Climate researchers are self-censoring and adapting their research to fit in with the climate alarmist narrative in order to be published in the top journals, a climate scientist whistleblower has said. Writing in the Free Press, Dr. Patrick T. Brown says that he wrote his new paper in Nature according to the approved script in order to get it published, after having previous articles rejected by the top journals for not sticking to it closely enough. Here’s how his FP article begins.
If you’ve been reading any news about wildfires this summer — from Canada to Europe to Maui — you will surely get the impression that they are mostly the result of climate change.
Here’s the AP: ‘Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the “new abnormal.”’
And PBS NewsHour: ‘Wildfires driven by climate change are on the rise—Spain must do more to prepare, experts say.’
And the New York Times: ‘How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox.’
And Bloomberg: ‘Maui Fires Show Climate Change’s Ugly Reach.’
I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn’t close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus.
So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.
The paper I just published — ‘Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California‘ — focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behaviour. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.
This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives — even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.
To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.
Why is this happening?
It starts with the fact that a researcher’s career depends on his or her work being cited widely and perceived as important. This triggers the self-reinforcing feedback loops of name recognition, funding, quality applications from aspiring PhD students and postdocs, and of course, accolades.
But as the number of researchers has skyrocketed in recent years — there are close to six times more PhDs earned in the U.S. each year than there were in the early 1960s — it has become more difficult than ever to stand out from the crowd. So while there has always been a tremendous premium placed on publishing in journals like Nature and Science, it’s also become extraordinarily more competitive.
In theory, scientific research should prize curiosity, dispassionate objectivity, and a commitment to uncovering the truth. Surely those are the qualities that editors of scientific journals should value.
In reality, though, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximise the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.
The media should “stop accepting such papers at face value”, Dr. Brown says, “and do some digging on what’s been left out”. The editors of the prominent journals need to “expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions”. And the researchers need to “start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish”.
Worth reading in full.
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As I’ve written earlier today, why do some studies have an impact and others don’t?
It’s clear the gate keepers are not impartial. They have agendas.
Our society is largely built on the illusion of impartial experts acting in the best interests of society. The reality is that everyone is looking out for their self interest first and foremost.
But who ultimately is pressuring the editors of these journals to follow the Climate Agenda? The editors are looking out for their own interests, but who is threatening their interests?
It’s THE question. How did all this get started and why.
Obviously these days it’s a giant gravy train and lots and lots of people have hopped on and are feeding off it.
But at some point it wasn’t. Somebody or somebodies with power got the ball rolling.
Here’s a theory.
I am beginning to regard these big societal shifting movements as a series of independent interests that begin to align and collude and gather momentum until they becomes an unstoppable force.
A bit like a star forming from pieces of matter until eventually it has enough mass and gravity to produce a nuclear reaction (forgive the amateurish physics).
In the case of climate change, I reckon greens were knocking about agitating for green policies, then the western establishment started to grow cold on fossil fuels because they were increasingly out of their hands and more into hands of “rival” states. Then socialists and communists that are always knocking about probably realised this was an opportunity to bring back more central planning which they love and gives them power. And of course there will b e other interests that have latched on. And they’ve slowly coalesced around this nutty climate change idea and created a powerful unstoppable movement.
I would say this might be a single unifying theory that brings together Delingpole’s bad actors and Toby Young’s random cock up theory into a plausible unifying explanation.
I like it anyway.
There’s a lot of truth in what you’ve said. The one factor you’ve missed out is people who are sincere but misguided/plain wrong. In the case of scientific journal editors if they genuinely believe that we’re face a climate catastrophe they’re not going to publish papers that dispute this as it will weaken the impact of the message they want to send out. However much scientists want to be unbiased and guided only by facts and evidence conformation bias, especially at a subconscious level is hard to overcome.
Sincere but misguided could also apply to a lot of grassroots environmental activists such as JSO. If you genuinely believed some of the more extreme predictions about climate change such as vast areas of the Earth will become uninhabitable and global population will be reduced to 1 or 2 billion people by the end of the century would you not to anything to try and prevent these things? It could even be argued that in order to prevent an apocalypse on this scale communism and a return to 19th century living standards is a price worth paying. Obviously I’m not advocating these things as I know such predictions are complete BS but a lot of people may well be fully indoctrinated and live in a social bubble/echo chamber and have an understandable desire to, as they see it, try to save billions of lives.
