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description= It’s easy to construct a persuasive argument, it’s much more difficult to figure out the truth…;
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Text of the page (random words):
erature and coverage of those reports all reinforcing a positive feedback loop how did nature respond to the accusation of having a preferred narrative to me a reasonable dismissal of my criticism would be to say something to the effect of yes the assessment of scientific research is done by people and people have conscious and unconscious preferences that affect that assessment this is an issue that philosophers have grappled with for centuries and is hardly anything novel instead they doubled down on the façade of pristine objectivity saying when it comes to science nature does not have a preferred narrative but what about your coauthors was it fair to them to call into question research that they contributed to i was 100 responsible for molding the presentation of the research in a way that i thought would be palatable to a high profile venue so my critique is only on my own actions not those of my co authors i knew my editorial would be controversial and generate discussion but i did not anticipate the level of negative coverage it would get it was not fair of me to subject my coauthors to the firestorm i regret that quite a lot and i am very sorry to them do you have ideas for reform identifying a problem is much easier than identifying a concrete solution but i d like to work on concrete solutions much more going forward these solutions range from being more technical at the level of the journal to being more broad at a cultural level at the level of journals i think something that would help would be more widespread adoption of preregistering methodologies preferably resembling hypothesis tests this would help reduce the file drawer effect where only the flashiest results make it to publication and subsequent promotion in the media at the level of synthesis and dissemination of the state of climate change i think the bulletin of the american meteorological society s annual state of the climate report is a good model because it reports the state of virtually all relevant climate variables in a systematic consistent way without an effort to seek out and highlighting only the most dramatic changes more broadly i am pushing for changes in attitudes and norms from researchers to institutions to journals and the media my main thrust is simply that research on climate and society should not have such an inordinate focus on identifying and highlighting negative climate impacts at the expense of studying the effectiveness of solutions that can help people today i am interested in hearing ideas and forming networks of people who would also like to see reform in this direction posted in uncategorized 12 comments the not so secret formula for publishing a high profile climate change research paper posted on september 5 2023 by ptbrown31 there is a formula for publishing climate change impacts research in the most prestigious and widely read scientific journals following it brings professional success but it comes at a cost to society this is a version of a piece that is published in the free press this month i published a lead author research paper in nature on changes in extreme wildfire behavior under climate change because nature is one of the world s most prestigious and visible scientific journals getting published there is highly competitive and it can significantly advance a researcher s career this is my third publication in nature to go along with another in nature s climate focused journal nature climate change i have also served as an expert peer reviewer for both journals as well as nature communications and nature geoscience through this experience as well as through various failures to get research published in these journals i have learned that there is a formula for success which i enumerate below in a four item checklist unfortunately the formula is more about shaping your research in specific ways to support pre approved narratives than it is about generating useful knowledge for society in order for scientific research to be as useful as possible it should prize curiosity dispassionate objectivity commitment to uncovering the truth and practicality however scientific research is carried out by people and people tend to subconsciously prioritize more immediate personal goals tied to meaning status and professional advancement aligning the personal incentives that researchers face with the production of the most valuable information for society is critical for the public to get what it deserves from the research that they largely fund but the current reality falls far short of this ideal many will have heard the phrase publish or perish in relation to academic research it is a simple truth that at bottom research is a social endeavor if you do not communicate what you have done to your colleagues your funders and the public it is the same as not having done the work at all the way that research is communicated is by publishing it in academic peer reviewed journals but which journals you publish in makes a huge difference a researcher s career depends on their work being widely known and perceived as important this begins the self reinforcing feedback loops of name recognition funding quality applications from aspiring ph d students and postdocs and of course accolades but as the number of researchers and the volume of research has skyrocketed in recent years it has become more competitive than ever to stand out in the crowd thus while there has always been a tremendous premium placed on publishing in the most high profile scientific journals namely nature and its rival science this has never been more true given then that the editors at nature and science serve as gatekeepers for career success in academic research their preferences exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields they select what gets published from a much larger pool of what is submitted but in doing so they also shape how research is conducted more broadly because savvy researchers will tailor their studies to maximize their likelihood of being accepted i know because i am one of those savvy researchers my overarching advice for getting climate change impacts research published in a high profile journal is to make sure that it supports the mainstream narrative that climate change impacts are pervasive and catastrophic and the primary way to deal with them is not through practical adaptation measures but through policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions specifically the paper should try to check at least four boxes the first thing to know is that simply showing that climate change impacts something of value is usually sufficient and it is not typically necessary to show that the impact is large compared to other relevant influences in my recent nature paper we focused on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior but did not bother to quantify the influence of other obviously relevant factors like changes in human ignitions or the effect of poor forest management i knew that considering these factors would make for a more realistic and useful analysis but i also knew that it would muddy the waters and thus make the research more difficult to publish this type of framing where the influence of climate change is unrealistically considered in isolation is the norm for high