SeaLevel.info

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noteworthy papers — topics:

 

Sea-level rise acceleration?

Sydney, Australia tide gauge record Although many climate models predict that rising CO2 levels should cause accelerated sea level rise, sea level measurements show that, thus far, in response to roughly 3/4 century of substantial anthropogenically-driven CO2 increases, there has been no detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. In fact, some studies have detected small a deceleration (slowing). Here are some papers which have reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):

  1. Douglas B (1992). Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992. doi:10.1029/92JC01133
  2. Douglas B and Peltier W R (2002). The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise. Physics Today 55(3):35-40.
  3. Daly J (2003). Tasmanian Sea Levels: The 'Isle of the Dead' Revisited. [Internet].
  4. Daly J (2004). Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels for the Greening Earth Society. [Internet].
  5. Jevrejeva S, et al (2006). Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records. J. Geophysical Research, 111, C09012, 2006. doi:10.1029/2005JC003229. (data)
  6. Holgate SJ (2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602. doi:10.1029/2006GL028492. (Discussion here.)
  7. Wunsch R, Ponte R and Heimbach P (2007). Decadal trends in sea level patterns: 1993-2004. Journal of Climatology. 5889-5911.
  8. Woodworth P, et al (2009). Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 29, Issue 6, pages 777-789, May 2009. doi:10.1002/joc.1771
  9. You ZJ, Lord DB, and Watson PJ (2009). Estimation of Relative Mean Sea Level Rise From Fort Denison Tide Gauge Data. Proceedings of the 19th Australasian Coastal and Ocean Engineering Conference, Wellington, NZ, September 2009.
  10. Wenzel M and Schröter J (2010). Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans. 115:C08013.
  11. Mörner N-A (2010a). Sea level changes in Bangladesh new observational facts. (Reprinted here.) Energy and Environment. 21(3):235-249.
  12. Mörner N-A (2010b). Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International. 221(1-2):3-8.
  13. Mörner N-A (2010c). There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise! 21st Century Science & Technology. Fall 2010:7-17.
  14. Houston JR and Dean RG (2011a). Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. 27:409-417.
  15. Houston JR and Dean RG (2011b). J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean (2011) Reply to: Rahmstorf, S. and Vermeer, M., 2011. Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. Volume 27, Issue 4: pp. 788-790. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00008.1
  16. Watson PJ (2011). Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? Journal of Coastal Research. 27:368-377.
  17. Modra B and Hesse S (2011), NSW Ocean Water Level. 21st NSW Coastal Conference. (or here)
  18. Mörner N-A, (2011a). Setting the frames of expected future sea level changes by exploring past geological sea level records. Chapter 6 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
  19. Mörner N-A, (2011b). The Maldives: A measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics. Chapter 7 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
  20. Boretti A (2012a). Short Term Comparison of Climate Model Predictions and Satellite Altimeter Measurements of Sea Levels. Coastal Engineering, 60, pp. 319-322. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.10.005. (Also, an article about this paper.)
  21. Boretti A (2012b). Is there any support in the long term tide gauge data to the claims that parts of Sydney will be swamped by rising sea levels? Coastal Engineering, 64, pp. 161-167. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2012.01.006.
  22. Hughes W (2012), Continued existence of Maori canals near Blenheim in New Zealand indicates a stable relative sea level over 200 years. [Internet].
  23. Boretti A and Watson T (2012). The inconvenient truth: Ocean Levels are not accelerating in Australia. Energy & Environment. doi:10.1260/0958-305X.23.5.801.
  24. Burton D (2012). Comments on “Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York,” by Shepard, et al. Natural Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8.
  25. Lüning S and Vahrenholt F (2012). Fallstudien aus aller Welt belegen: Keine Beschleunigung des Meeresspiegelanstiegs während der letzten 30 Jahre. (Case studies from around the world: no evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the last 30 years - English translation.)
