Slashdot Mirror

"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "

Yes indeed. And anyone who claims otherwise--such as the parent--is either ignorant or dishonest. Here are some sources, but it feels unfair to only list these few.

The Hockey Stick Illusion (book about the "hockey stick")
The Delinquent Teenager (book about IPCC being infiltrated by extreme advocates)
"Understanding Climategate's hidden decline" (article about "hide the decline")
Watts Up With That? (leading blog)
Letter to the Science and Technology Committee (on fraud)

Etc. Etc.

I am the story's submitter. My original submission included a link to the mathematician's web page about this; the page has many more details. There have also been other news stories, e.g. at the BBC.

The UK Freedom of Information Act has exemptions for data that has not yet been used in publications, vexatious requests, etc.

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The e-mails show that Tom Wigley, one of the most highly-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate, thought my paper was "valid". They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to get the journal editor to not publish my paper.

After my paper was published, the State University of New York, where the research was conducted, carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed: contrary to the university's policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report's release, but I was not allowed to see the report: truly Kafkaesque.

The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense against my allegation. The defense is obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise, then, that the university still refuses to release the report. More details on all this, including source documents are, here.

If you read the links, it is clear that the data upon which Wang's research was based did not exist. Why do you criticize Keenan for exposing that?

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The e-mails show that Tom Wigley, one of the most highly-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate, thought my paper was "valid". They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to get the journal editor to not publish my paper.

After my paper was published, the State University of New York, where the research was conducted, carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed: contrary to the university's policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report's release, but I was not allowed to see the report: truly Kafkaesque.

The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense against my allegation. The defense is obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise, then, that the university still refuses to release the report. More details on all this, including source documents are, here.

If you read the links, it is clear that the data upon which Wang's research was based did not exist. Why do you criticize Keenan for exposing that?

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The e-mails show that Tom Wigley, one of the most highly-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate, thought my paper was "valid". They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to get the journal editor to not publish my paper.

After my paper was published, the State University of New York, where the research was conducted, carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed: contrary to the university's policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report's release, but I was not allowed to see the report: truly Kafkaesque.

The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense against my allegation. The defense is obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise, then, that the university still refuses to release the report. More details on all this, including source documents are, here.

If you read the links, it is clear that the data upon which Wang's research was based did not exist. Why do you criticize Keenan for exposing that?

Except they can't actually find the contracts that say they aren't allowed to share, and because they can't identify subsets of the data which are safe, they refuse to share any of it.... Meanwhile, amongst the skeptic crowd we find McKintyre at climateaudit.org, who always does a full disclosure of methods and data.

I would note that it's not clear that Wang was actually innocent, and the university committee has been balking at releasing the committee findings. Since defense relies on the memory of Zhaomei Zeng, who was a co-author of the report that claimed those stations didn't have a quality history in 1990 but now claims they did but that she lost the information. It's a strong sign that there is an issue with station selection, even if the error lies with Zeng not Wang. This is exactly the sort of issues that FOI requests can reveal.

Except they can't actually find the contracts that say they aren't allowed to share, and because they can't identify subsets of the data which are safe, they refuse to share any of it.... Meanwhile, amongst the skeptic crowd we find McKintyre at climateaudit.org, who always does a full disclosure of methods and data.

I would note that it's not clear that Wang was actually innocent, and the university committee has been balking at releasing the committee findings. Since defense relies on the memory of Zhaomei Zeng, who was a co-author of the report that claimed those stations didn't have a quality history in 1990 but now claims they did but that she lost the information. It's a strong sign that there is an issue with station selection, even if the error lies with Zeng not Wang. This is exactly the sort of issues that FOI requests can reveal.

Bingo!

Better still, make up the metadata where none exists to disprove UHI effects

Remember, its not scientific fraud if they don't ask you to produce the goods! Unless you're Hwang woo Suk...

