Deltoid

I thought I recently read that John McLean was not a working scientist, was not affiliated with any recognized research organization. Ah yes, here we go, he apparently has described himself as "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." and "Computer consultant and occasional travel photographer"

Now I'm all for amateurs making and being recognized for contributions, but shouldn't a journal be extra careful about reviewing the work of an amateur? We now see that he cannot understand or admit that his differencing technique is essentially a derivative with respect to time, does not reduce noise, but does eliminate any long term linear trend. This shows a massive gap in math/science background - the background of an amateur.

Has the journal editor issued any sort of mea culpa?

Posted by: GFW | April 3, 2010 1:58 PM

Hey Ben, did you happen to notice that even when the global temperature is very warm for say 3-4 months (like it has been from December thru March) denialists cherry pick a few places where it is cooler than normal and claim that global cooling is happening. Now THAT'S pretty dumb, huh? :) Ever notice that?

Posted by: Robert Murphy | April 3, 2010 5:17 PM

Ben @3, care to speak to McLean et al's idiocy and ignorance? Or is that what you are trying to detract from with a beautiful example of your own idiocy and ignorance?

Sorry to be so blunt, but I've had it with trolls.

Posted by: MapleLeaf | April 3, 2010 6:32 PM

6 MapleLeaf,

One of the defining characteristics of denidiots is their absolute inability to stay on topic.

Just how do they get to be like this?

Posted by: TrueSceptic | April 3, 2010 8:02 PM

Eli had something to say about amateur hour a few years ago, which pretty much nails McLean

What amateurs lack as a group is perspective, an understanding of how everything fits together and a sense of proportion. Graduate training is designed to pass lore from advisors to students. You learn much about things that didn't work and therefore were never published [hey Prof. I have a great idea!...Well actually son, we did that back in 06 and wasted two years on it], whose papers to trust, and which to be suspicious of [Hey Prof. here's a great new paper!... Son, don't trust that clown.] In short the kind of local knowledge that allows one to cut through the published literature thicket. But this lack makes amateurs prone to get caught in the traps that entangled the professionals' grandfathers, and it can be difficult to disabuse them of their discoveries. Especially problematical are those who want science to validate preconceived political notions, and those willing to believe they are Einstein and the professionals are fools. Put these two types together and you get a witches brew of ignorance and attitude.

Posted by: Eli Rabett | April 3, 2010 8:22 PM

RE: #2, GFW

"I thought I recently read that John McLean was not a working scientist, was not affiliated with any recognized research organization."

McLean is a PhD student, so would have a supervisor and be associated with a university somewhere. We should cut McLean a lot of slack in this respect. It is perfectly reasonable for PhD students to publish papers as first authors, and this is normally a cause for celebration.

When things blow up as spectacularly as MFC09 has, the spotlight should fall on his PhD supervisor. Is the supervisor providing wise counsel? It is not normally sensible for a PhD student (and his coauthors) to launch a public attack on some of the world's leading experts in the field, as well as the editor and reviewers of a scientific journal. If a situation like this happened at UNSW we would bring all the parties together for a serious chat.

In a recent post at the Drum, John Nicol complained about the treatment that McLean et al have received, saying "McLean et al. may then have to modify some of their work and so it goes on in a very competitive but hopefully convivial fashion as it always should. Not with vitriolic outbursts we have seen here as if MFC09 had strayed onto someone's sacred turf"

To which I replied (not yet up on the Drum):

The normal to and fro of peer-reviewed science would have dealt with MFC09 in its usual way, most likely the paper would have had no citations and would have quietly disappeared since it was obvious to any climate scientist that the paper was seriously flawed.

Occasionally, bad papers do get into peer-reviewed journals. They usually drift off into electronic oblivion.

Where McLean et al crossed the line was to issue press releases immediately after the paper was published claiming that the paper showed that Nature, not man, was responsible for global warming. Needless to say, it is laughable to think that the paper shows any such thing.

