http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/studio/ep-149

Scientific study resubmitted.

An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie Gallant, Steven Phipps and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.

The manuscript has been re-submitted to the Journal of Climate and is being reviewed again.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/page/JCLI-D-11-00649

“Due to errors discovered in this paper during the publication process,

it was withdrawn by the authors prior to being published in final form.”

[h/t Jean S. at Climate Audit]

Has Retraction Watch gotten any straight info from the journal or the authors about the genuine status of this paper? Why were they not able to salvage it in 2 months, when they previously announced that they expected to re-submit by the end of July, which was the deadline for being included in the IPCC’s AR5 process? (and which was a stated goal of the Gergis et al. project announced repeatedly with much fanfare)….. this was supposed to be “the” Southern Hemisphere paleoclimate millenial reconstruction for the Australasian region in the next IPCC report (AR5), according to Gergis. Will there not be such data since they have missed the IPCC deadline for submission?

Aug. 2 announcement on Gergis et al. (2012) on U. Melbourne website

[emphasis added]

1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming
2 Aug 2012, 12.40 PM
Print publication of scientific study on hold

The authors are performing detailed reanalysis of the data for the above paper and will submit the revised paper to the journal as soon as possible, likely before the end of September.

http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/29/mosher-on-the-provenance-of-said-et-al-2008/

It appears that the plagiarized introduction/overview/boilerplate was not willful, merely lazy.

To a disinterested third-party the solution would be to properly attribute the immaterial material thru an addendum.

The reason for the retraction is puzzling. Being climate science, my guess is politics.

Oh well, it’s just a matter of time. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/gergis2012/gergis2012australasia.txt

Here is the message on the official data site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

NAME OF DATA SET:
Australasia 1000 Year Ensemble Temperature Reconstructions

LAST UPDATE: 6/2012 (Removal of reconstruction data due to
withdrawal of Gergis et al. 2012, Journal of Climate.
Original receipt by WDC Paleo 5/2012)

CONTRIBUTORS: Gergis, J., R. Neukom, S.J. Phipps, A.J.E. Gallant,
D.J. Karoly, and PAGES Aus2K Project Members.
IGBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2012-061

http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/AIMS%20Emails%20J.Gergis%20and%20J.Lough%281.1.10-19.6.12%29.pdf

http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1688#comments

Gergis: “we needed to voluntarily withdraw the paper in press with the journal”

There are several extraordinary, disturbing statements in the email letter to co-authors and data suppliers.

This letter reads more like a “cover story” trying to get everyone on the same page for journalist inquiries than any candid effort to ensure the science is done right.

1) Why does she use the word “withdraw” the paper when her senior co-author Karoly pretended the paper was “on hold” (whatever that curious expression means for a paper already published in the journal’s online site)?

2) Why does she know prior to re-analysis of the data that their conclusions will not change?

3) It has been asserted on Climate Audit that with the change of data methods she will not have statistically robust data for more than 8 proxies (not the 22 she claims in the letter linked above), so this bears close attention when they resubmit.

4) Why does she seem to be concerned only to “avoid further negative commentary on the paper” rather than to arrive at scientifically robust results? This does not read to me like the letter of a rigorous credible scientist determined to arrive at the most accurate and statistically robust result, whatever it may be.

5) Why does she pretend (is it credible and will she produce evidence) that she or a co-author discovered the data problem on June 5 independently of Climate AUdit’s comment of the same date drawing attention to the problem?
(Australia of course is one day ahead of North America for a substantial portion of each day, so she may in effect be claiming that they found the problem June 4 in N. American time zones, but where IS the evidence for this claim?)

The suggestion being that the conclusion may partially be the result of cherry-picking. To my best knowledge they have been stone-walled in these requests.

But others may know more details.

To my mind it’s satisfactory that publishing practices are sufficiently flexible to accommodate this particular instance. It’s also not surprising that people are attempting to extract political mileage from this episode!

Notice btw, that re your plea about “…attempt(ing) to divert the discussion here from the important issues in this matter…”, that it was the very first responder on this thread that did the “diverting the discussion”; that’s sadly par for the course when it comes to pretty much any scientific field where there are agendas that benefit from misrepresenting the science.

I do agree with you re press releases which is one of the minor scourges of modern science (along with the huge expansion of junk journals and the metrification of research effort which tends to encourage dodgy practices amongst the less-than-scrupulous). It would be nice if there was a rule that stated that any significant reappraisal of research trumpeted in a press release should be given an equally prominent showing in the sources it was trumpeted….but I expect we’ll wait in vain for such a happy outcome….