Skeptical Science New Research for Week #48, 2019

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"Not just your opinion, man*"

From time to time scientists or groups of scientists pull their heads out of instrumentation, calculation, the general obsessive fascination of focused scientific

inquiry and think about what their work means to the wider world. What can come out of this is useful synthesis. Many of the over 100 journals we scan regularly publish moments of bigger picture thinking, these being distinguished from beery bar chatter because even as they seek to form conclusions or suggestions about where we're headed or may want to go as a society, they're grounded in a foundation of scrupulous attention to facts and evidence. There's too much good thinking of this kind to leave unread, yet these musings don't fit the strict definition of research publications. To account for all of this, we've added a section at the bottom of the weekly research roundups titled "Informed opinion and nudges." Some select governmental and NGO whitepapers with roots in solid science may also be found there.

Update to global warming "hiatus" research survey

For many years Skeptical Science volunteer Ari Jokimäki published this weekly research review. Of late Ari's been working on updating his massive literature review/compendium of papers investigating a seeming slowdown in warming that was for a time unaccounted for in Earth's energy budget, the so-called "global warming hiatus." The latest version is now published as Global Warming Hiatus papers, version 3.0. Constructing and maintaining this assembly is a massive amount of picky work— hats off to Ari.

Near and dear to Skeptical Science

Questioning scientific practice: linking beliefs about scientists, science agencies, and climate change examines public attitudes and beliefs about science and scientific researchers. In plain language, what authors Safford et al identify is quite familiar: when confronted with unassailable facts and evidence, people posing as "skeptics" and pursuing various agendas are forced to abandon actual argument, shifting instead to ad hominem attacks on character. That's not a fair or honestly productive means of discourse, but the authors also identify possible ways of mitigating effects of such tactics. From the abstract:

65 Articles:

Obtaining legal copies of "paywalled" articles

We know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.

Suggestions

Please let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.

A list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.

The previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.