The paper was then picked up by the denialist blogosphere, the anti-AGW public relations machine, loopy organisations such as the Science and Public Policy Institute, the usual crowd of wingnut OpEd writers, and the Murdoch media, and added to the very thin list of papers allegedly disproving human influence on the climate.

It was at this point that an eminent group of climate scientists came together to write a comment on the paper. Normally they wouldn't bother with such an obviously flawed piece of work, but the baying hysteria from the anti-AGW lobby demanded a response.

Foster et al killed MFC09 stone dead.

At this point, McLean et al should have taken the comments on board, and moved on to doing some real science. Instead they wrote a rebuttal to Foster et al, but it was so illogical and self-contradictory that the journal rejected it.

At this point, McLean et al should perhaps have tried speaking with the editor and attempted a rewrite of their rebuttal to answer the referees' objections. But the reality is that you can't breathe life into the corpse that is MFC09.

Instead, once again McLean et al crossed the line of normal scientific behavior and issued a 10-page rambling attack on the journal, the reviewers, the American Geophysical Union, and the authors of the rebuttal.

McLean et al have only themselves to blame for how this played out. They have made fools of themselves and shone a bright light on how the anti-AGW publicity machine works.

Posted by: Michael Ashley | April 3, 2010 8:23 PM

It is not normally sensible for a PhD student (and his coauthors) to launch a public attack on some of the world's leading experts in the field,

I probably missed it, but did anyone mention in what field he's a PhD candidate? It's strange that he never seems to refer to it himself. What discipline? What university? What's the subject of his dissertation?

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | April 3, 2010 9:00 PM

Here in the US, you can only call yourself a "candidate" when you've passed your oral/comprehensive exams. Is that the case everywhere?

I don't recall there being a big distinction between "student" and "candidate" in Australia. But then, at least in my field, we don't generally have a series of subjects with exams at the start of the process prior to starting actual research, which I believe is the typical case in the US. We do take postgrad (and sometimes undergrad subjects) but I don't recall a formal distinction between two phases - so some of the research activities start while some of the classes are being taken.

My PhD was more than a decade ago, so maybe those with more recent experience in Australia, either as students or supervisors, can chime in.

Posted by: Lotharsson | April 3, 2010 9:21 PM

re: #12 Great summary, Michael. One nit: SPPI is not exactly an organization, it's really Rob Ferguson, a website, some unknown funding, and a few of the usual advisors, acting as a USA outlet for the Viscount. Rob is being more productive than he was at FF/CSPP. See CCC, p.74 on SPPI and p.121 on Ferguson.

For amusement, see p.50 "What's in a name?" which shows a matrix of think tanks versus words.

Science and Public Policy Institute would make Orwell proud

into its name. "Public" is respectable also, with 6 mentions. Someone could probably make up a random think tank name generator from these words.

Although Institute fits the dictionary, Rob doesn't really fit most people's idea of an institute. If there is any actual science, that's not apparent. It clearly isn't for the public. I would agree he wants to influence policy.

But, back to McLean. For a good while, he billed himself as a climate data analyst, although Marc Morano had already awarded him a PhD. I posted more detail here at Deltoid, with a bunch of questions that I didn't ever notice answered, but may have missed. This was back when I was studying SPPI closely for the Monckton/Oreskes affair.

But the interesting question is: a) Can someone in Oz confirm whether or not McLean is actually in a PhD program somewhere (like James Cook, as DC suggests)? How many PhD-granting institutions are there with relevant programs?

b) Generally, as Michael notes, people are generally pleased to see a PhD candidate as a lead author... perhaps not this one.

re: #10 Eli's full post is worth reading

Posted by: John Mashey | April 3, 2010 9:36 PM

John Mashey, thanks. Looking around a bit more before you posted, I saw that you had already done the investigative work! I think it's the same person who signed that 2007 letter, and that the PhD there was a falsehood. In any case, it should be simple enough for this John McLean to say, "No, I didn't sign that letter. That had to have been a different John McLean." I also want to see evidence that he is currently in an actual PhD program. There's something very fishy going on here. Why would someone be so dodgy about his field?

