The One-Two Punch of Climate Change on the Great Barrier Reef

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Stephan Lewandowsky Arctic sea ice bucket challenge, with help from John Cook!

Stephan Lewandowsky - Arctic Sea Ice Bucket challenge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdlWHpQqu0I

97 HOURS OF CLIMATE CONSENSUS: JOHN COOK RULES!!!

by Peter Sinclair, Climate Crocks, September 7, 2014

Near photographic likeness of Jason Box is part of the 97 Hours of Consensus, now underway at Skeptical Science. [CLICK ON IT!!!!  http://skepticalscience.com/nsh/#]

Ed Maibach, Über-pollster at George Mason University, has more:

The campaign was inspired, in part, by our research which has shown that less than 12% of American adults are aware of the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change, that people who understand there is a scientific consensus are more likely to support actions to slow climate change, and that simple messages from credible sources can help set the record straight.

http://climatecrocks.com/2014/09/07/97-hours-of-cartoon-climate-consensus-continued/

AND, FROM GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY:

Every hour, for the next 97 hours, a statement by a leading climate scientist - featuring a playful hand-drawn caricature of the scientist - will be published and shared on social media around the world. The "97 Hours of Consensus" campaign was created to communicate the fact that 97% of climate scientists have concluded that humans are causing global warming. The campaign's lead developer -- and the artist who drew caricatures of the 97 climate scientists -- is John Cook, a research fellow in climate communication with the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland, and founder of climate change website Skeptical Science. The campaign was inspired, in part, by our research which has shown that less than 12% of American adults are aware of the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change, that people who understand there is a scientific consensus are more likely to support actions to slow climate change, and that simple messages from credible sources can help set the record straight. You can view the statements and caricatures at http://sks.to/97, and you can contact John Cook at 97hours@skepticalscience.com

Conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts counting down to "sue the pants off" SkepticalScience

[Readers, it is all about this: http://skepticalscience.com/nsh/#]

UPDATE: MUST SEE VIDEO by Peter Sinclair:

And note that Richard Muller's BEST project refuted all of Watts' claims.

by Sou, Hot Whopper, September 6, 2014

Update - see below- Anthony's had second thoughts and has now decided to hedge his bets. Then he had a third thought. Wonder of wonders - so many thoughts in his little head all at the same time, competing for his attention. (An observed trait of conspiracy theorists is that they can hold conflicting ideas simultaneously.)

---

Oh my. Anthony Watts is letting his paranoia (and narcissism) show (archived here). He's noticed something in the sidebar at SkepticalScience.com and has decided that it signals nefarious intent.

Here's the link to the home page at SkepticalScience.com. What Anthony wrote about is in the sidebar on the right. It's time bound, so if you are reading this at a later time it will probably look different. To capture how it looks now, here is a screen grab with my arrow pointing to the SkepticalScience teaser:

If you click on the link on the SkS image, you get to another page.

What can it be? Anthony Watts hasn't a clue (a normal state of affairs), but in true conspiracy theory style, has pretty well decided whatever it can be is "no good." He wrote a headline:

The ‘Skeptical Science’ kidz are up to no good again

In the WUWT article underneath Anthony let his paranoia run rampant, writing:

...All of the silhouettes are greyed out now, but one can rest assured they be filled in with cartoonish caricatures once the countdown clock on the lower right reaches zero.

My guess? John Cook has likely put his failed cartooning talents back to work again. Given the juvenile fascination former cartoonist turned amateur psychologist and numbers bookie for the 97% John Cook has with smearing climate skeptics, this will reveal itself as some sort of interactive “name and shame” application for the top 100 climate skeptics worldwide.

I hope it does, because if so, and if it turns out to be as libelous as I think it will be, it will give a whole bunch of people a reason to sue the pants off that whole team of creepy playtime Nazi cross dressers. Bring it.

Notice how Anthony adds some unsubstantiated statements. SkepticalScience is very proper and neither SkepticalScience nor John Cook gets into muckraking. They don't "smear climate sceptics". They don't need to. Fake sceptics condemn themselves by their own words. And why do you think Anthony doesn't give any examples of his allegations? It's because he can't. SkepticalScience is about reporting the science and showing why denier memes are wrong.

