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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."
From the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review Final Report pdf:
Intentionally supplying misleading figures is scientific misconduct. It may be commonplace, but that's no excuse.
Personally, that doesn't bother me much; science has always been politicized between factions who behave unethically in order to further their own theories. What does bother me is the attempt to pass off the results of incompetent software engineering as valid science.
None of the people who asked for the data were amateurs. But more importantly, the data that Jones was trying to hide had already been lost - by Jones.
More importantly for the Guardian readers and everyone else trying to put a line under the ClimateGate affair, the Russell inquiry failed to ever ask whether the emails requested under FOIA had in fact been deleted as Jones had demanded.
Still there are a lot of people desperately trying to sweep inconvenient truths under the rug - but its only going to get worse, not better.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
In general, scientists are happy to share their data (after they've finished analyzing it and have published) with other scientists who they believe might have some competence in understanding it.
That isn't the case where the data supports a controversial proposal, then you'll find that even fellow scientists have difficulty getting the original data. Keeping hold of data and claiming it as your personal property is rife in the sciences.
For example, I've tried to get hold of several pieces of data which support a supposedly scientifically significant result, and each time the data have remained hidden by the scientists. Next will come the FOIA.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
One of their columnists (George Monbiot, with a degree in biology), wrote an article demanding Jones's resignation before any proper investigation of the leaked emails had taken place. He has subsequently written what I consider to be a very grudging retraction. I myself feel rather strongly that the Guardian has, on this issue, a poor record of balance and has shown a serious lack of understanding of science and scientists, and a failure to explain the background properly to its readers. More worrying still, it appears to be printing what look like advertorials for Apple products without labelling them as such, which also looks somewhat unbalanced. Much as I hate to say it, being a Brit (not really - I'm very willing to admit it) the NYT has a much better record on this.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And they published in journals whose policies were that data must be released.
I'm surprised this got modded up. Any employer is well within their rights to view the communications of their employees while on the job and pertaining to job-related tasks. Since the public is their employer, the public has the right to know. There's some tweaking of this rule when it comes to state secrets (instead of the public being told, select representatives of the public are told and it's their responsibility to uphold the public's interest and make sure the job is being done right), but even there the same principle applies - you do not have an expectation of privacy.
If you want to head down to the bar with your scientist buddies after work and shoot the breeze about the Rosetta probe's flyby of Lutetia, then you can expect it to remain private. But if you are conversing with them about tasks relevant to your job while at work using computers and networks bought with public money discussing data collected at public expense regarding issues you're being paid to investigate, then your employer - the public - has every right to know what you're doing and saying.
In fact, that's part of the premise behind government and educational research being of higher quality than private research. The openness of the former allows for greater scrutiny and confirmation of results. If you're going to argue that public research shouldn't be open, then you've just knocked the trustworthiness of said research down to the level of privately-funded research - i.e. your climate research is no more trustworthy than climate research funded by Exxon-Mobil. They refuse to give select details about their research, you refuse to give select details about your research. They did it to make money, you did it to make money.
The other part of the premise is that there's no conflict of interest - that the research doesn't desire a certain result. But it's been argued that there's a financial conflict of interest in pro-AGW research since it now represents a significant fraction of government research spending. So again, the only practical difference between industry-funded research and government-funded research is the openness of the latter.
there is some real controversy about tree ring data, and it's pretty clear that they thought that they were presenting the data in the clearest form.
If you can spare a moment to explain this a bit more, it would really help me out.
This is my current understanding of the situation. If it is incorrect in any particular I would appreciate the correction; I am not some shill spreading misinformation.
My current understanding is that they were trying to use tree ring data to determine what the temperature was in the past; tree rings were available going far earlier than we have actual measured temperature data. My understanding is that the tree ring data did not successfully predict the temperatures of the recent times, but that once the tree ring data got into recent years, they simply stopped using the tree ring data.
I just don't understand how this is acceptable in any way. If the tree ring data cannot correctly predict temperatures that are known, why should we trust that it can predict older, unknown temperatures? Here's a quote from that Nature article:
Again I am perplexed. Why does he say the proxy data "no longer" tracked with direct temperature records? Why should we believe it used to track and no longer tracks?
Are there other tree-ring data series out there that do correctly predict the temperatures of modern times?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What is a 'Climatologist,' precisely?
Basically, they are all people from other fields because there is no associates/bachelors/masters degrees in climatology.
None of the big names in climatology have advanced degrees in statistics, but they should, because they is the primary discipline that they are practicing.
"His name was James Damore."
Jones should take a lesson from Richard Lenski (see)
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/lenski-gives-co.html
There is an answer that makes a lot of sense. He too has spent 20+ years generating data.
There is legitimate concern that the data would be 'misquoted'. However Jones' answer leaves a lot to be desired.
Compare to Lenski's answer where he does agree to provide data (and perhaps samples?) to legitimate requests.
Even if the request is from a news organization you suspect is out to disprove your conclusions, that is not in itself a valid reason to refuse. If you want your conclusions to be put into action in the real world (i.e. political decisions regarding car emissions, carbon taxes etc.) you should be prepared to go through the political process. Messy perhaps, but necessary.
softcoder.
Albert Einstein was an amateur in 1905, the year he released Special Relativity, his work on brownian motion, his work on the photoelectric effect and the equivalence of matter and energy. Even if they were amateurs in a useful sense, you cannot call either McIntyre or Watts unknowledgeable about the subject. Not without the rest of us laughing at you, anyway.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
The damage was done. The timing of the hack and selective release of the CRU emails was to sabotage Copenhagen. And it helped to derail it. Those who are vested in doing nothing about climate change don't give a rat's ass that the scientists were cleared of misconduct or that there was nothing wrong with their data or science. There is a huge disconnect between the science of climate change and the public. This isn't a war about facts. It's a propaganda war.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Why must everything vaguely scandalous acquire the suffix "gate"? Was there a gate anywhere in this event? The original "Watergate" was a proper name but ever since then there is this compulsion to use the suffix as if it meant "scandal". All too often -- as in this case -- there is no scandal. A crime was committed by people who stole private emails and made them public to make a political point. If those people don't end up in jail then there is the scandal.