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | April 3, 2010 9:55 PM

Regarding the issue of a PhD, I am quite certain that no John D. McLean has ever obtained a higher degree by research in Australia at any institution in any field at any time.

The Australian National Library keeps a record that, to the best of my knowledge, is authoritative and I searched that a few months ago. (I mentioned that in my piece on the ABC Drum.)

By Mr. McLean's own recent statements it is quite clear that he does not claim to have earned a PhD.

The letters "PhD" must therefore have slipped into his earlier signature(s) by some minor clerical mistake or were added by persons unknown.

Posted by: Stephan Lewandowsky | April 3, 2010 11:20 PM

I asked McLean on /The Drum/ just which 'peer-reviewed journal' his critical study of the CSIRO was published in, and he didn't find the time to reply...let's go to one of his sources...

(http://www.auscsc.org.au/about_us.html)

His crit! ical rev iew of CSIRO climate reports, published in Energy & Environment, was a first for Australia

(end quotes)

Anyone surprised?

*

I'm still trying to work out just what he's a PhD candidate in, and where. His reluctance to tell us is at least suggestive. His home page describes him as a "[c]omputer consultant and occasional travel photographer". I can't find anything amounting to an actual CV on his pages about climate issues, either. (http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm) So who knows?

Posted by: Zibethicus | April 3, 2010 11:32 PM

"He is completing a PhD at James Cook University."

"Completing" might be overstating it, given that MFC09 lists his affiliation as "Applied Science Consultants, Croydon, Victoria, Australia". That implies (at a minimum) that he was not enrolled in a PhD program at the time of submission (Dec '08), and possibly not even at the time of acceptance (May '09). It would be fairly astonishing to be nearing completion after only 10-16 months (unless perhaps it's primarily a mild rehash of his earlier papers on process).

Posted by: Lotharsson | April 4, 2010 1:03 AM

What would it take for JGR to formally withdraw the paper?

Also, for those wondering about whether John McLean is a PhD candidate at JCU or not - typically, PhD students have to do a confirmation seminar within 12 months of starting their PhD. I'm about 9 months into my PhD candidature at JCU, and have neither seen any notice of a confirmation seminar for John McLean, nor have I ever heard of him before this brouhaha. There's also no reference to him at all anywhere on JCU's website.

Posted by: V. infernalis | April 4, 2010 2:06 AM

It looks as if the differences trend is rising too, would this implicate the speed of warming has increased? Well, the rise is very shallow, and likely statistically insignificant. But I for one sure would want to have a speedometer that detects the change of speed while descending a steep hill that has a curve on the bottom (ecological collapse for the Darwin Award driver).

Posted by: jyyh | April 4, 2010 2:23 AM

@29. Golly, at the rate Bob Carter is going he'll soon be found cowering in a dark corner huddled in the fetal position with spittle dribbling down his chin mumbling "don't let the commies get me! don't let the commies get me!"

You're right. It is the ramblings of someone who has just about lost their mind.

Posted by: Other Mike | April 4, 2010 2:33 AM

Lotharsson says

"Completing" might be overstating it, given that MFC09 lists his affiliation as "Applied Science Consultants, Croydon, Victoria, Australia". That implies (at a minimum) that he was not enrolled in a PhD program at the time of submission (Dec '08), and possibly not even at the time of acceptance (May '09). It would be fairly astonishing to be nearing completion after only 10-16 months (unless perhaps it's primarily a mild rehash of his earlier papers on process).

Think Tim Ball. Likely someone is trying to wire this one. It happens

Posted by: Eli Rabett | April 4, 2010 4:48 AM

There is a fascinating lack of trolls on this thread so far.

Easter Sunday? All at the Church of Poisoned Minds, maybe?

Being a Holy Day, they probably don't know what to think, because even Murdoch doesn't publish any papers on Easter Sunday. So they haven't received their memos on how to attack. Must be terribly frustrating for them.

They want to attack, they know they should attack, but their training and conditioning tells them that independent thought and action is totally unacceptable.