  26. Homewood P (2012). Is Sea Level Rise Accelerating? [Internet].
  27. Schmith T, et al (2012), Statistical analysis of global surface temperature and sea level using cointegration methods. Journal of Climate, 2012, American Meteorological Society. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00598.1 (or draft)
  28. Beenstock, Reingewertz & Paldor (2012). Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming, Earth Syst Dynam, 3, 173-188, 2012. (Earlier draft here, and discussion here.) Note: this paper is not about sea-level, but it is included in this list because it provides some context for Beenstock (2014). doi:10.5194/esd-3-173-2012.↑
  29. Mörner N-A and Parker A (2013). Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case, Environmental Science, An Indian Journal, ESAIJ, 8(2), 2013 [43-51]
  30. Scafetta, N (2013a). Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming, Pattern Recognition in Physics. 1, 37-57, 2013. doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013.
  31. Dean RG and Houston JR (2013). Recent sea level trends and accelerations: Comparison of tide gauge and satellite results, Coastal Engineering, Vol. 75, May 2013, pp. 4–9. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2013.01.001.↑
  32. Gregory, White, Church, et al (2013). Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts? American Meteorological Society , Volume 26 Issue 13 (July 2013). (See abstract: “...a relationship between global climate change and the rate of [Global Mean Sea Level Rise]... is weak or absent during the twentieth century.”) doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1.
  33. Chen et al (2014). Global sea level trend during 1993–2012, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 112, Jan. 2014, pp. 26-32. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2013.11.001. ↑
  34. Beenstock, Felsenstein, Frank & Reingewertz (2014). Tide gauge location and the measurement of global sealevel rise, Environ Ecol Stat (2015) 22:179-206. doi:10.1007/s10651-014-0293-4. (Earlier drafts here and here, discussed here and here.) ↑
  35. Scafetta N (2014). Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics, 43:175-192. doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1771-3. (Preprint here.)
  36. Kemp et al (2015). Relative sea-level change in Connecticut (USA) during the last 2200 yrs, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 428, 15 Oct. 2015, Pages 217-229. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2015.07.034.
    Excerpt from the abstract: "Change point analysis identified that modern rates of rise in Connecticut began at 1850-1886CE. This timing is synchronous with changes recorded at other sites on the U.S. Atlantic coast and is likely the local expression of a global sea-level change."
  37. Parker A and Ollier C D (2015). Coastal planning should be based on proven sea level data, Ocean & Coastal Management, 124 (2016) 1-9. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2016.02.005.
  38. Hamlin, L (2016). 2015 Updated NOAA Tide Gauge Data Shows No Coastal Sea Level Rise Acceleration, by Larry Hamlin, Watts Up With That, 28 May, 2016
  39. Fasullo et al (2016). Is the detection of accelerated sea level rise imminent?, by Fasullo J T, Nerem R S, & Hamlington B, 10 August 2016, Nature Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/srep31245
  40. Mörner, N-A (2016). Rates of Sea Level Changes — A Clarifying Note, by Nils-Axel Mörner, International Journal of Geosciences, Vol.7, No.11, Nov. 2016, pp. 1318-1322. doi:10.4236/ijg.2016.711096
  41. Mörner, N-A (2017). Sea Level Manipulation, by Nils-Axel Mörner, International Journal of Engineering Science Invention, Vol.6, No.8, Aug.2017.
  42. Parker, A & Ollier, C (2019). Pacific sea levels rising very slowly and not accelerating. Quaestiones Geographicae 38(1), Bogucki Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Poznań, pp. 179-184. doi:10.2478/quageo-2019-0007.
  43. Plus, according to news reports, several papers suppressed by the New South Wales, Australia government. [1] [2&2b]  (Plus commentary here and here.)

Here's another list of peer-reviewed papers reporting the lack of measurable acceleration in rate of sea level rise:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#Sea

Note: Among the most extreme predictions of accelerated sea level rise are those from German climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf.

 

How long should an LTT† sea level record be?

