Slashdot Mirror
Climategate and the Need For Greater Scientific Openness
The Guardian follows up on the recent news that CRU climate scientists were cleared of scientific misconduct with an article that focuses on how the controversy could have been avoided, and public trust retained, had the scientists made more of an effort to be open about their research. You may recall our discussion of a report from Pennsylvania State University; that was followed by another review with similar conclusions. Quoting:
"The review, led by Sir Muir Russell, does not mention the media. Instead, it examines the reaction of the scientists at the UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to the pressure exerted by bloggers: 'An important feature of the blogosphere is the extent to which it demands openness and access to data. A failure to recognize this and to act appropriately can lead to immense reputational damage by feeding allegations of cover-up.' The review adds: 'We found a lack of recognition of the extent to which earlier action to release information might have minimized the problems.' Pressure on the scientists, whose once esoteric work creating records of past temperatures had gained global significance, was intense. In 2005, CRU head Phil Jones replied to a request: 'We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?' But, the review implies, the more they blocked, the more the Freedom of Information requests flooded in."
I think this demonstrates that the idealized version of the scientific method isn't always followed.
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Because that is how science works. Any decent scientist would rather say "here is my data, please help me find something wrong with it."
Hey, I've got a response for you: Fuck the blogosphere.
There is sufficient transparency in the scientific community, but you know what? People have opinions in the community as well. They don't claim its science, they argue, they piss each other off behind closed doors, and they deserve to have their personal e-mails kept private. They aren't politicians -- they aren't accountable to the public, though they often do perform public services. But then they set it all aside, they publish their work to peer reviewed journals, and move towards some kind of consensus using common criterion. Demanding greater transparency (ie reduced privacy) because a small number of people from a much, much larger community made a poor judgement call (at best) is uncalled for.
And the blogosphere is not exactly what I would call a bastion of unbiased requests! For shame...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Um, that is precisely why. Do you even know how to spell the word "science", Phil?
It was only a big deal to the paid US shills, there was no "loss of public trust".
Reasonable people listen to scientific consensus.
Although this article esquire.com - marc morano is admittedly pop-media, it demonstrates that most of the fault here lies with reporting, not the science or even the scientists. The researchers at UEA have been doing the best job of measuring and analyzing that anyone can, yet when they are harassed by payed pundits and gadflys the objectivity of the media is completely lost. Even now that the researchers have been cleared of any professional wrongdoing, they are still being criticized (or apologized for) because they expressed frustration that their work was being misrepresented. If we should take away any message from this incident, it should be concern about how easily information can be corrupted in the public mind, even at times when clear public debate is critically important. Case in point: The Guardian is not the most balanced news outlet, and often has a sensationalist agenda of it's own.
This is like what, the third time they have had to come out and tell us that the Phil Jones and crew are cleared of all wrong doing?
Why aren't they back at their posts then?
I predicted they would do, none other than 3 very public "Nothing to see here...move along" sort of PR stunts like this back in October when I posted my response on slashdot when this whole scam was blow by an insider who followed the money trail.
Rubbish all of it.
If anyone is really interested, take a look at the work most of the scientists that were Black Balled in the Emails that were leaked (Jones lists them) (which you can get anywhere on the internet) and look at the research they are doing.
I think you will find some problems with the idea of man made warming, although they do find a slight warming trend that is consistent with Historical Solar flux. (11 Year Sun Spot Cycles) and the gradual changes in the earths orbital and processional characteristics.
It is a MONEY SCAM. Al Gore is a partner in one of the firms that setup the entire idea of a Global Tax on carbon.
The best way to start cleaning up this planet, is to start giving the damn Nobel Prize to people who actually contribute something to the science to protect this planet.
Not some idiot like Al Gore.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Of course there's the problem of those private emails revealing naked attempts to massage what qualifies for peer review and who qualifies as a peer to do the reviewing.
You're aware that the papers that Jones was referring to when he said he would "keep them out somehow" from the IPCC report were, in fact, not kept out, and did appear in the report?
This was, basically, a frustrated scientist blowing off steam in a private conversation. Out of a thousand stolen e-mail messages, one of them was frustrated and hot-tempered. Turns out, scientists actually are human.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Ten grand per paper? And this compares to the government funding of warmist science by what, a factor of 1 to 1000? 1 to 100,000?
