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No,
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ConsensusThe heroic consensus. Heroic consensus? This a contradiction. Think of any heroic character. Did this person fight for the majority or minority?!97% of scientists believe that Global Warming is true[0]. And this is one of the big trumps the scientific (and political) community uses, one of the big arguments to convince people. To explain what is wrong with using consensus as an argument, let me copy here an e-mail sent to an Editor of Meteorology, where our paper was rejected because all referees found our tone insulting to the community. The editor said that she never interferes with referees' decisions. [0]: J. Cook, D. Nuccitelli, S. A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R. Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs, A. Skuce, "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature", Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024 (2013). |
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A letter sent to R
Editor of Hindawi Journals. (7 October 2013)
Dear R,
Thank you for giving us feedback and an explanation how your journals are organized. Basically 'not interfering with the referees'.
Yet, I do hope that you realize that this behavior leads to a consensus in literature. That famous heroic consensus. The word 'heroic' is not mine, but actually recently uttered by a [pseudo]scientist, Reusswig [1], who also writes "We -- as scientists -- will have to explain to policy makers ..", showing he himself is a politician and not a scientist.
Others write "The task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument ..."[2] (which is a Lutherian religious statement "Reason is the biggest enemy that faith has"). Rudman writes "Our hope is that researchers will design persuasion strategies that effectively change people's implicit attitudes"[3]. May I remind you, 'persuasion strategies' (euphemism!) were used in totalitarian regimes to align the people to the government.
The list goes on like this ...
This is how the consensus is constructed:
1) X (x%) is of opinion "A". Y (y%) of opinion "B"
2) X is inclined to accept A and reject B
3) Editors select referees on basis of their publication track record
4) Editors do not check if reasons for rejection/acceptance are scientifically sound
5) Researchers without (enough) publications will be out of job
Imagine X starts with a (tiny) majority, x%>y%
- There will be more referees of group A (3)
- There will be more acceptance of group A (2)
- X will become larger and Y smaller. Goto first step.
- Eventually, there will be no publications of type B (2), referees (3), nor researchers (5). We have a consensus! Praise the consensus!
Conclusion: the apparent consensus in Global Warming is a side effect of the editors not caring if referees have scientific behavior, which would break the cycle at rule (2,4), and by the Darwinistic force of peer-reviewing in general (2,5).
May I remind you to the words of Galileo, who, on his deathbed, uttered the famous last words "Eppur si muove", "and STILL, it moves", referring to the fact that he was forced during his life to abdicate his controversial, against the consensus, model that the Earth is revolving around the Sun.
Please take a look at your referees and their comments. None of them make scientific comments on our paper(s). It is all about the format, which is -- and I agree, it can be considered as such -- insulting to the community (Yet, the stance of the referees is rule #2 in the disinformation technique used by politicians, "become incredulous and indignant"[4]). Well, we are not in it for getting a reward on being Mr. Nice Guy. We understand that we are social outcasts in this Facebook society, but please, try to take a professional scientific stance and analyze our work as such.
You could, for instance, send our papers to non-climatologists. Send it to a PhD in medicine, or something like that. If our reasoning is sound, which I think it is, it will stand up to scrutiny from any educated person.
I do realize that your publishing house also might have difficulty keeping its head above the water in these difficult times, and it is therefore more beneficial to publish popular papers than to publish scientific papers, but bear in mind that sometimes short-term strategies are detrimental on the long term.
- Peter
PS: This e-mail will be placed on my Facebook page for everybody to see what we are working on.
---
PS2 (not sent to the editor):
In the work of Ereaut and Segnit[2], the authors write in the second paragraph of the preface "This report was commissioned by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) as part of its project on how to stimulate climate-friendly behaviour in the UK". Let me write it in a way, to place it 50 years back and 4000 miles East, so you'll understand: "This report was commisioned by the Propaganda Department of the Polit Bureau (*) as part of its project on how to stimulate communistic thinking in the Soviet Union". Or let's put the clock a little further back and return westwards, "This report was commissioned by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (o) as part of its project on enforcing the Nazism ideology". The words have changed, the methods are the same.
*: Отдел пропаганды и агитации ЦК КПСС
o: RMVP, or Propagandaministerium, of Minister Goebbels
References:
[1]: F. Reusswig, "History and future of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming", Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 031003 (2013).
[2] G. Ereaut, N. Segnit, "Warm Words. How we are telling the climate story and can we tell it better?" Institute for Public Policy Research (2006).
