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The trouble with peer review is the peers…

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From Climate Audit:

n 2012, the then much ballyhoo-ed Australian temperature reconstruction of Gergis et al 2012 mysteriously disappeared from Journal of Climate after being criticized at Climate Audit. Now, more than four years later, a successor article has finally been published. Gergis says that the only problem with the original article was a “typo” in a single word. Rather than “taking the easy way out” and simply correcting the “typo”, Gergis instead embarked on a program that ultimately involved nine rounds of revision, 21 individual reviews, two editors and took longer than the American involvement in World War II. However, rather than Gergis et al 2016 being an improvement on or confirmation of Gergis et al 2012, it is one of the most extraordinary examples of data torture (Wagenmakers, 2011, 2012) that any of us will ever witness.

The re-appearance of Gergis’ Journal of Climate article was accompanied by an untrue account at Conversation of the withdrawal/retraction of the 2012 version. Gergis’ fantasies and misrepresentations drew fulsome praise from the academics and other commenters at Conversation. Gergis named me personally as having stated in 2012 that there were “fundamental issues” with the article, claims which she (falsely) said were “incorrect” and supposedly initiated a “concerted smear campaign aimed at discrediting [their] science”. Their subsequent difficulty in publishing the article, a process that took over four years, seems to me to be as eloquent a confirmation of my original diagnosis as one could expect.

I’ve drafted up lengthy notes on Gergis’ false statements about the incident, in particular, about false claims by Gergis and Karoly that the original authors had independently discovered the original error “two days” before it was diagnosed at Climate Audit. These claims were disproven several years ago by emails provided in response to an FOI request. Gergis characterized the FOI requests as “an attempt to intimidate scientists and derail our efforts to do our job”, but they arose only because of the implausible claims by Gergis and Karoly to priority over Climate Audit. More.

Global warming, true or false, is going to be a good business for a lot of people for a long time, and we can be prepared for a deluge of this stuff.

Nothing suits a mediocrity better than enforcement against new ideas. It’s his birthright. And he feels righteous about it. Many civilizations have sunk under the weight. One naturally hopes ours won’t be one, but …

See also: Bill Nye on prosecuting global warming doubters

and

Scientific dissent can never be securities fraud

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Comments
Very well said! I previously gave an example of a paper that needs peer review, but which will never get it ("Beyond Einstein: non-local physics" by Brian Fraser, 2015 ). Here is another one: "Adventures in Energy Destruction" at: http://scripturalphysics.org/qm/adven.html It summarizes my own experiments pertaining to altering the half-lives of radioactive nuclides, and how this safe and simple technology can be used to destroy (not store) radioactive waste. I informed Senator John McCain (re: Yucca Mountain repository) and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future of the results. Nobody was interested.BrianFraser
July 30, 2016
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