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Congressman Seeks Scientists' Personal Data
jfengel writes "The Washington Post reports that House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) has requested raw data and personal financial information on three scientists who published a paper which claimed that temperatures rose precipitously in the 20th century. Colleagues (including other Republicans) are calling the investigation 'misguided and illegitimate.' Barton has long been an opponent of government action on global warming."
Based solely on the editorial, it looks like in this case it is more the latter than the former. But we don't know the whole picture. In fact that one-sided editorial is an excellent example of bias; nowhere does it even outline the Chairman's view.
It comes down to an interesting question. If personal and professional finances are off-limits, how else can politicians determine whether a complex statistical report has been "paid for" by an interested party?
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Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion.
I was lucky to recently attend Al Gore's presentation on Global Climate Change. While I don't care about Global Warming at all (I see it as an eventual end of society and part of the Earth's history) but I did find that Al Gore's excellent multimedia presentation to be full of the very evidence that proves Global Climate Change is occurring and increasing in speed.
Why are these leaders creating issues for scientists unless they are trying to strongarm them? Were they seriously thinking that this data was created from false research? Antarctica is losing large slabs of ice at an alarming rate but it has nothing to do w/temperatures rising?
Again, Global Warming is something that's going to happen and it's inevitable, but we don't need to be harassing science because our political survival depends on it.
He can "seek" anything he wants, but that doesn't mean anyone will take him seriously, or that he'll get it, I don't think the "law" supports that kind of fishing. Much about nothing here, there are a ton of nut-cases in Washington from Texas...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I know, I know, the liberal scientists will probably talk about hot-air and inflammatory rhetoric causing electoral heating. Some say that if we don't curb emissions like this one, we may have an increase in heated opinions, leading to an increase in Republicans. Many blame the continued use of fossil fools for this problem.
But there's little evidence to show this. For one, Michael Crichton says these governments are purely cyclical. Over time, you get Republican Administrations, then Democrat Administrations, then Republican again. Apparently there's a wealth of historical evidence to show this fact.
Then there's the so-called scientists and how their theories change. According to many back in 2004, we were supposed to get a Democratic administration! Now they're saying we're having Republicans. Why should we believe them now?
Anyway, if Joe Barton can discredit the notion that human beings have anything to do with Republicanism, and he's doing a fine job right now let me tell you, I think this will be a great thing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Republicans have perfected the strategy that if you don't like the message, seek to discredit the messenger.
Apparently the Republican party was in charge when Jesus was on earth because that was the same strategy the local political powers pursued against Him.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
While we're at it, let's make ole Joe's real financial backings public. Nothing to hide, right?
"Republicans have perfected the strategy that if you don't like the message, seek to discredit the messenger."
Professional debatists and philosophers have a term for that: ad hominem attacks.
Indeed, due to the declining education standards in most of the Western world, many younger people are not aware of such a concept. That is why those politicians, regardless of their political affiliation, who resort to the use of such logical fallacies are not held responsible for their faulty debatery.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
At the time, I laughed when he was elected. Now, I'm not laughing anymore.
From the abovementioned paper:
Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. Time-dependent correlations of the reconstructions with time-series records representing changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols suggest that each of these factors has contributed to the climate variability of the past 400 years, with greenhouse gases emerging as the dominant forcing during the twentieth century. Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the past eight years are warmer than any other year since (at least) AD 1400.
While I think asking for personal data and computer codes is pretty far out of line, I think a review of the raw data and a detailed analysis of the "Spatially resolved global reconstructions" may not be asking too much.
A peek at the "multivariate calibrations" might be a good idea as well.
For a different perspective on the same news:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=274#more-274/
The head of the Energy Committee is asking for the source code for the statistical calculations that "prove" we're experiencing global warming. Code that was developed with US Government money.
No more than an open source advocate would expect.
The source has now been released.
You don't understand the concept of "fair and balanced." It means that for every person who expresses an accepted and scientifically justifiable opinion, you give equal or greater weight to selected whackos who disagree.
Then, once it becomes accepted that there is "no consensus" you split the difference, and find some even more extreme whackos to skew the "middle ground" even further. Eventually those with well-considered opinion are completely marginalized.
An honest scientist cannot win in this environment, because he or she is not willing to take ever-more-extreme positions to maintain "balance".
So your theory is that there is some nefarious secret ultra rich organization that loves the earth so much that they are bribing scientists to alter their studies in favor of environmentalism.
That would be really great but I doubt it.
BTW scientists are trained to describe their studies in detail and ensure they are repeatable. The way to check a scientist's veracity is to repeat the study and see if you come up with the same results.
