patrick.net

There's a great post about a recent retraction in nature from Judith Curry's site. It's an open dialogue site where real scientists analyze the unscientific methods and conclusions drawn in the field of climatology. It confirms what I've been saying. The data typically presented and the conclusions drawn are not validated by the statistical analysis typically required to draw such conclusions. In short, the data is too noisy to detect the trends they claim to see ahead. That hasn't stopped the entire field from publishing papers with a shoddy peer review process. I've published articles in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Physics, and Biochemistry. Even as a lowly grad student, we adhered to strict statistical methods to justify our fitting of data. Once it was pointed out, their article was forced to be retracted. As they state in the link: Climate science needs professional statisticians

https://judithcurry.com/2019/09/25/resplandy-et-al-part-5-final-outcome/#more-25271


"Nearly ten months have passed since then, without Nature publishing the authors’ correction.

However, Ruth Dixon has just spotted that the Resplandy et al. paper has today been retracted, at Nature’s request. This article at Retraction Watch covers the story. The Retraction Notice by the authors at Nature reads:


Shortly after publication, arising from comments from Nicholas Lewis, we realized that our reported uncertainties were underestimated owing to our treatment of certain systematic errors as random errors. In addition, we became aware of several smaller issues in our analysis of uncertainty. Although correcting these issues did not substantially change the central estimate of ocean warming, it led to a roughly fourfold increase in uncertainties, significantly weakening implications for an upward revision of ocean warming and climate sensitivity. Because of these weaker implications, the Nature editors asked for a Retraction, which we accept. Despite the revised uncertainties, our method remains valid and provides an estimate of ocean warming that is independent of the ocean data underpinning other approaches. The revised paper, with corrected uncertainties, will be submitted to another journal. The Retraction will contain a link to the new publication, if and when it is published.



I believe that this saga, as well as showing how ineffective journal peer review tends to be in spotting problematic issues in papers, illustrates the need for a much closer involvement of statisticians in climate science research. That was a point also made in one of the articles highlighted in Judith’s latest Week in Review post: Climate science needs professional statisticians"