Peer Review

What the Pandemic Has Taught Us About Science

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By Dr. Judith Curry – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The scientific method remains the best way to solve many problems, but bias, overconfidence and politics can sometimes lead scientists astray

It’s been awhile since I have been so struck by an article that I felt moved to immediately do a blog post.  Well, maybe because today is Saturday and it is one day after the landfall of Hurricane Delta, I actually have a half hour to do this.

Matt Ridley has published an article in the WSJ What the pandemic has taught us about science, that is highly relevant for climate change as well as for Covid-19.  It is excellent, I agree with and endorse every word of this.

The paper is behind paywall; Dan Hughes kindly sent me a topic of the text.  Here are extensive excerpts

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Rooting Out Scientific Corruption

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Recent actions show reform is in the wind, but much remains to be done, especially on climate

Dr. Brian Wansink recently resigned from his position as Columbia University professor, eating behavior researcher and director of the Cornell “food lab.” A faculty investigation found that he had misreported research data, failed to preserve data and results properly, and employed dubious statistical techniques.

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Sacred Peer-Review Takes a Big Hit

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Re-Blogged From CFACT

Global warming alarmists suffered a big hit this week in their effort to deify shoddy “peer-reviewed” climate papers. Stanford University medical professor John Ioannidis, in an interview with Agence France Presse (AFP), blew the lid off the trustworthiness of the peer-review process.

When the alarmist community seeks to push a new argument or messaging strategy in the global warming debate, they first have one of their pseudo-scientists write an article for publication in a compromised peer-reviewed journal. The political left has infiltrated and taken over most science journals that address political hot topics, much as they have taken over most of the “mainstream” news media. This is especially the case regarding global warming issues. As the leaked Climategate emails revealed, editors of science journals typically are prominent alarmists or deliberately coordinate with prominent alarmists in the selection of articles and messaging (see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review). The “peer-review process” typically involves the editor sending a submitted article to a team of reviewers who are outspoken climate activists. After the paper is published, global warming activists and their media allies typically cite the peer-reviewed nature of the paper as evidence that its conclusions are infallible. Any who question the methodology or alarmist conclusions are then labeled science deniers.

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‘The Data Thugs’

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By Peter D. Tillman – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Got your attention, didn’t it? But they are actually the good guys — two working scientists who, behind the scenes, have had striking success in bringing on retractions by publicly calling out questionable data. Their work was written up in Science Magazine in a freely-available article, here.

Once a problematic paper has been identified, it’s seldom straightforward getting it fixed.  Nick Brown and James Heathers have had unusual numbers of successes, perhaps because they start out low-key, but don’t hesitate to go public if they get no response. Other would-be whistle-blowers have had less success, as the Science article describes  in some detail. One whistle-blower’s efforts attracted legal threats — another scenario WUWT readers will recall, with  a few progressing to actual lawsuits. The litigious Dr. Michael Mann comes to mind.

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Fact Checking Alarmist Fake News Now Easy With Trive

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By Mike Lorrey – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

NOTE: The author is an advisor to trive.news. He has also made a number of contributions to WUWT over the years including moderating during the Climategate era.

We have seen over the past decade plus of the climate wars how the alarmist establishment has exploited its advantage in the halls of power and wealthy influence peddlers in Silicon Valley and the Left Coast to seek to do its best to propagandize, promote, filter, dissimilate, dissemble and to downgrade the search rankings those fighting for truth in science like us at WUWT, JoNova, ClimateAudit, etc.

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Five Reasons Blog Posts are of Higher Scientific Quality Than Journal Articles

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By Daniel Lakens – Re-Blogged FromThe 20% Statistician

A blog on statistics, methods, and open science. Understanding 20% of statistics will improve 80% of your inferences.

The Dutch toilet cleaner ‘WC-EEND’ (literally: ‘Toilet Duck’) aired a famous commercial in 1989 that had the slogan ‘We from WC-EEND advise… WC-EEND’. It is now a common saying in The Netherlands whenever someone gives an opinion that is clearly aligned with their self-interest. In this blog, I will examine the hypothesis that blogs are, on average, of higher quality than journal articles. Below, I present 5 arguments in favor of this hypothesis.  [EDIT: I’m an experimental psychologist. Mileage of what you’ll read below may vary in other disciplines].

1. Blogs have Open Data, Code, and Materials

When you want to evaluate scientific claims, you need access to the raw data, the code, and the materials. Most journals do not (yet) require authors to make their data publicly available (whenever possible).

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Science Is In Deep Trouble

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

‘Fraudulent research makes it past gatekeepers at even the most prestigious journals’

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London 31 October:  A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals the extent to which current policy-making is reliant on untrustworthy peer-reviewed research, much of which cannot be replicated and “may be simply untrue”.


click on the image above to watch a short video about the GWPF report

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Peer Review is Broken – Springer Announces 64 Papers Retracted Due to Fake Reviews

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Science publishing giant Springer, with over 2900 journals, has announced on its website that 64 articles published in 10 of its journals are being retracted.  Editorial staff found evidence of fake email addresses for peer reviewers.
No word yet on what type of papers, or if any climate papers are involved.

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