Yes, but the facts should speak for themselves. The request for raw data is perfectly reasonable. If that data is subsequently found to be falsified, THEN ask for financials. The raw data should be peer-reviewed first... not the scientist's bank records.
From the article, "[they] were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes."
I think the scientists were mainly incensed over the request of personal financial information and not their funding sources, computer codes, or raw data.
In fact, ANYONE who requests the materials and methods of a published work is usually given them. In order to verify and repeat the results of the work, other scientists need that information.
But, I think the two zany Republicans overstepped their bounds by asking for personal financial information. They're clearly looking for a relationship between the scientists and some environmental organization (the wackier the better). I doubt these guys took personal money from their research grants. But the Republicans seem intent on spinning the published work in any way they can: discredit its authors, its methods, and its funding sources.
Though, the attempt to discredit their methods is not unusual nor wrong! Science is all about critically questioning the work of others until you are convinced of their correct results.
Favorite
Of course he's got nothing to hide...
*cough,cough*
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Any questions?
The paper was published in the Nature magazine. It doesnot matter who funded the studies, it has been peer reviewed and the results agreed upon by a majority of the author's peers who know the subject matter best.
Passing publication review is important. But it is not meant to be a judgement about the correctness of the paper's results -- instead, it is about whether the paper ought to be published or not.
In science, the only real test is reproducibility.
For example, the paper "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter" [1] passed peer review, as it should have. But its results could not be reproduced reliably, so as of this moment its authors' conclusions are considered to be (at best) flawed.
Or for another example, take pentaquarks. Some experiments claim to have unambiguous evidence of their creation in certain production channels. Other experiments claim to unambgiously show that they are not produced in similar -- often, nearly identical -- production channels.
The research on pentaquarks, from both sides, is quality work and certainly worthy of publication. But it is almost certain that someone's experimental methodology is flawed. So the status of pentaquarks remains controversial, as it should.
The ultimate scientific test is to continue trying to reproduce results with improved methods, and to see what nature tells us. This is the essence of peer review.
Publication review is an important part of this mechanism, but it is only one part of the entire cycle of peer review.
[1] S.E. Jones et al., "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter," Nature 338: 737-740 (1989).
The scientists responses. They gave him all he wanted and then some. I don't think he was expecting the answer he got and probably wishes he hadn't asked it now.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I am a scientist (geologist, specifically).
I research global warming (interrelationship of Paleogene temperature and sea-level and how that translates to the present day).
Global warming is real.
The CAUSE is uncertain.
90% Professional Slacker
Amazing that you would think that this is the same thing. The congressman is not interested in just these 3 scientists. He has been shown to be after anybody who has said that we are in a global warming esp. if they state that it is caused by man.
Basically, we are looking at an inquisition. We have them every so often. The catholics (and most Christians) had theirs against science.
We had it during the 50's with the red scare. And yet, we do not learn our lessons. So, as was muttered "And yet, it moves"
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Some main points that don't seem to have come out so far in the Slashdot discussion so far are that
Anyway, follow the link and read what the main scientific institutions think of this episode before you come to your own conclusions please.
Also, if you don't mind signing in, see the recent editorial in the New York Times. It includes the following:
mt
You will see that what was requested was:
That is not personal financial information - that is information that bears directly on his disclosure responsibilities. NSF grants require disclosure of the resultant products (data and algorithms). Asking about funding serves to establish what disclosure obligations result.
Read the scienists official responses to Barton. The hockey stick has not been discredited and it is not claimed to be "the difinitive proof". It is generally acknowledged that the IPCC report is "the" standard body of Global warming knowledge, undermining the IPCC report is the real target of Barton.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Are they somehow above being asked that and we should just take their word on it?
See, this is the key fact of science-- research is not certified until it has been confirmed by outside sources. Publication and transparency are the norm, not the exception.
The do not ask us to take their word on it. They present the research methods and results, and are peer-reviewed. Sometimes, they are proven incorrect. Sometimes, it takes a while to disprove an hypothesis.
In stark contrast, the results of politicians are based on rhetoric, not reason. Even peer review is based on influence, funding, and more rhetoric. There is no transparency.
In this situation, I'm on the side of the scientists. If they are wrong, it will be proven out. If they are right, we should be listening.
If the politician succeeds in silencing the discussion, we all lose, whether he is right or not.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
looking at this and all the other similar articles i wonder if US can still be refferred to as the "land of the free"....
Not with a straight face.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
But all that was really asked for was the financing of the research. See Skippy's post for details. Whenever someone claims there is no warming, or no human caused warming, there's always questions by the other side about who funded the research.
So now we have someone asking who funded the research that said warming is happening. Is this so unfair? Full disclosure of funding for ANY research should be mandatory.
