ValueError using recursive feature elimination for SVM with rbf kernel in scikit-learn

I’m trying to use the recursive feature elimination (RFE) function in scikit-learn but keep getting the error ValueError: coef_ is only available when using a linear kernel. I am trying to perform feature selection for a support vector classifier (SVC) using a rbf kernel. This example from the website executes fine:

print(__doc__)

from sklearn.svm import SVC
from sklearn.cross_validation import StratifiedKFold
from sklearn.feature_selection import RFECV
from sklearn.datasets import make_classification
from sklearn.metrics import zero_one_loss

# Build a classification task using 3 informative features
X, y = make_classification(n_samples=1000, n_features=25, n_informative=3,
                       n_redundant=2, n_repeated=0, n_classes=8,
                       n_clusters_per_class=1, random_state=0)

# Create the RFE object and compute a cross-validated score.
svc = SVC(kernel="linear")
rfecv = RFECV(estimator=svc, step=1, cv=StratifiedKFold(y, 2),
          scoring='accuracy')
rfecv.fit(X, y)

print("Optimal number of features : %d" % rfecv.n_features_)

# Plot number of features VS. cross-validation scores
import pylab as pl
pl.figure()
pl.xlabel("Number of features selected")
pl.ylabel("Cross validation score (nb of misclassifications)")
pl.plot(range(1, len(rfecv.grid_scores_) + 1), rfecv.grid_scores_)
pl.show()

However, simply changing the kernel type from linear to rbf, as follows, produces the error:

print(__doc__)

from sklearn.svm import SVC
from sklearn.cross_validation import StratifiedKFold
from sklearn.feature_selection import RFECV
from sklearn.datasets import make_classification
from sklearn.metrics import zero_one_loss

# Build a classification task using 3 informative features
X, y = make_classification(n_samples=1000, n_features=25, n_informative=3,
                       n_redundant=2, n_repeated=0, n_classes=8,
                       n_clusters_per_class=1, random_state=0)

# Create the RFE object and compute a cross-validated score.
svc = SVC(kernel="rbf")
rfecv = RFECV(estimator=svc, step=1, cv=StratifiedKFold(y, 2),
          scoring='accuracy')
rfecv.fit(X, y)

print("Optimal number of features : %d" % rfecv.n_features_)

# Plot number of features VS. cross-validation scores
import pylab as pl
pl.figure()
pl.xlabel("Number of features selected")
pl.ylabel("Cross validation score (nb of misclassifications)")
pl.plot(range(1, len(rfecv.grid_scores_) + 1), rfecv.grid_scores_)
pl.show()

This seems like it could be a bug, but if anyone could spot something I’m doing wrong that would be great. Also, I’m running python 2.7.6 with scikit-learn version 0.14.1.

Thanks for the help!