AMO index showing 60-year periodicity Multidecadal oscillations in regional sea levels mean that a minimum of 50-60 years of sea level data is required to establish a robust  †Long Term Trend (LTT). See:

  1. Schlesinger, M. & Ramankutty, N. (1994), An oscillation in the global climate system of period 65-70 years. Nature, Vol. 367, pp. 723-726 (24 February 1994), doi:10.1038/367723a0 (p.1 is here)
  2. Douglas, B. (1995). Global sea level change: Determination and interpretation. Reviews of Geophysics 33(S1): doi:10.1029/95RG00355. issn: 8755-1209.
  3. Douglas B (1997). Global Sea Rise: a Redetermination, Surveys in Geophysics, Vol. 18, No. 2-3 (1997), 279-292, doi:10.1023/A:1006544227856.
    Excerpt: "It is well established that sea level trends obtained from tide gauge records shorter than about 50-60 years are corrupted by interdecadal sea level variation..."
  4. Mitchell W, Chittleborough J, Ronai B, and Lennon G W (2000), Sea Level Rise in Australia and the Pacific, in the Proceedings of the Pacific Islands Conference on Climate Change, Climate Variability and Sea Level Rise, Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF), 3-7 April 2000.
    (See p.2; excerpt: "...it is scientifically unreasonable to consider historic records less than several decades to yield realistic estimates of sea level trends.")
  5. Klyashtorin, L. (2001), UN FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 410: Climate Change and Long-Term Fluctuations of Commercial Catches - The Possibility of Forecasting, ISBN 92‑5‑104695‑6, ISSN 0429‑9345, 86 pp. (see p. 5)
  6. AMSAT Pacific Country Report on Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State, Kiribati, June 2002, National Tidal Facility - Australia. See especially p.8. See also Willis Eschenbach's related analysis (of Tuvalu) here or here.
  7. Knight, J.R., et al (2005), A signature of persistent natural thermohaline circulation cycles in observed climate, Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L20708. doi:10.1029/2005GL024233. (Discusses the approximately 65-year Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [AMO].)
  8. Klyashtorin, L., and Lyubushin, A. (2007), Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity, VNIRO Publishing, 2007. 224 p. ISBN 978-5-85382-339-6.
  9. Jevrejeva, S., J. C. Moore, A. Grinsted, and P. L. Woodworth (2008), Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago? Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08715, doi:10.1029/2008GL033611 (see p. 3).
  10. Zervas, C. (2009), NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 053, Sea Level Variations of the United States, 1854 - 2006 (see p. xiii). This report is also a great resource with in-depth information about determination of sea-level trends from tide gauge measurement records.
  11. Frolov, I., et al (2010), Climate Change in Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas: Centennial Ice Cover Observations. Springer Science & Business Media, 2010. ISBN: 354085875X, 9783540858751. (The abstract notes an evident 60 year cycle, and Section 2.4 discusses it.)
  12. Knudsen, N.F., et al (2011), Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years. Nature Communications 2, Article number: 178 (2011), doi: 10.1038/ncomms1186.
  13. Scafetta, N. (2012), "...an interval of just 30 years is the worst that can be chosen because it is half 60-year cycle, and it happened that for SLR the period 1975-2005 had this 60-year cycle during its warming phase (the temperature warming phase was about 1970-2000). So, if you fit the last 30-40 years you get an overestimation of the real trend." [private communication]
  14. Chambers, D., Merrifield, M.A., and Nerem, R.S. (2012). Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level? Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2012GL052885 (and two related articles)
  15. Baart, F., et al (2012). The Effect of the 18.6-Year Lunar Nodal Cycle on Regional Sea-Level Rise Estimates. Journal of Coastal Research Volume 28, Issue 2: pp. 511-516. doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1.
  16. Woodworth, P.L. (2012). A Note on the Nodal Tide in Sea Level Records. Journal of Coastal Research Volume 28, Issue 2: pp. 316-323. doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00023.1.
  17. Lüdecke H-J, Hempelmann A, & Weiss C O (2013). Multi-periodic climate dynamics: spectral analysis of long-term instrumental and proxy temperature records, Clim. Past, 9, 447-452, 2013, doi:10.5194/cp-9-447-2013, and related article.
  18. Scafetta, N (2013b). Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews. 126, 321-357. (pdf) doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.08.008.
  19. Scafetta, N (2013c). Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs. Energy & Environment. 24(3-4), 455-496. (pdf) doi:10.1260/0958-305X.24.3-4.455.
  20. IPCC AR5 Chapter 3 (2013), Rhein, M., et al: Observations: Ocean. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.010. Excerpt: "A long time-scale is needed because significant multidecadal variability appears in numerous tide gauge records during the 20th century. The multidecadal variability is marked by an increasing trend starting in 1910-1920, a downward trend (i.e., leveling of sea level if a long-term trend is not removed) starting around 1950, and an increasing trend starting around 1980."
  21. Parker, A (2014). Minimum 60 years of recording are needed to compute the sea level rate of rise in the Western South Pacific. Nonlinear Engineering, ISSN (Online) 2192-8010, ISSN (Print) 2192-8029, doi:10.1515/nleng-2013-0011.
  22. Wenzel & Schröter (2014). Global and regional sea level change during the 20th century. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans. (See the Concluding remarks.) doi:10.1002/2014JC009900.
  23. Also, Scafetta N (2014), above.
  24. Gervais, F. (2016). Anthropogenic CO2 warming challenged by 60-year cycle. Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 155, April 2016, 129-135. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.02.005.
  25. WUWT/Javier (2018). The 60-year oscillation revisited. (Internet)

