Climategate 2.0: Wigley, Harvey try intimidating journal editor

Tom Wigley and Dana Harvey thought they had spiked a paper by skeptics Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon — and when they realized they hadn’t…

From the Climategate 2.0 collection, Tom Wigley and Danny Harvey are very unhappy with Climate Research editor Chris de Freitas decision to ignore their “review” of a Baliunas/Soon paper:

…Your decision that a paper judged totally unacceptable for publication should not require rereview is unprecedented in our experience. We therefore request that you forward to us copies of the authors responses to our criticisms, together with: (1) your reason for not sending these responses or the revised manuscript to us; (2) an explanation for your judgment that the revised paper should be published in the absence of our re-review; and (3) your reason for failing to follow accepted editorial procedures.

The e-mail exchange is below.

——————————————
cc: “p.jones”

, mann@virginia.edu
date: Mon, 19 May 2003 16:35:04 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann”
subject: Fwd: Problesm with the review process at Climate Research
to: f034 , Clare Goodess , Mike Hulme

From: harvey@cirque.geog.utoronto.ca
To: mann@virginia.edu, trenberth@ucar.ncar.edu, wigley@ucar.edu,
jhansen@giss.nasa.gov, jto@u.arizona.edu, simon.shackley@umist.ac.uk,
Robert wilby , tim.carter@vyh.fi,
p.martens@icis.unimaas.nl, peter.whetton@dar.csiro.au, c.goodess@uea,
Mike Hulme , p.jones@uea,
PITTOCK Barrie , a.minns@uea.ac.uk,
Wolfgang Cramer , j.salinger@niwa.co.nz,
simon.torok@csiro.au, harvey@geog.utoronto.ca
Illegal-Object: Syntax error in To: address found on bureau6.utcc.utoronto.ca:
To: N.W.Arnell
^-missing end of address
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:12:19 -0400
Subject: Problesm with the review process at Climate Research
Reply-to: harvey@cirque.geog.utoronto.ca
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b)
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from Quoted-printable to 8bit by multiproxy.evsc.Virginia.EDU
id
h3MHF3105779
Dear All:
Tom Wigley forwarded to me recent correspondance over concerns
about another bad paper that was published in Climate Research
(by Baliunus), and suggested that I forward a copy of an email that
we (after some procrastination) have just sent to de Freitas (see
Page 16428 of 33101
below).
I might add that we were both independently informed that the
reviewer’s “were split”. Since both Tom and I were strongly against
publishing the paper, that implies that there were four reviewers,
which of course is highly unusual. We have chosen not to raise
questions about that at this time.
Regards
Danny Harvey
Dear Dr. de Freitas:
We have discovered that we were both reviewers of the paper
Revised 21st
century temperature projections by Michaels et al. recently
published in
your journal (vol. 23, pp. 19, 2002). In our reviews, we both judged
the
paper to be in category d (Publication not recommended) because
of
numerous flaws in the arguments, which we carefully documented.
We now see that the paper has been published almost without
alteration
from the original submission, except for a few added paragraphs
that
either do not address or inadequately address the main objections
that we
raised. The revised manuscript was apparently not subjected to rereview
at least not by us. We find this to be most unusual even if the
authors presented a counter-argument to each of our objections, it
is the
normal procedure among reputable journals for the authors reply to
be
forwarded to the original reviewers for further comment.
We note in this regard that even under the less damning evaluation
category c (Revise and re-submit for additional review), responses
and
revisions should be sent back to the original referees. Your
decision that
a paper judged totally unacceptable for publication should not
require rereview
is unprecedented in our experience.
We therefore request that you forward to us copies of the authors
responses to our criticisms, together with: (1) your reason for not
sending these responses or the revised manuscript to us; (2) an
explanation for your judgment that the revised paper should be
published in the absence of our re-review; and (3) your reason for
failing
to follow accepted editorial procedures.
Yours truly,
Danny Harvey and
Tom Wigley
______________________________________________________________
Page 16429 of 33101
Professor Michael E. Mann
Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903
_______________________________________________________________________
e-mail: mann@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-7770 FAX: (434) 982-2137
[1]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

3 thoughts on “Climategate 2.0: Wigley, Harvey try intimidating journal editor”

  1. Any newspaper is a collection of news stories, features, editorial and articles. A news story provides hard news. It provides information in a straightforward manner. A feature appeals to the emotions. It covers all kind of topics and provides the information in an interesting and easy-to-read manner. A feature tries to entertain while informing. Editorial provide the newspapers point of view. Article, on the other hand, provide the point of views of individual writer for Acai.

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