What’s so special about climate science?

From Climate Scepticism

By MARK HODGSON

In September last year, John Ridgway published here at Cliscep a piece titled Burn the Witch!, about an article written by climate scientist Patrick T Brown in which he (Dr Brown) suggested “that journals such as Nature and Science were biased towards articles that are focussed upon a particular narrative.” In particular, as John reported, Dr Brown said:

I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell. This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society. To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.

Inevitably, perhaps, those comments met with quite a backlash in climate-concerned circles. Whether the original claim, or the backlash against it, is more justified probably lies in the eye of the beholder, but at the time the wagons were vigorously circled in defence of the integrity of climate science. The claims made by Dr Brown were denied in a most determined way.

A few months later, and the Observer published an article with the heading “‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point – Last year, 10,000 sham papers had to be retracted by academic journals, but experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg”.

In fairness, the claims about “fake scientific papers” were of a different order to the candid confession made by Dr Brown last September. As described by the Observer, the situation is truly dreadful. Tens of thousands of bogus papers are being published every year, and their number is increasing.

Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

In 2023, so we are told, for the first time research journals retracted more than ten thousand papers in a year. “Most” analysts believe this is just the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud. Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University is quoted as saying:

The situation has become appalling. The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science. In many fields it is becoming difficult to build up a cumulative approach to a subject, because we lack a solid foundation of trustworthy findings. And it’s getting worse and worse.

The problem started in China, apparently, because promotion for young doctors and scientists working there depends on them having published papers. And so “paper mills” cashed in by supplying fake scientific papers for publication. And now the problem is spreading like a plague – to India, Iran, Russia, former Soviet Union states and to eastern Europe. Journal editors are being bribed, and the paper mills themselves have established their own agents as guest editors, thus facilitating the publication of yet more false work.

The next quote is from Professor Alison Avenell of Aberdeen University, who says:

Editors are not fulfilling their roles properly, and peer reviewers are not doing their jobs. And some are being paid large sums of money. It is deeply worrying.

The article concludes with another quote from Professor Bishop in Oxford:

People are building careers on the back of this tidal wave of fraudulent science and could end up running scientific institutes and eventually be used by mainstream journals as reviewers and editors. Corruption is creeping into the system.

I am grateful to the Observer for bringing this to our attention. I do have a question, however. Is this problem one that relates only to the particular area discussed in its article, namely medicine and drug development? Professor Bishop referred to “many fields” and said that “it’s getting worse and worse”. Also, we are told that it is likely to be only the tip of an iceberg. Could it affect climate science? And if not, why not? Why is climate science so special?