Also, Alan Cheetham has an informative web page about various apparent climate-related cycles of approx. 55 to 65 years duration.

 

Science

“What passes for science includes opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups. This is not science.”  Climatologist John Christy, Sept. 20, 2012

photo of cherries being picked What a mess!

 

The Scientific Method is what distinguishes “science” from other types of study. It is an algorithm or process for investigating the physical world. Here's how it is supposed to work, in seven steps:

  1. The scientist observes the available data.
  2. He formulates an hypothesis (or perhaps several plausible tentative hypotheses) to explain the observations.
  3. He derives testable predictions from the hypothesis.
  4. He devises experiments or observations to test the predictions.
  5. He does the experiments or makes the observations.
  6. If the test results match the predictions, he cries “eureka!” and publishes. He can now properly call his hypothesis a scientific theory or theoretical model. He publishes it along with his data and detailed calculations, so that other scientists can reproduce and verify his work.
  7. If the test results fail to match the predictions, the theory is said to be “falsified,” so he discards or revises it and starts over at step 2, with the new observations or experimental results added to the body of available data.

 

Step 7 is the test of a scientist's integrity. If, instead of discarding or revising falsified theories or models, a disappointed researcher revises the data, to make it fit his predictions, he's no scientist worthy of the name.

“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it disagrees with experiment [or nature, or experience, or observation], it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”
- Richard Feynman (1964)

Unfortunately, much of what passes for “science” these days fails that test. Here is some recommended reading:

