Another Climate Scientist Admits He Skewed the Data Just to Get Published

Weatherman2020

Diamond Member
Mar 3, 2013
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Right coast, classified
In other words, “I lied by omission, in a classic case of noble cause corruption.”

Follow the science.
Into the abyss.

I’m actually shocked that he had the integrity to come right out and admit this. Good for him. He’s not saying anything that the more well-informed of us didn’t already know, but the fact that this will generate discussion over the amount of overt corruption (which they hardly even bother trying to hide anymore) in the peer review process is a definite bonus.



A new study by a team of mostly San Francisco Bay Area scientists that found human-caused climate warming has increased the frequency of extremely fast-spreading California wildfires has come into question from the unlikeliest of critics—its own lead author.

Patrick T. Brown, climate team co-director at the nonprofit Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley and a visiting research professor at San Jose State University, said his Aug. 30 paper in the prestigious British journal Nature is scientifically sound and “advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior.”

But Brown this week dropped a bomb on the journal—as well as his study’s co-authors who are staunchly defending the team’s work. In an online article, blog post and social media posts, Brown said he “left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published,” causing almost as much of a stir as the alarming findings themselves.

Brown wrote that the study didn’t look at poor forest management and other factors that are just as, if not more, important to fire behavior because “I knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.” He added such bias in climate science “misinforms the public” and “makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”

 
OIP.xAIZ3i70sEjJ4h9QBd5X7gAAAA
 
Where is Troll Crack Crock Cuckoo ?
What's the story, Crick Crock Cruck ?
WEF Hit Man Kerry will be incandescent and Schwab will want him roasted alive on his garden barbeque.
What a Cad and a Bounder .
But a good chap .
 
WE the AMERICAN PEOPLE are being lied to across the board on virtually all subjects SCIENCE..

Murderous FRAUD vax
deliberate intentional mass murder on Maui
Co2 FRAUD
911

indeed, even really obvious election fraud involves science, and we are lied to about that too....
 
In other words, “I lied by omission, in a classic case of noble cause corruption.”

Follow the science.
Into the abyss.

I’m actually shocked that he had the integrity to come right out and admit this. Good for him. He’s not saying anything that the more well-informed of us didn’t already know, but the fact that this will generate discussion over the amount of overt corruption (which they hardly even bother trying to hide anymore) in the peer review process is a definite bonus.



A new study by a team of mostly San Francisco Bay Area scientists that found human-caused climate warming has increased the frequency of extremely fast-spreading California wildfires has come into question from the unlikeliest of critics—its own lead author.

Patrick T. Brown, climate team co-director at the nonprofit Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley and a visiting research professor at San Jose State University, said his Aug. 30 paper in the prestigious British journal Nature is scientifically sound and “advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior.”

But Brown this week dropped a bomb on the journal—as well as his study’s co-authors who are staunchly defending the team’s work. In an online article, blog post and social media posts, Brown said he “left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published,” causing almost as much of a stir as the alarming findings themselves.

Brown wrote that the study didn’t look at poor forest management and other factors that are just as, if not more, important to fire behavior because “I knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.” He added such bias in climate science “misinforms the public” and “makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”


However, other scientists were quick to point out that the study’s reviewers had indeed recommended that these other factors were considered.
In addition, Brown and his co-authors themselves had argued in their response to the peer reviewers that including the other factors was “very difficult” and that was “precisely why” they had chosen to focus on “the much cleaner but more narrow question of what the influence of warming alone”.
In a statement, Nature’s editor-in-chief Dr Magdalena Skipper accused Brown of “poor research practices” that were “not in line with the standards we set for our journal”.
One study co-author told Carbon Brief that Brown’s comments “took me by surprise” and that “I don’t think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased”.
Meanwhile, other climate scientists described Brown’s actions as “monumentally unethical” and “very, very weird behaviour indeed”.

AND

What did the study’s peer-review comments show?

