Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise. Former National Post & Toronto Star columnist, past vice president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Higher Education. Science. Peer review.

Ecologist Allan Savory says students enter university as ‘bright young people,’ but ‘come out of it brain dead.’

January 24, 2022

100s of Published Reports of Post-Vaccine Medical Distress (Part 1)

Peer-reviewed medical journals describe extensive harm linked to COVID vaccines. When does the ‘cure’ become worse than the disease?

January 17, 2022

China: Land of the Anal Swab

Travelers to China are now subject to anal penetration by the authorities.

March 8, 2021

Science, Skepticism, and Irony

An impressive new book about the shortcomings of scientific research is inadvertently ironic.

August 31, 2020

Fooling Us With Climate Trickery

An influential report aimed at business leaders re-labelled an implausible, far-fetched scenario as ‘our current path.’

July 1, 2020

Retracted Papers Written by Journal VIP

The lead author of two retracted COVID-19 papers is editor-in-chief of an Elsevier medical journal.

June 17, 2020

Cancel Culture Hits Medical Journals

Anti-meat experts ask external bodies to suppress rival research.

January 27, 2020

IPCC Expert’s 8 Discredited Papers

Philip Munday’s work falls to pieces whenever someone tries to verify it.

January 15, 2020

Fishy Findings: 100% Replication Failure

Eight fish studies were double-checked. Not one was accurate.

January 13, 2020

Will Trump Smash Academic Paywalls?

US taxpayers pay three times over for scientific research.

December 30, 2019

The Corals That Don’t Exist

Peer-reviewed science is contradicted by the real world.

November 18, 2019

Protecting Society From ‘Science’

Scientific research, published in influential places, can change the world. For ill as well as for good.

November 4, 2019

Retracted Ocean Warming Paper & the IPCC

A new UN report relies on discredited research – and on academics who conceal vital information.

October 14, 2019

Why Academic Hoaxes are Deadly Serious

Tax dollars are being used to brainwash young people with arrant, dangerous nonsense.

July 31, 2019

Hoaxing Academic Journals Now Forbidden

Portland State University says submitting fake papers to journals explicitly to assess their rigour is an ethics violation.

July 29, 2019

Failed Replication of Famous Research Rejected

When scientific journals decline to address their own fake news.

June 26, 2019

Academic Journals: High Stakes, Few Safeguards

If a journal’s decision can make or break your career, its employees wield extraordinary power.

November 28, 2018

Peer Review: Selfie-Sticks & Snobbery

The current system gives some scientific errors high prestige packaging

November 21, 2018

IPCC Pretends the Scientific Publishing Crisis Doesn’t Exist

If climate research is like other research, half of the IPCC’s 6,000 academic citations are dubious.

October 8, 2018

Secretive Blacklists & The Economist Magazine

Reporting on peer review, The Economist misses the elephant in the room – and advocates unjust hiring practices.

July 20, 2018

The Science of Self-Control

Another idea, supposedly confirmed by science, turns out to have little scientific foundation.

May 25, 2018

How Much Plastic is Polluting the Ocean?

Peer-reviewed studies, published six months apart, produce wildly different estimates.

May 18, 2018

How Peer Review is Used to Shut Down Debate

Some inhabitants of the Ivory Tower are using peer review – a process that helps scholarly journals decide what to print – as a shield to hide behind. Delegitimizing public input about publicly-funded science is arrogant and counterproductive.

November 1, 2016

Peer Review Is Bunk

A report I wrote for the Global Warming Policy Foundation was released today. It explains that peer-reviewed research is as likely to be wrong as right. Basing public policy on findings that haven’t yet been reproduced is nuts.

October 27, 2016

Michael Mann’s Peer Review Dogma

Academics insist that peer-reviewed research is sound and that everything else is inferior. But scholarly journals are actually littered with muck.

September 6, 2016

Conflict-of-Interest in the IPCC’s New Chapter 7

As a journal guest editor, IPCC lead author Andrew Challinor approved the publication of 9 research papers that are now being cited as evidence in his IPCC chapter.

March 21, 2014

Don’t Let Your Daughters Grow Up to Be This Kind of Scientist

A new essay in the peer-reviewed literature searches for the secret formula by which to manipulate public opinion.

June 9, 2013

Two Views on Science, Pollution & Pristine Lakes

Canadian greens say lake-destroying research is all about science – but how do we know for sure?

May 6, 2013

A Normal Day in Climate Science

Don’t believe everything you read – especially about the supposed link between global warming and natural disasters.

April 11, 2013

The Workshop Presentation that Never Was

The BBC African temperature exaggeration is worse that we thought. It also has an IPCC connection.

February 13, 2013

Meet ‘One of the World’s Foremost Climate Scientists’

Andrew Weaver: climate modeler, Green Party deputy leader, Greenpeace promoter.

January 25, 2013

The Secret Santa Leak: Translations & IPCC Reaction

The IPCC’s response to the leak of three data sticks is typical of that organization. It expects us to accept its version of reality at face value. Its statement provides no opportunity for the public to draw its own conclusions.

January 16, 2013

Pachauri’s Rhetoric vs Reality

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has systematically misled us regarding the quality and kind of material his organization consults.

November 22, 2011

Landsea, the IPCC & the Union of Concerned Scientists

There’s a link between hurricane expert Chris Landsea, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. That link is James J. McCarthy.

July 5, 2011

Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Critiqued

An opinion piece in Scientific America alleges that, over the long term, a great deal of scientific research turns out not to be true. Independent replication of research findings is apparently far less common than we think.