They must anxiously await Murdoch's "team of well-broken horses" appearances on Monday before they know how they are allowed to think.

Fascinating. I might become a PhD candidate on the topic.

Posted by: stopmurdoch | April 4, 2010 8:44 AM

When things blow up as spectacularly as MFC09 has, the spotlight should fall on his PhD supervisor. Is the supervisor providing wise counsel? It is not normally sensible for a PhD student (and his coauthors) to launch a public attack on some of the world's leading experts in the field, as well as the editor and reviewers of a scientific journal. If a situation like this happened at UNSW we would bring all the parties together for a serious chat.

Michael Ashley is being very much the gentleman in his observations about John McLean's paper, co-authored by de Freitas and Carter. I find it difficult to be as polite as Mike has been in this matter.

When I was writing manuscript drafts during my PhD I was keen to promote my work that contradicted the accepted decades of consensus, but even so I was acutely aware that my own investigations were but a drop in the ocean compared with the body of knowledge that I was working within, and thus that I might easily have missed something obvious. A little humility goes a long way to reining in the ego when drafting papers, and if MFC has exercised such they might have picked up the errors in the paper that really would make a first year undergraduate in climatology blush with humiliation.

My sister also found herself in a situation during her PhD where she was able to overturn a fundamental tenet of her field. I spent hours with her checking her results, comparing them with the literature of her field, and paying careful attention to the phrasing of her claims in order to ensure that she spoke from a solid scientific basis. Unlike my work, hers had commercial implications, and this only added to the motivation to be utterly stringent in the conclusions that she drew.

Mclean's et al claims, on the other hand, demonstrate a cavalier rashness and disregard for scientific preciseness that make me wonder if he really has any association with a credible scientific institution, and if he does, whether his association is supervised by competent professional scientists...

Stepping back though, I have to say that I am flabbergasted that McLean could have been "invited" to do a PhD in Australia in the first place, on the basis of his previous output. Any candidate, or potential candidate, for a PhD in Australia will be acutely aware of how difficult it is to be accepted into a course, and McLean's record is not one that would have passed muster by a bull's roar, at my university at least. The only way to have been fast-tracked to candidature, that I can imagine, would be to have been backed by some very highly connected and/or very well financed interests who have the know-how to circumvent the usual academic hoops though which prospective students are required to leap.

I have been wondering if Mclean is "enrolled" in an overseas cereal-box PhD: I can't imagine that there is the laxity in Australian criteria for his candidature.

And if he is enrolled in an Australian institution, his (and his supervisor's) patent incompetence in putting out the MFC09 paper would seriously call into question his suitability for remaining as a candidate. Any Australian university faced with Foster et al would definitely be tripping over their feet to have the "serious chat" that Michael Ashley mentions.

On a much more trivial matter, and with respect to stopmurdoch's comment about the quietness of the Denialati, I found myself wondering the same thing.

The silence is fascinating!

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 4, 2010 10:01 AM

Over at Open Mind (but no so open your brain falls out), Slioch presents several comments from years gone by, posted by 'John M' and 'JDM'. Certainly sounds like the same John McLean, and blimey does the denialism run deep. Be careful not to drown.

Posted by: Stu | April 4, 2010 10:20 AM

Mapleleaf.

It was just yesterday that I was thinking about McKitrick's nonsense; it's interesting to see that he too picked April Fool's Day to bray from his soapbox, at Pielke's. Fortunately McKitrick's rant was posted before I pondered his grievous errors again, so I don't have to fret that I somehow invoked his appearance on the Interweb! ;-)

On an only marginally less flippant note, it'd be entertaining to see The Drum offer McKitrick his own thread from which to spout his tripe. Given McLean's pummelling, I think that McKitrick would be wise not to go there at the moment - for a change, the ABC's blogs are significantly peopled with folk who actually have a clue.

Ol' Ross would be minced.

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 4, 2010 12:25 PM

BernardJ @42, Thanks.

McK is predictably going with the very friendly and uncritical crowd at Pielke Jnr. Pielke is once again engaging in dog-whistle tactics, and the loyal denialists come running, and then spread the misinformation far and wide on the net, which then gets picked up by Leake et al. and so the fun and games begin, again.

