Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/21/2009 11:52:01 PM PST by Windflier
Please note - in my "past life" I ran an ISP, and am a qualified expert in these matters. I write spam filtering software commercially and have since 1995, being the author of the first ISP-centered spam interdiction package. As such when it comes to issues like Internet mail transport I can easily speak to what is supposed to be present - and what is not.
Further, I want to note that my interest in this has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying claim - "Is Man-Made Global Warming Real?" Rather, my interest in this is whether or not the alleged scientific process has been followed - or subverted.
[snip]
Science is the process by which we take a question and:
* Form a hypothesis.
* Design an experiment to test that hypothesis.
* Perform the experiment and collect the data thus generated.
* Analyze the resulting data.
* Form a conclusion from the data thus collected.
That's "The Scientific Method."
To the extent that method is corrupted on purpose one does not have science. To the extent that it is corrupted out of necessity (e.g. missing data that one requires, and thus one "guesses") this is accepted provided one discloses one's guess and how it was derived - that is, provided there is no material concealment.
In the "Big Science World" the check and balance on concealment - and outright fraud - is peer review and post-publication duplication. To be able to duplicate the results claimed, however, the algorithms, code, methods and data sets must be made publicly available so that anyone who desires to do so can validate the claimed experimental results.
[snip]
In short, I see nothing in that data set that implies that the messages have been tampered with, but there is also no reasonable way to prove their provenance as the necessary information to do so (routing and message-id information) is missing. A well-place FOI request should resolve that problem, if anyone is particularly interested in doing so.
The data sets included in the archive are also interesting. Again, a reasonably-detailed look through them shows nothing implying that they have been tampered with, and they include data and computer code (source program code) from a wide variety of time periods. It appears authentic.
Comments within, however, disclose an extraordinary amount of extrapolation and "curve fitting" - that is, fitting results to data, not the other way around as it should be that appears to have been going on in the process of so-called "analysis." Worse, there are plenty of comments that make clear that the researchers are literally making things up as they go along - much of the data sets are claimed to be incomplete, inaccurate in terms of their time frames .vs. what is claimed in the headers and titles, and containing junk values.
There is some real trouble here, in that if you're not sure what you've got (that is, you're not sure what the data is!) or worse, you're knowingly missing pieces that you need to perform an analysis, what are you "analyzing"?
Worse, there are comments in the files that make clear that there are observations that are outside of what has been published - and worse, some of those observations are ten times outside the alleged "resolution" of claimed results. Uh, that's a major problem, and goes back to what I have repeatedly said about so-called "climate science" for a very long time...
[snip]
When one performs complex mathematical functions on input data uncertainties must also be carried through the mathematical functions. Without that we know nothing about the quality of the result - it is entirely possible, given data with enough noise in it, to produce what looks like a perfectly valid answer but have it be absolute trash and of no value at all.
The only way to know if that is possible is for all measurements to be reported with their uncertainties attached, and for all uncertainties to be carried through all computational processes.
It is quite clear, from the data sets I have looked at, that this is simply not being done. Instead computations are being "fudged" to fit data to expected previously claimed results and/or data sets simply discarded or modified that do not fit with either previously-published numbers or desired outcomes.
In the “Big Science World” the check and balance on concealment - and outright fraud - is peer review and post-publication duplication.
***Peer review is becoming the Big Science equivalent of high school peer pressure and “I’m in with the IN crowd”. But it does beg the question of what would be better. Maybe a system of double blind peer reviewing which includes the possibility of fraudulent claims at each turn so that those involved have to be technically proficient?
Peer review has become a way to silence those who are suggesting “politically incorrect” theories. It is a way of guaranteeing that science moves in lockstep. There is unimaginable arrogance behind it; the assumption being that those doing the reviewing already know the answer.
An incredible forensic analysis of the hacked AGW emails.The REAL benefit of these e-mails will be to match them up with the e-mails to/with EVENTS and PAPERS published on GW issues and the authors correspondence WITH the outside world with regard to inquiries and requests for validating materials like data and code to replicate the plotted/charted results.
Example: Michael E. Mann's 'Hockey Stick' and and his use of non-standard bad/flawed statistical techniques and stone-walling of code.
And where's that happening/going to happen?
In the blog word at WUWT and CA. And maybe even here too.
