The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is producing a report on the effects of CO2 and global climate change. Of course, the study suggests that limits on CO2 production are necessary. There has been a lot of writing and talk about how “the overwhelming number” of scientists support the concept of anthropogenic global warming and endorse the extreme measures necessary to reduce its effect. Somewhere in all this, the credentials of the scientists became a major factor. After all, if “the science is settled,” it matters who settled it.
That resulted in a bit of a flap today. The lead author of the NOAA study was described as “Dr Tom Karl”, although that bio does not include a PhD. I don’t know if the bio has been “corrected” since yesterday but there has been an impression left with many in the climate world that he had a PhD. Like here.
Day 1 / Afternoon (Wednesday, June 11, 2003: NIST Auditorium)
Session 2: Customers Speak to the Government:
Economic Benefits / Customer Satisfaction
Moderator: Dr. Tom Karl
Anyway, the report was printed with his phantom PHD until it was noticed by NRO, after which the first draft disappeared. A new version is now up with ALL degrees omitted for ALL authors.
They can’t fix this, though.
In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. This committee does not believe that web logs are an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue.
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.
Hmmmm.