So now the University of East Anglia, either the victim, perpetrator–or both–of Climategate, has done a “U-turn” and agreed to release raw data that it has heretofore fought assiduously to keep secret. From the story:
Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full. The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, “stolen” by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics. In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.
But they didn’t do the right thing easily:
David Holland, who describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus, is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws. Mr Holland, of Northampton, complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last week after the leaked emails included several Freedom of Information requests he had submitted to the CRU, and scientists’ private responses to them.
Within hours, a senior complaints officer in the ICO wrote back by email: “I have started to examine the issues that you have raised in your letter and I am currently liaising with colleagues in our Enforcement and Data Protection teams as to what steps to take next.” The official also promised to investigate other universities linked to the CRU, which is one of the world’s leading authorities on temperature levels and has helped to prove that man-made global warming not only exists but will have catastrophic consequences if not tackled urgently. Mr Holland is convinced the threat has been greatly exaggerated.
What is needed is the equivalent of a special prosecutor with subpoena privileges.
But it shouldn’t have come to this. And that is part of what is so awful about this story: On a matter as important as global warming–which could lead to the enactment of policies that deconstruct our economies–the raw data should have been open and available for analysis all along. Trust was key. Instead, we we seem to have been fed raw ideology masking as science, and hence, decisions were made to try and keep it all a deep, dark secret. This, in turn, led to profound distrust, and eventually, the hacking and publishing–wrongdoing that may have exposed science fraud on a massive scale. It’s the worst scandal since Hwang Woo-suk faked human cloning.
We have to stop this dance. Otherwise, we will have no trust in each other–and no way forward to make reasonable and rational public policy decisions.
Update: A reader sent a Sunday Times link of a story reporting that much of the data agreed to be “released” has already been destroyed. From the story:
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data was supposedly tossed in the late 1980s. But since when do scientists throw away data? I think this is a scandal that threatens to undermine the people’s trust in science itself.
November 28th, 2009 | 9:47 pm
They’ve agreed to release what they’ve destroyed.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
November 28th, 2009 | 9:50 pm
Why am I not surprised. But the destroyed data will create an even bigger scandal. The global warming hysterics are in real trouble, I think.
November 28th, 2009 | 9:53 pm
RE: “agreed to release raw data”
I hope they also release the all program code and the description of the method and what was used and for what and where and when. I also hope that will show us, by reproducing Exactly The Same Results in front of skeptical witnesses, how they got the numbers they published to the world.
See also:
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
November 28th, 2009 | 9:54 pm
Except that TimesOnline is reporting that the dog ate their homework…
November 28th, 2009 | 10:08 pm
Dr. Jones says it may take several months to obtain permission to release the data. This will place the release of the data long after Copenhagen. No surprise there.
I found this in poking around the net today:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199736.php
In that story, the CRU has an advertising agency to consult on how to sell the AGW agenda. Links to the email and the advertising playbook involved and to the advertising agency (Futerra) website are in the story referenced.
Futerra’s motto: “For eight years we’ve helped you save the planet.”
In that playbook you can see why the CRU has behaved the way they have: They’re following Futerra’s instructions.
When this is made into a movie, they’re going to be wishing Peter Sellers was still around.
November 28th, 2009 | 10:10 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ProLifeBlogs, Scott Groves. Scott Groves said: RT @CO2HOG: Climategate: The Hacked Agree to Release All Data http://bit.ly/8TULsW [...]
November 28th, 2009 | 10:55 pm
[...] From Secondhand Smoke: [...]
November 29th, 2009 | 10:35 am
You briefly hit upon the biggest point here, but I think you’ve missed how important it is. You never, ever throw away your original data. I’ve been covering in detail this on my own blog and this last bit has sealed the deal for me.
Global Warming is a cult. The folks at East Anglia are messianic leaders who have disposed of the original data so their followers can’t find the flaws in their arguments.
November 29th, 2009 | 1:07 pm
What do all the climategate posts have to do with bioethics?
Climatology is quite distinct from biotechnology and related fields.
I suspect the anti-science, anti-progress Discovery Institute will be heavily pushing climategate through all outlets.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20872000/The-Discovery-Institute-s-Wedge-Document
This is odd because the DI has published but one, single review paper (not even experimental research) in a science journal (albeit of exceptionally low impact factor), and it was mired in an ethics scandal by the editor:
http://www.souder.house.gov/_files/AppendixtoReportIntoleranceandthePoliticizationofScienceattheSmithsonian.pdf
Therefore, since the DI has published only one review and it was under scandlous cirumstances, it holds no moral or ethical authority to rightly complain.
November 29th, 2009 | 1:37 pm
The “missing” data is the smoking gun. No scientist throws away raw data. In one of the leaked emails, tossing data in response to a FOIA is discussed.
I think we all know what happened.
November 29th, 2009 | 6:22 pm
THe data that they are releasing, as today’s Times’ story makes quite clear will be the data that has already been “massaged” innumerable times to ensure that it shows accelerating warming in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. It’s next to worthless for purposes of replication by other scientists of results published by these fakers for many years now, all to great acclaim, I should add. This release of data is about as transparent as lead. The only possible way around this unfortunate and, of course, completely surprising data dump is to retrieve data from the original sources, usually the national meteorological services of countries around the world. Close reading of several
of the “Climategate” files reveals, however, that, apart from taking years, might be pointless to begin with. Complaints in the file by CRU’s own programmers trying to debug their worthless software suites show that there currently is little to no documentation on the specific source (e.g., station locations) of much of the data in the set. Furthermore the data to be released has likely been worked over multiple times – again according to CRU’s own programmers – with no comments indicating where and when and, most importantly, how or by whom. So many ad hoc fixes and fudges have been applied to those poor, tortured numerical arrays that recovering them would be comparable to reproducing an infant snapshot from a photo of a 40-year-old woman. That is quite unbelievable, true, but it also means that any attempt to replicate CRU’s results will, with high probability, be an exercise in futility.
If the IPCC had an ounce of integrity, given the tremendous weight it placed on the CRU-data-based temperature reconstructions in coming to its notorious conclusion in its Fourth Assessment Report that, “with 90% probability,” current global warming is both “accelerating, unprecedented, and man made,” it would immediately declare a moratorium on making policy recommendations as to what to do about it. It was CRU’s data and CRU alone on the IPCC relied on for the “accelerating” and “unprecedented” part of this ridiculous assertion.
November 29th, 2009 | 7:35 pm
I concur with the notes above: it’s unimaginable for a legitimate scientist to throw away his raw data. I’ve done both lab and clinical research. Even when my studies proved completely worthless (which, sadly, was not rarely), I saved the data for years. Good heavens, we still have Gregor Mendel’s raw data, and that’s 150 years old!
November 30th, 2009 | 2:54 am
So, scientist who seem to have committed fraud are going to release their data?
Or are they going to release the data that has already been manipulated to support their theory?
These are people who want us to gut the ecomomies of countries, who want us to sacrifice billions in tax dollars to support their ideas; and they delete the data that proves their theory?
And why, according to the emails did they do that? So the data would not be released! Why do you destroy data that supports your theory, if it in fact supports your theory?
Why do you want to not release it, if it proves you right?
Unless it maybe doesn’t! Well at least not till you “fix” it.
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