profile research papers for example in another recent influential nature paper they calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture however that paper does not mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts temperature related deaths have been declining and agricultural yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change this brings me to the second component of the formula which is to ignore or at least downplay near term practical actions that can negate the impact of climate change if deaths related to outdoor temperatures are decreasing and agricultural yields are increasing then it stands to reason that we can overcome some major negative effects of climate change it is then valuable to study how we have been able to achieve success so that we can facilitate more of it however there is a strong taboo against studying or even mentioning successes since they are thought to undermine the motivation for emissions reductions identifying and focusing on problems rather than studying the effectiveness of solutions makes for more compelling abstracts that can be turned into headlines but it is a major reason why high profile research is not as useful to society as it could be a third element of a high profile climate change research paper is to focus on metrics that are not necessarily the most illuminating or relevant but rather are specifically designed to generate impressive numbers in the case of our paper we followed the common convention of focusing on changes in the risk of extreme wildfire events rather than simpler and more intuitive metrics like changes in the amount of acres burned the sacrifice of clarity for the sake of more impressive numbers was probably necessary for it to get into nature another related convention which we also followed in our paper is to report results corresponding to time periods that are not necessarily relevant to society but again get you the large numbers that justify the importance of your research for example it is standard practice to report societal climate change impacts associated with how much warming has occurred since the industrial revolution but to ignore or hold constant societal changes over that time this makes little sense from a practical standpoint since societal changes have been much larger than climate changes since the 1800s similarly it is conventional to report projections associated with distant future warming scenarios now thought to be implausible while ignoring potential changes in technology and resilience a much more useful analysis for informing adaptation decisions would focus on changes in climate from the recent past that living people have actually experienced to the foreseeable future the next several decades while accounting for changes in technology and resilience in the case of my recent nature paper this would mean considering the impact of climate change in conjunction with proposed reforms to forest management practices over the next several decades research we are conducting now this more practical kind of analysis is discouraged however because looking at changes in impacts over shorter time periods and in the context of other relevant factors reduces the calculated magnitude of the impact of climate change and thus it appears to weaken the case for greenhouse gas emissions reductions the final and perhaps most insidious element of producing a high profile scientific research paper has to do with the clean concise format of the presentation these papers are required to be short with only a few graphics and thus there is little room for discussion of complicating factors or contradictory evidence furthermore such discussions will weaken the argument that the findings deserve the high profile venue this incentivizes researchers to assemble and promote only the strongest evidence in favor of the case they are making the data may be messy and contradictory but that messiness has to be downplayed and the data shoehorned into a neat compelling story this encouragement of confirmation bias is of course completely contradictory to the spirit of objective truth seeking that many imagine animates the scientific enterprise all this is not to say that i think my recent nature paper is useless on the contrary i do think it advances our understanding of climate change s role in day to day wildfire behavior it s just that the process of customizing the research for a high profile journal caused it to be less useful than it could have been i am now conducting the version of this research that i believe adds much more practical value for real world decisions this entails using more straightforward metrics over more relevant timeframes to quantify the impact of climate change on wildfire behavior in the context of other important influences like changes in human ignition patterns and changes in forest management practices but why did i follow the formula for producing a high profile scientific research paper if i don t believe it creates the most useful knowledge for society i did it because i began this research as a new assistant professor facing pressure to establish myself in a new field and to maximize my prospects of securing respect from my peers future funding tenure and ultimately a successful career when i had previously attempted to deviate from the formula i outlined here my papers were promptly rejected out of hand by the editors of high profile journals without even going to peer review thus i sacrificed value added for society in order to for the research to be compatible with the preferred narratives of the editors i have now transitioned out of a tenure track academic position and i feel liberated to direct my research toward questions that i think are more useful for society even if they won t make for clean stories that are published in high profile venues stepping outside of the academy also removes the reservations i had to call out the perverse incentives facing scientific researchers because i no longer have to worry about the possibility of burning bridges and ruining my chances of ever publishing in a nature journal again so what can shift the research landscape towards a more honest and useful treatment of climate change impacts a good place to start would be for the editors of high profile scientific journals to widen the scope of what is eligible for their stamp of approval and embrace their ostensible policies that encourage out of the box thinking that challenges conventional wisdom if they can open the door to research that places the impacts of climate change in the appropriate context uses the most relevant metrics gives serious treatment to societal changes in resilience and is more honest about contradictory evidence a wider array of valuable research will be published and the career goals of researchers will be better aligned with the production of the most useful decision support for society posted in uncategorized 29 comments new article highlighting a conceptual error in the peer reviewed literature that leads to major exaggerations of the influence of climate change on extreme weather impacts posted on august 9 2023 by ptbrown31 brown 2023 climatic change download posted in uncategorized 1 comment overestimating the human influence on the economic costs of extreme weather events posted on february 14 2022 by ptbrown31 estimating the human influence on extreme weather events and their economic costs is relevant to many policy discussions around climate change 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