Bishop Hill Marcott in freefall
Mar 15, 2013 Climate: MWP Journals Media It has only taken days for some serious question marks to be raised about the Marcott hockey stick. McIntyre has posted here about the mystery surrounding the methodology and here about the curious lack of a similar 20th century uptick in Marcott's PhD thesis on which the Science paper appears to have been based. Willis Eschenbach notes that many of the proxies used fail the paper's own criteria for inclusion, David Middleton has raised further questions based on examination of individual proxies. Don Easterbrook has further concerns here.
I was struck by Rob Wilson's comments about the paper a couple of days ago. He had only given it a brief read and alarm bells were already sounding. Rob is an expert in the area, but even for me, the paper did not pass the sniff test.
What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?
Reader Comments (93)
It demonstrates the conversion of Science (and Nature) from first class scientific journals to advocacy magazines following the fine example previously set by Scientific American and New Scientist.
It shows Science is in dire straits, giving in to political correctness, social media opinions and consensus articles. It is going right down the drain.
They're going to bluff it out just like Hockey Stick 1.0, which has never been withdrawn, right?
What does it say about the MMS which will ignore the issue and leave the original "splash" unchanged?
This paper appears to be so bad that one must consider its zero point - annum 1950 - at which the blade appears. It is like a singularity, or a bad data end point. These happen in papers -- Richard Feynman won his Nobel after realizing that the previous (wrong) paradigm had been contingent on a single bad data endpoint. Or maybe the data after 1950 has reversed polarity because of "negative years". Deer in headlights time for these authors.
To me, the most puzzling question is the ethics of the authors. Even if, for whatever reason, you obtain significantly different results (from the same raw material) than earlier, aren't you at least obligated to tell it (and preferably explain the reason for the difference)? It is impossible to stand behind both the results of Marcott et al Marcott's thesis version (which states "To be submitted to Nature") and Marcott et al. Science version.
Andrew said:
"What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?"
Indeed, do you not find that very saddening, I know I do.
I could not bring myself to publish a paper unless it had been rigorously picked over by my peers [and betters - it's a fail safe] and with all scientific method, data published too - and isn't that what one is supposed to do?
The blogospehere is becoming the best way to critique papers in the climate field, and slapdash authors should be very afraid of its thoroughness and un-cosyness.
I haven't read this paper, nor am I an expert on paleoclimate, so won't comment on specifics.
*However*
If a group of people are *genuinely* concerned about a scientific result, and believe they can show serious flaws, then they will be taken much more seriously by the scientific community if they submit a comment to the journal.
This helps all round - arguments have to be carefully thought through, there is a right of reply, and individuals don't have to go round looking at hundreds of blogs of massively varying quality.
I know there will be lots of comments about "gatekeeping", but the comment route can be effective if there is a strong case. If there is a strong case, then finding academics with opinions on the original manuscript shouldn't be too hard. At the very least, there would be a coherent manuscript that people can look at.
And if there isn't a strong case, then, well,....
'What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?'
It says that the deadline for inclusion on IPCC AR5 is this week. And that since any critiques of Marcott et all - however devastating - will not have been published in a scientific journal by then, the paper will stand as the latest part of the public record for the purposes AR5.
As far as they are concerned The Hockey Stick was not dead...only sleeping.
But gaming the publication system such an obvious way is a much higher risk strategy nowadays than it was for earlier IPCC 'reviews'. For AR4 the deadline was in 2005 or 2006. The 'sceptic' movement had hardly found a voice for itself in those days, let alone in the MSM. IPCC reports were accepted without question then as the independent results of objective scientists. There was no scrutiny..the few who tried (McIntyre, McKitrick) were universally denounced as deranged heretics
But along came Climategate and WUWT and HSI and AIT and the GWPF and all dem tings and the world was never the same again.
Like the awful example of Gergis et al, Marcott's paper is being ripped apart by many determined and skilled investigators. After less than a week it is clear that it has (as a minimum) severe problems with its methods and conclusions. It may survive the scrutiny..but only in a much diluted form.
And after such a mauling, the IPCC editors would surely be deranged to rely on this paper as part of their argument. It would lay them open to charges of special pleading and lack of judgement. I can imagine those few IPCC authors with both ability and integrity already writing
'I'm going to keep this paper out of AR5 even if I have to redefine what peer-reviewed' means.
I think we can see already that Marcott's bid for scientific superstardom has failed, He is damaged goods. He's taken a foolish career gamble and lost. Maybe he believed the Team Hype that outside scrutineers were just knuckle dragging morons in thrall to Big Oil and at the intellectual bidding of the Koch Twins and incapable of seeing through the bluster. Or maybe he had just become infested with the same egovirus as his predecessors.
