Too hot to handle!

Posted by William M. Connolley on March 2, 2008
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I feel very uncomfortable about the fate of the Brown/Pielke/Annan poll. For the record, I can’t remember whether I voted or not or was even asked; but I too would have been a 5. As I said, there were flaws in the poll, but it should have been published anyway. Its the curse of Annan, of course.

A familiar part of this is the curious response of the editor: ignoring the “problem” for months and then refusing to answer emails. I’ll mail him myself, see if that gets me anywhere (looking up his email, I find that the top google hit for “Fred Spillhaus” is JEB :-)… ah, probably because he only has one “l”). Well if anyone misspelt my name I’d be offended enough to reject their scummy paper.

An excuse for some more Bragg, though its not the same without the guitar:

Blue eyes fighting the grey eyes fighting the tears
Armed to the teeth for a war of words
Reaching all the years
I advanced across a poppy field
I saw the gleam as you raised your shield
And love screamed down
With the sun behind its back
I knew once again I was under attack
So stand fast my emotions,
Rally round my shaking heart

Our Fathers were all soldiers,
Shall we be soldiers too
Fighting and falling like soldiers
Fighting and falling like soldiers
Fighting and falling like soldiers do
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Comments

  1. #1 Simon D
    2008/03/02

    The circumstances are odd. I can imagine reviewers electing not to publish because i) the result is based on judgments of <10% of the IPCC members responded, and self-selected at that, or ii) the choice of language in the questions. But I’d feel better if the paper was at least reviewed.

    [If there were lots of other surveys out there, I'd agree that this might be a problem. But there aren't. Publication of one survey might help to spur a more formal effort, perhaps. I also think that Pielke has, regrettably, someone spun the conclusions, and that would need to be addressed under review. But to be honest it doesn't look like these are the reasons for rejection, which look more political. Send Fred and email -W]

  2. #2 mugwump
    2008/03/03

    “5. The scientific basis for human impacts on climate is well represented by the IPCC WG1 report. The lead scientists know what they are doing.”

    Pfft! Overfitting and the hockeystick anyone?

    While the climate science community continues to defend fundamentally flawed studies, I remain unconvinced that the “lead scientists know what they are doing”.

    When are Mann, Hansen, Schmidt (and, for that matter, all the supercilious prigs at realclimate) going to admit what everyone else with decent mathematical and statistical training has known for a long time: the hockeystick studies are an elaborate exercise in poor statistical analysis, designed only to support a predetermined conclusion?

  3. #3 James Annan
    2008/03/03

    Well Roger had written Spilhous and I knew that was wrong :-) Anyway, thanks for the support – I would never claim that it was perfect, but it certainly seems reasonable enough, and the treatment of it was, as you say, curious.

    [Um. I don’t suppose you’re starting to feel sympathetic to certain other folk who’ve had a hard time getting published? Have you considered E&E for your survey :-)))? -W}

  4. #4 James Annan
    2008/03/04

    I don’t know to which other people you might refer – I don’t know of anyone else who has had such a high proportion of obviously valid manuscripts rejected in a short period of time, but of course most people don’t advertise such things :-) I did at one time consider E&E for some of the probability stuff, but I reckon they might not like it anyway as it hardly supports the true denialists, and would only get ignored anyway.