This post is some commentary of a recent experience that I had in commenting on this post / paper by John Mashey.
Pal Review True Story Fair Tail - John Mashey
I was "Rufus9" in the discussion forum. Although I have participated in numerous discussions previous to this, I had never come across one with so many rules of what was "on topic" or so many instances of outright censorship in my posts. At one point, after a particularly heavy "snipping", I actually ask the moderator to go ahead and delete the most of the rest of the post since he had destroyed the context of my statements. Eventually I asked the moderator to delete my account.
Okay, so that was all quite interesting. I had never experienced something like that previously. I told some friends about it, and they said, "you're wasting your time, they only want to hear from people with their point of view." I guess I agree with that, which is why I am writing this on my blog instead of re-instating my account on Skeptical Science
Getting Skeptical About Global Warming Skepticism???. Also, I'm not going to tolerate being censored for having different views.
So, where do we start, and what points will we cover?
1. Is Mashey's paper worthwhile? Can we learn anything valuable from it?
2. Lessons of the Ice Cube / Puddle of Water Fallacy (ICPWF)
3. Lessons in Moderation / Censorship
4. Closed minds on Skeptical Science?
Mashey's Paper
This paper is about allegations between the two camps of the climate debate in which each accuse the other of having overly friendly networks of influence that help get papers published when they shouldn't. This post concludes with the following statement:
"The next time you see a complaint about the fairy tale of rampant climate science "pal review", direct the accuser to
John Mashey's documentation of a pal review true story."
Well, that's interesting, but let's look at the article / paper and the Excel spreadsheet and see if the case hold up under scrutiny. First, if you are going to make allegations like these, one thing to be very careful about is the potential damage to someone's reputation (in this case Chris de Freitas, an editor of
Climate Research). I also want to make the point up front, that the allegations of Patrick Michaels may also suffer from some of the flaws I am about to point out.
What does the paper say? Mostly it provides what I called "correlation but not causation" in my discussion comments. Why do I say that?
1. The spreadsheet lists a set of papers that the author feels are dubious and then shows how those papers were edited by de Freitas.
2. The spreadsheet also lists the number of days that it took for the editorial review to be completed, notes that these papers took less time on average, and then asks "Suspicious?"
3. It has an influence network showing relationships between authors
4. It notes
"After von Storch's resignation, Mashey documents that the pals' Climate Research publications [by certain authors] dried up."
5. The paper highlights the von Storck resignation from Climate Research and quotes him:
"..the reason was that I as newly appointed Editor-in-Chief wanted to make public that the publication of the Soon & Baliunas article was an error, and that the review process at Climate Research would be changed in order to avoid similar failures. The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked....It was not the first time that the process had failed, but it was the most severe case....I withdrew also als editor because I learned during the conflict that [Climate Research] editors used different scales for judging the validity of an article. Some editors considered the problem of the Soon & Baliunas paper as merely a problem of "opinion", while it was really a problem of severe methodological flaws. Thus, I decided that I had to disconnect from that journal, which I had served proudly for about 10 years."
Making the Case
So, does this then make a convincing case that de Freitas was the cause or played a major role in the publication of "biased research"?
No, not really. In fact all of this is circumstantial evidence. In fact, the entire spreadsheet, while it must have taken considerable effort to compile, is simply a convenient listing of information that was already known at the time of publication of these papers. Yes, these 14 were edited by de Freitas, but of course he edited other "normal" papers as well. From Table 1:
"... 14 accepted by de Freitas (bold), and 7 handled by others (red, underlined italics). De Freitas also accepted 13 seemingly normal papers from other authors..."
So, what are we missing, if that is not sufficient evidence?
1. An statement from von Storck about this specific allegation, and not about his general reason for resignation.
2. Statements from other editors or insiders at the journal
3. Statements from de Freitas
4. Statements from the authors
5. Documentation showing in some way that the editorial process was corrupted
It may be that none of the above are obtainable, but depending on the statements, we might have a much clearer picture of what happened.
Alternate Theory
Another flaw of Mashey's paper is that it is a "rush to judgment" that does not appear to examine any other alternative theories. For example, given the facts above, here is an alternative theory.
1. von Storck quite for reasons that did not include de Freitas' editing
2. Other individuals involved at Climate Research were involved in making decisions about what was published
3. The authors quit publishing at CR for unknown reasons
4. The authors do know each other, but are not part of a conspiracy
5. de Freitas left CR for reasons unrelated to his editing of these 14 papers
So, as I read Mashey's paper, I find it entirely circumstantial, and I seriously doubt if there was a court where this case could be presented that the prosecutor would even attempt to bring it before a judge. As such, I think the publication of this paper at this stage is premature and places de Freitas' reputation at risk without evidence capable of proving he actually did anything wrong.
Final Flaw
One additional problem with Mashey's paper is that, after "establishing" that the "biased research" was erroneously published is that he then takes a massive extrapolation to say that there is a causal link between these 14 papers, the "biased media coverage" of papers like this, and the survey result that:
Here again, we get into circumstantial evidence and no attempt to explore alternate theories for why people's belief might be one way or the other. First off, I seriously doubt that Climate Research articles have much influence on the average citizen. How many people actually subscribe? It is very expensive:
Annual rate(including print and online versions)2012: € 995 plus postage [wow, not even free postage]
It may be that they are influential across the scientific community and with certain journalists who then quote these journals, but there are thousands of these stories published annually. How much influence can we give to this?
More importantly, here are a few alternative theories that could be investigated, although I could easily list 100.
1. People don't believe that humans are the primary cause because they are generally scientifically illiterate
2. People don't trust the media reports
3. People don't trust the experts (on either side)
4. Some people don't care one way or the other, and don't put much thought into issues like this
A different way of looking at this is to reverse Mashey's argument and see if you believe it: "41% of Americans don't believe... and de Freitas played an influential role in causing that". This seems like the butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane story to me.
Conclusion
So, overall, I rate this paper as circumstantial at best with higher than necessary risk of reputational damage due to having an inadequate set of evidence. I also see the mingling of "people don't believe" with the question of editorial misconduct as an apples and oranges issue. They should be separated..
I will continue with some other points in another post.
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