A Times front page today claims a leading scientific journal has “deliberately suppressed” dissenting views on the severity of global warming.

But the scientific journal in question has dismissed the claims and taken the unusual step of publishing reviewer comments on the paper, which show reviewers had raised concerns about the quality of the research.

The Times front page claims the rejection of work by Lennart Bengtsson, a scientist at Reading University, by the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) was an attempt to “reject” evidence that “heaped doubt on the rate of global warming.”

But ERL promptly issued a statement strongly dismissing the claims, saying:

“The draft journal paper by Lennart Bengtsson that Environmental Research Letters declined to publish … contained errors, in our view did not provide a significant advancement in the field, and therefore could not be published in the journal.”

A measure of sensitivity

The research is trying to calculate something called ‘climate sensitivity’ – a measure of how much warming we’re likely to see if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles.

The IPCC estimates climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 1.5 to 4.4 degrees for a doubling of carbon dioxide, but scientists can’t narrow the uncertainty any further at the moment.

The Times suggests the journal’s reviewers rejected Bengtsson’s paper on the grounds that it disagreed with the IPCC’s estimate.

The newspaper repeats a reviewer’s comments that the research was “unhelpful”:

“The unnamed scientist concluded: “Actually [Bengtsson’s paper] is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”

But today, ERL said the reviewer’s comments were “taken out of context” and that the editors had far more fundamental concerns with the paper.

The journal has taken the unusual step of releasing the full review comment on the paper cited in the Times. Review comments are critiques of the work provided by independent scientists as part of the peer review process.

In the review comments, the reviewer explains their concerns the paper did not make a enough of a significant new contribution to warrant publication.

The reviewer explains that scientists already know estimates based on the methods employed by Bengtsson don’t overlap fully with those from climate models – that’s why the IPCC gives a likely range rather than a single value.

But the reviewer adds:

“The finding of differences … are reported as apparent inconsistencies … The paper does not make any significant attempt at explaining or understanding the differences … [The paper] does not clarify anything but puts up the (false) claim of some big inconsistency, where no consistency was to be expected in the first place”

This provides the context for the comment The Times piece highlights, which was:

“[T]he simplistic comparison of ranges from [the IPCC reports and other published literature combined with the statement they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”

Dr. Nicola Gulley, Editorial Director at the journal’s publishers, said:

“The decision not to publish had absolutely nothing to do with any ‘activism’ on the part of the reviewers or the journal, as suggested in The Times’ article; the rejection was solely based on the content of the paper not meeting the journal’s high editorial standards”

Professor Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at University College London, told the Science Media Centre:

“In this case the independent reviewers suggested there were flaws in the science – and, even more damning, that it was not original … publishing bad science does not advance the science or the policy relevant discussions at all”.

Far from dismissing the paper out of hand, as the Times suggests, reviewers “encouraged the authors to provide more innovative ways of undertaking the research to create a useful advance”, says the journal. Indeed, one of the reviewer’s comments suggests:

“‘A careful, constructive, and comprehensive analysis of what these ranges mean, and how they come to be different, and what underlying problems these comparisons bring would indeed be a valuable contribution to the debate.”

A non-story?

When a scientific paper is submitted to a journal, it goes to two or three scientists to review. The reviewers are independent experts in the field who have not been involved in the research. They examine the paper and judge whether its methods are robust and its conclusions justified. This is the process of peer review.

Sometimes reviewers suggest minor revisions and a paper is published fairly rapidly. Or reviewers may ask for some major revisions and/or additional information or graphics to be included before it’s fit for publication.

As Dr Simon Lewis from University College London explains, it’s not unusual for papers to be rejected if fundamental flaws cannot be corrected with major revisions, or if the revisions aren’t deemed satisfactory. Lewis says:

“The rejection of a scientific paper becoming front page news is a surprise.  Scientific papers get rejected all the time. In top journals nine in ten papers get rejected; there is nothing unusual about it.”

The ultimate decision on whether a paper is fit for publication rests with the editor, and it’s wrong to “selectively quote” from the a single review comment, adds Lewis.

ERL added today that it is “quite astonished that The Times has taken the decision to put such a non-story on its front page.”

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Update Monday 19th May

UK newspapers have continued to cover this story over the weekend, with the Financial Times and The Guardian reporting on the journal’s statement refuting the Times’ claims.

On Friday evening, Rennart Bengtsson released a comment to the Science Media Centre clarifying that he does not support the Times’ interpretation of his paper’s rejection as evidence of the scientific community’s intolerance of dissenting views. He said:

“I do not believe there is any systematic “cover up” of scientific evidence on climate change or that academics’ work is being “deliberately suppressed”, as The Times front page suggests. I am worried by a wider trend that science is being gradually being influenced by political views. Policy decisions need to be based on solid fact.

Despite Bengtsson’s comments, a follow up piece in the Times on Saturday continued to suggest the scientific community’s is biased against views that fall outside the mainstream, basing its argument on comments reportedly made by King’s College professor Mike Hulme.

And in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, climate skeptic journalist David Rose repeated the Times’ claims that scientists are censoring findings, in a piece headlined ‘Revealed: How green zealots gagged professor who dared to question global warming’. Rose includes neither the statement from Environmental Research Letters nor Bengtsson’s comments in his report on last week’s events.