[3] L. A. Rudman, M. C. McLean, M. Bunzl, "When Truth Is Personally Inconvenient, Attitudes Change. The Impact of Extreme Weather on Implicit Support for Green Politicians and Explicit Climate-Change Beliefs", Psy. Sci. (2013). DOI: 10.1177/0956797613492775.
[4] http://www.nowandfutures.com/spew_tools.html
For more information, contact me at The University of The Algarve,
Thank you for giving us feedback and an explanation how your journals are organized. Basically 'not interfering with the referees'.
Yet, I do hope that you realize that this behavior leads to a consensus in literature. That famous heroic consensus. The word 'heroic' is not mine, but actually recently uttered by a [pseudo]scientist, Reusswig [1], who also writes "We -- as scientists -- will have to explain to policy makers ..", showing he himself is a politician and not a scientist.
Others write "The task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument ..."[2] (which is a Lutherian religious statement "Reason is the biggest enemy that faith has"). Rudman writes "Our hope is that researchers will design persuasion strategies that effectively change people's implicit attitudes"[3]. May I remind you, 'persuasion strategies' (euphemism!) were used in totalitarian regimes to align the people to the government.
The list goes on like this ...
This is how the consensus is constructed:
1) X (x%) is of opinion "A". Y (y%) of opinion "B"
2) X is inclined to accept A and reject B
3) Editors select referees on basis of their publication track record
4) Editors do not check if reasons for rejection/acceptance are scientifically sound
5) Researchers without (enough) publications will be out of job
Imagine X starts with a (tiny) majority, x%>y%
- There will be more referees of group A (3)
- There will be more acceptance of group A (2)
- X will become larger and Y smaller. Goto first step.
- Eventually, there will be no publications of type B (2), referees (3), nor researchers (5). We have a consensus! Praise the consensus!
Conclusion: the apparent consensus in Global Warming is a side effect of the editors not caring if referees have scientific behavior, which would break the cycle at rule (2,4), and by the Darwinistic force of peer-reviewing in general (2,5).
May I remind you to the words of Galileo, who, on his deathbed, uttered the famous last words "Eppur si muove", "and STILL, it moves", referring to the fact that he was forced during his life to abdicate his controversial, against the consensus, model that the Earth is revolving around the Sun.
Please take a look at your referees and their comments. None of them make scientific comments on our paper(s). It is all about the format, which is -- and I agree, it can be considered as such -- insulting to the community (Yet, the stance of the referees is rule #2 in the disinformation technique used by politicians, "become incredulous and indignant"[4]). Well, we are not in it for getting a reward on being Mr. Nice Guy. We understand that we are social outcasts in this Facebook society, but please, try to take a professional scientific stance and analyze our work as such.
You could, for instance, send our papers to non-climatologists. Send it to a PhD in medicine, or something like that. If our reasoning is sound, which I think it is, it will stand up to scrutiny from any educated person.
I do realize that your publishing house also might have difficulty keeping its head above the water in these difficult times, and it is therefore more beneficial to publish popular papers than to publish scientific papers, but bear in mind that sometimes short-term strategies are detrimental on the long term.
- Peter
PS: This e-mail will be placed on my Facebook page for everybody to see what we are working on.
---
PS2 (not sent to the editor):
In the work of Ereaut and Segnit[2], the authors write in the second paragraph of the preface "This report was commissioned by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) as part of its project on how to stimulate climate-friendly behaviour in the UK". Let me write it in a way, to place it 50 years back and 4000 miles East, so you'll understand: "This report was commisioned by the Propaganda Department of the Polit Bureau (*) as part of its project on how to stimulate communistic thinking in the Soviet Union". Or let's put the clock a little further back and return westwards, "This report was commissioned by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (o) as part of its project on enforcing the Nazism ideology". The words have changed, the methods are the same.
*: Отдел пропаганды и агитации ЦК КПСС
o: RMVP, or Propagandaministerium, of Minister Goebbels
References:
[1]: F. Reusswig, "History and future of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming", Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 031003 (2013).
[2] G. Ereaut, N. Segnit, "Warm Words. How we are telling the climate story and can we tell it better?" Institute for Public Policy Research (2006).
[3] L. A. Rudman, M. C. McLean, M. Bunzl, "When Truth Is Personally Inconvenient, Attitudes Change. The Impact of Extreme Weather on Implicit Support for Green Politicians and Explicit Climate-Change Beliefs", Psy. Sci. (2013). DOI: 10.1177/0956797613492775.
[4] http://www.nowandfutures.com/spew_tools.html
For more information, contact me at The University of The Algarve,
Prof.
Peter Stallinga