date: Tue, 27 May 2008 14:41:06 -0700 from: Ben Santer subject: David Douglass to: "Thorne, Peter" , Leopold Haimberger , Karl Taylor , Tom Wigley , John Lanzante , ssolomon@frii.com, Melissa Free , peter gleckler , "'Philip D. Jones'" , Thomas R Karl , Steve Klein , carl mears , Doug Nychka , Gavin Schmidt , Steven Sherwood , Frank Wentz Dear folks, I just wanted to alert you to an issue that has arisen in the last few days. As you probably know, a paper by Robert Allen and Steve Sherwood was published last week in "Nature Geoscience". Peter Thorne was asked to asked to write a "News and Views" piece on the Allen and Sherwood paper. Peter's commentary on Allen and Sherwood briefly referenced our joint International Journal of Climatology (IJoC) paper. Peter discussed this with me about a month ago, and I saw no problem with including a reference to our IJoC paper. The reference in Peter's "News and Views" contribution is very general, and gives absolutely no information on the substance of our IJoC paper. At the time Peter I discussed this issue, I had high hopes that our IJoC manuscript would now be very close to publication. I saw no reason why publication of Peter's "News and Views" piece should cause us any concern. Now, however, it is obvious that David Douglass has read the "News and Views" piece and wants a copy of our IJoC paper in advance of its publication - in fact, before a final editorial decision on the paper has been reached. Dr. Douglass has written to me and to Peter, requesting a copy of our IJoC paper. In his letter to Peter, Dr. Douglass has claimed that failure to provide him (Douglass) with a copy of our IJoC paper would contravene the ethics policies of the journal "Nature". As you can see from my reply to Dr. Douglass, I feel strongly that we should not give him an advance copy of our paper. However, I think we should resubmit our revised manuscript to IJoC as soon as possible. The sooner we receive a final editorial decision on our paper, the less likely that it is that Dr. Douglass will be able to cause problems. With your permission, therefore, I'd like to resubmit our revised manuscript by no later than close of business tomorrow. I've incorporated most of the suggested changes I've received from you in the past few days. My personal feeling is that we've now reached the point of diminishing returns, and that's it's more important to get the manuscript resubmitted than to engage in further iterations about relatively minor details. I will circulate a final version of the revised paper and the response to the reviewers later this evening. Please let me know if resubmission by C.O.B. tomorrow is not acceptable to you. With best regards, Ben ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin D. Santer Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808, Mail Stop L-103 Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A. Tel: (925) 422-2486 FAX: (925) 422-7675 email: santer1@llnl.gov ----------------------------------------------------------------------------