Whatever it was, he is toast.
As to the future of Science magazine, its editors brave words before Congress will come back to haunt him in a most powerful way. For it is likely to be shown that all his hype about integrity and openness and the like have been mere window-dressing. Scientists from fields less tainted than climatology will wonder why they should wish to publish in a tawdry mag that doesn't even play by its own rules.
In all this week's fuss over CG3 - of which not a single e-mail has yet been published - I think we may have missed the bigger story of Marcott et al....another waystation on the journey of the The Team and its acolytes from Heroes to Zeroes....
Doug, you have read the site-owners book I take it? Journal editors may not always be the best judge of what constitutes a 'strong case', especially if they might be ousted from that position by irate scientists.
It is unbelievable that these so called "climate scientists" will publish this garbage, knowing that it will be torn to shreds by real scientists and statisticians. Ditto for the peer reviewers and journal editors. Has integrity completely gone from the field or is the cause so much greater than integrity.
The difficulty in submitting a comment to the journal would appear to be that the authors of the paper are unclear on exactly what they have done and unwilling to clarify it.
Once again we have a situation where a paper takes unremarkable data, applies unspecified and unreproduceable techniques to it and out comes a hockey stick.
The only comment which could be made to the journal is "Why did you publish this garbage?"
I am afraid the well-meaning individuals like Doug aren't aware of how the real world works.
Years ago when I and some friends (most from academia themselves) had reservations on Gillett et al we prepared a comment for Nature, got approval from both reviewers and then...the comment was rejected by the Editors.
It was sadly ironic to read then in CG2 the Jones Squad review our comment stating more or less that we had written perfectly reasonably stuff (linking Arctic ice to variability modes like the AMO instead of CO2 concentrations).
So what did I learn? That IF I am "*genuinely* concerned about a scientific result" AND I believe I can "show serious flaws" AND I go through all the unpaid effort to prepare a comment the way Nature wants it AND I pass the judgement of both peer reviewers AND the authors of the original paper find my conclusions reasonable
STILL
the Editors at Nature will prevent my contribution from seeing the light of day, where it would have been "taken much more seriously by the scientific community".
Case closed.
Apologies for all those bold marks but they should all make it very, very, very clear...
@Doug McNeall
'If a group of people are *genuinely* concerned about a scientific result, and believe they can show serious flaws, then they will be taken much more seriously by the scientific community if they submit a comment to the journal.'
So if a collection of contributors from Climate Audit write a comment and submit it to Science, then the editor is going to publish it?
Sure he will. And the fairies at the bottom of my garden would like to help make it happen.
But if a respected author - noted fro his understanding of hockey sticks - and a proven ability to make complex statistical stuff accessible to the layman were to write a critique........
One of the trends apparent over the last decade has been the breakdown of the dominance of the paper-based old-style 'peer-reviewed' scientific journals in favour of internet-based crowd-reviewed publication. This is a great opportunity to take another step in that direction.
The Met Office endorses the paper.
The following appears on their My Climate and Me website.
(They don't mention that the Science paper they give a link to is paywalled.)
That's because for all intents and purposes omnologos, you are dealing with a new soviet union in it's reinvented form. Substitute "Pravda" for "Nature" and it dawns on you why your own thoughts and work just don't cut it. Don't assume everyone is as integral as you are.
Why should Taxpayers pay the same amount for near-instantly discredited research, as they do for accurate research?
Bish - don't forget Paul Mathews' posting on BH on the original Marcott thread.
In searching for those media outlets who'd jumped at Marcott's tasty worm I can't find a mention of it on either the Guardian of the BBC. Perhaps a little flicker of scepticism is beginning to grow in the darkest of places.
TinyCO2, I believe from observation that the BBC has an active policy of not publishing climate stories when it's cold or snowy. When the nice weather kicks in, expect a deluge.
Guesswork In, Gospel Out is the GIGO that should be on any monument to mark the lost integrity of climate workers of a certain type, as illuminated for example by the ClimateGate Revelations.
Gospel In, Groupthink Out is the one that should be on any monument to mark the lost integrity of organisations of a certain type, as illustrated for example by the Royal Society,
Groupthink In, GrapicsOut is for the monument for those who sold their souls for 'the cause' by designing and manufacturing hockey-stick plots as if to order.
Garbage In, Garbage Out on the other hand, will do nicely for such as Nature and Science.
Doug,
Sometimes blog scrutiny will deliver that single fatal blow to a given paper, as was in the case of 'this is called research' Gergis. Other times, it just produces a shotgun spatter from a distance - may not be immediately fatal, may not even be externally visible, but causes massive internal damage and leaves the paper on the edge of collapse from the merest of blows coming next.
