Last summer, on Aug 28, 2007, I wrote a post observing that Wahl and Ammann 2007, although being cited in IPCC AR4, had still not appeared in print. I think that it was then the only article cited in IPCC AR4 chapter 6 in that situation. In that post, I observed that it seemed anomalous that UCAR stated that this article had been “accepted for publication” on February 28, 2006, but, as of Aug 28, 2007, Climatic Change had still not published the aticle, even though many articles that had been submitted and accepted much later had appeared in print. Indeed, a different article by the same two authors, covering much of the same ground, had just been published online on Aug 24, 2007, stating that it had been accepted on June 13, 2007, more than a year after the supposed “acceptance” of Wahl and Ammann 2007. The timeline for this article also stated that it had been received on August 22, 2000, an obvious improbability.
David Pannell, an Australian academic and journal editor, observed the improbability of the chronology claimed at the UCAR website and suggested that I investigate.
The authors’ claimed chronology for the original paper does not add up. Looking at the journal, all of the recently published papers were accepted in 2007. As a journal editor myself, it is not plausible that one article would be kept aside for later publication, other than perhaps by an issue or two to get it into a particular special issue. I interpret that the claim by the authors “February 28, 2006″ Accepted for Publication” is false in some way. But if it is false, where did all those dates (in review, revised, etc.) come from? Could they really make up a series of dates like that? If they are not made up, then what has happened?
Steve, if I were you, I would ask the editor what has happened to the paper.
I didn’t investigate at the time, but did so recently with some curious results and a puzzle still unexplained.
Wahl and Ammann 2007 was published online a couple of weeks after the above post (on Sept 4, 2007). It slightly varied the dates from UCAR, placing the dates of receipt and “acceptance” one day later in each case:
Received: 11 May 2005 / Accepted: 1 March 2006
.
The reason why publication of Wahl and Ammann has been delayed so long is almost certainly their citation of their rejected GRL article, which was referred to as “Ammann and Wahl, under review” in the March 2006 version. As a reviewer of the first version, I had objected to their academic check-kiting in citing an unaccepted article. (My use of the term “academic check-kiting” post-dates the review, but the practice itself was categorically condemned in my review, an objection that surely have had particular force given that the GRL submission had already been rejected by the time of my review.) While I was a reviewer of the first version, I was not a reviewer of the second “accepted” version. Shortly after the “acceptance” of the 2nd version was claimed by Ammann and Wahl in March 2006, their re-submitted GRL article was rejected a second time. I wrote a very pointed letter to Stephen Schneider – see here in which I objected to the academic check-kiting among other things.
It seemed preposterous to me that they could “accept” an article which relied on academic check-kiting. It left a serious problem for Climatic Change since they could hardly continue to refer to “Ammann and Wahl, under review”.
Their strategy for coopering up the situation seems to have been as follows.
It looks like Wahl and Ammann 2007 was put on publication hold after the rejection of the GRL article – particularly after I’d put the matter into the sunlight. Ammann and Wahl then wrote a new article, carefully maintaining the same authorship so that the new and substituted article could also be called “Ammann and Wahl 2007” and substituted in the text without the external reviewers noticing. This new article was submitted in August 2006 and became the article published online on August 24, 2007. Were any of the referees notified of the rejection of “Ammann and Wahl under review”? I don’t believe it for a minute.
The Climatic Change version of Ammann and Wahl 2007 was a substantially different article than the Ammann and Wahl submission to GRL (which I’ve placed online for comparison). We submitted the following reply to the second Ammann and Wahl submission at GRL – unlike Climatic Change, GRL considered our reply in making a decision. Because the articles are different, one needs to examine whether the substituted article actually supports the claim in Wahl and Ammann 2007. By and large, it doesn’t – something that I’ll discuss on another occasion.
While Schneider was prepared to go a long way to accommodate a pro-Stick article, it appears that even Schneider was not going to release Wahl and Ammann 2007 until the plausible substitute for “Ammann and Wahl under review” had appeared in print. However, already twice burned by Ammann attempting to publish outside Climatic Change, Schneider solved the rejection problem by taking the companion article into the Climatic Change system, permitting them to submit and publish an article in Climatic Change that went over much of the same ground as its companion article, creating an almost incoherent pattern of cross-referencing between two articles by the same coauthors in the same journal a few weeks apart.
Once Ammann and Wahl 2007 worked through the Climatic Change review system, Schneider released Wahl and Ammann 2007 from its limbo and it was published on Sep 4, 2007, a couple of weeks after Ammann and Wahl on Aug 24, 2007.
Despite Wahl and Ammann being in limbo since the GRL rejection of the companion article in March 2006, the myth of the March 1, 2006 “acceptance” date was preserved. The reason for this is, of course, IPCC publication deadlines, which Ammann and Wahl (and Schneider) had kept a close eye throughout this process. Did the “acceptance date” matter? Well, it did for the IPCC. I’ll review their story in another post in a day or two.
About 6 weeks ago, I thought that I’d follow up David Pannell’s suggestion and, on April 3, 2008, I wrote to Stephen Schneider in his capacity as editor of Climatic Change as follows:
Ammann and Wahl 2007 (Clim Chg Nov 2007) states that it was “Received: 22 August 2000 / Accepted: 13 June 2007”. Given that the article deals with matters arising subsequent to 2000 and that the article was not cited in the version of Wahl and Ammann placed online in March 2006, I presume that August 2006 is the intended date for the date of receipt. Is this surmise correct?
If this surmise is correct, then I presume that there is another error in respect to the reported dates for Wahl and Ammann (Clim Chg 2007), which states it was “Received: 11 May 2005 / Accepted: 1 March 2006” . Ammann and Wahl 2007 is cited and relied on in Wahl and Ammann 2007, but it appears not to have even been received until August 2006. This is not an incidental reference in Wahl and Ammann 2007, but is relied on for several key assumptions. The published version of Wahl and Ammann is similar to an earlier draft that was placed online by Ammann in March 2006, but the earlier article did not cite Wahl and Ammann 2007, but a submission by the same authors to GRL which had already been rejected once and which was rejected a second time a few weeks later.
I presume that you made it a condition of publication that the Wahl and Ammann 2007 citation to “Ammann and Wahl” be supported by something more substantial than a rejected submission and that all conditions for acceptance of Wahl and Ammann 2007 were therefore not complete until the results from the rejected publication were accepted elsewhere. Could you confirm whether you made acceptance of “Ammann and Wahl” a condition for publishing Wahl and Ammann?
I presume that your editorial practice is to show dates of final acceptance, rather than provisional acceptance. If so, shouldn’t the date shown for Wahl and Ammann 2007 be the date at which Climatic Change agreed that they had complied with all conditions of publication, as opposed to any dates of provisional acceptance?
On May 20, 2008, I received the following reply (and many readers will raise their eyebrows at some of the claims in this letter):
Thank you for your comments which led us to investigate our files and to ask specific questions to the authors for answers to issues you raise. Below is a response from the authors:
“First: The primary results shown in Wahl and Ammann (2007) do not depend on assumptions that are drawn from Ammann and Wahl (2007). Rather, Wahl and Ammann (2007) point to additional information and arguments developed in more detail in Ammann and Wahl (2007).
