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Andy @Revkin's avatar

Great to see you on Substack with this theme, Volker, and I'd love to get you on my #SustainWhat webcast to dig deeper. Through 40 years in science journlism, mostly focused on climate, I've seen a woeful tendency echoing the concerns of Roger Pielke (and you). But the problem starts with abstracts, and includes funders' pressures. Here's are relevant posts from 2011 and 2012 on my New York Times blog Dot Earth: On Storms, Warming, Caveats and the Front Page https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/on-storms-warming-caveats-and-the-front-page/; From Abstract to News Release to Story, a Tilt to the ‘Front-Page Thought’: https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/from-abstract-to-news-release-to-story-a-tilt-to-the-front-page-thought/ The longtime climate scientist Gavin Schmidt defends the language of abstracts and I push back.

Gavin says: "'Here we show' statements are required by Nature and Science to clearly lay out the point of the paper. If you don’t include it, they will write it in. The caveats/uncertainties/issues all come later. I think the confusion is more cultural than anything. No one at Nature or Science or any of the authors in any subject think that uncertainties are zero, but they require a clear statement of the point of the paper within their house style."

I replied: "I think that conclusion misses the reality that, particularly in the world of online communication of science, abstracts are not merely for colleagues who know the shorthand, but have different audiences who’ll have different ways of interpreting phrases such as 'here we show.'”

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