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The whole area of Scientific Publishing is in need of a major shift by disrupting current practices - and I am hoping when it does is a YC start-up. While stud

• timr 17y ago
  The criticisms in this article have little to do with peer review. In fact, the whole problem is that the IPCC panels appear to have incorporated non-peer-reviewed papers in a few locations in the reports about impacts and mitigation. Peer review is not falling apart, despite breathless claims to the contrary.
  • hga 17y ago
    "In fact, the whole problem is that the IPCC panels appear to have incorporated non-peer-reviewed papers in a few locations in the reports about impacts and mitigation." There's no "appear" about it, they've been forced to admit it. Saying they used garbage "in a few locations" severely understates the damage, e.g. they shouted from the rooftops that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 (which turned out to be a terrible mistake for them, since India had no choice but to take a rigorous look at their claims ... which the Indian head of the IPCC then claimed was "voodoo science", something he later had to apologize for). Peer review "is not falling apart", but it's taken a severe body blow. No longer will anyone be taken seriously who stakes a claim on the basis that it was peer reviewed.
    • ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      All the bits you mention weren't peer-reviewed. How is that a problem with peer review? (I think peer review has issues, I just don't understand what you're trying to say)
      • hga 17y ago
        Didn't the IPCC imply that their claims were from the peer reviewed literature? However, my comment was indeed agreeing with you that peer review "is not falling apart", and implicitly I was saying that had little to do with this part of the IPCC's shenanigans. My comment was more general, in that the IPCC and others used "peer-review" as a bludgeon against their opponents, all while they were gaming the peer-review system to exclude them. As Phil Jones wrote to Mann: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
    • timr 17y ago
      "Peer review "is not falling apart", but it's taken a severe body blow. No longer will anyone be taken seriously who stakes a claim on the basis that it was peer reviewed." No, you're exaggerating. There's a difference between peer-reviewed scientific publication, and what the IPCC does, which is to aggregate and summarize the findings of peer-reviewed scientific publications. And though the panels assembling the IPCC report let through some questionable material, these errors of inclusion neither invalidate the hundreds of other lines of evidence in the reports, nor do they invalidate the system of peer review. (Also, not incidentally: claiming that the glaciers are melting more slowly than argued in the IPCC report doesn't mean that they're not melting.)
      • hga 17y ago
        What I'm referring to when I say "stakes a claim" is a) the sort of thing the IPCC does, science policy, and b) the documented abuse of the peer-review system by ClimateGate conspirators. And that's quite bad, since the point of a fair amount of science is to have real effects on the world at large; both these abuses is going to make that much harder. They could also have bad effects on science funding ... why should people trust such a system? Potentially worse is that this general group of people has been crying wolf since the '60s (no later than the publication of Silent Spring in 1962). One day we might truly face an existential threat and our ability to deal with it will almost certainly be crippled since we've been hearing a "we're all going to die!!!" message for half a century, and we're still here and seem to be doing quite well (e.g. life expectancy is going up).