Second: The scientific content in Ammann and Wahl (2007) to which Wahl and Ammann (2007) point is unaltered and equivalent to the content in the ultimately rejected GRL manuscript to which the inquiry refers.
Third: The initial manuscript submitted to GRL was neither turned down by GRL for its scientific content nor for technical issues, but rather for editorial purposes related to a comment-reply pair. In fact, the same content was fully accepted in the review process for the Ammann and Wahl (2007) paper.
Therefore it was judged appropriate to replace what was initially a reference to a GRL manuscript in Wahl and Ammann (2007) with a pointer to the new Ammann and Wahl (2007) article in Climatic Change.”
With regard to Ammann and Wahl 2007, of course it was not received in 2000 and that was an unfortunate printer’s error on the part of the publisher, and indeed your presumption of August 2006 is correct for the date of receipt. Hopefully all readers will join you in reaching that logical conclusion despite the printer’s error. In any case, we will ask the publisher to publish an erratum to avoid any misunderstanding.
More importantly is the process we used at CC to deal with these papers. Ammann and Wahl 2007 was originally conceived as an Editorial. Despite this, because it was an unusually meaty editorial, instead of one review, I had it reviewed by two independent referees who made substantial comments to which the authors responded, and an independent re-reviewer who only called for minor revisions to the resubmission. Given that the paper was peer-reviewed as an article — much more stringently than an editorial — and given that two reviewers said it should be changed from an Editorial to a paper to provide a perspective on the issues, we dropped the initial notion of it being an editorial and, instead, treated it as an independent article, given how it was reviewed — and thus I agree with the authors last sentence about removing the initial references in Wahl and Ammann to the GRL manuscript by pointing to the new Ammann and Wahl peer-reviewed paper. I hope this clarifies your questions.
With regard to Wahl and Amman 2007, it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers and thus acceptance of Ammann and Wahl 2007 was not a condition for publishing Wahl and Ammann 2007 given it had undergone strict peer review on its own merits.
Concerning our practice on dates of final acceptance, we do indeed indicate to the publisher the date when all editorial components are complete, but when they put articles on the web and what dates they indicate online we do not monitor.
Sincerely,
Stephen H. Schneider
Editor
As to the claim about the reviewers, I had been a reviewer of Wahl and Ammann 2007 and, in my capacity as reviewer, had categorically and unequivocally objected to the citation of an unaccepted GRL submission – a practice which I later referred as “academic check-kiting”. So Schneider’s statement about the “four reviewers” is untrue.
Look at the last line.
Concerning our practice on dates of final acceptance, we do indeed indicate to the publisher the date when all editorial components are complete, but when they put articles on the web and what dates they indicate online we do not monitor.
So what was the mystery date – what date did they “indicate to the publisher the date when all editorial components are complete”? This could hardly have been on Feb 29, 2006 or even March 1, 2006, as Wahl and Ammann refers to an article which had not even been submitted until August 2006. And notice that the parsing by Schneider – I guess he’s working towards a distinction between “accepting” an article and “”indicating to the publisher the date when all editorial components are complete”. So into the breach one more to try to find out some actual dates. I sent the following letter yesterday:
Dear Dr Schneider,
Thank you for your reply. You acknowledge that there was “an unfortunate printer’s error on the part of the publisher” as to the date of receipt of Ammann and Wahl 2007 and have underaken to ask the publisher to publish an erratum to avoid any misunderstanding. You state:
Concerning our practice on dates of final acceptance, we do indeed indicate to the publisher the date when all editorial components are complete, but when they put articles on the web and what dates they indicate online we do not monitor.
As noted before, it appears to me that there is another error in connection with one of the dates of Wahl and Ammann 2007. Since you do not monitor the dates published online, would you please consult your records and advise me of the actual date on which you “indicated to the publisher …[that] all editorial components were complete” in respect to Wahl and Ammann 2007. Given that Wahl and Ammann 2007 references an article now acknowledged to have been submitted in August 2006 rather than the date originally shown, I presume that these editorial components were not complete until some time after August 2006 and the date that you indicated completion to the publisher was some time after August 2006 (which seems likely given the timing of the eventual publication in second half 2007). If this is correct, I request that you correct the record, perhaps through the issuance of a second erratum concurrent with the one already planned.
Regards, Steve McIntyre
Maybe we’ll solve another climate science mystery: when was Wahl and Ammann 2007 “accepted”?
Climate Audit 
86 Comments
Forget about “when”…how about “why?”
maybe they meant Aug. 22nd 2008?
Is this the same Stephen Schneider who wanted to “scare” people with unsubstantiated global warming news?
If the paper was not accepted until after August 2006, that would make it problematic if someone had wanted to rely heavily on it for the purpose of writing, say, a large assessment report for a UN organization whose rules forbade referencing material not published by August 2006. That is, if any such reports happened to have been in preparation at the time.
Science publications should be concerned that poor publication practices on headline issues could rise to the attention of Governmental regulators and lawmakers. It may be only a 20% possibility, but the consequence for them could be significant.
The mitigation doesn’t seem hard or costly. Namely that the scientific publishers get together (if they haven’t already) to validate, improve, “police” their communities procedures and practices. They may already get together for other purposes, just focus the next get together.
Not to mention that there may be a possibility that they lose their authority and business to new media?
Pete
The proposed (?) U.S. lawsuit against the U.S. EPA polar bear threatened species listing sponsored by the State of Alaska and others could be an impetus for scrutiny of scientific publication practices.
Dear Steve,
just a thought:
Schneider writes
“With regard to Wahl and Amman 2007, it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers and thus acceptance of Ammann and Wahl 2007 was not a condition ..”
Could it be that you are only part of the initial four reviewers and he took four rereviewers, which did not “object to the citation of an unaccepted GRL submission”
In this case his statement might be technically true!?
I am a little confused about the debate, what exaclty is the difference in the content of these two publications? Did the later written one corections from earlier critics? What are the main open points in the newer article (Beside the issues with the proxies as described in your very nice Ohio-article)
All the best and a nice weekend,
LoN
There may also be a technicality involved. At one point, one of my papers took forever to be published, even though it was long ‘accepted’ by an AGU journal (JGR). When I inquired about the delay, I got this reply:
Dear Dr. Svalgaard:
There are a couple of answers to that one [when is acceptance?]. Dr. Bhattacharjee already “scientifically accepted” the manuscript. The final acceptance, though, is when “AGU receives workable files,” which is a bit vague, but in reality means that the date I put in the computer is the date that you approve the versions of your images that will go to production.
Once you’ve approved the images they come back to me, and I put together a packet with all the information about the manuscript. Then, I send that to copyediting. I’m usually able to move the manuscript on the same day I get it, unless it’s late in the afternoon.