Along with that, the research itself should receive the most scrutiny. Too often research is dismissed because of the funding source. Well, maybe, just maybe, someone funds research because they are actually right, and wish to prove a point before vast policy decisions get made based on myth and lies.
In the end, the problem is too much politics and ideology in the sciences.
On the other hand, according to a friend in Texas, Barton is a bit of a tube steak.
The world's scientific community has created theorized a number of severe and nearly catastrophic harms that will result from global warming.
But wait! No one has considered what could be the worst of all possible outcomes from global warming:
TEXANS WILL BE FORCED TO LEAVE TEXAS
When the sh*t really hits the fan, when confonted with regular daily temperatures in the 140 degree range, we will be faced with a massive northern migration of Texans, such as this Joe Barton cracker, throughout the greater continental United States.
Good God, we must to stop global warming now! If we can just make people aware of the dire consequences of having large numbers of Texans living outside of Texas, then surely everyone will come to their senses and start solving this problem.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Who says you have to pretend that you're "proving" anything (in the mathematical sense)? And anyway, disproving something is proving not-something, so either you can prove things or you can't. (For the record, you can't, in the mathematical sense.)
Rejecting the null hypothesis is a method for gaining confidence that something interesting is happening. If there are other competing hypotheses, you test those too.
I suppose that your characterization of perception is true, but that doesn't mean that science is actually based upon a fallacy--rather, people are given an oversimplification of how and why it works. (It does not help that philosophers of science cannot agree on how and why it works thanks largely to historical philosophical baggage.)
As a practicing scientist, it's pretty clear to me and my colleagues how and why the scientific method works.
So what exactly do you put your faith in? Religion? I'll take science any day of the week. Scientists findings are peer reviewed, scrutinized, and sometimes even found flawed. That's ok though because that is how the process works. Science gives us the best possible picture of the world that we have at our disposal. Anything else is just guessing.
What makes no sense to me is that global warming is accepted by the majority of scientists in the world. Only a few crack pot scientists debate it, well, a few crack pot scientists and and few crack pot politicians.
Time makes more converts than reason
Yep, I will, and the debate over Global Warming is one of the reasons.
Scientists didn't suddenly all decide that the Earth was heating up. The first ones to do so were roundly criticized. It took years and many more studies to confirm their initial findings and still there were far more skeptics than supporters.
The idea that the world has been heating up has been around for almost 20 years now, maybe longer. It wasn't until the last ten years that the majority of scientists started to say they believed that the Earth really is warming up and that the warming we're seeing is caused by human activities.
The scientists who opposed the Global Warming theory were far more qualified to do so than Senator Barton from Texas. Many of them fought with every weapon at their disposal to disprove the theory. Now most of them support it.
Very few new radical ideas get accepted by the scientific community without being thoroughly tested. Look at what happened with cold fusion. There is always some scientist whose work is going to be called into question by any new theory or revision of an old theory. Like any other person, those that are threatened are going to fight back and challenge the upstarts. That's the reason the scientific method works so well.
The scientific method is not the fastest way to learn about the universe, but it is the one that is capable of convincing even the most skeptical of the conclusions that are reached.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Since I don't actually have all day to reply, here is a quick selection of 'reputable' links and a few recent (05) peer-reviewed journal article abstracts concerning global warming.
I wasn't implying that you should take MY word for it...just that I have experience in this topic and that my (informed) opinion is that GW is underway. Denying global warming is about as futile as denying evolution (I'm also a paleontologist). As I mentioned in the previous post, however, the causes of global warming are still up in the air (although I personally suspect that greenhouse gas emissions play a role in accelerating warming). Of course Fairbanks (Nature 342/89) demonstrated that there was a two meter per century rise in sea level around 14000 years ago, so rapid change can occur even without human influence.
Here are a few references:
Fairbanks, R.G., 1989, A 17,000-year glacio-eustatic sea level record; influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep-ocean circulation: Nature, v. 342, no. 6250, p. 637-642.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Aerosols/
http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/coral-bleach ing/scr2000/scr-00gcrmn-report.html
http://www4.nas.edu/onpi/webextra.nsf/44bf87db3095 63a0852566f2006d63bb/e4dcc6e935831fc885256a8400588 146?OpenDocument
http://climatechange.gc.ca/english/default.asp
____
From: Analysis of mean, maximum, and minimum temperature in Athens from 1897 to 2001 with emphasis on the last decade, trends, warm events, and cold events, Extreme climatic events
The 105-year (1897-2001) surface air temperature record of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) has been analyzed to determine indications of significant deviations from long-term average features in the city of Athens. The analysis of the whole record reveals a tendency towards warmer years, with significantly warmer summer and spring periods and slightly warmer winters (an increase of 1.23 and 0.34 degrees C has been observed in the mean summer and mean winter temperature, respectively). The tendency is more pronounced for the summer and spring maximum temperature, but marginal for the minimum temperature of the cold season. On a monthly basis, a statistically significant (at the 95th confidence level) warming trend has been observed in the average maximum temperature of May and June. The trend analysis for the last decade of the record (1992-2001) revealed a significant increase for both warm and cold seasons, yet maximum and minimum temperature. Extreme temperatures (high/low temperatures above/below a certain threshold value) and extreme events (prolonged extreme temperatures) have also been studied. The number of hot days as well as the frequency of occurrence and duration of warm events have significantly increased during the last decade, while a negative trend is observed in the frequency of low temperatures and the duration of cold events especially after 1960.
