Learning from mistakes and replicating contrarian claims - recent study

Considering the developing theme over here is highlighting the fundamentally fictional, self-delusional nature of the Republican/libertarian mindset I've decided to reproduce the complete text of a recent study that attempted to replicate 38 of the most popular AGW contrarian go-to science papers. 

What the authors found is further evidence that the Republican/libertarian rejection of science is driven by a deeply held ideological, (if not religious), conviction that rejects objective evidence and down to earth logic.  

Since the paper has a CreativeCommons Copyright and there's too much in it I'd like to quote, I've decided to Repost the full text over here - after letting Dana Nuccitelli (one of the authors) give an introduction (taken from his August 25th, 2015 article in the UK Guardian.), enjoy and draw your own conclusions.

Dana Nuccitelli - The Guardian - August 25, 2015 

Those who reject the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming often invoke Galileo as an example of when the scientific minority overturned the majority view. In reality, climate contrarians have almost nothing in common with Galileo, whose conclusions were based on empirical scientific evidence, supported by many scientific contemporaries, and persecuted by the religious-political establishment. Nevertheless, there’s a slim chance that the 2–3% minority is correct and the 97% climate consensus is wrong. 

To evaluate that possibility, a new paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology examines a selection of contrarian climate science research and attempts to replicate their results. The idea is that accurate scientific research should be replicable, and through replication we can also identify any methodological flaws in that research. The study also seeks to answer the question, why do these contrarian papers come to a different conclusion than 97% of the climate science literature? …   ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/25/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-replicate-climate-contrarian-papers?CMP=twt_a-science_b-gdnscience )

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{I have taken the liberty of adding extra paragraph breaks for clarity and  highlighting what seems to me important sentences.}

Original Paper appeared in

Theoretical and Applied Climatology

First online: 20 August 2015 - pp 1-5

Learning from mistakes in climate research

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5/fulltext.html

10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5

Rasmus E. Benestad, Dana Nuccitelli, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, John Cook

Abstract

Among papers stating a position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), 97 % endorse AGW. What is happening with the 2 % of papers that reject AGW? We examine a selection of papers rejecting AGW. 

An analytical tool has been developed to replicate and test the results and methods used in these studies; our replication reveals a number of methodological flaws, and a pattern of common mistakes emerges that is not visible when looking at single isolated cases. Thus, real-life scientific disputes in some cases can be resolved, and we can learn from mistakes. 

A common denominator seems to be missing contextual information or ignoring information that does not fit the conclusions, be it other relevant work or related geophysical data. In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup. 

Other typical weaknesses include false dichotomies, inappropriate statistical methods, or basing conclusions on misconceived or incomplete physics. We also argue that science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subject to sustained scrutiny. The merit of replication is highlighted and we discuss how the quality of the scientific literature may benefit from replication.