Last week, Nature published a damning refutation of a significant body of climate change research. The title of that article is self-explanatory: Ocean acidification does not impair the behavior of coral reef fishes.
The authors studied more than 900 fish from six different species over a period of three years, attempting to verify earlier findings by a team of researchers at Australia’s James Cook University.
Their attempts failed.
Scholarly convention being what it is, the now-discredited work isn’t identified in a clear manner. Readers are compelled to sift through footnotes to locate the “several high-profile papers” that are being refuted. So here they are:
Dixson 2010
Danielle L. Dixson, Philip L. Munday, Geoffrey P. Jones
Ocean acidification disrupts the innate ability of fish to detect predator olfactory cues.
Ecology Letters, 2009/2010
Munday 2010
Philip L. Munday, Danielle L. Dixson, Mark L. McCormick, Mark Meekan, Maud C.O. Ferrari, Douglas P. Chivers
Replenishment of fish populations is threatened by ocean acidification
PNAS, 2010
Ferrari 2012
Maud C. O. Ferrari, Mark I. McCormick, Philip L. Munday, Mark G. Meekan, Danielle L. Dixson, Oona Lönnstedt, Douglas P. Chivers
Effects of ocean acidification on visual risk assessment in coral reef fishes
Functional Ecology, 2012
Nilsson 2012
Göran E. Nilsson, Danielle L. Dixson, Paolo Domenici, Mark I. McCormick, Christina Sørensen, Sue-Ann Watson, Philip L. Munday
Near-future carbon dioxide levels alter fish behavior by interfering with neurotransmitter function
Nature Climate Change, 2012
Munday 2013
Philip L. Munday, Morgan S. Pratchett, Danielle L. Dixson, Jennifer M. Donelson, Geoff G.K. Endo, Adam D. Reynolds, Richard Knuckey
Elevated CO2 affects the behavior of an ecologically and economically important coral reef fish
Marine Biology, 2012
Chung 2014
Munday 2014
Philip L. Munday, Alistair J. Cheal, Danielle L. Dixson, Jodie L. Rummer, Katharina E. Fabricius
Behavioral impairment in reef fishes caused by ocean acidification at CO2seeps
Nature Climate Change, 2014
Welch 2014
Megan J. Welch, Sue-Ann Watson, Justin Q. Welch, Mark I. McCormick, Philip L. Munday
Effects of elevated CO2 on fish behavior undiminished by transgenerational acclimation
Nature Climate Change, 2014
The author in common is research leader Philip Munday. When eight of this man’s papers were double-checked, other scientists were unable to confirm his findings. They performed the same experiments but got different results. Every. Single. Time.
The James Cook University website tells us Munday is “in the top 1% of cited researchers in the ISI fields of Plant and Animal Science” (bold added). He sits on the editorial board of three scientific journals.
He also – ding, ding, ding – “has contributed to IPCC reports” on ocean acidification. In fact, Munday’s name appears 46 times in this 174-page document about a 2011 IPCC workshop on that topic.
You heard it here first, folks. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s pronouncements about tropical fish rely on a man whose work falls to pieces whenever anyone tries to verify it.
Read more at Big Pic News
Yet, these frauds keep their positions and are shameless.
All my life [until the last 20 years or so], I believed scientific reports, unless they were quickly debunked. I could not believe that highly educated people would stoop to fraud. How naive I was. After Mike and his Mann-made global warming, I soon became a skeptic.
Now with the Internet, these fraudulent people are being exposed.
Donna is, without a doubt, high on the list of people who have exposed these frauds.
Her book and articles are wonderful.
Thank Donna.
In the 1970’s when I was a serious science student, results of research was considered preliminary until verified by another researcher. In a few cases the verification would fail and the researchers would communicate to find out the differences. These were the good old days before science had been corrupted by politics.
With eight failures, it is clear that Munday was running rigged experiments to support his political cause. Not only were the results of the experiments wrong, remember that he used pH levels predicted by climate change. Based on the accuracy of past climate change predictions, it is pretty certain the oceans will never see those pH levels.
My guess is that he was not as much faking or fudging the work, as not doing it at all. He probably had his name on the paper of his subordinates/friends, without actually doing the work himself. An assumption, I may be wrong, but it happens in research.
Ah, good ol’ acidification of the oceans as if the pH of the ocean is actually acidic–it’s not. And the variability of the pH in the ocean is significant but always > 7.0 which makes it basic (or alkaline). But the fish seem to handle it just fine and have done so when CO2 levels were much higher (e.g. 4000 ppm).
The carboniferous era had 7000 ppm and was considered the greatest proliferation of life ever. Yet so small a change in CO2 now can cause all sorts of abnormalities is amazing.
All that stuff we were reading about Acid Rain what a load of pure 99/44 & 100% Malarkey and they lie to the school kids about it as well