Start by reading about the UN thinktank “The Club of Rome”. Then onto the UN agenda of Sustainable Development. None of those politics are a mystery. They don’t even try to hide it. They state clearly what their goals are. They are Eco Socialists hoping to govern the world, control its wealth and resources all based on the idea that fossil fuels are a finite resource and the population of the world is growing with everyone seeking the prosperity that fossil fuels bring. But according to the UN those affluent lifestyles are not possible for us all. Or as they say “Unsustainable”. ——-To get away with lowering living standards to levels deemed acceptable to the eco socialists they need a very plausible excuse, and that excuse is “Climate Change”. Every human activity involves the release of some CO2 and what better way to control all human activity than by controlling that CO2. It allows you to dictate everything humans do. What they eat, what they drive, how they heat or cool their house, if they can fly, if they can drive etc etc….It is as Mrs Thatcher called it “Supra-National Socialism.——It isn’t and never was about the climate which is why the “science” al has to be covered up and lied about.
If government pay you money to look for a purple horse you might not be in too big a hurry to say you cannot find any. ———It really is as crude as that in the so called science of climate change. Science has been corrupted, and we now have armies of government funded data adjusters masquerading as scientists.
In the end it all comes down to money. Join the dominant narrative and hold onto everything or try and tell the truth and lose everything. Unwittingly though, those who ignore the alternative science are condemning their children and children’s children to a miserable future.
With respect, if you leave stuff out of a scientific paper to fit an agenda (ie to get published), you can’t expect the professional journalists to show more concern for truth than you, and clear up after you.
Climate change/net zero is a religious cult pure and simple. You are a believer or a heretic. I’ve made my own mind up and it’s all BS fear porn to gain control. Those who believe in it are dim-witted, guilable, or just desperate for something to believe in.
I was once a true believer in the climate cult. I may of been looking for something to believe in or something to give my life meaning but I don’t want to think I was dim-witted. What I can’t answer is why I managed to break free and discover the truth but so many people don’t seem to be able to do the same. Maybe it’s just luck that I managed to stumble across the right books and later websites/blogs.
Great to see you breaking out of the hive mind Matt. Been there, done that. Just keep spreading the word as best you can. Once you see the climate propaganda for what it is and critically examine each claim and prediction, it is obvious that the real agenda is something else entirely.
It appears dr Patrick T. Brown should look at his own integrity.
I’m trying to get a paper published that basically trashes a lot of the published models. I’ve been told it’s not significant enough to publish by journals.
At the start of the pandemic I read everything I could find on Covid 19 and prioritised the articles in Science and Nature because I thought they would be authoritative. Initially they were. However, it became increasingly obvious the articles were becoming skewed in favour of a universally approved narrative. Scientific evidence is almost always accompanied by a disclaimer regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines regardless of the findings. It has become so obvious as to be laughable.
MSM similarly started off by being open-minded and presenting facts and publishing letters that were starting to question the official narrative.
i now only skim through the mouthpieces of the powers that be just in case the truth should slip out inadvertently, unnoticed by the censors!
Thank goodness the Daily Sceptic and various well informed individuals have managed to keep truthful evidence and discussion alive but unfortunately go unnoticed and unread by most people who stick with the skewed and inaccurate misinformation that is officially approved.
What a sorry state of affairs!
We are being subjected to Propaganda on an industrial scale.
“Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.” We need to add to that …..
Believe nothing you read, nothing you hear and only half of what you see. And question everything.
The Climate Industrial Complex claims certainty where none exists. Whenever did you hear any mention of any uncertainties in climate change science? There are huge uncertainties and we would never know that because it is never mentioned. But ofcourse it has long been obvious that this isn’t science as it used to be where you had a hypothesis and then compared that to observations. This the post modern science.—- It is 95% computer modelling, where bunches of assumptions are chucked into a model and out the other end comes little fantasy scenario’s all based on speculation and guesses for all the things in climate that are poorly understood or simply unknown, which is plenty.——————- Even the most basic parameter in climate change theory called ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) which is the number that determines how sensitive the earths climate is to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is NOT KNOWN. —–So models project warming based on a guess about how sensitive the earths climate is to CO2 and those models are what politicians use as their excuse for public policy around energy and every single aspect of our lives. What we can eat, what we can drive, When and if we can fly, how we heat our homes, etc etc.. It is all based on the idea that we have this “climate crisis” but there is no science at all that supports that idea. What we have here is the greatest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public who think the weather is all changing around them and that they will have to see their standard of living heavily reduced, their central heating and car removed, and flights abroad curtailed etc etc, and some of us actually glue ourselves to the road clamouring for our own impoverishment. ——-It would really be hilarious if it was not so PATHETIC. ——Or as Mark Twain said, “Ah yes science, one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact”. ———When people think some issue or other is all to do with “science”, they tend to just accept that scientists know better than them. They never question it. But the Used Car Salesman knows more about cars than me, however I don’t always buy one from him. I use my own judgment. But what people don’t seem to understand is that computer climate models are NOT science, and they are NOT evidence of anything. There is no evidence of any climate emergency. We are being played.