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Deniers Turn To 'Money Machine Fraud Operation' For Special Denial Edition of MDPI Journal 'Climate' [1]

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Date: 2022-06-28 00:00:00

When you watch Sherlock Holmes or some other detective solve a murder, does it compel you to research all the ways people die naturally? Or when you lose your sense of smell and start coughing constantly and feeling terrible in the midst of a global pandemic, do you forgo a Covid-19 test to instead leave angry reviews because your Yankee Candle has no scent ?

And if you don't accept the scientific consensus that the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is dangerously heating the atmosphere, and think instead that scientists just haven't discovered the natural reason for climate change, well here's a chance to prove it!

It seems someone at the open access publisher MDPI has invited Ned Nikolov to guest-edit an edition of their Climate journal, and like the tobacco lawyer who brings up research on naturally-occuring cancers to defend his client against evidence of culpability, the theme of the issue is "natural drivers of the Earth’s climate."

Yes, please just ignore the elephant in the room energy imbalance in the atmosphere and instead consider that maybe the temperature has a "higher correlation with seismic activity than it has with atmospheric CO2," or perhaps that the "high correlation between global temperature and the rate of annual migration of the North Magnetic Pole" means there's some causation, there, too! The call for submissions is now open , but before you jump in to validate this kangaroo court, perhaps some context is in store.

Ned Nikolov is a longtime climate science denier, whose reputation is so irreparably damaged that back in 2016 he resorted to publishing one of his denial papers under a fake name . The then-retracted paper was so bad that even WUWT refused to post it , in case you were wondering about the paper's merits.

And the publisher that apparently invited Nikolov to guest-edit (under his own name even!) is not exactly highly regarded. A quick search on RetractionWatch shows that MDPI has been publishing a LOT of Covid crap , and the company pressured a watchdog into reversing the determination that it's a predatory publisher, even though its questionable practices continue .

According to a remarkably lengthy, yet still not comprehensive, "Controversies" section on its Wikipedia entry, MDPI has experienced multiple mass resignations as a result of unethical publication practices. In 2018, 10 senior editors resigned from Nutrients because MDPI wanted to force them to run mediocre work. In 2021 five members of the Vaccines editorial board resigned after it published an article claiming the COVID-19 vaccine wasn't effective.

And not included in the otherwise lengthy Wiki entry is the 2011 resignation of the editor-in-chief of the MDPI journal Remote Sensing, over its publication of climate denial, though it does note that Remote Sensing is rated poorly by official Norwegian academic standards. The Wiki entry also documents that scholars describe MDPI as "a 'money machine' based in China with 'a small 'artificial' office in Switzerland."

MDPI, according to academics who just happen to not be engaged in selling climate, Covid or anti-vaxx disinformation, has "an aggressive focus" on "flooding the market with rapidly published special issues motivated purely by profit," and is a "money machine fraud operation."

Making it the perfect place for a special issue of climate disinformation seeking out any possible excuse for climate change that doesn't implicate the fossil fuel industry's money machine!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/28/2107034/-Deniers-Turn-To-Money-Machine-Fraud-Operation-For-Special-Denial-Edition-of-MDPI-Journal-Climate

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