Heartland Institute Finds Chinese Scientific Journal Where Monckton Can Still Publish His Shit

[hatrack]

For global warming deniers, the latest outlet appears to be the Chinese publishing industry, and through that venue they arrive at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) portal for journalists. After that, a study popped up in a major global newspaper. The study appeared last week in the Science Bulletin, a journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and was authored by well-known climate change deniers. The study -- not surprisingly -- challenges the basis of climate change models in use today and has been called flawed by numerous scientists.

"We didn't even think of publishing in the West," said Christopher Monckton, a climate denier who is also the lead author on the study. "We decided the West is now no longer doing science, it is doing propaganda via the learned journals, so we weren't playing that game anymore."

To make the study freely available to the public, Monckton turned to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank made infamous in 2012 for its billboard ads on climate change featuring Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. The organization also promotes the tobacco industry. Heartland paid the journal a $3,000 open access fee. The journal's public information officer then submitted a press release, originally penned by Monckton, to EurekAlert, a platform run by AAAS that informs journalists of upcoming studies in over 1,900 journals. EurekAlert published the release, which was picked up by the United Kingdom's Daily Mail Online, which uncritically asked, "Is climate change really that dangerous?"

EurekAlert's director of editorial content, Brian Lin, said in an email that the journal is a "credible, peer-reviewed journal." It is in the Science Citation Index, which lists all credible journals. In the hierarchy of publications, however, Science Bulletin comes in rather low, with an impact factor of 1.36 (in comparison, Nature has an impact factor of 42.35). It is primarily read by Chinese researchers.

EDIT

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060012152

[DavidDvorkin]

1. I saw that on Eurekalert and was very disappointed

Eurekalert publishes quite a few press releases of dubious merit along with valuable scientific news. I wish they filtered.

Monckton's academic background is in classics and journalism. What a joke.