Skeptics' Journal Publishes Plagiarist's Paper

onMar 24, 2008 @ 15:53 PDT

Despite dismissing the work as “a bit patchy and nothing new,” Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of the skeptic’s journal Energy and Environment journal, has published the work of the plagiarist Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte.

Dr. Schulte’s “research” was first published last year on an industry-funded website called the Science and Public Policy Institute. Actually, it was excerpted in a long essay by the disingenuous Viscount Christopher Monckton (inset), who pronounced Schulte’s paper serious, peer-reviewed science even while failing to admit his own part in its creation.

Following up on criticisms of Schulte’s methodology and accusations that he had plagiarized earlier work by the oft-humiliated anthropologist Benny Peiser, the DeSmogBlog contacted Ms. Boehmer-Christiansen in September and asked how she could justify publishing Schulte’s article.

In her response, dated Sept. 6, 2006, Boehmer-Christiansen said:

For your information, I have informed Dr.Schulte that I am happy to publish his own research findings on the effect on patients of climate alamism/’Angst’.

His survey of papers critical of the consensus was a bit patchy and nothing new, as you point out. it was not what was of interest to me; nothing has been published.

Sincerely

Sonja B-C

And as of September last year, nothing had been published. But the March issue of E&E proudly includes Schulte’s work, pretty much unedited from the much-criticized version circulating last summer. We still await any actual research from Schulte on the effect of “alarmism” or “angst” on the health of his patients – or anything beyond his anecdotal reports that some among his patients find the threat of climate change (quite justifiably) anxiety inducing.

For the definitive review of both Schulte’s unimpressive scholarship and the longer-running campaign to claim a legitimate ongoing scientific debate about global warming, see the attached paper by John R. Mashey. It is exhaustive and devastating – and pretty much every potential point of contention is backed up with links and direct references, creating a degree of transparency the likes of which appear to be entirely unfamiliar to Monckton-Schulte.

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