Comments on: MM05 Chosen as a GRL Journal Highlight

By: TCO

TCO — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 04:46:36 +0000

Maybe there is just a little bit of the sticking it in the eye for Nature. the specialty journals in some ways often have better standards…

By: Michael Mayson

Michael Mayson — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 03:45:38 +0000

Yes – congratulations on the recognition and also for the straightforwardness of your last paragaraph.
If only the Hockey Team could be as up front – speaking of which, how about a game called “Spot the Irony”.

As the first entry this is what I found when I followed your link to ‘another diatribe’;

“….Shaviv and Veizer’s analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming.”

By: N. Joseph Potts

N. Joseph Potts — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:56:50 +0000

All professions are conspiracies against the laiety.
- George Bernard Shaw

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:25:19 +0000

Congratulations! I do have one bone to pick with AGU, however. It states in the highlight that, “Most climatologists agree that the twentieth century was the hottest in the last 1,000 years. This consensus is based in part on the ‘hockey stick’ record published by climatologist Michael Mann and colleagues in 1998.” The “consensus” is invoked over and over again without the slightest bit if evidence. Nearly every newspaper story on global warming invokes the “consensus of scientists.” Yet no one ever cites polls or surveys that lend any support to such assertions. It may well be that there is a consensus of scientists on global warming, but nobody to date has shown any supporting data to support such a claim.

By: John A

John A — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:00:19 +0000

If the work of McIntyre and McKitrick in MM05 really was “fully discredited” as well as making “false and specious claims”, then we would expect that truly independent reviewers would have spotted these “errors” and said so, quoting chapter and verse of exactly where these “errors” occur.

To the point, GRL have had the most massive political pressure placed on their expert reviewers about this one paper – and yet the AGU are now higlighting the paper as an example of the sort of work they wish to give greater prominence to.

If I were a member of the AGU, I would be embarassed by the antics of Mann and Schmidt – what example are they setting for the image of science?

By: rexie

rexie — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 14:49:57 +0000

I suspect that the major failings of peer review arise from the way in which they promote and sustain orthodoxy. Over at the Internation Network of Cholesterol Skeptics they have similar misgivings.