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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."
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
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