Best regards,
Joel Inwood
Editor’s Assistant
Journal of Geophysical Research–Space Physics
#8. Leif, I’ll tie this in to IPCC dates in a post that I’m working on.
Re: #3
Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research described the scientists’ dilemma this way: “On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but-which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but; human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might. have. This `double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” DISCOVER OCTOBER 1989, Page 47
A further point on Ammann and Wahl that I just noticed.
UCAR issued a press release on May 11, 2005 announcing the submission of articles to Climatic Change and GRL, supposedly showing that our claims were “unfounded”. IPCC headquarters are at UCAR. To this day, the very name of the IPCC website is an unseemly combination of a multimillion dollar corporation (UCAR) and a supposedly impartial advisory agency. Thus http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/
If you go to the UCAR webpage on Ammann and Wahl here, you will see that it still contains the following statement.
The website states the following:
We’ve already observed that Wahl and Ammann was supposedly accepted on Feb 29, 2006 (according to Ammann) and on March 1, 2006 (according to the present pdf.)
Let me add one more date into the mix. On March 16, 2006, I received an email from Famiglietti of GRL, informing me that the Ammann Comment (and thus our Reply) had been rejected a second time. The official GRL notice of the Ammann rejection arrived the next day and stated:
Between March 16, 2006 and today, despite the loud announcement by UCAR on May 11, 2005 of the submission to GRL, neither UCAR nor Ammann reported the rejection of Ammann and Wahl by GRL. OVer two years has passed since the rejection and not even the webpage has been changed. But they were very quick to amend the webpage to state that the Climatic Change article had been accepted.
There’s something else that is very problematic about this webpage. I compared the webpage version trolled by the Wayback Machine on Feb 5, 2006 to the present version. There is only one change between the two versions – the addition of the following paragraph:
Think about it. This is the only change from the Feb 5, 2006 webpage. The change is dated March 25, 2006. But on March 16, 2006, Ammann had been informed that GRL had rejected their GRL submission.
Also place this in an IPCC context. The IPCC Second Order Draft was scheduled to be sent out to reviewers about 2 weeks later – April 7, 2006 with review comments to be back by June 2, 2006. Do you think that Ammann wanted to announce the GRL rejection to the IPCC authors? Do you think that Ammann informed IPCC chapter authors of the rejection? I don’t. One way he could perhaps have coopered up the situation a little was to note the rejection at his webpage, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, on March 25, 2006, after the GRL rejection on March 13, 2006, as noted above, the following change was made on his webpage:
For some reason, I get the impression this wouldn’t pass any GAP tests or meet GATT rules.
Steve, I can’t see anything obviously untrue about Schneider’s statement about the “four reviewers”. His statement only says that four reviewers reviewed the paper, not that all four reviewers concurred on accepting the paper.
The acceptance dates fall within the margin of error of the ensemble of calendars used.
#13. He said that the four reviewers also “re-reviewed” the paper. I didn’t re-review the paper. So at a minimum his arithmetic is off. Either four reviewers reviewed the paper, of which three re-reviewed it or five reviewed it and four re-reviewed it. I certainly didn’t do both.
Re #15
Actually Steve he didn’t, he said:
“With regard to Wahl and Amman 2007, it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers”
Dr. Schneider, it seems, is as good at writing as a high priced lawyer. He knows how to craft a letter that can mean whatever the reader wants it to mean, while not saying anything at all. Pretty clever.
#16. Cute. So Schneider says, It was independently reviewed [omitting the fact that one of the independent reviewers categorically objected to the check-kiting], then Schneider takes a deep breath and says, and was re-reviewed by four reviewers. So you’re saying that he took a deep breath and by doing so didn’t actually so anything untrue. Perhaps. You climate scientists are a tricky bunch, that’s for sure.
So let’s admire this little piece of sleight of hand and deal with the main issues.
Explain to me how Ammann can justify the events described in #11 above or how an article citing Ammann and Wahl 2007 (which wasn’t even submitted until August 2006) could have been “accepted” on March 1, 2006.
Also were any of the reviewers informed of the rejection of the GRL article?
I think your interpretation of his words is correct, Steve. Phil. is misusing his gift for rhetoric, here.
==================================================================
#18. Didn’t Schneider know he was responding to YOU and that YOU were one of the original reviewers? If so, he’s not trying to fool YOU. And, Phil#16, if you want to try to parse “reviewers” from “re-reviewers”, you need a comma after reviewers. It gets pretty strained trying to attribute genuousness to Dr. Scheider’s response.
It’s no wonder that Steve’s sense of decorum gets a little sideways when dealing with the Hockey Team, not that that’s evident in this particular exchange.
Re #19
Kim, by adding ‘the’ and ‘also’ Steve changes the meaning, the original might be ambiguous but all the more reason to stick to the original wording.
It seems pretty clear to me that Schneider is referring to two reviewers and two re-reviewers, especially as he implies earlier in his letter that two reviewers is the standard for articles. But perhaps I’m being seduced by the dark side of the force…
Steve,
This is off topic but could I ask if anyone knows where the archives for the previous IPCC reviews are? One thing that strikes me is the marked difference in style between the Bureaucratic Met Office who ran WGII TSU this time and WGI last time, and the freewheeling partisan style of UCAR. It would be interesting to see what “experts” thought of the “hockey stick” first time round. Also the Met Office would have had no reason to trim the archive as might have happened this time.
Re #22
Seems that way to me from the context, also since Steve said that he was a reviewer not a re-reviewer.
#24. OK, let’s say that there were two reviewers and two re-reviewers. It would be nice to know what Schneider intends, but it doesn’t matter a whit. So let’s say that it’s two and two.
And let’s talk about academic check-kiting and disclosure.
Let’s say that Schneider received two reviews, one which we don’t know anything about and one from me. My review is online here, together with my correspondence with Stephen Schneider here. In addition, shortly after I learned that the article had been “accepted” without my being asked to consider the responses to my review, I sent this letter to Stephen Schneider objecting once more to the academic check-kiting, in this case observing that he had been twice burned by Ammann, as GRL had rejected their article a second time.
In Schneider’s shoes, I would have taken the comments about academic check-kiting very seriously. Let’s suppose that the other first-round referee did not raise the matter. Did the other referee turn his mind to the problem and say that it didn’t matter? Was he informed of the GRL rejection when it occurred – that “Ammann and Wahl under review” was no longer “under review”? Nope. In a securities offering, Ammann would have had to promptly amend his offering once he knew of the rejection. He should have done the same with his GRL submission. I happened to know the GRL situation by coincidence. The other referee didn’t. IT’s not like he approved the check-kiting; he simply didn’t turn his mind to it as he’d been misled by incomplete disclosure.
In a business situation, if a company officer had one consultant’s report raising a problem and another consultant’s report that doesn’t consider the problem, the officer would be negligent if he ignored the one report simply because the other report didn’t raise the question. In my opinion, once the bell had been rung, the officer would have an obligation to draw the issue to the attention of the second consultant and ask him to specifically turn his mind to the problem.
