"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to find something wrong with it?"

After unveiling the Hadley Center adjustment error that has been used in all temperature compilations for the past 20 years, Phil Jones stated:

Climate scientists should think about data quality more often, says Jones, so that there is no opportunity for incorrect data to sow seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the reality of climate change.

This is the same Phil Jones who said:

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.

Peter Webster, like Hans von Storch before him, was nonplussed at this attitude and, at his request, I provided the supporting email in a comment on another thread, noting that von Storch, also in disbelief, had contacted Phli Jones directly for confirmation, obtaining such personal confirmation, which von Storch had then reported to the NAS panel, as I discussed here, linking to von Storch's PPT.

During the past few years, I've posted progress reports on CRU's obstruction of efforts to find out even the simplest information about how they do their calculations – things as simple as a list of stations in their temperature calculations. These progress reports are scattered through many posts and I’ve collated into a PDF online here, covering two topics:

1) efforts to identify the station data used in CRU temperature analyses, and, once that had been refused, efforts to obtain even a list of stations used by SRU. Two generations of inquiry are shown, first by Warwick Hughes in 2005 and then by Willis Eschenbach in 2006-2007, which after 3 years and countless attempts only resulted in a not quite complete list of stations.

2) efforts to obtain a list of stations used in Jones et al 1990, a prominent study purportedly proving that the UHI effect was inconsequential. Once this list was obtained, an examination of the list of Chinese stations by myself and Doug Keenan, showed that claims in Jones et al 1990 to have selected stations based on careful examination of station history metadata could not possibly be true, as such metadata did not exist, which led Keenan to file a complaint against one of the authors.

This collation draws on previous posts at Climate Audit and my correspondence files.

> If you don’t share your data with other scientists, it ain’t science.

Oh, but haven’t you heard?

The science is settled.

You will be taxed into poverty, fossil fuels will become scarce and expensive, and your lifestyle will begin to more closely approximate that of people from remote Indonesia. And with Sharia law to regulate your life.

Aren’t you excited?

Why should I prove my income, when your aim is to prove that I owe more taxes?

Nice response.

In the case of personal finances, because by withholding data, you are inviting an audit. As a person you have nothing to gain by doing this, and a great deal of expense, hassel and expense as a consequence.

In the case of the Climate hoax, by withholding the data, you make the published data suspect. The fact that RAW data was destroyed is inexcuseable, there is only one reason for intentionally destroying RAW data, and that is fraud.

If the RAW data were available, then a person's work can be inspected and criticisized, different statistucal analysis can be done; and a consensus can be reached as to what the 'real adjusted' values should be. Without RAW data, no analysis can be done; as the data has been adjusted in a manner that makes it worthless.

"But it was of the essence of Einstein's methodology that he insisted his equations must be verified by empirical observation and he himself devised three specific tests for this purpose....

At the time, Einstein's professional heroism did not go unappreciated. To the young philosopher Karl Popper and his friends at Vienna University, 'it was a great experience for us, and one which had a lasting influence on my intellectual development.'

'What impressed me most', Popper wrote later, 'was Einstein's own clear statement that he would regard his theory as untenable if it should fail in certain tests...Here was an attitude utterly different from the dogmatism of Marx, Freud, Adler and even more so that of their followers. Einstein was looking for crucial experiments whose agreement with his predictions would by no means establish his theory; while a disagreement, as he was the first to stress, would show his theory to be untenable. This, I felt, was the true scientific attitude."

Modern Times by Paul Johnson

“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to find something wrong with it?”

Going to weekly research seminars in graduate school, one of the first things I learned was that when you present your work in front of a group of professionals, there are going to be dozens of people trying to determine what might be wrong with it, and those folks aren’t going to be shy about pointing out the weaknesses in the research you’re presenting.

The distortion of science by these clowns at the CRU is most clearly evident in their attitude towards McIntyre - they were quite happy to share their work with friends who agreed with them (or for that matter, share their conclusions with a public that couldn’t assess their reliability), but they avoided like the plague any chance that the work would be critically evaluated, which is a crucial part of the self-correction that leads real scientists to useful and trustworthy conclusions.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Climate scientists should think about data quality more often, says Jones

FReepmail me to get on or off