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Post by rsmith7 on Oct 8, 2010 20:17:08 GMT 1
Before the polymaths pile in, the most telling point in the book is the continued warmist evasion, obfuscation and refusal to release their data and methodology.
I don't have the statistical knowledge to question Montfords (and MacIntyre's) conclusions but the behaviour of the Hockey team, the IPCC and the scientific journals tell me all I need to know.
A biblical scale scandal and a scurrilous corruption of science.
People MUST be jailed for this.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 14, 2011 11:46:45 GMT 1
Review of The Hockey Stick Illusion, by A.W. Montford (Stacey Intl., 2010), 482 pages, ISBN-13: 978:1906768355 Cutting-edge science, mystery, and whodunit intrigue rarely merge in a single book. Rarer still do they merge in nonfiction. In A. W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, readers get an intriguing, highly informative dose of all three. While walking readers through a tale of real-life mystery, complete with unexpected heroes and villains, The Hockey Stick Illusion presents superb chronological detail, explicit explanations of statistics, and a clear discussion of the science at the heart of one of science’s most troubling scandals. Code-Breaking ThrillerAs Montford explains, the Hockey Stick refers to an attempt by global warming alarmists to mislead people into believing the Medieval Warm Period of the 13th century, when coastal Greenland was actually green, trees in California grew above today’s tree line, and wine grapes grew in places too cold to grow them today, never occurred. As Nigel Calder, author of The Chilling Stars, explains in the foreword to The Hockey Stick Illusion, this is a thriller about code-breaking—not Hitler’s codes or al Qaeda’s codes, but computer codes programmed in a manner to produce a false claim about the temperature record. The Hockey Stick made its grand entrance in the scientific debate in a paper published in April 1998 in the journal Nature. The senior author was a then relatively obscure scientist named Michael Mann, who had just received his Ph.D. and was serving as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Massachusetts. The paper is commonly referred to as MBH98 for the three authors, including Ray Bradley and Malcom Hughes. Data Kept SecretThe MBH98 paper describes, but does not include, the 112 sets of data the authors claimed to have studied in forming a temperature analysis of the previous millennium. The authors referred to the data as “indicators”—commonly described as “proxies”—in which tree rings and other items are asserted to convey temperatures long before humans set up a global network of mercury thermometers. Statistical experts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick suspected something was funny about the unprecedented claims made in the MBH98 paper and the authors’ failure to disclose the raw data upon which they made their claims. The Hockey Stick Illusion details how McIntyre and McKitrick spent years navigating endless roadblocks and obstacle courses to obtain the raw data and unravel the statistical gymnastics performed by the MBH98 authors to make their maverick claim current-day temperatures are higher than those of the Medieval Warm Period. Reading Montford’s book, it is impossible to miss the parallels between McIntyre and McKitrick unraveling the MBH hockey stick scheme and federal law enforcement officials exposing the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. One must hope fervently that Mann’s deception will get equally extensive exposure. Mann and his coauthors used a variety of tricks to make their analysis of their unpublished data appear plausible to those not expert in statistical analysis. Montford offers clear tutorials on every one of Mann’s statistical tricks, which could make this book an excellent selection for outside reading in a college statistics course. You do not need to understand statistics to enjoy this book, but if you do, you will especially enjoy Montford’s tutorials on such things as centring, regression analysis, and principal components. After years of investigation and analysis, McIntyre and McKitrick showed a graph of the earth’s temperature during the past thousand years does not resemble a hockey stick with its long handle gently sloping down and its short blade rising sharply at a 45-degree angle at the very end (representing abnormally high 20th century temperatures). McIntrye and McKittrick were spurned by mainstream science journals in the thrall of alarmists and radical environmental activist groups. To the rescue came Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of the peer-reviewed science journal Energy and Environment, who published their work in October 2003. Limits of Peer ReviewOne of the most interesting parts of the book is the section on the limits of peer review in scientific journals. A peer review normally involves simply reading a scientific manuscript and providing instructive comments and feedback. It does not involve obtaining the data, reviewing the code, or performing the calculations again. Yet the proponents of global warming alarmism attempt to mislead the public into believing peer-review is a necessary prerequisite for scientific credibility and a gold stamp of approval on the authors’ conclusions. Because the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals are just as dominated by liberal establishment thought as are the editorial boards of the mainstream news media, these myths about peer review serve global warming alarmists well. Centuries of scientific endeavor, however, show truth emerges only from repeated experimentation and falsification of theories, a process that only begins after publication and can continue for months, years, decades, or centuries thereafter. Scientific facts are not governed by a show of hands, especially when the jury is just as biased as, say, the editorial board of the New York Times. It was clear long before publication of MBH98 that the Medieval Warm Period was a major problem for those who argued human activities were having what would be an ultimately catastrophic effect on the climate. MBH98 temporarily solved that problem for the alarmists, but The Hockey Stick Illusion expertly explains how and why MBH98 has been relegated to the dustbin of scientific history. Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director of The Heartland Institute. www.heartland.org/full/30162/Mesmerizing_Insight_into_the_Infamous_Hockey_Stick_Scandal.html
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Post by StuartG on Jun 14, 2011 12:20:41 GMT 1
I've read the above and took the lead to heartland.org from there I found my way to this blog, where it points up "The June 1 issue of the North Atlanta weekly paper, Northside Neighbor...." showing a letter from by James H. Rust on June 13, 2011, He states... "One of the problems I have noticed with NASA is it has become too political." blog.heartland.org/2011/06/the-trouble-with-nasa/#more-4667 I've 'banged on' about this on the previous science forum [beeb] and this is the first time I've seen it written elsewhere. Perhaps this is the start of un-politicising the science, a worry all should share, because if You don't then certain research will get sidelined as not 'politically correct' or 'non-expedient'. The saying 'careful what You wish for, should include 'wish and vote for'. StuartG the original letter... neighbornewspapers.com/stories/True-cost-of-NASA-cuts-is-astronomical,171965 |
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 14, 2011 13:15:48 GMT 1
What bollocks! Necessary pre-requisite, yes, but we all know that there isn't enough TIME for a reviewer to re-analyse every paper.