All research papers in credible academic journals go through some form of “peer review”. This process sees two or three scientists not involved in the study – but with appropriate expertise – offering their assessment of the work, often anonymously. They will recommend whether the paper should or should not be published, as well as offering suggestions for improvement.
Nature published the peer-review comments for Dr Brown’s paper alongside the study – a practice it has been offering since 2020.
There are three reviewers for the paper and author “rebuttals” to their comments are also included in the document.
Their comments, taken together, severely undermine Brown’s claims that he was encouraged to support what he described as the journal’s “pre-approved narratives”.
Two of the three reviewers said they could not recommend the paper for publication in its initial form, with the third reviewer providing comments, but no specific recommendation.
The two reviewers that recommended rejection both highlighted the limited scope of the study. Reviewer 1 noted that “a concern is the use of wildfire growth as the key variable”, adding:
“As the authors acknowledge there are numerous factors that play a confounding role in wildfire growth that are not directly accounted for in this study…Vegetation type (fuel), ignitions (lightning and people), fire management activities (direct and indirect suppression, prescribed fire, policies such as fire bans and forest closures) and fire load.”
Reviewer 3 was concerned that “the climate change scenario only includes temperature as input for the modified climate”, adding that “changes in atmospheric humidity would also be highly relevant”.
In a lengthy response, the authors wrote that “we agree that climatic variables other than temperature are important for projecting changes in wildfire risk”, adding:
“In addition to absolute atmospheric humidity, other important variables include changes in precipitation, wind patterns, vegetation, snowpack, ignitions, antecedent fire activity, etc. Not to mention factors like changes in human population distribution, fuel breaks, land use, ignition patterns, firefighting tactics, forest management strategies and long-term buildup of fuels.”
However, “accounting for changes in all of these variables and their potential interactions simultaneously is very difficult”, they said:
“This is precisely why we chose to use a methodology that addresses the much cleaner but more narrow question of what the influence of warming alone is on the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth.”
They added:
“We believe that studying the influence of warming in isolation is valuable because temperature is the variable in the wildfire behaviour triangle…that is by far the most directly related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and, thus, the most well-constrained in future projections. There is no consensus on even the expected direction of the change of many of the other relevant variables.”
When these points were raised to Brown on Twitter, he responded that “the point here is that focusing exclusively on the climate change variable (temperature and, yes, acknowledging other variables but holding them constant) is what makes the study more likely to be publishable in a high-impact journal”.
He added:
“It would be MUCH more difficult to take any one of the other moving parts, study it in isolation, and get that into a high-impact journal.”
(Brown has also posted further comments in a piece on the Breakthrough Institute’s website where he argues that “nowhere in the peer-review process did reviewers challenge the usefulness of focusing solely on the impact of climate change when projecting long-term changes in wildfire behaviour”.)
However, in an interview conducted with study co-author and meteorologist Holt Hanley the day after the paper was published, Brown – adopting a very different tone – noted he considers the study as “step one” of ongoing research:
“We did isolate the impact of temperature on – in this case – the risk of extreme [wildfire] growth…And, in that sense, we’re not looking at the relative influence of temperature change versus other important contributions like changes in ignition patterns and changes in fuel characteristics in particular. But, in our current phase of the research, we are bringing those in.”
 
What? You mean denier leaders lied about what the guy said, and all the deniers here gleefully repeated the lie?

No, I don't think anyone is surprised.

Of course the deniers here don't regret pushing the BigLie. Have they ever? They're deniers. TheParty told them to push the lie, therefore they consider the lie to be a GoodAndHolyThing.
 

However, other scientists were quick to point out that the study’s reviewers had indeed recommended that these other factors were considered.
In addition, Brown and his co-authors themselves had argued in their response to the peer reviewers that including the other factors was “very difficult” and that was “precisely why” they had chosen to focus on “the much cleaner but more narrow question of what the influence of warming alone”.
In a statement, Nature’s editor-in-chief Dr Magdalena Skipper accused Brown of “poor research practices” that were “not in line with the standards we set for our journal”.
One study co-author told Carbon Brief that Brown’s comments “took me by surprise” and that “I don’t think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased”.
Meanwhile, other climate scientists described Brown’s actions as “monumentally unethical” and “very, very weird behaviour indeed”.

AND

What did the study’s peer-review comments show?

All research papers in credible academic journals go through some form of “peer review”. This process sees two or three scientists not involved in the study – but with appropriate expertise – offering their assessment of the work, often anonymously. They will recommend whether the paper should or should not be published, as well as offering suggestions for improvement.
Nature published the peer-review comments for Dr Brown’s paper alongside the study – a practice it has been offering since 2020.
There are three reviewers for the paper and author “rebuttals” to their comments are also included in the document.
Their comments, taken together, severely undermine Brown’s claims that he was encouraged to support what he described as the journal’s “pre-approved narratives”.
Two of the three reviewers said they could not recommend the paper for publication in its initial form, with the third reviewer providing comments, but no specific recommendation.
The two reviewers that recommended rejection both highlighted the limited scope of the study. Reviewer 1 noted that “a concern is the use of wildfire growth as the key variable”, adding:

Reviewer 3 was concerned that “the climate change scenario only includes temperature as input for the modified climate”, adding that “changes in atmospheric humidity would also be highly relevant”.
In a lengthy response, the authors wrote that “we agree that climatic variables other than temperature are important for projecting changes in wildfire risk”, adding:

However, “accounting for changes in all of these variables and their potential interactions simultaneously is very difficult”, they said:

They added:

When these points were raised to Brown on Twitter, he responded that “the point here is that focusing exclusively on the climate change variable (temperature and, yes, acknowledging other variables but holding them constant) is what makes the study more likely to be publishable in a high-impact journal”.
He added:

(Brown has also posted further comments in a piece on the Breakthrough Institute’s website where he argues that “nowhere in the peer-review process did reviewers challenge the usefulness of focusing solely on the impact of climate change when projecting long-term changes in wildfire behaviour”.)
However, in an interview conducted with study co-author and meteorologist Holt Hanley the day after the paper was published, Brown – adopting a very different tone – noted he considers the study as “step one” of ongoing research:
Factcheck by climate hoaxers, hilarious!
 
Dufus, I told you.
Why do you hate science?
I read your article and have responded in the other thread you created. I do not hate science. I'm a big fan of the stuff. You're the one that seems intent on showing science wrong. Why do YOU hate science?
 

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