Rejected climate science paper contained errors, says publisher A story in the Times on Friday claimed that the climate change paper had been rejected by scientists because it was 'less than helpful' to their cause Decision not to publish paper in Environmental Research Letters had nothing to do with 'activism' of peer reviewers 16 May 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/16/rejected-climate-science-paper-environmental-research-letters [with comments]
A large number of the scientific papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals are rejected, usually because of criticisms of the scientific methods used or because the research does not represent a major new advance in thinking. Environmental Research Letters told the Guardian that it rejects about 65-70% of the papers submitted to it.
Misplaced cries of McCarthyism: an attempt to muddy the climate change waters.
by Michael E. Mann Posted: 05/18/2014 3:25 pm EDT Updated: 05/19/2014 8:59 am EDT
Recently, a somewhat obscure scientific journal rejected a paper. Somehow, that made the front page of the London Times and spawned a number of articles in the right-wing press. How in the world does a rejected manuscript warrant front-page media coverage? Here's how.
Here's the full story: in April, a respected Swedish atmospheric scientist named Lennart Bengtsson joined [ http://www.thegwpf.org/professor-lennart-bengtsson-joins-gwpf-academic-advisory-council/ ] the Global Warming Policy Foundation's (GWPF) Academic Advisory Council. The GWPF is ostensibly a charity, although it recently owned up to its advocacy, starting a purely political wing [ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/09/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-thinktank ] (possibly to avoid the requirement that their "educational materials" be accurate). Even climate change contrarian Roger Pielke Jr. described GWPF as engaging in "stealth advocacy" -- presenting themselves as an educational group when their true aims are political. Essentially, they distort science in order to argue against action on climate change. That applies not just to the GWPF but the handful of scientists and commentators who facilitate [ http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/academic-advisory-council/ ] their activities, such as Richard Lindzen, Richard Tol, Matt Ridley, and Ross McKitrick.
When Bengtsson joined GWPF, there were stories (at least in sympathetic press outlets) about how "A Famous Scientist Becomes a Skeptic [ http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/meteorologist-lennart-bengtsson-joins-climate-skeptic-think-tank-a-968856.html ]." The flaw in this headline is that Bengtsson has been a climate change contrarian for some time; he was active on a Swedish climate blog originally named "The Climate Scam" (but renamed with a much more inconspicuous "Climate Enlightenment."). That's the first distortion of reality to this story.
As you might expect, an academic like Bengtsson joining a group like GWPF doesn't elicit a pleasant reaction from the scientific community. He received a number of messages from colleagues questioning his move and advising against it. Going one step further, a researcher working with Bengtsson was no longer willing to co-author a paper. Some say these researchers overreacted, but it is their right to distance themselves from Bengtsson -- just as it was his right to join GWPF.
We don't know the extent to which Bengtsson has been exploited by the GWPF or was just naive, but when a scientist aligns himself with a politically driven anti-science front group, he should be ready for those committed to the goals of true science to react. Scientists expressing their disappointment in a colleague's decision to embrace a science-distorting stealth advocacy group is not McCarthyism. It's normal. Part of science is recognizing your own errors, as is pointing out the errors of others. If his peers believed he erred in joining GWPF, they were well within the bounds of scientific normalcy to express their opinions.
The term "McCarthyism" refers back to the campaign against alleged communists conducted by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s, wherein many accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, even though they did not in fact belong to the Communist Party. In common parlance, the term denotes a scenario wherein someone in a position of power uses his or her authority to harass someone through prosecutorial accusations of wrongdoing.
If you know my story (as told in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars), then you know that it is I who was the researcher at the receiving end of the harassment. So I hope you'll forgive my lack of sympathy for Bengtsson, who complains of threats and McCarthyism yet has endured no formal inquiries or attacks from Capitol Hill, no death threats against him or his family (that I am aware of), nor any suspicious packages in the mail requiring FBI quarantine and testing. I guess I'm just lucky.
But right-wing media, not content to merely cry "McCarthy," went further. At some point, Bengtsson authored a paper and submitted to Environmental Research Letters (ERL), a respectable if somewhat obscure academic journal. ERL rejected it due to poor quality. One reviewer, however, mentioned that if it were to be published, it would "open the door for oversimplified claims of 'errors' and worse from the climate sceptics media side."
Said skeptic media took that minor and mined quote and (as the quote itself warned would happen,) spun up a controversy claiming the paper wasn't printed because of a "cover-up [ http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4091344.ece ]" to prevent a "damaging review" of climate science.
To shine the light of truth onto this darkly misleading story, ERL took the unusual step of issuing a public response [ http://ioppublishing.org/newsDetails/statement-from-iop-publishing-on-story-in-the-times ] to the spurious accusations, and decided to release the full text of the reviewer's thoughts on Bengtsson's paper. The text shows the reviewer felt the paper wasn't original, provided no new insight and offered no explanation for its main conclusion. And most telling of all? Bengtsson himself disavowed the media's skewed portrayal: "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 there it is. The man himself doesn't believe the cooked-up controversy presented by conservative media. Any objective examination of the situation finds absolutely no validity to either the claims of McCarthyism or of conspiratorial suppression of science. In fact, the reviewer that "suppressed" Bengtsson's paper offered a number of suggestions to improve its odds of being published. Certainly not something you'd do to a paper you're trying to "suppress."
All that said, I wish the best for Bengtsson, and hope he never has to experience real McCarthyism. But in any event he is a pawn in this affair. The real story here is how desperate the professional climate change denial machine is to fan this dubious matter into yet another faux scandal, even as the observations of climate change come more sharply into focus, from drought to wildfires to flash floods to ice sheet collapse. History will not look back kindly on those who sought to sow false doubt about the growing threat of climate change at the expense of all humanity.