To me a big flag in the AGW Climate Argument is when one side refuses to debate the underlying science with the opposition and fall back on trying to disparage the opponents with inappropriate language such as ‘deniers’!
This is typically PC/Leftism.
I agree. But I’m in the middle of my own Peer Review problem. I put money down at Intrade on the Arata-Zhang experiment to be peer reviewed and I was certain that the American Chemical Society was a Peer Reviewed Journal, but now I’m not so sure. So I’m looking for a Peer Reviewed replication of the May 2008 Arata-Zhang experiment.
http://bb.intrade.com/intradeForum/posts/list/2239.page
Thanks.
Didn’t you get the memo? ... The left has determined that the “ad homenium attack” is actually not a fallacious argument after all?
I have a running ( constantly updated as long as new info comes in ) post on this up at our Canadian sister site:
http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=125688
Hadley CRU has apparently been hacked –[epic fraud?]
I note, ironically, that their sub-forum for this:
“Global Warming and Other Junk Sciences” was created many years ago— they called it from the first.
You are spot-on with that comment. Just for reference, because of the heavy load on an old server at climateaudit.org, Steve McIntyre has set up a sort of "mirror" Wordpress site at:
IMHO, Steve McIntyre is the man of the hour in this whole episode. He was the forcing function with his FOI requests that, I'm betting, led to the release of this data. The analysis in this thread's article basically points to an anonymous whistleblower rather than a hacker as the source of the data and that, furthermore, the data could be from a compilation to respond to an FOIA request. That seems to be the consensus or at least the majority opinion over at ClimateAudit as well.
Peer-review is only the "up front" attempt to see whether the information to be published is worthy of publication. It is strictly short term.
The ultimate big hammer is the process of science itself. Eventually, bad data and hypotheses impact other areas of science, causing cumulative effects, but also causing scientists in those other areas to start looking for the sources of those errors. Hence:
Eventually the truth comes out. It ALWAYS comes out. It WILL always come out. Which is why it is pointless to even TRY to foster this kind of fraud. But there is always a new generation of folks, some of whom are egomaniacal enough to think that THEY are the ones that will succeed in getting away with fraud.
I am computer illiterate, but doesn't this statement from the article indicate that these emails were released by person or persons unknown rather than hacked?
The intercept, wherever it happened, does not appear to have been done at the system or transport level. Specifically, the "Received:" and "Message-ID:" lines that are part of all internet-transported email are missing. This strongly implies that wherever these emails came from, they were saved/stored by one or more user(s) and were not an automated process that was maintaining archival (or forensic) logs.
The “Algore Scientific Method”
1) Figure out the best way to make a lot of money & scam the public.
2) Come up with outlandish statements that are nearly impossible to prove.
3) Get your lapdogs in the media to parrot each statement. Get your cronies in entertainment to make movies about it.
4) Declare that the debate is over.
5) Destroy civilization, and after plunging the western world into poverty, ensure that you and your cronies are at the top of the “food chain.”
I think that pretty well describes it...
Mark
“Eventually, bad data and hypotheses impact other areas of science, causing cumulative effects, but also causing scientists in those other areas to start looking for the sources of those errors.”
I agree, but only after lots of money has been spent, contrary manuscripts and grants have been trashed, and a lot of time has been wasted.
What really should happen at this point is that the editors of Science, Nature, and wherever else this group has published should ask for the raw data sets, and a full disclosure of the methodology used to analyze them.
Here is some raw data:
1) The sun is a huge ball of fire.
2) The earth is a tiny rock in comparison to the sun.
3) Man is less than a speck on our tiny rock.
4) Some less-than-specks in DC think they can write a law on paper that will control the activity of the sun.
Have I missed anything?
Yeah, fraud always causes bad things to happen. But in science, fraud is ALWAYS eventually outed.
"What really should happen at this point is that the editors of Science, Nature, and wherever else this group has published should ask for the raw data sets, and a full disclosure of the methodology used to analyze them.
Don't hold your breath. Those editors are just as much a part of the liberal media as any other print organ, ESPECIALLY Science and Nature. Probably not yet in the more hard-core technical journals, but those "generalist" journals have long been taken over by the left.
ping
An incredible forensic analysis of the hacked AGW emails.
. . . so much so that I urge the reader to go read the unexerpted article here.A must-read. Bookmarking.
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