Isn't Peer Review just BS?

Question

Who cares if climatologist peer review findings? What good is that? Shouldn't their studies be given to other disciplines to be tested and verified?

What do you think the results would be if UFO-olgist peer reviewed their work? I'll bet they will conclude that UFO's really exist.

What will be the results of Para-psychologist peer review? Any chance that they will think that ghost and spirits don't really exist?

So why are climatologist given such a pass on their findings? If they are correct, then let other disciplines review their work. Somehow, I think they need to keep a tight reign on their data, and not let others see what they are doing.

Why do you put a gold standard on peer review? It's nothing but BS!

Yea, I can just see your boss giving you his material to review. Or giving a bad review to someone who may review your work someday.

Just isn't going to be objective, will it.

No, if you want to prove your point, let others who are not your peers review the work. Unless you have something to hide.

Answer 1

You make a good point. The best example of this is Mann's temperature reconstruction study, or the infamous hockey stick graph, that shows temperatures roughly the same for the last 1000 years and shooting up during the 20th century. Even though the science behind it was very poor, it passed the peer review process. Why? because a group of climatologist with a political agenda wanted it to be true.

In the government sponsored Wegman report set to investigate Mann's study, they concluded:

"In our further exploration of the social
network of authorships in temperature
reconstruction, we found that at least 43
authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by
virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our
findings from this analysis suggest that
authors in the area of paleoclimate studies
are closely connected and thus
‘independent studies’ may not be as
independent as they might appear on the
surface."

Richard Litdzen, a well known sceptic, has made claims that numerous papers have been rejected because it is of no interest to its readers. In other words, if a paper does not fit the dogma, many publications will not publish it.

Answer 2

No one study could 'disprove' evolutionary theory. It would need to be a large number of different lines of evidence and must offer a better explanation than we have at the moment. This is very hard to do but not impossible; that's why scientists don't say it is a fact but a theory. There is no such thing as a fact in science, there are robust models which describe the system but it is probably just an abstraction of the reality. As in, it probably is true at the core, that we all share common ancestors and that species change over evolutionary time. This change is communicated via the passing of genetic information through generations. No one study has ever made this into the unanimously accepted scientific theory of the explanation of why organisms are the way they are, it is just what the evidence says. This evidence is diverse and from multiple disciplines (biological, palaeontological, geological, archaeological etc) and multiple peer reviewed studies. This doesn't mean evolutionary theory hasn't changed, it is being modified all the time. But over the past >200 years the core premise has not changed; species change over evolutionary time.

Answer 3

Funny you should ask. Parapsychology used to be a peer-reviewed science, for about twenty years, from the mid 50's through the mid-70's. Then it died as a science entirely. Why? Because parapsychologists couldn't find anything publishable. And "publishable" in this context means able to pass peer-review. After a while, scientists just got tired of reading yet-another-study showing no parapsychological effect.

Climatologists are not "given a pass" on their findings. Anyone, from any discipline, can read any scientific paper and object to it. This kind of post-publication peer review happens all the time -- read the letters column in any scientific journal and see what I mean. Naturally it is quite embarrassing, for both authors and editors, if somebody finds a mistake in published material. That's why editors do pre-publication peer-review: to try and catch every possible mistake before publication, thus saving face for everyone involved.

Science is a self-correcting process. That's the brilliance of it. And peer-review is what makes it self-correcting, and why it's not merely valuable, but essential to the scientific method. Anyone who avoids peer-review is just spouting opinions, not doing science.

Answer 4

Not all climate scientists study global warming dude. So they aren't handing their work off to another 'UFO-ologist'. They're handing it off to someone who doesn't believe them and whose job it is to prove them wrong.

That of course is aside form the fact that not everyone reviewing climate science papers =is= a climate scientist. Many are physicists, mathematicians, Geologists, chemists, etc.

The fact that the theory has performed so marvelously under such intense scrutiny is a testament to the strength of the evidence supporting it.

Eric: Michael Mann pointed out the flaws in the Wegman report of his graph himself. Not the least of which being the fact that they implied that because nearly forty of the scientists had 'ties' to Mann (they never said what those ties might be), they were incapable of objectively examine the graph. Anyone with half a brain can see how ridiculous that statement is. They have yet to respond.

And every climate scientist I've ever met would laugh at the idea that there is some sort of organization to the climate science community. Most climate scientists are familiar with the work of other climate scientists. Very, very few of them actually =know= these other scientists.

Also, no paper in the =history= of peer review has ever been rejected on the grounds of being uninteresting. Richard Lindzen just seems bitter that some of his papers didn't make it through the process.

Answer 5

Um, there's no such thing as UFO-ology.

Your suggestion makes no sense. You would prefer to have a stripper or "UFO-ologist" review a climatology paper than a panel of climatologists? The reason papers are reviewed by peer scientists before being published is because they'll be able to understand the research and see if there are any flaws in it.

Basically you're talking about the conspiracy theory that climate scientists are all perpetrating a giant global warming hoax. That's not how reality works. A panel of scientists review a paper, and if the science behind it is valid, they approve it regardless of what the paper concludes.

There is no conspiracy. In fact, if you want to review their papers, go ahead! Be my guest. It would do you a lot of good. You're reviewing the exact same paper reviewed by their peers. It's not like the panel reviews the paper, approves it, then hides all the scientific evidence. It's all there in the paper for everyone to see. Peer-review simply gives it credibility because experts in the field have confirmed that the science is valid.

Answer 6

Peer review is an important process when establishing support for a hypothesis or theory. But that is where it ends.

When it comes to APPLYING the science - as is the case with the IPCC with suggested courses of action - then by the same measure that other scientists and engineers are not as well-qualified to review the pure climatology science, climatologists are not qualified to apply the science towards a course of action.

For example a PhD in human physiology may know human biochemistry back and forth better than anyone, but that does not, in and of itself, qualify him or her to prescribe a medical course of action in treating a physiologic disease.

That is why, when it comes to determining policy and action to bring about a desired change, that the global warming researchers are going to have to show their hand. Otherwise, it's just like any number of hundreds and thousands of hypotheses or theories which demand no action in and of itself.

Answer 7

If climate science is not to be reviewed by other climate scientists, then who would review it? By people who have no clue about climate science?

Peer review is just an error check. If the paper has some obvious error, like helium is heavier than air or whatever, it needs to be caught by people who know otherwise. A Peer review is a proof reading for obvious errors. You wouldn't want your English paper proof read by a native Russian speaker who does not speak English, would you? A peer review is not a vote on the correctness of a new idea.

Answer 8

I'm glad you brought this up, because that's exactly what global warming pontificators mean when they say "the vast majority of the worlds scientists agree on global warming". Because the vast majority of the worlds scientists are something OTHER than climatologists. They're metallurgists, mathematicians, psychologists etc. You get the idea. If they read scientific articles about global warming and agree with the results, its really a matter of extending professional courtesy to climatologists to wrote it. But they still get polled by the news media and Y!A's own panel of in house experts as creating a "consensus" that you'd better agree with if you don't want to be ostracized.

Answer 9

Why? Because you say it is?

It's how science has worked, and worked well, for many years. Mistakes such as cold fusion and polywater were rapidly exposed by the peer review process.

And it provably works to advance science. The computer you're working on is an ultimate product of science developed using the peer review process.

Just because you don't like some results of science doesn't mean the process is bad.

I think this question is just BS. I have more scientists on my side.

Answer 10

The quality of the peer review is very important.

For scientific materials the peer reviewers must be scientists with expertise in the subject of the article that is being reviewed..