Still, we'll have to wait another day and seven hours or so to see if he's right and if SkepticalScience has changed tack. I'd be very surprised if it has. It's committed to reporting climate science. It doesn't even allow ad homs, let alone defamation.

While we're waiting, perhaps someone will deliver a message to Anthony Watts.

Message to Anthony Watts: Anthony, it's some science deniers who are prone to skating too close to defamation. Not so much people who accept mainstream science.

Update

Anthony Watts has had second thoughts, probably after reading the WUWT comments - or maybe HotWhopper -  and has decided to hedge his bets. He's added some more words to the bottom of his original article:

Of course it could also be a rah-rah application, where each of the silhouettes is a “real climate scientist”, and the popup text message is all about how they “feel” about climate change…like these clowns.

"These clowns" being scientists who were describing how they feel about global warming. Anthony is a tough antihero for whom feelings are a sign of weakness. Except when he's feeling brave but trepidatious and when he doesn't like feeling ignored.

Anthony doesn't want to look like a wimp, so he belatedly back-backtracked and added this further bit of speculation:

Whatever it is, it will likely be the caliber of sort of lowbrow stuff we’ve seen before, like the “designed to be funny but actually horrifying” 10:10 video which blows up children who don’t want to go along with climate change in school.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't any yet. I'll update as they accrue. We've got a few, but none are as paranoid as Anthony's own article. Remember that nobody has seen what the teaser is about yet, so all comments are based on nothing but greyed out shadows of people.

jmichna doesn't have a clue but decides whatever it is, it's bound to be childish.

September 5, 2014, at 10:16 pm
High school antics… sophomoric at that. Ought to be cute.

omnologos has quite an imagination

September 5, 2014, at 10:35 pm
First 100 victims of the climate holocaust?
We should play a guessing game. Winner to be hospitalized as mentally unwell since he or she reasons like Cookie

Nik actually counted all the figures in the image and said:

September 6, 2014, at 12:02 am
There are 99 figures there. I’ll bet they’re going to do something on the 99.99999% scientists believe in agw paper. 

leftturnandre implores Anthony to leave off the conspiracy theories and mudslinging and be daring enough to write about science instead. But it's clear he doesn't want Anthony to go overboard in that regard. He doesn't want WUWT to go as far as writing about real science, because he also thinks that WUWT shouldn't be promoting SkepticalScience.com. Probably he just wants some pseudo-science served up occasionally. SkS is way too sciency for the denier crowd.

September 6, 2014, at 1:06 am
Antony,
I don’t know if it’s wise to do this variation of feeding the trolls. WUWT gets a huge amount of traffic and ranks around 9800 in Alexa. SKS is a mere borderline phenomenon ranking in the 88,000 region. If you feed them with links they may grow. Also articles like these may be counter productively strengthen their adepts in the believe of the demonic character of sceptics. Don’t accept their war. Also maybe recognise that this type of polarisation is just early “stage 1 classification” in the accumulation to genocide.

Take the high ground. Ignore them and stay friendly.

A better alterative is concentrating on the science. Maybe my first blog could be inspiration.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/09/conspiracy-theorist-anthony-watts.html

Humorous comments at link above.

Graham Wayne: On why the bell is tolling for Richard Tol

Arson Attack on Ivory Towers

by Graham Wayne, "Small Epiphanies," June 4, 2014

Academic in-fighting is hardly the stuff of front-page news, yet the UK’s Times newspaper ran a front page story about a rejected paper. Now another journal has accepted a paper already turned down three times elsewhere…

Does the rejection of a scientist’s paper by a peer-reviewed journal constitute front page news, as featured in the UK’s Times under the splenetic title “Scientists In Cover-Up Of ‘Damaging’ Climate View”?

As the UK’s Guardian reported, the paper was turned down by prestigious journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) not because it was part of some lurid conspiracy, but because the paper wasn’t very good. ERL were sufficiently incensed by the accusations to take an unusual step, and publish in full the peer-reviewers comments.

