John Christy and David Douglass provide a detailed accounting of how a comment on one of their papers was handled in the peer review process (even more detail here). Their experience, with the gory details revealed by the CRU emails, show in all of its unpleasantness how activist scientists sought to stage-manage climate science from the inside.Their story hits very close to home with me, as I went through a very,very similar process with respect to a comment (PDF) and reply (PDF) on the "shameful article" on hurricanes and global warming that I co-authored in 2005 (PDF). (If my emails ever get hacked you'll see that ugly episode from the inside.;-) That situation had a positive outcome only because at the time I protested efforts to deny us a right to respond in accordance with journal policies and threatened to go public with the improper efforts at stage-management. I am sure that these sort of shenanigans go on in academia more than we'd like to admit, however that does not justify them.
What these episodes reveal is an effort by activist climate scientists to stage-manage the peer review process much like how one might manage a partisan blog for public consumption. The blog management philosophy of Real Climate was described as follows in the CRU emails:
I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use [the RealClimate blog] in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we'll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include.While bloggers are of course free to operate their turf as they see fit, whatever one's views of climate science, climate policy or the Douglass et al. paper, we should all be able to agree that efforts to stage manage the peer review process are not good for science, however they might be justified.
You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont'get to use the RC comments as a megaphone...
11 comments:
Sigh. It makes me tired thinking of all these highly paid individuals plotting instead of thinking or writing.
Again, the machinations just go to show that the current journal review procedures are not all they're cracked up to be. Online publications with comments and dialogue online are the only way to make sure that scientific controversies are fully explored. It is pretty silly, in my view, to think that something this complicated can be clarified with a letter to the editor of the journal followed by one reply by the authors. Back and forth is what makes discussion or dialogue.
As a political theorist by profession it is hard for me to read this sorts of things and not see them as expressing a deep antipathy towards democratic values.
The following quote comes from Karl Popper "The Open Society and its Enemies: Vol II Hegel and Marx" (pp.217-218):
"Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance... Together they constitute what I may term the 'public character of scientific method'. First, there is
something approaching free criticism. A scientist may offer his theory with the full conviction that it is unassailable. But this
does not necessarily impress his fellow-scientists ; rather it challenges them. For they know that the scientific attitude means criticizing everything, and they are little deterred even by authorities. Secondly, scientists try to avoid talking at
cross-purposes. (I may remind the reader that I am speaking of the natural sciences, but a part of modern economics may be included.) They try very seriously to speak one and the same language, even if they use different mother tongues. In the natural sciences this is achieved by recognizing experience as the impartial arbiter of their controversies. When speaking of 'experience' I have in mind experience of a 'public' character, like observations, and experiments, as opposed to experience in the sense of more 'private' aesthetic or religious experience; and
an experience is 'public' if everybody who takes the trouble can repeat it. In order to avoid speaking at cross-purposes, scientists
try to express their theories in such a form that they can be tested, i.e. refuted (or otherwise confirmed) by such experience.
"This is what constitutes scientific objectivity. Everyone who has learned the technique of understanding and testing scientific theories can repeat the experiment and judge for himself. In spite of this, there will always be some who come to judgements which are partial, or even cranky. This cannot be helped, and it does not seriously disturb the working of the various social institutions which have been designed to further scientific objectivity and impartiality; for instance the laboratories, the scientific periodicals, the congresses. This aspect of scientific method shows what can be achieved by institutions designed to make public control possible, and by the open expression of public opinion, even if this is limited to a circle of specialists. Only
political power when it is used to suppress free criticism, or when it fails to protect it, can impair the functioning of these institutions, on which all progress, scientific, technological, and political, ultimately depends."
I realy believe it is the introduction of the expressly political into this process which is udermining it. But it isn't merely because it is political, but because it is a variety of the political hostile to the ideals of free inquiry in the first place. It is hard to believe in democratic ideals of free inquiry and speech and also support the turning of the "laboratories, the scientific periodicals, the congresses" into instruments of intellectual repression.
But the science is settled. It's all been peer-reviewed! Peer review, peer review, peer review. It's the good science seal of approval. It means really, reaaly smart people have looked at the research findings and proved them to be correct or something.
We common riffraff types can't be expected to think about complicated stuff like science. We should defer to the peer review seal of approval and do whatever the experts tell us.
Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die. We must be mindful of our place and defer to our betters -- those keepers of the peer review seal of approval.
Or as someone recently described RealClimate: it's just "one straw man and red herring after another followed by 350 posts of back-slapping and high-fives"
(If my emails ever get hacked you'll see that ugly episode from the inside.;-)
Man, don't tease us.
I just wish they hadn't chosen such a highly partisan place to publish their article. It's now tainted by association with all the other half-true, half-made-up, paranoid ravings.
No amount of contradictory data seems to convince the team that their theory is too simplistic. It's always hugely dispiriting to see such institutionalized dogma among the intelligencia, yet it's so incredibly common.
Can this all happen without ANY repercussion??
jgedes,
As opposed to the "fake, but accurate" news media like CBS or NY Times? How 'bout the "leg-tinglers" at MSNBC?
"I just wish they hadn't chosen such a highly partisan place to publish their article. It's now tainted by association with all the other half-true, half-made-up, paranoid ravings."
Compared to what? Chavez in Copenhagen? ;-)
Stan
I meant that they could have chosen a blog with more scientific kudos and less political hate-mongering. There are plenty to choose from.
On media - Yes but it works both ways: You remember surely the fake linking of US Anthrax attacks to Saddam on ABC?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/
The media common denominator is in scaring the public with bogeymen. Some people are therefore skeptical of all media while others just align their prejudices, either from the left or right.
TIM
I spy a strawman argument :) It's odd for Chavez to make a stand about fossil fuels though - with most of the worlds heavy oil being located in the Orinoco. You'd think he'd be a skeptic.
No, not a strawman. Just gently attacking the notion that ideas can be "tainted" by their surroundings, be that surrounding an ideologically minded journal/blog, or a rostrum peopled with a lunatic South American dictator. ;-)
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