Misleading studies sowing doubt about climate change are getting into peer-reviewed journals, scientists warn, citing latest papers linked to a lawsuit in Germany whose authors denied conflicts of curiosity.
Observers have lengthy questioned the rising variety of analysis journals that take charges from keen lecturers however usually publish their work with out rigorous evaluation.
Biased authors, they are saying, are making the most of an overloaded evaluation system, undermining the scientific proof that gives the bedrock for climate motion.
“The recent explosion of so-called ‘predatory journals’ is creating problems that are pro-actively explored by climate sceptics,” stated Carl Schleussner, a scientist at analysis group Climate Analytics.
“It opens the door to those who want to willingly get dubious research out there.”
Peruvian glacier research
One research denied that human-driven warming was accountable for the melting of a Peruvian glacier and the resultant flood danger.
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Two of its authors are former executives of RWE, a German vitality firm focused by a lawsuit over the glacier, and each are outstanding climate contrarians.
Their research appeared in November 2022 within the Journal of South American Earth Sciences, which is owned by the most important Dutch writer Elsevier.
Like many others, the journal prices authors for submissions, that are then presupposed to be vetted by certified specialists earlier than being printed.
The paper attacked the findings of an earlier research by scientists at Oxford University {that a} plaintiff within the Peruvian case — a neighborhood farmer who says RWE’s carbon emissions contributed to warming — is citing as proof.
Nathan Stansell, a palaeoclimatologist at Northern Illinois University, is among the scientists whose work was cited within the German-led paper.
The paper was “fraught with misinformation, mischaracterizations and bias,” he instructed AFP.
It offered a “debunked argument that since it was warm in medieval times, then there was nothing alarming about recent warming.
“The bulk of the paleoclimate neighborhood recognises that the teams attempting to unfold this fallacy can not compete with sound scientific information.”
Two other scientists cited in the study, Ben Marzeion of the University of Bremen and Jorge Strelin of Cordoba University in Argentina, also told AFP their work was misused.
Strelin said a graphic in the study, drawing on one used in his own work, omitted data showing the sharp retreat of one glacier over recent decades.
The two ex-RWE men, lead author and geologist Sebastian Luening and chemist-turned-politician Fritz Vahrenholt, did not respond to AFP’s requests to comment.
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The creator of the Oxford research, Rupert Stuart-Smith, submitted to the journal a formal scientific rebuttal of Luening’s paper, contesting its use of certain data and detailing what he called “inaccurate or deceptive assertions.”
Elsevier communications executive Andrew Davis told AFP the journal’s editors “didn’t detect unethical behaviours and it’s their perception that the 2 analysis teams merely didn’t agree with one another.”
But the publisher acknowledged the failure to include a disclosure of the authors’ links to RWE in the study.
The disclosure did appear in a preliminary “pre-proof” of the paper but disappeared from the version published in November 2022.
“The writer want to apologize for any inconvenience precipitated,” Elsevier said in an email to AFP.
It said the disclosure would be added back into the study after approval from the authors.
Firm denies funding study
Another paper on the Peru glacier appeared in the journal Remote Sensing, from publisher MDPI, in 2021.
The study reviewed three years of data on ice-flow velocity and assessed the risk of avalanches and floods, concluding that there was no evidence that a flood was imminent.
Stansell said this conclusion should have been dealt with in a separate study as it “appears misplaced and would not relate instantly with their principal findings”.
A 2022 article by investigative media group SourceMaterial said the study was produced with funding from RWE. It cited the authors as denying this. The authors did not respond to AFP.
RWE spokesman Guido Steffen told AFP the study “was made independently from RWE and the courtroom case and it was not funded or paid for by RWE.”
Regarding the Luening study, he said: “We did neither fee that research nor play any function in producing it.”
Extreme weather study slammedÂ
In September 2022, top climate scientists called for the withdrawal of a paper that claimed scientific evidence of a climate crisis was lacking.
The peer-reviewed paper by four Italian scientists appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus, from the prestigious science publisher Springer Nature.
Four scientists told AFP the study manipulated data and cherry-picked facts about extreme weather events.
In response, Springer Nature put a warning notice on the article and said it was investigating.
In late March 2023 Christian Caron, executive publisher of Springer Nature, told AFP the investigation was “progressing however nonetheless ongoing.
“Additional material received as part of the investigation is currently following the usual procedures of an extensive peer-reviewing process, which may take more time than anticipated.”
Payment for publication is a time-honoured a part of the enterprise mannequin amongst peer-reviewed journals.
Their repute depends on being the gold customary in scientific publishing, by way of exterior reviewers who’re presupposed to weed out false papers and reject sketchy or biased use of knowledge.
But the low-cost benefits of publishing on the web have led to an explosion of peer-reviewed journals and, say some, requirements have fallen.
Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a weblog that tracks hundreds of withdrawals of educational papers every year, instructed AFP some authors sought to get unsound work printed in journals with a lax peer-review system that used unqualified reviewers.
“A lot of junk gets through peer review,” he stated. “It is really time that everybody admitted that, so that we can try and do better.”