The same applies to the Climatic Change review process. Once the bell had been rung, in my opinion, Schneider had an obligation to disclose that “Ammann and Wahl under review” was no longer “under review”. To some extent, the Wahl and Ammann referees would be influenced by the fact that some of these findings were being independently peer reviewed at another journal. Because they were not fully informed, at this point, it’s impossible to say what they would have decided, had there been full disclosure of the situation with GRL.
This situation was made worse by the fact that UCAR had issued a prominent press release on the submission to both Climatic Chane and GRL and did not issue a press release or other announcement of the GRL rejection.
In my opinion, the independent referees were not fully informed either by Schneider or by Ammann. In a securities offering, this would create all kinds of issues. PErhaps it’s different in academics. In securities offering, “don’t ask, don’t tell” isn’t good enough. You have to disclose the bad news even if no one specifically asks. This seems to be hard for climate scientists to understand. The trouble with sharp practice is “fool me once- shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”.
#24: A person who “re-reviews” isn’t a reviewer but a “re-reviewer”. Therefore, the phrase, “…independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers”, means that 4 reviewers did the 1st pass review and an unspecified number did the “re-review”.
Sorry. I couldn’t help it.
This excerpt from the quote attributed to Stephen Schneider in #10 should justify being suspicious of anything that Schneider says?
27 (MJ) Yes. One must be honest to be effective in ethical endeavour. That he sees a choice between honesty and effectiveness should initiate the search for what is wrong in the endeavour.
================================
was it Richard Nixon that said “it’s not the crime, its the cover-up” that gets you in doo-doo ??
Re #25 What the hell are you talking about Steve, I spun nothing I just commented on your misquotation of Schneider!
Granted my experience of the academic review process is far more extensive than yours but I made no comment about that and your comparison with securities offerings, inappropriate in my view but I put that down to your background and inexperience.
The nearest thing to sharp practice is your misrepresentation of Schneider as I pointed out above, I’ll await your apology for your insulting remarks and ask you to delete the remark.
Steve: I agree that you remained silent on the conduct of Schneider and Ammann and did not overtly spin it. Accordingly, I’ve deleted this reference in the above comment at your request. As to your allegation of sharp practice, Schneider said that “it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers”. I said that Schneider “said that the four reviewers also “re-reviewed” the paper.” That seems to me to be a very plausible interpretation of what Schneider said and not to constitute “sharp practice” as you allege. But if you think that my quotation was “sharp practice”, how can you not condemn the withholding of the adverse information regarding the GRL rejection? You suggest that this bothers me merely because I am “inexperienced” in academic ways. And perhaps I am. But perhaps it’s time that academics reflect a little on the ethics of withholding relevant information. I withdraw the observation that you overtly endorsed this sort of behanvior, but I’d certainly appreciate a comment from you as to whether you regard this sort of thing as within the realm of tolerated academic behavior.
It would require a parallel universe with a different Leap Year convention, to have something happen on Feb 29 2006.
30 (Phil.) Well, I’ll say this. I think I misinterpreted your comment #16, so I’ll withdraw my sharp remark in #19. But still, with your knowledge of journal practice, do you think all was kosher in this case?
===================
Phil,
What Steve said was,
He doesn’t say that you HAVE spun it but that you may spin it in the future and he’d be fine with that…. Don’t like that interpretation of Steve’s words? Then perhaps you should go back and think a little more about what Steve is complaining about. In any case you should withdraw your demand that
Phil trumpeted that:
Would you care to offer any evidence that that statement is true …
Hmmm, another issue is why are all the links against names linked to http:/// … this seems to be a bug.
#34. I’m prepared to stipulate that Phil’s experience with the academic review process is more extensive than mine. However, withholding adverse information such as the GRL rejection from reviewers – and in this case, the information was withheld both by Ammann and Schneider, affected the review process. Phil says that objecting to this is a sign of “inexperience”. Surely the academic world is not as cynical as this.
#30 I have plenty of experience of the review process, and Schneider’s comment, in that context, has only one plain meaning. By saying “it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers” the ordinary meaning is that four reviewers read the submission and the subsequent resubmission. It is highly nonstandard for a paper to be reviewed by 2 people, who reject it or require major amendments, then the resubmission is reviewed by 2 different people. That is simply not the plain meaning of the words since that is not how review processes work. If Schneider had meant to say “It was reviewed first by 2 people and then the second submission was reviewed by 2 other people” he could have said that, or words to that effect. Even if there was overlap between the group of initial reviewers and the reviewers of the resubmitted version, any changes in the group of reviewers between rounds is the exceptional case and not the norm.
And none of this takes away from the core issue, which is that the Climatic Change submission relied heavily on a point covered in the GRL submission. But at the time the paper went to reviewers, the GRL submission had already been rejected. This is what Steve means by referring to “check kiting” — defending one claim by referring to a result in another paper that has already been rejected, before the reviewers can find out that it has been rejected. Is anyone seriously defending this?
Steve: Ross, in my opinion, the check kiting occurred by citing the unaccepted paper. When the paper was rejected, the check bounced.
35 (SteveM):
As a whole it is not, but you can always find bad apples, so in particular cases it may be true.
Let’s go back to David Pannell’s question. Schneider says:
If that is true, why was there such a long delay in publishing Wahl and Ammann 2007? It doesn’t make sense. Maybe Phil or someone else can explain that to me. The only explanation that makes sense is that Schneider put Wahl and Ammann 2007 on hold until Ammann and Wahl 2007 was clear. Schneider must have attached some conditions to Wahl and Ammann 2007 or else it would have been published long earlier. I don’t blame him for attaching conditions. He’d look like a fool if Ammann and Wahl 200x never saw the light of day and he’d already been burned twice by Ammann. So why did Schneider put up with this nonsense? Why didn’t he throw Ammann out of his office when he learned of the initial withholding of the GRL rejection – where Ammann overtly withheld this information from a reviewer? Think about it.
Also I want readers to pay attention to is just how hard Schneider and Ammann and working to maintain the fiction of a March 1, 2006 acceptance date. Ask yourselves why. Why wouldn’t they have simply said that it was accepted in 2007 after all the hurdles had been cleared? How hard would that have been? But they didn’t do that. Why?
It is not a “double ethical bind” at all if one actually has, and abides by, true ethics. There is a very simple formula: telling the truth. This is the foremost responsibility of any editorial position (well, other than fiction editors). There is no balance between being effective and being honest, the most effective strategy is to simply be honest. He clearly does not understand this.
Mark
Steve: Schneider’s famous quotation has been discussed on many occasions. Let’s not dwell on it here.
Re #35
Steve my reference was clearly to your comparison between academic review processes and securities offerings not to the rest of your post. Thank you for removing the offensive remark could you please also remove it from the Block quote in #30, I would have appreciated an apology but I guess that’s not in your nature.
Sure, it just seemed pointed and relevant to the current situation. I.e., there’s clearly an ethical boundary that is not well understood with this guy, and it is evident in the “mystery” you’re discussing in this thread. GRL seems to get it. That’s all.