To his credit the author, respected meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson, also debunked the claim stating that “I do not believe there is any systematic “cover up” of scientific evidence on climate change or that academics’ work is being 'deliberately suppressed,' as The Times front page suggests.”

So what’s going on here?

Actually, it’s dirty politics. The story was yet another attempt by ideologues to undermine climate science, this time at the behest of secretive lobby group GWPF – the UK’s mini-me version of the Heartland Institute. Bengtsson had recently joined the GWPF executive. After only two weeks he resigned, claiming to have been subjected to intolerable pressure. The GWPF spun the story as Galileo-style persecution instead of political blundering by a naïve scientist, and concocted the cover-up story for The Times in order to shore up their specious claim – which The Times duly published, even though it wasn’t true.

Now there’s a new story brewing, which on the face of it should be equally arcane and abstruse but is likely to create more headlines for all the wrong reasons. A paper authored by Sussex University’s economics professor Richard Tol will be published shortly in the journal Energy Policy. (Tol is also on the GWPF’s ‘Academic Advisory Council,’ by the way.)

Tol’s submission seeks to show that the most downloaded paper in over 80 Institute of Physics journals, Cook et al. 2013 (and the winner of the ERL board’s award for the best paper of the year), is seriously flawed. Cook et al.'s paper confirms (yet again) the 97% consensus among climate scientists who back the theory of anthropogenic climate change.

“Energy Policy is an international peer-reviewed journal addressing the policy implications of energy supply and use from their economic, social, planning and environmental aspects…” insists the journal. Why would they publish a paper so clearly outside their expertise? More curious is that before Energy Policy agreed to publish it, ERL and several other journals rejected previous drafts. The reasons for the rejection were as copious as they were blunt. In an ERL Board Members Report discussing the rejection, they say:

 “[Tol’s submission] raises a number of issues with the recent study by Cook et al. It is written in a rather opinionated style, seen, e.g., in the entire introductory section making political points, and in off-hand remarks like labelling Skeptical Science a “polemic blog” or in sweeping generalisations like the paper “may strengthen the belief that all is not well in climate research.” It reads more like a blog post than a scientific comment.

Perhaps more damning is their dismissal of his paper’s merit (emphasis added):

I do not see that the submission has identified any clear errors in the Cook et al. paper that would call its conclusions into question – in fact [Tol] agrees that the consensus documented by Cook et al. exists.

Given the previous rejections, you might wonder why Energy Policy is now going to publish it. We can only wait to see in what form the paper appears, and if Tol really has made any significant alterations that improve the paper. Indeed, the quality of his work has been subject to considerable criticism. Bob Ward at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, environmental economist Frank Ackerman, and Professor Andrew Gelman, director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, writing in the Washington Post, have all found numerous errors in Tol’s previous work. (Tol has not taken kindly to the criticism, making a number of personal attacks on his critics, provoking 41 academics to sign a joint statement (PDF) calling for Tol to act in a more professional manner.)

Coincidentally, Tol was called by skeptical [global warming denying shills] Republicans to testify before the US House of Representatives last week. One might infer there is a political agenda at work here, in support of the constant attempts by ideologues to promote the false notion there is a scientific debate about the cause and effect of climate change.

Why is the consensus important? Why do demagogues constantly attack the 97% figure and manufacture dissent? It is because they know, as both fossil fuel interests (e.g., American Petroleum Institute (PDF)) and a political advisor to a Republican president have suggested, when the public believe that most scientists support a theory, they are much more likely to accept it.

The so-called skeptics cannot bring science to bear in support of their views. After the latest hearing (at which Tol testified there was a consensus), the Republicans could only misrepresent the facts. “The President and others often claim that 97 percent of scientists believe that global warming is primarily driven by human activity.  However, the study they cite has been debunked," they claim in a press release. Debunked by who, exactly? The GOP? The Koch brothers? Not Richard Tol, that’s for sure.