June 2, 2011

That Wobbly Foundation: Peer-Reviewed Research

Climate activists have long argued that scientific research that has been peer-reviewed is reliable, trustworthy & true.

May 30, 2011

IPCC: Screw the Rules

Last year a committee investigating the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told it to pull up its socks and follow its own rules. This week, the IPCC decided to jettison an important rule instead.

May 17, 2011

The Climate Caper

Written by a senior Australian scientist, The Climate Caper explores some of the reasons why official IPCC science has become so pervasive. For one thing, it’s affiliated with huge government agencies employing large numbers of civil servant scientists.

May 9, 2011

Speeding Tickets and the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has taken the time to write down some rules of the road. But it has never hired any traffic cops.

April 19, 2011

Citizen Audit Anniversary

A year ago a group of volunteers from 12 countries struck a blow for truth-in-advertising. Our audit revealed that 1 in 3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report references are to non-peer-reviewed literature. For years we’ve been told the climate bible relies exclusively on peer-reviewed research.

April 17, 2011

John Holdren’s IPCC Myths

President Obama’s science advisor says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bases its conclusions on source material that has been vetted in excruciating detail. According to IPCC insiders, this is bunk.

February 9, 2011

Climategate 2.0

A recently-released collection of candid insider comments confirms many of our worst fears about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

February 7, 2011

Grey Literature: IPCC Insiders Speak Candidly

IPCC insiders say non-peer-reviewed literature is essential and unavoidable when they write one of the world’s most important reports. Yet chairman Pachauri has, for years, insisted only peer-reviewed material gets used. Why haven’t scientific organizations set the record straight?

January 21, 2011

Missing Documents, Unfulfilled Promises

The InterAcademy Council has been promising since August to release documents associated with an investigation of the IPCC’s policies and procedures. There’s still no sign of them.

December 15, 2010

Should UN Employees Be IPCC Lead Authors?

Koko Warner is a UN employee whose research has been funded and brazenly promoted by the UN in order to advance the UN’s climate change agenda. Now she is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

November 18, 2010

We Trusted Too Completely

Close examination of the climate bible leaves one dumbfounded. Almost nothing we’ve been told about it seems remotely true. Almost nothing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has said – or continues to say – about that document seems connected to reality.

May 24, 2010

Cutoff Dates, What Cutoff Dates?

When the IPCC flouts its own rules outrageously – yet insists it has followed them religiously – its credibility evaporates.

May 10, 2010

The Stern Review Scandal – IPCC Breaks 3 of Its Own Rules

Ten months after the official cutoff date, and well after the expert reviewers were out of the picture, climate bible authors inserted references to the Stern Review into 12 different chapters.

April 24, 2010

Dr. Pachauri, Call Your Office

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly declared that the climate bible relies solely on peer-reviewed source material. This claim is false. Rajendra Pachauri should resign.

April 21, 2010

IPCC Reliance on Grey Literature 30 Times Greater than UK Threshold

The British government says 99% of the sources on which the climate bible bases its arguments should be peer-reviewed. But only 70% are.

April 18, 2010

What’s Left if We Disregard Non-Peer-Reviewed Claims?

The chairman of the IPCC has said that non-peer-reviewed research is so undeserving of the IPCC’s attention it should be thrown “into the dustbin.” Yet on one page of the climate bible, only 17% of the text is backed-up by peer-reviewed research.

April 16, 2010

The Water Cannon of the Climate Debate

The climate bible is the ultimate weapon in the global warming debate. Skeptics are told the experts have spoken and that carbon dioxide is the Great Satan.

April 15, 2010

Climate Bible Gets 21 ‘F’s on Report Card

Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,531 sources cited in the latest version of the climate bible – finding 5,587 to be not peer-reviewed. 21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations’ Nobel-winning report had so few peer-reviewed references they earned an F on our report card.

April 14, 2010

Poll: How Many Non-Peer-Reviewed References?

A poll was held prior to the release of our citizen audit findings. That project tallied up the number of climate bible references which involve peer-reviewed sources. (The public has long been told all references are to such material, yet we discovered 1/3 are not.)

April 10, 2010

Does the IPCC Prefer Grey Literature to Peer-Reviewed?

Economist Richard Tol has written a series of blog posts regarding, among other concerns, the IPCC’s apparent use of non-peer-reviewed literature to neutralize peer-reviewed research findings.

March 23, 2010

Help Audit the UN Climate Report – Crowdsourcing Project

In this blog post, I invited people to help me examine the references relied upon by the climate bible. Five weeks later, we delivered a report card in which 21 of 44 chapters of the climate bible received an ‘F’.

March 8, 2010

The Great Peer-Review Fairy Tale

The chairman of the IPCC has repeatedly told the world the climate bible relies solely on peer-reviewed scientific literature. He is wrong.

March 6, 2010

Almost Half Non-Peer-Reviewed

Despite vigorous protests from its own expert reviewers, 42% of the documents cited in one chapter of the climate bible are grey literature rather than peer-reviewed.

March 4, 2010

What She Said About the Climate Bible 3 Months Ago

If the climate bible includes significant mistakes, if it uses newspaper & magazine articles to make its case, if it relies on literature generated by activist organizations – then it is rather a different animal from the uber-respectable paragon of virtue so many journalists have described. Bamboozled by the PR machine that is the IPCC, they’ve passed along bad information to the public.

February 2, 2010