Peer Review

Lots of folks are following the Roger Pielke/Andy Revkin/Joe Romm/Michael Tobis Goreathon complete with walk on from one of Al's staffers. The thing was touched off by one of Roger's patented, passive agressive, tutt-tatts which Andy swallowed whole. Michael was not amused

If Revkin came up with this noise himself, he should think long and hard about what he has done and issue something beyond a feeble justification.

If Revkin was pushed to write this he should quit. Period.

It then went nuclear and thermonuclear

The base issue is the question about whether storm damage will increase because of climate change, an issue that a certain someone feels he owns, in particular what science says about this issue. Roger starts by saying no. Joe Romm (Eli has a day job, and the bunny was too slow. The cycle time on climate blogs is approaching CNN speed) points to Pielke being quoted in Nature (2006) saying yes

Previously sceptical, Pielke says that he is now convinced that at least some of the increased losses can be blamed on climate: “Clearly, since 1970 climate change has shaped the disaster loss record.”

Romm even shows Pielke weaseling away from this at the place where Ethon dines. Back Roger against the wall and he says there is no peer reviewed scientific evidence for this. Romm points to an article by Evan Mills in Science (2005)

Global weather-related losses in recent years have been trending upward much faster than population, inflation, or insurance penetration, and faster than non–weather-related events (Fig. 2D). By some estimates, losses have increased by a factor of 2, after accounting for these factors plus increased density of insured values (23, 24).

Pielke and Mills had a go around in the letters a bit later on. Mills was not convinced

How do we explain rising economic losses (e.g., those to crops in the heartland or physical infrastructure built on melting permafrost) that are only weakly linked to oft-cited demographic factors such as populations clustering around coastlines?

Lastly, why would rising numbers of events (10) not translate into rising costs?

Assuming that only socioeconomic factors--rather than rising emissions--influence losses may yield ill-founded policy recommendations that focus exclusively on adapting to climate change while dismissing energy policy as a legitimate part of the toolkit for responding (11). . . .

In a narrow sense, it would be a relief to learn that the only cause of rising losses is that people are moving more into harm's way. That conclusion would, however, be premature and scientifically indefensible given the paucity of data, limitations of available analyses, and consistency between observed impacts and those expected under climate change. Nor should we make the opposite mistake of attributing the observed growth in losses solely to climate change. Rather than "proof " by vigorous assertion, the constructive approach is to better understand the compounding roles of increasing vulnerability and climate change, and take affordable precautionary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the changes rather than waiting for unaffordable consequences.

Eli couldn't really add anything civil, but this plays right into the everygreen what the hell is peer review. Sort of like pornography in the words of Justice Holmes, hard to describe, but you know it when you get shoved into the barrel to do one.

The Lab Lemming has about as good a walk through as the Rabett has seen

In between irate meetings, technical emergencies, slipping deadlines, and normal workload, you get an unsolicited email from a total stranger. Assuming it doesn’t go directly to the spam bin, opening it reveals that it is Professor Joe Blogger, associate editor of the Journal of Acceptable Results, and he’d like you to review a paper.

Hopefully the paper is on a topic with which you are actually familiar. . .

As far as I can tell, there are two basic approaches. These are ideally similar but in practice can be opposite. The first is imitation of reviews that one has received. The second is the golden rule.

For me, the first option would involve some combination of non-specific pleasantries, attacks based on a misunderstanding of the literature or techniques used, or multi-page lists of specific minor points which are not related to each other or the using-whole-sentences part of the review. So when asked to review, I tried the second method, but without any real sense of guidance or idea what I was working towards. My inability to find a type specimen of a quality review is probably due to the lack of transparency that surrounds peer review. So in order to illuminate this mysterious process, here is my reviewing experience.

RTFL

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