Japan claims southern ocean whaling had led to 666 peer-reviewed papers, but international court says there are just two

Japan’s commissioner to the International Whaling Commission [IWC], Joji Morishita, sparked consternation on Wednesday when he claimed that Japan had published 666 peer-reviewed papers based on its scientific whaling programme in the Antarctic.

That figure contrasts wildly with the number cited by the International Court of Justice [ICJ] when it halted the Antarctic hunt in March.

In its ruling, the ICJ judges upheld Australia’s claim that Japan, having published just two peer-reviewed papers since 2005, had failed to fulfil its scientific brief. Those papers, Australia added, had been based on data obtained from the slaughter of just nine whales.

The presiding judge, Peter Tomka, said at the time that Jarpa II – the name given to Japan’s research programme in the Antarctic since 2005 – had produced little of scientific value.

“In light of the fact the Jarpa II has been going on since 2005, and has involved the killing of about 3,600 minke whales, the scientific output to date appears limited.

“Japan shall revoke any existent authorisation, permit or licence granted in relation to Jarpa II and refrain from granting any further permits in pursuance to the program.”

The Institute of Cetacean Research, the semi-governmental body in Tokyo that overseas the hunts, did not respond to queries on Thursday, but states that Japan submitted 130 peer-reviewed papers based on Jarpa and Jarpa II between 1988 and 2013.

A list of the papers, their authors, the subject matter and date of publication appear on the institute’s website. The vast majority are either unpublished or appeared in reports for the IWC, not journals that peer review papers before publishing them.

But Patrick Ramage, director of the global whale programme at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the ICJ figure of two is the only internationally recognised assessment of Japan’s scientific contribution.

“That’s a lot of dead whales per paper and a lot of tax subsidies from the people of Japan in return for some poor science,” Ramage told the Guardian from Slovenia, where the members of the IWC are holding their biennial meeting.

“Japan is talking about the quantity of paperwork rather than the quality of peer-reviewed papers. There has been a blizzard of working papers submitted by Japan to the IWC scientific committee, but these are not the same as scientific papers for peer-reviewed quality scientific journals.



“Morishita was making a conscious effort to confuse the committee on this point, but the world court was very clear on this. He was advancing a specious cultural argument, suggesting that Japanese scientists should not be held to recognised international standards.”

According to the cetacean research institute, the aims of the scientific research include improving the management of minke whale stocks in the southern hemisphere, as well as studying the role of whales in the marine ecosystem and the effect of environmental change on whale populations.

An official in the international affairs division of Japan’s fisheries agency said the vast majority of the papers mentioned by Morishita had been submitted to, and closely scrutinised by, the IWC’s scientific committee.

“Even if those papers are not peer-reviewed, committee members can ask questions about their contents and criticise them,” the official said.

Masayuki Komatsu, formerly Japan’s chief negotiator at the IWC, said Japan had submitted a large number of papers to the scientific committee ranging from data on stocks and age structure to pregnancy rates in whale populations.

“Both the ICJ and Morishita are correct,” said Komatsu, now a visiting research professor at the International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development.

“The ICJ is talking about papers that are available to the outside world because they appear in prestigious scientific journals. The papers Japan’s submits to the IWC are not necessarily peer reviewed, but members of the scientific committee all get to see them.

“Japan is not to blame here. Its papers are rejected by scientific journals simply because they are based on data acquired through the killing of whales. That’s why peer reviewed papers in journals are limited in number.”