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BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias
Amtiskaw writes "Discussion of climate change is rife with claims and counter-claims of partisanship and bias. Some of the most serious of which being that the scientific community is smothering more skeptical research in the field. Now the BBC is asking for evidence of this self-censorship. From the article:
'Journals are meant to publish the best research irrespective of whether it accepts that the sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ... So the accusations that all is not well at the heart of climate science, and that censorship is rife in organisations which award research grants, the editorial boards of journals and the committees of the IPCC, should be examined seriously.
Readers are asked to submit evidence of bias, which the the BBC will then investigate.'" Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.
He never really did, just that the evidence was inconclusive. Now he believe global warming to be real (the evidence has become stronger), Lomborg just claim that adapting to a changing climate makes more economic sense than trying to control the climate.
Comparing the cost of trying to adapt to a changing climate with the cost of trying to prevent climate change is certainly a worthwhile, especially as global warming based on past actions is already inevitable.
Dr. William Gray, hurricane researcher out of Colorado State University, has suggested that his funding may have been cut due to his unwillingness to accept the common view of anthropogenic global warming, which he calls "grossly exaggerated." He suggests in the same interview that many of his colleagues who have been around for a long time have similar feelings and experiences.
/ discover-dialogue/
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-05/departments
Just another contrarian viewpoint because he's too stuck to see it? Or someone whose experience provides the nuances required to see that global warming is a house of cards?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
As someone who went to grad school in climatology, I have to say, in a word: No. Most of us have personally read the actual scientific studies and not the media "report", and our findings are that climate change really is happening. We also don't disagree with the finding that this is due to humans more than doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past 150 years. This work has been supported by studies in climate science and geology, so it's not just one field of science. These are settled matters within the climate science community, and any efforts to stir up that there's a "debate" is sensationalist media misrepresenting science. What is up for debate is the outcome of climate change and what should (and can) be done. Clearly things are changing, but the picture of how things will change is just beginning to become clear, and so most scientists choose to voice caution: we don't know for certain what is going to happen, but we might want to think about what we're doing because rapid change is likely to be bad (and expensive).
I'll give you the sensationalism on the part of the media, as far as the rest I'm going to kindly ask you to stop talking out of your ass. Calling the character of climate scientists into question is the most common hack for people who can't produce any valid scientific counter-arguments. A great deal of scientific "reporting" in this area does little justice to the actual science they're reporting on. I'm going to call FUD on the "push by global warming scientists". We go through the same peer review process as any other branch of science, we don't publish our most "outlandish" theories, we publish what we find. Actually, a great deal of restraint is exercised by most scientists due to the political nature of the field. There are of course a couple of people who will do something sensational (i.e. the man who claimed a link between hurricanes and global warming), but this happens in other fields too. When it does, the community usually self-polices: i.e. this man took a lot of flak for inside the community precisely because his work was a little too speculative and did some hard to his credibility with the rest of the community.
And I think you have an extremely naive view of how science works. I have spent my entire career working with scientists, including a couple of Nobel prize winners. Bias, ego and simple ass covering do play a huge part in science. I am simply amazed that so many so-called scientists aren't aware of this. Every major scientific endeavor I have been involved with has been full of such stuff and it has a major affect on what gets explored and what gets reported and communicated. Every academic department I have been in that was involved in anything even close to controversial or in question was full of ego battles and just really, really nasty politics. Maybe my experience is unusual but I don't think so. And in fact it is much, much worse in fields, like global climatology, where you can't do experiments to physically prove your point. So if you think that some scientist who has made a career of a certain position or even just published a few papers with a certain stance is going to stand up and say "sorry I was wrong" you are way off base. That would be a career killer and very few have the courage to do that. Especially if the evidence that they were "wrong" is unclear, impossible to prove or based on a computer model. My basic tenant is if they can't predict the weather next week (which they still can't do very accurately) why should I believe they can predict the weather 20 years from now?
What happens, then, if it's difficult to get a contrarian article into a peer-reviewed journal? That's often the case, as it happens. For someone with results that cut against the grain, it can take years to break through the peer review wall, assuming you're able to keep going that long
That is not why people don't get into peer reviewed journals. Good peer reviewed journals publish 'against the grain' papers all the time. What prevents publications getting into good journals is if their analyses are questionable or their results aren't repeatable. In most areas of science, journals are hungry for interesting papers. Research that simply repeats existing findings gets boring and of no interest.
This isn't unique to climatology - I've seen other situations in which a highly charged issue that has many believers on one side can squeeze out any last dissent.
Again, that is not why people get squeezed out. It is not a matter of 'believers', it is about the quality of research.
At best, the standard for publishing a contrarian view is much higher
And that is as things should be. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary views require extraordinary evidence. Contrary views should require out-of-the-ordinary evidence.
at worst, reviewers can reject these articles out of hand. This makes it extremely difficult for a budding researcher to get established in a tenure-track position, and then to get tenure.
In quality journals, editors don't accept such out-of-hand rejections. There are much-used appeal processes, and the opinion of a reviewer who simply rejected an article 'out-of-hand' would not last long. Reviewers have to justify their rejections in the same way as the authors of papers have to justify their findings.
I know this because I have worked to get controversial papers through review processes, and I have also acted as a peer reviewer.
Right or wrong, there's a serious problem when no one is even taking a serious Devil's Advocate position on things, and I've not seen that.
This is just not true. The entire peer review process is a Devil's Advocate process. The phrase 'peer review' explains it - papers aren't being reviewed by friends of the author, but almost always the reviewing panel includes those who are competitors of the author, often competing in the same country for the same funding!
The peer review process works because it is so much a Devil's Advocate process, and publications have to pass through that.