Climate scientists are not fooled by the manufactured doubt. The public, however, can be deceived, which is why Cook et al. is so valuable to the public discourse, and such anathema to those whose agenda serves vested interests like the fossil fuel industry. And since Richard Tol’s own work confirmed the consensus, one wonders what purpose his new paper serves except to obfuscate and inflame, to pour petrol on a fire any responsible scientist should be helping to extinguish.

http://gpwayne.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/arson-attack-on-ivory-towers/

Richard Tol's Attack On 97% Climate Change Consensus Study Has 'Critical Errors'

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog, May 30, 2014

One of the most consistent of all the attacks from climate science sceptics and deniers is the one which tries to convince the public that expert scientists are divided on the causes of climate change.

Those attacks have come from ideologically motivated think tanks and the fossil fuel industry, often working together. Only last week, the Wall Street Journal published a polemic to try and mislead the public that a consensus does not exist.

In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute was developing a campaign with the explicit aim of convincing the public that “uncertainties” existed in the science of climate change and its causes.

In 2002, Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote that: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.”

Several studies have surveyed the views of climate science experts or the scientific literature and have come to the same conclusions — the number of studies and the number of scientists who reject the fact that humans are causing climate change remains vanishingly small.

The latest and most high profile study to survey the scientific literature was led by John Cook, of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and founder of the Skeptical Science website, and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in May 2013.

Cook et al. analyzed close to 12,000 global warming studies from 1991 to 2011 to see how many accepted or rejected the fact that human activities are causing climate change. The researchers also asked scientists themselves to look at their own papers and confirm whether they endorsed the scientific consensus.

The central finding, reported widely and even tweeted by Barack Obama’s campaign team, was that 97% of the scientific papers on climate change found that humans were causing it.

Since that study was published, Professor Richard Tol, an economist from the University of Sussex, has been planning to attack Cook’s paper. 

Tol is advisor to the UK climate sceptic group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by Lord Nigel Lawson, who was treasurer to former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Tol is also an IPCC lead author but withdrew from the team writing the Summary for Policymakers, claiming the report was “too alarmist.”

Tol accepts that humans cause climate change, but his work consistently claims that economic impacts will be small and won’t turn negative until the back end of this century. 

This week, the chairman of the Republican-led US House of Representatives science committee Lamar Smith claimed that Cook’s study had been “debunked” and that the “science is not settled.”

Professor Tol gave testimony to the committee, and when he was asked about the 97% figure, he told the hearing: 

“The 97% estimate is bandied about by almost everybody. I had a close look at what this study really did, and as far as I can see the study just crumbles when you touch it. None of the statements in the papers is supported by any data that is actually in the papers. It is pretty clear that most of the science agrees that climate change is real and most likely human made, but this 97% is essentially pulled from thin air – it’s not based on any credible research whatsoever.”

Sometime in the coming days, DeSmogBlog understands the journal Energy Policy will publish a paper that claims to debunk Cook et al.’s work. The research will inevitably be devoured by conservative media. The author is Richard Tol. 

DeSmogBlog has found the paper was rejected by three journals and heavily criticized by reviewers who saw earlier drafts, who said it had identified “no serious flaws” in the Cook paper, and made some claims that were “not supported by the author’s analyses.”

Cook has told DeSmogBlog that he and his colleagues have found numerous errors [in Tol's final accepted manuscript to Energy Policy].

However, this is unlikely to matter to the world’s conservative media. 

Tol’s attack plan

In June 2013, the month after the Cook et al. study was published, Tol commented on a blog that he had “three choices” open to him as a response. 

He wrote these were to either “shut up,” or write a “destructive comment” or a “constructive comment.” He wrote that he would opt to make a “destructive comment.”

Tol had also submitted a response to Cook et al. to Environmental Research Letters — the same journal where Cook’s original paper was published.

Unusually, Tol published the anonymous comments from the academics who were asked to review his paper.

One reviewer wrote: “I do not see that the submission has identified any clear errors in the Cook et al. paper that would call its conclusions into question – in fact he agrees that the consensus documented by Cook et al. exists.”

Another reviewer comment said Tol’s paper “provides no reason to question the main conclusions of Cook et al.” 

