scientist to make their mark in academia and obtain a desirable permanent position. JC advice to Marcott and Shakun: I understand how tough it is for a young Ph.D. Will they (i) decide to care primarily about science, and embrace the values of transparency and public accountability, answer questions about their research, and engage with skeptics in the interest of improving their research or (ii) do they aspire to Mike Mann-style celebrity and plan to join the RealClimate warriors against auditing and skepticism? I see this as a struggle for the souls of two young climate scientists.Here is a suspicion: Marcott was subsequently contacted by one of the RealClimate principals, providing advice against engaging with McIntyre, sympathy that they are being attacked by deniers, and providing support and a safe refuge on RealClimate. I wonder how his response landed on RealClimate. Marcott scored points in my book by communicating with Steve McIntyre, and for some measure of honesty in his response.What kind of advice did they give Marcott and Shakun in all this? And the paper was also hyped by a NSF Program Manager. Alan Mix and Peter Clark are the senior authors. In terms of the hyping of this story, I am prepared to give Marcott and Shakun somewhat of a pass given that they are recent Ph.D.Are there still no checks and balances in the paleoclimate community (outside of the efforts of Steve McIntyre, JeanS et al.)?.JC comments: This case is an interesting one in the sociology of climate science. After they get uncovered in the blogosphere, the academic community rushes to circle the wagons and denounce any criticism as “denialism.” There’s denialism going on all right – on the part of scientists who don’t see that their continuing defence of these kinds of practices exacts a toll on the public credibility of their field. In recent years there have been a number of cases in which high-profile paper from climate scientists turned out, on close inspection, to rely on unseemly tricks fudges and/or misleading analyses. It was introduced into their proxy reconsruction as an artifact of arbitrarily redating the end points of a few proxy records. What made their original conclusion about exceptional nature of the 20th century warming plausible was precisely the fact that it appeared to be picked up both by modern thermometers and by their proxy data. Yet at no point did they mention the fact that the 20th century portion of their proxy reconstruction is garbage. Now you tell us! The 20th-century uptick was the focus of worldwide media attention during which the authors made very strong claims about the implications of their findings regarding 20th-century warming. contains a remarkable admission: “ 20th-century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of glbal temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.” In their online supplementary information the authors said they had assumed the core tops were dated to the present “unless otherwise noted in the original publication.” In other words, they claimed to be relying on the original dating, even while they had redated the cores in a way that strongly influenced their results. Worse, the article did not disclose this step. Steve McIntyre of began examining the details of the Marcott et al work, and by March 16 he had made a remarkable discovery (JC note: see original article for details). The real story is only just emerging, and it isn’t pretty. The trouble is, as they quietly admitted over the weekend, their new and stunning claim is groundless. News of this finding flew around the world and the authors suddenly became the latest in a long line of celebrity climate scientists. The latter was an apparent discovery that 20th-century warming was a wild departure from anything seen in over 11,000 years. Ross McKitrick provides a summary of all this in an article for the Financial Post, entitled We’re not screwed? Excerpts: Fixing the Marcott mess in climate science by Roger Pielke Jr.The saga surrounding the Marcott et al paper has gotten really interesting over the weekend. It’s among the most compelling bits of proof out there that human beings are behind global warming, and as such has become a target on Mann’s back for climate denialists looking to draw a bead on scientists. We’re screwed: 11,000 years’ worth of climate data prove it.
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