The whole "living in glass houses" idiom comes to mind here -> if money is a corrupting influence on science, than it's clear the warmist position is the more corrupt position. Best to stick the basics of the falsifiable hypotheses being discussed, rather than drip into distracting ad hominem.
Or even worse, amateurs who do not know how to read the data using it to 'prove' nonsense.
As opposed to those using the data for public reports with an amateur understanding of statistics doing statistical analysis of data?
Why is that OK with you? And why is it NOT OK to lat "amateurs" like Richard Feynman who may not be amateur at all in some tangentially related field access to the data? Because that is who you are blocking along with the rest of the "amateurs".
People like you are going to have to get used to true experts who simply lack a degree in the field in question. The small blip of time where the presence of a degree is the end-all of understanding of a topic is a historical aberration. And it's not even like "climatologists" as a degree has been around very long at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.
Another feature of the blogsphere is that it gives a loud megaphone to anyone who has the intelligence to type, and many who do not.
It takes a fair amount of funding to research something from scratch and make some intelligent conclusions. Taking a report already available and picking it apart by cherrypicking the data is cheap. In more than one sense.
When I read the summary, I was wondering just how in the comments those who have been making excuses for the "scientists" who would not let anyone review data. I mean, with a quote so plain, bold and absurd how could anyone possibly make excuses for the "scientists" who would not let real peer-review happen?
Well thanks to your post, now we know. It's apparently because only the "right" kind of peer can see the data. I can see a mind like yours, a century prior, arguing that the data shouldn't be released because women might try to look at it and get all confused.
And as a side note, "Fuck You" is never a valid response to any question covering scientific study. Lest the students here be confused and a new era of obscenity in response to criticism is tolerated or becomes the new norm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The blogosphere needs to stuff it. If they really think they can understand anything in the world without subject-specific training and education, if they think their arguments should be taken as seriously and responded to with the same frequency as in-channel discussion, and if they think reputation in their sphere is the most important kind of reputation, they're deluded. You find the same idiots digging out a law book, arguing about terms of art as if they were common-speak versions of the term, ignoring the weight of history and legal philosophy that governs the sphere, and thinking they have some great insight. It's a good thing they don't crack medical books, or we'd have the geeks following the homeopaths into placebo-land.
In academia, science is open. It's not perfect, but it works, and the fringe science is kept roughly at the right distance where on the one time in ten thousand they have a good idea, it can be tested by the mainstream and maybe eventually join the broad scientific consensus. If you want a publication, you can get it. If you want data, you can probably get that too. If you don't think a study is valid, reproduce it under the same or slightly different circumstances. You have to know what you're doing or the journals will weed you out.
People outside of the research community should tone down their hubris and get comfortable with the fact that to be qualified to talk about something, they should become educated about it first and be prepared to deal with the way the scientific community works. Until then, they're best off relying on the broadest scientific consensus they can find on whatever topic is at hand.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Science isn't a priesthood where you must reach a certain level of trust, experience, or whatever to be allowed in. It is open to all, and all have the potential to contribute. My favorite story along those lines is a 9 year old girl that debunked aura readers. The people said "I can feel your aura!" She said "Ok then you stuck your hands through this partition and I'll put my hand over one of yours, you tell me which." Results were taken and tabulated, readers couldn't do it (did a bit worse than chance actually). It was a complete, valid, experiment, has been referenced later and retested, and an elementary student came up with it.
Now that doesn't mean anyone will have USEFUL commentary, but it doesn't mean that people should be excluded just because they aren't an "expert".
In particular, someone may not be an expert at the given science, but might be an expert at something related that is important. So you have a document on climate and a mathematician wants to examine it. He knows jack and shit about climate, he usually doesn't even know what the weather is. However he knows math inside and out. He goes, examines your research and says "Wait a sec, this is wrong. The math here doesn't work. These numbers do not come out right." He can't analyze the climactic theories, but found out that the conclusion was incorrect because the data had been processed wrong. Or perhaps a philosopher who is very skilled at formal logic and analyzing arguments reads the research and says "Ok hang on, you have a gap in your logic. The conclusion does not follow the premises as stated here." Again he not an expert in the field, but he's an expert in logic.
