Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

On Aug 7, 2:17 am, James Arthur <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
bill.slo...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Aug 6, 7:10 am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@My-Web-
Site.com> wrote:
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:03:17 GMT, James Arthur wrote:
Joerg wrote:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
This shows how much political hardball seems to be played in that
"scientific" world. Pretty sad, actually:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=224

This URL doesn't work. Changing it to end ?page_id=224 ended up
getting me to a blog posting by Steve McIntyre on Friday, June 17th,
2005 at 6:49 am, basically bitching that the rest of the world doesn't
share his particular obsession.

The last paragraph is shocking:
"One of the first places that we would recommend such procedures is the
temperature data set used by the IPCC. Other researchers have tried
without success to get access to the supporting data. One of them shared
with us the response he received from the principal author of the
dataset: “We have 25 years invested in this work. Why should we let you
look at it, when your only objective is to find fault with it?”"
The 2nd-to-last paragraph is stunning as well.  Such sloth.  The work
shows it.

Sloth? Referees aren't paid.

That doesn't excuse not doing their job.  Their job is to
double-check the work to help avoid errors.  We all make
mistakes; this process is supposed to catch them and prevent
outright fraud.

That isn't the referees primary job, which is to work out whether the
authors know what they are talking about.

To do that you have to check the data.

That's your - distinctly ideosyncratic - opinion. If it were held by
anybody who actually refereed papers (other than McIntyre, who seems
to be some lind of nut) the whole process of refereeing and publishing
papers would stop dead, because referees don't have the time to dig
into the paper they are refereeing in that kind of detail.

By "sloth" I also meant the authors--not deigning to share their
data or methods for critical review?  Do they think they own this
publicly-funded data, or that their work is beyond review?

What branch of cloud-cuckoo land do you inhabit? In my expereience,
referees never ask for raw data, and authors don't get the option of
offering such access.

These data aren't trade secrets, they aren't proprietary; these
guys didn't pay for the satellites or weather stations, and they
/are/ responsible for some extraordinary policy recommendations; we
have a right and they have an obligation to provide all information
essential to scientific review.

Your idea of what scientific review ordinarily constitutes seems to
have been dredged from your overly fertile imagination.

IOW they're intellectually sloppy; they're not willing to defend
their work.  Or even disclose it, here.

Your ideas about defence and disclosure are inrteresting and -
unfortunately - entirely novel, not to mention thoroughly impractical.
Your ideas of how science ought to be conducted are entertaining, but
bear no relation to the way things happen in real life.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  The Great Oz
has spoken." -- The Wizards [sic] of Oz

A childish perspective on a grown-up's problem.

  I haven't noticed Steve McIntyre, or
anybody else with concerns about the quality of refereeing in
scientific journals, ever coming up with scheme for paying referees
for the time they put in on reading and trying to understand other
people's papers. At the moment the people who put in the time get very
little back for their work, and this time could more productively be
invested in work that will get them publications, grant money and
promotion.

That's the most damning description of peer-review I've heard.
If the reviewers aren't interested and don't have the time, maybe
they shouldn't do it.

Then you'd better learn a bit more about the system you imagine you
are criticising.

You will find much more damning criticisms of the peer-reviewing
system if you talk to people who know how it works and have to suffer
from its actual faults - referees who delay their reviews enough to
get their own papers into the literature before the paper they are
reviewing, and referees who won't accept anything that doesn't cite
their publications. Good editors are wise to these sorts of
activities, but there aren't enough good editors.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: publishing problems (physics)
    ... Referees are asked to detail their criticisms but they ... Journals for which I review papers send me a form and ... This is perhaps expected for the less well funded journals. ... It seems to me somewhat unreasonable if review does not mean giving a ...
    (uk.business.agriculture)
  • Re: Specially for the Slow Man
    ... peer review on blogs after publication than in journals. ... People who referee papers normally do so anonymously. ... quite a lot of negotiation with referees, and she still has to revise ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: The answer to Uncle Als old question
    ... inertia connected with the length of half-arms where the studied ... these peer referees got into a deep mess; this would be no less than ... bravura review telling that solutions for such problem are long ago ... The fact that international scientific journals buy the ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: The answer to Uncle Als old question
    ... inertia connected with the length of half-arms where the studied ... these peer referees got into a deep mess; this would be no less than ... bravura review telling that solutions for such problem are long ago ... The fact that international scientific journals buy the ...
    (sci.astro)
  • Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere
    ... this involves a lot more work than referees are normally ... or that their work is beyond review? ... and most academics are delighted to ... editor for several journals that are edited ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
Quantcast