Mark
Regarding Steve’s reference to ‘check-kiting’. it’s normal on occasion to include references to publications ‘in press’ or ‘submitted for publication to…’, given the frequent delays of a year or more in publication this is necessary. Of course the editor or reviewers are quite within their rights to ask for copies of any such references and to require that they be kept up to date with the progress of the publication. Usually the full reference is available by the time the proofs are prepared and the full reference is published. In a case such as this where one of the references is in fact rejected then it’s up to the editor to make a decision what to do about it. From what I read above that’s what happened and presumably was responsible for the delay in publication?
Regarding dates, that’s a mis-mash and varies from journal to journal, the most important one from an academic perspective is the date of first submission (provided it’s ultimately accepted of course) because that establishes precedence. In situations such as this the other dates might be important, Steve and I had a discussion about this in the ‘Chevaliers’ thread regarding when certain changes and rebuttals were made for example. There are various reasons for delay, slow response from reviewers is a frequent one, chivvying reviewers being one of the tasks of an editor!
Steve: In this case, there is something else that’s going on with the dates. That’s why I’m laying this groundwork.
In my own experience of the review process, if a paper is accepted (or deemed acceptable) by one reviewer, and rejected by the other, the Editor would ask the authors for changes, and then have the revised manuscript re-reviewed at the very least by the reviewer who first requested the changes. If that reviewer is still not happy, but the other one is still happy, then you would ask a third reviewer to settle the debate (it has actually happened to me very recently). I’ve never seen anything like a first review by two reviewers, and a re-review by two different ones. The original reviewers who rejected the paper or requested changes must be happy with the revised version.
It may happen (in fact it regularly happens) that one reviewer will just not accept any changes, and stubbornly refuse to accept the paper, while the other one finds it O.K. It is the Editor’s task to use his/her best judgment to see if that reviewer’s opinion is justified and in good faith, or hides some other motives (personal animosity, or even an attempt at stalling publication from a competitor). That’s why you want to ask a third, independent opinion.
About the check-kiting: citing an unpublished, and especially a non-accepted paper, is at your own risks, and again if the reviewer raises concerns over this, the Editor must use his/her best judgment to determine if the objection is valid or not. It all depends if the un-published paper is crucial to the results presented, or not. To a reviewer, it is always frustrating to have this kind of reference, because it often means you must blindly trust the authors about their results.
Finally, about Steve’s comment: “In a securities offering, this would create all kinds of issues. PErhaps it’s different in academics.”, I would say the last thing in the world that academics want to have to worry about is accountability. That is the beauty of an academic position: whatever you do, it doesn’t matter. It’s all but a childish game. That is one reason why most climate scientists don’t understand the so-called “skeptic” movement. They can only rationalize it as some kind of dark conspiracy by the oil industry, and not as a honest call for accountability. Academics usually solve their problems within themselves, which usually means that everyone’s ego must be satisfied, and that does it. I have seen the same clash of different visions in my own field (fiber optics) when many academics were lured to industry during the bubble of the late 90’s. Academics used to promising the moon about their technology could not understand that the venture capitalists actually asked them to deliver on those promises.
Re: #42 Phil, you note that:
Exactly. The question is, why does Schneider deny that this was the case? (“…thus acceptance of Ammann and Wahl 2007 was not a condition for publishing Wahl and Ammann 2007…”)
#21 – Phil, Steve’s interpretation in #18 is the correct inference in light of the common context of peer-review in science. Ross has already pointed this out in #36, and he’s right. To suppose Stephen Schneider meant anything different than what Steve M. inferred is to suppose that Schneider is being consciously equivocal. One may expect conscious equivocation from a defense lawyer but not from a journal editor.
Steve also didn’t “misquote” Schneider (your #30), at worst Steve misinterpreted Schneider. But, if so, that misinterpretation was honest because it involved assuming the common context of scientific peer-review and not the caginess of courtroom misdirection.
As a working scientist myself, I find Steve’s analogies between ethical business practice and journal editing in #25 to be entirely appropriate.
The currency of science is ideas, whereas the currency of business is money. Business lawyers take an interest in money, and so enforce an ethics of transparency to reduce the exposure of their clients. There are no science lawyers who take an interest in ideas, and who can bring journal editors and scientists to a bar of civil justice (and punishment) for clouding meaning, abusing trust, or stealing ideas.
Science, therefore, lives and dies on personal ethics alone. It’s a fragile and beautiful balance, demanding strict personal ethics. It looks to me that the Wahl and Ammann story is one of trust violation; one that attacks the very foundation of scientific practice. If Stephen Schneider is protecting Wahl’s and Ammann’s publication-kiting, especially so as to obscure a violation of the plain rules of IPCC practice, then he, too, is corroding the very base of scientific practice and violating the ethics of trust. If Steve M.’s allegations are true, as they seem to be, then the described practice is corrupt.
Francois, #43, you’re talking about the difference between academic science and industrial R&D. It may be that many academic scientists are not familiar with the strict market-driven focus of technological R&D. But really, academic research is not about the market. Industrial R&D is mostly engineering research — how to make a process work, how to make a product cheaply. High technology is amazing — it sells extremely sophisticated products for much less than their value to the customer.
Academic research is the exploration of new ideas. This exploration is far in the lead of industrial R&D, and can’t be subject to the same sort of accountability. It’s not about egos — although to be sure there are plenty of those — it’s about being allowed to make mistakes in pursuit of the unknown. In academic science, to be creatively wrong is an honorable estate. Creative mistakes point the way to eventual knowledge. In industrial R&D, to be creatively wrong is to lose money, possibly to lose your business, your livelihood, and your job. If academic scientists were subject to the punishments of the market, pure research would come to a grinding halt.
You know that high-technology industry depends on academic research to produce the science, scientists, and engineers high-tech industry will need for the future-decadal demands of the market. High-tech industry has a 5-10 year vision, no more. They can’t afford any more. Academic science has no such imposed limits on its vision. Likewise, it should have no impositional accountability concerning correct or incorrect results; a distasteful egoism notwithstanding. What academic science must have is an imposed accountability concerning dishonest practice.
It seems to me that the basic problem with academic climate science is that it’s being used as though it were a product of industrial R&D. Climate models are being used to make engineering decisions, both in terms of the power industry and in terms of socio-political adjudications. Climate scientists — a lot of them, anyway — are offering the models as competent to support these decisions, when in fact they are not thus competent. Essentially, these scientists have removed climate science from the academic milieu, where it properly belongs, and placed it into the industrial R&D milieu, where different and very serious consequences apply to making mistakes.
And now, facing that alternative suite of consequences, instead of mistakes being admitted, they’re being covered up. This is where the offense lays. Climate science would have iterated its way to a good theory in the obscurity of academic give-and-take. But certain climate scientists have elevated their feelings and fears above the ethics of science, and in servicing the former have corrupted the latter. And the ethics of science — strict commitment to objective truth — is all we have between us and tyranny. This is the pitiless lesson of the Enlightenment.