  1. What is Science?, by Richard Feynman, 1966.
  2. Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman, 1974. (This part is especially relevant to climatology.) (h/t Simon)
  3. Getting Along Without Doomsday, by Bryan Magee, 1975. (h/t Prof. Thayer Watkins)
  4. Dickersin K, et al (1987) found that pharmaceutical trials with positive results were more likely to be published than trials with negative results. That's just one example of a much broader “publication bias” problem: when researchers find the results they're hoping for, they publish; otherwise, they often don't. For example, when climatologists Church & White examined three sets of tide-gauge records of sea-level measurements for evidence of acceleration (2006, 2009 & 2011), they found evidence of slight post-1900 acceleration in two of them (2006 & 2011), but slight deceleration in the third (2009). Guess which one did not have a paper published about it?
  5. The Earth Is Round (p < .05), by Jacob Cohen, December 2004, American Psychologist Vol. 49, No. 12, 997-1003.
    This paper is also included as Chapter 2 of the book, What If There Were No Significance Tests, edited by Lisa L. Harlow, Stanley A. Mulaik & James H. Steige.
  6. Aliens Cause Global Warming, by Michael Crichton, 2003.
  7. The Peer Review System: Is Climate Science Politically Corrupt? by John L. Daly, 2004.
  8. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, by John P. A. Ioannidis, 2005. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.
  9. A Junk Science Christmas Carol, Steven Milloy, Fox News, 22 December 2005.
  10. The Wegman Report, 2006, highlights, and an article.
  11. Revisiting Chamberlin: Multiple Working Hypotheses for the 21st Century, by Louis P. Elliott and Barry W. Brook, 2007. BioScience, Volume 57, Issue 7, 608–614. (“Chamberlin: Multiple Working Hypothesis” is a reference to this 1890 paper.) doi:10.1641/B570708.
  12. Cereal-induced gender selection? Most likely a multiple testing false positive, by Stan Young, Heejung Bang & Kutluk Oktay, 2008.
  13. A Dirty Dozen: Twelve P-Value Misconceptions, by Steven Goodman, Seminars in Hematology, 2008 Jul;45(3):135-140. doi:10.1053/j.seminhematol.2008.04.003. Erratum in Semin Hematol 2011 Oct;48(4):302.
  14. Tricking Yourself Into Cherry-Picking, by Lucia Liljegren, 2009. ↑
  15. How Science Will Get Rid Of The AGW Dogma, by Maurizio Morabito, 2009.
  16. Short Circuiting the Scientific Process — a Serious Problem in the Climate Science Community, by Roger Pielke Sr., June 8, 2009
  17. Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions? by Prof. Richard S. Lindzen, Global Research, 30 November, 2009.
  18. Towards understanding the paleocean, by Carl Wunsch, 2010, Quat. Sci Rev. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.05.020 See also the discussions here: The perils of ‘near-tabloid science’, and on WUWT. ↑
  19. Deming, data and observational studies: A process out of control and needing fixing, by Stan Young & Alan Karr, 2011.
  20. Scientific Heresy, RSA 2011 Angus Millar lecture, by Matt Ridley.
  21. Trust Your Science? Open Your Data and Code, Victoria Stodden, Amstat News, American Statistical Association, July 2011 (or pdf).
  22. Science publishing: The trouble with retractions, Nature 478, 26-28 (2011), doi:10.1038/478026a (or pdf), and blog discussion.
  23. What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe, a TED Talk by Dr. Ben Goldacre, April 2012.
  24. Replication studies: Bad copy, Ed Yong, Nature Vol. 485, pp. 298-300 (17 May 2012), doi:10.1038/485298a. This was one of the articles featured in Nature's 2013 Special Report: Challenges in Irreproducible Research.
  25. Open Your Minds and Share Your Results (editorial), Nature 486, 441 (28 June 2012) doi:10.1038/486441a, and discussion.
  26. Trust-me science, by Stan Young, 2012.
  27. A textbook example of groupthink, by Paul MacRae, 2012.
  28. Statistical Follies and Epidemiology, a lecture by William Matthew ("Matt") Briggs, Ph.D., 2012.
  29. How a scientist becomes a con man, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, NY Times Magazine, 2013, and commentary by Bruce Webster, Geoff Brown, and Janet Stemwedel (and part two).
  30. Redefine misconduct as distorted reporting (how to cope with an epidemic of scientific misconduct), Daniele Fanelli, Nature Vol. 494, p. 149 (14 February 2013), doi:10.1038/494149a.
  31. Opinion: A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing, Edward Archer, The Scientist, Oct. 22, 2013. (Discussion here.)
  32. Revised standards for statistical evidence, Valen E. Johnson, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, Oct. 9, 2013 (print Nov. 11, 2013), doi:10.1073/pnas.1313476110. (See also the discussion at WUWT, esp. Prof. Robert G. Brown's comment here, and the article in Nature here.)
  33. Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab, The Economist, Oct. 19, 2013 (or here).
  34. Scientific Groupthink and Gay Parenting, Richard E. Redding, adapted from Politicized Science, Society, Vol. 50, Issue 5, pp. 439-446 (October 2013), doi:10.1007/s12115-013-9686-5.
  35. The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age, Timothy H. Vines, et al, Current Biology, Dec. 19, 2013, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014. Discussions here and here.
  36. The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness, The Guardian, 18 January, 2014.
  37. A Finger On the Scales, by Kevin W. Glass, Townhall.com, Jan. 25, 2014.
  38. Modelling the effects of subjective and objective decision making in scientific peer review, Park, Peacey & Munafò, Nature Vol. 506, pp. 93-96 (6 February 2014), doi:10.1038/nature12786. The paper is paywalled, but I contacted one of the authors, and he kindly sent me a copy. Here are a few quotes.