_____
From: Recent trends from Canadian permafrost thermal monitoring network sites, Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, vol.16, no.1, pp.19-30, Mar 2005
The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), in collaboration with other government partners, has been developing and maintaining a network of active-layer and permafrost thermal monitoring sites which contribute to the Canadian Permafrost Monitoring Network and the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. Recent results from the thermal monitoring sites maintained by the GSC and other federal government agencies are presented. These results indicate that the response of permafrost temperature to rec
90% Professional Slacker
The resolution to the perplexities of positivism is Bayes' Theorem.
:
Where p(A|X) is "the probability of A given X" and ~A means "not A"
p(A|X) = [ p(X|A)*p(A) ] / [ p(X|A)*p(A) + p(X|~A)*p(~A) ]
Much knowledge can be derived from applying that: quantum mechanics, statistics, AI theory, the scientific method and more.
This article is long, so here's the relevant bit
from "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning" by Eliezer Yudkowsky
http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html
Previously, the most popular philosophy of science was probably Karl Popper's falsificationism - this is the old philosophy that the Bayesian revolution is currently dethroning. Karl Popper's idea that theories can be definitely falsified, but never definitely confirmed, is yet another special case of the Bayesian rules; if p(X|A) ~ 1 - if the theory makes a definite prediction - then observing ~X very strongly falsifies A. On the other hand, if p(X|A) ~ 1, and we observe X, this doesn't definitely confirm the theory; there might be some other condition B such that p(X|B) ~ 1, in which case observing X doesn't favor A over B. For observing X to definitely confirm A, we would have to know, not that p(X|A) ~ 1, but that p(X|~A) ~ 0, which is something that we can't know because we can't range over all possible alternative explanations. For example, when Einstein's theory of General Relativity toppled Newton's incredibly well-confirmed theory of gravity, it turned out that all of Newton's predictions were just a special case of Einstein's predictions.
You can even formalize Popper's philosophy mathematically. The likelihood ratio for X, p(X|A)/p(X|~A), determines how much observing X slides the probability for A; the likelihood ratio is what says how strong X is as evidence. Well, in your theory A, you can predict X with probability 1, if you like; but you can't control the denominator of the likelihood ratio, p(X|~A) - there will always be some alternative theories that also predict X, and while we go with the simplest theory that fits the current evidence, you may someday encounter some evidence that an alternative theory predicts but your theory does not. That's the hidden gotcha that toppled Newton's theory of gravity. So there's a limit on how much mileage you can get from successful predictions; there's a limit on how high the likelihood ratio goes for confirmatory evidence.
On the other hand, if you encounter some piece of evidence Y that is definitely not predicted by your theory, this is enormously strong evidence against your theory. If p(Y|A) is infinitesimal, then the likelihood ratio will also be infinitesimal. For example, if p(Y|A) is 0.0001%, and p(Y|~A) is 1%, then the likelihood ratio p(Y|A)/p(Y|~A) will be 1:10000. -40 decibels of evidence! Or flipping the likelihood ratio, if p(Y|A) is very small, then p(Y|~A)/p(Y|A) will be very large, meaning that observing Y greatly favors ~A over A. Falsification is much stronger than confirmation. This is a consequence of the earlier point that very strong evidence is not the product of a very high probability that A leads to X, but the product of a very low probability that not-A could have led to X. This is the precise Bayesian rule that underlies the heuristic value of Popper's falsificationism.
Similarly, Popper's dictum that an idea must be falsifiable can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Bayesian conservation-of-probability rule; if a result X is positive evidence for the theory, then the result ~X would have disconfirmed the theory to some extent. If you try to interpret both X and ~X as "confirming" the theory, the Bayesian rules say this is impossible! To increase the probability of a theory you must expose it to tests that can potentially decrease its probability; this is not just a rule for detecting would-be cheaters in the social process of science, but a consequence of Bayesian probability theory. On the other hand,
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry