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Post by steve on Nov 21, 2009 18:55:43 GMT
Steve, I think all of our focus is on what is the best theory of climate forcing and how does the data fit in with the various theories. But to assess that you have to have confidence in the data and the temperature reconstructions. I think these emails should motivate a much broader swath of the climate science community to stop pushing back against people that cast a critical eye towards climate statistics and instead join in their pursuit of an open and well audited climate record. There is a lot of disagreement between the various researchers. They push against each other all the time. I don't see what is unjustifiable, though, about a scientist "pushing back" against poor science or against unpeerreviewed blog science if they genuinely believe it is being used to shape a destructive anti-science agenda. To a degree, science is competitive, and people should not be compelled to respect theories that they consider distasteful or badly wrong. Theories need to be challenged, to force them either to be improved or junked. While the scientists still don't like McIntyre, even Gavin Schmidt is now constantly crowing these days about how all his model code is available on the web.
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 18:58:20 GMT
This link sums up the issue very well. From the link: "As far as I can tell from the email archive, Briffa never did respond to the plant scientist. Jones's email warning Briffa to be "very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up" was written just three weeks ago. It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor.
On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science. "The plant scientist had pointed out that tree rings were not a proxy for temperature (in a very tactful way).
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Post by icefisher on Nov 21, 2009 19:10:38 GMT
But the way I see it a lot of skeptics are not realizing that they are demanding a change to the process, it's as if they think the process already works how they think it should work, and that therefore these scientists are failing to follow some scientific process by not releasing intermediate steps and source code. They are failing to release intermediate steps and source code Socold! You are just trying to defend the establishment. The scientists in question have been publishing work and challenging the work of others as they always have done through the peer reviewed literature. The introduction of blogs making demands and FOI requests does not fit into this scientific process. Whether it should be fit in is another question, but that affects the future not the present or the past. Socold you are describing the "Establishment's" view of how the world should work. Reality is change of the establishment's tired and old and biased processes only comes from public and legal pressure. Thus while you acknowledge such change might be called for; you are complaining about the time honored path to change. To that I say tough! Often there is one scientist saying one thing and another saying something else. The only way to resolve these issues is for them to publish results and challenges to peer review. That of course is complete nonsense. Change is occurring due to FOI and blogs. There is no question about that. You are denying reality once yet again just like you deny climate change from the path predicted by the people you admire. This is especially important when undertrained scientists dominate a field. This typically happens when a field suddenly becomes popular for whatever reason. Old guys that never learned modern statistics are more like guys with divining sticks. There is nothing wrong with that, as these guys have a lot to contribute from their experience; but their predictive abilities are very limited due to their reduced mathematical analytical abilities. Businessmen like Steve McIntyre completely and thoroughly understands that and in fact made his business on that to produce superior results for his clients.If McIntyre thinks the results are wrong because the methods are wrong, all he has to do imo is publish different results using a method he thinks is correct to demonstrate that. The emails between the scientists raise a similar point when they ask why doesn't McIntyre take the raw data and do the analysis himself, why is he sending all these FOI requests for data he doesn't need to reproduce the results. You have to a moron if you don't know why. I am an auditor I know why we audit. If a financial institution reports earnings and wants to sell stock to the public; I don't verify that by starting a financial company and trying to find out if indeed I can replicate the earnings. I audit them to see if they really earned the money! What you are defending here is a shield for incompetent and unethical scientists. It seems some wish for these people to be honored by the public and their opinions elevated above the common man. . . .but they don't want to pay the price for that of increased public scrutiny. It looks to me that the scientists simply don't understand what McIntyre is trying to achieve. If he wants to try to reproduce their results, he has the data available to do that. They don't understand why he wants their exact steps, and rightly or wrongly they end up concluding that he's trying to waste their time or discredit by finding minor code errors irrespective of the significance of those to the results. They know exactly why McIntyre wants the data. Thats why they say they would rather destroy it than give it to him. The fact is if you have nothing to hide, why not give it to him? Bottom line is if you are selling something its perfectly fair to somebody to give you a review. Science is suffering big time from scam artists and since these issues are emerging as important as your savings account in the bank. . . .its time