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Climate scientist admits overhyping impact of global warming on wildfires to get published
Dr Patrick Brown claims research that cuts against the ‘mainstream narrative’ on climate change is ‘taboo’ in certain journalsBy Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR6 September 2023 • 8:06pm
A climate scientist has admitted overhyping the impact of global warming on wildfires to ensure his work was published in the prestigious science journal Nature.
Dr Patrick Brown, the co-director of the climate and energy team at The Breakthrough Institute, Berkeley, published a paper last week arguing that climate change had increased wildfires in California.
The Nature study has been accessed more than 3,000 times online and was cited by 109 news outlets across the globe.
But in a blog and series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, Dr Brown admitted that there were other factors influencing wildfires that he had purposefully omitted – such as poor forestry management and an increase in people starting fires deliberately or accidentally.
He said he had found that journals would not publish climate studies unless they followed a specific “formula” and “mainstream narrative” in which global warming was viewed as the sole culprit for environmental destruction.
Dr Brown made the dramatic claims in his blog
Nature denied it had a preferred narrative and said it was “considering the implications” of Dr Brown’s admission, adding that his comments reflect irresponsible and poor research practices.
Dr Brown warned that climate scientists often used irrelevant metrics to create “eye-popping numbers” or used time periods that are not relevant to modern societies.
And he said he had discovered it was “taboo” to mention that global warming was often mitigated by changes in technology and resilience.
“The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative,” he said.
“Why did I focus exclusively on the impact of climate change? I wanted the research to get as widely disseminated as possible, and thus I wanted it to be published in a high-impact journal.
“When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula I outlined here, my papers were promptly rejected out of hand by the editors of high-profile journals without even going to peer review.”
He added: “This type of framing, where the influence of climate change is unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers.
“It is standard practice to calculate impacts for scary hypothetical future warming scenarios that strain credibility while ignoring potential changes to technology and resilience that would lessen the impact.”
‘THEY REFLECT POOR RESEARCH PRACTICES’
Dr Magdalena Skipper, the Editor in Chief of Nature, disputed the accusations and pointed to recent studies that did not show the alleged editorial biases – including a paper that concluded a rise in carbon emissions in the Amazon was due to a decline in law enforcement.She also said that peer reviewers of Dr Brown’s work had suggested taking other variables into account, but the authors had argued against their inclusion.
“The only thing in Patrick Brown’s statements about the editorial processes in scholarly journals that we agree on is that science should not work through the efforts by which he published this article,” she said.
“We have an expectation that researchers use the most appropriate data and methods when assessing these data, and that they include all key facts and results that are relevant to the main conclusions of a paper.
“When researchers do not do so, it goes against the interests of both fellow researchers and the research field as a whole. To deliberately not do so is, at best, highly irresponsible.
“We are now carefully considering the implications of his stated actions; certainly, they reflect poor research practices and are not in line with the standards we set for our journal.”
In the paper, Dr Brown and colleagues argued that man-made global warming had increased the average frequency of extreme daily wildfire growth by 25 per cent in California.
But in his blog, he said there were other factors that were “just as or more important” pointing out that more than 80 per cent of wildfires in the US are ignited by humans.
He said his current research indicates that changes in forest management could “completely negate” the detrimental effects of global warming on wildfires.
Dr Brown said he was not disowning his paper, but said it was “less useful” than it could have been.
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