As concerns Mann himself, this is especially curious in light of the recent RealClimate posts (link and link) in which Mann and Gavin Schmidt warn us about peer review and the limits therein. Their point is essentially that peer review is limited and can be much less than thorough. One assumes that they are talking about their own work as well as McIntyre’s, although they never state this. Mann and Schmidt go to great lengths in their post to single out Geophysical Research Letters. Their post then seems a bit ironic, as GRL is the journal in which the original Mann curve was published (1999, vol 26., issue 6, p. 759), an article which is now receiving much attention as being flawed and under-reviewed.

Actually the word I would use is not “ironic”. It is “chutzpah”.

It is chutzpah to claim that GRL’s peer review process is flawed when Mann’s original papers were published there and from which Mann and his acolytes started claiming their work was “peer reviewed” and represented the “scientific consensus”.

It was not chutzpah when Mann called up the editor of GRL and tried to get him to stop the Mcintyre and McKitrick analysis published. That word is “censorship”, and is to my mind, a revealing act of desperation. If the M&M analysis was indeed flawed, then publication would be the best way to reveal it in a way that could not be denied.

That’s a big “if”

John A.

1. If the data is propriatary and cannot be widely published, then neither should the research.

2. If one is deterred by fear of piracy, then wait until the fear subsides.

1. Who paid for it? If a granting agency, what do they have to say (probably not much, but still…)? And if it is a grant that you worked off, to whom do you owe first consideration when it comes to dissemination of the data? If the taxpayer is the ultimate bagman, then perhaps your fellow citizens deserve the first chance to examine it. I only mention this last point because Mr. McIntyre is a Canadian, and perhaps ought not to have expected immediate access to data collected and techniques developed at the expense of the American taxpayer.

2. What are your plans for further analysis? If the data are squeezed dry, as far as your forseeable research is concerned, there should be no objections to disseminating them far and wide. On the other hand, if the data set is part of an ongoing research program, it’s a bit of a strain on collegiality to be expected to yield it up to, well, anybody at all – you have no way of knowing who is going to use it to pre-empt your further research opportunities. This should apply even if the data are collected using government grant money.