We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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While Nature had turned the paper down because so many others had already shown the existence of the problem, this referee recommended rejection because no evidence for the problem existed.
– Ross McKitrick, discussing the difficulties of getting sceptical papers on climate change published in climatology journals. Read the whole thing.
Three quick asides:
Firstly, McKitrick is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, and the partner of Stephen McIntyre in many of the papers that have questioned Michael Mann’s hockey stick. Basically, McIntyre is someone of considerable quantitative expertise whose actual career is (shudder) in the private sector (in the mining industry) and who has done the heavy lifting, whereas McKitrick has provided oversight and experience of academia and the academic publishing process. At least, such is my impression. If I have undersold his contribution, my apologies. That said, this doesn’t seem to have helped greatly in getting papers published in climatology journals.
Secondly, this kind of thing seems to have happened a lot with respect to people attempting to take a sceptical line on climate change. Papers have been submitted to journals, relatively neutral referees have come out in favour of publication, but the papers have ultimately been rejected on the basis that they are unsuitable in some way with respect to the journal’s editorial policies. Really, this reveals weaknesses of the peer review process. Ultimately it is the editor of a journal who decides if a paper will be published. If an editor thinks yes, then he will find a way for peer review to support this belief, either by choosing tame additional referees or by overruling negative referees on technical points. If he thinks no, the tactic of changing the referees and/or the terms of reference under which the paper should be accepted is an old one, and one that has been used a lot in this field. McIntyre and McKitrick’s 2004 submission to Nature, which attempted to question the methodology of the Hockey Stick is a classic example. Initially both referees argued that the paper should be accepted, but somehow it was ultimately rejected.
Thirdly, the fact that neither McIntyre or McKitrick are climatologists is highly relevant. I suspect, though, that the argument is about how it is highly relevant. The Global Warming alarmist camp would say that it is relevant because they lack expertise on climatology and/or they are funded by the oil industry, I suspect. The sceptical camp would say that it is relevant because they are not part of a captive clique. The libertarian camp would probably say that it is relevant because they (or at least McIntyre) are not directly funded by the state, and are not being therefore funded to advance a pre-decided agenda. I will leave decisions about the appropriate level of cynicism to the reader.
Link via Bishop Hill
“So you live beyond your means and rack up a bunch of bills you can’t cover. So you go to your rich uncle. He’s tapped out, alas. And tired of supporting you. So he goes to his rich uncle who’s even richer and known for his desire to keep the family name unsullied. But what if he’s tapped out? Those are my thoughts when I read this story that Sarkozy is supporting Merkel in getting the IMF to bail out the Greeks. The IMF is the richer uncle. Eventually the other guy runs out of money. We’re going to have to start borrowing from Mars or Venus soon.”
– Russ Roberts, at the Cafe Hayek blog.
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.
– Cory Doctorow
There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.
– William Gladstone
Repeat after me, you greenie morons … cold kills, cold kills, cold kills … greenies kill. You granny killers should be up for manslaughter.
– The indefatigable Richard North spells out just how much worse cold weather is than hot weather.
“In the 19th century, the British would have answered Mr Riley-Smith’s question “What has trade to do with human understanding” very readily. It has a great deal to do with it, we would have said. Commerce is the main means of peaceful intercourse with other people. It is the circulatory system of the world. It is part of the constitution of liberty which, as the author rightly says, we exported to America. If we have forgotten this, it is we, not the United States who are – both metaphorically and literally – the poorer.”
Charles Moore, writing about what he regards as an interesting but in some ways wrong-headed book about America by Tristram Riley-Smith.
Jack lost his iPhone last night. He has therefore been stuck at home on his Playstation 3 all day.
– An (early twenties, male) customer overheard in a coffee bar in the East End yesterday afternoon. I can understand how the world outside the front door is a scary, scary place if it is just you, completely unaugmented.
The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.
– Lysander Spooner
“By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap.”
– Rod Liddle
As regulars know, I am not Mr Liddle’s greatest fan but when he is on form, he really hits it out of the park, as they say in baseball. The whole piece is an exhilerating piece of invective, all the more delicious in that its targets deserve everything they get.
Gordon Brown must have read Oscar Wilde when he was studying as he has spent his entire career implementng one of his aphorisms in government:
It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes
For this reason, he will be remembered for a very long time
Personally, I’d like to see some Congressmen forced to testify before a panel of car dealers, about the budget deficit’s Sudden Acceleration Problem.
– Instapundit reflects on the travails of Toyota.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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