But there is also mention of urban stations being moved to the seashore and stuff like that, and, of course, one must look at all factors at once.

(Perhaps the data is so bad it’s not terribly useful.)

But the topic at hand, the questionable quality of the foreign data.

I note cases of both warming and cooling biases in the unaccounted moves. Is this tit-for-tat, or is there an overall upward or downward bias indicated?

Kidding aside, I do think that those plants in the picture are probably giant ragweed, but you are right that if in doubt, it’s better to play it safe.

I repeat, if a volunteer sees any obviously suspicious plants, I advise (s)he leave at once and for god’s sake don’t take any pictures.

The 1991 DOE report (the source of the data) on the China stations stated that the China station’s historical record was nor robust re: climate measurements. Too much movement. Too many gaps.

To state that the station’s records were robust they had to use the data without reading the attached report.

What are the odds?

(BTW Wang had a pre-publication version of the DOE report which accounts for the timing discrepancy)

Questionable research practices include activities such as the following:

Failing to retain significant research data for a reasonable period.
Maintaining inadequate research records, especially for results that are published or are relied on by others;
Conferring or requesting authorship on the basis of a specialized service or contribution that is not significantly related to the research reported in the paper;
Refusing to give peers reasonable access to unique research materials or data that support published papers;
Using inappropriate statistical or other methods of measurement to enhance the significance of research findings;
Inadequately supervising research subordinates or exploiting them; and
Misrepresenting speculations as fact or releasing preliminary research results, especially in the public media, without providing sufficient data to allow peers to judge the validity of the results or to reproduce the experiments. [COSEPUP 1992:28, emphasis in original]4

For those who wish to know. Falsification may be the best word to use for the reveiw of this work. In many areas that I am a professional, a false claim of quality is a falsification. You have falsely claimed that the data was true, accurate, and correct. When presenting data to many state and federal agencies, one must certify the quality. Failure to do so is subject to penalty. Falsification is subject to a five year felony (most often both state and federal; so you can be tried twice, since both are violations of different law). But as interesting as this discussion is. Just gander at what misconduct is!!! If only a fraction of what has been claimed, not to mention what has been admitted, there are a lot of AGW researchers, that want you to accept their work, that are in seriuos violation of the guidelines/ requirements. That the administrators of certain institutions may be refusing to make persons who recieved federal funding follow these guides/requirements shoiuld give other scientists and informed public cause to reject the claims of AGW or other “science” until they are met.

Misconduct in science is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism…
Fabrication is making up data or results,
falsification is changing data or results, and
plagiarism is using the ideas or words of another person without giving appropriate credit.

DougK is accusing Wang of making up data, i.e. station histories. He’s not making accusations about changing data.

TCO, if you want to argue that station histories are not “data”, go look at AnthonyW’s photo collection and explain why those photos are not data. The data describing provenance of measurements is just as important as the measurements themselves.

Apparently you don’t know that, and thus have lost my trust in your self-selected role as SteveM’s in-house gadfly.

TCO, once upon a time you seemed to be one who shared nuggets of gadfly-wisdom based on a depth of background understanding. Now I see you are more like Chauncey Gardiner — seen as wise because you had so little to say.

Too bad. Perhaps the advice of one of my long-ago mentors would be a help to you as well: “MrPete, you’re a smart guy. Shut up for a few years and learn to listen… and then you will have something valuable to contribute.”

Boy that stung… (!) but it was good advice.

Their lives could be in extreme danger, and I ain’t kidding even a little.

a “false claim of data quality” is NOT falsification. it is clearly fabrication. a claim was made in which the claimer knew, or should have known, that the claim was untrue.

maybe a distinction without a difference, but i think you are wrong here.

Every fabrication is a falsification. “TCO has horns and carries a pitch fork.”

But not every falsification is a fabrication. “TCO has a sub 100 IQ.”

The former being an outright Invention ( err as far as I know ) made up out of whole cloth and the latter being an exaggeration, err an underestimation, ahhh crap.

Thus ends today’s lesson in meaningless scholastic distinctions.

TCO may not be your cup of tea, but more often than not, he’s not half wrong.

Ok, enough frivolity. Like it or not the real business is doing the kind of study that TCO suggests.

Still, some in the community have rhetorical skills, some legal, some photographic, some are Stats guys, HVAC guys, Hurricane girls, So, Perhaps some pressure and friction on Wang will result in a happy ending.

If I’m reading this correctly, TCO is gnawing on a gnat’s eyebrow aspect of this.

Doug’s claim is “fabricating scientific claims”, while TCO wants the term “fabrication” to focus on data.

Doug’s actual complaint is about fabrication of station-move data (i.e. station histories). Wang claims all the station histories were available, but cannot produce them. DougK’s claim is supported by material published by Zeng (Wang’s data source), who said, at the time, that station histories were not available.

To me, that’s a valid fabrication claim: Doug is saying Wang based his work on unmoved stations, when he apparently did not have the necessary station-move data to support his work.

Sure, there’s a minor english usage question involved here, and TCO loves to quibble about grammar… but most people just don’t care about grammar.

That’s my interpretation at least.