cc: p.jones@uea.ac.uk date: Fri, 16 May 2003 16:11:04 -0400 from: "Michael E. Mann" subject: Re: Climate Research and adequate peer review to: Mike Hulme Dear Mike Did anything ever come of this? Clare Goodness was in touch w/ me indicating that she had discussed the matter w/ Von Storch, and that DeFrietas would be relieved of his position. However, I haven't heard anything. A large segment of the community I've been in contact with feels that this event has already done its damage, allowing Baliunas and colleagues to attempt to impact U.S. governmental policy, w/ this new weapon in hand--the appearance of a legitimate peer-reviewed document challenging some core assertions of IPCC to wave in congress. They appear to be making some headway in using this to influence U.S. policy, which makes our original discussions all the more pressing now. In this context, it seems important that either Clare and Von Storch take imminent action on this, or else actions of the sort you had mentioned below should perhaps be strongly considered again. Non-action or slow action here could be extremely damaging. I'll forward you some emails which will indicate the damage that the publication has already caused. Thanks very much for all your help w/ this to date, and for anything additional you may be able to do in this regard to move this forward. best regards, mike At 06:47 PM 4/16/2003 +0100, you wrote: Dear Co-Review Editor, You may or may not have seen/read the article by Soon and Baliunas (from the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysics Lab) in the Jan 31 2003 issue of CR (vol.23,2). A variant of this analysis has just been published in the journal Energy and Environment. The authors/editor made a big media campaign to publicise this work, claiming it showed clearly the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the 20th century and that the IPCC (and other) analysis claiming the 20th century was the warmest in the last millennium was plain wrong. In the UK, the Sunday Telegraph ran the story. I have followed some email discussion about this amongst concerned paleoclimate experts here at UEA, in the USA and in Oz and NZ and their is overwhelming consensus that the Soon and Baliunas work is just crap science that should never be passed peer review (for a flavour see Mike Mann, Phil Jones and Barrie Pittock below). These paleo-experts have decided it is not worth a formal scientific response since the story has not run that widely in the mass media (although is now used by sceptics of course to undermine good science) and that the science is so poor it is not worth a reply. The CR editor concerned is Chris de Freitas and I have followed over the years papers in CR that he has been responsible for reviewing. [Wolfgang Cramer resigned from CR a few years ago over a similar concern over the way de Freitas managed the peer review process for a manuscript Wolfgang reviewd]. Whilst we do not know who reviewed the Soon/Baliunas manuscript, there is sufficient evidence in my view to justify a "loss of confidence" in the peer review process operated by the journal and hence a mass resignation of review editors may be warranted. This is by no means a one-off - I could do the analysis of de Freitas's manuscripts if needbe. I am contacting the seven of you since I know you well and believe you may also have similar concerns to me about the quality of climate change science and how that science is communicated to the public. I would be interested in your views on this course of action - which was suggested in the first place my me, once I knew the strength of feeling amongst people like Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Mike Mann, Ray Bradley, Tom Crowley, etc. CSIRO and Tyndall communication managers would then think that a mass resignation would draw attention to the way such poor science gets into mainstream journals. Of course, we would need to be sure of our case and to argue on grounds of poor conduct of peer review (I can forward a devastating critique of the Soon/Baliunas method from Barrie Pittock if you wish) rather than on disagreeable content of one manuscript. CR does of course publish some good science, but the journal is not doing anyone a service by allowing crap science also to be published. Thoughts please, Mike ______________________________________ FROM MIKE MANN Dear all, Phil relayed this message to me--this echos discussions that others of us here have had as well, and at Phil's request, I'm forwarding some of these (Phil seems to have deleted them). I am encouraged at the prospect of some sort of action being taken. The "Energy and Environment" piece is an ad hominem attack against the work of several of us, and could be legally actionable, though I don't think its worth the effort. But more problematic, in my mind, is the "Climate Research" piece which is a real challenge to the integrity of the peer-review processes in our field. I believe that a boycott against publishing, reviewing for, or even citing articles from "Climate Research" is certainly warranted, but perhaps the minimum action that should be taken. A paper published there last year by a University of Virginia "colleague" of mine who shall remain nameless contained, to my amazement, an ad hominem attach against the climate modeling community, and the offending statement never should have seen the light of day (nor should have any of the several papers of his which have been published there in recent years, based on quality and honesty standards alone). A formal statement of "loss of confidence" in the journal seems like an excellent idea. It may or may not be useful for me to be directly involved in this, given that I am a primary object of attack by these folks. However, I'm happy to help in any way that I can, and please keep me in the loop. best regards, Mike Mann FROM PHIL JONES Dear All, There have been a number of emails on these two papers. They are bad. I'll be seeing Hans von Storch next week and I'll be telling him in person what a disservice he's doing to the science and the status of Climate Research. I've already told Hans I want nothing more to do with the journal. Tom Crowley may be writing something - find out also next week, but at the EGS last week Ray Bradley, Mike Mann, Malcolm Hughes and others decided it would be best to do nothing. Papers that respond to work like this never get cited - a point I'm trying to get across to Hans. We all have better papers to write than waste our time responding to drivel like this. Cheers Phil Jones FROM BARRIE PITTOCK Dear Jim, Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I hope the co-editors of 'Climate Research' can agree on some joint action. I know that Peter Whetton is one who is concerned. Any action must of course be effective and also not give the sceptics an excuse for making de Freitas appear as a martyr - the charge should surely be not following scientific standards of review, rather than publishing contrarian views as such. If a paper is contested by referees that should at least be stated in any publication, and minimal standards of statistical treatment, honesty and clarity should be insisted on. Bringing the journal and publisher into disrepute may be one reasonable charge. 'Energy and Environment' is another journal with low standards for sceptics, but if my recollection is correct this is implicit in their stated policy of stirring different points of view - the real test for both journals may be whether they are prepared to publish refutations, especially simultaneously with the sceptics' papers so that readers are not deceived. On that score you might consider whether it is possible to find who de Freitas got to review various papers and how their comments were dealt with. I heard second hand that Tom Wigley was very annoyed about a paper which gave very low projections of future warmings (I forget which paper, but it was in a recent issue) got through despite strong criticism from him as a reviewer. Cheers, Barrie Pittock. ______________________________________________________________ Professor Michael E. Mann Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 _______________________________________________________________________ e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137 [1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml