Don't you think that there is something wrong with the peer review process.?

Question

Phil Jones is one the people responsible in putting out the world wide temperature data sets. A couple of years ago, there was a paper submitted to a journal that was critical of his work over the temperatures in Siberia. Phil Jones was one of the peer reviewers. Naturally he rejected this criticism and the paper was never published.

"Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL."

Full story here

http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/21/climategatekeeping-siberia/

A couple of years later there was a paper submitted by one his climate friends, Gavin Schmitt, that supported one of his conclusions. Again Jones was a peer reviewer, and accepted Schmitt's conclusions and the paper was published. Full story here

http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/22/climategatekeeping-schmidt-2009/

Shouldn't a peer reviewer be someone who is emotioanlly unattached to the subject matter? Considering that these were papers that rejected/supported Jone's work respectively, is it surprising to find Jone's recommendation for these papers? What does it say for the integrity of these journals that they would have Jones as a reviewer?

Answer 1

It stinks - any one can see that.



I suppose the warmists will claim that this is normal. Maybe in climate science it is!



""Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. *Went to town in both reviews*, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised"



~ sounds like fair and dispassionate peer review to me.

Answer 2

The IPCC made a mistake with one specific prediction out of hundreds of papers they reviewed. i'm afraid, until eventually we've sentient, wakeful, self-conscious machines, human beings will make errors. Now, you could the two chalk it as much as a mistake, or gown it up as 'planned lies' and 'failure of the peer evaluation device'. i think of the latter determination sounds somewhat hysterical.

Answer 3

This is a common fallacy about the peer review process. Scientific studies have become advanced to the point that it often requires specialists in a specific sub-discipline of an overall discipline to properly disseminate the manuscript. A climatologist will most likely specialize in a certain area and maintain a advanced-general knowledge of the current knowledge of the rest of the discipline.



For example, I'm in plant physiology, tree physiology specifically. Even more specifically I study the way trees develop and utilize sapwood for water storage and transport. While I have an in depth knowledge of plant hormone responses (another facet of plant physiology) I would in no way be able to properly review a paper written investigating plant hormone biochemistry and molecular biology because it is not possible to keep up with the research and literature in my field as well as another distant and tangentially related field withing my discipline. I would assume there are similar divisions among the myriad divisions of climate science.



However, it is also important to realize that many journals focusing on the sub-divisions within disciplines are prone to a clique mentality and the focus and reporting of research is directed and controlled to some degree by those who hold positions as editors, senior reviewers and participants on grant review boards.

Answer 4

The problem comes when you mix up science with politics and only fund if a certain conclusion is found. Then you get political hacks like Jones and Mann that cook the books and rig peer review. They were clearly, in their own words, pushing an agenda. People who got it wrong should be held to account and discredited. Science should be about getting it factually correct. About the only way you will get them to not be emotionally invested is to stop rewarding only alarmists with grants and the running of organizations like the CRU. How much would there funding have been if they said it doesn't seem to be a significant problem? That isn't practical. Perhaps they need some sort of police force of honest scientists whose pay depends on debunking them to act as arbiters that have the power to deny them funding. That would be the normal political opposition in a sane world since they are clearly political and not scientific in how they operate.

Answer 5

Conflict of interest.



Even if it were a 100% legitimate discovery process, you'd still be confronted with the conflict of interest.



I'm not familiar with this story but if it's true, I can't see anyone believing it's a good idea for a reviewer to have a financial/professional stake in the outcome.



Isn't this the same problem we're having w/ the IPCC's current financial portfolio?



In the private sector, these would be actionable crimes -- jail time.



Lets at least be consistent on the process. We can disagree on the science, but there should be no wiggle room when dealing with the process.

Answer 6

That is why some of us have a real problem with certain peer reviewed articles based on the subject. The climategate e-mails doesn't help them at all and the AGW supporters don't see anything wrong with black balling any article that doesn't support them.

Answer 7

Unfortunately peer review is a religious system that was invented by the Catholic church as part of the pogrom that developed into the first the crusades and later the inquisition. It became so much of problem that Galileo was arrested because he scientifically proved the earth orbited the sun and the moon orbited the earth. He was imprisoned because he had released this information where anybody could read it without having submitted it to the vatican for peer review so they could correct his mistaken theology before the corrected material could be released.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Answer 8

Peer review should be made by the opposing side to determine faults in the theory

I guess by avoiding proper peer review then its an easy way to have your work accepted by the media and then the grants will come...



Its such a scam its disgusting and ba$£$"(ising climate science!

Answer 9

the peer review process is a farce and has been for a very long time, in almost all branches of science. But in the case of global warming, it's deadly serious, because these evil people are trying to impose global communism via outlawing carbon dioxide, while establishing a huge income stream (carbon taxes) to fund their tyranny.. It's adding insult to injury. They're trying to impose communistic slavery upon the world, while taxing us to finance their tyranny at the same time. We must revolt against the communists now while we still can.

Answer 10

NATURE (the world's leading science magazine), Dec 3:



The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.



This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.



(The Nature editorial goes on to say that the papers did in fact appear. So what's your point? Isn't that an example of the system working?)



Richie: when there is an opposing side, someone from that side does get involved in the review process, and so it should be. (Been there, done that, though not in this field). But wait a minute, aren't you *complaining* that in this case someone who disagreed with the paper was involved in reviewing it?



Not even a full-time climate denialist can have it both ways.

Answer 11

I am not familiar with the citations you give but I can tell you that peer review has always been a messy process-how could it be otherwise? But the process in general works well as many high quality papers are written every year, and most of the junk gets sifted out during the review process.

Answer 12

No.



If a scientist has done research on a subject, it only makes sense for him to be a reviewer on a paper about the same subject. He's the best-equipped person to evaluate that study. If the study in question has a valid point, a good peer-reviewer will allow the paper to be published even if it disagrees with his prior conclusions.



The thing is, you're assuming Jones couldn't put his ego aside and objectively assess the papers in question. But that's precisely the job of a scientist.



Besides which, if the process does fail as you suggest, the author can just go to another journal which would likely use different peer-reviewers. If the study is sound, it will get published. Heck even if it's not sound there's a decent chance it will get published somewhere, as happens all the time.



Peer-review certainly isn't perfect, nor it it sufficient in weeding out all the bad papers. But it is necessary. What other criteria would you use? Publication on Watts' blog? You need experts reviewing a paper to determine if it's scientifically sound, and it makes perfect sense to have a person who's published on the topic reviewing another study on the same topic.



Deniers just hate peer-review because 99+% of peer-reviewed papers support AGW. But guys like Spencer and Lindzen are still able to pass peer-review because they do pretty good science. Attacking peer-review in general is just a sign of desperation.

Answer 13

one good answer here and so far has two thumbs down



????



good answer David B