As I keep saying, publication is only the START of the process, and what matters is not what ONE paper says, but whether others get the same results doing a similalr analysis on the same data, or on different data. The CONSENSUS takes time to form, and papers can disappear without trace, opinions change over time.
But papers that CAN'T pass peer-review mean that you couldn't even convince a couple of reviewers that:
1) you can write
2) you can understand what others have written in the past
3) that you're not talking plain bollocks or wasting your time on an incorrect assumption or blatantly false method of analysis
4) What you say may be right, but just plainly not interesting or too minor or trivial in terms of original contribution to merit journal publication
So, it's not peer-review per se that is guarantee of quality (it isn't OBVIOUS crap), but that LACK of success at peer-review (where a lot of the supposed skeptics sit) means that it IS fairly-obvious crap. Like Casey and his bloody-stupid and factually incorrect comments about isotopic analysis...............................
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Post by principled on Jun 14, 2011 20:06:06 GMT 1
STA And there's the rub or certainly the weak point. I expect that a paper that reinforces the consensus will have less of a hurdle to get to publication than one that doesn't. The trouble is, as you have pointed out, opinions change and perhaps, just perhaps, those papers that were swimming against the consensus which didn't make publication may in fact have been swimming in the right direction all along. We're all human and all of us have human frailties...even scientists. I like this link to scientists who were thought to be wrong, but were proved correct. amasci.com/weird/vindac.htmlP |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 15, 2011 7:22:01 GMT 1
I think nothing as deeply politicised as the climate debate has occurred since Galileo knocked up against the Roman church. That really is, IMO, analogous to the opposition contrarian scientists are now meeting from the Establishment and Orthodoxy both in the scientific and political realms. It is really mean stuff that is being perpetrated by the IPCC approved "Consensus" as revealed in the Climategate emails - the latest manifestation being Ralph Cicerone, arch alarmist and president of the National Academy of Sciences, attempting to belittle Richard Lindzen by refusing to publish his paper on atmospheric physics in the PNAS.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 15, 2011 14:57:45 GMT 1
Well, that's kind of natural, in that people will tend to be more sceptical of a paper that seems to disagree with all they have been taught. But not just that -- to be the consensus, means that there is a whole load of evidence to support it. IF you are claiming that is ALL WRONG based on your one little paper where the data etc isn't really that strong, then you'll be pulled up for making claims that aren't supported by the data that you have presented. As regards the supposed Lindzen thing, it seems to be that he received two favourable, and two not so favourable reviews from PNAS, amd decided to submit elsewhere. Not exactly the same as a refusal to publish by the president: climateaudit.org/2011/06/10/lindzens-pnas-reviews/In fact, the whole account of the review process seems a little murky: www.masterresource.org/2011/06/lindzen-choi-special-treatment/with claims that 'none of my suggested reviewers would have said that' etc etc, but no actual evidence that they weren't using the suggested reviewers. I can't see where Ralph Cicerone comes in though.................... Let's face it, the skeptics arev trying to promote the idea that their papers get unfavourable reviews, and the journals are trying to avoid that, whilst the poor bloody reviewers probably wish that they could just get on with the science without the prospect of seeing their reviews spread all over the skeptic websites as soon as they are received.................. Mind you, Lindzen probably didn't help his side by saying the following: This is basically saying that four of the respected academics the journal suggested as suitable reviewers are unfit to judge, because they have a different opinion to Lindzen. The crack about 'global warming alarmists' doesn't help either. He is just plain accusing these four of NOT being decent scientists. This tends not to go down well with journals (who after all know what they expect of reviewers, a fair unbiased judgement based on the facts of the paper), so suggests the journal editorial board is as bad as the reviewers -- and this is BEFORE they have submitted a review, favourable or otherwise. Lots of journal editors must be used to the 'your reviewers are obvious idiots' line after a paper has been rejected, but not BEFORE. And accusing suggested reviewers of not being FAIR before they have said a word about the paper is frankly, rather unprofessional. Say they don't have the relevant experience, that would be fair, say they aren't experts in the particular area needed, ditto, but saying without any evidence that they will not be FAIR is a slap in the fact that any decent reviewer would be affronted by. The point about papers is that we have to TRUST the author that they did what they said they did, and the results were as they were. The same assumption of trust and probity is also usually extended the other way, from authors to reviewers selected by prestigious journals. Calling people untrustworthy idiots without any EVIDENCE hence breaks this bond of mutual assumption of trustworthiness, and I'd have got a bit snotty if it had been me on the editorial panel. Nevertheless, they got four reviews, and the balance went against the paper. Tough shit, it happens, but unfortunately Lindzen seems to have ASSUMED what was going to happen before it did. |
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Post by jonjel on Jun 15, 2011 15:09:46 GMT 1
Which is very unusual. Most people who submit papers are passionate about the subject and absolutely convinced that their research is ground breaking in one way or another. Many of us have been bored rigid by obscure subject matter about to be printed.