The comment added: “[Tol] merely provides his opinions on where he would have conducted this survey differently and in his view better – and he is free to do just that. But he has not identified serious methodological flaws in Cook et al. that would justify the publication of a Comment.”

In August, Tol wrote to the University of Queensland’s vice-chancellor Professor Peter Hoj to complain about what he claimed were errors in Cook’s methodology.

Tol wanted data that would associate the members of Cook’s team to the scientific papers they had looked at. He wrote that he wanted to find out if the ratings might have been impacted by “fatigue.”

This was the same argument he had made in the first draft of his own paper to Environmental Research Letters (ERL).  One reviewer wrote in response to the “fatigue” hypothesis:

Tol presents no evidence that this is a large problem that would significantly alter the results, though, to the contrary – the numbers he presents suggest it is a small problem that would not significantly alter the conclusion of an overwhelming consensus. 

The University of Queensland released a statement responding to claims that it was trying to block the release of important data connected to Cook’s research.  The university said: 

All data relating to the “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature” paper that are of any scientific value were published on the website Skepticalscience.com in 2013.

Only information that might be used to identify the individual research participants was withheld.

In September 2013, Tol took to Twitter to promote an article written by climate science denialist Lord Christopher Monckton.

In the article, Monckton went on a name-calling spree, describing the Cook et al. authoring team among other things as “zit-faces,” “tiddlers” and “intellectual minnows.”

Tol has published the first 7 drafts of his paper on his blog. His paper was rejected twice by Environmental Research Letters and was also rejected by two other journals for being “out of scope” before it was finally accepted by the journal Energy Policy.

Tol has also created a slideshow based on his Energy Policy paper where he discusses his claims, despite the fact the paper is not yet published.

In one instance, Tol says he reanalyzed the data in the Cook et al. paper and found the consensus figure dropped from 97% to 91%.

Whether or not Tol has addressed the wide-ranging criticisms of his earlier work remains to be seen.

Cook told DeSmogBlog that a response to Tol’s paper would be published in the same issue of Energy Policy and would document “a number of critical errors.” He said:

Our finding of 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in relevant climate papers was based on the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate papers yet to be conducted. Our result is consistent with previous studies, using different methods, which have independently found 97% agreement amongst climate scientists.

I have been invited by the journal to submit a reply to Professor Tol’s paper, to be published in the same issue. Our reply will document a number of critical errors in Professor Tol's paper and will be available once his paper has been published.

Link: http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/05/30/richard-tol-s-attack-97-cent-climate-change-consensus-study-has-critical-errors

Dana Nuccitelli: Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists

Contrarian papers tend to be rebutted quickly in peer-reviewed literature, but receive disproportionate media attention

by Dana Nuccitelli, "Climate Consensus - The 97%," The Guardian, April 11, 2014

Both the quality of mainstream and contrarian climate research and their media coverage have been unbalanced, but in different directions. Photograph: www.alamy.com

A new paper has been published in the journal Cosmopolis entitled "Review of the consensus and asymmetric quality of research on human-induced climate change." The paper was authored by John Abraham, myself, and our colleagues John Cook, John Fasullo, Peter Jacobs, and Scott Mandia. Each of the authors has experience in publishing peer-reviewed responses to flawed contrarian papers.

Despite the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warmingsupported by peer-reviewed research, expert opinion, the IPCC reports, and National Academies of Science and other scientific organizations from around the world, a large segment of the population remains unconvinced on the issue. A new commentary by Edward Maibach, Teresa Myers and Anthony Leiserowitz in Earth's Future notes that most people don't know there is a scientific consensus about human-caused climate change, which undermines public engagement on the subject.

This 'consensus gap' is in large part due the media giving disproportionate coverage to climate contrarians. In our paper, we sought to evaluate whether that disproportionate media coverage was justified by examining how well contrarian hypotheses have withstood scientific scrutiny and the test of time. The short answer is, not well.

Low climate sensitivity papers by Lindzen and Spencer (open circles) and peer-reviewed rebuttals (closed circles). Created by John Garrett of Wildomar, CA.