for science to pony up if they want their opinions and projections to be respected. In short they don't see any scientific benefit to giving McIntyre what he asks for and they instead think it will harm their reputations and/or waste their time. So naturally they start getting annoyed and trying to dodge his requests. The FOI requests for personal communications really didn't help and only made them more annoyed. In the end I suspect they simply didn't want to provide anything to McIntyre, even if they should have done under the rules they started stonewalling as much as they could. A bit childish perhaps. Not only a bit childish but perhaps illegal as well. And if not illegal it will be of concern to a public that actually wants good science to guide their policy. What we are talking about here is really the only way that can be done. Doing it as you suggest turns science into a beauty contest. . . .and that has nothing whatsoever to do with science. That is exactly what the forever stogy establishment desires. The rich stay rich the poor stay poor the respected stay respected. Its actually a sign of rot. One thing that is confusing this issue (well confuses me) with regard to FOI requests is what they did and didn't respond do. In my mind there were three kinds of FOI requests made 1) requests for raw data 2) requests for intermediate working, source code 3) requests for personal communications, eg email I think request type #3, for personal communications, was rightfully rejected to be honest. I don't think FOI would (or even should) cover personal communications. Emails are not a non-discoverable item in a lawsuit if the email was relevant to the subject of the suit. FOI requests for emails should extend to emails where the topic was discussed. As I pointed out an accounting firm was taken down on emails for recommending the destruction of data even though no investigation had been launched. The destruction of the data in question would have been legal as part of a document destruction policy; however the jury smelled a rat in that the urging that employees ensure that the policy was being followed to the letter came after the risk of a lawsuit or investigation had been elevated. That might not be the case here, but rest assured the public will have concerns about it. More importantly and to the point though I don't think #3 and #1 are completely different beasts. #3 to me seems more of a harassing pointless request whereas #1 seems totally justified to me. #2 is middle ground. This and a bunch more from socold not copied! My interest here is not individuals and what they may be culpable of or not. The best way to avoid FOIA requests is to be transparent in your transactions. As far as data ownership issues are concerned those should be cleared up before publication of studies using the data. If you want to avoid an embarrassment from a blog. . . .I say do decent work and earn respect the old fashioned way! Keep in mind that science requires data and policies of a free people requires transparency. Science is science whether it gets published or not. If a journal wins respect in that it can attract readers that really has nothing whatsoever to do with science. I am aware that a lot of people vote because some celebrity tells them to vote that way. But it is one thing to do that and quite another to advocate it. I advocate people familiarizing themselves with the issues and paywalls, stonewalling, and a lack of transparency does not fit with that.
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Post by itsthesunstupid on Nov 21, 2009 19:23:08 GMT
socold, Please. You are embarrassing yourself. Any reasonable person reading these e-mails should substitute 'personal investment money' for 'climate science', and then ask themselves: Do these e-mails reflect what I would find acceptable in a team of people managing my money? If a major mutual fund company was investing money like this, and playing with their reports and manipulating the auditing process like they clearly were to the peer review process, criminal indictments would soon follow. Is it fraud? If you consider fraud to be the act of setting out to defraud, perhaps not. If you believe it is fraudulent to participate in dubious activities in the quest of an objective (no matter how noble), then perhaps yes. What we have here is a group of people who have a belief system that leads them to the possibility of drastic consequences. Rationalization of facts and procedures is thus likely to follow when they don't fit into that belief system. Blind eyes lead to more rationalized activities and before they know they are caught in a deep web of deceit. All of this is magnified by dependence and allure of funding from fellow believers and those with other agendas. Inevitably, some people start to wake from the ether and that is when things like Climategate erupt - some individuals find it to be cathartic to make amends by exposing the corruption that they were apart of.
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Post by Pooh on Nov 21, 2009 20:10:50 GMT
Well iirc someone (was it briffa?) did try something like that to satisfy one of CA's requests, but CA then complains that no metadata or description is provided! Socold: CA (Steve McIntyre) rightfully insists on metadata, since metadata is the definition of the content of the data file or database (in lay terms, the description). Metadata is data about the data. Bottom line, one can not confidently use the data (or database) without metadata. Further, "definition" involves boundaries: what it is, and what it is not. Worst of all, one can not implement a robust computer application without defining its metadata. The following is a brief (and necessarily incomplete) list of what is involved. - For each data item in a record (field, column, attribute):
- Name
- Definition
- Domain (what kind of data: text, number [bit, integer, single/double floating point], date, etc.)
- Length (if limited; otherwise domain may be memo, varchar, blob, URL, etc.)
- Precision (e.g., decimal places)
- Value if empty or never posted (null, 0, -999, blank, etc.) or Default value
- Essential validations
- For each record:
- Name
- Unique identifier ("key", may be multiple data items in defined sequence)
- Definition (what thing of interest it represents)
- For records related to each other:
- Name (may be a verb or verb phrase)
- Optionality (required or not)
- Cardinality (how many can be related)
- Foreign Key (cross-reference)
- Referential Integrity requirement
- Transferability
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Post by magellan on Nov 21, 2009 20:40:07 GMT
In one respect Socold you are right. Thats the way science has been done. But as science becomes more and more justification for laws to limit the freedom of others that model may no longer be appropriate. You are right that skeptics are essentially demanding the process of science to change. In my opinion there are both benefits and disadvantages to such a change. But the way I see it a lot of skeptics are not realizing that they are demanding a change to the process, it's as if they think the process already works how they think it should work, and that therefore these scientists are failing to follow some scientific process by not releasing intermediate steps and source code. The scientists in question have been publishing work and challenging the work of others as they always have done through the peer reviewed literature. The introduction of blogs making demands and FOI requests does not fit into this scientific process. Whether it should be fit in is another question, but that affects the future not the present or the past. Often there is one scientist saying one thing and another saying something else. The only way to resolve these issues is for them to publish results and challenges to peer review. Take for example Santer's challenge ofn Douglass's paper on observations vs model results. Santer didn't do that by requesting all the source code and intermediate data from Douglass and scrutinizing his methods, he did it by performing the same analysis himself, finding a different result and publishing that different result. If McIntyre thinks the results are wrong because the methods are wrong, all he has to do imo is publish different results using a method he thinks is correct to demonstrate that. The emails between the scientists raise a similar point when they ask why doesn't McIntyre take the raw data and do the analysis himself, why is he sending all these FOI requests for data he doesn't need to reproduce the results. It looks to me that the scientists simply don't understand what McIntyre is trying to achieve. If he wants to try to reproduce their results, he has the data available to do that. They don't understand why he wants their exact steps, and rightly or wrongly they end up concluding that he's trying to waste their time or discredit by finding minor code errors irrespective of the significance of those to the results. In short they don't see any scientific benefit to giving McIntyre what he asks for and they instead think it will harm their reputations and/or waste their time. So naturally they start getting annoyed and trying to dodge his requests. The FOI requests for personal communications really didn't help and only made them more annoyed. In the end I suspect they simply didn't want to provide anything to McIntyre, even if they should have done under the rules they started stonewalling as much as they could. A bit childish perhaps. One thing that is confusing this issue (well confuses me) with regard to FOI requests is what they did and didn't respond do. In my mind there were three kinds of FOI requests made 1) requests for raw data 2) requests for intermediate working, source code 3) requests for personal communications, eg email I think request type #3, for personal communications, was rightfully rejected to be honest. I don't think FOI would (or even should) cover personal communications. More importantly and to the point though I don't think #3 and #1 are completely different beasts. #3 to me seems more of a harassing pointless request whereas #1 seems totally justified to me. #2 is middle ground. I think there is lots of confusion on the internet concerning the leaded emails with regard to them stonewalling type 3 requests for personal communication. Some people seem to be reading these emails as if they are stonewalling type #1 requests. In fact I saw one account which cited the Briffa "delete all your emails" message with Jones not providing a request for #1 concerning raw station data. Jones says the data is lost, but the implication on the site was that he deleted it according to Briffa's email, even though that was about email correspondence concerning the IPCC. So there is a lot of confusion going on, which definitely doesn't help me. Certainly in regards to FOI requests for #1 I know of only two examples (there may be more, I am not an expert on the history of this stuff): 1) The Yamal raw data. The FOI request was turned down in my opinion justifiably because Briffa didn't own the data to give away. The communication between Briffa and McIntyre but by that point relations had well and truly broken down. 2) Jones station data which he says he lost. He says the raw data in question (not all the station data - just a subset) was processed in the 1980s and since then the raw data is lost but the processed results from the first step is still around. Of course people will ask did he really lose it, but it's not unfeasible that he did. I've looked through a lot of the emails and allegations now and I am finding the skeptic claims of the significance of these emails to be very exaggerated. Not that the skeptics have nothing at all though. There is one email that is suspicious to me and I would like to hear an explanation. Is the one about the "trick" to sort out "declining". That in my mind is the only suspicious email and I eagerly hope Jones will remember the context he wrote it in and provide an explanation. Gavin's explanation for that email made no sense to me. 1) The Yamal raw data. The FOI request was turned down in my opinion justifiably because Briffa didn't own the data to give away. The communication between Briffa and McIntyre but by that point relations had well and truly broken down.
You have no idea what you're talking about socold. First, although it started before July 2008, FOI had nothing to do with SM's getting the data. Where did the Russians get funding? Cite one piece of evidence there was a contractual agreement for non-disclosure. It always goes back to "Briffa refused". References: www.climateaudit.org/?p=3352"As a condition of acceptance authors agree to honour any reasonable request by other researchers for materials, methods, or data necessary to verify the conclusion of the article.
Supplementary data up to 10Mb is placed on the Society's website free of charge and is publicly accessible. Large datasets must be deposited in a recognised public domain database by the author prior to submission. The accession number should be provided for inclusion in the published article." www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1&filename=826209667.txtWe can send to you all raw measurements which were used for developing these chronologies. Of course, we are in need of additional money, especially for collecting wood samples at high latitudes and in remote regions. The cost of field works in these areas is increased many times during the last some years. That is why it is important for us to get money from additional sources, in particular from the ADVANCE and INTAS ones. Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible. Please, inform us what kind of documents and financial reports we must represent you and your administration for these money. h/t to Tallbloke www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=13&filename=844968241.txt0844968241.txt
From: “Tati*na ” To: k. Subject: Rashit Date: Thu, 10 Oct 96 13:24:01 +0500
Dear Keith, enclosed are data concerning Yamal chronology. 1 – list of samples: 139 subfossil samples (checked only), covered time span from about 350 BC and 18 samples from living trees (jah- from Yada river, m- and x- Hadyta river, por- from Portsa river); 2 – general chronology (1248 BC – 1994 AD). I have some little doubt about 360 BC – may be it is false. It was found that in chronology I sent you before 155 BC was false ring; 3 – ring widths of living trees from Yada and Hadyta; 4 – ring widths of living trees from Portsa. Some of them didn’t include in chronology, because were not measured at that time; 5 – ring widths of subfossil trees. Zero means that ring didn’t find on sample. I don’t send description of collection sites, deposits and etc. for the present. Some details you can find in our article (Shiyatov,…., Loosli). By the way, do you know something about its fate? Please, inform me if you have any questions about these data. Sincerely yours, Rashit Hantemirov
begin 644 data.arj M8.HH`!X&`0`0“*;FU-*(9M32B$… ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You also said, without reference of course: McIntyre btw was sent the data by those Russian colleagues back in 2004 but he didn’t realize it was the data. So his FOI requests were for data he already had (not his fault tho) Produce references or don't post. Anything coming from RC or their sycophants without collaborating links to CA will be considered BS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Jones station data which he says he lost. He says the raw data in question (not all the station data - just a subset) was processed in the 1980s and since then the raw data is lost but the processed results from the first step is still around. Of course people will ask did he really lose it, but it's not unfeasible that he did. This is all available on CA, but it is still loading slow. article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.
Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language. Jones is a POS plain and simple. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I've looked through a lot of the emails and allegations now and I am finding the skeptic claims of the significance of these emails to be very exaggerated. There are many thousands more emails the Team have deleted, or that's what they think. Lawyers are very good at piecing together this sort of stuff. Lo and behold, one has: www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not that the skeptics have nothing at all though. There is one email that is suspicious to me and I would like to hear an explanation. Is the one about the "trick" to sort out "declining". That in my mind is the only suspicious email and I eagerly hope Jones will remember the context he wrote it in and provide an explanation. Gavin's explanation for that email made no sense to me.
