On Saturday, 17 May 2014 18:11:23 UTC+1, Ian Bingham wrote:
Prof.Bengtsson of Reading University put under "enormous pressure" for

daring to say that Global Warming may have been exaggerated. I don't carry

a brief for either camp and keep an open mind, but that really is

deplorable. Do we have a scientific community motivated by the spirit of

scientific enquiry, or do we have The Spanish Inquisition? His paper was

rejected because the editor said it contained errors, but that sounds mighty

like a rationalization to me; he just expressed an opinion that was out of

favour. The scientific community has sunk pretty low when that sort of

thing can happen.

What? Where does this analysis come from because it certainly doesn't chime with the reality of scientific life.

Other professionals might want to chip in with their percentages and views, but at a rough guess I'd say that the breakdown was as follows: Only 1 in 3 papers submitted get accepted for publication with only minor revisions; another 1 in 3 only get accepted after substantial rewrites to correct serious criticisms from the peer review process; and the final third - as apparently in this case - never see the light of day at all, because they contained major flaws which the author(s) weren't either willing or able to address. Been there, done that myself for the last one!

That's not to say that the peer review process is perfect - it does make some mistakes as the recent row-back by the BMJ on the paper exaggerating the side-effects of statins shows. But this was actually an error of judgement where the peer review was too lenient on letting a flawed paper pass. IME if the conclusions of a paper are at all controversial then the relevant editor will try hard to give the paper a fair hearing (eg by calling in extra referees if the initial opinion is split) and may well publish against their better judgement rather than be accused of blocking some controversial elements. But the paper still has to stand up scientifically.

To imagine automatically that the Bengtsson paper was rejected for ideological reasons is ill-informed to put it mildly. That really isn't typical of how the scientific process works, despite skeptic propaganda.