#46. Much of the frustration in all this lies in the fact that I, for one, do not think that all this prima donna behavior is the least bit relevant to making a policy case on CO2. Exploration geologists go to difficult places, but it would never occur to an exploration geologist that the data is his personal property. He’s entitled to be paid for his work, but the data is not his property. But I blame NSF as much or more than the scientists. To the extent that senior policyt makers have turned their minds to this issue, there are clear policies requiring data archiving after a very limited period of exclusive use, which would typically end on publication if not earlier. As long as NSF acquiesces in and even encourages prima donna behavior, it won’t end. NSF could get Lonnie Thompson to archive his data in a heartbeat by both giving him some funding to tidy up the mess and cutting off his funding until he agrees to make a comprehensive archive.
Steve didn’t “misquote” Schneider – he placed it word-for-word for all to see (“With regard to Wahl and Amman 2007, it was independently reviewed and re-reviewed by four reviewers…”).
Your interpretation of the meaning of the quote may differ from Steve’s, but that’s a totally different issue.
Academic “check-kiting” is NOT “normal”, though it is “normal on occasion”. If one in 20 papers does it, and the average paper has 25 citations, then the frequency of this kind of citation is 1/500. And I would bet it is lower than that. More like 1/1000. How on earth can anything that occurs 0.1% of the time be considered “normal”? This is a good example of creeping normalcy. Citing an unpublished paper is bad practice. Period. That is precisely why it is so rarely done.
There are many things in society that are “normal on occassion”. Cell phone use while driving, for example. Just because it is “normal on occasion” doesn’t mean we accept it as a good thing.
#47 — Steve, your points are entirely reasonable and the ethics implicit in your complaint are exactly what should be in force in science.
As an experimental scientist, I could never ethically hold back the parts of a valid data set that disconfirm my own published results. Cherry-picking what part of some results to publish and what part to withhold so as to promote a particular ouutcome is the deepest betrayal possible of scientific ethics, with the possible exception of outright wholesale fabrication. And really, conscious and tendentious data pruning is to fabricate a result, and really to withhold a valid part of the data is to also fabricate the data set.
That said, what you have discovered and experienced on the part of these scientists is not “prima donna” behavior. I’ve known prima donnas in science, and I don’t know one that has systematically and consciously gated data to publish only stuff that confirms a pre-desired result. To do so is to falsify.
The fault in climate science is widespread. The social outlook in climate science has shifted so far into insanity that in context it seems ethically OK to these people to cherry-pick what to publish, and to withhold disconfirming results. The other half of the offense is that institutional bodies have failed to enforce their own rules meant to prevent exactly such behavior. But institutions are really just people sitting at desks, and it’s clear that many of these people share the same skewed social outlook.
This trend in outlook is, in science, an example of the sort of social trajectory brilliantly described by Hannah Arendt in her treatise on the banality of evil. When social context alone defines normalcy, then ordinary behavior can slide into insanity without anyone noticing. This is what’s happened in climate science.
Those scientists who have a strongly internalized set of ethics have withstood the trend and remained sane. The rest have tipped over the edge. This is the reason, I think, that so many can behave with apparently complete sincerity. They are legitimately sincere and from the perspective inside that social context, they have done everything right.
Their behavior is a lesson for us all in the real value of objective standards. If we didn’t have them, there’s be no judging the legitimacy of subjective judgments. But we do have them, and they unambiguously validate your case.
Re #48 & #45
He did see #15 & #16
Re #49 Actually I think it’s done more often than that bender, the point is that the references are to papers that are in the process of publication and almost always are published and the correct reference included in the final proof because it is known by then. To not do so would be to effectively embargo a paper for about a year while waiting for it to appear in print.
Re #45
Steve’s interpretation is one of the possible interpretations and if he hadn’t changed the wording I wouldn’t have posted but Steve’s rewording was only capable of one interpretation. Also from the context it seemed that Schneider was distinguishing between two processes (his use of the word ‘independent’ for example), and indeed we knew from what Steve said that he was a reviewer but not a re-reviewer. The review process is not ‘one size fits all’, there are different procedures, some of which are two-tier, particularly if there is a problem with a paper. Some journals allow you to state who should not review a paper, for instance. I’m not the only one who took a different view of Schneider’s statement, e.g. #22.
Pat Frank #46 and #50. The blur between academic research and profit oriented R&D. Your observation is spot on. But the real agenda of climate science AGW proponents and their government cohorts reaches far beyond a desire to compete equally with ‘real world’ scientists who will be fired for making mistakes. AGW climate academics and government employees both share the luxury of non-accountability. Both groups have jobs for life, right or wrong. Their first target this time around is to pressure the media into accepting AGW and thereby forcing legislative mandates down the public’s throat. This game is about the raw power of ultimate crowd control through use of any tactics to further that objective. This results in all the basic data stonewalling, manipulation of models, half-truths and outright obfuscation and lies permeating AGW climate science today. This game plan creates tremmendous tensions and frustrations with honest scientists and observers who want nothing more than to validate climate projections supported by solid, reliable data and actual observations. This blog continues to expose data issues and is indispensible.
#51. Again,Phil, the issue is disclosure. If an author has gone out on a limb by citing a submitted article, then surely you must agree that he has a duty to inform the editor of the paper citing the rejected article that the article has been rejected. Further, surely you agree that, once the editor has been informed, he has a duty to inform the reviewers that the citation has been rejected and let the reviewers decide on a fully informed basis what they wish to do.
That’s not what happened here. Did Ammann inform Schneider of the GRL rejection in May/June 2005? Nope. Did Schneider inform the other reviewers of the GRL rejection? Nope. HAving issued a press release that they had submitted to GRL, did UCAR announce the rejection? Nope. Did this affect the public record? Yep. Houghton relied on these claims in testimony to the Senate. Did UCAR and Ammann have an obligation to correct their webpages and disclose the GRL rejection? Was Ammann justified on March 25, 2006 in posting the paragraph cited above on the UCAR website?
Or do I take it that it is your position that Ammann had no obligation to officially notify Climatic Change of either GRL rejection? That Schneider had no obligation to inform the reviewers once he was informed? That UCAR is entitled to maintain false information on their webpages?
These are simple questions, Phil.
Phil, one more incident in this sorry record. I posted up my correspondence as a reviewer here.
As a reviewer, I requested that Wahl and Ammann disclose the verification r2 and other statistics – a completely proper request on any number of levels. They refused. In their refusal letter, Wahl wrote:
The “other material referenced in mss #3221” was their GRL submission, which had at that time been rejected. Surely even you must object to an attempt to use the rejected article as authority without disclosing that it had been disclosed. A securities commission would have turned Ammann and Wahl inside out if they’d done a stunt like this.
Re #53
Steve you are making incorrect assumptions about my position on this matter.
I said as much above (#42), were I the editor and I felt that the article in question was of significant import to the paper under review I would have asked for a copy, circulated it to the reviewers and required that I be informed of the progress of the paper in a timely manner.
