1/ A great summary! After having peer reviewed many papers in the past, I can't leave this uncommented. There is just too much truth in it. But also many things missing. @markdhumphries
2/ "only one of Einstein’s 300 or so published papers was ever peer-reviewed, which so disgusted him that he never submitted a paper to that journal again."
He was not alone. Nature rejected Kary Mullis PCR paper (Nobel Price awared).
3/ Peer Review is nothing more than "please have a look". It's a basic check, not a quality endorsment. Most papers I received were Chinese low quality papers pushing into high-end journals like Phys. Rev. B or Phys. Rev. Letters. I rejected (or redirected elswhere) most of them.
4/ It was clear that pushing low quality into high-end journals was about reputation and money. It's a quantitative money game, driven by the sick funding process in science. The more I rejected (or redirected elsewhere), the more I received from Phys. Rev. I noticed empirically
5/ Other reviewers may not be critical, so the flooding tactics to the high-end obviously works by being lucky (catching e.g. a lazy "ok" reviewer). For my own papers, I considered such high-end flooding tactic as unmoral to engage in. Nice small conferences are fine too for me.
6/ "much peer review is aggressive, rude, lazy, or just plain bad.".
You nailed it!
We don't get paid for this, so what do you expect? Quality? Most papers are bad, so it's really not fun nor a popular task to proof read. 99.99..% of the papers are not breaking discoveries.
7/ When a paper drops in for review, what is more likely? A) You drop your work or B) you pass it on to the PhD student? At some point, when Phys. Rev. sent too much, I started to reduce, reject or pass on. Checking the "not my field" box was the fastest way out for boring papers
8/ Peer Review is NOT a quality stamp nor a "certification" like mainstream COVID manic media claims.
"Does it stop a plainly wrong or plainly nonsense paper from being published? No"
9/ The article forgot to mention another issue: Rivality between competing groups. Dirty games may be played on the high end front. Rejection in order to publish ahead. At least that's what rumors tell for high impact publications on Moore's law research. Not seen it myself.
10/ Academic integrity and courage at the level of @ConceptualJames@BretWeinstein@peterboghossian@SwipeWright is exceptionally rare. They deserve a big thank you in this sinister "post factual" propaganda times of political science.
12/ The weak point seems to be at the editorial level. Once you get a political agenda pushing admin on such post, it's game over. In science and media. Nice example is @ggreenwald (also a shining star) who resigned from the outlet he co-founded. theguardian.com/media/2020/oct…
13/ Team #DRASTIC has shown us the pathway for the future. It's time to scarp and wrap-up the dead dinosaurs, both in media and science journals.
Ideally we should have a block chain version of an uncensorable version of Twitter for science with a built in pre-print database.
14/ Closing words: "Satoshi Nakamoto" un-reviewed #bitcoin paper provided a solution to a long unsolvable mathematical problem: "The #Byzantine Generals’ Problem". A major mathematical discovery with disruptive impact on society. bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf link.medium.com/8tpn7lYHWgb
London is glowing today. Wide urban heat plume. Not “climate change.” Just real estate and concrete. The effect is visible. Quantifiable. Known. This should be a good study day to quantify UHI in more detail once the IR satellite pictures come in.
2/ We start low tech. Actually nothing more is needed. There is over 6°C urban heat. It's embarrassing to pretend today's 33°C are comparable to 100 years ago. Subtract 6–8°C for UHI and you get... 25–27°C. Welcome back to reality.
3/ Nighttime, Tmin. Watch how they flatten the colors. You’re not supposed to notice the 7°C UHI. We unflatten the colors. Look again: you see it now?
We can also do from SE raw. And we can also show how rural stations look. Frederik does like them. Climate agenda is measured in downtowns of the capitals?
Not sure if it’s normal that amateurs now have to lecture academics…?
The downtown station logs hourly=no need for even Ekholm, no need for re-sampling. Does Frederik even know what we mean? Nothing is adjusted. Also PHA leaves it as is as it only detects breakpoints (not UHI).
Yes. Hausfather & Berkeley Earth are pushing it.
But it’s not a measurement. Not one station shows that.
It’s what you get when you aggregate rot over time.
On the left: 8 pristine USCRN sites. Same y-scale.
Now look what they did.👇
2/ Was wir hier sehen: Die Datenreihe ist ein Komposit (sehr beliebt, wenig seroes, in der Klima-„Wissenschaft“).
Die Messmethode (und mehr) hat sich verändert – von analogen zu digitalen Sensoren. Die Entropie der Nachkommastellen zeigt das – deutlich.
1/ The result is simply wrong.
There are 2 stations there — we can compare.
🟥Red: Carlwood
🟩Green: Gatewick
We clearly see the overshoot.
Moreover: They’re using subhourly spikes (error) from a single, low-inertia sensor.
Total incompetence.
2/ Using TMAX from a low-quality single urban sensor is already peak incompetence.
But they go further — they take the spikes.
Even top-tier stations like USCRN show 2–3°C error at peak forcing.
USCRN uses triple sensors — worst spikes get voted out.
3/ The UK has nothing like the USCRN triple-sensor setup.
So when two nearby stations disagree, the right move is simple:
Discard the implausible one — in this case, Charlwood.
What does the agenda-captured @metoffice do?
They run with the error.
They hoax the public.
ISO9001🤡
Not a high-quality reference site like
Valentia Observatory (Ireland) or h-USCRN sites.
But: Lower urban bias than cities like Kyoto or Tokyo. It starts to show the well known flatliner we see at stable sites.
3/ To see it better, here’s 4 months side by side:
🟥 Kyoto
⬛️ Tokyo
🟦 Suttsu
This is man-made. The T trend is just unrelated to climate. It measures the site and environment change. Suttsu as expected least impacted. But it still is.