Thank you for your email of January 23, 2004.

 

We are somewhat concerned about a comment in this email and would like to clarify something regarding the status of our submission. As we specifically stated in our cover letter, we have made two submissions to Nature, a Communication Arising (i.e. the paper to which your email referred) and a separate Materials Complaint, which has been handled by Karl Ziemelis. In your email to us, you referred to our submitted paper as a ‘complaint’, perhaps unintentionally conflating the two. It is important that they be treated in their own categories. We made a submission as a Communications Arising on the belief that it is an “exceptionally interesting or important comment” on an original paper published in Nature (see www.nature.com/nature/submit/gta/index.html #8.) and not merely a “complaint”.

 

In your email, you state that Nature has a policy that “Communications Arising are only published as such if they represent a scientific advance over the original paper”. But in the on-line policies, the term “scientific advance” is not used in connection with Communications Arising, only in connection with “Articles.” The criterion for Communications Arising is the phrase quoted above (“exceptionally interesting or important comments and clarifications on original research papers”). That said, we believe that the elimination of error, especially in such a famous and influential study, is a significant form of scientific advance. Additionally, the effort represented by our short paper goes well beyond the effort typically involved in a “complaint”, including the development of computer programs, compilation of large data sets and careful and patient analysis of these large data sets. In our view, our submission would, in any event, qualify under either criterion.

 

In your email, you state “critical comments such as yours may instead be addressed in the form of a published correction/clarification from the criticised authors, if this is recommended by our referees”, referring presumably to  http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/policies/index.html #10. I find this language hard to reconcile with the procedure outlined in www.nature.com/nature/submit/gta/index.html #8, where a procedure is described for obtaining a reply from originating authors to a Communications Arising. As noted above, this is what we thought would happen. We have put a lot of time and effort into this investigation, and along the way have taken a great deal of public criticism on earlier findings published elsewhere, including some from high-profile scientists and commentators. The present submission is a substantial advance from our earlier findings and serves as a complete response to these criticisms. Although we would have obviously liked to have already responded to these attacks, doing so would have required divulging the contents of our submission to Nature. Thus, at some personal sacrifice, we have let some attacks go unchallenged, so as to allow the Nature review process to operate confidentially. If our findings are correct, the originating authors not only applied incorrect methodology, but their disclosure of methods and data to the editors, reviewers and readers of Nature was inaccurate, and substantially influenced how the paper was received. It would be inequitable if our findings are upheld, but the originating authors are allowed to present a “clarification”, without simultaneous presentation of our findings. Moreover, this potential procedure would be inconsistent with the procedures set out in www.nature.com/nature/submit/gta/index.html #8.

 

It is possible that we misunderstood some of the comments in your email and that you raised a situation which was merely hypothetical, without specific reference to the facts in this particular case. We hope that it is the case. However, in order to forestall any misunderstanding, we wish to make it clear that our paper under review was submitted as a Communications Arising, under the criterion of an “interesting comment”, rather than as a “complaint”.

 

We note from your on-line policies that authors of work being commented on have two weeks to submit a reply and that today is the end of the two week period for Professor Mann’s response. In our cover letter, we suggested some names of independent reviewers. We re-iterate our concern that at least one reviewer be an expert in the appropriate statistics, preferably one who has not been previously involved in the climate change debate.

 

Thank you for your consideration.

 

Yours truly,

 

Stephen McIntyre