Actually no, the purpose of the reviewers is to advise me on the merits of the paper, it is my job as editor to weigh the evidence wrt publication. If an important reference has been rejected but the reviewers otherwise think that the paper has merit then I’d discuss the matter with the author(s) and reviewers and determine what would need to be done in order for publication to proceed. That would depend to a certain extent on the reasons for rejection, and I’d want to see the letter: perhaps alternative, already published material could be substituted, or publishing as a companion paper in my journal, or including some of the material in the current paper to make it self-contained, etc. If the author didn’t comply with my wishes I might get ticked off and suggest he took his paper elsewhere!
No you may not, I’ve told you what my approach would be were I the editor (and I have performed that thankless task on occasion), in my view it’s up to the editor to set the ground rules (and enforce them where necessary).
If it is to be a standard for 300 plus years as Newton or Galileo Galilei, what does a year really mean?? IF not, why should we pay attention…we have Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Hooke, Darwin, Watson, Einstien, etc,etc,…But as many sceptics claim, IPCC is only interested in surviving the NEXT political bruhaha. A year means much to politics, much less to science. Of course, one could claim, based on some posts, that climate science is only good for 30 years.
Now, what profit to argue with such a statement?
In #53 Steve M says
Re #53
I have a problem with this conversation. Steve M has repeatedly asked in several ways “Should there be ethical rules for disclosure?”
Phill #55 says
emphasis mine
The problem is that Steve M has shown that copies, circulation, reveiw, (assumed) requirements, information, and progress were circumvented; and given that “kiting” was involved, a bit more than a feeling would be appreciated. Additionally, although I respect a good argument, I have to wonder, what does Phil’s feelings
has to do with providing reasonable criteria for circumventing established procedures for disclosure?
I, also, as many have stated on this blog, am a professional where neglecting or refusing to provide reasonable criteria, or refusing to disclose ,can result in conviction of felony charges.
Phil,
I have read the whole thread twice. I am still trying to determine what your position is.
You belabor Steve over the tiniest assumed inaccuracy.
You claim that you would have acted differently had you been the editor.
Yet, it would appear that you have no problem with authors citing rejected papers without any notice to anyone. In other words, I do not see how your difference would ultimately have made any difference.
Phil,
Please clarify your position. Some of us are sceptical!!
Oh, and please try to use simple, clear, declaratory sentences that MORONS like me can understand!!
All very true. I think we are at the point where one of the posters will say just about anything in an attempt to not lose the argument. You see it frequently on message boards, blogs, etc. He will nuance his way out of anything. Pick on a word here, some objectionable phrasing there, claim he his not understood, etc. in a dizzying array of subterfuge, denial, and extreme face saving maneuvers.
Check-kiting happens. It is bad. Editors need to figure out a systematic process for handling such outcomes. No one can reasonably disagree with this.
Re: #57
k, Phil (finally) pretty much agrees with Steve’s stated positions in his post #55. He agrees that an author needs to inform the editor if one of his references has been rejected. He agrees that if a reference has been rejected, that info needs to be disclosed to the reviewers.
It doesn’t seem to me that it should be the least bit difficult to deal with academic check kiting.
You require the authors to provide you with a list of any unaccepted references as a separate attachment. You tell them that you’ll start the review process, but won’t clear it until they bring confirmation of acceptance of all the articles on the list. This would quickly discourage references to things like “in prep.”
Also I think that it’s particularly objectionable when authors are citing their own unaccepted work (as opposed to third party unaccepted work.) If the citation to their own unaccepted work is not critical, then the reference should be removed (in such a case, it was probably just citation inflation anyway). If the citation to their own unaccepted work was critical, then the two papers should in most cases have been consolidated. But if there’s a valid reason for them not being consolidated, then the authors would just have to wait until all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed in their review process.
I note that, if this were a business transaction and there was the equivalent of an unaccepted reference, the lawyers would categorically require that the other deal close before closing the contingent deal.
As Armand observes, Phil doesn’t seem to actually disagree with any of the ethical issues in relation to the Ammann review process. But he’s got a funny way of arguing. Consider this exchange. I observed:
Phil purports to disagree with me:
As usual, Phil is pretty anxious to express disagreement, but what did he actually disagree with? Phil agrees that the editor has to “discuss” the rejection with the reviewers. That obviously means the editor has to “inform” the reviewers of the rejection. Thus, although Phil seems unprepared to actually express agreement on such a self-evident matter, it seems that he does agree with this obvious obligation – one which Schneider seems to have evaded.
I said that the “reviewers [should] decide on a fully informed basis what they wish to do”. In expressing things this way, I’m simply talking about them discharging their duties as reviewers. I wasn’t opining on the structure of the editor-reviewer relationship. If it’s the editor’s job to make a decision, fine. All I’m talking about is the performance of the reviewer as a reviewer.
However, if the editor withholds relevant information from the reviewers and, as Phil says, the decision is ultimately the editor’s, then Phil is obliged to agree that, when challenged, the editor is not entitled to assert that there was fully informed (“strict”) peer review.
So in the present case, if the facts show that Schneider did not inform the reviewers of each GRL rejection, then Phil is obliged to condemn the following statement by Schneider:
Schneider subverted the “strict peer review” by failing to provide information to the reviewers that Phil agrees to be relevant to the discharge of their duties. Again, I do not preclude the possibility of the article being re-written to incorporate the kited arguments and include them in the review process. But this has to be done in the full light of day.
Suggestion #61 is perfectly reasonable.
Hah, bender, a while ago I almost wrote that the contingency requirement isn’t a fanciful legal concept, but rather plain common sense. It doesn’t take a lawyer to point out what is plain: the chicanery was to avoid an IPCC requirement.
====================================================
Next step: write a letter to the Editor of Nature asking them to endorse this policy.
# 61 and 62. Re: What is Phil actually saying? What your are seeing with Phil’s threads is a technique frequently used in academia, but would be fatal in the real world of business science where accountability rules. This technique is the eternal mincing and parsing of words and phrases until language itself becomes useless. and discourse ends without resolution. This substitutes for victory in academia. No winners, no losers. Thus no accountability. But, in blogs, where written statements persist for comparison, the process of intentional obfuscation by parsing, mincing finaly emerges for what it is. It just takes a while to get there. Experience will, at some point, shorten the process because readers will know from the onset of parsing, that serious dialoge is not forthcoming nor intended, and not engage in time-wasting.
At some point, Phil’s arguments always devolve into semantic quibbling. I think he purposefully wastes Steve’s time.
Damn! Halfwise beat me to it.
But then perhaps this is just an example of Steve’s dry sense of humour as per the dog that did not bite wherein he referred to submissions made in late February 2006.
#46 Pat, you should read this.
Also, there are examples where citing an unpublished may be a very acceptable practice. For example, if you present experiimental results, and refer to a submitted paper that contains the theoretical analysis. Other times, a paper is in two parts, and you might refer to the second part. Citing a manuscript in preparation is thus fairly common. What you want to avoid is citing an unpublished paper on which your own manuscript is heavily reliant. Say a paper is in two parts, you don’t submit part II first.
