Category: Science

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Science 6 Comments

Inside Philanthropy;

Since editor and physician Ivan Oransky and science writer Adam Marcus launched Retraction Watch in 2010, the blog cataloging retracted articles in science journals has drawn a lot of attention, and had more fodder than it can keep up with.
Now, thanks to a two-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Retraction Watch is going to expand from a scrappy watchdog to a full-fledged monitoring program that will catalog nearly all retractions issued by major journals in a database, and do deeper analysis of the root causes.

Related! Implausible Results from the Use of Invalid Methods

The Sound Of Settled Science

climategate2 Unsettled Science 10 Comments

WUWT;

Mike Wallace is a hydrologist with nearly 30 years’ experience, who is now working on his Ph.D. in nanogeosciences at the University of New Mexico. In the course of his studies, he uncovered a startling data omission that he told me: “eclipses even the so-called climategate event.” Feely’s work is based on computer models that don’t line up with real-world data — which Feely acknowledged in email communications with Wallace (which I have read). And, as Wallace determined, there is real world data. Feely, and his coauthor Dr. Christopher L. Sabine, PMEL Director, omitted 80 years of data, which incorporate more than 2 million records of ocean pH levels.
Feely’s chart, first mentioned, begins in 1988 — which is surprising as instrumental ocean pH data has been measured for more than 100 years since the invention of the glass electrode pH (GEPH) meter. As a hydrologist, Wallace was aware of GEPH’s history and found it odd that the Feely/Sabine work omitted it. He went to the source. The NOAA paper with the chart beginning in 1850 lists Dave Bard, with Pew Charitable Trust, as the contact.
Wallace sent Bard an email: “I’m looking in fact for the source references for the red curve in their plot which was labeled ‘Historical & Projected pH & Dissolved Co2.’ This plot is at the top of the second page. It covers the period of my interest.” Bard responded and suggested that Wallace communicate with Feely and Sabine–which he did over a period of several months. Wallace asked again for the “time series data (NOT MODELING) of ocean pH for 20th century.” Sabine responded by saying that it was inappropriate for Wallace to question their “motives or quality of our science,” adding that if he continued in this manner, “you will not last long in your career.”

Emphasis mine. I’ll leave it to you to guess how it ends. (h/t TimR)

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Moonbats Science Unsettled Science 10 Comments

Restoring science to its rightful place…

The GOP study researched the federal government’s peer review process for 13 different endangered species listings made by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) since July 2013 and found examples of a lack of transparency and consistency.
The agency, according to the report, sometimes employs peer reviewers who authored studies on the species they are reviewing. The GOP staff determined that the peer review process as currently employed by the FWS “relies on a network of scientists who, if nothing else, have a professional and academic interest in the outcome of the ESA listing decisions they are being asked to review.”
“In recruiting peer reviewers, the FWS appears to favor scientists whose views on a species are already well known rather than more independent scientists in other academic or professional fields who would be able to bring a fresh perspective to the science the FWS is citing to support its ESA listing decisions,” it said.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Science Unsettled Science 15 Comments

Mother’s Milk, Literature Sleuths, and Science Fairies;

I had that sinking feeling yesterday as I read a killer review. In the text the authors described an exciting dynamic; high food intake, high cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and high activity in kittens covary while low food intake, low cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and low activity in kittens covary. Neat. Tidy. Compelling. And there was a gorgeous figure to reinforce this awesomeness! Now, don't get too excited here, because, spoiler alert, none of this turns out to be an accurate representation of the papers they are citing.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 24 Comments

The Australian;

AUSTRALIA is lucky to possess the high-quality, 128-year-long tide gauge record from Fort Denison (Sydney Harbour), which since 1886 indicates a long-term rate of sea-level rise of 0.65mm a year, or 6.5cm a century. […]
Similarly low rates of local sea-level rise have been measured at other tide gauges along the east coast. National Tidal Centre records reveal variations between about 5cm and 16cm/century in rates of relative rise. The differ­ences between individual tide gauges mostly represent slightly differing rates of subsidence of the land at each site, and differing time periods.
For example, measurements at Sydney between 2005 and 2014 show the tide gauge site is sinking at a rate of 0.49mm/yr, leaving just 0.16mm/yr of the overall relative rise as representing global sea-level change. Indeed, the rate of rise at Fort Denison, and globally, has been decreasing for the past 50 years.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 15 Comments

Matt Ridley;

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.
This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly “independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy.

But read it all.