The first contrarian argument examined in our paper was the claim that the Earth is not warming. This argument was particularly popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when John Christy and Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville published an analysis of satellite data that seemed to indicate the lower atmosphere was cooling. This appeared to contradict surface temperature measurements from thousands of thermometers around the world, which when combined together, indicated substantial global warming. Contrarians were certain that the thermometers were wrong, the satellites were right, and we didn't have to worry about global warming.

However, it turns out that satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures are very tricky. The satellites are positioned above the atmosphere that they're trying to measure, and have to peer through many different atmospheric layers. Their orbits also drift, and satellites have limited lifespans, forcing scientists to splice together measurements from different instruments.

Gradually, various problems with the satellite temperature measurements were identified, some by the Huntsville group, and several by other groups. Corrections were made to the record, and before long the satellite record showed the warming of the lower atmosphere happening at a similar rate to that estimated from the thermometers around the globe.

Evolution of lower tropospheric temperature trends from satellite observations.

Two decades later, additional possible biases are still being identified in the satellite temperature record. Nevertheless, contrarians continue that the lower atmosphere isn't warming as fast as it should be, or that the surface thermometer measurements are biased hot (recent research has shown they actually have a cool bias). However, Christy and Spencer's claim that the planet isn't warming did not withstand scientific scrutiny or the test of time.

The second contrarian argument we investigated involved the claim that the global climate is not very sensitive to the increased greenhouse effect because the planet has some sort of natural climate response that will offset global warming. One of the first such arguments in the peer-reviewed literature was the 'infrared iris' hypothesis from contrarian darling Richard Lindzen.

The premise of Lindzen's hypothesis was that as the climate warms, the area in the atmosphere covered by high cirrus clouds will contract to allow more heat to escape into outer space, similar to the iris in a human eye contracting to allow less light to pass through the pupil in a brightly lit environment. However, within a year of Lindzen's iris hypothesis paper being published, four scientific groups had published their own studies finding significant flaws in his methods and assumptions, shown in dark blue in the first graphic above.

Several more critiques were published in the ensuing years failing to find evidence supporting the iris concept (red in the first graphic), showing that while the scientific community took this new hypothesis seriously, it simply failed to withstand scientific scrutiny. Although this is the case for most of Lindzen's arguments, he continues to be among the most highly sought contrarians by journalists and policymakers who try to create the perception of significant disagreement amongst climate science experts.

Roy Spencer and his colleague Danny Braswell have similarly published papers arguing that the climate is not as sensitive to the increased greenhouse effect as most climate scientists believe and most of the available evidence indicates. A paper they published in 2008 used a very simple climate model to make this argument, but subsequent research showed that their model was actually too simple, and failed to accurately represent how the global climate operates (green in the first graphic).

Spencer and Lindzen published several other papers making similar arguments in subsequent years, but these again failed to withstand scientific scrutiny (orange, black, and light blue in the first graphic). Various other scientific groups pointed out several flaws in the methods and assumptions in each of their publications, and in fact one editor resigned because he felt his journal had failed its task of conducting rigorous peer-review in publishing a fundamentally flawed 2011 Spencer and Braswell paper (black in the first graphic).

To contrast, human-caused global warming is based on solid fundamental physics that we've understood for over a century. In contrast to the relatively few studies mentioned here, thousands of studies have scrutinized and reaffirmed the basic physics that underlies the theory. It has withstood the test of time.

While there are still some areas of climate science undergoing serious research, like how much we're influencing changes in various types of extreme weather, the central tenets of human-caused global warming are solidly established. While some challenges have been advanced in the scientific literature, these challenges have been found to be incorrect.

In addition to the failure of their alternative hypotheses to withstand scientific scrutiny, research has shown that contrarian scientists have less expertise and fewer publications than mainstream climate scientists, and that as climate expertise increases, so does acceptance of human-caused global warming.

