The Tribal Outcast
If Judith Curry, a climate researcher at Georgia Tech, ever found herself marooned on an island, where the other inhabitants included a tribe of climate skeptics led by Anthony Watts and another tribe of climate scientists led by Gavin Schmidt (whose enforcer, despite being a physicist, was Joe Romm), she’d probably end up living alone in a cave.
This is a roundabout way of mentioning the chilly reception that a new PNAS paper by Curry and one of her colleagues (PDF here), is receiving over at WUWT. Like Policy Lass, what interests me most is the harsh response, and how, as Lass observes, Curry now stands accused of drinking Kool Aid with both sides in the climate debate.
Judith, welcome to one of the seven hells in journalism, where you get to be loathed by all. (But we secretly love it!) In this fiery climate sphere, Andy Revkin reigns as lord master, where he is regularly slammed by Romm and his echo chamber at Climate Progress AND the hardcore skeptic wing.
But back to the show. One commenter at WUWT, noting the negative reaction to Judith, gives her a backhanded compliment when he writes:
I have to applaud Judith Curry on having the guts to present her paper in the boxing ring of climate blogs where the wild and ignorant rule. but also these that think unbiased and try to address problems in creative ways. I just hope she was not counting on any mercy here.
Here’s Judith’s devastating parry: I don’t want your stinkin’ mercy, I’m just lookin’ for some evidence of sentient thought.
Okay, I paraphrased.
Seriously, there are rumblings of an unfair and heavily moderated thread at WUWT over this paper (see here and here, for example), so I thought I’d provide a vehicle for the disaffected or suppressed to come on over here and express yourself. All I ask is that you be polite.
More broadly, I think it’s worth pointing out that Judith Curry occupies a peculiar space in the climate debate, where neither camp trusts her to carry water for them.
UPDATE: In fairness, I should also note that Curry’s PNAS paper is taken up in full by Willis Eschenbach over at WUWT.
Of course, it may just be a technical glitch that happens to certain people. Seriously, not having posting privileges is not the worst thing to happen there – it is their house and they can do what they want. Other people have had their workplaces or names disclosed or posts carefully edited.
My own airbrushing out started in this thread, where I was one of a number of posters who pointed out an error in Watts’ work that was discussed at Open Mind (oops: Rule #1, don’t reference Tamino):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/06/open-thread-weekend/
When my (apparently obnoxious) posts were relegated to oblivion, I pasted them in threads at Ben’s place:
http://wottsupwiththat.com/2010/03/07/awol-anthony-watts-out-of-lies/
I have to say that Judith’s response paraphrased above was priceless. As seen here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/03/the-guardian-hounds-cru-with-new-reports/#comment-308134
they are much less clever at WUWT.
Sorry to clutter up the thread, but I did have one post go through this summer, but was blocked thereafter.
Anthony Watts just called me, and we talked for about 1/2 hour. It was a very collegial, productive, and informative discussion. Apparently WUWT is run on a shoestring budget, with a few hundred bucks per month revenue from google ads. Given the traffic at WUWT, moderation is an overwhelming problem. Since few people are paid full time bloggers (like Joe Romm), its a really difficult thing to do in the context of their day jobs and family responsibilities.
We each ended up with constructive suggestions out of the conversation. Universities issuing press releases should make sure that the paper is on the university web site, apparently copyright laws do permit the paper to be available from author’s web site. Since I am a bit of a lightning rod over at WUWT, moderation clearly needs to be stepped up when I am in involved.
So the “test” is to see if Willis’ thread can actually turn productive. Stay tuned . . .
Thanks for the update, Judith. I do believe the appropriate place for a technical discussion of your paper is over at Willis’ thread, assuming the moderating is fairly applied.
I wrote this post to spur any discussion on the tribal issue, which appears alive and well.
WUWT, by itself, is a mostly scientific blog, especially in what regards Watts himself and many commentators.
However, as other such blogs (including Climate Audit), it is also frequented by ideological right-wing denialists of all stripes, who hang around broadcasting their views and ready to catch any snippet of science favourable to their preadopted beliefs, and to pour derogation on anybody perceived as contrarian to those beliefs.
Thus Judith was for them first a hero, then a villain, with no fault of her own nor any change in her views.
If we follow science information and debate through blogs, we should accept these facts of life. Boring and nasty, of course, but they come with the territory. One (anyone, including Dr Curry) should ignore the noise and concentrate on the information. Or so do I, at least.
For context, Jeff Id put up a video and some graphs that show the annual changes in Antarctic and Arctic ice extents, 1979-present. Sea Ice Update. Video at the bottom of the post.
He used the NSIDC data set.
Keith: In what way do you think that a blog can be “the appropriate place for a technical discussion” of an important scientific issue like this? Also, do you think science journalists should turn to blogs like WUWT or Climateprogress to get a better handle on the science? Or only to get a better handle on how the science is being received in the political sphere? Basically, I’m interested to know whether you think anything “scientific” is going on in these blog discussions, and whether science journalists need to pay attention to it.
Judith: One frame that Keith uses here is “two sides” in a “debate.” But the question as to why Antarctic sea ice is growing while Arctic sea ice is shrinking is probably not going to be answered in these blogs. Given that, I ask this out of curiosity and with deep respect: Why do you participate in the discussions?
Well since the topic is tribes …..
Hector when you say
frequented by ideological right-wing denialists of all stripes
What exactly do you mean ? I am frankly curious. What defines a right-wing denialist ? Is this matched by a left-wing believer arguing the opposite viewpoint ? I see very little of the bible thumping that I would associate with right wing opposition and no discussions yet about how global warming is causing gay marriage or even appeals to right wing fascism. What features of this argument denote right wing to you ?
Tom–
I would pose your question to the hosts at Real Climate, no? I know some readers here disagree, but I still think that’s a great place to see scientific discussion on climate issues.
In the same vein, I think there are interesting discussions that take place at Climate Audit and other contrarian sites. And I think that’s been especially true here where I’ve had participation from climate scientists such as Judith Curry and Gavin Schmidt.
Over at WUWT and Climate Progress, I think you need to judge the posts individually. I’ve specifically suggested that a technical discussion of Judith’s recent PNAS paper should take place there because Willis Eschenbach has written a critique of it. If she can get a fair hearing on the thread, and it’s fairly moderated, I think there can be a good exchange on it. I feel the same about Romm’s shop, even though I’ve been highly critical of him in the past. He’s quite sharp on the science (though I think he goes overboard with AGW attribution to disasters) but of course is often hyperbolic when someone strays from the political party line he espouses. We already have op-ed writers like Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman paying attention to him, so yes, science journalists should too, of course.
But it would be good if more science journalists paid attention to additional voices in the climate blogosphere, where climate science issues get hashed out pretty good and to a large degree not seen in mainstream media.
So all in all, it seems obvious to me that science journalists should be paying attention to the climate blogosphere, just as journalists on the Supreme Court beat pay attention to law blogs that dissect Supreme Court rulings.
Dr. Curry:
How well do we know P-E from observations? What is the sensitivity of your conclusions with respect to uncertainties in P-E? I’m not sure about most recent data but not too long ago both the accuracy and spacial coverage were low, especially of the E.
Second, I find it counter-intuitive (but not necessarily wrong) that enhanced hydrological cycle could overcome the warming trend and result in additional ice. Increase in sea ice are means lower winter temps (unless we are playing with the dependence of the freezing point on salinity). It follows that the summer warming overcomes winter cooling to net out a warming trend. What’s a mechanism for such an amplification of the seasonal cycle? Thinning of the upper mixed layer?
Keith: was it too technical or OK?
I see the same thing Hector M sees, Artifex. Not to say that WUWT readers are in the main right-wing denialists, but it’s a simple fact that climate scepticism often suits right wing agenda quite well and as a result there is a contingency of right-wing, arm-flailing nuts that hang around WUWT and scrabble in the mud for the titbits of scientific scepticism that they see as supportive of their denialism.
Experience suggests that Judith will say what Judith thinks, and will not bend that to fit what she thinks others want to hear. Whether it suits the sceptics and annoys the alarmists, or the other way around, at least we will know that it’s what Judith thinks.
Similarly, I don’t think that even if Willis and Judith became the best of friends offline, that Willis would resist posting or even likely temper his criticism, if he disagrees with what Judith publishes. Neither do I imagine that Judith would want him to.
Today, I think the primary issue is the way WUWT is being moderated. That’s an issue separate from discussion about Judith’s latest paper, and I expect that it’s something that can and will be addressed by Watts to the satisfaction of those of us who are highly critical of skewed moderation. I certainly hope so.
WUWT attacks appear to be out of frustration. Maybe the over-the-top comments have been removed now.
I understand the criticism “pseudo-skeptic” can apply to a few of the responses. They confuse skepticism with suspicion. Looking at it from the other side, isn’t very pretty.
OTOH, Anthony is unhappy about the way this turned out. By communicating directly with JC, AW is stepping up to the plate. He appears to be taking steps to address the situation. Unlike Gavin, who lead the RC villagers, as they grabbed their pitchforks and torches.
I realize that pointing out that the other guys did worse, doesn’t excuse my “side’s” actions. I don’t think I’ve ever posted (maybe once) on that blog. Is this typical of WUWT? Judith Curry has been a blessing to the climate change blogosphere. Please don’t let a few idiots chase you away, Judith!
Sashka (11)-
I’m not saying that nobody should ask any science-related questions. It’s just that there is already a well-established thread on the paper elsewhere and given that Judith has only so much time she can devote to blogs, I’m guessing that that one would be the one where’d she want to focus her attention–as it pertains to the critique of her paper. I figured it might also be the most logical place for others who wanted to weigh in.
That said, anybody who can’t get their comment in over there should feel free to place it here.
Keith (and anyone else who cares to comment): As you know, I am about to teach a graduate level Science Writing class, and in the past I have emphasized the importance of peer review is assessing science. If I am now to tell them that they should also read blogs like WUWT when covering climate, what specific role should I say that these blogs can play in reporting, and what cautions should I emphasize?
A related question is how can a non-expert such as a science journalist evaluate the claims and counter-claims made at a blog like WUWT?
Tom Yulsman, I’m experimenting with the blogosphere as a means of public education, crowd sourcing of knowledge from different disciplines, facilitate public understanding of complex issues, and building trust between climate scientists and the public. Jerome Ravetz speaks of the “radical implications of the blogosphere” and I agree that we are just scratching the surface.
This is my second major foray over at WUWT. After the first (which was really much worse than this), it seems there are a few people that are appreciative of my participation and want to listen to what I have to say. Willis is much less strident than on his previous post. So progress if any is slow, but progress nevertheless. I think my public chastisement of Anthony Watts for his moderation definitely got his attention, and I think he will address this issue, at least with regards to my posts.
The punchline is that I am not willing to write off or dismiss Watt’s 3 million readers who care enough about this subject to frequent the site and post on this subject. The net result so far is to make myself a punching bag, but I still think the climate blogosphere is overall evolving in an interesting direction, and the cross tribe discussion of this over at Keith’s is facilitating its evolution in a useful direction.
Next time I engage at all on WUWT, i will definitely communicate with Anthony Watts first. Note, when I do something at climateaudit, Steve McIntyre works overtime on the moderation (when he can, i popped in unexpectedly when he was unavailable with very good results, this is the thread where michael tobis showed up also).
Sashka, good point about P-E. Satellite retrievals of P over the open ocean are becoming relatively mature. Once we get the Global Precipitation Mission (global cloud radar) then it will be even better. Regarding E, that is the subjection of Liu’s and my research grant, there is untapped potential there. Model derived values are a mixed bag. P-E is a bigger issue than the SST in terms of the data and model simulations.
Tom (15):
I’ve been telling (and teaching) my students for years that blogs (and now twitter and other social media) are a vital informational stream they have to pay attention to. Note: they still have to go through the same journalistic process in determining a site or source’s suitability.
Like I said in the other comment, but I’ll give another example: journalists who report on the media–in addition to following industry publications, have to follow media blogs. It’s the same principle with science journalists. Of course, people only have so much time in the their day, so there has to be some culling involved.
BTW, I also explain the merits and hazards of blogging–at least for journalists.
After paging through the comments at WUWT, it’s clear that you can discuss the science if you want to there–you just have to skim over some of the nonsense. Too bad they can’t be color-coded.
It’s still miles ahead of Real Climate, where you have to live in fear of being edited by a moderator or censored completely–waiting hours sometimes for a comment to go up.
I think it’s easier to see at WUWT that a part of the audience is not there for the science, but rather than the politics. I think the same is true at RC, but it’s better camouflaged.
@Tom,
Blogs are great place to get a different angle on a story and see problems with a thesis.
A good example is the recent RiceGate story. Richard Black of the BBC got the story upside down in his original BBC version – he claimed that rice crops had been in decline for 25 years. Bloggers soon corrected him and he changed the story to what you can see now:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10918591
On his own blog he posted an explanation – but spoilt it by taking a “sorry, but…” style.
Mea culpa and au revoir
Many BBC journoes – RB included – have no science background and struggle with scientific topics. I wonder if the BBC would have a Japan correspondent who didn’t speak Japanese?
It is interesting that several are trying to push Joe Romm and Real Climate into a situation where they are entirely uninvolved. Both have their own flaws and strengths, but this situation ain’t either.
It was also entirely predictable that the Watt’s mob would turn on Prof. Curry if her science threatened their political views, as it did on Prof. Pielke and Dr. Spencer. In the case of Pielke it was rich with schadenfreude, because at a minimum he is the intellectual godfather of WUWT. As a matter of fact, Prof. Curry was continually told this here and other places. And it was fairly clear that she would react badly to being slagged off.
But what does Eli know, he is only a chemist.
Eli (21),
In keeping with the spirit of this post, let’s play Mad Libs with this sentence from you:
“It was also entirely predictable that the __ mob would turn on Prof. Curry if her science threatened their political views…”
Anybody want to play?
Tom (15)
Common sense suggests that out of 3 million participants of WUWT (or any other place devoid of some sort of self-selection bias) half has an IQ below average and a lot of them love to post their valuable opinions. I would emphasize that.
As a non-expert you can still follow the logic and evaluate the quality of arguments. I don’t think filtering noise is such a big problem if you are willing to invest your time and effort into this. For example, Andy Revkin is strictly speaking not an expert but he knows what’s going on pretty well.
I should note that I’m getting spoiled here by a better quality of commenter. Guess I’d better not drag the average down…
I don’t think I’ve ever commented at WUWT, preferring to keep an eye on the goings-on than to involve myself in the frenzied pace (and often tone) of the place. But to write the blog off as some sort of “denialist echo chamber” doesn’t quite do it justice, and if I was a climate scientist I would certainly consider following Dr. Curry’s example – the reach of WUWT needs to be considered, and some of the people there do have a good deal of sense.
The borders of the “camps” or “tribes” are nebulous and always shifting, but Dr. Curry’s communication experiments have present a good opportunity to think about where these borders might lie, and I think challenge the more simplified notions about camps in the debate. Hopefully she’s helped to make cognitive borders more flexible for some of the readers of the blogs. We may see tribalism in the response to this or that post at RC or WUWT, but I’m hopeful a misfit like Dr. Curry who defies easy dismissal (though you wouldn’t know it by some comments) helps to challenge some troubling perspectives concerning the “tribes”. Hard to track this of course, and I’m sure the flaming internet arrows will keep flying in any case.
As a side note I think being moderator at RC or WUWT would be one of the least favorite jobs I can imagine.
KK #22: Just so you know, the first 5 that came to me were all expletives 😉 Your point, of course, is well made.
There has been some appalling piling on at WUWT. We’re quickly reminded that the intelligence of a mob is the square root of its number. But I don’t perceive the net balance of criticism at WUWT as turning on Judith at all. The internet is a disproportionately fickle environment, with an apparent tendency to display characteristics of seemingly violent flux. It’s easy to appear to have fallen out of favour without doing so, and I don’t see appreciation of Judith diminished today.
I think there’ll likely be some tussling back and forth between Willis and Judith, and I anticipate that the details, the uncertainties, the misunderstandings and the implications of the paper will be played out. Net result will be that a whole bunch of people who would otherwise never have understood a thing about Antarctica will come away with vastly improved comprehension of the subject.
Tom Yulsman,
You raise some very interesting issues.
“when covering climate, what specific role should I say that these blogs can play in reporting, and what cautions should I emphasize?”
Scientific fora (journal articles, conferences, assessment reports, institutes, universities) report science; blogs report opinions. They are not equivalent in their scientific information value, and should not be treated as if they were. Of course, there is bad science and there are good, well informed blogs. But the fact is, there is quality control (however fallible) for science, whereas there is quaility control whatsoever for blogs. Sending young students to the blogosphere to get scientific information, without a clear guide on how to asses the validity of information, is asking for trouble imho.
Which leads to your related question:
“how can a non-expert such as a science journalist evaluate the claims and counter-claims made at a blog like WUWT?”
That’s an extremely important issue. I made an attempt at providing some guidelines here.
Tom (Yulsman), it isn’t exactly ‘you pays your money and you takes your chances.’ There is obviously a hierarchy of credibility and authority starting with peer-reviewed papers from well-established scientists and probably ending here, in the comments sections of weblogs.
But there are relevant questions (and sometimes answers) brought up on weblogs and even in the comments sections. To ignore them would be a bit sad. Just remember we’re all dogs here on the Internet and take it all with a grain of salt.
The tide has turned in the 2nd half of the WUWT thread, after Anthony Watt’s intervention, its now a productive dialogue. The WUWT crowd (esp Anthony) want to be taken seriously.
KK has really blazed the trail in terms of how to train the commenters. Obviously a bigger challenge over at WUWT, but Anthony’s intervention really illustrates how the blog owner sets the tone and expectations, and can turn things around.
Bart, good post.
Bart Verheggen: I’d say that while blogs do not have traditional forms of scientific quality control, they have their own forms of “quality control” (and perhaps even “peer review”). Moderation policies, use of guest posts, and just the personal tendencies of blog operators all exercise forms of control and shape a blog’s virtual space and overall message (what a blog’s “overall message” is can be debated, but blogs do follow certain narratives much more closely than scientific journals. These narratives can fragment or be derailed however, and some blogs exercise more control over the narrative than others). Once you understand how a place like RC, CA, or WUWT generally runs it is much easier to form judgments concerning some new posting there. The problem is that all of these are variables that differ among blogs, and I think the only way to get a good handle on them is to spend time reading various blogs, paying attention to the sorts of topics which appear and how they are treated. It took me several months of pretty dedicated climate blog reading to really know how I felt about the sites I was paying attention to.
Blogs are a useful form of public scientific communication, where scientific claims are blended with what many people would call “the political” – an inherent combination in public discussions of science. Evaluating them poses some real challenges, but it is doable. It would be great if we could write up a checklist to help us determine which blogs to believe and which to ignore, but I just don’t think that’s the best way to go about it. Blog science has to be considered on its own merit and in its own context, and it should be accepted conditionally – which is important for traditional science as well. I think it’s important to spend time at several sites in the climate blogosphere, read the archives of some of the notable events, and try to get as good a grasp as possible on some fundamentals of climate science and the history of the debate. It’s really hard to make an informed judgment without informing yourself, and even then there may still be plenty to reserve judgment about.
Keith(22),
“It was also entirely predictable that the __ mob would turn on Prof. Curry if her science threatened their political views”¦”
Yes, my irony meter jumped off the scale when I read that sentence in Eli’s post. The attitudes of those involved remind me somewhat of politics with those entrenched in their position on either extreme and often denying the large number of people who are basically Independents (lukewarmers for example). In science as in politics people want someone who will do the right thing and not just stick with the party line. We are usually disappointed in politics. It’s refreshing to see someone in science such as Judith Curry who doesn’t feel pressured to follow the party line.
Erratum:
I obviously meant to write:
“whereas there is *NO* quality control whatsoever for blogs.”
There is a certain narrative and sociological network etc, but I wouldn’t call those objective quality control. They’re the type of influence as how the type of bar you’re in, or how much beer you’ve had to drink influences the way you talk. No matter how much I’d like to think that I make more sense when I drink a nice trappist, that statement may not pass quality control.
Us little people are cursed with something the high priests lack: common sense.
2 examples:
1) Did the Curry paper really say that snow just sits on top of the southern ocean like it sits on the ground? I have seen different in the seas around England – it disappears.
2) The rice production paper – the authors claim that rice annual production is decelerating caused by climate change. Does this pass the ‘opposite test’? If climate were held constant would annual rice production accelerate at a constant rate? I don’t think so…
Jack, I’ve seen snow settle on a lake in Cumbria. I’ve seen ice form on a beach by Lindisfarne. Strange but true.
Regarding rice production, I remember the Conservatives in Thatcher’s day claiming that the trend of increasing unemployment was down – of course, unemployment was still increasing. I believe that such things are easy to express simply and accurately, and those that find ways to not do so should be first up against the wall come the revolution.
Big blogs like WUWT and RC tend to have a signal to noise ratio that makes substantive discussion difficult. I much prefer places like Lucia’s or Bart’s blog that attract a smaller clientele with a diverse range of views and (generally) quality discussion in the comments.
Jack Hughes, our paper said that precipitation falls in the Southern Ocean and lands both on open water and sea ice. The precip that lands on open water immediately melts. If the precip is snow, then it accumulates on the sea ice until it melts during the summer warming.
Bart,
Since you have posted this several times, lets take a bit closer look at several sections of your “Who to Trust” essay. I must admit I like the idea of objective rules for determination of trust, but they honestly seem more like nifty rationalizations than honest hard fast rules. There is a certain irony in posting this so close to Keith’s thread “The Response”.
So are saying in the items Timescales and Check for Consistancy that when Gavin and MT argue that a weather event is possibly a sign of global warming, but they brush off the previous cold winter as meaningless they run afoul of your rules and you no longer trust them or does this only apply to the “bad guys” ? When a mainstream CAGW blogista posits “Influences of Big Oil” this doesn’t run into your “Conspiracy theory” rule or do more exceptions follow ?
I find your are rules intermittently applied and useless for that reason. Fundamentally I trust Judith because she is honestly responsive. This does not mean that I always agree with her reasoning, but it does mean I trust her to give me a clear picture of what she is thinking and not try to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug which seems to be the fashion in so many blogs these days.
Keith: You haven’t really answered my question. And perhaps you should ignore it, because it is besides the point of this thread. But just in case…
You say you tell your students that they have to “pay attention to” and “follow” blogs. Well, once they’re “paying attention” and “following,” then what?
When seemingly informed people at WUWT cast doubt on Judith Curry’s research, what do I do with that as a science writer? Do I say there is a scientific “debate” and refer to the criticism on WUWT? If you think so, this is a radical departure from what we have traditionally taught students in science writing. Perhaps that is a radical departure that we must take. But that is precisely what I’m trying to get you to address. Are you suggesting that science writers give equal weight to the serious, moderated discourse at blogs like WUWT? And if so, how do we, as non-experts, judge what is claimed there?
As science writers, our answer in the past was that peer-reviewed science was the gold standard “” even knowing the limitations of that system. It was, as they say, the worst system imaginable “” except for all the others.
Are you now saying that WUWT should have a voice in our stories about science (as opposed to stories about policy and politics)? Judy: Do you have some thoughts on this?
KK,
Sorry to harp on this, but I do not put AR and you in the same league. This is a sincere compliment to you. Yes, he is in the climate journalism business from a long time, but so what. I don’t see the good it has done. Same thing with the Policy Wonk/Lass.
Judy: Your answers to my questions are fascinating! And I really admire what you’re trying to do.
But if I understand what you said, your participation is ultimately one-sided. The way I interpret what you said is that you are trying to convince as many of the 3 million people (or however many there are) who read WUWT that you are right, but I don’t get a sense that you are necessarily open to having your science altered by what they say “” unless that’s what you meant by “crowd-sourcing.”
If you do feel that your science is improving as a result of being involved in this discourse, that is a remarkable and newsworthy story! I’d certainly like to hear more, and also your thoughts about how science writers should respond “” not in their blogs but in their day to day coverage of climate change.
Let’s get down to brass tacks on this: You published a paper on why Antarctic sea ice is not shrinking. As a science writer working on this story, traditionally I would interview you and then a handful of experts in this area who were not involved in your research. And that would form the basis of the story. But now that you are discussing the science at WUWT, should I be altering how I cover the story? If so, how? What role should the folks at WUWT have in my reporting on this story?
I’m not asking this out of some academic interest. In fact I wrote a short news blurb on your research (for KGNU radio). And in a few days, I will face 15 very eager grad students who are hoping to become science writers. What should I pass along to them so that they can respond appropriately as responsible journalists seeking to get at the truth of an issue like Antarctic sea ice?
Dear Mr. Yulsman
There is another way of “covering the story”. You could put in your own thoughts about the paper.
I don’t know Keith – I don’t like all this “criteria for experts”, “who should be consulted for what”, “who to trust” business – it keeps popping up. It just leaves me cold. Sure, not everyone is going to understand science – we all know that. Why do we keep talking about it? It is totalitarian, it is nonsense and it reflects bad form.
Dr Curry
There are major problems with the Georgia Tech press release – I try to read it, my head hurts. At the least, couldn’t they have used a few more words and explained your paper a bit better?
The language of climate science suffers from some kind of deep-seated infection. That’s what is pissing off removed observers – the kind you see at WUWT. They have the benefit of distance and perspective that a lot of us do not have. Their hostile comments should only be viewed in that sense. The language of the press release is too self-absorbed, not self-sufficient and expects readers to assume many things which is setting off the whole reaction.
Tom, I’m not trying to convert skeptics or whatever, that is the job of the evangelist. I am trying provoke people into thinking critically and keeping an open mind (this goes for people on both sides of the debate.
I think science journalism needs to focus on the process and excitement of science, not about looking for the “right” answer on a controversial subject that is relatively immature in terms of the science. If you do this, you end up with the windshield wiper effect that Revkin describes, and you don’t get anywhere, and people get disgusted with science.
Take the antarctic sea ice story. That press release took 8 drafts. What we wanted to write was deemed incomprehensible and uninteresting by the journalist we were working with. The end result was a short piece that the journalist thought was sufficiently interesting and that didn’t contain any statements that we thought were incorrect or otherwise objected to.
If it weren’t for the AGW policy debate, this paper would be viewed as interesting to those that are curious about science, and things polar tend to have a gee whiz factor that people are interested in. The story could be about the frontier of knowledge, the excitement of trying to unravel the unknown, without any pretense of producing a final answer or something that policy depends on.
There is a big underthread of curiousity at WUWT. Political deniers just arent’ going to spend all that time at a science blog, when they can get all the news they need at climatedepot. Anthony Watts writes on topics that people are actually interested in. And if you read the posts, very few come across like climatedepot. The commenters are another story, they are distrustful of elite scientists and think the whole topic of climate science is too political. Actually engaging with scientists can help dissipate this distrust.
The challenge is how to bring back the excitement and sense of curiosity about science to the public. Climate science is something everybody can relate to. Is it possible to write an article, say about the antarctic sea ice, without the main theme being about which side this paper supports? It doesn’t have any direct policy relevance (other than science policy, i.e. we need better data).
Mr. Yulsman, if I can step in front of your intended responders, your questions for Dr. Curry in #41 sound like exactly the questions I would put in front of 15 grad students…
Judith, the topic of your paper sounds like it leads to another area where we are potentially storing up trouble for the future. An asynchronous or non-linear response from such a large storage mechanism could really cause a lot of trouble.
I haven’t read your paper yet, but do you offer recommendations for futher study?
All the “tribe” stuff is a tad weird. In climate science, there are not two tribes. There are hundreds — and I am limiting myself here to the working scientists; without worrying about the general public.
Every new paper, every new bit of research, is potential for a critical or alternative view. The notion that there are “two sides” (usually thought of as AGW and not-AGW) is not a good account of the science debates. It may get closer to what happens in wider circles, but in the world of working professional science? No.
There’s debate over sensitivity, over the roles of aerosols, over the worth of this or that proxy, over sea level rises, over ocean heat content, and on and on and on and on.
Judith Curry’s venture into the world of blogging has been interesting to watch. People have been trying to see it in terms of “teams”. A climate scientist gone to the dark side? A new skeptic who turns out to have been a mole for the warmists? Etc, etc.
But it isn’t about the person. When someone makes comments on some topic in a public forum (a newspaper interview, a published paper, a blog) it is quite normal for some comments to be more sensible than others, which are less sensible. What matters are the comments themselves. I have no problem disagreeing on some point, being interested in another where I am still learning, and agreeing with a third. Teams don’t come in to it.
With respect to the new PNAS paper, I am having a feeling of deja vue. I’m really frustrated, because I can recall discussing antarctic sea ice a couple of years ago, with respect to something published by someone, on how changing climates in a warming world are, for the time being, increasing the extent of sea ice in the south… but not the north. The role of snow and increased precipitation was mentioned as well.
The new paper was interesting to read, and at first sight seems to be a more carefully investigated consideration of these ideas, using models to explore possible shifts in those patterns which could have an impact. I just wish I could remember the other papers I was looking at a few years ago on this.
I very much doubt that Judith has lost any personal respect at all among the majority of WUWT readers. What they, rightly or wrongly, took exception to was a perceived somewhat provocative, speculative conclusion counter to current trend, in a region with very inadequate hard data, based primary on modelling. Irritation may also have been compounded by not infrequent prior blogs debating erroneous and misleading press coverage on the Antarctic. Most will have posted a reflex knee-jerk aimed at the paper, probably withour reviewing in full, not at Judith personally.
Personally on the topic, I wonder whether we really have sufficient knowledge of historic 20th C perturbations in ocean current circulation from lower latitudes and submarine volcanism/geothermal contributions to reliably model Antarctic waters.
Tom, if I may ask: You say “When seemingly informed people at WUWT cast doubt on Judith Curry’s research, what do I do with that as a science writer?”
What do you think you should do? If someone asks a coherent question that seems quite reasonable to you, does it matter where the question came from? Is it necessary to follow the path of authority and ignore questions from inferiors? Does one assume that an elephant in the room can only be identified by a trained zoologist?
It seems to me that what is important is whether that coherent question, regardless of the source, can be sufficiently answered. But further, to a journalist, I feel that a coherent question that remains unanswered, or perhaps appears to have been dodged (some scientists like to do this by tangentially “blinding with science”), should be like a red rag to a bull.
I often think I’ve been far too naive both with regard to scientists and journalists. The discovery that scientists can have an agenda which can override their scientific integrity was genuinely quite distressing. The discovery that there could be journalists who regarded balance and cynicism as optional extras and not fundamental to their craft was similarly upsetting. In my mind – and perhaps only there – both scientists and journalists ALL strive for honesty and integrity, fairness and balance in the pursuit of “the truth”. And they believe that those are the only worthy pursuits.
The idea that journalists can be so suspicious of the motives of politicians when answering questions (or indeed evading them) and yet can so blithely accept without question the word of government-funded and lobby-group funded scientists, particularly when it is so easy – easy enough even for a simpleton like me – to discover that scientists CAN have political or ideological agendas.
So my final question to you, Tom, would be: Do you question scientists’ motives, or do their positions and qualifications preclude such scrutiny? Even if you were to satisfy yourself that there were no ulterior motive – no sponsored result, no advocacy influence – isn’t the question itself worth asking when writing up the proclamations of scientists?
At the second WTF thread, JC writes:
” Please keep your rants to the other thread …”
Good idea. But AW has locked the original thread.
——
Tom Y. asked for lessons for student journalists. Best lesson yet, I submit, is what JC writes above:
> That press release took 8 drafts…. result was a short piece
> that the journalist thought was sufficiently interesting
> and that didn’t contain any statements that we thought
> were incorrect or otherwise objected to …
That belongs in a museum of good science press releases (along with the evidence already accruing that people will still work hard to misunderstand, no matter how much effort has been made).
Tom Fuller: Oh, you can be sure I’ll be REQUIRING my students to read this entire thread and then discuss it in class!
Judith: I appreciate what you say about the process and excitement of science. At the end of the day, science journalism is at its best when it does that. But we also have to cover the nitty gritty findings of science “” and address questions like, “To what degree is global warming implicated in the Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods?” (Along with an explanation, of course.)
So as a science writer who once relied on peer review as the gold standard by which to determine what scientific voices to trust, what should I do now? Should I somehow follow your lead in “crowd sourcing”? What does that even mean?
And Keith: You still haven’t answered me. How do I use what is being discussed at WUWT in a story about attribution of extreme weather events?
And by all means, any one interested in this please have at it.
Tom (39):
It’s not a simple either/or issue.
If I was covering Judith’s paper in a straightforward spot news fashion for, say, the AP, I wouldn’t be mining WUWT. I would be talking to typically credentialed experts. But…let’s say, in this digital age, I were to file an accompanying blog post, covering a different angle to this story–say, the blog storm kicked up by the paper, in particular over at WUWT, which has an educated and opinionated audience that has a default skeptical position on climate change. (A faithful WUWT reader should correct me if I have mischaracterized the audience.) Ideally, I wouldn’t want to base my related web post on just one site, so the hope would be that the PNAS paper was being kicked around on other well-known and highly trafficked climate blogs. (A good example of this was the recent PNAS expert paper that was discussed widely in the blogosphere–at RC, here, RPJ, and elsewhere, but not anywhere in the mainstream press.)
As you know, much depends on the story peg. So I would be careful in advising your students that they have to suddenly montor ten climate blogs closely as another source of hard science. That’s not what I’m saying. But there is sort of a shadow debate happening in the blogosphere, out of sight of the general public. True, much of it can seem like a ping pong match, but there also some real illuminating exchanges happening, and rather organically, which makes this process all the more interesting. Again, I like to think some of that has happened here, but I scan enough threads elsewhere to see plenty of good stuff on many other blogs as well.
Hope this answers your question.
I’ll have a go–recent discussion seems to indicate that attribution has a lot more uncertainty to it than one might have thought when reading press releases and even summaries for policy makers.
This seems to be moving towards a successful resolution, where for example what happened in Pakistan, China and Moscow can be (and already is in some venues) as sort of a preview of coming attractions, but not something we can say is attributable to observed warming to date. (My paraphrase and open to correction, of course.)
The connection with the blogosphere (It’s much wider than at WUWT) is that content consumers are stating preferences for depth of information, disclosure of interests and connection to policy issues and positions that some find startling or inappropriate. The communicators who adapt most quickly to what the blogosphere seems to want will be well-received by the blogosphere.
Whether that is important or not seems to me an open question.
Chris Ho-Stuart (46)-
Excellent point about the tribes. I merely used two as an amusing set-up for my post.
Journalism is sacred!! anything short of that is garbage and abusive of those who want answers.
Quality control! There is such a huge amount of information to read to get a balanced picture of an issue, you yearn for honest brokers. I get so tired of very tired of searching for the rest of the story or that which wasn’t mentioned.
Honest sites attract a more civilized comment board, WUWT has people who will question and explain the science to laymen but the shear volume guarantees a few fools. Other lessor sites seem populated with only abusive fools.
Keith, I don’t agree with your cagw position but I support your style.
And Thanks Judith.
Simon H. #48 thank you!!!
Frustrating that the public has to explain journalism to an instructor. It certainly doesn’t take a college degree in journalism to regurgitate a spoon-fed story.
I am appalled to see the UK MSM finally uncover the true story, then retract it with a butt-kissing apology.
Like it or not, the public has to take it upon themselves to uncover the true in the wild, untamed world of the internet.
There have been previous threads on the topic of journalism, Tom Y. You might get a more complete picture of Keith’s style by browsing through the archives.
Tom F. makes a great point. These questions do seem to be the ones to ask your students since like it or not, this is the present and future. Instead of insulting the public with labels like “denier” or “tea-baggers”, bring us the true story.
Tom, your statement
“the gold standard by which to determine what scientific voices to trust”
is a key issue. I have been reading papers on the sociology and politics of expertise (many of the papers recommended by comments on recent collide-a-scape thread. Trust is a huge issue. But the blogosphere is changing the politics of expertise. We need sociologists to help sort this out.
I’m a volunteer moderator at WattsUpWithThat, and I snipped Richard Telford’s comment this morning. I won’t go into details, suffice it to say that Mr Telford dared any moderator to snip his somewhat over the top comment. I noted: “You get your wish,” and snipped the single objectionable sentence, and posted the balance.
I take full responsibility for snipping Mr Telford’s comment today, and I apologize for hurting his feelings. I did it on my own; Anthony Watts had nothing to do with it. I’ve also gone back and snipped the comment Telford was complaining about.
I’m not commenting here to argue about this, only to explain, and to give some background on the way comments are moderated on WUWT:
Unlike most blogs, there is an enormous amount of moderation activity at WUWT. The unwritten policy is to ‘moderate with a light touch.’ I leave over 99.5% of all comments exactly as they were written – and I never edit the language [although spelling and grammar mistakes are sometimes corrected for readability]. Commentators’ words and meaning are always left intact.
On average I make an in-line reply, or snip a part, or all of a post, less than once per 500 comments [with the exception of saying something like, for example, “Thanks, fixed,” when someone points out a typo in a new article].
On a really busy day [such as during the Climategate exposé] I personally moderate 800+ comments a day. On an average busy day, between 250 – 500. On an average day, always over 200. That’s just me; there are several other moderators.
Also, there are a handful of individuals who are so out of control, obscene, etc., that they have ben banned after repeated warnings. The last I saw, the total was five. Commentators are given plenty of warnings before they are given even a time out. The vast majority are polite, and never have any problem getting their complete comments posted.
There is not a blog anywhere that gets more than a few comments a day, that does not ban a few commentators for repeated bad behavior. The fact that WUWT consistently allows all points of view, without the routine censorship common to certain other blogs, is what sets it apart. And IMHO this ‘light touch’ in moderation is what has resulted in the skyrocketing popularity of Anthony Watts’ site.
WUWT is already at a half a million comments, with more than 50 million hits ““ up from zero in only three years. WUWT is the winner of the most recent Weblog Awards for “Best Science” site, and the most recent Wikio Award for best in Science. WUWT is giving people what they want in a science site, and Judith Curry is absolutely correct in refusing to write off WUWT’s millions of readers.
You can be sure that if your comment is polite, and not overly taunting, or completely off-topic, or grossly insulting, or obscene, it will be posted. WUWT does not censor comments with a different point of view. In contrast, I have posted close to two dozen comments at RealClimate and Climate Progress, written in as straightforward a manner as this one. None of them ever made it out of moderation. Not a single one.
Finding the right balance between an unmoderated free-for-all, and deliberate, one-sided censorship is a judgement call. WUWT has always leaned toward a very light touch in moderating comments; more than 99% of them are posted with no problem, and the comments cover the spectrum, from believers in catastrophic runaway global warming to folks who think nothing unusual or extraordinary is occurring. No one’s view is excluded. That is one of the primary characteristics that makes WUWT stand out: people want to read all points of view, and WUWT enables that kind of discussion.
Thank you for allowing me to explain and clarify the moderating situation at WUWT. I wish you all the best.
Sincerely,
D.B. Stealey [“~dbs, mod.”]
http://wattsupwiththat.com
Thanks dbs.. my response is in the other thread. 🙂
Tom Yulsman,
I’m no journalist, but I don’t know that I see very much news worthy coming from the blogs themselves, unless one is reporting on them directly. I see them more as a vehicle to get people involved and excited about science, as Judy says; a sort of citizens access to current research that scientists themselves can choose to participate in. And I think in some cases it can influence the science. I’m a firm believer that the more brains applied to a problem, the better. Even if most of those brains and ill informed and angry;)
As for your students, I think the blogs are a good way to gauge the mood, find out what people think or how they react to the results of a certain study. I’m sometimes overwhelmed scrolling through comment threads… Its an amazing access to so many opinions (usually stated as fact), and I would imagine this could be useful to a journalist(?).
P.S. Cellulosic ethanol is my area of expertise, kudos on your reporting (I checked out your page). We market a pretty awesome pretreatment, it creates clean lignin and cellulose streams. check us out: http://www.bio-process.com
A couple comments from the peanut gallery:
One, when people start bleating about their own IQs, or speculating about the low IQs of those who disagree with them, my first response is to let go of a deep yawn. Then I am reminded of William Buckley’s great line: “I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.”
Two, “I don’t know that I see very much news worthy coming from the blogs themselves[?]” Was it the New York Times or the BBC that broke the climategate story? Or was that not news?
Three, for those who want to limit their comments and reviews to the peer reviewed literature, knock yourself out. We could wait 6 months or a year for Willis Eschenbach to publish a critique of Judith Curry and Jiping Liu’s paper, and a similar time for their response, etc. Or they can discuss their differences now. Which would you prefer?
There is an election in four months, and another two years later, that may well decide climate policy for the next decade or so. So maybe discussing these issues in a forum accessible to those poor stupid voters is a good thing. And maybe the Gavin Smiths, Judith Currys, Anthony Watts, Steven McIntyres, Keith Kloors etc. etc., are providing real value, on both the science and policy debates, whatever their politics.
isaacs
Ok, here is a small shibboleth, if you will. It is from an area you are familiar with.
“Information programs to promote cellulosic biofuels may not achieve their objectives unless consumers can be induced to care about the information presented to them.”
Do you find anything wrong with the above?
It is from a peer-reviewed publication. (Teisl et al. The Psychology of Eco-Consumption, Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, 7(9), 2009.)
(http://www.bepress.com/jafio/vol7/iss2/art9)
Followup to my earlier comment, in which I mention recalling reading another paper on this subject a couple of years ago. I’ve found the paper I was reading, and then also found it in the references for the new PNAS paper. The one I was reading back this is:
Zhang, Jinlun (2007) Increasing Antarctic sea ice under warming atmospheric and oceanic conditions. in J. Clim. Vol 20, pp 2515″“2529
The critical blog comments on the new paper by Liu and Curry are strange — or perhaps just more illustration of the difficulties of communicating how science works in this whole area. And science DOES work, and this IS science.
The new paper by Liu and Curry shows how models can and should be used to test out various ideas. The models are not “proof”, and querying whether they are “reliable” miss the point, IMO. They’ll never be perfect. But they don’t have to be to useful. A model is one way to test the credibility of hypotheses for how sea ice extent might be increasing as the ocean warms. It’s not the start nor the end of study of Antarctic sea ice in a warming world; and the conclusions are not particularly surprising. I don’t mean that as denigration, by the way. It’s a good contribution on the topic.
see also:
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2010/03/wuwt-trumpets-result-supporting-climate.html
Zhang’s model doesn’t have an active atmosphere. I find it a bit unsettling that such a primitive model reproduces the strange observed behavior. Clearly Liu & Curry study is superior.
Anthony is not capable of complicated technical discussion. Not just because he lacks specific technical knowledge, but he also lacks deep scientific knowledge in any field. [SNIP] He also lacks an honest questioning attitude (he is biased and can’t recognize it). As with most of the bloggers, he loves his little enterprise, the community of it. And he craves to be taken seriously. But he should not be.
I’m not sure that I approve of all the scientist outreach. I’d rather shut down your blogging, RC’s blogging, and the Klimazweiebel, too. Get you all in the lab and have you develop a very blase who cares attitude about the public debates. Just run regressions and collect samples and do hard core scienct. Leave it to policy advocates and popularizers to do all the translation. They will screw it up, but so what. Do science.
It seems fine to me that a very simple model will reproduce a certain effect, particularly as it is a binary proposition being tested, rather than a detailed forecast. The thing to remember is that there are also simple models which don’t reproduce the effect. They tend to get discarded.
With a simple model you can’t have much confidence that you happen to have nailed the right cause for the particular effect, without some additional argument or evidence. One approach is to use a more sophisticated model, to test the idea better.
This is how I see the new PNAS paper. The hypothesis is not new. The additional support of more detailed modeling is not the end of the story; models are always primitive by comparison with the real system. But they are still useful even as they keep being extended. It’s a normal part of science moving on.
In that sense, this paper is unexceptional. Again, I am not denigrating it with that remark. It looks like a good solid contribution, extending what has been done already and with scope to consider it much further still. For example, the suggestion that there will come a point where sea ice extent starts to decrease is something which we’ll eventually see as a good prediction — or not — but before then I expect additional physical modeling will make additional and more definite predictions.
@Tom Yulsman
Your students need to develop a questioning approach of their own.
In politics this is easy – you get a story and you ask pols of different colours for input and then write it up.
In science it don’t work like that. There are no easy “go-to guys” for a different angle. They will need to be “the opposition” and figure out the awkward questions that need asking by themselves.
The alternative is that they just re-type press-releases.
@Tom,
Maybe use posts from blogs as case studies – the commenters are great at asking the awkward questions that the journoes seem to miss.
Show a story to your students and get them to come up with some awkward questions by themselves.
Remember that if they can’t ask those awkward questions then are not adding any value to the press-releases.
Ray (54):
How do you infer that I have a “CAGW position”? On the previous thread, one commenter asked me, “I’m curious”¦ is there anything that you would attribute to global warming?” It’s always amusing to see how people assume they know someone’s position.
DBS (57): Thanks for coming over here to discuss the moderation policy at WUWT.
Polyis (65):
That’s not very nice of you, but since your personal screed against Watts is part of a larger critique of all climate/science bloggers, I’m going to let it stand (with some snipping, which I hate to do, but you went too far.)
The second half of your comment is intriguing, because it basically asks, “what’s the good of it”? And I think most scientists would agree with you and do stay safely confined to their labs.
All I can say to that is that journalists too used to be safely confined to the newsrooms, where they had little interaction with their readers. Plenty still are. But I’m finding it not such a bad thing to have an informal cross exchange with some folks interested in the same topics as me, be they scientists or lay people.
Tom Yulsman asks a very basic question that I interpret as “Who do you trust?” Using the published literature as a standard (one might look towards writings like NRC reports as a higher standard), the default answer is that the people to trust are those who represent the published literature accurately. That puts us firmly in the mainstream. Some here may chafe at that standard, though.
But lets look at other scientific fields. In medicine, would a writer look at alternative medicine sites for information on the latest cancer treatment? Probably not, but a blog like “Respectful Insolence”, written by a surgeon and oncology researcher can be a useful source of information. During the recent H1N1 pandemic, one of the “go-to” sites was the now-defunct blog “Effect Measure”.
Blogs can add to the discussion, but they vary in quality and accuracy. Frankly (IMHO, of course), for the articles themselves, a blog like RealClimate will have a better chance of giving the reader an accurate explanation of the science than a blog like WUWT that basically disputes mainstream science (but which occasionally has some interesting posts when they try give an mainstream viewpoint).
Dr Curry
I don’t know if you answered this anywhere else, so apologies. W.r.t the Liu paper, what is the paradox?
Witness Chris Ho-Stuart above and Hank applying emollients – this is just science, we already knew this even in 1992, this is just things moving on.
PS: I just went back and read more of the second thread comments. I see Willis E is asking the same question.
Shub, the apparent paradox is warming climate, increasing antarctic sea ice. Yes, this is well known. The climate models generally get this right in terms of retaining (or even increasing) the antarctic sea ice as climate warms, then eventually decreasing it as the climate gets much warmer. Our paper explains a physical mechanism for this, and the changing balances that will result in eventual decrease of the Antarctic sea ice. Not earth shattering results in any way, but an interesting paper (IMO) that addresses something the public seems interested in, and also targets one of the skeptic talking points re the increasing antarctic sea ice.
Willis E says there is no warming so no paradox
Dr. Curry,
“Peer review” has come up in this thread, and often raises its head in climate/AGW discussions, so it seems on-topic here. Until a few years ago, the journal PNAS was famous (notorious?) for having a two-track policy: “regular” authors’ manuscripts would go through standard peer review, but Members of the National Academy could direct that their submissions be reviewed under a kinder, gentler policy. Up until at least five or ten years ago, this led to grumbling (in biomedicine-related areas, anyway): in one of the highest-impact prestige journals, the science in a few articles seemed to be performed to a lower standard.
The Editorial Board took steps to remedy this problem, five-plus years ago, by making the peer-review process for NAS Member submissions more rigorous–although that second track still remains, as far as I know.
With that background: how do you feel the submission process went for the Liu-Curry manuscript whose final form is “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean…”? Did the editors and reviewers understand your work and its importance? Did any of them spot major problems with your theory, model, or data and demand an extensive rewrite–a rewrite that strengthened the final product? Do you think reviewers’ comments were fair or unfair, cursory or thorough, narrowly technical or broadly insightful? How is your paper better for the process, and was it worth the price of the extra work and delay?
Upthread, Tom Yulsman, Keith Kloor, and others were discussing the relative merits of “standard science” and “blog science” from the journalist’s perspective, regarding both the work itself and communication about the work. Your view of this peer-review experience might add to that.
GaryM,
I was being self deprecating, I think the blogs are a great thing (especially keith’s), maybe it came out wrong. I’m definitely no elitist either and I think what Judith and Jiping are doing is great.
Shub,
The link didn’t work. I don’t have any knowledge of information programs to promote cellulosic biofuels, we do sponsored research projects, consulting, project scale up and things like that. Although I like talking about biofuels and microbiology, its pretty boring to most people, but public interest is not really necessary.
Hi Amac, some history on submission of the paper. We originally submitted to Science and Nature. One of them (I forget which) didn’t send it out to review. The other one sent it out for review, extensive comments came back, it was rejected, but the comments were useful in revision. With regards to the PNAS submission (Liu’s choice to submit there), the process was reasonable and the reviews weren’t as tough as the previous ones (but by then the manuscript had been through the process already, and was pretty solid).
Personally I prefer the online discussion journals. If you want to see an academic food fight, check this out at ACPD (check out the interactive discussion). With regards to the reviews, it is a classic conflict between theorists and empiricists, with the theorists (us) telling the empiricists they are interpreting their observations incorrectly. The revised version of this is still under review. This is how it should work, IMO.
I don’t think Dr. Curry is one of ‘The Tribal Outcast’ mob. Frankly, I put her in a very small group willing to reach out to the public and talk openly about her work. I would, however, put most of her contemporaries in ‘The Self-Imposed Exile’ mob. She’s ahead of the rest of the class and breaking new ground for the timid and the young.
Regarding the PNAS paper by Liu and Curry and the ‘reception’ the press release on it got at WUWT, this could (should?) have been expected. Dispite its having been rewriten 7 or 8 times, this was the spark that caused the firestorm so to speak. Suggest that PAO’s and authors who don’t write these for the WEB Public (as well as for the Pro’s) are going to get a similar effect, or worse, no reaction at all.
So the southern oceans are expected (by whom?) to be warmed by global warming and then melt the sea ice, but they don’t. Is that the paradox?
As you point out above – you guys (climatologists ) knew it all along anyway, so once again, where is the paradox?
I am not trying to start a discussion on the science here, that’s been done anyway and things are what they are. I am trying to explain why people got ticked off.
Small correction:
So the southern oceans were expected (by whom?) to be warmed by global warming and then melt the sea ice, but they didn’t. Is that the paradox
shub, the skeptics have used the increasing antarctic sea ice as one of the “proofs” that there is no global warming. More sea ice in a warmer climate (including local warming in the southern ocean is counter intuitive). The word paradox was not used in the paper, but in the press release.
People got ticked off because the words “accelerated warming” was in the title. We did not document any current accelerated warming, but discussed the mechanism of what might happen in accelerated warming according to the IPCC warming scenarios. There was real hysterical nuttiness on the first “paradox” thread.
Willis E got involved in this because he became famous (with big media quotes) as a result of his reply on WUWT to my “building trust” essay. So Willis sees a big advantage in taking me on.
An interesting dynamic . . .
Equally disconcerting as the rabid reaction from the contrarian crew over any paper indicating a human influence on climate is the uncritical cheerleading over anything that is perceived (or more accurately in this case “misperceived”) to challenge the prevailing view, most recently the McShane/Wyner draft. DC has the breakdown.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/19/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
An article on the current topic:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/antarctic-sea-ice-growth.html
Cook has a good review of the recent trends and causes:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Antarctic-sea-ice-increasing.html
Lastly, WUWT has a history of censoring comments, particularly from those who believe global warming is a problem. Much more disturbing, Watts himself has posted personal information (gained from IP addresses) on multiple occasions in an attempt to intimidate. This, and the fact that they are shamelessly and dishonestly self-promoting (note the constant highlighting of “hits” as an indication of “millions of readers”), is why I don’t spend much time even clicking on WUWT links these days. Interestingly, Judith has taken such web stat claims at face value. MT and I have a dissection of that here…
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/07/ten-camps.html?showComment=1278372470853#c7224250824328830393
… and is now inflated further
2 million hits -> “2 million unique visitors” -> “2M strong WUWT army” -> “3 million readers” -> what will it be next week?
Michael Tobis writes…
“Each page view is at least 8 hits, quite likely more.
So 2 million hits per month is about 250,000 page views, less than ten times what this blog does and nothing unusual. My daily uniques are about half my page views, so if Watts is similar, about 125,000 daily uniques per month.
If the mean of visitors is 6 visits per month (some people look every day, some come by once and run away screaming) that’s about 20,000 people, or an error of about three orders of magnitude.
The regular readers are probably a small fraction of that, though they contribute lots of hits. I’d guess he has about 2000 devotees at most.”
… my guesstimate was around 10,000 “devotees”.
Oh how easily they’re led astray.
There are two types of hit in website analysis. You’re talking about the component hit, which counts a hit for the HTML and a hit for each graphic on the page loaded from that server. The other type of hit – the REAL hit – is otherwise known as a “page view” or “impression”. Watts is dealing with the latter, while you’re either misreading the results of “Weblog Expert lite” or similar site freebie stats analysis package, or you’re deliberately trying to mislead. I will trust it’s the former.
The results at Alexa are in, every month, and it’d be better to just suck it up.
Here’s the best analysis I’ve seen of WUWT etc web traffic. Nothing to sneeze at.
Laursaurus: Sorry you feel frustrated. I never asked you, or need you, to explain journalism to me. I simply asked a few questions in good faith to gain insight about this brave new world we find ourselves in. And I’ve gotten some valuable perspectives as a result. Thank you to those who have offered them.
As for looking through the archives of what Keith has been doing here, I’m well aware of it, since I helped him get his blog started in the first place.
My interest is in how journalists should cover these issues now. Peer review as the gold standard clearly is no longer good enough if we want to cover the full breadth of many stories. And I think Keith and Judith got it just right in their replies to me.
Even so, there are risks to turning to the blogs for information on anything other than politics and the “shadow debate,” as Keith puts it. To offer one example of the risks I see, you, Laursaurus, and countless others in the blogosphere, are not brave enough to use your own name here. So I have no idea who you are, let alone what expertise you bring to these subjects. So I have no way of judging what, if anything, you are qualified to speak to “” other than your own opinions.
Thanks for the link to web analysis Judith. Very interesting indeed. But I’m surprised you’ve highlighted it given your apparent fondness for WUWT.
I was particularly struck by two findings:
1. “Relative to the general internet population, people over 65 years old are greatly over-represented at wattsupwiththat.com”
2. Romm’s Climateprogress.org holds reader’s attention like no other comparable site, a sure sign of quality. I cannot help but suspect that Watts and his moderator were more interested in quantity.
IMO there is no question that Romm is better on quality, but I think that the reason the pagevisits are so much longer on his site is at least partly due to the fact that his posts are so damn long…
let me close with following two gems from the author:
What does this tell us? Again, this can be spun any way you like. If you don’t think old people get cranky, feel neglected, have vast amounts of time on their hands, review the past with invented affection and the present as a constant threat, you’ll not agree with my view that reactionary right-wing curmudgeons are behind a great deal of climate change denial. It is cynical to suggest they don’t care because they’ll be dead before the worst of it hits us. Perhaps it is more that climate change is just the most willing horse to flog, the quickest way to find “˜lefties’ to duke it out with, trembling behind their pseudonyms as they post insults and slanders so venomous they have to be strapped to their keyboards for fear of falling off…
…This is a time when we should be responsible in our use of media. I do not think Wattsupwiththat meet the common criteria of responsibility when it comes to the way they supply so much ideological and distorted information to the public. All across the internet, lies and misdirections are propagated with astonishing speed. These myths, deceits and zombie arguments about bad science all come from just a few sources. WUWT is one of them and to draw attention to how many people are being taken in is not a claim to success, but an admission of guilt.
priceless.
SimonH
i’m sorry that i assumed minimum competence on the part of watts… he confused “views per month” (the metric graphed) with “visits by month” (his graph label) with “2 million hits this month” (his blog post title… which is what i read)… it’s somewhat impressive to confuse all three metrics in one post
… ok, so 2 million page views, assuming that *all views are by regular readers*, assuming that a member of the “WUWT army” reads at minimum five pages per month, equates to an improbable maximum of 400,000… still somewhat less than “3 million”.
There is an implication here that WUWT moderators suppress comments unfairly. I would really like to see an actual example, and am skeptical that one will appear. Off topic and offensive comments still generally appear with the content snipped. Consistently offensive sources do get blocked. All comments are moderated, and stuff is published sometimes that should have been blocked. It is an unfunded volunteer community site, and mature people should be able to ignore comments that maybe should have been edited by the moderators.
Compare and contrast that to many CAGW sites where comments just disappear and never leave moderation. Anthony generally retrieves stuff from the junk filter if asked, and no one whose text isn’t way out from blog policy is getting blocked from what I can see. Someone have evidence otherwise?
Lazar, nahh. You’re over-reaching in your determination to denigrate. Watts uses the same metrics every other site uses in their site usage statistics. In the land I live, nobody misunderstands page hits like you seem to. “views per month” and “visits by month” are interchangeable. His “2 million hits” is a legitimate claim, but you’re stating the obvious when you say that not all are unique, and to suggest that Watts is concealing this – which is the sum of the impression I’m getting – is the usual stuff of straw men.
Marlowe, “2. Romm’s Climateprogress.org holds reader’s attention like no other comparable site, a sure sign of quality.”
This isn’t “a sure sign of quality”. It’s a sure sign that visitors to the site are slow to navigate away, but does not speak to “quality”. This metric is typically treated as a consolation prize for the lesser-visited websites.
cagw_skeptic99: Regarding WUWT moderation, I’ve prodded WUWT fairly hard about this. I’m entirely satisfied that they don’t delete un-supportive content in a comparable way to RC. I’m confident that the claim that they do is likely somewhere between an urban myth and a blatant misrepresentation for effect.
Lazar, the web site i provided a link to provided the most extensive data analysis of the relevant web sites that I have seen. They basically support Watt’s claim that alot of people go to his site. I do not agree with or otherwise endorse the editorial statements that were made. Re Climate Progress, note the recent downtick.
SimonH,
“In the land I live, nobody misunderstands page hits like you seem to”
… “page hits” seems to be your confusion between “hits” and “page views”
“”views per month” and “visits by month” are interchangeable”
no they are not…
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=web+stats+terminology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics
“Hit – A request for a file from the web server. […] A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded”
“Page view – A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. […] a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.”
“Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User – The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period […] Identification is made to the visitor’s computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent.”
“to suggest that Watts is concealing this”
no… i couldn’t care less what watts is trying to do… my interest is in what jc is claiming… as fact… 2 million page views per month does not equate to 2 million wuwt followers… or 3 million as jc is now claiming… watts incompetent exchanging of three different and precisely defined metrics as if they measured the same thing is irrelevant…
Dear Mr. Yulsman
If I may say so, the problem in front of you is probably from not using blogs/forums/boards since the ‘early days’.
You think Keith and Dr Curry got it just right because, it looks to me, they gave you the kind of answers you were looking for.
The climate blogs or “the blogs” are not a brave new world. There is nothing new.
And we know your real name – what good does it do? To wit, here is an experiment you can perform (since you raised the issue of anonymity, and since you are KK’s pal – telling you because of that). Adopt a skeptical position and write a few columns and start commenting on a few blogs – just for grins. Just point out some valid skeptical aspects – and there are many in climate science, in the light of which all the hype/policy hunger doesn’t seem justified. See what happens.
The short answer of course, if I dont care who you are, all I care is about what you are telling me. Apparently that doesn’t cut it with you. 😉
For a healthy democracy, a governing establishment needs a strong opposition to keep it accountable and sharp. The fact of the matter is that climate research is a quasi-political establishment with very profound and costly implications for the public, and no formalised means to hold it to account. That vacuum is the reason for the proliferation of the sceptic blogosphere. To hold to account, to audit, and keep honest. WUWT and CA have risen spontaneously to the top of that heap precisely because they fulfill that role admirably and unpaid, and because the more traditional mainstream media have dismally failed to provide it.
Wow – I never realised there could be so many different flavors of appeal to authority.
Tom (85), I think you need to be a little more sympathetic to the anonymity issue. While it’s true that plenty of people abuse anonymity in comment threads, surely you know that plenty of others can’t use their real names out of job and other legitimate concerns.
For example, I’ve spotlighted various perceptive comments on my blog from anonymous posters (from one who works in state government on water policy and another who is in military intelligence.) Thus I respect anonymity, so long the anonymous respect others at this blog.
Lazar, I already set out the definitions this way earlier. Watts’ “visits by month” or “views per month” is unique visit, I would presume multiplied by page view. This is the normal “site hit” calculation outside of the minutiae of log analysis. As an aside, I see there’s an error of omission in the wiki content you’ve pasted regarding “visitor’s computer” vs “person”, so I wouldn’t be relying too heavily on this as a definitive source. Trust me instead 😉 (Jack, chalk up another) 😀
Also, the 2 million hit (let’s get precise, then, “impression”) post was pre-Climategate. I’m pretty sure the increase in traffic noted at Alexa corresponds with that, so I see no reason to doubt the 3 million impression figure.
But.. just for grins.. let’s pretend that Watts’ page impressions are actually HTTP file calls instead. In that case, RC and others must be REALLY quiet.
Regarding anonymity, it really is the nature of the internet beast. Blame IRC a bit, but mostly AOL. The internet was founded on people interacting using pseudonyms, or “screennames”, in “chatrooms”. In the early days it was indeed to preserve anonymity and then later it was to provide continuity across sites. These days it’s somewhere between habitual and ritual, but there is little consideration of a need for anonymity, and little need for it except in those cases Keith identifies. If you ever wanted to know what the H in my pseudonym stands for, you need only click on it. No secrets here, but then nothing ever worth quoting either. 🙂
Since this thread evolved into a WUWT stream, I will go with it.
The demographics of WUWT posters/commenters is as varied as the makeup of the world population. That is because of the open nature of his venue.
Authority and expertise are judged there, they are seldom accepted prima facia. Earning respect is a step-by-step process there.
Anyone from academia who is not used to that kind of situation will experience some negative vibes and frustration.
John
@Tom Y, I was typing my reply and didn’t have the benefit of reading the comments that posted subsequently after Simon before submitting. I am unfamiliar with your name and didn’t connected you as the topic of Keith’s earlier post.
The unique feature of blog journalism, from a consumer standpoint, is interaction with the readers. Asking a question to a specific individual publicly, especially more than once, appears rhetorical or what blogs commonly refer to as “the concerned troll.” Admittedly, I went against the standard advise “don’t feed the troll”, was a mistake right off the bat.
When prominent op-ed MSM journalists have embraced the use of derogatory labels, it involved more than insulting a particular opinion for the purpose of silencing it. The allusion to Holocaust Deniers was deliberately created. Climate skeptics ought to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. The punishment for which, is execution. When metaphoric death threats are acceptable, using my real name is a foolish risk.
Plus I’m a female who once was the victim of identity fraud. But your certainly entitled to your opinion that I represent “the problem” with blog content.
BTW, this is my favorite blog and I check it more frequently than my email. Thanks for helping Keith launch it!
Laura S
Wow! I made several grammatical errors in that last comment. Clearly, I’m an amateur and not even a student of journalism.
Examiner.com conducted a survey last year that attracted a good number of respondents from WUWT. Here is the crosstab of their demographics:
Watt’s Up With That 2,214
Male 93.3%
under 18 0.1%
Age
(158)
35-44 14.8%
(326) 14.8%
(326)
45-54 29.7%
(654) 29.7%
(654)
55-64 29.6%
(651) 29.6%
(651)
65-74 14.0%
(309) 14.0%
employment status
Employed full time50.9% (1,113)
Employed part time 3.6% (79)
Self employed 18.3% (400)
Retired 21.5% (469)
Student 2.2% (47)
Unemployed 2.3% (50)
Hey–I’m still in school! University or college 1.5% (32)
High school graduate 2.9% (63)
Some college, no degree 13.9% (303)
Associate degree 5.5% (119)
Bachelor’s degree 35.3% (769)
Master’s degree 23.3% (507)
Doctorate or other post-graduate completed 16.2% (353)
Keith Kloor Says:
August 19th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Tom (85), I think you need to be a little more sympathetic to the anonymity issue. While it’s true that plenty of people abuse anonymity in comment threads, surely you know that plenty of others can’t use their real names out of job and other legitimate concerns.
Keith,
Regarding anonymity, in real life I am required to be non-anonymous in every aspect and I require others to also to be non-anonymous. In the real world I will not deal with people who will not identify themselves.
On a blog which touches on climate, which supposedly impacts the future of all mankind, anonymity is a dominant feature. People fear to talk about climate?
Yes, some fear. But I do not think >50% of the blog world does. So to me it appears that lot of people are just using anonymity for entertainment/escapism purposes and/or avoiding responsibility for their actions.
John
SimonH,
“no reason to doubt the 3 million impression”
page views (“impressions”) do not equal the number of regular wuwt readers… i’m not sure how to put this in simpler terms… what part don’t you understand?
Lazar, which part of “you’re stating the obvious when you say that not all are unique”* don’t you understand?
John (103)-
I respect your own personal position but respectfully disagree with the thrust of your take on anonymity. Fear of reprisal is a legitimate concern for some people. Also, lots of anonymous people make excellent contributions to this blog. I wouldn’t want to discourage them from participating.
Laursaurus (100):
I continue to appreciate all the blog accolades you send my way. Just a slight correction, if I may: Tom didn’t technically help me launch the blog, though he was a fantastic sounding board and font of support as I was kicking the idea around. And since this occurred during the final months of my fellowship at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, where Tom is the co-director, he was often a source of inspiration as I got the blog off ground. I’m fortunate to have him as a friend, colleague and mentor. Thus, he’s partially responsible for the blog monster that has mutated into its current form. 🙂
SimonH
do try to follow…
i was responding to jc’s claims, not yours, or watts’… jc claimed “2 million unique visitors”, a “2M strong WUWT army”, “3 million readers”… on the basis of 2 million page views per month… that is wrong… by simple maths and logic the number of ‘regular readers’ must be substantially less than 2 million… that was my point… my sole point… nothing else implied or inferred… which has nothing to do with watts or you
then you chimed in, including misrepresenting jc’s statement of “3 million readers” as “3 million impression[s]”
Lazar, that’s not actually true, is it? In fact you commenced with a false premise about WUWT’s “hit” statistic, doing your own calculations which were erroneous, and which I addressed. It was later that you moved on to pick up NYJ’s torch regarding JC’s acceptance of WUWT’s traffic figures.
Let me try to make this very simple, so we can put this to bed once and for all. In terms of website usage, the phrase “3 million visitors” does not, never has and – unless certain companies get their way – never will literally mean unique visitors. In order to be able to claim this, a site would have to verify each user’s identity BEFORE they ever arrive at the site. No site currently has this capability.
Nevertheless, many thousands of websites claim “x visitors”, and all of these sites are using precisely the same metric as at WUWT. It’s an established and well-understood term, and to argue that it’s a specific misrepresentation by WUWT is.. well, it’s just being silly.
As for Judith, if it’s a revelation to her that 3 million visitors is not actually 3 million unique visitors, so be it. I’m glad to have finally imparted something – for some of us, this environment is far too much take and not enough give. We all learn as we go along. And at least YOU now know the difference between a weblog “hit” and a website “hit”, so everybody benefits.
But nothing you’ve said or learned has reduced the relative significance of WUWT as a climate information portal.
I said “a site would have to verify each user’s identity BEFORE they ever arrive at the site. No site currently has this capability.” I meant AS they arrive, and I meant literally their identity – no possibility of anonymity at all. Sorry for any confusion.
SimonH,
[in response to; “i was responding to jc’s claims”]
“Lazar, that’s not actually true, is it? In fact you commenced with a false premise about WUWT’s “hit” statistic, doing your own calculations which were erroneous, and which I addressed. It was later that you moved on to pick up NYJ’s torch regarding JC’s acceptance of WUWT’s traffic figures.”
Actually, no, the first comment;
“”¦ and is now inflated further
2 million hits -> “2 million unique visitors” -> “2M strong WUWT army” -> “3 million readers” -> what will it be next week?“
… was quoting jc… my point being… she was increasingly misrepresenting the “2 million hits” claimed by wuwt as “2 million unique visitors” -> “2M strong WUWT army” -> “3 million readers”
the calculations in that comment were by Michael Tobis, his (and my calculations in a subsequent comment) took the 2 million figure as “hits” because that is how watts’ incompetently described the 2 million figure in the title of his blog post… that the figure was really page views doesn’t change the point that it isn’t 2 (or 3) million “readers” or “WUWT army”
“the phrase “3 million visitors””
… which part of ‘page views does not equal the number of visitors’ do you not understand?
“the difference between a weblog “hit” and a website “hit””
… do you think that no one will notice, that you’re making stuff up?
Scientists spending too much time on blog science?; Eduardo Zorita on McShane and Wyner…
“McShane and Wyner are two statisticians that aim to analyze the statistical methods used in proxy-based climate reconstruction, but mostly focusing on the reconstructions by Mann and collaborators. Summarizing, this paper has two parts: in the first one, the authors present a critic of what the think are the reconstruction method used by ‘climatologist’. This part is very weak. It seems that their knowledge of the papers by Mann et al is only indirect – from what they may have read in blogs – and that they actually did not read the papers themselves. […] The introduction already contains a terrible and unnecessary paragraph, full of errors […] Further misunderstandings, this time about climate models […] MBH never used ‘only one principal component of the proxy record’. The authors, again, are probably confused by what they may have read in blogs.”
Lazar: “”the difference between a weblog “hit” and a website “hit””
“¦ do you think that no one will notice, that you’re making stuff up?”
Streuth! Okay, go to this page and read what it says. Or, for the hard of clicking, “A hit counter measures and displays the number of times visitors have viewed a single page on a website. [..] There is a high potential for confusion here, because log analysis also involves the interpretation of “˜hits’. The hits recorded by log files are much more numerous, and do not individually represent individual human “˜hits’ or “˜clicks’.”
I don’t make stuff up.
Marlowe Johnson Says:
August 19th, 2010 at 3:03 pm T
“2. Romm’s Climateprogress.org holds reader’s attention like no other comparable site, a sure sign of quality.”
Joe Romm’s site appeals to people who hold ‘progressive’ views which account for 16 percent of the population. If one wants news/information from the ‘progressive’ viewpoint then the sites run by the ‘Center for American Progress are the place to go. For the 84% of the US population that doesn’t see the world thru a progressive lens the websites run by the Center for American Progress appear to be heavily biased. Just as the websites run by the Republican National Committee appear biased to those who are not Republicans.
Lazar, dude, give it up. If Climate Progress were a cool place to be. we’d be there talking about the climate.
John Whitman
I humbly request you to rethink about the anonymity thing. People have used anonymity/pseudonyms throughout the ages, – there is a reason for that.
It is to prevent who you are, distracting from what you say.
Marlowe Johnson
1. “Relative to the general internet population, people over 65 years old are greatly over-represented at wattsupwiththat.com”
I wrote the article Judith linked to about WUWT web traffic (thanks Judith, glad to offer a modest assist in your troubled times). I thought I should make it clear that the over-represented metric is Alexa’s analysis, not mine. I’m just quoting from the same set of stats Watts published. That he was rather economical with the data is really shocking, isn’t it? (Or not).
There is something else about this metric I want to mention. I write a lot in the Guardian forum, and it appears to be a magnet for retired folk. They post all day long, every day, and are as deeply entrenched in contrarian opinions as its possible to get. We’ve all seen demographic claims about denialism: male, retired, middle-management etc, but this is the first metric I’ve come across that confirms something I’ve suspected for a long time – that climate change denial is a wagon to which old people hitch their disaffection. They have the time, hate change and the left, and love a virtual fight behind a fake name because nobody can hold them responsible. It’s a crap way to run a democracy, and they should have more sense.
You also say this: “I think that the reason the pagevisits are so much longer on [Romm’s] site is at least partly due to the fact that his posts are so damn long”¦
No need to try so hard mate. If as a writer I could hold readers attention – whether on a single item or many – that would be the most important metric I would look at. It’s like owning a shop – no point in counting how many people come through the door – what matters is how long they browse (thus increasing the chance of a sale). Romm holds his audience, WUWT less so.
Graham Wayne
#102 Tom Fuller
Wow, very interesting statistics for WUWT. The audience is generally older with the majority having at least a bachelor’s degree and quite a few being self-employed.
That’s a very influential political demographic.
Well, being one who mainly reads at work, where I’m primarily paid for my presence, I rarely comment – those who study neuro probably can identify the different parts of the brain associated with passive vs. active participation.
I feel I might have a contribution to make to Tom Yulsman’s dilemma, not as a colleague as some of you have, but as a member of his students’ ultimate focus group.
Here’s a little background so he can judge my qualifications, per his stated wishes. If I still have time (leaving at 12:30 for a low-carbon-footprint off-grid weekend in my “real home” in southern CH), I will make my comment(s) as well.
My last name is Schauwecker – I only use Kendra as a user name simply because I’m not a very formal person. My academic field was Anthropology, in which I have a BA from Okla. Univ. and several years of graduate courses in Ethnologie at the University of Zurich. Although I was well-situated to pursue an academic career, I deliberately chose not to.
I am an expat due to marriage to a Swiss, although we tried and failed to build up something in the U.S., incurring to that end a debt of 30,000 we are still paying off so my husband could earn an LL.M. at UVA.
Although I chose to stay out of academia, my interest in learning has only grown, and I’ve spent many hours studying science-related issues, e.g. nutrition, psychotropic drugs, tobacco smoke, as well as climate change, in addition to following my other interests in subcultures, language and culture, etc. Therefore, I consider myself representative of the kind of person who would be attracted to the articles his students will be writing. WRT whether or not this is a significant demographic worthy of taking into consideration might vary greatly according to the specific publication.
First, it is essential that the issues discussed in the blogosphere be addressed / acknowledged to attract such readers. There are a number of online news sites I have lost any trust in whatsoever because of their “science by press release” articles. Quite frankly, it angers me greatly to come across articles that make no mention of what I know is at issue. However, I do force myself to keep up with the MSM simply to keep informed on what the mainstream is being told.
I suppose here I should add that while fluent in German I prefer to read in English (easier skimming) so perhaps I’m more reliant on the net than print media (altho I do read the free street papers – in German or Italian – with their little blurbs when I take the train) than others in “my demographic.”
Whoops, now the one daily task is ready, then I leave. Unfortunately, I spent more time on my “qualifications” than on the comment but that seemed to be necessary.
Thanks, Keith, for a great site – like Laura S, it’s one of the first I check.
SimonH,
“A hit counter measures and displays the number of times visitors have viewed a single page on a website“
dude… that’s explaining the difference between hit counters and stats from log files… not between websites and blogs… note that watts wasn’t reporting the results of “the graph from the internal WordPress stats system”… which graphs [page] “views”
Shub,
“give it up. If Climate Progress were a cool place to be. we’d be there talking about the climate.”
interesting how you and SimonH try to twist my issue with jc… misrepresenting 2 million page views per month as 2 (or 3) million wuwt followers… into some kinda meta issue of wuwt vs. other blogs… that wasn’t the point…
SimonH,
correction… “watts was”
Shub and SimonH,
supposing wuwt really does have many more readers than cp, or rc, or some other ‘alarmist’ blog… why do you think it matters?
