Bias-Undisclosed conflicts of interest are a serious problem in the climate change literature - Highlighted Article

From: Conflicted - Substack

By: Jessica Weinkle

Date: January 9, 2025

Bias
Undisclosed conflicts of interest are a serious problem in the climate change literature

A flurry of commentary on bias indicates the depths of the conflicts of interest problem in climate change research.

Yesterday, Patrick Brown at The Breakthrough Institute had a great write up walking us through a cascade of bias in extreme weather attribution studies, the body of literature supporting it, and the media reporting on it.

Patrick names the following biases: Occurrence Bias, Choice Bias, Publication Bias, and Media Coverage Bias.

Patrick’s work comes on the heals of an essay series “Weather Attribution Alchemy” by Roger Pielke Jr. at The Honest Broker. In his most recent post to the series, Roger names: Selection bias, Misrepresentation of the statistics, and the Fallacy of begging the question.

Bias is a distortion of science that results in unreliable knowledge. Distorted science is socially, economically, and politically costly to society.

Here, I will situate these findings of bias in the extreme weather event attribution literature under the broader heading of researcher conflicts of interest (COI), a major topic of concern for research ethics.

Bias as an outcome of researcher conflicts of interest is relevant here for two reasons.

First the methods, organizations, and researchers that advance extreme weather event attribution are inherently tied to litigation and advocacy.

Second, the situation is symptomatic of a far deeper and widespread problem of poor author conflicts of interest disclosure practices throughout the climate change science literature.

Let’s take this in pieces. (continue reading)

Bias
Undisclosed conflicts of interest are a serious problem in the climate change literature