ChicagoBoyz – Scientific Peer-Review is a Lightweight Process:
By the way that proponents of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) wave it about as a talisman to ward off criticism, a lay person could be excused for thinking that peer review is a rigorous process that is central to the functioning of science and that verifies the conclusions of a scientist’s research.
Peer review is nothing like that.
Peer review isn’t even central to science. Science functioned fine for centuries without peer review and scientists who work in secret or proprietary environments do not use it. Instead, peer review serves economic and social functions related to scientific publishing and does nothing else. Peer review somewhat protects the integrity of scientific media, not the quality of science itself.
Read the whole thing.
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I’m not a firm believer in global warming, but Shannon’s article is absolutely ridiculous. Peer review is a very important step when in comes to publishing articles, and has the same strengths and weaknesses that come with any human interaction. Peer review is not some secret way to subvert the scientific process as the author seems to think. Mitchell Selfdrive gives a more in depth review in the comments section.
“Peer review is not some secret way to subvert the scientific process as the author seems to think.”
I didn’t read it that way. He’s saying in the excerpt above that peer review isn’t a high standard, but rather a minimal standard.
I’ve both published and reviewed technical articles. At the end of the day the reviewer looks to see that the grammer is acceptable, the arithmetic is correct, the equations are correct, any math derivations used are correct and that the conclusions fit what is said. What the reviewer does not do, nor can do is review the data used in the article, beyond making sure the conclusions fit the data. At the end of the day the reviewer has to accept the data as presented. It was(is) the data presented in the various gobal warming articles that is now in question, see the Mann hockey stick, and now the questions about the various weather stations used or not used to develop the AGW claim.