Adventures in peer review

Peer review is a gatekeeping function.  It's supposed to keep garbage out of the journals.  But if "the science is settled", is everything being excluded really garbage?

 

 I hope not…

via the Air Vent by Jeff Id on 7/18/10

Pat Michaels has a disturbing article in the Wall Street Journal on what is happening in peer review since climategate.  He can no longer publish any papers and has had four blocked since November.   The article was from the 12th but I didn't see it until now.

Climate Research and several other journals have stopped accepting anything that substantially challenges the received wisdom on global warming perpetuated by the CRU. I have had four perfectly good manuscripts rejected out of hand since the CRU shenanigans, and I'm hardly the only one. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, has noted that it's becoming nearly impossible to publish anything on global warming that's nonalarmist in peer-reviewed journals.

Blocking of papers that came to different conclusions from climate journals was one of the central issues of climategate.   The conspiracy to block certain views was openly discussed in the emails, of course the 'review' panels couldn't seem to read them, but whatever.