewed journal.
I can’t find fault with the argument, assuming that its assumptions are correct.
No, I think it’s saying that a journal that publishes crap-quality research shall be declared non-legitimate.
Let’s look at the context of this in the full excerpt from the OP’s link:
In other words, the complaint is that the journal was “letting through” substandard papers (i.e., allowing them to be published) to support a climate-skeptic position. The mention of Hans von Storch seems to indicate the following incident:
This suggests that my guess about the meaning of the Hadley scientists’ complaints was correct: namely, they were upset that climate skeptics had spotted a weak point in the journal’s peer review process and used it as a platform for poor-quality publications, e.g., the abovementioned “controversial article” by Soon and Baliunas:
So the concern is apparently not that CR was publishing “skeptics’ positions”, but that it was publishing poor-quality research that misrepresented earlier publications and mishandled the data.
I can see how outrageous it would be if your interpretation were correct, but AFAICT, you’re wrong. You’ve jumped to the conclusion that what the Hadley scientists wanted to “delegitimize” was the skeptical viewpoint or “dissent” per se. But it appears that what they actually wanted to delegitimize was the use of bad science to support the skeptical viewpoint.
I trust that you’re not arguing that “consensus” scientists should approve the publication of misleading and unsound articles in order to avoid suppressing “dissent”?
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They aren’t just saying people should be leery. They are advocating that people not cite articles in the journal, even when they are highly relevant. That is such a blatant attempt to manipulate the impact factor of the journal that it is repulsive to me as scientist.
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They are also stating that they intend to manipulate and bring pressure to bear on the editorial board: “We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…”. This is not a recommendation to be leery, it’s a blatant admission of attempting to influence the editorial board If you need to be told why that is reprehensible and totally incompatible with sceince then you are no scientist.
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Assuming that its assumptions are correct. Aye, that’s the rub. What evidence did they base these assumptions on? Surely not just the fact that the editorial board finds skeptic articles worthy of publication. Which, as I;ve noted before, is the problem. The objections aren’t scientific, can’t be scientific. They are based on a disagreement with the personalities, hypotheses and research presented.
Once again, science is supposed to be based on evidence and argument. What gets published and why shouldn’t matter. All that should matte ris the strength of the argument and the evidence. Yet here we have an apparent attempt to stifle publication of one side of the argument.
That’s a massive fault no matter what the evidence is.
It’s repulsive to not cite suspect data? Explain this to me in Bigfoot terms.
To late to do an “ETA” but let me note that I’m not using “bigfoot” to mock you. My point is that any position you hold on how research is done and results computed and publicized should remain consistent regardless of what field of study we are talking about or what side of the fence you happen to be on in any sort of scientific argument.
Can you offer an example, unrelated to climate change, where you would cry foul when scientists identify a journal that isn’t keeping up proper peer-review standards and advise others to hold any data in it suspect. I mean, yes obviously if their identification of the journal as being dirty is wrong then they’re in the wrong. But that’s independent of their intentions which is simply to avoid the use of data that isn’t reliable. Would you really find the avoidance of unreliable data for citation a repulsive act? I find that idea ludicrous, which is why I didn’t even read on to your second and further points. You presented what seems to be a full on WTF.
In Bigfoot terms it is like a journal publishing evidence of bigfoot and you refusing to cite it in a paper you publish on North American primates because you decided that the evidence is suspect because… it appeared in a journal that publishes evidence of bigfoot.
That’s what it’s like in bigfoot terms.
If that isn’t repulsive to a scientist then they are no scientist. Based on this position it is completely impossible for anyone to ever publish an article that contradicts your opinion in any reputabe journal because as soon as any journal publishes such an article you get to declare it less than reputable.
It frees them from any obligation to ever address any serious evidence against their position.
And yes, that’s repulsive. It’s antithetical to science. If I, as a scientist, believe that data is suspect then I need to demonstrate why it is suspect. Simply declaring it suspect because it appears in journals edited by personalities I disagree with, or that publishe articles that reach conclusions that contradicts my own, that isn’t science.
Surely you can see that?
I really have to ask how honest some people are being here. What if we had evidence that Exxon had had brought pressure to bear on journal editors to not publish pro-AGW articles? What if Shell had encouraged scientists to shun publications that promoted global warming? Would the same people honestly be saying that’s perfectly acceptable? That it was a good way to establish the truth Thhat this was best practice science and any consensus thus reached was perfectly valid and not in the least tainted?
I think not. I really think not.
Another site published a fuller version of one of the email responses quoted above, the bulk of which is devoted to the following criticisms of a “skeptic” paper:
This does not sound to me like someone trying to “stifle publication of one side of the argument” “solely because it is that side”. Rather, it sounds like somebody disgusted with a particular example of flawed arguments and bad science.
Absolutely. And what we appear to have here are scientists objecting to the publication of weak arguments and insufficient evidence. I really don’t see why anybody should find that repulsive or shocking or outrageous.