It is highly important that people of different disciplines be allowed to look at research, in particular when said research is very complex. When you are talking about something that is based off of a lot of math conducted on thousands of points of raw data, that is the sort of thing that is ideal to being in "non-experts" on. Get mathematicians, statisticians, probably some cryptography experts (recognizing patterns in randomness is their thing) to look at the data. They might not be able to understand the climate science, but they can analyze the data and the math and say "This calculation is solid," or "This calculation is incorrect." Looking at the parts of the whose with their given expertise can be as or more valuable than trying to look at the whole thing. The climate scientist might look at the whole thing and say "Ya, all the science fits," but only because they assume all the math is right. If the math is wrong then they might say "Oh, well this no longer shows what it says it does."
The problem is, SuperKendall, that all of the claims of "hoax" or "falsified data" have turned out to be phony.
All of them. I've learned that even Fox News aired a very brief item about how the scientists in this case were completely exonerated from absolutely any wrongdoing. It was about 12 seconds long and does nothing to correct their hours and hours of coverage of this fictitious "climategate" story, but at least they admitted their culpability.
You're going to have to find a different hobby horse to ride. That you would still claim that there is a "controversy" over climate change is pitiful. The only controversy is political, not scientific. It's very similar to the non-existent scientific "controversy" over evolution.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I was responding to a post about the review's conclusions, not the scientific validity of the proxies, so obviously I didn't respond to McKitrick's claims. Don't insult me because I'm not discussing the topic that you so desperately want to debate. Start a new post if you can't stay on topic.
"If they were intentionally misleading the public, why would they omit the data from a later publication with much wider circulation?"
A report for the WMO has a wider circulation than NATURE, arguably the most prestigious science journal in the world? Are you kidding me?
The later publication contains all the information necessary to find the original articles. Anyone who actually deserves the label 'skeptic', instead of 'blind-faith conspiracy theorist' would have looked up the original articles by Mann and other to see how the proxy data was used to make the graph. Are you actually arguing a cover-up of data that is publicly available in the most prestigious journal in science? What kind of cover-up involves covering up material that is already in the public domain? If people like McKitrick are too damn lazy to check sources that's a mark against them.
I came here for a good argument
The only controversy is political, not scientific.
If there's no controversy in the science, then it isn't science. There is a consensus on the data - that the temperature has been rising for the last century, and it correlates to CO2 emissions - even Exxon's mouthpieces have said that.
There is, however, no consensus on the long term effects of that warming, there is no consensus on the climate models being used to predict such effects, and there is no consensus on what should be done to limit or reverse the effects of that warming, or even if anything needs to be done.
"Climategate" was a bunch of theatrics, but the climate scientists were not allowing their data to be peer reviewed, and were basically demanding that their conclusions be taken on faith. A stink was necessary to shake the data loose, and the scientists have since been vindicated of any wrong doing (except for being pretentious, selfish assholes who were desperately attempting to maintain their relevance - and source of income, of course).
Now hopefully we can get a lot more qualified experts involved to solve what is potentially the greatest problem human kind has ever faced.
In other words, this hobby horse has plenty more ride left in her, and if it's true science the controversy will probably never be over (just have a look at any well-established field of science to see what I mean - physics and cosmology are especially hot right now).
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
So let me please rephrase: ...if one's research findings tend to question human-caused climate change - means to live and work in an environment of constant accusations of fraud, calls for investigations (or for criminal prosecutions), demands for access to every draft, every intermediate calculation, and every email exchanged with colleagues, daily hate mail and threats, and attempts to pressure the institutions that employ us and fund our research. Through experience, we have learned that there is no critique of climate scientists' work that isn't deemed a "whitewash" by climate change advocates; there is no casual remark that can't be seized upon, blown out of proportion and distorted; and there is no person whose character can't be assassinated, no matter how careful and honest their research.
Now how would you feel about it?
There are serious, sober, and intelligent climate scientists that have serious questions about the anthropogenic climate change conclusions.
