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AGU Statement on Peer Review and Scientific Publishing
February 2010
A Message from AGU's President
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams, December 1770
In his op-ed piece titled “How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus” (Wall Street Journal, 17 December 2009), Patrick Michaels called into question the integrity of the scientific review process in a scholarly journal published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). As president of AGU, I want to set the record straight: Michaels' insinuations about AGU publishing and his premise that the peer review process can be systemically manipulated are not supported by the facts.
Hacked e-mails stolen from computers at the Climate Research United of the University of East Anglia showed several highly respected mainstream climate scientists grousing about an associate editor of AGU's journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) because of an article he published. In a stunning leap of bad faith, Michaels implies that the editor left his position a year after publishing the controversial article because those scientists somehow succeeded in getting rid of him. Michaels then represents this as evidence of a small number of individuals successfully controlling the peer review process over a period of years.
The facts in this case are that James Saiers of Yale University simply rotated out of his GRL associate editorship on schedule at the end of his three-year term. He was not forced out. Prior to his term as GRL associate editor for hydrology and biogeosciences, Saiers was associate editor of another AGU journal, Water Resources Research. He has held this post again since 2007.
Michaels paints a very unrealistic picture of how the peer review process works at AGU. The facts are that scientific manuscripts are sent to an editor who then distributes them to a set of qualified reviewers. These reviewers evaluate the quality of the science based on specific criteria related to whether or not the scientific evidence supports the conclusions of the paper. The editor considers the evaluations of the peer reviewers and then makes the final decision regarding publication of the paper.
All of the highly respected scientists who serve as AGU editors are charged with giving unbiased consideration to manuscripts offered for publication. They are required to be independent-minded and even-handed. They are also expected to attract innovative, high quality science that has the potential to open up new avenues of research.
Who are these editors? They are experts in their fields who volunteer or are nominated to serve by their peers. A search committee reviews applications, conducts interviews, and makes selections based on candidates’ scientific, editorial, and managerial qualifications. Final appointments are made by the president of AGU.
AGU is, and always has been, firmly committed to maintaining the highest standards of publishing excellence, including the objectivity and integrity of the peer review process for all its publications. We do not censor the authors of papers submitted to our journals or the editors of those journals. In the area of climate research, AGU will continue to publish excellent, peer-reviewed scientific findings regardless of whether they appear to support or question prevailing theories.
From the broader perspective of scientific publishing in general, history shows that Michaels' premise that a few scientists could skew peer reviewed literature toward a particular bias is false. The first American peer-reviewed journal, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, was published in 1838. Since that time the peer review system has successfully supported scientific advancement over a period of 170 years. Much research has been published on the peer review process itself, verifying time and again that it works.
Disagreement among scientists is part of the energy that moves inquiry forward. By encouraging and publishing the full range of well researched and well reasoned viewpoints, scientific publishing becomes self-policing. Over time the best science prevails.
Michaels' op-ed reflects a political strategy to sway popular opinion without regard for facts or the enormous body of scientific evidence that has accumulated with respect to climate change. The point is to get one's opinion, backed by whatever dubious evidence one can muster, published in highly influential publications such as the Wall Street Journal where it will be taken as some form of “truth.” Once that is accomplished, facts and informed opinion are lost in a windstorm of controversy — exactly as the author intended.
Sadly, recent polls indicate this strategy is succeeding relative to climate change research. The result is damaging to the entire scientific community and is a disservice to the public.
Timothy L. Grove
President-American Geophysical Union
Professor-Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Text of Letter to the Editor Submitted to and Published by the Wall Street Journal
Saturday/Sunday, 9–10 January 2010. The letter is no longer available online.