  39. To make science better, watch out for statistical flaws, by Tom Siegfried, ScienceNews, 7 February 2014. (See also the discussion at WUWT.)
  40. Scientific method: Statistical errors, Regina Nuzzo, Nature Vol. 506, pp. 150-152 (13 February 2014), doi:10.1038/506150a. "P values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume."
  41. AAAS on reproducibility — 'a cornerstone of science', by Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat blog, 10 June, 2014
  42. Not all science is created equal, by John Ioannidis, Chemistry World, 16 October 2014.
  43. Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma? by Richard Horton, The Lancet, Volume 385, No. 9976, p.1380, 11 April 2015. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60696-1. “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
  44. Science is often flawed; It's time we embraced that, by Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman, Vox, 13 May 2015. (See also a related story about how the biggest news in Social Science in 2014 turned out to be fraudulent.)
  45. Science publication is hopelessly compromised, say journal editors, American Council on Science and Health, 19 May 2015, and related video.
  46. I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How. by John Bohannon, io9, 27 May, 2015. There's some discussion and background information on WUWT here & here, and on RetractionWatch here & here, and similar hoaxes.
  47. Types of Bias and How To Avoid Bias In Data Science. By Enda Ridge, on his guerrilla-analytics.net blog, 15 July, 2015.
  48. Peer Review: Definitive Truth or Suboptimal Standard? Four Views. By Tom Birkland, Barbara Oakley, Joann Keyton and John Staddon, Pope Center Commentaries, 29 July, 2015.
  49. Registered clinical trials make positive findings vanish, by Chris Woolston, Nature 524, 269 (20 August 2015), doi:10.1038/524269f. “The launch of the clinicaltrials.gov registry in 2000 seems to have had a striking impact on reported trial results, according to a PLoS ONE study…” [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132382, 5 August 2015].
  50. Let's just try that again, The Economist, 6 February 2016. “Reproducibility should be at science's heart. It isn't. But that may soon change.”
  51. Cleaning up bad science, The National, CBC News, April 18, 2016 (13:20 news documentary). “Beall's List” of apparently predatory scholarly journals and publishers (mentioned in the documentary) is here: https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
  52. Climate Alarmism and the Muzzling of Independent Science, by Leo Goldstein (a/k/a Ari Halperin), American Thinker, April 21, 2016.↑
  53. Climate science might become the most important casualty of the replication crisis, by Larry Kummer, WattsUpWithThat, April 22, 2016.↑
  54. Scientific Regress, by William A. Wilson, First Things, May 2016.
  55. Presenting One of the Most Humiliating Academic Mistakes Ever, by David French, National Review, 9 June, 2016. Also, Epic Correction of the Decade, by Steven Hayward, PowerLine Blog, 8 June, 2016. Their topic is this erratum: doi:10.1111/ajps.12216 in the American Journal of Political Science.
  56. From the August 2016 University of Virginia Board of Visitors Retreat comes The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists, by Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer, and Brian Resnick, 14 July 2016.
  57. Science in the age of selfies, by Donald & Stuart Geman, PNAS, 23 August 2016, Vol. 113, No. 34, 9384-9387. doi:10.1073/pnas.1609793113
  58. The natural selection of bad science, by Paul E. Smaldino & Richard McElreath, Royal Society Open Science, 21 September 2016. doi:10.1098/rsos.160384. The Guardian has a surprisingly good article about it, and there's a good discussion on WUWT.
  59. In January, 2017, Science and Nature reported that multi-milllion dollar effort, by “The Reproducibility Project” at the University of Virginia's Center for Open Science, to reproduce five major cancer biology studies, found that only two of them were reproduceable. The BBC has a typically garbled article about it. ↑
  60. Nine Causes of Scientific Decline in American Academia, by Leo Goldstein, American Thinker, February 25, 2017. ↑
  61. Beware of spurious correlations, such as the Secret of Climate.
  62. RetractionWatch.com has a seemingly endless stream of cautionary tales about science gone wrong.
  63. Australians Jo Diong and Marty Héroux have created a useful new (2016) web site called ScientificallySound.org, with resources for scientists interested in doing scientifically sound research.
  64. Physicist Richard Muller discussed scientific objectivity in his answer to a Quora question.↑
  65. The Brussels declaration on ethics & principles for science & society policy-making, a “Twenty-point plan for science policy,” was announced on January 19, 2017 in Nature 541, 289. doi:10.1038/541289a. The authors also released an accompanying “policy-making manifesto,” which Judith Curry discusses here. ↑
  66. Seven Costs of the Money Chase: How Academia's Focus on Funding Influences Scientific Progress, by Scott Lilienfeld, Association for Psychological Science, Oct. 2017. ↑
  67. Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science (or here), (pdf here or here), a report of the National Association of Scholars, by David Randall and Christopher Welser, April 2018. See also several related reports & documents here, and discussions here & here.↑
“The most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is, 'I do not know.'”  Jack B. Sowards (screenwriter), voiced by Lt Cdr Data (Brent Spiner).

