SPPI Blog:  Source:  Master Resource

[Editor’s note: The following material was supplied to us by Dr. Richard Lindzen as an example of how research that counters climate-change alarm receives special treatment in the scientific publication process as compared with results that reinforce the consensus view. In this case, Lindzen’s submission to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was subjected to unusual procedures and eventually rejected (in a rare move), only to be accepted for publication in the Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.

I, too, have firsthand knowledge about receiving special treatment. Ross McKitrick has documented similar experiences, as have John Christy and David Douglass and Roy Spencer, and I am sure others. The unfortunate side-effect of this differential treatment is that a self-generating consensus slows the forward progress of scientific knowledge- a situation well-described by Thomas Kuhn is his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. - Chip Knappenberger]

“If one reads [our new] paper, one sees that it is hardly likely to represent the last word on the matter. One is working with data that is far from what one might wish for. Moreover, the complexity of the situation tends to defeat simple analyses. Nonetheless, certain things are clear: models are at great variance with observations, the simple regressions between outgoing radiation and surface temperature will severely misrepresent climate sensitivity, and the observations suggest negative rather than positive feedbacks.” - Richard S. Lindzen

...

To: rlindzen@mit.edu
Subject: PNAS: 2010-15738 (On the observational determination of cl…)
Cc: ekavanagh@nas.edu
From: mpiotrowski@nas.edu
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:05:24 -0500
Message-Id: <44129546032491@ejpweb15>

Dear Dr. Lindzen,

I am contacting you regarding your contributed paper. Attached is a letter from Randy Schekman.

Sincerely,
May Piotrowski
Editorial Manager
PNAS

Attach3.pdf

The attachment was a polite rejection of our paper. Included were the complete reviews. Although some of the points in the reviews were, in fact, addressed in our paper, we thought it advisable to respond to the reviews in detail, and to revise our paper in order to clarify matters. It was, however, clear, that the revised paper would no longer satisfy the space constraints of PNAS - especially since the reviewers made clear that important material should not be relegated to ‘supplementary material’.

Although Schekman’s rejection could be interpreted as mildly encouraging, our experience has been that any attempt to resubmit a revised paper simply leads to further delay culminating in re-rejection. Our final letter to Schekman (Letter_to_Schekman.pdf) is attached. As already noted, we chose to respond in detail to each review, and these responses are attached (Response.pdf). The revised paper (as well as the original version submitted to the PNAS: Lindzen-Choi-PNASSubmission.pdf) is also attached (Lindzen-Choi-APJAS.pdf). The final version is accepted (following review) by the Asian Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.

If one reads the paper, one sees that it is hardly likely to represent the last word on the matter. One is working with data that is far from what one might wish for. Moreover, the complexity of the situation tends to defeat simple analyses. Nonetheless, certain things are clear: models are at great variance with observations, the simple regressions between outgoing radiation and surface temperature will severely misrepresent climate sensitivity, and the observations suggest negative rather than positive feedbacks.