Guest post by Kip Hansen – October 7, 2024 – 1300 words/7 minutes
If you haven't read Roger Pielke Jr.'s substack The Honest Broker, you should. I do, and I'm a paying subscriber – not because I always agree with him on climate change (that's my opinion) sometimes do), but because he is an honest and hard-working scientist on policy and one of the most effective public voices of climate skepticism and climate realism (although I doubt he would see it that way.)
Here's a quote from his latest effort”Weaponizing peer review“:
“Imagining peer review as the arbiter of good science is problematic for many reasons, but one is that it downplays the possibility that bad science appears in the peer-reviewed literature and that good science appears outside these pipelines.
[ most quotes following are from Pielke Jr. there]
He next talks about this skeptical businessman Author: Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, quote them On the definition of bad science: [this quote not Pielke Jr.]
“Science is clearly fraudulent when data is invented, fabricated, or manipulated. Bad science is one where data are cherry-picked—some data are intentionally left out—or where it is impossible for the reader to understand the steps taken to generate or analyze the data. This is a set of claims that cannot be tested, claims that are based on too small a sample, and claims that cannot be derived from the evidence presented. When proponents of a position draw conclusions based on insufficient or inconsistent data, science is bad—or at least weak. … “While these scientific standards may be clear in principle, understanding when they apply in practice requires judgment. To do this, scientists rely on peer review. Peer review is a topic that is unlikely to become sexy, but understanding it is essential is important because it is what makes science a science, not just a form of science. point of view“. [ note again: that’s Oreskes and Conway, not Pielke Jr.]
This “idea of peer review as the arbiter of good science is problematic for many reasons, but one of them is that it downplays the fact that bad science can appear in the peer-reviewed literature while good science Possibilities emerge outside of these pipelines, said Pielke Jr.
Of course, he's absolutely right.
In the featured substacking article, Pielke Jr. focuses on
“…the use and abuse of peer-reviewed literature to generate tactical science I define it as:
“Publications—usually peer-reviewed literature—are designed and constructed to serve parascientific purposes, often to shape public opinion, influence politics, or serve legal proceedings.”
Have we seen anything in climate science that fits this description? Yes, we do, a lot. Please note that all tactical science yes bad science – Pretended science, scientific papers with predetermined findings, propaganda disguised as science, political manipulation rather than science – Papers that look like science but are actually designed to achieve some purpose other than true science:
“Science as a collective institution aims to provide increasingly accurate natural explanations of how the natural world works, what its components are, and how the world came to be what it is.” [ source ]
I could make a long list of what I consider to be poor scientific papers in another long list of fields (poorly done, cherry-picked, misuse of statistical methods, wrongly selected data sets, conclusions not consistent with the evidence presented, etc.). But Dr. Pielke provides the following example: tactical science Areas of interest to most readers—climate science:
[ Money quote from Abstract: “Even considered on the time frame of 100 years after emission (GWP100), which severely understates the climatic damage of methane, the LNG footprint equals or exceeds that of coal.” — kh ]
[ Money quote from Abstract: “Although the probability of 8.5 watt per square meters scenarios is low, our results support their continued utility for calibrating damage functions, characterizing climate in the 22nd century (the probability of exceeding 8.5 watt per square meters increases to about 7% by 2150), and assessing low-probability/high-impact futures.” — kh ]
- Schwalm et al. 2020. The paper relies on the bizarre assumption of a large increase in carbon dioxide emissions from land use, which is completely inconsistent with observations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
[ Money quote from Abstract: “Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100.” – kh ]
According to Pielke Jr., signs of tactical science include, but are not limited to:
1. Failure to disclose the interests of direct funders
2. These findings are outliers in their respective fields but provide reasonable counterarguments as to why the findings are true despite the broader field.
Such papers allow others to produce political opinion Based on these anomalous results – use something like “The latest science in a peer-reviewed paper published by Slinger and Smuts shows that we must…“.
Regarding the three examples above, Pielke Jr. made it clear:
“The three climate papers mentioned above are bad science, not just because they are tactical science, but because they are bad science — and proving them requires good science.”
In his substack article, Pielke Jr. offers some advice on how to approach the science of tactics.
The first is to understand “Peer review provides a minimum standard of review. It certainly does not provide a line between good science and bad science“.
My point is that, as readers here may already know, peer review is often Culprits that encourage bad science And it’s not a cure. All fields of science are prone to pervasive biases in favor of (or against) various scientific viewpoints that develop through the office. publication bias [see para 8.5]science fashion, friends’ comments, go with the flow Peer reviewers who support popular opinion and social pressure.
Many times, a paper is approved for publication in a peer-reviewed journal because it has a catchy title, “seems to agree” with the general field, will generate a large number of “clicks”, and will attract interest in the authors, their paper Favorable attention.
Not only are there tactical science journal articles, but there are entire tactical climate crisis research groups that do nothing but support the so-called tactical science of the climate crisis.
encourage readers List them in the comments.
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Author comments:
Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about bad science and tactical science Producers, scientists themselvesare all bad people. They are just regular people: parents, moms and dads, neighbors, bowling league members, youth baseball and soccer coaches, and volunteers at the local food bank. What sets them apart is that they were involved in the production of tactical science, or in the production of sloppy, poorly done, and/or erroneous work.
Why? You'd have to ask each of them personally, but my guess is justification of the Nobel cause: the mistaken belief that some generally bad behavior is justified by the Nobel cause it promotes. Others are stuck in professional limbo need to believe or face loss of status or reputation.
Many people simply have to get along, just like they did when they were teenagers and stayed in the crowd.
Bad science makes me (need…) try to correct it. Tactical science makes me sick.
Thank you for reading.
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