Wednesday, November 14, 2018

IN THE NEWS: CLIMATE CONTRARIAN UNCOVERS ERROR, UPENDS MAJOR OCEAN WARMING STUDY FROM PRINCETON, SCRIPPS

THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE: Researchers with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Princeton University recently walked back scientific findings published last month that showed oceans have been heating up dramatically faster than previously thought as a result of climate change.  In a paper published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature, researchers found that ocean temperatures had warmed 60 percent more than outlined by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

However, the conclusion came under scrutiny after mathematician Nic Lewis, a critic of the scientific consensus around human-induced warming, posted a critique of the paper on the blog of Judith Curry, another well-known critic....“The findings of the ... paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media,” Lewis wrote. “Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.” 

Co-author Ralph Keeling, climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, took full blame and thanked Lewis for alerting him to the mistake.  MORE HERE.

3 comments:

  1. Because it fit the narrative so who cares about careful research? Like this stuff:

    WALL STREET JOURNAL
    Fake News Comes to Academia
    How three scholars gulled academic journals to publish hoax papers on ‘grievance studies.’

    The existence of a monthly journal focused on “feminist geography” is a sign of something gone awry in academia. The journal in question—Gender, Place & Culture—published a paper online in May whose author claimed to have spent a year observing canine sexual misconduct in Portland, Ore., parks.

    The author admits that “my own anthropocentric frame” makes it difficult to judge animal consent. Still, the paper claims dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”

    The paper was ridiculous enough to pique my interest—and rouse my skepticism, which grew in July with a report in Campus Reform by Toni Airaksinen. Author Helen Wilson had claimed to have a doctorate in feminist studies https://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-comes-to-academia-1538520950


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    1. When this climate paper came out, it was everywhere and there were the usual screams to "do something". Will there be equal press now that the report is in error? I don't think so.

      The nonchalant attitude of the author, oops, is also very telling.

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  2. When your mind is already made up on an issue, peer review means nothing. How could they have missed this? I think the bigger question is perhaps "why" it was missed.

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