Climate change: Where are the editors? - mike's web log/comments

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January 20, 2010 | Climate change: Where are the editors? | 2767 hit(s)

This is for fun. I was reading the article "UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers", which reports on an IPCC report that has some errors in it. The controversy is mostly around one particular section of the report, a half page in a report that is 838 pages long[1], and which lists some (incorrect) numbers about how quickly glaciers are melting in the Himalayas.

Naturally, this has thrown gas onto the whole climate-change controversy, with skeptics in particular having a field day with the errors.

What I liked about the whole brouhaha, though, was the following. I bet you know why.

"It is a very shoddily written section," said Graham Cogley, a professor of geography and glaciers at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, who brought the error to everyone's attention. "It wasn't copy-edited properly."

[1] The term "riddled with" in the article title sounds a little extreme to me.

Jim Galasyn 20 Jan 10 - 6:39 PM

Great find! I read a lot of news copy, and there's been an obvious decline in fit-and-finish quality in recent years.

RealClimate has a good wrap-up: "The IPCC is not infallible (shock!)" http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/the-ipcc-is-not-infallible-shock/

Hank Roberts 20 Jan 10 - 7:44 PM

Absolutely right. There were several inconsistent statements within two paragraphs. Over at Deltoid there's a look at the various drafts and comments, and apparently it was actually copy-edited properly -- but the copy-edits weren't accepted by the primary author.

Prob'ly the first time _that_ has ever happened in the world.

P. Lewis 21 Jan 10 - 2:04 AM

Prob'ly the first time _that_ has ever happened in the world.

Have you missed the "not" out after "Prob'ly" Hank?

Perhaps you are being sarcastic and I just haven't picked up the written "vibe".

As a copy-editor of STM stuff, I can tell you that, whilst it's not a common occurrence, it does happen more often than it should.

One anecdote I can relate concerns a professor who, despite it being laid out for him on a plate mathematically and practically why he was wrong, was insistent that the magnifications he quoted in his text and captions concerning his SEM images (with no scale bars) were correct, despite the images having been resized at least twice (by himself during preparation and again during publication).

Hank Roberts 21 Jan 10 - 11:58 AM

> sarcastic

Ironic, at least by intent.

> I can tell you that, whilst it's not a common occurrence, it does happen

Gasp!*
___________
* Okay, _that_ was sarcastic

No offense; I didn't imagine anyone would take that literally, with or without an added "not" --- I'd be surprised to meet anyone in this line of work who hasn't flagged and corrected some gross error in a draft, and been ignored.