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various leading scientists had criticized de Freitas for the way he had conducted himself as editor at
Climate Research , as reported in the mainstream press. 41
Perhaps the single most troubling issue to arise from the Soon and Baliunas affair was that of
apparent editorial malpractice. At the two journals that published versions of the paper, the peer
review process appears to have been compromised to produce a study in the scientific literature that
could be seized upon by those with a contrarian policy agenda. The importance of the integrity of the
editorial and peer review process cannot be overstated. While it is not infallible and bad papers
inevitably get published occasionally, the process is an essential component of the self-correcting
machinery of science. Peer review is a necessary—if not always sufficient—condition for taking the
conclusions of a study seriously. 42
It is particularly pernicious when that process is compromised or co-opted for political ends.
The repercussions of such lapses may be more dramatic in other areas, such as tobacco, medicine, or
pharmaceuticals, where there is a more immediate connection with human health and the toll of
allowing industry-funded ghostwriters to publish distortions in the medical literature can literally be
measured in human lives. However, it is no more acceptable in other fields. In the case of climate
change, the costs to humanity may not be as immediately evident or observable, but the long-term
threat is every bit as real.
A Coordinated Attack
The crescendo in contrarian attacks aimed at our work (and that of other climate scientists) through
the summer of 2003 was no accident. The attacks had a clear purpose: to block an imminent effort in
fall 2003 to pass meaningful legislation to combat climate change. That legislation would take the
form of the Climate Stewardship Act, jointly sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Joseph Lieberman (D-
CT) and John McCain (R-AZ). The bill would require the EPA administrator to regulate greenhouse
gases as well as to set up a market-based cap and trade system designed to curb greenhouse gas
emissions of polluters. In addition to the events recounted earlier in this chapter, yet another attack,
this time focused even more directly on the hockey stick, would be released on the eve of a crucial
October 30 Senate vote.
The attack was launched in a paper released on October 27, published by the very same
controversial journal, Energy and Environment, that had published one of the versions of the Soon
and Baliunas study. 43 The right-wing economist Ross McKitrick was one of the two authors; the other
was Stephen McIntyre of the climateaudit blog, a man who had no publication record in science or
any apparent formal training in areas of science directly relevant to climate. McIntyre billed himself
as a “semiretired minerals consultant”; as disclosed by investigative journalist Paul Thacker, he had
close ties to the energy industry, having served as president of Northwest Exploration Co Ltd. before
it became CGX Energy, an oil and gas exploration company that subsequently listed McIntyre as a
“strategic adviser.” 44
The central claim of the McIntyre and McKitrick paper, that the hockey stick was an artifact of
bad data, was readily refuted. 45 The paper's dramatically different result from ours—purporting an
extended warm period during the fifteenth century that rivaled late-twentieth-century warmth—was
instead an artifact of the authors' having inexplicably removed from our network two-thirds of the
 
 
 
 
 
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