Lazar, let’s get it boiled down to nothing. A page hit is different from a weblog hit. A page hit is typically referred to as an “impression” these days SPECIFICALLY because of the confusion between a page view and a weblog hit, but “hit” has long been in the vernacular to refer to a page visit, in the same way that “URL” is in the vernacular to describe a web address, even though a web address is correctly termed “URI”. A blog is usually a self-contained website. The term “website” refers to a collection of inter-linked pages hosted on a domain (eg. wattsupwiththat.com) or subdomain (eg. bishophill.squarespace.com). A “hit counter”, whether on a blog or a website, is the same damn thing.
I do not for one second believe that JC was “misrepresenting” anything, because implicit in the use of that word is intent. At worst, JC misunderstood the “2 millionth visit” or some such (whatever, I’m so way past caring) to mean unique visitors. It’s a very easy mistake to make, not at all uncommon, and does NOT betray an intent to mislead. Dude, seriously, give it up. WUWT still has vastly greater reach than RC or any other climate-specific blog.
Lazar: “supposing wuwt really does have many more readers than cp, or rc, or some other “˜alarmist’ blog”¦ why do you think it matters?”
Whoa.. I feel a bit like Steve McIntyre all of a sudden. As he said, just because he highlights problems with handling of the data doesn’t mean he thinks the data itself is useful!
Website statistics are interesting to look at, but they can’t cook your dinner. They (I mean actual direct web log analysis) can occasionally tell you if you’re doing something wrong – for example, I had the good fortune to work on a high traffic site, at one time, where it was possible to see the near-instant effect on site traffic of changing an “ENTER” button to “GO” – but other than that, they’re mostly useful for comparison with competing sites.
Oh wow.. hang on… I just realised. When I said “web log”, you inferred “blog”. No, sorry, my fault for not explaining. A “web log” is a text file generated by your server, which collects detailed information about site visits – their IPs, where they linked in from, which pages they visit and how long they stayed. This is the thing that collects the component “hits”. Nothing to do with the distinction between a website and a blog. Blogs and websites both collect data in a “web log”. Maybe this will help clear stuff up.
Keith Kloor (106) August 19th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Shub Niggurath (114) August 19th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
——————
Keith & Shub,
Keith, you run a great venue here. Thanks. My view on anonymity is no criticism of your policies. I accept the reality that there is a lot of anonymity generally on the blogosphere. Yes, great comments are independent of anonymity.
Shub, yes, as you point out historically before computers there are uses of anonymity. Also, I understand peer review of papers by science journals often have anonymous reviewers, but that is a formal process . . . not winging it on the blogosphere.
Still, identity provides a vehicle for carrying responsibility. Anonymity does not have that vehicle.
Consider the achievements of our culture in this vein.
John
“1. “Relative to the general internet population, people over 65 years old are greatly over-represented at wattsupwiththat.com”
According to alexa.com, much the same is true of of RealClimate and ClimateProgress. I agree with Graham’s take that cranky retirees make up a notable portion of ‘skeptical’ posters — I’ve anecdotally observed it on evo biology forums too — but I wouldn’t take that as proof that ‘mainstream’ posters aren’t old farts too. (FWIW I’m 50 so I probably qualify too, though I’m far from retired)
Dr Curry writes:
” I have been reading papers on the sociology and politics of expertise (many of the papers recommended by comments on recent collide-a-scape thread. Trust is a huge issue. But the blogosphere is changing the politics of expertise. We need sociologists to help sort this out.”
So, we need experts to sort out a topic within their bailiwick. Imagine that!
“Hi Amac, some history on submission of the paper. We originally submitted to Science and Nature. One of them (I forget which) didn’t send it out to review. The other one sent it out for review, extensive comments came back, it was rejected, but the comments were useful in revision. With regards to the PNAS submission (Liu’s choice to submit there), the process was reasonable and the reviews weren’t as tough as the previous ones (but by then the manuscript had been through the process already, and was pretty solid).”
In other words: no nefarious plot, just science as usual. Alert the media!
Judith writes:
“They basically support Watt’s claim that alot of people go to his site. ”
Nice backtrack. If his claim was only this generalized, no one would have a problem with it. It’s the specific claims that he and his cohorts have made (and echoed by Judith) that are not supported by the evidence. Lazar has been clearly reiterating this as Judith and Simon (particularly so) dodge and move the goalposts. This is typical.
Probably more importantly, such claims are made to support the notion that public popularity is a sign of reliability.
From Judith’s link in #84:
” All across the internet, lies and misdirections are propagated with astonishing speed. These myths, deceits and zombie arguments about bad science all come from just a few sources. WUWT is one of them and to draw attention to how many people are being taken in is not a claim to success, but an admission of guilt. ”
It’s interesting that the same crew finds popularity among the non-experts of ideas espoused by Watts to be a good thing and a mark of reliability, but popularity of a theory among scientists is a “religion”. If one is a religion, the other is surely a cult.
Back McShane and Wyner paper, Zorita, who certainly has no personal love of Mann, provides us with an even more harsh critique than DC. I’ll point out a line that seems to pop up pretty much every day.
“The authors, again, are probably confused by what they may have read in blogs.”
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-on-climate.html#more
Some have made the assertion that climate scientists should work with their community more (Zorita makes this point as well). This is debatable. Statistics is a tool of the trade. Every climate scientist knows statistics to varying degrees, and statisticans are sometimes consulted, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to include more collaboration.
What is clear is that statisticians trying to do climate science on their own generally don’t do too well, and why studies published in non-science journals often will not have an adequate review. Wegman/McIntyre have made similar errors in their pseudo-analysis of science.
Why is it considered as a bad thing, if reader demographics consists of primarily retired men? It makes sense that this group has the opportunity and the interest in discussing climate change. This is an ad hom argument implying that age and gender are grounds for dismissing an opinion. I’m not sure, but wouldn’t this group also have a better record of voter turnout (and absentee ballots)? So don’t their opinions actually carry more weight?
SimonH
“I do not for one second believe that JC was “misrepresenting” anything, because implicit in the use of that word is intent.”
misrepresentation means misrepresentation… as in, misrepresenting… as opposed to, accurately representing… if i thought jc’s misrepresentation was deliberate, i would write deliberate misrepresentation… to be clear, i don’t think jc’s misrepresenation was deliberate… i think it’s sloppy exageration… your attempt to derail a dispute over facts… into something over motives… is again noted… and is not impressive
“At worst, JC misunderstood the “2 millionth visit” or some such (whatever, I’m so way past caring) to mean unique visitors”
i wonder how many times… it’s three so far… you’re willing to misrepresent the content of her claims…
2 million hits -> “2 million unique visitors” -> “2M strong WUWT army” -> “3 million readers”
… and please note again that the metric wuwt displayed was page views… if you want to redefine terminology on the fly that’s fine… as long as we’re clear that when you say “visits” you mean page views…
NewYork
“harsh critique from DC”? I don’t think so. You can sell DC as much as you please but it doesn’t cut it. And Zorita is bashing MW down because “Mann is not very vehement in his defence of the hockey stick handle”.
Now, is that a joke or what? Everyone looks at the hockey stick to look at the handle, what else?? The blade can be inferred from the instrumental proxy. The only value of tree-ring paleo-stuff is to tell how past temperatures were, and if the handle can be tilted upwards and Mann doesn’t care that much about it – it is game over.
NewYorkJ (126) August 20th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
It’s interesting that the same crew finds popularity among the non-experts of ideas espoused by Watts to be a good thing and a mark of reliability, but popularity of a theory among scientists is a “religion”. If one is a religion, the other is surely a cult.
NewYorkJ,
You bring out good opportunities for continued dialog. Thanks.
It is indeed interesting that, in lieu of a critical and balanced MSM , that free individuals who want to know about facts relating to AGW theory, independently of the mainstream climate scientists and government bodies who fund them, seek blog venues that best suit their needs. These individuals will judge for themselves and many have already done so. Is this the reason for the shift of support in the general population from GAGW? Partly, yes.
Anyone who is critical of that behavior of free individuals, like you, is not going to find any traction with them. Try a different tactic to convince them. I think Judith Curry has the lead on an appropriate course of action. Go Judith.
WUWT was (an is) a pioneer in openness on climate science discussion against what I think were considerable odds. Keith Kloor is also on the right track here to provide appropriate course of action. Open open open with both views balanced and fair. Heh, maybe we can teach the MSM about something they forgot?
John
Boy, I am having problems to consistently put spaces between paragraphs. Sometimes successful and other times not. Frustrating.
John
SimonH,
[“supposing wuwt really does have many more readers than cp, or rc, or some other “˜alarmist’ blog”¦ why do you think it matters?”]
“I feel a bit like Steve McIntyre all of a sudden. As he said, just because he highlights problems with handling of the data doesn’t mean he thinks the data itself is useful!”
i must apologize and hope you can understand the source of my confusion… given that i had not made any statements comparing wuwt traffic with any other site or sites, and you felt the need to state…
“The results at Alexa are in, every month, and it’d be better to just suck it up.”
and…
“But.. just for grins.. let’s pretend that Watts’ page impressions are actually HTTP file calls instead. In that case, RC and others must be REALLY quiet.”
and…
“nothing you’ve said or learned has reduced the relative significance of WUWT as a climate information portal.”
and…
“Dude, seriously, give it up. WUWT still has vastly greater reach than RC or any other climate-specific blog.”
… it sounded to me like the relative traffic of wuwt was of some importance to you… my mistake
Re McShane and Wyner
informed commentary (Zorita, TCO, and Gavin’s Pussycat) suggest that a significant part of the 1st section is marred and the 2nd is at least interesting… not necessarily correct, but worth discussing… which is a shame (the 1st section)… if Zorita is right about the cause of sloppiness… and blog hearsay ending up in papers is one of Ravetz’ “radical implications of the blogosphere”… that could be a reason for less engagement… here’s more alleged sloppiness in one item pumped for attention
American Statistical Association… “Statisticians Comment on Status of Climate Change Science”… a reasonable and informed view
NewYorkJ
agreed about collaboration being a good thing… note the emphasis on replication in the ASA article as providing the robustness of climate science results… these guys know that climate scientists have (mostly) relatively unsophisticated statistics… but appreciate the value of people spending decades thinking about a problem… working out what the problem is, what is assumed, what questions to ask… with basic tools… compared to people with advanced tools spending two months on the problem answering the wrong questions…
Hello all,
I wish to correct some mis-information that has been posted here about WattsUpWithThat.com. I have been a moderator on that site for the past couple of years.
I am not arguing with anyone. However, like any moderator or regular reader, I become familiar with the repeat commentators’ views by their screen names. Deech56 is a good example. Regarding the March 2010 thread he says:
” My own airbrushing out started in this thread…”
When Anthony Watts makes an (extremely rare) decision to ban someone, he emails the moderators and tells them that a specific individual has been banned, along with the relevant information.
Deech56 has never been banned, nor has he been given a time out, or restricted in any other way from commenting on WUWT.
Next, NewYorkJ says:
“…WUWT has a history of censoring comments, particularly from those who believe global warming is a problem. Much more disturbing, Watts himself has posted personal information (gained from IP addresses) on multiple occasions in an attempt to intimidate.”
That may be NewYorkJ’s view, but I would like to see some verifiable examples that “on multiple occasions” Anthony Watts has tried to “intimidate” someone (how do you intimidate a screen name?); nor has he violated his site’s policy. It is rare that Anthony corrects someone’s misinformation, but correcting an error is not ‘intimidation’ ““ unless that person feels intimidated by having something they thought was a fact refuted in a public forum. In any case, their original comment is left posted, so readers can make up their own minds.
I also dispute the claim that WUWT “has a history of censoring comments, particularly from those who believe global warming is a problem.” I know that statement is not true. And if WUWT started such a wrong-headed policy, it would become just another self-reinforcing echo chamber, and its readership would decline. Here is an example of the results of open discussion vs heavy-handed censorship:
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog
NewYorkJ has made exactly one comment ever on WUWT, on 7/18/2008. It was posted in full with no problem. As I stated in this thread and in the Judith Curry thread, if anyone doubts that WUWT encourages all points of view, simply make a comment there. It will be posted (with the usual exceptions: no heavy profanity or obscene content, no libelous content, no heavy insults or very off-topic posts, etc.).
It is one of the strengths of WUWT that anyone can post their point of view, from: “Climate catastrophe is right around the corner,” to: “Nothing unusual is occurring with the climate,” and everything in-between.
Blogs that censor unwanted comments lose the readers in the middle ““ the undecided public ““ end up being a discussion between only like-minded individuals.
