Climateaudit is the living example that climate scientists are sloppy with their data.

Now how did I find out that Arrhenius calculations of 1896 were based on water vapour and not CO2? Because Langley published his spectra and observations.

Check the http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html

search for Luterbacher: his digital results of his european temperature reconstruction are not even there.
search for Chuine: her results are there.

Check knmi for all their old daily data
http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/antieke_wrn/index.html

See? Easy in 2005, Easy in 1896

“Real scientists submit their data to data centers or share their ftp sites, to advance science. ”

They do?!? What are the names of these data centers, and why doesn’t my Uni have a sub to one?

“a result is not scientific without proper method description and input. ”

Your talking point still needs work. Back to the drawing board, keeping in mind you need to address the fact in mind that you can’t retroactively expect data availability in a service that didn’t exist at the time.

D

Your talking point still needs work. Back to the drawing board, keeping in mind you need to address the fact in mind that you can’t retroactively expect data availability in a service that didn’t exist at the time.

D

Exactly: Real scientists submit their data to data centers or share their ftp sites, to advance science.
Science is difficult enough without also having to hunt data. Additionally to that, proxy data have a serious versioning problem, just citing “Polar Urals” doesn’t indicate which version was used..

Bottom line: a result is not scientific without proper method description and input.

After being rebuffed by individual scientists, I sought assistance from NSF and was rebuffed by them as well. I have posted up correspondence from NSF, which culminated in an absurd declaration from Margaret Leinen that the data which I sought was already posted up at WDCP. I think that most of you realize that I;m pretty careful about these things and would not have mentioned data that was up at WDCP. My NSF correspondence begins here: http://www.climate2003.com/correspondence/nsf.031215.htm

I have also attempted to get Nature and Science to implement their data archiving policies, which has had some small dividends, including the first release of sample-by-sample data by Thompson, although it was only for 2 cores from one site and only dO18 data. See, inter alia, http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=327

I have had quite a different reaction from non-Hockey Team authors. For example, I suggested to Kameda and Hughen that they archive certain unarchived data with WDCP, which they did promptly and courteously.

You should also note that the Barton Committee has taken an interest in NSF’s disinterest in enforcing US GRCP policies and sent a letter to NSF, which is not entirely unrelated to my comments at climateaudit. I am hopeful that they will cause a shakeup in NSF policies. I asked Margaret Leinen at the CCSP workshop about why they didn’t require grantees to archive data. After an initially unresponsive answer, she said to stay tuned to their website.

I certainly don’t expect scientists to act as data services. I do expect them to comply with the terms of their grants and for the granting agencies to enforce compliance by them with the terms of their grants.

I also strongly urge paleoclimate journals to require authors to archive source code and data as used as a condition of submission for publication. This is required in empirical econometrics and is best practice. There’s no excuse for anything less than best practice in a field that has policy relevance.

This would help eliminate these gamie-games, esp. wrt your

“[s]cientists don’t have either the time or inclination to act as data services. This is why data policies and centers exist.”

Yes.

Best,

D

Dano’s post on data (not computer code, to be clear, but data would include computer model output used in peer-reviewed publications) is a plausible explation for why this conflict exists. I think that he is absolutely right when he says that some scientists withold data based on personal judgments of (a) how the data might be used (Dano expresses concerns about “hit pieces”), or (b) scientists perceptions of the political leanings or associations of the requestor (Dano expresses a desire for data requestors to disavow associations with “Milloy-types”, presumably referring to Steven milloy of the JunkScience web site).

If this is indeed accurate, then it seems to me that it provides a good reason for data policies. Let me say that I too find some of the comments at ClimateAudit to be way off target. And I also an no fan of Steven Milloy. But at the same time, so what? Blacklists and discrimination makes me nervous. If someone asked me for data related to my research, would I be justified by replying, “I don’t like the commentary on your WWW site, or peole whom you endorse, so no you can’t have it”? I don’t think so.

It seems to me that the USGCRP, which has the legal mandate to fund climate reserch in the US has it about right in its data managment statement:

http://www.gcrio.org/ocp97/box1ch3.html

In particular:

“Preservation of all data needed for long-term global change research is required. For each and every global change data parameter, there should be at least one explicitly designated archive. Procedures and criteria for setting priorities for data acquisition, retention, and purging should be developed by participating agencies, both nationally and internationally. A clearing-house process should be established to prevent the purging and loss of important data sets.”

and

“For those programs in which selected principal investigators have initial periods of exclusive data use, data should be made openly available as soon as they become widely useful. In each case, the funding agency should explicitly define the duration of any exclusive-use period.”

