Roger Pielke, Jr., describes how a peer-reviewed paper about climate change is being retracted by a scientific journal —for no legitimate reason.
“A Critical Assessment of Extreme Events Trends in Times of Global Warming” was written by Galluca Almonti and colleagues and published in January 2022 in the journal European Physical Journal Plus (EPJP). “The paper reviews trends in various extreme events and disasters, drawing heavily on IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports,” says Pielke.
The retraction process started because several scientists were quoted by the media (the leftwing Guardian, and one or two others) as saying it was faulty. However, writes Pielke:
“The eight ‘colleagues who expressed concern’ via the media . . . all apparently chose not to provide a scientific comment on Alimonti et al. and no further discussion of the comment was made in subsequent correspondence that I have seen.
“However, the investigation proceeded.”
The co-editor-in-chief of the journal decided that there was a “clear weakness” in the article. That weakness, says Pielke, was that the paper did not include references to the 2023 Sixth Assessment Report by the IPCC—yet the report had not yet been issued when the article was published!
Alimonti et al. were willing to write an addendum that included discussion of the latest IPCC assessment. They did, and the journal submitted it to four peer reviewers.
Just one out of four reviewers voted against publishing the addendum. However, an “adjudicator,” appointed by the journal to make the final decision for publication, was given just two reviews and sided with the one negative reviewer. No clear reason seems to have been given for this choice.
So, unless there is a last-minute change, the journal has decided to retract it.
Pielke concludes his column:
“What to take from this saga? Shenanigans continue in climate science, with influential scientists teaming up with journalists to corrupt peer review.”
Image above by CongerDesign on Pixabay.
Climategate was a mentality, not a bump on the road.