PLoS One staff, right up through editor-in-chief Dr. Joerg Heber, violated every single element of the purported PLoS ethical standard.

See the Code of Conduct and the competing interests guidelines included in the PLoS file.

The cover letter requested that the review editor not be a climate modeler on the grounds of the obvious conflict of interest with a study demonstrating climate models have no predictive value.
Also provided was evidence of the general incompetence of climate modelers as regards error analysis.

The cover letter explicitly provided that the study concerned physical error analysis, not climate physics. It recommended the reviewers be condensed matter physicists and/or analytical chemists.

Nevertheless, PLoS assigned Dr. Añel as the academic editorial reviewer. Dr. Añel is a climate modeler. His career is fully invested in the status-quo.
 
Dr. Añel:
	•	was adversarial
	•	was hostile
	•	had a fatal professional conflict of interest with the manuscript study
	•	was ethically required to recuse himself, but did not do so
	•	produced a thoroughly incompetent a review 
	•	was so non-specific in his criticisms as to support an inference that he did not read the manuscript before writing his review

The appeal reviewer, Dr. Leonie Mueck:
	•	upheld Dr. Añel’s incompetent review
	•	claimed the farcical grounds of a “lack of evidence to support the conclusions.”
	•	claimed the study required climate modeler reviewers, despite that it concerned only physical error analysis.
	•	showed no notice that Dr. Añel was an adversarial reviewer and should have recused himself.

The ethics editor, Dr. Renee Hoch:
	•	replied with silence to a request to intervene.
	•	was evidently unmoved that Dr. Añel violated PLoS ethics by his non-recusal

Editor-in-Chief Dr. Joerg Heber:
	•	was included in every email exchange
	•	replied with silence to a request to intervene
	•	must have been aware that Dr. Añel thoroughly violated PLoS ethics, but did nothing
	•	was apparently unconcerned by the incompetence of Dr. Añel’s review.