Letters to the Editor
droogoy
Published Letters: 590 Editor's Choice: 9
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Agendas
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Solarpower wrote:
But, what happens when the peer reviewing your paper is evidently antagonistic towards you? (as has been your own experience.)
Actually, I have never had that experience. If you will re-read my post 'Akasofu Redux' you will see my experience was NOT in the context of getting a paper peer reviewed, but of Akasofu making a nuisance of himself at a seminar I was giving. The papers were ALREADY published!
In other words, Prof. A was disputing the very basis for publication. Some years later, he and cohorts did come up with their own paper, 'A Dynamo Theory of Solar Flares' - but it was laughable in that it applied so many auroral mechanisms to solar events.
Now, though I have never ever had a referee "antagonistic" toward a paper I prepared, I have had at least one complain, about this, that and the other. What I did then was revise the paper to the criteria the ref wanted. Some months later it was published. I suspect 90% of this mewling and whining by contrarians is because they aren't prepared to do the necessary revisions required to get their work in a mainline journal.
I guess you seek a more friendly peer, one more likely to grant credence to the majority of your conclusions, no?
Sorry, no - doesn't work! You get an unnamed referee and all the journals I have published in make it clear from the outset YOU don't get to pick and choose who will review it.
However, if conference papers are being produced, there will sometimes be the opportunity to suggest possible referees. That doesn't mean you will get them by any means!
By this, I am suggesting the peer review system is itself flawed since the IPCC set out with a clear POLITICAL agenda, not a scientific agenda
That's preposterous. What you are saying in effect is that DOZENS of journals that deal with climate science or paleo-climate studies are flawed in their respective peer reviews. That's nonsense, and you haven't one iota of evidence to support it.
Journals have to comply with very specific and rigorous standards, all set by overseeing organizations that publish them. For example, the American Astronomical Society oversees the editing, etc. of The Astrophysical Journal. They do not simply nix proffered papers because a submitter belongs to a political ideology, nor do they accept them. The papers must be based on solid science. As George Monbiot noted in the Physics Today piece I quoted, the IPCC has the most solid science behind it.
What has happened, as Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton noted in the same article, is that the science is hardening as many more inputs enter and the conclusions of the SCIENCE are causing a meltdown in political circles, because governments like the capitalist US of A do not wish to deal with the economic consequences the the scientific conclusions point the need for. So you have it exactly back asswards.
All the climate and atmospheric scientists I have known the past twenty years, would be mightily insulted if someone asserted they worked from a political "agenda". They are not. However, all are -were painfully aware of how their conclusions and scientific findings can arouse ire.
It is in the nature of humans. When conclusions emerge that point to the need for painful change, humans don't want to do it. A nation addicted to cheap oil and profits over people, and an economy-finance dominant mindset (over protecting resources and preservation of the planet) will ALWAYS find fault with findings that point to the need to cut back, or conserve or change methodologies.
But here's something further for you to consider: WHY is it so many businesses now are behind the IPCC thrust? Even oil companies, like British Petroleum, are changing their tune. Ask yourself that before you concoct or come back with more of these conspiracy theories.
Lastly, I never said I was "wasting my time", I said I had to attend to other priorities and those have deadlines, unlke posting to blogs and such. If you still aren't satisfied with the responses given, I can't help that. We agree to differ, what more can I say?
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That Soon & Baliunas paper
[Read the article: Desperate times, desperate scientists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Solar power wrote:
The six editors of the journal
Climate Researchwho dared to publish the Soon and Baliunas
2003 paper were fired by the publisher.
More conspiracy theories! That Soon and Baliunas paper was specious and cultivated a biased statistical methodology and bogus conclusion. The pair used 50-year intervals for their data, instead of 30-year intervals, and thereby used a ruse known as "statistical concealment" to bury the anthropogenic warming signal.
This, by the way, was the subject of a Scientific American report about four years ago. There should be a link, and I can post it when I locate it.
You express outrage at scientists with political agendas, but Baliunas has demonstrated some of the biggest - with her Marshall Institue connections, see e.g.
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=38
If you're going to go after IPCC scientists, you really need to go after Baliunas too.
The very fact she works for the Marshall Inst. - a known right wing think tank- discloses she isn't about good science, but in whoring science to support capitalist ends.
Wake up and smell the coffee, man!