A continuing theme of this blog is going to be the nature of peer review and how it is not at all the reliable source of information on alleged global warming that leftists think it is. There are many avenues to explore in connection with this issue, but for now I simply want to quote a statement from the Chronicle of Higher Education for June 18th of this year (page A80). The quote is from a piece entitled, “We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research,” by Mark Bauerlein, Mohamed Gad-El-Hak, Wayne Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Stanley W. Trimble. Here is the quote:
“Experts asked to evaluate manuscripts, results, and promotion files give them less-careful scrutiny or pass the burden along to other, less-competent peers. We all know busy professors who ask Ph.D. students to do their reviewing for them. Questionable work finds its way more easily through the review process and enters into the domain of knowledge.... Aspiring researchers are turned into publish-or-perish entrepreneurs, often becoming more less cynical about the higher ideals of the pursuit of knowledge. They fashion pathways to speedier publication, cutting corners on methodology and turning to politicking and fawning strategies for acceptance.
“Such outcomes run squarely against the goals of scientific inquiry. The surest guarantee of integrity, peer review, falls under a debilitating crush of findings, for peer review can handle only so much material without breaking down. More isn’t better. At some point, quality gives way to quantity.
“Academic publication has passed that point in most, if not all disciplines – in some fields by a long shot.”
This is from an article that has nothing to do with global warming or climate science. It is simply talking about the state of academic publication these days, and it finds that state far from ideal. It nevertheless bears on global warming because everyone who believes in global warming talks about how reliable the science behind it is, and to prove it is reliable they point to peer review. But why believe that peer review is reliable? This quotation suggests it is not.
“Experts asked to evaluate manuscripts, results, and promotion files give them less-careful scrutiny or pass the burden along to other, less-competent peers. We all know busy professors who ask Ph.D. students to do their reviewing for them. Questionable work finds its way more easily through the review process and enters into the domain of knowledge.... Aspiring researchers are turned into publish-or-perish entrepreneurs, often becoming more less cynical about the higher ideals of the pursuit of knowledge. They fashion pathways to speedier publication, cutting corners on methodology and turning to politicking and fawning strategies for acceptance.
“Such outcomes run squarely against the goals of scientific inquiry. The surest guarantee of integrity, peer review, falls under a debilitating crush of findings, for peer review can handle only so much material without breaking down. More isn’t better. At some point, quality gives way to quantity.
“Academic publication has passed that point in most, if not all disciplines – in some fields by a long shot.”
This is from an article that has nothing to do with global warming or climate science. It is simply talking about the state of academic publication these days, and it finds that state far from ideal. It nevertheless bears on global warming because everyone who believes in global warming talks about how reliable the science behind it is, and to prove it is reliable they point to peer review. But why believe that peer review is reliable? This quotation suggests it is not.
This reminds me of a study about 5 years ago called Why Most Published Research Findings Are False that said about half of published scientific papers are wrong. From a newscientist article:
"Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true."
Posted by: Stylo | 06/28/2010 at 11:52 PM
Peer review is not a guarantee of the veracity of research, its role is to establish that research is original, worthy of publication (and therefore put into the public domain for debate and verification) and well presented.
My son is a PhD student and was asked to peer review a conference paper, his diligence established that the authors were guilty of significant plagiarism and the paper was withdrawn.
Posted by: DocBud | 06/29/2010 at 12:16 AM
Thanks for the comments. Ordinarily, science relies on replication of results to test the claims made by a scientist. And with cold fusion, it was quickly discovered that the results couldn't be replicated.
But with global warming, we are dealing with observations made at a particular place and time, so replication of the results is not possible. So, peer review becomes important. This is obviously less convincing than replication, yet I've been told that peer review is the foundation of science. It isn't.
Posted by: John Pepple | 06/29/2010 at 08:38 PM
@DocBud...I think this is the point of this post. While I believe you have summed up what the label "peer reviewed" SHOULD mean in your three points (original, worthy, well presented) the global warming community has added a fourth point. Peer review makes the article true. "Peer reviewed" has become a badge of honor in the MSM, and on blogs, that is meant to communicate "the ideas contained here are correct as opposed to those over there which clearly must be wrong because they haven't been peer reviewed".
Posted by: Steve C | 07/13/2010 at 07:13 AM
Experience never misleads; what you are missed by is only your judgement, and this misleads you by anticipating results from experience of a kind that is not produced by your experements. Do you think so?
Posted by: lacoste shoes 2010 | 07/14/2010 at 05:34 PM
And scientists concerned about climate change believe it will cause more drought in many areas in the future.
Posted by: Jordan 1 | 08/05/2010 at 08:58 PM