Actually, it seems to be more like a journal publishing articles on Bigfoot that misinterpret earlier articles and skew the data in order to overstate the evidence for Bigfoot, and you refuse to cite it and you advocate a scientific boycott of the journal because it publishes articles that misinterpret earlier articles and skew data in order to overstate the evidence for Bigfoot, and consequently is not acting like a reputable scientific journal.
Sure, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. What the Hadley scientists appear to be doing is declaring a journal suspect because it publishes shoddy research.
You seem to have made up your mind, based on a few sentences taken out of context, that the Hadley scientists are reprehensibly trying to sabotage dissent in and of itself. And you appear to be resolutely ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
I’ll repeat what I said at the outset: it’s too early to know what the legitimacyof these claims are or precisely what evidence they are based on. But if that is an accurate, unedited quote it’s shocking.
It’s not the place of scientists to decide to organise secret groups to decide what journals are and are not valid. If they feel any individual article is flawed for the reasons that you have noted then that should be noted when they rebut it. But to simply blanket declare that they will not cite articles in the journal at all and they will bring pressure to bear o the editors based on their beliefs is abhorent.
Worse yet is the fact that they have blatantly attempted to pervert the impact factor rating of a journal to achieve that end. I’m not sure anyone here understands just how serious that is. The impact factor is supposed to be a natural rating base don relevance. This person has planned the equivalent of a Google bomb to subvert the rating.
Once again I have to ask, if this were Exxon rather than AGW proponents, would the reaction be the same? I can honestly say that mine would be.
Let’s imagine that, after the Mann Hockey stick debacle, Exxon scientists had concluded that the journals that Mann and co had published in had been taken over by AGW proponents because of the flaws in Mann’s papers on the subject. And let’s imagine we then found out that the had, thorugh their organisation, brought pressure to bear ion the editors of those journals not to publish pro-AGW articles, and had encouraged other scientists not to cite articles published therein.
Are you honestly saying that if this were revealed you’d all still be saying that’s fine and that it doesn’t affect the quality of the science at all?:dubious:
And you people honestly see no problem with an organisation secretly deciding that a journal is shoddy, has been “taken over” by people who disagree with them and then setting about to secretly bring down its impact rating and bring pressure to bear on its editors base don that assumption?
All I can say is that I find it impossible to believe that your reaction would be the if the organisation were named “Exxon” rather than “Hadley CRU”, ad the people who had has allegedly taken over were AGW proponents rather than skeptics.
But hey, can’t read minds. Maybe you really would be just fine with that. Which I find even more disturbing. No matter how you look at such behaviour, it is completely antithetical to science. Indeed it makes science completely impossible. Even if you think it’s justified, it’s still completely incompatible with the practice of science.
If a journal is not properly scrupulous about peer review and consequently is prone to publishing flawed articles, particularly ones promoting a particular ideology, then the journal is an unreliable source, and it does not deserve the credibility generally attributed to peer-reviewed publications.
In such a case, scientists will start to avoid the journal in question and will not publish in it or cite publications in it, because they think its credibility is suspect. They will also pressure the journal editors to tighten up their standards to restore the journal’s credibility.
I don’t see why any of that should be automatically considered unscientific or abhorrent.
Admittedly, we don’t know the full story of the Hadley scientists’ objections to Climate Research, and more details may change the picture. But AFAICT, there is ample evidence indicating, so far, that what the scientists were boycotting was not the publication of climate-skeptic viewpoints per se but rather the publication of bad science to support climate-skeptic viewpoints.
These “secrecy” allegations are apparently all in your head. One of the quoted scientists said that he was emailing the journal directly to tell them he was boycotting them. Another said that they should encourage their colleagues in the climate research community to boycott the journal. Hello, the climate research community comprises thousands of practicing scientists—not exactly a situation favorable to secret communications! For mercy’s sake, the complaints of climate scientists about Climate Research, including information on the resignations of editors and the hazards to the journal’s reputation or “impact rating”, were being discussed publicly as far back as 2003.
This talk of “secrecy” appears to be merely making things up to bolster the illusion of a sinister clandestine conspiracy by a particular “organisation” to nefariously sabotage a minority scientific viewpoint. That simply doesn’t reflect the available facts. Even somebody like me, who as I noted earlier knew nothing about Climate Research when I started posting to this thread, had no trouble finding publicly available information about the history of these complaints and criticisms when I took the trouble to look for it.
Once again I have to ask, if this were Exxon rather than AGW proponents, would the reaction be the same? I can honestly say that mine would be.
Let’s imagine that, after the Mann Hockey stick debacle, Exxon scientists had concluded that the journals that Mann and co had published in had been taken over by AGW proponents because of the flaws in Mann’s papers on the subject. And let’s imagine we then found out that the had, through their organisation, brought pressure to bear ion the editors of those journals not to publish pro-AGW articles, and had encouraged other scientists not to cite articles published therein.
Are you honestly saying that if this were revealed you’d all still be saying that’s fine and that it doesn’t affect the quality of the science at all?:dubious: