It is a long-established principle of scientific enquiry that if you want to understand the structure of something then just give it a bang and see how it rattles. It is a technique that crops up in a number of different guises from seismography and spectrography to magnetic resonance imaging; just excite something and stand back and enjoy the physics. But the technique doesn’t have to be restricted to physical enquiry. Rattle any cage and the noises given off will tell you an awful lot about what you are dealing with. Take, for example, the recent cage-rattling of climate scientist Patrick T. Brown, formerly of John Hopkins University. Everything was just calypso and candy until he came along and caused a breach of the peace by suggesting in an article in The Free Press that journals such as Nature and Science were biased towards articles that are focussed upon a particular narrative. The accusations he was making suggested a problem with the structure, but it was actually the howling response that betrayed the structure of the problem.
The essence of Brown’s allegation is actually quite simple: Climate scientists are self-censoring particular details of their research because they anticipate that otherwise they may find difficulty in getting their studies published in the prestigious journals. In his particular case, Brown had deliberately omitted the key fact that 80% of wildfires were started by humans; an omission that facilitates the preferred narrative that wildfires are yet another indication that climate change risk is not just a concern for the future, but also one which is having a serious impact today. In his own words:
I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell. This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society. To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.
Readers of Cliscep will recognise this as a key concern of the sceptic. A great deal of trust is placed in scientific consensus, to the extent that its very existence substitutes for evidence. However, the way that communities work, scientific or otherwise, means that consensus can be a poor proxy for wisdom. In practice, scientists do not blindly follow where the evidence takes them. They undertake their journey of discovery within the constraints that society creates for them, whether that takes the form of peer pressure, financial inducement and support or outright censorship. And in many instances, the scientists are enthusiastic game players, since they will often sense the social value and importance of some narratives in preference to others. But the resulting focus can often be to the detriment of a fuller understanding. This particularly matters when deciding upon the best way of tackling a problem. For example, as Brown points out, a preoccupation with the climate change narrative and the push to reduce CO2 output in order to reduce fire risk may cause people to overlook the fact that the recent trend in wildfires could be entirely reversed by re-introducing sound forest management and addressing the social problems behind an epidemic of arsonists.
In any other field, Brown’s observations would be met with mild bemusement. There would be an admission that science operates within constraints, but there may be a counter-argument offered to the effect that any suggestion this leads to a damaging distortion is to exaggerate the extent of the problem. The editor of the journal concerned would probably respond with something along the lines of, ‘We are disappointed that we may be giving certain scientists the impression that we gatekeep narratives, and we are only too happy to reassure such individuals that all avenues of relevant study shall be considered for publication without prejudice. Indeed, promoting a broader knowledge for society lies at the very heart of our ethos’.
Whether true or not, the very tone of the response would reflect how relaxed the scientific community was in seeing their very human and unremarkable frailty highlighted. But no, this is not any other field, this is climate science we are dealing with here. And so this is what was actually said by Dr Magdalena Skipper, editor of Nature:
The only thing in Patrick Brown’s statements about the editorial processes in scholarly journals that we agree on is that science should not work through the efforts by which he published this [study]. We are now carefully considering the implications of his stated actions; certainly, they reflect poor research practices and are not in line with the standards we set for our journal.
Skipper added that Nature has an ‘expectation’ that researchers use the most appropriate data, methods and results:
When researchers do not do so, it goes against the interests of both fellow researchers and the research field as a whole. To deliberately not do so is, at best, highly irresponsible. Researchers have a responsibility for their research which they must take seriously.
Or to put it succinctly, she has come out all guns blazing with an accusation of scientific malpractice and a not-so-veiled threat that Nature will not be accepting any further work with Brown’s name on it. It is a gross over-reaction that speaks volumes. A rattled cage wouldn’t be making so much noise if its structure had the required integrity.
To start with, Brown had only talked about self-censoring regarding the scope of work. That is every scientist’s prerogative. Nowhere did he claim not to have used the most appropriate data, methods and results – that’s Skipper’s deliberate misrepresentation of the issues. He didn’t do anything that invalidated his results, as far as they went.
Secondly, she talks of work that did not meet the standards ‘we set for our journal’. This is very odd, because the study concerned had already been happily accepted by the journal despite the fact that the authors politely declined a peer reviewer’s suggestion that they widen its scope (see addendum below). It seems maintaining the original scope was acceptable, and only became ‘poor research practice’ and ‘highly irresponsible’ after Brown had said his piece to the press. The implication is that his declared motives for wishing to restrict the scope were indicative of ‘poor research practice’. This is nonsense.
Thirdly, Skipper seems to have completely overlooked the fact that Brown spoke of not trying to ‘quantify key aspects other than climate change’. This is actually a key strategy that every climate scientist religiously abides by. If it is ‘poor research practice’ and ‘highly irresponsible’, then the whole climate science community is guilty as charged. To understand why this is the case, one has to reflect upon the nature of causal analysis and the policy position that climate scientists have taken. The matter is discussed in a paper partly co-written by Judea Pearl, the father of modern-day causal inference, and Friederike Otto, the public face of modern-day extreme weather attribution studies. In that paper a contrast is made between the probability of necessity (PN) and the probability of sufficiency (PS). PN is equated to the concept of culpability (the higher the PN, the higher the supposed levels of guilt). PN also happens to be the facet of causality that extreme weather event attributions are designed to calculate. Such studies are therefore focussed upon the extent to which blame can be attributed to AGW. What they can’t address is how such levels of culpability compare to other factors that lie outside the scope of the climate models. Consequently, even when such factors are mentioned, you rarely see them quantified and encapsulated in a full causal statement covering both PN and PS. This is precisely what Brown has accused the climate science community of doing. And, as it happens, that is precisely what that community sets out to do. The only issue seems to be the extent to which this is achieved through principled self-censorship rather than through a self-censorship that is running scared of editorial favouritism. There may be a bit of both, but in Brown’s experience, there is plenty of the latter:
When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula I outlined here, my papers were promptly rejected out of hand by the editors of high-profile journals without even going to peer review.
Every time Otto publishes an attribution study that talks of the impossibility of something happening without climate change, she is referring only to a probability of necessity and in so doing chooses a deliberately narrow scope that fails to cover the probabilities of sufficiency and fails to ‘quantify key aspects other than climate change’. But is Skipper stepping forward to accuse her of ‘poor research practice’ or being ‘highly irresponsible’? Is Otto’s research failing to meet the standards of Skipper’s journal? Of course not. So what is the difference between Otto and Brown? As far as I can see, the difference is simply that Otto is keeping her mouth shut, because she knows that if she were ever to make this common practice of self-censorship public (and particularly if she were to point out its ramifications, as did Brown) then the self-protective mechanisms of the culture that such disclosures threaten would kick into place and suddenly the once golden girl of extreme weather attribution would become a pariah and a disgrace to science. Professor Otto may be many things, but foolhardy she is not.
Finally, it should not have escaped Skipper’s attention that Brown did not restrict his concerns to matters of editorial bias in journals. If anything, it is the bias shown by the media in reporting upon climate change that causes the most damage. In fact, his article leads with:
If you’ve been reading any news about wildfires this summer—from Canada to Europe to Maui—you will surely get the impression that they are mostly the result of climate change.
He goes on to provide examples of such reporting before adding:
I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn’t close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus. So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.
So Brown is making an important point about narrative and the need to keep it simple and focused. Again, this is a point that has been made on this blog, both here and here. It is very telling that a climate scientist cannot make the same point without generating so much noise and heat.
I am not quite sure what motivated Brown to say what he did. From where I am stood, it just looks like an act of breathtaking honesty and common sense. He said what needed to be said, but he must surely have known that his profession would immediately throw him under the bus and seek to reverse all previous plaudits bestowed upon him. As a consequence, he used to be a much-respected member of the scientific community, but now he’s just a guy they used to know. It’s the same old cultural kickback; if someone criticises the culture, the culture protects itself by vilifying the critic. It’s a defamation that is only to be expected from a system that protects itself through social sanction. You can’t accuse such a system of censorial behaviour without expecting it to be censorious in return. Society, (and the scientific community that acts on its behalf) seems to have settled upon an orthodoxy that drives and frames our courses of enquiry. It also demands a simple narrative both within the scientific journals and, more importantly, in the publications charged with reporting to the public.
I will be following this news item in the coming weeks since I fear cancellation may be around the corner. Dr Ken Rice of ATTP fame has already declared his position:
Given that there can be preferred narratives within scientific communities, it is always good for there to be people who are regarded as credible and who push back against them. Even if you don’t agree with them, they can still present views that are worth thinking about. In my view, Patrick used to be one of those people.
It can be of little comfort to Patrick T. Brown that Dr Ken Rice’s views of him carry next to no weight.
Footnote
If you have not already done so, you are advised to read Professor Brown’s article in full. I could have written several posts on the many important issues it raises.
Addendum
Since this article was first published, Dr Brown has issued a clarification regarding the reviewers’ comments and has pointed out that at no stage were the authors of the study requested to extend its scope in order to include the quantification of non-climatic causations. The only reference to such causations was to point out that they would confound the metric used to assess the climatic effects (i.e. wildfire growth). The amendments requested were in order to address that issue. This clarification is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it is a rebuttal of Dr Skipper’s assertion that Nature had actively encouraged extension of the scope. Secondly, it demonstrates why the paper had ultimately met the standards set by the journal, notwithstanding its restricted scope.
Climate Scepticism 
“It’s the same old cultural kickback; if someone criticises the culture, the culture protects itself by vilifying the critic. It’s a defamation that is only to be expected from a system that protects itself through social sanction. You can’t accuse such a system of censorial behaviour without expecting it to be censorious in return. Society, (and the scientific community that acts on its behalf) seems to have settled upon an orthodoxy that drives and frames our courses of enquiry. It also demands a simple narrative both within the scientific journals and, more importantly, in the publications charged with reporting to the public.”
Spot on. We can measure the cultural attitudes across national publics, and by implication in public authorities too, via the end result of policies that they implement. We can’t measure them for scientists; the demographic is too small to register in general studies, and almost no-one attempts specialised polls on them (to which, even if it happened, through fear of identification they’d probably give the wrong information anyhow). Yet even if anecdotal, incidents of this kind show that climate catastrophism does manage to lean heavily upon what is supposed to be objective science, and ditto science communication.
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“The accusations he was making suggested a problem with the structure, but it was actually the howling response that betrayed the structure of the problem.”
First prize for this month’s most quotable phrase. There’s a big clue in the article as to why Patrick Brown is choosing to highlight this problem now. He does not have an academic career to lose:
“I left academia over a year ago, partially because I felt the pressures put on academic scientists caused too much of the research to be distorted. Now, as a member of a private nonprofit research center, The Breakthrough Institute, I feel much less pressure to mold my research to the preferences of prominent journal editors and the rest of the field.”
He clearly anticipated the howling response his admissions would bring. I would even suggest that beyond being motivated by a moral compass which is clearly pointing due north when it should do,, he has witnessed the outrageous goings on with Alimonti et al and is deliberately baiting Nature and the climate alarmist community to ‘punish’ him for his transgression by retrospectively retracting his peer-reviewed paper. Now that WOULD be interesting and it seems like Nature might be taking the bait from what you have written here John.
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Jaime,
As I said in my article, I hesitate to speculate upon Brown’s full intentions and expectations but, as you quite rightly point out, he had to leave academia before he felt he could speak freely. That is in itself very telling. It is reminiscent of Judith Curry. A pattern emerges.
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You can hear the wide-eyed editor being interviewed on PM here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001q6fq
[Starts at almost exactly 17 minutes in.]
I was somewhat pleased and not a little surprised to hear this story given such space (about 7 minutes) on the BBC.
The Ed claims that Nature does not have a preferred narrative. But they certainly had a preferred presidential candidate in 2020, and waxed lyrical about his climate credentials. if anyone has forgotten, I am sure they can guess which candidate Nature endorsed.
What about the other candidate?
You can read the whole October 14 editorial here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02852-x
As far as I’m concerned, that intervention would be the death of any scientific credibility Nature had, even if their record was unblemished to that point.
On the topic of outsiders, Clintel have amassed a large number of people to sign their “there’s no climate crisis” statement. I can’t help but wonder whether an analysis of those names would reveal that none of them are career-vulnerable climate scientists. The sense check comes from the retired and from those from related fields who smell a rat. The list is reported here at WUWT: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/16/there-is-no-climate-crisis1600-scientists-worldwide-nobel-prize-laureate-sign-declaration/
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Jit, it’s strange that Biden has been in office for nearly 3 years now, having immediately rejoined Paris as soon as he was ‘elected’ in 2020, yet climate change is accelerating all the same in 2023, according to ‘experts’ and the media. Trump can’t be blamed for that, yet the Nature editorial saw fit to blame him for the alleged acceleration in climate change from 2016-20. I’m surprised he hasn’t been indicted yet.
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John,
Thank you for the links. Patrick Brown’s website claims (and I have no reason to doubt him) that he has provided commentary for, inter alia, the New York Times, the BBC and the Guardian. That seems to be nothing short of a miracle (as does his getting papers published in Nature) given some of the things he has written about climate change, if you look at the links to the articles on his website. Is he a climate sceptic who has been hiding in plain site, but who is now prepared to emerge from hiding?
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John – thanks for the post & links to his article.
this partial quote from him reminds me of the Lancet article covered/posted by someone on this blog –
“For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change—which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions.”
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Dougie,
As I said, there’s enough in Brown’s piece to justify several articles. I needed to pick an angle and stick with it.
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For those who may have forgotten it, here is this exorcism gem from Oreskes and Lewandowsky:
Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community
Highlights
• Appeals to scientific uncertainty are often used to forestall action on climate change.
• We examine the seepage of this contrarian discourse into the scientific community.
• We highlight psychological reasons for scientists’ susceptibility to seepage.
• We use the global warming “hiatus” as an example of the consequences of seepage.
• We offer ways in which the scientific community can detect and avoid such seepage.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015000515
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Ron,
That Oreskes/Lewandowsky paper has to be one of the worst examples of psychological bullshit I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. For example, they introduce the concept of ambiguity aversion and then explain it by actually describing risk aversion! Even a student wouldn’t make that mistake. The whole thing is just junk.
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The backlash against Patrick Brown has certainly been predictable in its nature. The strategy was always going to be to ‘prove’ he is on his own and he is a dishonest person. Take this ‘fact check’ from Carbon Brief as an example:
“Scientists pour cold water on claims of ‘journal bias’ by author of wildfires study”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-scientists-pour-cold-water-on-claims-of-journal-bias-by-author-of-wildfires-study/
The gist of the debunking is that Brown had been asked by peer reviewers to include other factors in his paper and that Brown had declined. It was therefore inappropriate for him to claim afterwards that he left them out just because he knew that the journal would disapprove. What actually happened is that Brown effectively said, ‘yes we can mention all of these other climatic and non-climatic factors, but this is a study that is attempting to make a quantified attribution and it is currently so much easier to do so with regard to the direct effect of heat only’.
What I suspect is going on here is that the reviewers understood that all papers have to play the game of mentioning the other factors even though they never get to play a role in a quantified narrative. Brown’s point is that papers that present the resulting quantified, albeit simplified, narrative are readily accepted, but he suspects that if he had attempted to present a quantified argument that includes quantification of non-climatic factors (where data is scarce) the same reviewers would have objected. His suspicion, based upon previous experience, is that this rejection wouldn’t just be because of the serious uncertainties introduced, but also because of the resulting dilution of the central narrative. There is nothing in the exchange between Brown and the reviewers that sheds any light on that claim, but Carbon Brief has an agenda, so they don’t care. As long as they get to say:
“However, other scientists were quick to point out that the study’s reviewers had indeed recommended that these other factors were considered.”
Yes, quick to point out – far too quick to point out.
P.S. I take back what I said regarding Ken Rice’s influence. If Carbon Brief is prepared to quote him approvingly, then there is hope for him yet.
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John, that’s a half-baked ‘debunking’ at CB – as usual. They make a big deal about the reviewers’ initial comments and the authors’ response but what they fail to do is examine the reviewers’ responses to the responses. In particular, reviewer 3, who raised the issue of the narrowness of the study, responded to the authors’ defence of this narrow focus with the following:
“Recommendation: Accept subject to minor revisions. The authors have satisfactorily addressed most of my comments, including by revising their title, and by providing more analyses in the supplementary information. Regarding the fact that absolute humidity is kept constant in the experiments, I still consider this a major caveat.”
The reviewer was not at all concerned by the omission of all those other non-climate factors influencing extreme wildfire growth, he was primarily concerned with quantifying humidity and its link to climate change. Thus Reviewer 3 recommended publication despite knowing that all of these other non climate change factors were being left out. Brown argues that if he had tried to quantify these non-climate influences, the paper would not have passed peer review. It’s hard to disagree with him, though difficult to prove absolutely from the exchange of comments between author and reviewers. But CB’s attempt at a ‘debunking’ of Brown’s statements also falls flat on its face.
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Jaime,
I agree entirely that the reference to reviewer three’s comments is a complete red herring, since he/she wasn’t actually complaining about the absence of non-climatic factors, and did eventually recommend acceptance once the humidity issue had been conceded. I was actually more concerned with reviewer one’s comments since he/she drew attention to the failure to address non-climatic factors. Even so, the comments do not state the condition upon which he/she would accept the paper. It reads more like a statement to the effect that ‘you do realise don’t you that all of these quantified attributions are useless because they can’t or don’t include quantification of the non-climatic factors?’ Whatever the case, the paper was still accepted for publication. It just looks like the reviewers were equally aware of the game being played but went along with it anyway because they could see the political value of a compromised paper that tells the ‘right’ story.
The other point I should have made is that Brown’s speculation doesn’t end with the likely rejection of papers that attempt to include quantification of the non-climatic. He also speculates that a paper that holds temperature constant and then looks at the alternative attributions wouldn’t get accepted either. If Skipper can point to such a paper having been previously published by Nature, then I would accept her protests of innocence.
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I’ve been wondering if the folk who are ‘debunking’ Professor Brown are really as naïve as they appear to be. I know how important it is to them to portray him as isolated, eccentric and unprincipled, but surely they must secretly understand what he is getting at. My article draws a contrast with Friederike Otto and how her attribution studies are received. They always mention the non-climatic factors and so would appear to disprove Brown’s thesis, but there are a number of points to note about these factors:
a) There are always introduced at the end of the report.
b) They are always presented as secondary factors, e.g. factors that might exacerbate. They are never proposed as primary factors.
c) They are never quantified, or if they are, their quantification never alters the headline results of the study.
d) They never make it into the paper’s abstract.
e) They are never mentioned by Otto in the press when she talks about her results.
f) They never detract from the central narrative that AGW is the sole causation that needs to be addressed.
It’s as if a reviewer has said, ‘Don’t forget to pay lip service to the other stuff, Otto, otherwise Nature would not be able to defend itself against the Browns of this world’.
Brown knows what he is talking about and I strongly suspect his detractors understand more than they are letting on.
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John: It’s as if a reviewer has said, ‘‘Don’t forget to pay lip service to the other stuff, Otto, otherwise Nature would not be able to defend itself against the Browns of this world”.
I think that’s true John, but nevertheless not typically made specific, because it’s due to cultural bias that runs through every thread of the journals and media and most of climate science, and which works largely subconsciously. Everybody nudges everyone else to stay on the ‘right’ course. If something has to be made specific on occasion, it is likely to invert and make the gatekeepers look like saints being attacked by evil hyenas; like the climate-gate cases where, essentially: we can’t give the full story because it gives fodder for the evil deniers and fossil-fuel shills who will tear down real science.
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Andy,
That is quite right. Such things are rarely that explicit. Otto learns without having to receive specific instructions, just as Professor Brown has done. That’s what makes calling it out so difficult. Those who operate subconsciously can play the wounded victim and defy the critic to prove their case. And the critic is often being asked to prove a counterfactual. For example, if it were blameless, would Nature be full of studies that hold temperature constant? Does the absence of such studies prove Brown’s point? I suspect it does.
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I would like to see Brown call their bluff by rewriting the paper as it should have been, with proper emphasis on all the factors he considers important, and countering all Skipper’s complaints. He could then stand back and watch the reasons for rejection.
However, I expect he considers that the rattling he has already done is reverberating nicely, and he now has better things to occupy him.
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Druid144,
It is my understanding that he is currently researching the impact of forest management and hopes to publish work that provides a quantified attribution. The response to hearing this was, “Well what was all your fuss about then? Not including this in your earlier paper had nothing to do with editorial bias and everything to do with the fact that you hadn’t yet done the necessary research”. Brown’s reply is that he would never expect Nature to cover his latest research, and the fact that he has found it difficult work is because not enough has been published about it in the past — and that is in itself a symptom of biases within the profession.
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Very good John. Here’s me and Rupert Darwall on the subject this week.
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Patrick Brown made Nature look like a bunch of chumps, tee hee,
or chimps protecting their territory.
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Beth, I’m thinking we could have a great new PG Tips advert involving the editorial board at Nature!
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Beth, Jaime,
You might think that way, but that isn’t how the scientific community is portraying the situation. The consensus opinion is that the consensus is sound, and it is Professor Brown who is the chump. And to be fair, he has rather invited that accusation by playing the game of providing peer reviewers with a sound technical reason for not extending the scope of his study, only then to go to the press with an alternative excuse. This makes him look disingenuous, but I sincerely believe he gave the reviewers a disingenuous answer to a disingenuous question. What did Reviewer 1 really hope to achieve with his/her observation? Was he/she seriously suggesting that a quantified analysis was possible with non-climatic factors included? The reviewer would surely know that he/she was asking for the impossible given the current state of research. I think everyone was playing a game but only Brown has had the honesty to admit to it.
For those who are happy to conclude that Brown is not a credible witness and so should be ignored, I invite them to ask themselves the following questions. The classic approach to causal analysis is to control for all factors whilst varying one in order to isolate its impact. Repeat that exercise for all posited factors and then draw conclusions regarding which one seems to be primary. The journals are full of studies that isolate climatic factors when looking at wildfires but none that isolate the non-climatic factors. Why? And why is it, given that state of affairs, that the whole climate science community is happy to accept the primacy of climatic factors even though this primacy has never been proven? And why does Otto repeatedly run attribution studies that are limited to a small subset of climatic factors and always gets away with it? The hegemony of a given narrative is so bloody obvious and it frustrates me no end to see scientists in such denial.
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Regarding PN and PS I would put it a little differently. PS is what the IPCC and UNFCC process is built on – given that man made emissions ARE changing the climate tell us all the evidence you can find that support this contention, explain the ways this is happening, how much damage it is doing, and what we need to do to stop it. This may be expressed in probabilistic terms as Prob(evidence given the hypothesis is true). So it is purely confirmatory in nature. PN is what science is normally about and asks what is the probability that the hypothesis is true given the evidence – Prob(Hypothesis is true given the evidence).
Prob(E given H) is a much larger number than Prob(H given E) and they try to pull the wool over our eyes by making out the two are interchangeable. But this is where the Bayes formula comes in as it properly accounts for this reversal of the order of conditional probabilities. It includes probability terms for evidence that does not support the hypothesis (like sea level rise preceding CO2) and also probabilities of the evidence fitting other hypotheses (like natural variation).
Because PS is not kosher science we have to preface it with an obligatory definite article – hence we refer to climate change as “the Science” so as to signal that something not quite scientific is being perpetrated. It also leads to those strange circumlocutions you encounter in the IPCC when some observation departs from what the hypothesis would lead you to expect if it were true. You can’t say, like you would in normal science, that the evidence does not support the hypothesis so the hypothesis is wrong, you have to say something roundabout and unnatural like the evidence is of “low confidence”. This is because the null hypothesis has been turned on its head and leaves an implication that given more time and effort confidence will increase.
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Max,
Thank you for your thought-provoking comment and apologies for the delay in it being posted. WordPress automatically places first time posters in moderation and they are not always immediately picked up.
PN and PS are both legitimate elements of a causal statement and you need both. Neither is more fundamental or relevant than the other but PN certainly hogs the limelight in the science of climate causation, or at least the reporting of it. There are technical reasons for this (i.e. under exogeneity and monotonicity the Fraction of Attributable Risk (FAR), calculated by the climate model based attribution studies, is equivalent to PN) but there are also other factors at play. Firstly, when it comes to extreme weather event attributions, PN is always a lot larger than PS and this can be used to emphasise levels of causation in the minds of the unwary (for example, for the 2003 European heatwave, PN = 0.9 and PS = 0.0072). The high PN indicates the necessity of climate change to explain the phenomenon. The PS, on the other hand, speaks of uncertainty because it indicates the multitude of other necessary factors. So whilst PS has its purpose in areas such as the insurance industry, there is a tendency for climate scientists to want to keep it out of the news. A high PN emphasises a consistency with climate change, whilst a low PS draws attention to the inconsistencies, and climate scientists don’t seem to want to do that. Take, for example, this statement from Dr Peter Stott of the Hadley Centre:
“If the public hears that a particular weather event is consistent with climate change they may conclude that it is further proof of the immediate consequences of human-induced global warming. On the other hand, if the public hears that it is not possible to attribute an individual event, they may conclude that the uncertainties are such that nothing can be said authoritatively about the effects of climate change as actually experienced.”
There are, as you point out, similar issues with the transposing of a conditional. The net result of such a transposition is to downplay uncertainties by failing to take into account potentially low a priori probabilities. However, whilst the preoccupation with publicising PN is, by their own admission, a deliberate strategy taken by climate scientists, the transposing of the conditional by the likes of the IPCC leadership and Oreskes just looks to me like sheer incompetence.
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No apology needed as I appreciate your PN and PS remarks were in the context of attribution “science” and my broadening it to tests of the veracity of climate change in general was therefore off topic. But I guess my feeling about attribution as practised is that it is hardly worth wasting breath on as it is so self-evidently wrong-headed to equate probabilities within a sample space made up of intra-model run variance with event probabilities out in the real world. This feeling is compounded by being brought up on 1980s climatological mother’s milk that said it was laughable to imagine you can use extreme events frequencies to detect change. (Signal to noise and all that).
Is this “Climate Sceptics” the heir to the one set up by Timo Hameranta back in the 20th century? I used to contribute there.
But getting back to PS and PN (admittedly unfamiliar terminology to me) I fear I have them the wrong way round. I interpreted PS as being the hated “consistent with” probability which I see through the prism of the “prosecutor fallacy”. In this, the prosecuting attorney bamboozles the jury with the (consistent with) probability that the defendant would be in the area of the crime if he was guilty. What the jury’s real job is of course the reverse – to assess the probability that the defendant is guilty given all the evidence including inconsistent items. Likewise, if it is accepted as true that mankind is causing the ocean to warm, then sea level will be observed to rise with high probability. But that probability is a far cry from the one that claims that mankind is causing the ocean to warm given the sea level is observed to be rising. We all know the gaps in the chain of reasoning.
That statement you quote of Peter Stott reads like something straight out of the Stephen Schneider and the Nudge Unit play books.
My reading of the Peter Brown saga is that his study follows precisely the IPCC remit of limiting reviewed studies and conclusions to what can be said iff man-made climate change is treated as a paradigm, not a testable hypothesis. He was evidently embarrassed by the constraint this put him under which he is now trying to correct by making lacunae explicit. I hope that now he has taken this step, and also left academe, he can out himself as a sceptic or denier.
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Max,
>”But I guess my feeling about attribution as practised is that it is hardly worth wasting breath on as it is so self-evidently wrong-headed to equate probabilities within a sample space made up of intra-model run variance with event probabilities out in the real world.”
This sample space of models problem has been pointed out many times, even by climate scientists themselves, such as Gavin Schmidt. It doesn’t seem to deter the Friederike Ottos of this world, however. One could speculate forever why this should be so.
>”Is this “Climate Sceptics” the heir to the one set up by Timo Hameranta back in the 20th century?”
I am not a founding member of this blog and so should not comment on any relationship it may or may not have with a predecessor of a similar name. However, as far as I am aware there is no link.
>”That statement you quote of Peter Stott reads like something straight out of the Stephen Schneider and the Nudge Unit play books.”
And so it should. The IPCC made its enthusiasm for the ‘nudge playbook’ quite explicit in AR5, WG3, Chapter 2.
>”He [Patrick Brown] was evidently embarrassed by the constraint this put him under which he is now trying to correct by making lacunae explicit. I hope that now he has taken this step, and also left academe, he can out himself as a sceptic or denier.”
I certainly don’t imagine he would ever like to be called a denier, but he does seem to exhibit some remarkably sceptical patterns of thinking that I think worthy of respect. Sadly, I don’t think such respect will be forthcoming from within the ranks of the climate change catastrophe activists.
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Patrick Brown has published a detailed rebuttal of the various allegations that have been made of him:
https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/correcting-the-record-regarding-my-essay-in-the-free-press
It confirms most of my article’s speculations. In particular, he makes the point that his narrow focus is entirely in accordance with standard practice and that he didn’t do anything that might have falsified or invalidated results.
However, his rebuttal also helps to clear up one particular misunderstanding. I, like others, had accepted the possibility that reviewer 1 was asking that non-climatic factors be included in the quantification and I had suggested that, if that were the case, it would be a disingenuous request. I also felt that Brown’s rejection of such a request, whilst being technically justified, would be equally disingenuous given what he later said to the press. It would appear, however, that this was a misreading of the situation and I needn’t have been worried. According to Brown, reviewer 1 wasn’t in fact making a request that the scope of the attribution be extended. What the reviewer was doing instead was simply pointing out why wildfire growth may not be the best metric by which to quantify the attribution. It’s as I had suspected, the reviewer was making an observation and not a request. According to Brown:
“The reviewer is expressing concern that fire management will make it more difficult for us to quantify the influence of temperature on wildfire growth in our historical dataset (a relationship we can then use later for our climate change projections). We address this by inserting a caveat.”
Of the review comments in general, Brown states:
“Reviewers did not challenge the usefulness of focusing solely on the impact of climate change when calculating long-term changes in wildfire behavior in any of these discussions. Rather, they are focused on making sure the methodology is able to get an accurate quantification of the impact of climate change.”
A full reading of Brown’s rebuttal will reward the inquisitive.
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With respect to reviewer 3, Brown confirms what I said on September 10th:
“The reviewer was not at all concerned by the omission of all those other non-climate factors influencing extreme wildfire growth, he was primarily concerned with quantifying humidity and its link to climate change. Thus Reviewer 3 recommended publication despite knowing that all of these other non climate change factors were being left out. Brown argues that if he had tried to quantify these non-climate influences, the paper would not have passed peer review.”
Brown says:
“The reviewer is asking that we include another climate factor (absolute humidity) in our projections, not asking us to consider any non-climate factors in our projections.
In my response, I acknowledge that all climate variables other than temperature (and temperature’s influence on aridity) are held constant in the projections, and I bring up the fact that other non-climate factors are also held constant.”
“We agree that climatic variables other than temperature are important for projecting changes in wildfire risk. 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.”
This was patently obvious, but people like Rice and Carbon Brief chose to misrepresent the peer reviewer comments and Brown describes these people thus:
“Much of the public criticism revolves around highly misleading (and in some cases patently false) claims about the research approach that I took in designing the study and what then transpired during the peer review process.”
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Absolutely Jaime. Both you and I were able to anticipate Brown’s riposte in quite some detail. Why? All I will say is that there was precious little attempt from his detractors to acknowledge the context in which the study was submitted and the context in which the review comments were made.
As far as the likes of Ken Rice and Carbon Brief are concerned, it was a case of “we know he must be guilty of something because we don’t agree with his thesis. Now let’s come up with an interpretation of the facts that fits our presumption.” That interpretation even required the assumption that Brown has suddenly lost his scientific principles, having previously been one of the good guys. This was an assumption they were remarkably comfortable with, and that is because they would prefer to stay faithful to their worldview rather than to a scientific colleague.
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Yes John, and Brown has stated categorically that there “is no basis for retracting the paper on its methods or merits”. So if Nature do retract it, then we will know for sure that the motivation is pure spite, punishment of Brown for having revealed the publication bias in climate science peer-reviewed literature which most sceptics knew existed or strongly suspected existed anyway. Brown made it public knowledge and they must hate him for it with a vengeance.
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Jaime,
I’m not aware of any plans for Nature to retract the paper, but given Skipper’s public position, she would now look foolish if she didn’t. The problem is that she would also look foolish if she did, because she can only retract based upon the paper’s content, not Brown’s press statements. The sad fact is that she is a geneticist who is out of her depth when it comes to what is and is not accepted practice in the world of extreme event attribution. If she wants to go ahead with retraction, I hope she doesn’t just base her judgement on what she can read at Carbon Brief or ATTP.
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Ken Rice has now published two articles on his ATTP blog ‘debunking’ the allegations made by Patrick Brown. Unfortunately, the debate seems still to be focussed upon the false assertion that Brown declined a request to widen his attribution study to include non-climatic factors. I had also momentarily entertained that possibility when I saw reviewer one’s comment, but was never convinced. And now I can clearly see that the reviewer was not actually making a request to include climatic factors but was instead doing quite the opposite. Brown was using a metric (wildfire growth) that was confounded by climatic and non-climatic factors and the reviewer was pointing out the need to deconfound by controlling for the non-climatic, i.e. by holding those factors constant. Put another way, Brown had attempted to follow the usual climate science practice of keeping the non-climatic out of the equation but reviewer one did not think he had done a good enough job!
The only other comment that was even remotely relevant was the request from reviewer three to include humidity (another climatic factor) in the attribution study. This is obviously irrelevant to the debate but, again, there does not seem to be anyone at ATTP who has picked up on that.
I said in a previous comment that a full read of the Brown explanation on the Breakthrough Institute website would reward the inquisitive. I note that someone on ATTP has cited Brown’s Breakthrough Institute article only then to point out that he couldn’t be bothered to finish reading it – how very clever and astute of him. Equally, nobody at ATTP, including Ken Rice, has been bothered to address the Breakthrough Institute statement. As I have already said, they already know the verdict so there is no need to look at any new evidence.
For all the brainpower on display at ATTP they seem remarkably reluctant to address the technicalities of the Brown et al paper or seek to understand the causal analysis issues. I’d love to be able to put forward the case outlined in Brown’s Breakthrough Institute statement but I know from bitter experience that the result of me making an appearance on ATTP would be a car crash.
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I’d join you John, but then it would probably turn into a multi-car pile up . . . . . or maybe that should be pile on? 🙂
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My last comment appears to have resulted in the vestiges of communication between myself and Dr Rice (see ATTP). Understandably, he seems as reluctant to appear in person on my blog as I am on his. So we are left with what he refers to as ‘cross-blog commentary’. Well, it is better than nothing, so here goes:
Firstly, Dr Rice says:
“There seems to be this argument developing that the reviewers did not actually ask the authors to include non-climatic factors in their analysis and that, in fact, were suggesting that they should do an even better job of keeping these factors out of the analysis.”
Well, it isn’t so much as an argument developing, so much as a truth emerging, something even Dr Rice seems to begrudgingly accept when he says, “Which may well be true” in response to Dr Brown’s own explanation. However, there is always a “but even so…” to follow. The position of retreat seems to be that this still indicates “that the scientific community is well aware of these confounding factors and is not arguing that they should be ignored.”
Well I am perfectly happy with that statement because neither side was ever saying that they should be ignored. They should either be quantified in an attribution that focuses upon them (requiring climatic factors to be deconfounded) or they should be deconfounded themselves, thereby allowing a quantification of the climatic factors. Either way, the non-climatic factors are not being ‘ignored’, but they may or may not be being quantified.
The crucial argument is not whether or not they should be ignored in a given study but whether the scientific community should be more focused upon quantifying one set of factors in preference to another. The Brown argument is that a bias exists in the literature because it seems to focus exclusively on the deconfounding of the non-climatic factors. Brown seems to be suggesting that his previous attempts to redress the imbalance have met with editorial pushback. He doesn’t substantiate that allegation but if that isn’t a factor, then we still have to come up with an explanation for the imbalance. At the very least it reflects an imbalance in research interest, and this imbalance may prove to be important.
This point is crucial because so much emphasis has been placed upon Dr Brown’s supposed disingenuous response to a request to include non-climatic factors in his quantified attribution. The truth is that there was nothing two-faced about the way Dr Brown handled the request, because there never actually was such a request. They simply asked that the deconfounding presence of the non-climatic factors be acknowledged, which Dr Brown duly did, and without needing to widen the scope of his study.
Anyway, I am pleased to say that I can no longer accuse Dr Rice of ignoring the Breakthrough Institute statement. We may have some way to go before restoring Dr Brown’s integrity in the eyes of Dr Rice, but I would not give up hope just yet.
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The reviewers’ comments and the responses by the author have been used to stir up a storm in a teacup in response to the genuine furore which has arisen over Patrick Brown’s original comments, in an effort to try to discredit his original comments, which still stand however.
Reviewer 1 was PRIMARILY CONCERNED with the absolute definition of extreme daily wildfire growth of 10k acres. He/she thought that a percentile growth might be more appropriate. Nothing to do with non-climate factors.
The SECONDARY concern was with wildfire growth as the key variable and that there might be confounding non-climate factors inherent in its use. There was no suggestion that these confounding factors should be quantified, just perhaps that they should be minimised or eliminated so that the ‘key variable’ included climate factors ONLY.
Reviewer 3 was only concerned that another climatic variable, namely humidity, was not being accounted for. It was the author himself who responded that in addition to other climatic variables, there were also a host of non-climatic variables which it would be difficult to control for. Brown brought up the subject; the reviewer was apparently only concerned with the unaccounted for climatic variable of humidity. That reviewer did not respond with ‘Yes, you should account for these non-climatic variables too’. They were seemingly not bothered.
These comments have been used by detractors of Brown to construct a misleading narrative that the reviewers wanted to expand the scope of the study to include the influence of factors other than temperature (a climate change proxy), but that Brown rebuffed their attempts to do so. That’s just not what happened, not at all what the reviewers’ comments reveal.
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As for Brown’s integrity in the eyes of the climate change academic community, that’s gone, forever, I fear, simply because he dared to make public the suggestion that there is a strong publication bias heavily skewed towards tending to ignore non-climatic (specifically those attributable to climate change) influences in the peer-reviewed literature. That is akin to heresy.
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Jaime,
If the response on ATTP to Brown’s Breakthrough Institute statement is anything to go by, there seems no hope of any reappraisal of his integrity. The mental gymnastics the ATTP folk are going through to maintain the narrative of a duplicitous scientist is a wonder to behold. They certainly didn’t need us to go on there to create a pile-up; they seem to have managed it all by themselves by going into a spin and losing control on the same bend. According to the ATTP folk, now that deconfounding has become the issue, it is that which Brown screwed up and then lied about. I’ll give them one thing – these guys are nothing if not inventive.
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John,
I think what’s really got them wound up is that they were working on the Python principle that one should never expect the Spanish Inquisition, but Brown was obviously ready and fully prepared for the Spanish Inquisition and I’m afraid as a result he’s made the Inquisitors look . . . . inadequate, shall we say.
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Jaime,
>”The reviewers’ comments and the responses by the author have been used to stir up a storm in a teacup…”
Of course attribution studies have shown that, because of climate change, storms in teacups are now much more prevalent and of greater intensity. There are confounders that are also influencing the increase in such storms but they can be controlled for in the studies. The journals are full of such studies, but what you will not find are studies that isolate and quantify these non-climatic factors by controlling for climate change. This reflects an editorial bias in the journals – an observation that has itself become the cause of a climate-related teacup storm.