Generally, extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary proof. When this 'proof' is found to be massaged, culled, 'smoothed', and ANY critique or question is pilloried and attacked as a 'shill' of the oil industry - you don't see any room for doubt?
-Styopa
Which in a rational world would be used to throw out ALL their results as the fantasy they are...
There is a very important distinction here... There is a difference between having somebody try to disprove your stuff and somebody trying to wage a dirty PR war using arguments that have already been tested scientifically and have already been disproved (with the expectation that a large percentage of the intended audience will buy the argument). These issues would be worth revisiting if there was new data or new thinking on the problem but frequently the arguments put forwards but this tends not to be the case. I would like to see a non AGW explanation that fits the recent climate data that actually has scientific merit. It would hold a whole lot more weight than this being a global conspiracy between hundreds of scientific organisations and that everything was cooked up out of nothing.
I suspect however that making things more open if done properly in the long run will be an improvement all round.
This isn't a simple math equation, the data is messy, there are inconsistencies, multiple versions, workarounds for known issues, and the occasional mistake.
If someone has an axe to grind it's easy to do the equivalent of quote-mining, and even if what they say can be shown to be completely and conclusively wrong, people will still buy it. The unfortunate truth is that even if you are completely right you're probably still better hiding your data from critics. The critics don't have to be right, they just have to throw up some FUD and claim the data backs them up.
I agree they should have handed over the data, but I also believe that there's a lot of ways for critics to hurt you even if the data is good.
I stole this Sig
Funny you should mention you were a fence sitter, because I was one too. I didn't even bother to look at the evidence. Then the CRU e-mails leaked, and all the claims about a huge controversy sparked my interest. So I started looking that the mails in context, and started reading up on climate research.
Guess what, you are full of shit. I used to accept shit from assholes like you. Then I educated myself.
Clever signature text goes here.
Honestly mods, how can the parent get any closer to a school book example of a flamebait? He doesn't respond to anything the GP said, nor give any arguments of his own. The fact that it was modded insightful shows how politicized the global warming debate is.
Many comments here are along the line : "how could the scientists *not* release the data, how rude and unscientific". I basically agree that data should eventually be public, however I also understand the scientists who spend decades obtaining data and want it to fructify in the form of publications before others can do whatever they want with it.
Basically competing scientists are told to walk and get their own data. From the efficiency point of view this sounds stupid, but in fact in many case, the act of getting data is itself science. Think of all the effort spent in trying to get a Higgs boson trace! In many cases it makes sense for different teams to collect, analyze and publish based on their own data. It may well be that the analysis in one paper is correct but the data flawed in some ways. In something as complex as climate, this is in fact extremely likely.
What must definitely be made public as soon as one publication it out is the acquisition protocol and enough data to reproduce the results, but maybe not before.
As a scientist, I can say bullshit. 10K is not a lot. Also most of us are not here for the money... since commercial work pays far better. Further more, some universities the Professor does get a slice of the grant pie personally.
And what is the size of a grant for the CRU? There is money to be made by pushing AGW. Money *is* being made by pushing AGW.
Oil companies really don't care. We are *dependent* on oil. After say 10 years or so of AGW is the doom of us all.... we have increased our oil usage.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
"More light!"
There is a lot more heat than light observable in this discussion.
My own 2 cents worth:
(1) The system is too complex to model. Perhaps the planet will get hotter for a while.
(2) AGW may contribute to that warming. Should the early European explorers have taken the Amerind attitudes home and converted Eurasia back to neolithic hunter-gathering? Perhaps the industrial revolution has contributed to the issue. Perhaps slash and burn agriculture could be implicated a bit father back.
(3) We can't fix it. To these egomaniacs that think destroying our technological civilization will make a difference: let me see you stop ONE hurricane, ONE tornado. You have no grasp of the energy levels involved in the system. You cannot placate the climate gods.
(4) We should focus on surviving any possible warming/climate change. We might have that capability, if we stop the placation nonsense.
end rant.
Ahem, I think you're missing one key part here.
The general public doesn't care what the data really says, they only listen to who screams the loudest and who they agree with. Handing the data to that person, even if you do have the data to back yourself up, can be detrimental.