Tuesday 1 December 2009

#Climategate - the death of peer review?

Possibly the most disturbing thing to come out of Climategate is the damage that has been done to the reputation of the peer review process.

As far as I can tell, they have done the following:

  1. Forced editors out of journals for allowing skeptical science to be published.
  2. Removed journals from the lists of accredited publications.
  3. Stuffed the review process with their cronies and acolytes.

Irrespective of whether the skeptical science (or even the alarmist science) was good or bad, this created an unacceptable bias in the outcomes that were published. And it makes an absolute mockery of alarmists who have smugly claimed that "our science has been through the rigour of peer review, whereas the deniers can't even find someone to publish them", doesn't it?

Can you imagine if all tobacco research had to be peer reviewed by scientists known to be in the pocket of "big tobacco"? Scientists would be up in arms, yet here it's considered somehow OK.

It strikes at the very heart of contemporary science, because if Jones et al could do it this easily over such a highly visible subject, who knows where else the peer review process has been subverted for gain? (Although, to be fair, nowhere else has so much taxpayer money been on the table, so it's probably unlikely that anyone would have had the incentive in any other field of endeavour.)

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bodes well for the old penis extension though?

AntiCitizenOne said...

Perhaps The Large Taxpayer Collider?

bayard said...

I think we are not talking about science any more, AGW is a religion. It's the church v the scientists all over again, only this time the church is winning.

Anonymous said...

Oh no. I really hope that peer review does not die out.

How else will I be able to spot a blog or comment or article by a warmist/lier/crook/scientific charlatan/true believer if what I am reading is not littered with "peer review" "peer review" on every other line.
Damn.

Spartan said...

Don't worry ... the BBC will do an indepth, totally professional and factual investigation into Climategate ...


in your fucking dreams!

Plato said...

But, but Ed Begley thinks that's all that matters!!!!



Or this very amusing fisk of it which also appeared in the WSJ

MrAngryman said...

Global warming is the new home for all those old commie, leftie smash the state, dickheads who never grew up and got a proper job. Its just a convenient excuse to bash 'the system' and as such will be hard to destroy. The bigots who believe this shit will not be convinced by mere foibles such as 'evidence' but wish to return civilisation to a 'idyllic' medieval state of one man and his yurt. Fuckers

Dr Evadne said...

You may want to have some fun with this. I got an e-mail from this lot after I responded to that silly climate change survey from the Science Museum. The e-mail itself is a laugh too.

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-call-with-the-secretary-of-state

bayard said...

Yeah, what was the end result of the Science Museum "survey"?

Frank Davis said...

Tobacco research is just as bad, if not worse. You're not going to get very far against Tobacco Control and the pharma companies trying to publish anything sceptical about the dangers of tobacco, about which 'everybody knows' and the 'debate is over' and has been for a very long time.

If anything, climate 'science' reads from the well-established antismoking playbook, line by line, and lie by lie.

Mitch said...

I see on the idiot box they are still pushing the global warming fairytale harder than ever.
The smell of desperation is a joy to behold.

Anonymous said...

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit/about_the_count.aspx

About the count

In the run-up to the Copenhagen conference we invited Science Museum visitors and web users to respond to the following statement with ‘count me in’ or ‘count me out’:
"I've seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they're serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen."
In the PROVE IT! gallery, 3408 people chose to count in and 626 chose to count out. On the website, 2650 users counted in and 7612 counted out.
More information about the outcome of the count is available in this statement.

[Note: Total In 6,058
Total Out 8,238]

Link from above ("this statement.") in case it does not work:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us/press_and_media/press_releases/2009/12/Prove%20It%20Announcement.aspx

Today (1 December 2009) Professor Chris Rapley CBE, Director of the Science Museum and Professor of Climate Science at UCL said:
“More work needs to be done to convince people of the reality of human-induced climate change and of the urgency with which we must agree an international solution. Public organisations, like the Science Museum, have a responsibility to lay out the evidence and open up public discussion.”

Not heard of climategate then...

Like the Irish, we voted wrong, we must be retrained and vote again. U.N.til we get it Right.

Hurray for Science!

DP

Unknown said...

Peer-review process sucks, big time.

Non-experts are asked to review papers on research over which they have very little knowledge, and rather than them show integrity, and say so, these %&*$ post disingenuous reviews that suck, big time. While papers written by lazy authors/researchers, for example, citing Wikipedia as a source, get through the review process!!!

Have I said the 'scientific' paper review-process sucks big time? Well, it could only be as efficient as the humans that organise it. Scientists: liars, cheats and conmen, but not all!!!