(UPDATED*) USA Today: Plagiarism trouble, and retraction, for paper that critiqued global warming science
It was news to these eyes to read this morning that a favorite citation among climate contrarians on the web is a paper published several years ago finding signs of collusion – hence skewing of conclusions – in the global warming literature – the famed hockey stick to be specific. But that’s what USA Today‘s Dan Vergano tells us, while telling us that the small journal Computational Statistic and Data Analysis has now retracted it. Not that this will truncate its use among doubters – might in fact inflame suspicion that the whole global warming thing is a crock, and its backers are themselves in collusion. The retraction follows evidence that substantial portions were lifted from other publications without attribution, assertions that now appear to have been deemed persuasive by the journals’ reviewers. The authors defense, it says here, is that if passages got lifted, they didn’t do it themselves and they thought somebody on their team wrote them.
USA Today gave this a good ride today:
- Dan Vergano : Climate study gets pulled after charges of plagiarism ; Just the facts of it.
- Dan Vergano / ScienceFair blog: Retracted climate critics’ study panned by expert ; A compilation of analysis of the study by a person familiar with the authors and their technique of analysis. This also includes telling examples of emails exchanged during the time that the paper got unusually fast approval at the journal in the first place.
It’s hard to independently judge the merits of the accusation of an ethical lapse. But in any case the on line ScienceFair analysis is a suberb example of the added value print reporters can provide via blog-style remarks that enrich an initial news story.
This retraction is the second shoe to drop on the case. When bells began to ring among researchers over what looked like plagiarism, Vergano reported that, too, in November last year.
*UPDATES – Several other outlets promptly followed with their own accounts.
- Ars Technica – John Timmer: Climatology-Defying Paper Yanked for Plagiarism; A piece with irony, narrative, and insight – or at least, having none myself hence not being sure, what reads convincingly like insight. Also, further tribute here to Vergano’s lead in following the story in press.
- Live Science – Benjamin Radford: Allegedly Plagiarized Climate Study Won’t Stifle Debate: Dunno why the hed says ‘allegedly.’ Its point is that even if all the accusations of ethical and other lapses hold up, the now-retracted paper’s traction among contrarians and the their Inhofes and Bartons and other-such allies in congress won’t fade much. Radford is deputy ed. of Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, a pub. with deep familiarity with collective, recursive belief. That is, in many crowds convinced of a conspiracy, arguments marshalled against its reality merely demonstrate how deep the conspiracy’s roots go (Sometimes, one must know, that is the case. But usually not. It’s like the Galileo argument – he was persecuted, he was right. I’m persecuted, ipso factoidum idioticus, I must be right too.)
- Mother Jones – Kate Sheppard: Another Chink in Climate Skeptics’ Armor ; Sheppard, as has Vergano, has been following this news and links to her previous, damning posting on it. She tips her hat to USA Today’s Vergano too.
- Charlie Petit