“Organic” Is The Latin Word For “Grown In Pig Shit”

Genetics Science 27 Comments

A GMO debate goes horribly wrong:

Wednesday’s Intelligence Squared debate-the motion in favor of the benefits of genetically modified crops and foods was approved resoundingly by almost 2-to-1-infuriated GM science opponents began trashing their own carefully selected spokespeople on social media.
GMO Free USA-one of the most anti-science fringe NGOs-posted a scathing infographic on Facebook accusing Mellon and Benbrook of being on Monsanto’s payroll. “MONSANTO EXECUS PAY MELLON AND BENBROOK TO THROW DEBATE!” they screeched.

Grab a coffee and view the debate here.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Science 14 Comments

“…there were no entomologists on his tiny research team”

Lu is the Dr. Doom of bees. According to the nutritionist–but not clear to most other experts in the field– colony collapse disorder (CCD), which first emerged in 2006, can be directly linked to “neonics”, as the now controversial class of pesticides is often called, and also to genetically modified crops. Phased in during the 1990s, neonics are most often used by farmers to control unwanted crop pests. They are coated on seeds, which then produce plants that systemically fight pests.
To many environmental activists, the pesticide does more harm than good, and they’ve found their champion in Chensheng Lu. It’s been a busy fall for the professor, jetting back and forth between Boston and Washington, with forays around the United States to talk to adoring audiences. He presents himself as the defender of bees, and this fiery message has transformed a once obscure academic into a global “green” rock star, feted at events like yesterday’s lunch talk at Harvard. […]
One of the central problems with Lu’s central conclusion–and much of the reporting–is that despite the colony problems that erupted in 2006, the global bee population has remained remarkably stable since the widespread adoption of neonics in the late 1990s. The United Nations reports that the number of hives has actually risen over the past 15 years, to more than 80 million colonies, a record, as neonics usage has soared.
Country by country statistics are even more revealing. Beehives are up over the past two decades in Europe, where advocacy campaigns against neonics prompted the EU to impose a two-year moratorium beginning this year on the use of three neonics.

Of course, no “green” idea is too stupid or discredited to be adopted by Ontario Liberals.
h/t Meatriarchy

Y2Kyoto: I’ll Miss The Polar Ice Caps

Climate Cult Science Unsettled Science Y2Kyoto 4 Comments

Via The Register;

“Our surveys indicate that the floes are much thicker and more deformed than reported by most drilling and ship-based measurements of Antarctic sea ice,” the team reported in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday.
“Mean drafts range from 1.4 to 5.5 metres, with maxima up to 16 metres.
“We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in situ assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought.”
The survey was carried out by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), dubbed SeaBED, which has spent the past four years surveying 500,000 square metres of ice thicknesses in the Weddell, Bellingshausen and Wilkes Land sections of Antarctica for British, US and Australian scientists.

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Science Unsettled Science 5 Comments

The always entertaining Retraction Watch;

Yesterday, we reported on the discovery by BioMed Central that there were about 50 papers in their editorial system whose authors had recommended fake peer reviewers. Those “reviewers” had submitted reviews of a number of manuscripts, and five of the papers had been published. (BMC posted a blog examining the case this morning.)
For some Retraction Watch readers, the elements of the story may have seemed familiar. Fake reviews — often involving self-peer review — have been the basis for a growing number of retractions.

Y2Kyoto: Planetary Fever Update

Climate Cult Science Unsettled Science Y2Kyoto 7 Comments

MLive.com;

According to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, on November 20, 2014, three of Michigan’s Great Lakes had ice starting to form. Lake Superior and Lake Michigan were one-half percent ice covered, while Lake Huron had one percent ice. Lake Erie was not reporting any ice as of Nov. 20, 2014.
Decent early season ice coverage records date back to 1973. Last Friday was the earliest date that all three Great Lakes already had ice since the better reporting of early season ice began.
Lake Superior actually had ice forming on November 15th of this year. That is the earliest ice on Lake Superior in the good data set.

h/t Jim

Y2Kyoto: Demoting Science To Its Rightful Place

Climate Cult Science 10 Comments

Soylent green is SCIENTISTS!!!

Up until May this year, Professor -Glover had seemed an ideal fit for [chief scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission]. Most importantly — as Alex Salmond’s former chief scientist — she held the ‘correct’ views on climate change, even to the point of suggesting that global warming might lengthen the hours of daylight in Scotland.
But then she made the fatal mistake of being rather too outspoken and independent in a speech to Eurochambres, the Association of the European Chambers of Commerce and Industry, on the subject of the manipulation of science for political ends sometimes known as ‘policy-based evidence-making’.
One of the worst examples, she noted, was the EU’s ‘Reach’ regulation on chemicals adopted in 2006. Though as many as 36 different independent impact assessment studies had demonstrated that this would have a disastrous effect on business, the EU preferred to ignore them all in favour of its own impact study which, unsurprisingly, showed that Reach was a jolly good thing.

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