date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:24:40 -0000 from: "Glenn McGregor" subject: RE: Update on response to Douglass et al. to: "Tim Osborn" Tim hello from Kathmandu. thanks for the heads up on the rebuttal of the douglas et al paper. I would like to see it in IJoC as this is where the paper was originally published. I think we can promise a quick turn around time and parhaps you could help negotiate some quick reviews on my behalf. I can of course ask for priority in terms of getting the paper online asap after the authors have received proofs. In confidence I must confess that I think I made a misjudgement in letting the offending paper through as Francis Zwiers was not impressed with the paper having reviewed it but left it up to my judgement which on reflection was misplaced. What I am upset about is how one of the authors (springer?) is misrepresenting the findings presented in the paper and using it as a vehicle to peddle some of his rather far fetched views on climate change. hopefully I should have email over the next couple of days. back in the UK late on the 14th. if you could get the ball rolling on this I would be most grateful let me know how you get on with Ben Santer - emphasise that I will do everything in my power to get their paper online asap. I will hold back the print version of the douglas et al paper until I have the santer et al one glenn -----Original Message----- From: Tim Osborn [mailto:t.osborn@uea.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:39 AM To: glenn.mcgregor@kcl.ac.uk Subject: Fwd: Update on response to Douglass et al. Hi Glenn, I've had some correspondence from Ben Santer regarding the paper by Douglass et al. that I mentioned to you a few weeks ago. He, and a number of others it seems, believe Douglass et al. to be flawed and are formulating a comment/rebuttal. But Ben and his potential co-authors are having some debate over where to submit it... please see the extract from Ben's recent email copied below. My view is that the most appropriate place would be IJC, but they seem to be going against that on the basis of turnaround time, believing that GRL would be significantly faster (theoretically at least, since in practise it will depend upon the favourability of the reviews of course!). But I wondered whether I should attempt to persuade them to go with IJC, being the most appropriate place for a criticism of an IJC paper? To try to persuade them, I would need to indicate what the target turnaround time would be, and also I guess they'd be interested in how long it takes between acceptance and appearance (time to online publication is relatively short these days, isn't it?), and whether specific cases like this can be prioritised? Of course, if you'd prefer to avoid the hassle of dealing with a comment/response then I'll leave them to go with GRL. Anyway, I though you'd want to know about this (of course please treat the fact that a rebuttal is being prepared in confidence), Cheers, Tim >From: Ben Santer > >I just wanted to update you on my progress in formulating a response >to the Douglass et al. paper in the International Journal of Climatology (IJC). >... >It's an unfortunate situation. Singer is promoting the Douglass et >al. paper as a startling "new scientific evidence", which undercuts >the key conclusions of the IPCC and CCSP Reports. Christy is using >the Douglass et al. paper to argue that his UAH group is uniquely >positioned to perform "hard-nosed" and objective evaluation of model >performance, and that it's dangerous to leave model evaluation in >the hands of biased modelers. Much as I would like to see a >high-profile rebuttal of Douglass et al. in a journal like Science >or Nature, it's unlikely that either journal will publish such a rebuttal. > >So what are our options? Personally, I'd vote for GRL. I think that >it is important to publish an expeditious response to the >statistical flaws in Douglass et al. In theory, GRL should be able >to give us the desired fast turnaround time... > >Why not go for publication of a response in IJC? According to ..., >this option would probably take too long. Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK e-mail: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk phone: +44 1603 592089 fax: +44 1603 507784 web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ sunclock: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/sunclock.htm