From the “It’s science Jim – but not as we know it” department. (h/t Foxgoose) Sheesh. Another shedload of 97% consensus, spun to fit Paris COP21. The hubris here is astounding, but not unexpected from these egotistical scientists activists.

Learning from mistakes in climate research

Rasmus E. Benestad, Dana Nuccitelli, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, John Cook

Among papers stating a position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), 97 % endorse AGW. What is happening with the 2 % of papers that reject AGW? We examine a selection of papers rejecting AGW. An analytical tool has been developed to replicate and test the results and methods used in these studies; our replication reveals a number of methodological flaws, and a pattern of common mistakes emerges that is not visible when looking at single isolated cases. Thus, real-life scientific disputes in some cases can be resolved, and we can learn from mistakes. A common denominator seems to be missing contextual information or ignoring information that does not fit the conclusions, be it other relevant work or related geophysical data. In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup. Other typical weaknesses include false dichotomies, inappropriate statistical methods, or basing conclusions on misconceived or incomplete physics. We also argue that science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subject to sustained scrutiny. The merit of replication is highlighted and we discuss how the quality of the scientific literature may benefit from replication.

The article is open access if you want to bother reading it, but it basically says “we are right, you are wrong, and you have the capacity to learn from your mistakes, we don’t make any”.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5/fulltext.html

here’s the methodology in the SI

Click to access 704_2015_1597_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

(h/t to Barry Woods)

UPDATE: a review of some of the papers in the SI show they are targeting some of the cyclomania we’ve seen displayed, which even I reject here at WUWT after intitially examining it. It looks to me like they’ve picked the low hanging fruit.

UPDATE2: At RealClimate, Rasmus Benestad bemoans the fact that this paper was rejected by the first journal they submitted it to.