Jeff Id's website was created for just this sort of chicanery, so he is intimately familiar with the details. noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/3452/#commentsHowever, Gavin’s claim of out of context doesn’t hold water. Hiding the decline has been one of the key points at the Air Vent since it’s inception. In Mann 08 this well known problem with non warming data was addressed as shown in the following plot.
Ya see, they took the inconvenient purple curve and chopped the data back to the yellow line which had very poor correlation to tempareature – no consistent warming. Through some Mathemagic Michael Mann pasted on information from other upsloping proxies. — Instant warming. See hockey stick posts above.
This procedure is very well known and blindly accepted amongst the advocates WRT Briffa MXD. The same people who we now can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt have taken over paleoclimatology. After replacing open minded people, the advocate editors don’t even question the lopping of data, who knows what horrors it would do for their careers. If you pulled this garbage in ANY other science it would be laughed out of the building but from these emails Mann, Briffa and Jones are in charge of this situation. Hence, "hide the decline". Is it that difficult to see these people have hijacked climate science? They have perverted the peer review process by having undo influence on who the editors and reviewers are, and use their influence to bully journals with threat of "black spotting" any journal or scientist who disagrees with them.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Nov 21, 2009 21:23:26 GMT
I'm more interested in the politics of the reaction: Times Online ran a story on their environment page but they've dropped it! www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/The article (when they ran it) was a boys will be boys response, but as it got clear what was really there, the editors decided silence was the best action. Google has story on UK & US news (Sci/Tech) but haven't as yet allowed this on the Australian or New Zealand news page. As if NZers & Aussies don't care, or worse, Google is acting for the Governments on NZ & OZ with censorship? Canada also not running story on google news, but at least they have story that there is a true debate: www.troymedia.com/?p=5905
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Post by nautonnier on Nov 21, 2009 21:33:00 GMT
I'm more interested in the politics of the reaction: Times Online ran a story on their environment page but they've dropped it! www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/The article (when they ran it) was a boys will be boys response, but as it got clear what was really there, the editors decided silence was the best action. Google has story on UK & US news (Sci/Tech) but haven't as yet allowed this on the Australian or New Zealand news page. As if NZers & Aussies don't care, or worse, Google is acting for the Governments on NZ & OZ with censorship? "I'm more interested in the politics of the reaction:"People are watching to see what will be teased out of the leak before they will take positions. As I said in my post about the leak earlier on this thread: this is very much the earthquake - the tsunami that might follow could be more politically and scientifically damaging to everyone.The next 2 - 3 days will be critical then the opinion snowball will start rolling and accreting support - it will be interesting which path it takes. This is not good news for AGW proponents at Copenhagen. If the leaked emails were interesting the ones currently being sent between the 'team' - presumably heavily encrypted this time - would be far more interesting
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Post by icefisher on Nov 21, 2009 21:59:55 GMT
I don't believe it is outright fraud...let's be clear on that. Very poor sciencetific methodoly...yes. Trying to abridge the data to fit a preconcieved result? Yes... And this is human nature. That is impossible to get away from. He believes something so his analysis is screwed to that end. That is not fraud. It may not technically be a crime or a tort. Fraud presupposes some obligations regarding their work. For example, if a licensed auditor did this in the performance of an attestation engagement it would be fraud short of some extraordinary explanation I would think is not at all likely to come forward. These scientists may escape fraud on a technicality that their work is not subject to a contract or licensing agreement that requires them to do their work in accordance with a set of standards. Since we are not privy to any contracts they produced this misleading science under, its not possible to determine if they did or did not commit fraud. They are likely relieved in most civil and criminal law by virtue of not having a contractual relationship with the public. Although what they did do probably falls under academic and governmental employment rules that could give an institution grounds for firing them. Ultimately, it is their own words that establish these actions as apparently being fraudulent. Briffa on minimum sample sizes, Mann on statements about it being inappropriate to graft a temperature record onto a proxy, Jones on intentionally hiding a decline in the diagram by grafting a temperature record onto a proxy. Its very clear these guys did none of this stuff inadvertently. They conspired to do it, it appears to be done intentionally as fraudulent work, it was done to misinform and politically push their agenda and/or win contracts. But none of that makes it a crime or a tort. But it would seem to be unethical which opens the door to firing in most cases. However, we will need to see how this evolves. I think the public is going to see it in a poor light and they pay their salaries. And of course this fits Hansen perfectly advocating civil disobedience as a result of he believing so much in the vision. Ultimately its a religion and he fully expects to be vindicated in the long run.