This then raises the question as to why contrarians are given disproportionate attention by the media and policymakers. They represent a small minority of experts with fringe views that have failed to convince the rest scientific community, simply because their ideas haven't withstood scientific scrutiny. On the other side we have human-caused global warming, supported by 97% of peer-reviewed research, expert opinion, fundamental physics, and having withstood the test of time. The fact that these two groups are treated as being on equal scientific footing and the issue continues to be 'debated' in the media has resulted in a misinformed public, and that's a problem.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/apr/11/climate-change-research-quality-imbalance

A Conspiracy And Dunces? Journal Frontiers Tosses Authors Under Bus

by Greg Laden, "Greg Laden's Blog," Science blogs, April 7, 2014

Recently, the OpenAccess journal Frontiers retracted a paper written by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriot Hubble called “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation.” The paper discussed conspiracist ideation as implicated in the rejection of scientific work …

A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and the rejection of other scientic propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, in press; LOG12 from here on). This article analyzes the response of the climate blogosphere to the publication of LOG12. We identify and trace the hypotheses that emerged in response to LOG12 and that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions. Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking. For example, whereas hypotheses were initially narrowly focused on LOG12, some ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors of LOG12, such as
university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. The overall pattern of the blogosphere’s response to LOG12 illustrates the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science, although alternative scholarly interpretations may be advanced in the future.

Professor of Psychology Stephan Lewandowsky.

Since the retraction it has become clear to me that the journal Frontiers has acted inappropriately. One could argue that the journal has been unethical or possibly libelous and left itself open to very legitimate civil action, but I’m not a lawyer. More importantly for the academic community, Frontiers has demonstrated itself to be dangerous. Academics who publish with this journal in any area where there exists, or could emerge, a community of science denialists or other anti-academic activists risk having their hard work ruined (by retraction) and, astonishingly, risk being accused by the journal itself of unethical behavior that they did not commit. For these reasons, I urge members of the academic community to pressure Frontiers to change their policies and issue appropriate apologies or other remediation. Academics considering submitting material toFrontiers should consider not doing so.

Here are the details.

As stated, “Recursive Fury” paper was retracted by the journal in association with this statement:

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.

According to the authors, this statement was the outcome of negotiations between them and Frontiers and was part of a legal agreement. The authors tell us that they did not agree with the decision, and were disappointed with it. The Australian Psychological Society and other organizations, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists shared their disappointment with Frontiers’ decision with the authors. Other than that, the authors have had very little to say publicly until now (See: Revisiting a Retraction by Stephan Lewandowsky). In fact, Lewandowsky has continued to serve as a volunteer co-editor for an upcoming issue of the journal, and continues peer reviewing work for them. Furthermore, Lewandowsky and as far as I can tell the other authors have not supported any particular action regarding this screw-up by Frontiers, opting, rather, to let things play out for a period of time.

Then, Frontiers got weird.

The journal released a second, longer, and very different statement about the retraction. When I read the statement I felt it accused the authors of at least two counts of unethical conduct, and the statement indicated that this is why the paper was retracted. So, at this point, Frontiers clearly had lied once or twice (depending on which, if any, of the contradictory statements is true). Also, the assertions made in the second retraction were clearly wrong. As far as I can tell the authors used correct and proper methods for obtaining their data, reporting the data, and reporting the results. Yet, the journal makes an almost explicit statement that the authors acted unethically.

Since the second retraction incorrectly, in my view, accused four well-established academics of unethical behavior, the journal had become dangerous. The second retraction statement notes,

Frontiers came to the conclusion that it could not continue to carry the paper, which does not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects. Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics.

The source data for this paper was information fully available in public view on the Internet. The data was collected using widely available search engines such as Google. From the methods section:

An on-going web search in real time was conducted by two of the authors (J.C. and M.M.) during the period August-October 2012. This daily search used Google Alerts to detect newly published material matching the search term “Stephan Lewandowsky.” If new blog posts were discovered that featured links to other relevant blog posts not yet recorded, these were also included in the analysis. To ensure that the collection of hypotheses pertaining to LOG12 was exhaustive, Google was searched for links to the originating blog posts (i.e., rst instances of a recursive theory), thereby detecting any further references to the original hypothesis any derivatives

The search for data was later narrowed to focus on a subset of highly active internet sites, but still, all public (even if removed, as per the usual methods of finding blog posts and comments using “wayback machine” like technologies).

