Climate scientist admits to focusing solely on global warming in paper about United States wildfires and ignoring other ‘key aspects’ just to get published
- Brown says studies get will rejected unless they ‘support certain narratives’
A climate scientist has admitted exaggerating the impact of global warming on Californian wildfires to get his research published.
Patrick T Brown claims studies about climate change are rejected by scientific journals if they do not ‘support certain narratives’ and they favour ‘distorted’ research which overstates dangers.
He says his research article, which was published last week in Nature and titled ‘Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California’, focused exclusively on climate change and intentionally ignored other key factors.
The US state has suffered extreme wildfires in recent years which have led to loss of life and property. Writing in The Free Press, Dr Brown said: ‘I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature… want to tell.’
Explaining why he did this, Dr Brown, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said: ‘… it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals…
A climate scientist has admitted exaggerating the impact of global warming on Californian wildfires to get his research published. Pictured: The Sheep Fire wildfire burns through a forest on a hillside near homes in Wrightwood, California in June last year
Patrick T Brown claims studies about climate change are rejected by scientific journals if they do not ‘support certain narratives’ and they favour ‘distorted’ research which overstates dangers. Pictured: The Bobcat Fire burning near Mount Wilson in the Angeles National Forest, near Los Angeles, California in September 2020
Dr Brown claimed the journals approach climate change research in the way ‘the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause’ of wildfires, including the devastating fires in Hawaii last month, which killed 115 people. Pictured: Fire rages in Lahaina, Hawaii on August 8
‘And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives – even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.’
Dr Brown claimed the journals approach climate change research in the way ‘the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause’ of wildfires, including the devastating fires in Hawaii last month, which killed 115 people.
However, he pointed out research that showed 80 per cent of wildfires were started by humans.
He said: ‘To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change.’
Dr Magdalena Skipper, editor in chief at Nature, which is based in London, said the journal did not have a ‘preferred narrative’ when it comes to science. She said it had an ‘expectation’ that researchers had used the most appropriate data, methods and results, adding that ‘to deliberately not to do so is, at best, highly irresponsible’.
Dr Skipper claimed when reviewers asked Dr Brown to include other factors which cause wildfires, he argued against it. She said: ‘We are now carefully considering the implications of his stated actions. They reflect poor research practices and are not in line with the standards we set for our journal.’
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