So we perhaps can deduce that he was not so sure of his facts in the first place, and decided to condemn the reviewers before they condemned him, which he fully anticipated.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 15, 2011 16:38:35 GMT 1
The more I look at this, the WORSE it gets. He's saying to the editorial board that you're all corrupt bastards as well for choosing these biased reviewers, or too stupid to not see that they're not going to be fair.
He's slandering the reviewers before they've said a word, which is bad form old bean!
I mean, IF a suggested reviewer was someone whose wife you had had an affair with (or something of that sort), you might be in a position to suggest that they would find it a strain to be impartial in your case, so could you have someone else. But to suggest someone won't be impartial because they hold a contrary view is not the done thing, it is impugning their professional reputation ( a serious thing, often the only thing us poor academics have!), BEFORE you have any evidence.
Others have an interesting opinion of the process:
the point about PNAS that the 'skeptics' don't make so much of is that it is a slightly odd process anyway -- IF you're a member, you can submit a paper AND some reviews you managed to get and ask them to consider it. Only if the journal decides your reviewers are a bunch of numpties do they select their own (provided you agree!). This is hardly the NORMAL review process for a journal, when you submit, THEY pick the (anonymous) reviewers, and you just have to put up with it.
And even given all that, he still couldn't get it in!
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 16, 2011 13:21:09 GMT 1
So he took it to another journal which published it without too much soul-searching - The Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.
As Lindzen admits, no-one is claiming his is the last word on the subject - just part of the attempt to get a better understanding.
One wonders what purpose Stephen Schneider's PNAS hatchet job blacklisting contrarian scientists served ? Oh ,yes, discrediting the scientific opposition to the hypothesis he as much as anyone hs promoted over the last decades! I'm glad he's gone!
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 16, 2011 16:11:27 GMT 1
Yeah? your evidence for the easy review process is?
PNAS is an A* journal (ERA ranking), the top, whereas the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences is only a C, which is the bottom rank (A*,A,B,C).
In lay terms, he probably didn't have too much problem, cos its a low-ranking journal. Which means easier to get into, and people who read it know that. Myself, I try to stick with A* and A ranked journals (and conferences), because a C-ranked journal or conference impresses no one.
Many of us try to get into A* journals and get rejected, but going all the way down to a C-ranked journal makes him seem a bit desperate, most of us TRY an A* first, then re-write for A or B if that fails.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 18, 2011 19:50:06 GMT 1
PNAS is a vanity publishing organisation where members can get published with their pals acting as referees. That's how Schneider got his "contrarian blacklist" published. VERY "scientific", for the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES I must say. Don't they have anything better to do?
I am surprised Lindzen would want to be in that company, myself. I wouldn't
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Post by marchesarosa on Jul 18, 2011 14:56:15 GMT 1
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Post by marchesarosa on Oct 4, 2011 16:50:32 GMT 1
Another review of the Hockey Stick Illusion has been published - this time in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. It's paywalled, but is complimentary.
excerpt:
The book provides a fascinating and engaging level of detail, which brings scientific, statistical and even political procedures vividly to life, a feature which elevates this book into an important source of historical insight.
excerpt
“This book is an impressive and important work, one that could be an eye-opener for students of statistics, but also an inspiration for them as they see the power of careful and conscientious attention to detail in pursuing complex data analyses… But more importantly, in the near future, the book should be an eye-opener for politicians, and an encouragement for them to insist on thorough and independent investigation of claims published in scientific journals when these are used to underpin extremely important policy decisions.”
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