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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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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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).