So, I do agree with you that a single well-rounded and collected paper would be good. Except, it happens at some times. Most of the times, it doesn't. It requires lots of motivation to reply to crappy climate papers, with inadequate description of methodology. As such, knowledgeable people take what they get. Paul M's graph, listed above, is enough, for example.
The hockey stick is an artifact of the method and choices made in the data processing that creates it. We know it, the scientists in the field know it. They, on the other hand, are left defending a decade-old fraud because their discipline gained prominence, power, funding and recognition arising from this artifact being elevated to an icon by a political body.
It does not matter that the paper is fatally flawed.
It has served its purpose- Headline news and entry to AR5.
Any "corrections" will not be reported.
AGW scamsters 1 : Proper Science 0
Here's one of the views of the Marcott data that's been about a bit:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/marcott-a-10001.jpg
Now as Steve M and Jean S have noted, the uptick was not present in the original thesis. Also noted, has been the fact the the slope of the uptick is impossible given the resolution of the source data.
What I've not seen noted is that the graph shows the Mann et all uptick in the last 60-odd years of the graph - that's ok, as the baseline for BP is 1950, and the Mann uptick is clearly post 1950.
But the Marcott uptick is pre 1950. Nobody, especially not Mann et al, have ever reported a pre-1950 uptick.
So even the excuse of Mike's nature trick cannot expain this uptick.
"What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?"
As a naive bog standard member of the public I'll say that like justice, peer review must be seen to be done. It's no good if rubbish papers never see the light of day! People have got to be seen to make mistakes in order for others to learn from them, and learn how to spot them and combat them. That's the most positive spin I can put on it.
Publishing rubbish papers shouldn't be a slight on the journal - they should not be trying to sift paper and present themselves as having a reputation for being correct. That is to shortcut science. It will blow up in their faces eventually. This is part of the perversion of peer review that climate science has been a driver of.
Not everybody might know that it is customary for the Bish to remove the spammer's comments and _all_ replies to the spammer's comments. This obviously discourages reading anything the spammer writes, and I cannot say it's not a good thing.
So save yourselves and your time...
"I was struck by Rob Wilson's comments about the paper a couple of days ago. He had only given it a brief read and alarm bells were already sounding. Rob is an expert in the area, but even for me, the paper did not pass the sniff test."
Bish can you expand on this? Was this a private comment from Rob to you? Has Rob put anything into the public domain on this? I think he has been brave enough to comment here on occasion. Would he have the cojones to come out and say openly what he thinks of this paper? This is his profession falling into disrepute. It needs people of integrity to get it back on the straight and narrow.
Adding to Doug's remarks,
there are two ways to submit a comment on a Science paper:
The first of these seems particularly straightforward. I will put a comment there later today and post a copy here.
I would be interested in Doug's view, as an expert statistician, of the validity of the paper, particularly in relation to the latest CA post about the Marcott thesis.
Let's be charitable to the journal. Science, I presume, publishes on a whole range of subject areas. Presumably, they will have received the manuscript, identified its subject area, picked out probably three names known as recognised experts in that field, and then sent it off for review.
Having received reviews saying, perhaps, "Substantial and significant work, giving important new information on a subject of great importance. Clarify paras 21 and 23 otherwise strongly recommended for publication", the editor will then schedule it for publication. The journal will have followed its standard process.
However, let's not be charitable to climate scientists who actively or tacitly endorse this sort of stuff. The field is corrupt and it corrupts those who become involved in it.
Martin, yes, that's how the review process works. I expect we can all hazard a guess or two about who might have been chosen as an "expert reviewer".
Thanks for the tip-off about MyClimate&me. I have put a brief comment there pointing out the Marcott thesis. I wonder if they will post it.
What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?
What we already know know.
What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?
That their in hock to 'the cause' and knew this paper would be good PR for it .
Now if any of 'the Team' of the IPCC , to whom this is gold , leant on them to ensure this paper got in , is another question .
Another hockey stick? How surprising.
Follow the money. Several decades ago politicians saw the opportunity to create a new growth industry for themselves using taxpayers' money. Years down the line a bubble has been built out of nothing employing millions around the world that has brought prosperity to the many and untold riches to the few. Yet that money came not from wealth creation but from its destruction, from pointlessly diverting hundreds of millions of energy users' earnings worldwide into inflated energy bills now and much more importantly, for decades down the line in the future. This virtual juggernaut has smashed everything in its path and science lies crushed and broken in the debris, just one of the casualties. Far too much is at stake, hundreds of billions, perhaps even trillions for the perpetrators to let an insignificant thing like truth get in their way. This edifice is built on a distinctly shaky foundation of lies and fantasies as well they know, and they are never going to give up without a fight.
Martin A
If this had been a minor corner of some specialized field of another scientific discipline, you might have had a point. However this was about resurrecting a long-ago discredited broken hockestick and selling in a much worse one ...
There is no way the editor can have been completely oblivious to both the history, the message, the purpose and presumably also the timing of this 'work' .. No way!
"What does it say about Science that it would publish such a paper?"
Another question to ask is "what does it say about their perception of how well the climate science message is going?" They've got to know that there's a fair chance the paper will be shot down. They've got know that sceptics love to use a bad hockey stick to beat them with. Why set yourself up for that unless they still think that they need modern warming to be exceptional to prove CAGW? This time they've not only tried to kill the MWP they've tried to kill most of the last 10,000 years.
I'd have said that they don't need modern temperatures to be exceptional to predict CO2 catastrophe but who am I to argue with one of the top science journals? If they think it's essential, then it's essential. It leaves them with no fall back position.
TinyCO2:
TheBigYinJames:
Even if that was a cast-iron rule, TBYJ, which I hardly think it is, it wouldn't explain the silence of the Guardian. I haven't been following this closely at all but have noted the New York Times on 7th and The Atlantic's extraordinary We're Screwed: 11,000 Years' Worth of Climate Data Prove It on 9th. I think TinyCO2 is onto something on the London mass media's new-found scepticism about alarmist climate science. That's what I call good news.
Read it quick, the script's @ 1:06.
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One of the interesting things that the Marcott hockey stick reveals is how absolutely crucial the warmist establishment believes it is to try repeatedly to rewrite the commonly understood climate history of the holocene Stalinist fashion using a few very carefully selected proxies and data manipulations. Reduce one hockey stick to matchwood and another brand new one magically appears out of nowhere to take its place. I wonder for how long they are prepared to play at this particular game?
Martin Reed:
I like it Martin. "Having been purged, the Medieval Warm Period must now be disappeared from this photograph of the great leader."
Richard Drake
I had a good laugh over that. But those were the days, the good old days (not). I remember it well.
The single most chillin' geschribben in FOIA's crie d'escrire was 'script'.
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OK, OK, 'cri'. Now, though, I like the appended 'e', dripping like a tear at the end of the cry. Thought of 'cri d'escoeur', too, but I'm through my quota of neologisms for the day.
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Tho, how many thetheth will Marcott'th thethith thow?
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nTropywins et al.
I do have severe misgivings about the paper and have now even done some very quick (20 minutes) analyses. Emphasis on the quick!
I have sent my observations to Gavin Schmidt for his thoughts have urged him that if indeed there are problems with the basic conclusions of the paper that RealClimate should make some sort of blog post about it.
Rob
Yes, Rob Wilson, yes. It's time for the adults to step in. I'm not sure Gavin Schmidt qualifies in that regard, but even he might find defending this a bit of a chore. Unfortunately, what you are more likely to see at RealClimate is a ringing defense of the paper by Michael Mann.
Martin Reed says
'One of the interesting things that the Marcott hockey stick reveals is how absolutely crucial the warmist establishment believes it is to try repeatedly to rewrite the commonly understood climate history of the holocene Stalinist fashion using a few very carefully selected proxies and data manipulations'
They are absolutely desperate to re-attract people's attention from the very unfortunate lack of any observed warming over the last 15 years.
Dear, sweet Joelle (Gergis) was the career suicide volunteer who tried (but failed) last year. Shaun Marcott is the latest useful idiot. And if he fails to divert the discussion (as it seems he might), there'll be plenty of academic cannon fodder left to try again.
I wonder what their reward will be? What is the climatologist's equivalent of 72 fragrant virgins in return for flushing their future down the pan?
An audience on bended knee with Mikey? The chance to show Philboy how to use Excel? Or the opportunity to get arrested while chained to Jimmy the Astro?
Gareth,
"This is part of the perversion of peer review that climate science has been a driver of."
Peer review was a way by which journals attempted to ensure they were publishing papers which appeared to offer something new in the field, the experimental methods and data gathering were valid, and there were no obvious flaws in the analysis.
If the work was of any importance, other workers in the field would attempt to reproduce it and extend it.
One of the most remarkable aspects of climate science is the way peer review has been elevated to the status of God's seal of approval.
I transcribed the following excerpt from the Revkin interview of Shakun and posted it on Climateaudit last night. It think it is telling . . .