The problem as I see it is that Steve McIntyre is focusing in the wrong place to resolve his concerns. This is not an issue specific to particular researchers, but a failure of the research agencies to enforce their own data policies. Scientists don’t have either the time or inclination to act as data services. This is why data policies and centers exist.

The solution to this problem is not to squabble with scientists, but to take those actions needed to get the agencies to enforce their existing policies.

Context. Context. Context.

Context is important, and muddying the context drives the narrative on your site forward.

The issue is _not_ whether amateurs can or cannot have access to data. I don’t have an issue with that, nor with the assertion that there should be some Data Quality Standards. I agree. Maybe more disciplines need to allocate a portion of their time to better documentation. Great. Fantastic. Make it so. Yes. Boo-ya. Ooh-rah. Amateurs on advocacy sites, make your little charts and discuss amongst yourselves.

However. It sure does appear, Steve, that amateurs are flooding the zone and copycatting the ‘audit’ routine.

I, certainly, would look at a request from a Warwick Hughes and say to myself ‘hit piece’. Just as likely everyone else is doing.

Fer chrissake, Steve, lookit the comments on your site. Do you really that any scientist, after reading some of those guys, might think there’s a risk of you writing a hit piece with their data? Gimme a break. And Warwick Hughes? Haw.

That’s the context. Who cares whether you like it or not.

The narrative coming out of your site is conflating an unwillingness to work with somebody into a story that PIs reacting to requests from you have something to hide. Thus, a Grand Conspiracy!!!!! These guys need to keep their funding and keep driving their Audis!! See! Conspiracy! and other such ululating.

Folk see Warwick Hughes, Steve McIntyre, and other non-climate scientists making requests and, gosh, they might think another hit piece might be coming down the road…after all, it’s not like there’s no precedent here to draw upon – that first piece was a hatchet job and you know it. Don’t tell me no one gave you advice on how that’s exactly what it would look like if you publish that way. That’s what happened.

So that’s how we have to sell it: gee…it sure is bad, isn’t it, that scientist X isn’t cooperating. Hiding something, yupyup.

Well, they aren’t cooperating with someone who says things like this [again, HTML in comments would be nice]:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=420
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=419

and is assw:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=438#comment-9183
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=438#comment-9185

Suuure. They’re not cooperating, see, so that means they have something to hide, see, yup?

Puh-leez.

You may have a percentage of the population that falls for that routine, but I hain’t rid on no turnip truck, son.

So no, Steve, you presume incorrectly about what I think of Jones spending time with Warwick Hughes, and I suggest WH can:

1. wait until the Data Quality revolution comes around and standards/conventions are changed to make data available to the teeming masses,
2. play phone mail tag until Jones becomes not busy enough to spend some valuable time with an amateur who may or may not write a hit piece about some work he did,
3. get cred by, oh gosh I dunno, publishing empirical research and disavowing associations with Milloy-types.

Best,

D

Instead of a hypothetical that most would agree on, consider “If any other piece of climate research had been included in the TAR SPM and exposed to the same level of scrutiny by M&M would we be still talking about this.” On this hypothetical I think you would get very divergent opinions along the AGW-skeptic axis and better captures the broader implications of their work. To comment on the original post, I believe you are saying there have been many efforts at containment at work, first to MGH, then to the HS, then to the IPCC, and these concentric circles keep expanding outwards. The “Oil for Food” scandal might be a more appropriate analogy as it involves the next circle of the parent organization of the IPCC, the UN. Next circle, peer review and Nature publication standards, which is where it all started with the release of emails between McIntyre and Nature.

In audits, the motivation for hiding the basic data is usually irrelevant, the mere act creates suspicion. M&M do science a great service with their gratis attention to details that lovers of science should be thankful for.

Dear Jean Palutikof, Dr P.D. Jones,I was just reading your web page at; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/ and wish to access the station by station temperature data, updated through 2001 referred to on your CRU web page; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow as “Over land regions of the world over 3000 monthly station temperature timeseries are used.”Where can I download the latest station by station data which is a foundation of Dr Jones et al published papers ? Note, I am not asking about the CRU gridded data which I can see on your web site. Looking forward to your help, Best wishes, Warwick Hughes

After many months of runaround, in February 2005, Phil Jones finally brushed Hughes off as follows: “I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed top pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. 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. There is IPR to consider.”

Does that help? I presume that you’ll now suggest to Jones that he make the information available.

Dano, the availability of this stuff is nothing to do with amateurs; it should be available period. If you read McCullough on experience with empirical econometrics, the reluctance of authors to have anyone check their work is not unique to climatologists, although they are particularly sensitive.