A few additional thoughts for now: Some outlets are reporting that I admitted to "manipulating data" or some such thing. This is totally false. Please read the actual text of my piece to understand the nuance of the argument I am making. thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-… Overall, the point I am making is that the easiest pathway to a high-impact publication in this field is to focus on and highlight a climate change impact (even when it is just one driver in a complex, multi-causal system). I used my paper as an example: My paper focused exclusively on a climate change impact, and it was published in a high-profile venue. The editor-in-chief of Nature, Dr. Magdalena Skipper, has argued against my thesis by saying that reviewers asked us to account for other factors and I argued against it. That's not really true. A reviewer asked us about accounting for another climate variable (absolute humidity), and I voluntarily brought up other non-climatic factors in my response. Besides, my claim is not that you don’t have to mention / caveat other non-climatic factors (which my paper did from the outset), my claim is that ALL you have to do is mention/caveat other non-climatic factors, and you are fine to move on. Everything I am describing about my paper is totally conventional and banal. There is nothing about my paper that is unusual. That is the point. So I'm not talking about "leaving out the full truth" in the narrow sense, applied to the paper itself - all the assumptions are laid out in broad daylight. It's the end result of many papers focusing on the climate component that ends up leaving out the full truth when it comes to the message the public receives. As I say in the peer review rebuttal, It IS difficult to account for other non-climatic factors. But that COULD be a reason to reject the paper and disincentivize researchers from submitting similar papers. In an alternative universe where editors and reviewers were not so focused on climate change, we could have gotten reviews along the lines of: "when you make attribution statements, you have to account for the long-term build-up of fuel loads or long-term changes in ignition patterns or these numbers are meaningless. Reject this paper". Reviewers did not say anything like this. In our universe, with the focus so intently on climate change, not dealing with other factors is not remotely a barrier to publication. Also I would argue that it is difficult to quantify these other non-climatic factors in part BECAUSE so much focus is on the climate component - e.g., gridded model results are easily at my fingertips. If more resources and effort had historically gone into quantifying changes in ignition patterns and fuels over time, then those gridded datasets would also be easily accessible and at my fingertips. Dr. Skipper has also provided counter-example papers to show that Nature does not exclusively publish papers of the variety I am describing. Yes, of course, that's true that there are counterexamples. My point is not that it is impossible to publish high-impact papers that deviate from the formula I describe but that it is much harder. I have been documenting this kind of thing for a while: Incidentally, you need to look no further than the COVER of the issue of Nature my paper is in to see another example (below). nature.com/nature/volumes… Look at that cover, read the title of the underlying paper, look at how results are based on implausible high-end emission scenarios (RCP8.5) … this is the kind of thing I am talking about. Getting the cover story entices other researchers to mold their research in the same way because high-impact publications are so valuable. And the end result is that the public gets this firehose of climate doom research results that simply do not include the full picture. Some researchers have started to document the overuse of implausible high-end emissions scenarios in research. pnas.org/doi/full/10.10… I hope that my raising these issues encourages more researchers to document, in a systematic way, other research/publication practices that can lead, in the aggregate, to an inaccurate public perception of the magnitude of climate impacts relative to everything else.
Looking at the top climate-related papers in terms of news and social media mentions sends a clear signal to researchers of what is most likely to get into high-impact journals and get the ensuing media attention. carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-c… carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-c… carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-c…
@PatrickTBrown31 Your article is filled with misleading comments: 👉 most fires are human caused - climate change does not (usually) ignite fires but does make fires more frequent & severe. 👉 heat related deaths are declining - that does not change the fact that the Earth is warming
@PatrickTBrown31 I appreciate the points that you raise, and they can be made independent of your submitted research to Nature. IMHO it doesn't follow to play in to the very narratives you apparently wish to expose by crafting your work to those narratives. I.E. give us the un-doctored version
@PatrickTBrown31 Publications are strongly recommended to ask you, "Are you telling the full truth?" This publication has notes contradicting your narrative. Co-authors of yours are recommended to ask you many questions, as you admit you kept yours in the dark about your "expose."
@PatrickTBrown31 CO2 does not have a significant effect on global climate.
@PatrickTBrown31 Climate scientists, editors, and reviewers, all at once:
@PatrickTBrown31 what do you mean the "results are based on" rcp8.5? the study mentions it only as context and calls it "worst case" then "most pessimistic" nature.com/articles/s4158…
@PatrickTBrown31 I sense that you are trying to "do the right thing." That's commendable. But, in your naiveté you still believe in the system and think that by capitulating a little, you can still "do good." The reality is that the system has been co-opted by people with bad intentions.
@PatrickTBrown31 How would your results/conclusions have differed if you hadn’t felt compelled to fit a particular framing? It seems like you’re saying here that in an ideal world your paper would have been rejected?
@PatrickTBrown31 I’ll just leave this here for those looking for some clarity on this controversy. youtu.be/dXZUXQPqY3k?fe…