Here's another excellent list of articles about the troubled state of what passes for "science" these days: http://skepticalswedishscientists.wordpress.com/scientific-method/

Cartoon by Hilda Bastian

 

Other

  1. U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Republican Staff has issued several very informative Reports on Climate Change, the Climategate scandal, and related topics.
  2. Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics to the UK Parliament. The IOP concluded that the Climategate emails "provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law."
  3. GAO Report: Climate Monitoring - NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, GAO-11-800, Aug. 2011 (or here)
  4. Why has there been no global warming for the past decade? - a lecture by Princeton Prof. Wm Happer at UNC, Chapel Hill, NC, Sept. 8, 2014, about the physics of atmospheric greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide (slides, audio recording & supplemental information).
  5. Measurement of sea-level by satellite altimetry is unreliable. Physicist Willie Soon explains the problems starting at 17:37 in this very informative hour-long lecture.
  6. The "97% consensus" myth: Do 97% of experts really agree with the IPCC that human CO2 emissions are causing dangerous global warming? (Not even close!)
  7. Andrew at PopularTechnology.net has compiled a list of over 1300 peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments against climate alarmism.
  8. Pierre Gosselin at the “No Tricks Zone” blog, and Kenneth Richard, have compiled lists totaling 1526 peer-reviewed “skeptical” climate papers published in 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017 (parts 1, 2 & 3), plus many in 2018 (parts 1, 2 & 3).
  9. For information on the 2010-2012 North Carolina Sea-Level Rise political fight, see the sealevel.info Resources page.

 

 

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