Just WTF happened to the Pielkes!?

Posted by: MapleLeaf | April 4, 2010 2:11 PM

I was puzzled by McLean's claim "I am also a PhD candidate conducting thesis research on a climate topic. I accepted an invitation from a university on the basis of my analyses of various climate-related issues such as the IPCC's history, claims and processes". His biography on the Drum site says "He is completing a PhD at James Cook University."

Now, call me out of touch, but I don't know of a procedure where a university "invites" someone to do a PhD in the sense McLean means here. There seems to be no suggestion that McLean has an undergraduate degree (unless he has something in "IT", and that wouldn't provide a basis for an invite to do a PhD in climate science I think), and no evidence of any postgraduate (Honours or Masters) work. Having an undergraduate degree would be a pre-requisite for PhD enrolment. I know there can be situations where someone enrolled for a Masters at a particular university may do such excellent work that along the way they are invited to convert to a PhD enrolment, but this is clearly not the case here. In fact McLean seems to live in Victoria, and again, in my experience, you would really need to be based, for a minimum period of time (three years these days?), at the university, to be considered as being a PhD student.

So I wonder if McLean is just saying something like "Last time I chatted to Bob Carter he said my work was worthy of a PhD and he would look into enrolling me at JCU"?

I don't really care in general terms what someone says about their own qualifications. At some point, if it matters, you have to produce the evidence. If not, then, not. But McLean himself makes this an important issue. He slams Lewandowsky for only being a psychologist, and then "Tim Flannery, Barry Brook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg" are only biologists and "people in fields with no direct relationship to climate analysis speaking about climate change". He goes on to say Lewandowsky "failed to reveal or perhaps discover that I am also a PhD candidate conducting thesis research on a climate topic" and "Unlike Lewandowsky, and the other people mentioned above, my area of expertise, information technology, is directly applicable to the analysis of climate data, and my background in logic is likewise useful."

Now if you are going to make those claims - that you outrank Lewandowsky, Tim Flannery, Barry Brook and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg because you have an expertise in climate science and are doing a PhD on the topic (although it would indeed be unusual anyway for a mere PhD student to make a claim of superiority to the people mentioned above, especially when the "topic" is supposedly "my analyses of various climate-related issues such as the IPCC's history, claims and processes" not actual climate science) - you had better have the paperwork to back them.

Posted by: David Horton | April 4, 2010 6:50 PM

Regarding degrees, Item G) in my post here had found a BArch (Melbourne).

I suspect your hypothesis regarding Carter is at least plausible.

When I get back from the hot tub, I will offer an amusing parallel, which in fact has an odd connection with McLean.

Posted by: John Mashey | April 4, 2010 7:36 PM

Thanks John - I don't seem to be able to use the internet to see if there is a Bachelor of Architecture, but even if there is, would JCU take on someone for a PhD on the basis that they had, at some distant time in the past, done an undergraduate degree in some completely unrelated discipline? Without requiring them to demonstrate (a) any expertise in the field concerned or (b) any ability to do research, say by getting them started on a Masters Qual or a Postgrad Diploma. Once upon a time you had to get a very good honours degree in the same field order to go into a PhD directly, otherwise you had to go via Masters. This is all far more than I want to know about Mr McLean, and it is possible, as you suggest, that universities are so desperate for postgrads that qualifying standards have been totally dumped. It wouldn't affect my other questions.

Posted by: David Horton | April 4, 2010 7:59 PM

re: #50 David Horton I've given talks at many Oz universities, but I have no current calibration on what might or might not be done.

As an amusing exercise, people might look at Crescendo...", read Section 2, especially Figures 2.5 and 2.6, which catalog reasons for anti-science, and map them versus people's backgrounds. Which of these might fit McLean?

