Bullied by the warmists

It really does beggar belief. Climate science reduced to the level of playground bullies, with journal editors feeling they have to resign for publishing a paper which the “consensus boys” failed to exclude by their cosy pal-review process.

But not only that, we now read in an article on Daily Climate by Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter Gleick, the following astonishing statement:

Kevin Trenberth received a personal note of apology from both the editor-in-chief and the publisher of Remote Sensing. Wagner took this unusual and admirable step after becoming aware of the paper’s serious flaws. (source)

So because a warmist scientist considers the paper has flaws, a journal editor chooses to resign and apologise. Let’s turn the situation around for a moment: I would assume that Spencer and many other sceptical scientists would have a few issues with some of the consensus boys’ papers too, but I don’t see any editors rushing to resign because of that, do you? No, of course not.

Note that this has nothing to do with the worth of the scientific claims in the paper itself – this is all about procedure, and the integrity of the scientific process. The proper steps would be for Trenberth et al to rebut Spencer’s claims in a further, peer-reviewed, paper, or alternatively seek a retraction from the journal. Neither of these things has happened. A few comments on a blog is enough now – provided you’re on the warmist side.

Such is the power and influence wielded by the alarmist coterie, and the almost total politicisation of climate science, that almost without lifting a finger, a journal can be intimidated into providing a grovelling apology for daring to publish a paper which challenges the consensus. Truly jaw-dropping.

One has to ask, why are they so afraid? Is their CO2 driven construction so fragile that it cannot withstand a paper which, according to the alarmists, is total rubbish anyway? Why must they shut down scientific discourse, if the sceptics case is so weak, rather than let it be given the public ridicule it so obviously deserves? You can draw your own conclusions – I have mine.

There is much, much more – Roger Pielke Sr takes the whole thing apart here – read it all.

However, Maurizio Morabito, commenting on Pielke Jr’s blog, provides a cheering conclusion to the ridiculous extremes we have now reached:

“If “post-publication discussions of a scientific paper in the media or on blogs” can now “be used as the basis for subsequently re-evaluating the scientific merit of that paper within the scientific peer review process”, it just means that blogs and the media are now to be considered on-par with peer-review as ways to evaluate the scientific merit of a paper.

In other words, all people that support Wagner’s resignation are telling the world that the old complaint against skeptics “your article hasn’t been subjected to peer-review!” is not valid any longer. A blog or an interview will suffice.

Methinks only Gavin could come up with such a spectacular own goal.”

Where's the process?

Is this a new low? The death of scientific integrity and the scientific process, happening right before our eyes. A journal editor resigns because he dared to publish a sceptical paper (Spencer & Braswell 2011 – see here), which challenged the “consensus”. Why did he resign? Because internet discussion sites said the paper should not have been published. His resignation statement is astonishing:

Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.

After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.

“Various internet discussion fora”? Is this guy for real? So a few trolls on warmist sites, such as RealClimate and Climate Progress, convinced the editor of a peer-review journal to step down because he published a paper which challenged the consensus? “I agree with the critics of the paper”? Is that how peer review works? Editor of journal decides that the trolls are right and that’s that? No, if there were problems with the paper, they should be refuted by further peer-reviewed papers, not by the whim of one editor who chooses to fall on his sword to make a point.

And this:

In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. (source – PDF)

As Roy Spencer points out in his response to this bizarre sequence of events:

But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.

If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication. Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused. I can see no other explanation for an editor resigning in such a situation. (source)

I would like to see more evidence for the link to the IPCC that Spencer claims, although it is well known that there are “gatekeepers” at the main climate journals to make sure that anything that challenges the consensus is filtered out – clearly the system failed here. But this shows the extent of the corruption of the peer-review process, that an editor resigns (possibly under some external pressure to do so) rather than following the proper procedure for challenging or rebutting a scientific paper.

At this point it’s Warmists 1, Sceptics 0. Another sad day for the integrity of science.

UPDATE: Roger Pielke Sr responds to the story here  (with links to crowing articles at the BBC and Guardian), but makes the same point as above:

“The place to refute a published paper is in peer-reviewed papers, not in blogs (or the media). If the paper is not robust, it appropriately should be responded to by paper, not by the resignation of the Editor. In my view, he made a poor decision which has further damaged the scientific process of vetting new research results.”