This saga popped up last week.
Scientific journal retracts article that claimed no evidence of climate crisis
Publisher Springer Nature says 2022 article ‘not supported by available evidence’ as editors launch investigation
Graham Readfearn @readfearnSat 26 Aug 2023 01.00 AEST
Last modified on Sat 26 Aug 2023 01.01 AESTOne of the world’s biggest scientific publishers has retracted a journal article that claimed to have found no evidence of a climate crisis.
Springer Nature said it had retracted the article, by four Italian physicists, after an internal investigation found the conclusions were “not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors”.
Climate sceptic groups widely publicised the article, which appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus in January 2022 – a journal not known for publishing climate change science.
Nine months later the article was reported uncritically in a page one story in the Australian newspaper and promoted in two segments on Sky News Australia – a channel that has been described as a global hub for climate science misinformation. The segments were viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube.
The article claimed to have analysed data to find no trend in rainfall extremes, floods, droughts and food productivity.
“In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet,” the article said.
Several climate scientists told the Guardian and later the news agency AFP that the article had misrepresented some scientific articles, was “selective and biased” and had “cherrypicked” information.
After those concerns were raised, Springer Nature announced in October it was investigating the article.
In a statement Springer Nature said its editors had launched a “thorough investigation”, which included a post-publication review by subject matter experts.
The authors of the article also submitted an addendum to their original work during the course of the investigation, the statement said.
“After careful consideration and consultation with all parties involved, the editors and publishers concluded that they no longer had confidence in the results and conclusions of the article,” the journal said.
“The addendum was not considered suitable for publication and retraction was the most appropriate course of action in order to maintain the validity of the scientific record.”
A retraction note appearing on the article says concerns were raised “regarding the selection of the data, the analysis and the resulting conclusions of the article”.
The note says the article’s conclusions “were not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors”.
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That a reputable journal publisher takes more that 18 months to notice that an off-topic article it published was untrue evidence-free rubbish really makes it hard to understand just how we poor ignoramuses at the end of the information food chain are to discern fact from fiction etc.
When you think about it the implications of all this are really scary – to say the least! Even if material is not taken down surely it can be flagged a possibly misleading in a week or two. No properly conducted peer-review process gets it this wrong unquestioningly!
Springer this is just not OK! What do others think?
David.
1 comment:
Perfectly executed by the pro-extinction lobbyists - all they need to do is sow doubt about the facts. Scientific papers and standards are trusted because of the quality process behind them.
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