Now, on degrees... In doing the above piece, there emerged an especially odd collection of labels for Naomi Oreskes (from p.81 there):

She is often characterized as a
―history instructor (from Chris Horner, a lawyer)
―social scientist (Lindzen, who called her Nancy)
―history professor in a Gender Studies Department (from Joseph Bast, who runs heartland, but as far as I know, has no degree)
- essayist (from Monckton/Ferguson/SPPI, in comparison with "researcher" Schulte. SPPI publishes McLean...

Actually, she is a well-published geoscientist, BSc in Mining Geology from Imperial College, London (~MITR of UK), PhD in Geological Research and History of Science from Stanford U. She was an Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, and lately, a Provost at UCSD. She has done work on oceanography and evaluation of numerical models.
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/publication.html
http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html#awards Yes, she does history of science,but the only one of those with any relevant background is Lindzen.

Anyway, it turns out that most people with strong backgrounds and track records don't make a big deal over degrees. For some amusing interaction with the Viscount, who just had to put "Dr" in front of my name multiple times, see: DeSmogBlog.
Search down for "Brenchley" to find the Viscount's diatribe, which includes amazing complaints like:

"rather than interfering in an unlawful manner on the blogosphere"

After some amusing comments by others, I posted "Reality Check" about "Dr" and hoped he might respond, but alas, he did not.

Posted by: John Mashey | April 4, 2010 8:45 PM

Rubbish. To analyze climate data you need the ability to analyze data and probably some domain knowledge of climate. You don't even need a computer for that. Expertize in IT doesn't guarantee either of those things anyway.

Well, it's not really rubbish - it means he's qualified to write code for other people once they communicate the proper algorithms to him :)

But that's not what he's saying, which implies he's just blowing smoke. He might be smart enough to additionally learn enough of statistics to do useful work on his own, but that's totally different than saying his IT skills are directly applicable.

Posted by: dhogaza | April 4, 2010 10:21 PM

"IT" covers such as vast range of knowledge, experience and skills that claiming "IT expertise" is A VACUOUS CLAIM, hence really not even worth debating.

re: #47 thanks for checking

re: #50 I'm not sure if that was a rhetorical question or not. Although I've given talks for many OZ universities (including one in Townesville), it's been a while, and I certainly don't know the local behaviors. It is hardly inconceivable that Carter would tell McLean "you ought to do a PhD". Every once in a while some faculty member runs across someone with a nontraditional background they think has promise. However, all remains to be seen in this case.

An interesting exercise might be to read Chapter 2 of Crescendo..., especially the reasons-for-anti-science catalogs in Figs 2.5-2.6, and speculate on which, if any, might fit McLean.

A parallel to McLean's attempt to denigrate others' expertise popped up in the course of doing that piece. See p.81 of V1.0 for more, but Naomi Oreskes has been labeled:
"history instructor" (by Chris Horner, a lawyer)
“history professor in a Gender Studies Department" by Joseph Bast, who runs Heartland, but as far as I know, has no college degree
"essayist" (as compared to researcher Schulte), by Monckton & Rob Ferguson of SPPI (i.e., McLean's preferred venue)
"social scientist" (Richard Lindzen: well, at least Lindzen has some expertise, and Naomi does do social science sometimes. Of course, he couldn't get her name right, calling her Nancy.)

Naomi certainly does history of science, but she is a well-published geoscientist, BSc in Mining Geology from Imperial College, London (~MIT of UK), PhD in Geological Research and History of Science from Stanford U. She was an Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, a Professor at UCSD and lately, a Provost at UCSD. None of these are exactly poor schools. She has done work on oceanography and evaluation of numerical models. See this ,or this or this.

Posted by: John Mashey | April 5, 2010 12:16 AM

I’ve offered this up before elsewhere:

Here are links to submissions made by McLean to a New Zealand Parliament Select Committee that was considering an Emissions Trading Scheme.

Three Select Committees have had a go.

For the first round in 2008 McLean co-submitted with someone who in a previous life called for a boycott of Mobil because of climate change issues and is now a denialist.

http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/9/1/7/48SCFESCEvidenceCCETRP_ET44-Terry-Dunleavy.htm

For the second round in early 2009 McLean went solo:

http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/6/3/2/49SCETSSCevidenceETSR_047A-John-McLean-supp1.htm

http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/Documents/Evidence/3/6/2/49SCETSSCevidenceETSR_047-John-McLean.htm

And nothing for the 3rd round in late 2009.

