Climate Paper Leads to Resignation

The editor of Remote Sensing Journal Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned over a paper which cast doubt over man made climate change. The paper has been heavily criticized by scientists, who claim it should never have been published. Sceptic bloggers have been using the article as evidence that climate change is false.

The paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claims climate models inflate projections of temperatures. The journal is not normally used to publish climate science and is mainly for assessing methods for monitoring aspects of the Earth from space. Publishing in off-topic journals is considered poor form in the scientific community as the editors could lack the knowledge required to assess their merit.

“Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science,” says Wagner’s resignation notice published in Remote Sensing. “Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims.

“Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell... is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.”

In fact similar papers by other scientists have already been heavily criticized, something that the authors failed to mention: “the problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted..., a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.”

“In other words, the problem I see with the paper... is not that it declared a minority view, but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”

Unfortunately, the peer review process is not bulletproof and occasionally a rogue paper will get through the process, especially where the research is not the core topic of the journal. It is therefore important to closely assess whether an article is suitable for the journal in question or whether it would be better suited elsewhere.