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Post by Pooh on Nov 21, 2009 22:51:39 GMT
And here I thought that reproducibility was a key aspect of science. Reproducibility, yes: Do the reported experiment again, get the same results, the result is confirmed. However, one would need to know the calculations. Small wonder the call for FOI responses. Also, Prediction: Create a theory; make a prediction; do the experiment; observe the results. If results match prediction, one has a confirmation of the theory. IMO, AGW has not been confirmed by either method.
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Post by trbixler on Nov 21, 2009 23:33:58 GMT
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Post by Col 'NDX on Nov 21, 2009 23:36:01 GMT
A very good post. Let's wait and see what unfolds next. I'm more interested in the politics of the reaction: Times Online ran a story on their environment page but they've dropped it! www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/The article (when they ran it) was a boys will be boys response, but as it got clear what was really there, the editors decided silence was the best action. Google has story on UK & US news (Sci/Tech) but haven't as yet allowed this on the Australian or New Zealand news page. As if NZers & Aussies don't care, or worse, Google is acting for the Governments on NZ & OZ with censorship? "I'm more interested in the politics of the reaction:"People are watching to see what will be teased out of the leak before they will take positions. As I said in my post about the leak earlier on this thread: this is very much the earthquake - the tsunami that might follow could be more politically and scientifically damaging to everyone.The next 2 - 3 days will be critical then the opinion snowball will start rolling and accreting support - it will be interesting which path it takes. This is not good news for AGW proponents at Copenhagen. If the leaked emails were interesting the ones currently being sent between the 'team' - presumably heavily encrypted this time - would be far more interesting
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Post by trbixler on Nov 22, 2009 1:37:33 GMT
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Post by socold on Nov 22, 2009 2:37:17 GMT
But the way I see it a lot of skeptics are not realizing that they are demanding a change to the process, it's as if they think the process already works how they think it should work, and that therefore these scientists are failing to follow some scientific process by not releasing intermediate steps and source code. They are failing to release intermediate steps and source code Socold! Seeing as the intermediate steps and source code are not scientific requirements to reproduce work I find it's justifiable for scientists to release it at their discretion. Certainly if I sent an email off to Roy Spencer right now demanding he reply and attach all the UAH source code so I can audit it, what do you think should happen? I think he should mutter "who the hell are you?" and ignore me. I am describing how the scientific method works, how it's worked for over 100 years. Scientists try to reproduce results using their own implementation, they need to replicate the precise steps of others and require the source code/ working out in order to reproduce work. The change is that recently some blogs have been using FOI requests. I am not convinced that change is good... So to reproduce financial results you need to replicate the working. But to reproduce scientific results you don't need to. Scientists have for decades got on fine in reproducing the results of others without demanding full source code/working. The peer review process has never protected science from fraud. It is self evident though that science has been pretty good at advancing knowledge in the past 100 years. False results fade away to be surpassed by correct results that fit the data better. So you think McIntyre just wants the data so he can "create a fishing expedition to find minor glitches or unexplained bits of code--which exist in nearly all our kinds of complex work--and then assert that the entire result is thus suspect"? That's what one of the emails says. That's what they think McIntyre's motive is. So when you say "they know exactly why McIntyre wants the data", are you sure? See above. They are concerned that McIntyre simply wants the data so he can find the equivalent of a typo and then use his public blog to spread the idea that this discredits the whole work.
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Post by sigurdur on Nov 22, 2009 2:43:41 GMT
SoCold: I will say this again. You are IGNORING the law. IF you don't like what the law and the grant applications acceptance states, change the law. UNTIL that law is changed.....one complies to FOI requests.
IF these guys were that damn dumb, they had no business being in the position they were in. One does not sugar coat or try to explain away a breach of the law.
You are starting to look reallllllly foolish my friend.
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