12-09-2009, 08:05 AM
First peep at IHE: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/12/08/johnson
As expected, pure gar-bahj. E.g., "[T]here is no better source for climate change information than the peer-reviewed literature..." Somebody missed the point, I think.
Comments from the crowd include these:
As expected, pure gar-bahj. E.g., "[T]here is no better source for climate change information than the peer-reviewed literature..." Somebody missed the point, I think.
Comments from the crowd include these:
Quote:Rigorous peer-review?
Posted by Ryan Wisnesky , Graduate Student, Computer Science at Harvard University on December 8, 2009 at 5:15am EST
How rigorous can the peer-review process be if the source code used to analyze the raw data is not also thoroughly reviewed? From looking at the leaked source code comments it appears that even the programmers who wrote the code (over a period of years) were unsure how it actually works. If nothing else, this scandal suggests the ever increasing importance of code review for all scientific disciplines.
Quote:Question
Posted by hoosier , physics at IU on December 8, 2009 at 10:00am EST
Is this the first peep from InsideHigherEd on this topic?
Interesting.
Quote:Posted by Engineering Grad Student on December 8, 2009 at 11:30am EST
As far as I know, hoosier, this is the first peep from IHE on this topic. It is interesting. What's more interesting is that this column is all about the peer review process in climate science, and it doesn't mention an interesting view of the peer-review process revealed in the e-mails:
"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 !"
This is from Phil Jones, the head of the Hadley CRU (who has stepped down from his position while he is under investigation) to Michael Mann, a leading climatologist at Penn State (who is also under investigation by his university).
All that said, I do applaud Kevin for at least acknowledging that this episode is damaging to the public trust in the scientific process. The UK Met Office is one of three sources from which the IPCC draws temperature data, and it makes extensive use of the Hadley CRU data. The Met Office has announced it will be reviewing 160 years if temperature data in light of this episode. Issues of integrity aside, this has resulted in enormous waste of personnel resources