Is Peer Review Flawed?

Question

Both Mann's 'hockey stick' data and NASA GISS temperature anomalies were throughly checked out, reviewed, doubled checked for flaws, yet both these papers got by the rigorous gauntlet of "climatologist" filled with more errors than a Kennedy drivers test!

Both of these errors were detected by the mining executive, Stephen McIntyre.

So how can data like this easily pass the review of degreed climatologist? And what else has passed by "peer review" that we haven't found yet?

And isn't it time to dismiss "peer review" as a gold standard?

BB - 0.15DegC is not insignificant. The whole global warming, Earth is doomed belief is over 1DegC over 100 years! 0.15Deg is 15 years of the worst weather in te history of man, that is if the premise of "global warming" was real.

Hey Bird Brain- Even random numbers produce a hockey stick. Yea, it's flawed!

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html

Answer 1

Of course peer review is flawed.

That just means its been looked at some other people with similar opinions before publication.

If peer review was required for a new theory to be accepted... or a bad theory to be rejected... then Galileo's theory that the earth was not the center of the universe would never have gone past Galileo's desk.

All peer review does is check for typos.

Answer 2

Yes, check out the first couple of entries concerning the latest IPCC report:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070226_monckton.pdf

or this:
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/columns/article_1245606.php

Which, in the fervor to "fix" led to this:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/lyman/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

What this basically acknowledges is that [to paraphrase], "we're sorry, it only looks like the ocean is cooling because our historical records are ERRONEOUSLY WARMER THAN THEY SHOULD BE."
One such bias has been identified in a subset of Argo float profiles. This error will ultimately be corrected. However, until
corrections have been made these data can be easily excluded from OHCA estimates (see ttp://www.argo.ucsd.edu/ for more details). Another bias was caused by eXpendable
BathyThermograph (XBT) data that are systematically warm compared to other instruments [Gouretski and Koltermann, 2007]. Both biases appear to have contributed equally to the
spurious cooling.

There's an interesting discussion about this here:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/04/15/the-correction-to-the-lyman-et-al-2006-paper-is-available/


Bottom line with regards to ocean temperature trends was the mid-season adjustment to the number of predicted hurricanes due to COOLER OCEANS THAN PREDICTED. Since meteorologists' credibility rides on real-world predictions instead of the "let's see what happens next year and fudge our models some more" world of AGW modeling, it's no wonder that they don't have a problem admitting this.

Answer 3

Excellent idea. Do away with the peer review process then anyone can publish anything they like and we can all follow the principles of certain global warming skeptics - namely, do and say whatever you want, dispense with truth and pass fabrication off as fact.

I would explain the 'hockey stick' and GISTEMP anomalies but you'd simply ignore it because it doesn't conform to your preconceived ideas.

Answer 4

You may say the hockey stick is erroneous. The National Academy of Sciences disagrees with you. (Wonder who's right?) They supported its' conclusions, although they did say the data was overly smoothed (averaged).

Since then it's been duplicated many times with better statistical methods. Ten studies, using different methodologies:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png

The NASA temperature difference doesn't change anything. The 0.15 degree difference was only in the US, and applied to several years. The rate of warming didn't change except for the one year where the correction starts.

For global temperatures, the change amounted to 0.001 degree. Completely insignificant.

I don't normally insult people. But people who say this change affects global warming analysis are ignorant about it.

Peer review can make mistakes. The ones you're talking about are insignificant to any real world result. It may not be perfect, but it's very very good. The idea of dismissing it is completely ridiculous.

FredHH - Scientists accepted Galileo's work as correct from the beginning. The people who rejected it were the Catholic Church, because it threatened their power.

Similarly, scientists accept global warming as real and man made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The people who deny it are mostly motivated by politics or economics, because it threatens their power.

Answer 5

It only works if the group really works instead of peer pressure to get things done! I have been in peer groups , and one thing I noticed is that not everyone participates, over half just go along with the few "strong " voices, or highly opinionated voices.Also the moderator has to be strong or the whole thing is a waste of time.So I say if you pick the right group, you get good results.

Answer 6

In General, Science is full of examples where so called proven theory has been widely peer reviewed, accepted as the most likely answer. Only to be totally discredited years down the road when new facts come to light.

Answer 7

So the Mann graph is simply riddled with errors eh? Perhaps you wouldn't mind describing them to me. I'm sure you, believing yourself to be the harshest of skeptics, wouldn't have simply taken someone's word on this. I'm sure you have an excellent understanding of the issue and should be able to elucidate it for me.

