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Willie Soon recently co-authored a paper that criticised the big computer models used for many projections of future climate (which in turn have fed the IPCC process that drive consensus climate policy).

The majority of comment in the mainstream media focuses on a claim that Soon is guilty of failing to disclose a major conflict of interest. The Guardian summarises thus:

Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal’s conflict of interest guidelines.

The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature,” Davies said. “These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs.”

In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.

Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?

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matt_black
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note: This question was originally much longer and quoted section 1 of this response by The Heartland Institute. My comments here are in reference to those claims.

The Heartland Institute's claims about conflict of interest policies and funding disclosure, at least, are incorrect. The conflict of interest policy for Science Bulletin states:

Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could influence or bias the work. Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but not limited to the following:

  • Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)
  • Honoraria for speaking at symposia
  • Financial support for attending symposia [...]
  • Support from a project sponsor [...]

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

Funding is mentioned on the same page:

Acknowledgments: Acknowledgments of grants, funds, people, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

(In lay writing, an "acknowledgements" section is optional and usually informal, but in scientific writing it's a formal part of the paper with explicit rules.)

The claim that Soon did not receive the grant funding directly is irrelevant. It's rare for academics to receive funding directly. Grants are almost always made in the name of the researcher's institution, and the institution almost always keeps a large portion to cover their costs. Similarly, it's not relevant that the Smithsonian approved the grant, because no one is claiming that there was something wrong with the grant. The claim is that it needed to be disclosed.

octern
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    So, does every paper have to disclose all previous sources of funding from any source? Is that standard applied to all papers by all authors all the time? – matt_black Mar 09 '15 at 22:33
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    My field is the social sciences, but as far as I know the standards are the in other fields. You're required to disclose the sources of funding for study activities, as well as funding that supported you while the study was being run. This includes funding that helped pay your salary, even if it wasn't linked to the specific project. I believe that speaking fees and the like don't need to be disclosed on every paper, but they do need to be disclosed if there's any plausible relationship between the funder and the topic of the work. – octern Mar 10 '15 at 01:50
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    As far as I know this standard is applied to all authors by all reputable journals. It is considered a basic part of professional ethics. – octern Mar 10 '15 at 01:52
  • @matt_black it varies from journal to journal, in this particular case the requirements were much more stringent than most, but very clearly stated. For most academics they are keen to acknowledge their funding (as grants are so hard to get, it is something to shout about! ;o) and for most funding bodies it is a formal requirement that their support is explicitly acknowledged. However that is not a conflict of interest. For most academics their funding comes from government funding councils, so it isn't an issue anyway in the way that industrial funding *may* be. –  Mar 10 '15 at 08:14
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    I would say that industrial funding is definitely a conflict of interest. But saying that something is a "conflict of interest" doesn't mean that it's improper or unethical. In most cases the rules don't say that you have to avoid conflicts of interest, just that you have to disclose them. – octern Mar 10 '15 at 15:42
  • @octern It is only a conflict of interest if the findings of the paper have a commercial impact on an industrial partner, which is not *necessarily* the case. Fossil fuel companies may fund research on, say curing ebola, as a purely philanthropic act (or even to improve the image of the company), but that wouldn't be a conflict of interest per se. However I completely agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong with disclosed conflicts of interest - indeed it is an indication of good ethical practise. –  Mar 10 '15 at 15:56
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    @matt Conflicts of interest are about the *credibility* of a research paper: a paper with *hidden* conflicts of interest is less credible than a paper with *disclosed* conflicts of interest, which in turn is less credible of a paper *without* conflicts of interest. All this applies whether the results of the paper are right or wrong. A bad, undisclosed CoI doesn't mean a paper is wrong, just that it doesn't matter because it's not *believable*. – Sklivvz Mar 11 '15 at 19:24
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    @Sklivvz I don't disagree with your analysis. But Soon has been set a much higher standard that that normally applied to others in practice. If every climate scientist had to declare **every** historic source of funding, the acknowledgements would be longer than the papers. The starting point for this is the factual question of whether, in a strict interpretation, he and his co-authors actually broke the rules. The newspapers allowed no ambiguity; I'm skeptical they are right. – matt_black Mar 11 '15 at 19:46
  • @matt_black it's not a "factual" question. Rules are interpreted, that's why we have judges. :-) – Sklivvz Mar 11 '15 at 19:48
  • @Sklivvz Hence why it makes an interesting question here. – matt_black Mar 11 '15 at 19:48
  • @matt_black Soon is not being held to higher standards, the standards are set by the journal, and Soon chose to publish his paper at a journal with particularly rigorous CoI guidelines. Scientists (Soon included) are not required to declare **every** historic source of funding, just those that would represent a conflict of interest. There is no real question that Soon et al. broke the rules, Fossil Fuel and lobby group funding is a clear conflict of interest for climate research and Soon did not declare it. –  Mar 12 '15 at 10:16
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    Even ignoring the funding issue, all four authors of the paper in question are affiliated with think-tanks (e.g. the Heartland Institute) that active in the political debate on climate change. That is a clear conflict of interest that was not mentioned either. However, it isn't that big a deal, what really matters is whether the science holds up. –  Mar 12 '15 at 10:58
  • Incidentally, according to WUWT (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/16/peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-model-exposes-serious-errors-in-complex-computer-models-and-reveals-that-mans-influence-on-the-climate-is-negligible/) the Heartland Institute paid the open access fees for the paper. –  Mar 13 '15 at 09:57
  • Note that just because something isn't against the rules doesn't mean it is ethical to do - this answer is about the rules as written, not the rules as we'd like them to be interpreted. – Zibbobz Mar 13 '15 at 15:10