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Is climate change controversy good for science? IPCC and contrarian reports in the light of bibliometrics

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Abstract

Debate and controversy concerning the issue of climate change generally results in the hindering and obstruction of social and governmental action on this issue. This paper analyses the scientific background, i.e. the reference list of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report “The Physical Science Basis” and an alternative climate change report of a US think tank institute “Climate Change Reconsidered II. Physical Science”. We compared these two reports to the antecedent reports from 2007 (IPCC AR4 WGI) and 2009 (Climate Change Reconsidered). For the purposes of the study, we developed a database containing all the references collected from the four reports. The bibliometric analysis focused on the distribution of references among peer reviewed scientific journals and the most frequently cited lead authors that created the basis for the evaluation of their different scientific emphasis. Our findings underline that there is still no convergence between the scientific literature of the IPCC and the contrarian reports; however, the remarkable quantitative development on both sides and the qualitative progress of the IPCC report allows us to draw somewhat surprising conclusions in the context of climate change science. Contrary to expectations, controversy is beneficial to the science of climate change as it fosters the review process on both sides of the debate.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful for the reviewer’s help and suggestions, which improved our study. Our paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Jankó). Funding for this study was also provided by a project called Agroclimate. 2 VKSZ_12-1-2013-0034 (Papp Vancsó and Móricz).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alexandre Lamfalussy Faculty of Economics, University of Sopron, Erzsébet St. 9, Sopron, 9400, Hungary

    Ferenc Jankó

  2. Gyula Roth Technical School of Forestry and Wood Industry, Szent György St. 9, Sopron, 9400, Hungary

    Judit Papp Vancsó

  3. National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Forest Research Institute, Várkerület 30/A, Sárvár, 9600, Hungary

    Norbert Móricz

Authors
  1. Ferenc Jankó
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  2. Judit Papp Vancsó
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  3. Norbert Móricz
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Correspondence to Ferenc Jankó.

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Jankó, F., Papp Vancsó, J. & Móricz, N. Is climate change controversy good for science? IPCC and contrarian reports in the light of bibliometrics. Scientometrics 112, 1745–1759 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2440-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2440-9

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