And I suggest that if you're actually interested in the science itself, and not simply pushing your political beliefs, you would consider taking the time to analyze the data yourself. Seeing as it's all available for download over the internet. If you think the scientists did such a bad job, why don't you try and do a better one?

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Ah, so you have absolutely no clue what the issues were and chose your position ideologically rather than scientifically. Gottcha.

Answer 8

I suppose you suggest that there should be no review at all and also no monitoring of corporate pollution.
I think your question is not about peer review as much as it is about trying to smear science and to cast doubt upon the reality of Global Warming.
Note that the difference was 0.0001 degree for the global warming numbers and .15 degree for USA.




The NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) provides a measure of the changing global surface temperature with monthly resolution for the period since 1880, when a reasonably global distribution of meteorological stations was established. Input data for the analysis, collected by many national meteorological services around the world, is the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998) except that the USHCN station records up to 1999 were replaced by a version of USHCN data with further corrections after an adjustment computed by comparing the common 1990-1999 period of the two data sets. (We wish to thank Stephen McIntyre for bringing to our attention that such an adjustment is necessary to prevent creating an artificial jump in year 2000.) These data were augmented by SCAR data from Antarctic stations not present in GHCN. Documentation of our analysis is provided by Hansen et al. (1999), with several modifications described by Hansen et al. (2001). The GISS analysis is updated monthly.
The flaw did have a noticeable effect on mean U.S. temperature anomalies, as much as
0.15°C, as shown in Figure 1 below (for years 2001 and later, and 5 year mean for 1999 and
later). The effect on global temperature (Figure 2) was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so
the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.

Contrary to some of the statements flying around the Internet, there is no effect on the
rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the U.S.
(see the 2001 paper above), and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the
correction to post 2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998
temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty.

Somehow the flaw in 2001-2007 U.S. data was advertised on the Internet and for two
days I have been besieged by rants that I have wronged the President, that I must “step down”, or
that I must “vanish”. Hmm, I am not very good at magic tricks.

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EDIT TO DETAILS
For year 1999/200. and only in USA it says. The curves are indistingushable except for that blip, and the error of uncertainty is larger than the descepancy. The trend is what they were looking for there.
Any single year can vary by a larger anomaly than that and still not be a serious threat to the 5 year average.
It is a bigger concern that the funding for maintaining the temp monitoring stations is low and the reliability of any future measurements is at risk.

Note also that when he says a discrepancy of as much as he is referring to the momentary extreme value.

Again, if you think Nitpicking by a mining company and the related industies really damages or invalidates the review system, what do you propose instead? To have Exxon vet all papers on climate change?

read this for the real story,
http://www.realclimate.org/

You are obviously making a huge issue out of nothing. I expect this type of stuff out of republican and religious fundamentalists. I am not surprised by the rudeness or ignorance either.

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Vladoviking has a point, but when scientific theories tumble it is from new information backed up by serious research and rigorously tested by (guess who) scientists who then subject it to peer review.(again)
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I have read Mr Crichtons article, I always did enjoy his science fiction writing.
What is interesting is that after he spends so much time proving that arguing from trends and tracking is a bad method he introduces graphs based on trend tracking that are even more flawed, to support his position of increasing pollution.
I suggest again that whether you believe in global warming or not that reducing resource waste and reducing pollution are both valuable goals.
The fact that trying to achieve the Kyoto Agreement's goals achieves this, is almost enough to make it worth while with no other benefits.
The fact that there are a multitude of other benefits makes it even more important to do it.
Crichton also argues about the cost. That is a red herring. every place that has upgraded to new standards has reported increases in profits instead of losses.
In 2005 British Petrolium said that if it knew how much money scrubbers on its refineries would have made the would have put them on when they built the refineries. They put them on ahead of Kyoto on two refineries, they are going ahead with more pollution reduction whether they are forced to or not.
Their reason is simple profit grabbing. Until they were looking at what they could reclam from their chimneys and flare stacks they had never realized just how much money they were burning for no reason.
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And actually Galileo was shut down by a political action of a cardinal. He was a threat to the money and power if his discovery was accepted. He would have had no problems with the other scientists and they actually smuggled his book outside of the Pope's reach and published them for him.

Answer 9

no, it's good to let the mice guard the cheese. (or the kool aid)