By definition the submissions are public.

Posted by: Doug Mackie | April 5, 2010 1:42 AM

I wonder if McLean would meet the entry requirements for a PhD at JCU? http://cms.jcu.edu.au/grs/researchdegrees/JCUDEV_015301

Maybe this is why his paper was so important to him: "For example, a graduate of at least two years standing with research experience and publications could be considered."

He may have been optimistic with his claim that: "He is completing a PhD at James Cook University". I wonder if he has even started work towards it? It's really hard to find a school at JCU where his background would have any relevance and where he would write a thesis on a 'climate-related topic'.
http://cms.jcu.edu.au/grs/topics/index.htm

It can't be a science discipline, he just doesn't have the credentials. (Not that I know what his academic qualifications are, but if he studied science at the undergraduate level he obviously didn't keep up with it.)

He says he's been working in IT (which could mean anything, and doesn't mean he has academic quals in IT). Based on what he's written to date, I doubt he would have the expertise to contribute anything new on a climate-related topic. I can't see any other area in which he would have anything to contribute.

Hope someone satisfies my curiosity and unravels the mystery :D

Posted by: Sou | April 5, 2010 3:12 AM

Not to toot my own horn too much, but did everyone miss my earlier post (#28) concerning confirmation seminar requirements (as well as pointing out the fact that John McLean doesn't appear on the JCU website) at JCU?

Posted by: V. infernalis | April 5, 2010 4:31 AM

Surely if MFC-09 was part of McClean's PhD he should have declared his affiliation with the university. But in both the original paper and the response to Foster et al it is stated as Applied Science Consultants, Croydon. So, if his PhD is in science, he must have commenced after 15 January 2010, when he submitted his response to JGR. If he is doing a PhD then it would more likely be about the politics of climate change.

Posted by: Alan Greig | April 5, 2010 5:02 AM

Sorry about the odd formatting, dunno what happened there. Just wanted to add that I would be quite happy if someone was to prove all my hypotheses about this business to be wrong.

Posted by: David Horton | April 5, 2010 6:02 AM

Th other easy way to 'hide the decline' and solve global warming is pretty simple; Vote it away!

http://anarchist606.blogspot.com/2010/04/stop-climate-change-vote-it-away.html

While the denialists are at it; can we repeal the laws of gravity? Because I've always wanted to be able to fly!

Posted by: anarchist606 | April 5, 2010 7:35 AM

With respect to Michael Ashely's post above - in any other circumstance I would wholeheartedly concur.

However, McLean is very much a 'mature-age' student (if he really is a student), and his decades of independence as an adult, and as a worker in his chosen profession of 'IT', significantly enhance his culpability. And on top of this, McLean has a prominent and entrenched reputation in the field of public contradiction of accepted science, without having previously ever demonstrated any basis for being able to comment with competence or with valid authority in the field that he seeks to overturn.

On this basis, McLean is very much responsible for his own commentary, whether he does so as a real PhD student, or as a player in the Denialist body memetic. His previous history is one that any postgraduate research committee considering his candidature should carefully dissect in a judgement of his worthiness to remain as a PhD candidate...

I myself was a 'mature-age' student when I enrolled in my own PhD, and I was cognisant even then of my own responsibility in how I represented myself, my supervisors, my discipline, and my institution, and in the public commentary that I gave whilst I was a student. In my own candidature at least, saying the things that McLean said, with the obvious lack of scientific justification for doing so, and with the patent inability to self-assess one's scientific capacities in doing so, would have been justifiable grounds for termination of candidature.

If McLean is a PhD student, his supervisors, whomever they may be, are culpable if they had any prior knowledge of his participation in MFC09. However, as a fully mature, world-experienced and publicly-active adult, he holds just as much responsibility (if not more), and in any serious scientific educational institution his continued candidature would be justifiably considered inappropriate, and terminated in very short order.