WUWT strives to be all-inclusive. The complaints about “piling on” actually refer to other commentators, who certainly do pile on if someone makes an unsupportable statement. As they should. That is how the wheat gets separated from the chaff; scientific veracity from baseless conjecture. It is the Scientific Method in action, with skeptics doing their job trying to falsify unsupportable conjectures. Whatever is left standing after the skeptical onslaught is gradually accepted as current science. That is how the Scientific Method works. But it won’t work, if wrong ideas are protected from sometimes boisterous refutation.
It would be foolish to destroy such a successful blog model for the mere sake of deleting someone’s comment, simply because they have a different point of view. As you would suspect, when someone is snipped it is for a cause which many times is not mentioned, or is only mentioned obliquely. Comments aren’t snipped because they’re arguing for a particular point of view. And moderators are instructed in the rules for moderators that they are not to not delete comments because the moderator does not agree with them. (except of course, under the same circumstances that would apply in most moderated blogs; foul language, etc.).
Also, I used to follow the couple of sites that recorded rejected blog comments. I took them at face value ““ until I read a very cleaned-up comment that I personally knew had been snipped because of its unacceptable language and name-calling. Now I no longer bother reading such hearsay sites. They can be gamed, and there is no way to verify what is posted. The citing of those blogs as evidence fails coming from either side of the debate.
Finally, the folks who feel it necessary to try and demonize Anthony Watts do not know him at all. For an example one need only use the WUWT archives search tool to see that throughout the last Weblog Award contest for the “Best Science” site, Anthony continually told his readers that they were not to cheat in the voting by using multiple computers, or use any other tricks to stack the voting; if WUWT couldn’t win honestly, it wasn’t worth doing.
At the same time, a site we’re all familiar with had plenty of posts from people encouraging such behavior. The link above shows the results.
And finally, finally: Anthony Watts publishes articles from across the spectrum: Dr Walt Meier, Dr Judith Curry, Willis Eschenbach, Dr Roy Spencer, Prof Richard Lindzen, and many others. Anyone is free to submit an article. If it is well written and factually supported it will be published. For some reason, it’s very difficult to find those of the catastrophic AGW point of view who are willing to write an article. We need those articles, and you are always encouraged to submit one any time.
Sincerely,
D.B. Stealey, moderator
http://wattsupwiththat.com
How do we summit an article…?
I’ve not come across the correct link
Question for Dr. Curry — how does your paper tie into the earlier work going back to Manabe? I’ve been puzzled by the news stories about the “paradox” and “mystery” compared to the references discussed here, mentioned earlier:
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2010/03/wuwt-trumpets-result-supporting-climate.html
The press reports, this for example
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-paradox-science-environment/ sound like the antarctic sea ice change has been a complete mystery.
“Antarctic sea ice has mysteriously expanded, according to study leader Jiping Liu, a research scientist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
“We’ve seen this paradox, but we don’t know why””here we gave an explanation,” Liu said.
…
The data show that Antarctic sea ice growth in the 20th century might be mostly dictated by natural processes, Liu noted.
——
Is this press office focus solely on promoting the current work, or an actual difference of opinion contrasting your work to the prior work?
Hi Barry,
Put your article request in “Tips & Notes.”
Hank Roberts, the increasing Antarctic sea ice is well known to, well, everybody who pays attention. Climate model simulations for the latter half of the 20th century have generally produced a substantial decline in arctic sea ice, with no decrease in Antarctic sea ice. The lack of decrease of Antarctic sea ice has been a talking point for skeptics: so what if the Arctic ice is decreasing since the Antarctic ice is increasing, this looks like natural variability (not AGW). What our paper has done is to provide a physical mechanism to explain how Antarctic sea ice can be increasing in a warming climate, that is consistent with what observations we do have and with simulations by two climate models that do the best job of simulating the antarctic climate.
when you say climate models….
is that natural variation, causing this…
or man made factors in the models..
The ice, is ONLY a talking point for sceptics, because the likes of greenpeace, wwf, Gore etc, have been pointing fingers at the ice, saying we are all doomed, because of man made CO2, look at what is happening, to the ice…
Whereas a look at the graphs, would just see a long term (natural?) trend witha lot of variability. no human signature evident, except to the CAGW believers?
Yes, Dr Curry, Barry has the thing right about the ‘paradox’. I discussed this with my better-half (who knows nothing much about the AGW/climate change thing, except that I waste time on it – and so, is good for blinded discussion). We talked about your previous comment and I think we both agreed that
a) there can be an ‘apparent paradox’ in science – before we know a clear explanation for phenomena (like “how come the Antarctic sea ice is not melting, in fact increasing in this global warming”). On this count, we are now led to believe that this paradox never existed in the first place because the climate science community always ‘knew’ from models that Antarctic ice would increase.
b) there can be no true paradoxes in science. (in other words, there is no paradox, only human ignorance).
I think skeptics only pointed out, in the face of propaganda, that if global warming seems to cause melting in the north, it doesn’t seem to do much in the south. If global warming does indeed melt ice in the north and increases it in the south – it is the climate science community and the communicators(TM) who have failed to highlight this picture in totality in the first place. The origin of the paradox lies there.
Dr. Curry, let me try again. Can you clarify how your paper differs from, adds to, or disagrees with Manabe (1992), Cavalieri et al. (1997), and Markus et al. (2006), as Grumbine describes them? I’m asking at the press-release level, what’s new or different and why was the prior work not giving the same understanding.
I found this interesting hypothesis in the comment section of the National Geographic article that Hank (I think) linked. If you guys haven’t read it yet, check it out.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-paradox-science-environment/
There is an interview with Dr. Curry’s co-author, Dr. Liu. And the obligatory criticism from an elite, Hockey Team member, Trenberth@@.( The guy who still is predicting CAGW will increase hurricane activity and intensity despite scientific evidence to the contrary from the IPCC body of knowledge.)
The Arctic Ice is melting because of – surprise, surprise THE SUEZ CANAL (and probably the PANAMA CANAL). Before these man-made water channels were made, the warm water from Indian Ocean could never reach Atlantic Ocean unless around the southern tip of Africa. The Suez Canal has warmed the Medit…terranean water and may have also changed its density causing disruption in the thermohaline ocean currents ( see Wiki links for more info on thermohaline ocean currents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation). Since the warm water is flowing more to the Northern hemisphere, the Antartic Sea ice is GROWING and MELTING the Arctic region! Simple isn’t it? So much for all the IPCC experts and their theories on CO2 emissions… I bet the Panama Canal is also having similar effect on the ocean currents though to a smaller extent than the Suez as they have a lock system.
I’m interested what JC thinks about this hypothesis, since I believe oceanography is one of her areas of expertise. Do these transcontinental canals possibly influence the Arctic/Antarctic ice?
So its thread-end fun and games.
How about increasing net coprothermal energy in the Arctic from increasing polar bear populations, versus decreasing penguin guano? Or accelerated commercial overflights and military nuclear submarine patrols in the Arctic?
But more seriously there have been substantial, some say alarming (but rather par for the course) changes to the intensity of the magnetosphere and great uncertainty and controversy on the cosmic cloud connection.
the volume of water in the canal is trivial vs the oceans! if my small boy does a wee in a swimming pool, it boils? the water analogy
let alone the small diference in temp of the water and the relative volumer ie even if the canal water was at boiling point! Tiny tiny change to the temp of an oceans volume
So Barry, the environmental impact of the canals is probably about the same as fossil fuel emissions?
Better not give Al Gore or Obama any ideas, like charging a stiff fee for use of the canal. On a sliding scale, of course. Free for India and China, practically cost-prohibitive for North America and Europe.
😉
…..R,D, &C………..
Ok, I just clicked the link to CP and ventured into Romm’s world. Recently there has been a lot of discussion on c-a-s about blog popularity ratings. I remember one interpretation of the data was that readers stayed longer at CP. No wonder! Joe’s posts are LONG!
Just like me, Joe doesn’t do pithy.
But he does do vinegary…
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/accelerated_warming_of_the_sou.php
Anonymity. My name clearly indicates where I’m from. However, why do I not use my own name?
Well, there’s a problem with real names. My real name is not Mary Smith, but a lot of people would think I was hiding another name if it were and I posted under that. For those of us from an English speaking family, the real problem is that there aren’t that many names to choose from.
My real name is *exactly* the same as that of an internationally known writer on science matters. Even if I clearly indicated in every single thing I wrote that I’m not-her, my opinions or statements could easily be attributed to her by casual or careless readers. So a silly or bad-tempered remark from me could damage the professional standing of someone I’ve never met. Not a good look.
Anyway, in an international discussion I think that it’s more informative for others to know where I’m from. The influences on my views about climate are more easily discerned by knowing that I’m not from Europe or North America, but from hot, thirsty Adelaide.
Judith,
Per your interest in crowdsourcing (16), see today’s front page NYT article, titled, “Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review.”
It’s focused on the humanities, but there’s a mention of “frontier knowledge” and it seems the thrust of the story is much related to what you’ve talked about on this blog in recent months.
Keith, thanks for spotting this. Good to see that the humanities are starting to do this. I have participated in such a journal, which is Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion (ACPD). There is online regular peer review (anonymous plus signed discussion comments and author replies, to which the authors should reply to all. Then the editor makes a decision regarded whether it should be published in ACP. But the ACPD paper and discussion remains online in perpetuity (well hopefully). I have one such paper out there right now, the revised version is being discussed. The reviews and discussion on this paper is a classical battle between theorists (us) and empiricists; we say the empiricists are intepreting their measurements incorrectly.
I love this format, but the page charges are pretty steep; you pay when you submit, not once it is accepted into ACP. Personally I think all journals should be like this, and in this digital age, i don’t see why not.
Note, I had this discussion with Olive Heffernan of Nature who is starting a new climate journal. She wanted things to be as transparent as possible, but Nature’s press embargo precluded such openness prior to actual publication (and release of the press embargo).
Keith and other journalists perusing this site, would be interested in your take on the press embargo strategy used by scientific journals.
Why are we all talking about Outcasts, anyway, the behaviour of some created the tribe..
I had heard about the manipulation of wiki, in the past, on all things climate, by one William Conolley (stoat)
This link to what has been going on, is quite amazing..
whole article/adjudication, at Wiki, half way down, 7, onwards particularly
Judith, Kieth, et al might be interested in reading this, for a bit of background
(ref a member of the original RealClimate team)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Evidence
one or 2 might be banned for a while..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision
This sort of behaviour, created the tribalism. ONLY one view was allowed, as far as some were concerened..
The wiki battle, just a small blogospehre battle against, a 100% AGW consensus.
Bishop Hill, is watching with amusement, the discussion about the HSI article, being longer than his HSI article. He is advicing, his readers to stay well out of it, leave it to the wiki regulars.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/24/wiki-wars.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/22/enjoying-wiki.html
The press embargo system was a way to allow journalists to do their backgrounding, interviewing and writing/producing ahead of time so reasonably well reported stories could come out on the day that a paper was published. That certainly has been beneficial for journalists and their sources. But in the wake of the digital revolution, I’m not so sure it is still beneficial for the public “” if it ever was.
The embargo has allowed our sources to control what we do to their advantage. Letting sources control our work is supposed to be anathema to journalism, yet in science journalism we routinely agree to it. Moreover, it certainly does not encourage the kind of reporting that most of us really would like to do: fewer EUREKA! stories and more reporting that emphasizes the people doing the work and their process, as well as context, significance and, perhaps most important, integration of multiple streams of information to tell bigger, more meaningful stories.
The embargo system, emphasizing what I would argue is fake news, impedes this kind of journalism.
Of course, journals like Science and Nature want to control the release of information to generate the maximum possible impact on a single day. A wave of stories coming out at the same time has more of an impact that a scattering of stories coming out over a more extended period, which is what would probably happen if reporters simply had to scramble to report a story after a paper is actually published. As journalists, we’re supposed to report news in a timely fashion. So why do we agree to this system?
Partly I think it’s simply the safe way out. With the embargo system we can be assured of never getting beat on an important piece of news. That’s because everyone gets the same information in advance and reports it at exactly the same moment. That’s the opposite of enterprising reporting.
In the digital age, we now have incredible opportunities to report on things in a very different way. Scientists are already discussing in digital forums their ongoing work long before the final product, a paper, is finally produced. Some scientists, such as James Hansen and others at GISS, are even posting drafts of their papers online, and then discussing the feedback they get, making the entire process transparent. On balance, that’s got to be a good thing. And with the advent of the new kind of crowd-sourcing peer review discussed in the N.Y. Times article, the process could be opened up even more.
What a marvelous opportunity this presents to journalists who want to write about these issues in a deeper, more compelling way! But the old system of peer review stands in the way “” as the experience of Olive Heffernan proves.