#70 — Thanks Francois. You’re right that sometimes unpublished work may be cited. In the journals wherein I publish, a specified requirement is that any unpublished manuscript be submitted as evidence along with the actual manuscript under review. They want to be sure that the cited support really exists, which seems entirely reasonable. So, it’s OK to do that, but the unpublished evidence should be in hand for the reviewers. It appears that Stephen Schneider didn’t hold Wahl and Ammann to that standard.
The book you linked looks interesting. But I’m a little skeptical of such connections. Both evolution and markets may reflect self-organized criticality. If so, they may manifest similar properties, but that wouldn’t mean that markets are driven by evolution.
Here, take a look: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/bib/nf/b/bak.htm
#52 — Joe, I’m not able to really parse the motivations of AGW-propounding climate scientists. I’d rather think that these folks are sincere. But I think you’re right that they have removed themselves from the consequences of their mistakes. On the other hand, Jim Hansen works for NASA, and is not an academic. My own feeling is that the social context of climate science has been so poisoned by the extreme activists of the environmental NGOs that the sensibilities of otherwise sincere people have been badly distorted. What would be unethical from a dispassionate point of view is now allowable. Scary to me is that the distorted ethics have spread into the most august institutional levels of science and involves physicists — practitioners skilled in the most analytical of sciences.
This may sound circular, but the proper focus of climate modelers should be the physics within climate models, not predicting the future of Earth climate.
Re #62
No, as should be clear from my answer to your question I disagree with your assertion that “once the editor has been informed, he has a duty to inform the reviewers that the citation has been rejected and let the reviewers decide on a fully informed basis what they wish to do.” Cut the editorializing too!
You misunderstand the roles of reviewer and editor, the reviewers task is to advise the editor on the scientific merit of the paper, they are not the ones who make the decision on its final disposition. Were I the editor as I said before I’d have ensured that the reviewers would have copies of the submitted reference and as experts in the area they’d have all the information they’d need to review the paper. In the event that they recommended acceptance of the paper the issue of the rejected reference would need to be dealt with, that would be the time to discuss it.
According to the AGU: “The editor has complete responsibility and authority to accept a submitted paper for publication or to reject it. The editor may confer with associate editors or reviewers for an evaluation to use in making this decision.”
“A reviewer of a manuscript should judge objectively the quality of the manuscript and respect the intellectual independence of the authors. In no case is personal criticism appropriate.”
No I’m not so obliged, the way I’ve described it strict peer review would have been carried out.
Again I’m not, you wish to impose your idea of strict peer review on everyone, the issue of the rejected paper is between the editor and author, and the editor has to take that into account along with the reviewers’ reports on the quality of the manuscript when deciding on the next step.
You’re putting words in my mouth, in fact you’re directly contradicting my expressed viewpoint!
Re #70
Yes Francois, those are some of the situations I had in mind in #42, of course you hope that by the time the paper is actually published that the referenced material has been published and that the updated citation is included.
.
Phil. from 73:
So your premise is that the rejection or acceptance of a citation by another publication is NOT relevant to the reviewer’s task of assessing the quality of the manuscipt — but IS relevant to the editor’s decision whether or not to publish it.
And why would this be so? How can acceptance/rejection of a reference be relevant to one but not the other? What is the basis for this distinction?
#73 Phil
Don’t you think about the implications of what you say? Is this how you or any responsible editor would operate? Yes, the job of the reviewers is to advise the editor on the scientific merit of the paper. The whole point of references is to justify the validity of statements which are relevant (and sometimes crucial) to the matters dealt with in the paper without having to demonstrate directly that such statements are true. So references ARE important to the scientific merit being evaluated and ALL information concerning the references should be available to the reviewers. You seem to think that it is enough merely to send copies of un-reviewed references to the reviewers since “as experts in the area they’d have all the information they’d need to review the paper”. These reviewers are good! They can merely glance at them and immediately know whether the information contained in them is perfectly correct… or perhaps you are proposing that they also conduct a possibly lengthy full review of the supplementary materials (which supposedly have been submitted elsewhere for exactly that purpose) as well. Your final statement is a clincher. Don’t bother telling them the reference was rejected – let them do their full review and then tell them this crucial reference is not part of the valid information if they didn’t discover this fact themselves. Please tell me again a single thing of value is to be gained by your withholding that information from the reviewers. I must have missed that part.
43 (F. Ouelette)
It depends. In some journals (for e.g., Journal of Natural Products) there is an explicit request for attaching a .pdf of any yet unpublished cited paper to the submitted manuscript so that the reviewers can read it as well. Some genetical journals request DNA sequence alignments attached so that the reviewer can play with them and check the phylogenies in the submitted MS. Anything can be arranged as a part of a journal acceptance policy.
It’s the practice in biology submissions to provide the complete text of “companion” articles (i.e., unpublished work cited in the submission) so that reviewers can assess both the primary paper and any other unpublished work. As a reviewer I would always reject a paper for which important data was unpublished and not provided in full.
BBC science reporter Richard Black appears to have written something about Amman’s submissions here. [11-14-07] Apparently, he has relied on Amman’s version of the facts. His investigative article concludes there is no apparent bias against skepticism in academic publishing or IPCC, because nobody came to him with examples of bias. [Great investigation !]
Jim:
Amman and Annan are two different climate scientists.
Thanks Bernie. Off to the optometrist for me…
Steve,
It is interesting to me that UCAR has taken down the webpage you linked to above. I am guessing the page was still live when you wrote this in April. Seems funny to me that UCAR would leave the page up for two years and take it down only after you draw attention to it.
It is worth recording somewhere one of the alledged CRU emails 1189722851.txt about changing when Ammann and Wahl 2007 was received. The published received date was 22 August 2000, which is a bit of a joke given that about 50 of its references were to publications after 2000 and fewer than 10 before. To be fair, we don’t know in which direction Jones wanted the change.
I am amused.
Re: Henry (#83), it is probably also worth noting Wahl’s reply which, although it does not add anything to what Steve had already worked out, does stress the significance of the rejected paper and of A&W 2007 for W&A 2007.
Linking Mosher’s analysis of subterfuge connected with producing AR4:
May 10, 2005 — In review
September 27, 2005 — Revised
December 12, 2005 — Provisionally Accepted
February 28, 2006 — Accepted for Publication
according to them
http://web.archive.org/web/20070805021421re_/www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/WahlAmmann_ClimChange2006.html
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[…] high level hacks of the IPCC system include the following: changing chronologies, altering the appearance of graphics to tell a different story making up science out of whole cloth […]
[…] Meanwhile, I happened to be re-visiting Wahl and Ammann 2007 – the Supplementary Information was still unavailable and had been recently refused by Ammann. On April 3, I had asked Stephen Schneider, editor of Climatic Change, how an article that was supposedly “accepted” on Feb 28, 2006 included citations to (and relied on results from) an article that was not submitted until August 22, 2006. Schneider replied on May 20. Needless to say, there wasn’t (and could not be) a valid explanation. O posted Schneider’s evasive reply on May 23 here . […]