Article Reviews

“Is this article consistent with the latest thinking and knowledge in science?”
“Would experts in this field endorse the main message of this article?”

These are the types of questions our “feedbacks” are designed to answer. If the feedback is positive, you can generally assume the information you’re reading is of high credibility. If it’s negative, however, you may want to read with extra care and attention — some of the information contained and conclusions reached are not consistent with science.^[1]

Washington Examiner op-ed cherry-picks data and misleads readers about climate models

in The Washington Examiner, by Patrick Michaels, Caleb Stewart Rossiter

"This article focuses only on specific lines of evidence that climate models disagree with observations. In doing so, the authors ignore research that helps to reconcile differences between models and observations. The authors do not consider alternate datasets and time periods in which models and observations agree. Models are one tool for understanding climate change; their overall credibility does not hinge on one variable, in one domain, over a specific time period, with respect to a set of imperfect observations."

— 31 Aug 2019

Financial Post commentary jumps to unsupported conclusions in claiming “climate change isn’t causing extreme weather”

in Financial Post, by Ross McKitrick

"This article is misleading since it confuses changes in climate change impacts with changes in climate and weather extremes and it subjectively selects examples that support its message. There is clear scientific evidence that many weather and climate extreme events increase in intensity and frequency due to anthropogenic climate change. Munich Re, for example, publishes data on global major extreme events in its annual reports."

— 13 Jun 2019

Article claiming vaccines cause autoimmunity and autism due to fetal DNA contaminants found unsupported and implausible

in Vaccine Impact, by Theresa Deisher

"While the letter provides some concerns about the fetal cell-derived DNA contamination in vaccines, it does not provide any actual evidence to support the claims made. The whole hypothesis of the author (which is misleadingly presented as fact) is based on the author’s own measurements of fetal cell-derived DNA, which has serious methodological problems that could be easily prevented by RNase treatment"

— 09 Jun 2019

Claim that human civilization could end in 30 years is speculative, not supported with evidence

in IFLScience, by James Felton

"The report this article is based on describes a scenario which is unlikely, but several aspects of what is included in the report are likely to worsen in coming decades, such as the occurrence of deadly heatwaves. The conclusion of a high likelihood that human civilisation will end is false, although there is a great deal of evidence that there will be many damaging consequences to continued global warming over the coming decades."

— 09 Jun 2019

Commentary in The Australian by Ian Plimer relies on false claims to make its case

in The Australian, by Ian Plimer

"If you think that potentially causing hundreds of millions of refugees and trillions of dollars in damages is fine because some plants did well in the same conditions millions of years ago when humans weren’t around, then you could support this article."

— 20 May 2019

Breitbart article baselessly claims a study of past climate invalidates human-caused climate change

in Breitbart, by John Nolte

"By the reasoning of this article, if a rock rolled down a hill three million years ago, no human can be responsible for rolling a rock down a hill today. The fallaciousness of this reasoning is astounding. It is hard to imagine that a well-intentioned person can so profoundly misunderstand the science. Assuming the author is acting in good faith, this article provides evidence that motivated reasoning can produce results that appear delusional to well-informed people."

— 11 Apr 2019

Western Journal op-ed deceives readers with completely unsupported claims

in The Western Journal, by Jay Lehr, Tom Harris

"What would make their case stronger would be if they actually analysed all the data, engaged with the existing scientific literature and made their own contribution to our scientific understanding by publishing a scientific paper. The cherry picking exercise in this Western Journal article does not contribute to our scientific understanding of the world."

— 26 Feb 2019

New York Times’ coverage of IPCC report clearly presents conclusions

in The New York Times, by Coral Davenport

This story in The New York Times covered the October release of the IPCC's "Global Warming of 1.5 °C" report. Scientists who reviewed the story found that it provided an accurate and detailed summary of the report, though some statements about warming being "worse than previously thought" could have used some clarifying context.

— 24 Jan 2019

Guardian story on climate impacts of diet gets mixed reviews from scientists

in The Guardian, by Damian Carrington

"The word “Avoiding” in title and text is overly strong and should have been “Reducing”. Adopting a vegan diet is not necessary, but a reduction to having meat 1-2 times a week and dairy 3-4 times a week would suffice. In fact, flexitarian diets utilize natural resources much more efficiently than vegan diets[1]. In the article, Peter Alexander is quoted saying something to the same effect."

— 23 Jan 2019

[1] Note: These feedbacks do not constitute endorsements of the author’s political or economic ideology, rather they are assessments of the scientific foundations and reasoning of the argumentation contained within each article.