If there are any institutions out there that would hand out a PhD on the basis of McLean's ham-fisted grasp of science, I might almost wish that I had enrolled there rather than in my own university. This way I might have had to do far less work for my testamur, and saved myself a year or more in the process!

I have rather more pride in myself than that however, and I have sufficient pride in the hard yards that I and my colleagues have slogged over the years, to be more than disgusted that someone like McLean thinks that he can sail through without the sacrifice of the blood, sweat, tears and integrity that should underpin a real PhD.

As gentlemanly as Michael Ashley is about McLean's putative candidacy, I myself have to take the line of 'bad cop'. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that a scientific featherweight such as McLean might get the same level of academic recognition that I and countless of my colleagues have worked so hard for, for what is no better than a fail-level term report from a senior high school student. I've seen better scientists than him not get even a Masters for decent enough work, and in fact, in my own tertiary teaching I myself have failed better students than McLean demonstrates himself to be.

In the end, if McLean really is enrolled in a PhD somewhere, then something is wrong in the world of tertiary education, and it's a rot that threatens real science in the professional arena.

Out, out, foul spot!

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 5, 2010 8:39 AM

RE: #70, Bernard

That's a very sensible comment. And RE: #71, I'm not "concern trolling", although I can see how it might sound that way.

Despite McLean's age, experience, and past history, if he has competent supervision, and if he completes a PhD thesis, and if it is examined and passed by credible world experts (not hand-picked contrarians), then he should learn how to do good science.

However, there are a lot of "if"s there. Given recent events, JCU should be asking some questions.

Posted by: Michael Ashley | April 5, 2010 6:39 PM

A number of good people on here appear to have done some remarkable desktop investigating on McLean, and v. infenous has made two comments. I have no background in this area, and not followed it to the degree some have, is it possible that McLean doesn't exist, and that is why he is not on JCU dept. lists.

Could it be a simple internet invention of an established person as a way of saying things without getting into "trouble?"

Posted by: Post hoc | April 5, 2010 9:38 PM

Re #75

Funnily enough, you may have something there. An ABN search for "Applied Science Consultants" yields nothing. So this is not a registered trading name. A Google search on the postal address listed - PO Box 314 Croydon Vic only comes up for a business called Aromaspray/Nontoxic Online, which is registered to a Wayne Anthony Baker. One and the same? Who knows.

There is an ABN registered to a John Duncan McLean in Croydon, but it has no business name registered to it. Nothing appears on ASIC either.

As an aside, I notice that the authors of MDC thank Craig Loehle for lending his statistical expertise.

Posted by: Jimmy Nightingale | April 6, 2010 1:54 AM

Think Big #77, thank you, that post deserves to be in the all time annals of best denialism rants. Perhaps simply one of the best rants of all time. And Jimmy #76, good work, this whole thing gets curiouser and curiouser.

Posted by: justagreenie | April 6, 2010 3:15 AM

In the AGU paper, McLean's affiliation is listed as: "Applied Science Consultants, P.O. Box 314, Croydon, 3136, Australia"

A Google search for "P.O. Box 314, Croydon, 3136" yields a company listed as "Aromaspray / Nontoxic online" at the same address. This is a "health foods business". Strangely, despite the name, they don't seem to have a website. Can anyone in Australia find out anything about that business?

Posted by: GWB's nemesis | April 6, 2010 7:50 AM

I'm sure everyone remembers

http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm

Posted by: Chris | April 6, 2010 8:25 AM

For a fascinating insight into how real science is done, have a look at Martin Vermeer's discussion of what happened behind the scenes prior to publication of his paper on global sea level coauthored with Stefan Rahmstorf.

People such as McKitrick (who has been complaining of scientific "gatekeeping" and "censorship") might note that the Vermeer & Rahmstorf paper was first rejected by Nature. The authors dusted themselves off, used the referees' comments to improve the paper, and submitted to PNAS.

Posted by: Michael Ashley | April 6, 2010 5:08 PM