Push to close Australia's native timber industry to 'save' forest carbon based on flawed science

This error also has significant ramifications for the paper's findings because the estimated carbon stock has been modelled on a grossly inflated area.

Collectively, these quite fundamental errors have contributed to a highly flawed carbon accounting calculations that enabled Keith et al (2014) to grossly over-state the impact of timber production on supposedly exacerbating carbon emissions.

That these errors are being repeated in the new research undertaken by many of the same ANU researchers in conjunction with Fujitsu Laboratories, is evident in the two diagrams contained in the Fujitsu media release. One of these diagrams is a reproduction of Figure 8 from Keith et al, 2014 which contains the first three errors; with the other two incorporated in the second diagram.

A further potential misconception flagged in the Fujitsu media release is that all forest burnt by wildfire is presumed to be salvage logged when, in reality, the limitations of contractor capability and time before timber degrade ensures that the majority is not. This also has considerable potential to skew carbon accounting calculations.

Unfortunately over the past year, the factual errors outlined above have become part of the anti-logging lexicon by dint of being repeated by ANU ecologist David Lindenmayer (a co-author of Keith et al) on ABC Radio, in several newspaper articles, and at a Greens-sponsored 'extinction emergency' forum. In addition, they have been used in promotional material for a forests and climate change forum organised and sponsored by a number of forest and climate ENGOs, and used to support the push for a Great Forests National Park in Victoria's Central Highlands being mooted by ENGOs as the saviour of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum.

The errors in Keith et al (2014) raise important questions about the academic standards governing the ANU's forests conservation research program, including peer review and the public dissemination of research findings.

Peer review may be vaunted by the academic community as an unimpeachable guarantee that scientific evidence has been through a process of unbiased testing, but contrary to this idealistic expectation it can be readily biased by who the reviewers are and their professional, personal or political agendas; and/or the extent to which they actually know the topic and its wider context.

As Keith et al (2014) shows, it is folly to automatically accept peer review as a guarantee that the factual and conceptual accuracy of a research paper is beyond reproach. Clearly, it was reviewed by person/s unfamiliar with the paper's Victorian study area and the basic forestry data associated with it, and this is at the core of the paper's flaws.

It is noteworthy that ANU forests conservation research papers are being increasingly published in international online journals where peer review may not be as rigorous as was traditionally expected. Indeed, ESA Journals, which published Keith et al (2014), enables submitting authors to suggest their own peer reviewers from an international database of potential reviewers.

This may be an attraction of publishing in international online journals whereby peer review is more likely to be undertaken by scientists lacking sufficient background knowledge of the Australian context to meaningfully challenge the researchers' work. Sadly, this is a recipe for highly flawed science.

The major concern of how research findings with implications for the future of Australian forestry are being disseminated through the media is arguably of greater significance because of its potential to mislead the wider community and shape political decisions.

Keith et al (2014) and other forest conservation research papers produced by much the same cabal of ANU scientists since 2008, have created considerable consternation amongst forest scientists and forestry practitioners about a pre-conceived academic agenda. This has been inflamed by perceptions of inappropriate collusion between ENGOs and researchers zealously promoting draft findings at anti-forestry campaign events and through the media in support of ENGO agendas.