Roy Spencer artikel fundamenteel incorrect; hoofdredacteur stapt op

Wolfgang Wagner, hoofdredacteur van het tijdschrift Remote Sensing, stapt op vanwege de publicatie van een fundamenteel tekortkomend artikel:

[peer review is] supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. (…) the paper by Spencer and Braswell that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.

Peter Gleick heeft een goede samenvatting van de gebeurtenissen. Dan Satterfield zegt ook waar het op neer komt:

They [“skeptical” papers such as Spencer’s] are not published to further the science, but as a piece of meat to those who find the science very incompatible with their world view.

Wagner zegt dat kritische minderheidsopvattingen zeker gepubliceerd moeten worden, maar dat dat niet betekent dat allang weerlegde argumenten telkens maar weer een plaats verdienen in een peer reviewed tijdsschrift:

The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.

Volgense Stoat betekent dit dat

Yes, novel and interesting challenges to the established view should be published – perhaps even get given a slightly easier ride, if they are novel. But No: just saying the same old thing again isn’t any good.

Natuurlijk klaagt Roy “Conspiracy” Spencer erover dat de IPCC gatekeepers een genie als hem proberen buiten te sluiten.

Vertaling van mijn Engelstalige blog hierover.