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You can always trust the Daily Kos to fathom out – by which I mean fully explore the depths to which journalism can plunge. Here is their take on the Patrick T. Brown affair:
“Breakthrough’s Patrick Brown Confesses He Did Something Unethical, But Blames Everyone Else For It”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/12/2192837/-Breakthrough-s-Patrick-Brown-Confesses-He-Did-Something-Unethical-But-Blames-Everyone-Else-For-It
I think they must have been reading ATTP:
It seems that time and again I underestimate the pernicious influence that Ken Rice has.
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John, it’s complicated though, because whereas climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of storms in teacups, the leaves which make the tea which is in the teacups are under increasing threat, so it’s quite likely that the climate crisis will reduce the number of cups of tea available to brew up these storms in the first place:
“Your morning cup of tea may never taste the same again if global heating increases and the climate crisis intensifies, according to research.
Some of the world’s biggest tea-growing areas will be among the worst hit by extreme weather, and their yields are likely to be vastly reduced in the coming decades if climate breakdown continues at its current pace. Floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms are likely to have a severe impact on tea-growing areas around the world, according to a report from the charity Christian Aid.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/10/tea-growing-areas-to-be-badly-hit-if-global-heating-intensifies
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The eagle-eyed may have noticed that my article is now a 10 minute read. That is because I thought it was high time I added an addendum to tie up some loose ends and to put the record straight. Better late than never, I suppose.
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Apologies, John, if this is O/T, but I think it’s possibly borderline relevant to your article:
“Cochrane Scandal: We Found No Evidence Masks Worked – and That Had to Be Silenced”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/15/cochrane-scandal-we-found-no-evidence-masks-worked-and-that-had-to-be-silenced/
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Mark,
Thank you for the link. There is a relevance, of course, because it is another example of the sort of editorial skulduggery that can happen when scientists start to stray from the required line of thinking. However, the posting could just as easily have been left on my article regarding Dr Grimes, since that article used the controversy over mask wearing as a case in point – the point being that the scientific method is not all there is to the establishment of consensus.
Getting back to the Patrick Brown affair, I am sorely tempted to write a follow-up article now that I have seen some of the commentary that has ensued and the sheer scale and profundity of the misunderstandings on display. The major misapprehension is that Brown is the bad boy of science who did something wrong and seeks to blame everyone else. Ken Rice has been particularly vocal in perpetuating such nonsense. Just to be clear, the supposedly unethical deed that Brown admitted to was the failure to include quantification of non-climatic factors in his study. Not only did he himself draw attention to that fact, he also pointed out that all (or maybe nearly all) published studies on the subject share that omission. However, rather than acknowledge the readily confirmable truth of that statement and debate why it is so, the response has been a straightforward professional attack on Brown’s competence and integrity. And even when the inappropriateness of such an attack is pointed out to these people, they are unrepentant. As I said, you learn a lot about a group when you rattle their cage.
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I came across this interesting looking paper by Dr Brown today:
“When the fraction of attributable risk does not inform the impact associated with anthropogenic climate change”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-023-03591-4
Unfortunately, the paper is behind a paywall, but the abstract seems to suggest that it is saying something that I have always thought ought to be obvious to all, and yet seems not to be so. Basically, you can’t calculate attributable damage based purely upon a Fraction of Attributable Risk, which is essentially a probability of necessity. If you do so then you will overstate the anthropogenic contribution. As the abstract puts it:
“The FAR has further been used to estimate the fraction of observed impacts (e.g., lives lost or economic damage) that can be associated with ACC [Anthropogenic Climate Change] by multiplying realized impacts by the FAR (IFAR = Impact×FAR). Here, we illustrate with a few stylized examples that this IFAR calculation only produces reliably useful results when the weather or climate phenomena in question can be easily conceived of as a discrete binary “event” (i.e., the entirety of the event either occurs or it does not). We show that the IFAR calculation can produce misleading results when the weather or climate phenomena in question are on a continuum, and ACC can be thought of as altering the intensity of the geophysical value that is used in the eventhood definition.”
The point is that sufficiency is a factor that should also enter into the equation. Much of the impact on a continuum will be due to factors that have nothing at all to do with the ACC’s FAR.
I mention this here because it is another of those respects in which the climate science community’s incomplete treatment of causality conveniently exaggerates and promotes the climate change narrative.
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These guys managed to publish a paper that showed that “it’s better than we thought.” However, it has now been retracted. The cynic asks: would hostile attention have been lavished upon it if its conclusion was the fashionable “it’s worse than we thought”?
“Nature pulls study that found climate fears were overblown”
Seldom can a paper resist determined scrutiny. Even so, a tiny fraction attract sufficient interest to generate a reply, even where the editor permits such articles. What fraction are retracted for improper methods? Note, this means performing the analysis as described, not (sensu Gergis) writing one thing in methods and actually doing something else. I don’t see how, if methods are as described, there can be grounds for retraction. There was one particular fad in the study of population dynamics that used inappropriate methods and came to the wrong conclusions because of it. To my knowledge none of those papers have been retracted.
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This might not be the most appropriate place to put this comment, but in view of the article title (Burn the Witch!) it does feel appropriate:
“Senior Canadian Legislator Tables Bill to Jail People Who Speak Out in Favour of Fossil Fuels”
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/18/senior-canadian-legislator-tables-bill-to-jail-people-who-speak-out-in-favour-of-fossil-fuels/
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Interesting Mark but I very much doubt that such a bill would ever gather enough support to be passed. Even if it were, early attempts to enforce it would run into enormous problems because it clearly runs contra to any freedom of speech legislation and would be successfully countermanded in the courts. Knowing all this should this be a major impediment to the bill ever seeing the light of day. Nevertheless the appearance of the potential legislation is a clear sign of the future intent of green lobbyists.
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