If the _results_ from the lab in question match up with other independent results, what possible grounds to laymen have to presume the data was deliberately changed? Unless they assume that all independent labs falsified their data in concert, which would be a hell of a conspiracy.

Show me the independent verification of the paper Jones et al 1990.

Lets get this part out of the way real quickly. Firstly is that Jones is the man who runs that Real Climate this article mentions, and is also the big climate cheese at the CRU whos emails were hacked and said all sorts of questionable things in them.

Now, the paper in question is supposedly the definitive attempt the measure the Urban Heat Island effect. Almost two decades worth of Freedom Of Information requests were thwarted by Jones and one of his co-authors, Wang. Of focus here is that the paper claims that they took the raw china temperature data and weeded out the site locations which had unknown site provenance. That is, specifically, that they supposedly only used data from sites which had little to no urbanization or instrumentation changes over the period of the study.

So the site provenance data needs to be available in order to independently verify this paper. Unfortunately, IT DOES NOT EXIST ANY LONGER, and according to the DOE which produced a report (written by Zeng and *Wang*) AT THE SAME TIME as the Jones and *Wang* 1990 paper was being written, STATED EXPLICITLY THAT THIS DATA DID NOT EXIST.

Somebody completely made it up (probably Wang) and so far, nothing has been done about the allegations of outright scientific fraud.

I'll take your independent verification argument seriously when it actually becomes possible to independently verify the works of these fraudsters. Thats right, it is IMPOSSIBLE to even BEGIN to verify some of their work BECAUSE the data they claim to have had DOES NOT EXIST and PROBABLY DIDNT EVEN EXIST WHEN THE WORK WAS DONE.

You are right to be suspicious, especially when you learn more about the shenanigans of some of the alarmist climate researchers. One professor who has co-authored papers with Phil Jones of CRU is up on academic misconduct and fraud charges brought by Doug Keenan. See http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm See also the English Translation of the article titled "Kyoto Protocol Based on Flawed Statistics" found at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

Ritalin is scary stuff. There are no good-quality long-term studies on the effects of Ritalin. And there is some evidence that ritalin is carcinogenic and can cause permanent changes in the brain. There is a partial summary of potential problems with ritalin here (mostly as it is used to treat ADHD).

Lots of global-warming research is closed source. Check out this discussion of a prominent paper in Nature, for example:
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a3200.htm
—when things were finally opened up, it was also discovered to be wrong.

Closed source and hidden data is the norm. It is wrong.

The story is certainly interesting, but it's off-topic (even though it is about Wikipedia). Also, the correct link for “this review” seems to be http://www.informath.org/apprise/a6400.htm.

Lots of people manipulate Wikipedia for their own purposes, and sometimes these are highly dishonorable. As an example, check out the Wikipedia article for Christopher Gillberg. Then compare it to what you find googling for Gillberg affair, especially this review.

Gillberg appears to have been a highly dishonorable medical researcher, but his supporters, aided by an administrator, repeatedly changed the article to make it seem like he is a hero.

Allow me to explain further, since you completely missed the point. In many cases, and I've seen it on this very thread, people make something like the following claim: "The people making the claims are scientist. They know what they are doing, and non-scientists aren't qualified to judge. Therefore, since the majority of scientists believe this to be true, it is." It's an argument from authority, which is semivalid if the individuals really are a trusted source. However, proof of fallibility is a VALID argument to counter claims of authority. Since many of the same individuals have frequently made claims of a looming disaster in the past and been wrong, their claims of authority are worthless, and it is necessary to look carefully at their logic and reasoning rather than just accepting that the claims are accurate without bothering to verify.

There are some bad arguments in favor of anthropogenic climate change, which tend to increase people's doubt even when presented with good evidence. In some cases, it would appear that peer review is a flawed tool at best.

A better paraphrase of the argument would be "Most people have been wrong about similar predictions, therefore it is likely that most people are wrong about these predictions." The logic still isn't great since it's not always the same individuals, but it's much stronger than the straw man argument you provided.