That’s what the Big Climate guys did for years. They told editors of scientific journals and climate correspondents of major newspapers who they were permitted to publish and interview. One side of the debate controlled the terms of it:
Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review.” When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”
So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
This has been disastrous for the integrity of science. Dr Mann, who is suing me for calling his hockey stick “fraudulent”, told The New York Times that my fellow Canadians McIntyre and McKitrick’s paper on what was wrong with the stick was “pure scientific fraud” (they didn’t sue, not being insecure dweebs) – and, even more tellingly, advised the Times not to mention the M&M paper at all. We wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of the “consensus”, would we?