I’m not sure if an analogy is really needed here, but this is a bit like a peer-reviewed paper that studies statements made by Winston Churchill in public contexts during World War II. Except the conspiracy-ideationalizing, anti-science, internet trolls aren’t Winston Churchill.

The bottom line regarding Frontiers: If you publish there, and some people don’t like the work you did, they may manipulate Frontiers into throwing you under the bus. If you are an editor there or on the board, you may find yourself unwittingly part of an academic scandal that leaves you liable in part, or simply associated with, extremely questionable behavior. Rather than enhancing careers at the same time it enhances knowledge, this particular journal has become radioactive. My suggestion: Run away.

In order to fully document and underscore the problem, Stephan Lewandowsky has posted a full description of what transpired between the authors and the journal. It is posted HERE.

A few bullet points taken from the text and modified slightly (to be bullet points):

• In the second statement, the journal seemed to state that the paper was retracted because it “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects.”
• In the contractually-agreed retraction statement, signed by legal representatives of both parties, that Frontiers “…did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study.”
• In the second statement the journal said that it had received no (presumably legal) threats.
• There exist public statements of individuals who explicitly stated that they had threatened the journal or had launched defamation complaints (see Lewandowsky’s post for links). Also, this claim contradicts the contractually-agreed retraction statement, which ascribed the retraction to an “insufficiently clear” legal context.
• This legal context involved English libel laws in force prior to 2014. Those laws were sufficiently notorious for their chilling effect on inconvenient speech for President Obama to sign a law that makes U.K. libel judgments unenforceable in the U.S.
• Frontiers revealed the existence of a new paper that we submitted in January 2014 and that according to their latest statement “did not deal adequately with the issues raised by Frontiers.”

In his post, Lewandowsky provides a detailed summary of events behind the scenes. Read his post to get these details. The crux of it is this: Frontiers had told the authors that there were no ethical issues with the paper, but a few changes might be made to reduce legal risks. Further back and forth happened, and during this time the legal liability context changed because of changes in English libel law. A second “replacement” article was produced, apparently going beyond and above what was necessary, but for some reason Frontiers chose not to use it. (They give a reason, but the reason seems weak given what we know about the article and about what Frontiers was asking for.)

Lewandowsky sums up as follows:

Throughout the entire period, from March 2013 until February 2014, the only concern voiced by Frontiers related to the presumed defamation risk under English libel laws. While the University of Western Australia offered to host the retracted paper at uwa.edu.au/recursivefury because it did not share those legal concerns, Frontiers rejected an anonymized replacement paper on the basis that non-identifiable parties might feel defamed.

No other cause was ever offered or discussed by Frontiers to justify the retraction of Recursive Fury. We are not aware of a single mention of the claim that our study “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects” by Frontiers throughout the past year, although we are aware of their repeated explicit statements, in private and public, that the study was ethically sound.

This brings into focus several possibilities for the reconciliation of Frontier’s contradictory statements concerning the retraction:

First, one could generously propose that the phrase “did not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects” is simply a synonym for “defamation risk” and that the updated statement therefore supports the contractually-agreed statement. This is possible but it puts a considerable strain on the meaning of “synonym.”

Second, one could take the most recent statement by Frontiers at face value. This has two uncomfortable implications: It would imply that the true reason for the retraction was withheld from the authors for a year. It would also imply that the journal entered into a contractual agreement about the retraction statement that misrepresented its actual position.

Third, perhaps the journal only thought of this new angle now and in its haste did not consider that it violates their contractually-agreed position.

Or there are other possibilities that we have not been able to identify.

I just noticed that Frontiers has struck up some sort of arrangement to work with the internationally known and usually (but not always) venerated Nature Publishing Group. I wonder if this means that Nature Publishing Group has lowered its ethical standards, or if Frontiers will be made to make amends to these authors and the rest of the academic community.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/04/06/a-conspiracy-and-dunces-journal-frontiers-tosses-authors-under-bus/