The Peer Review Process: Why Scientists Can’t Speak Out

Don’t blame the scientists for botching soil carbon science. Blame the bars of the cell they work in.
Scientists can express only negative opinions about phenomena that have not been subject to the Peer Review system. This means that something like carbon sequestration in Australian soils does not exist for most scientists because it hasn’t been proven in enough trials that have been published in scientific journals that will report only findings that have been approved by a committee of scientists. This consensus system is meant to ensure only ‘good science’ gets the stamp of approval as “scientific fact”. Unfortunately the system doesn’t work when the scientific community’s knowledge of the context is poor. Ie. The design of the official soil carbon measurement projects conducted by the Australian Greenhouse Office was such that it failed to include soil management innovations which have greater sequestration potential than the traditional ways. Unaware of the gaps in the data sets which rendered the findings ‘unsound’, the scientific community felt free to declare soil carbon sequestration largely a non-event in Australia. That will remain the official position for years to come while we are shackled by ‘scientific fact’ that is not factual. Until 3-year trials are conducted, the data reported and reviewed by a group of scientists and published in a journal – which can add another 2 years to the process – soil carbon remains officially anchored in the 1970s. Scientists are free to attack anyone making a statement which does not reflect peer-reviewed reality, no matter how that ‘reality’ is. So, if you hear a scientist pouring scorn on soil carbon sequestration potential, you are hearing uninformed opinion which is unsupported by sound science. The more definite the negative opinion, the less credible is the source. The Peer-Review Process is designed to prevent ‘dodgy’ science slipping through the net and misleading people. But what can you do when it fails? When it prevents society from considering a solution to a crisis like climate change when every day that passes is a day lost and a day closer to disaster? Do scientists have a responsibility to act in ways that benefit society? Or is any outcome acceptable so long as we preserve the rules of a guild? The CSIRO’s Dr Mark Howden said recently that Australia has been politically slow to accept the threat of climate change, "putting us a decade behind where we could be". The science is also 10 years behind where we should be. And the Peer Review system seems destined to keep us there another 5 years.