Phil Jones on the hot seat – not sharing data is "standard practice"

Excerpts from the Daily Mail article here:

Head of ‘Climategate’ research unit admits he hid data – because it was ‘standard practice’

The scientist at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ row over global warming hid data ‘because it was standard practice’, it emerged today.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.

The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university’s server and posted online.

Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.

Prof Jones today said it was not ‘standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.

He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.

Appearing before the committee’s hearing into the disclosure of data from the CRU alongside Prof Jones, the university’s vice chancellor Prof Edward Acton said he had not seen any evidence of flaws in the overall science of climate change – but said he was planning this week to announce the chair of a second independent inquiry, which will look into the science produced at CRU.

h/t to WUWT reader Richard Lawson

UPDATE: Steven Mosher writes in comments about some relevant history that disproves Dr. Jones claim of “standard practice”:

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OK. Everybody write the UEA committee.

Jones says its standard practice NOT to share data.

1. in 2002 PRIOR to the publication of MM2003 Jones shared

data with Mcintyre. Jones was aware of confidentiality agreements.

“Dear Steve,

Attached are the two similar files [normup6190, cruwld.dat] to those I sent before which should be for the 1994 version. This is still the current version until the paper appears for the new one. As before the stations with normal values do not get used.

I’ll bear your comments in mind when possibly releasing the station data for the new version (comments wrt annual temperatures as well as the monthly). One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. With monthly data I can use even one value for a station in a year (for the month concerned), but for annual data I would have to decide on something like 8-11 months being needed for an annual average. With fewer than 12 I then have to decide what to insert for missing data. Problem also applies to the grid box dataset but is slightly less of an issue.

I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available. I would like to see more countries make their data freely available (and although these monthly averages should be according to GCOS rules for GAA-operational Met. Service.

Cheers

Phil Jones”

http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/06/a-2002-request-to-cru/

2. After the publication of MM03 he refused to share that data with Hughes in Feb 2005:a month after MM05 was published and a month after Wigly and he discussed ways to avoid FOIA. He refused

again with Mcintyre in 2007, citing confidentiality agreements.

3. Fully aware of the confidentiality agreements Jones shared the data

with Webster and with Rutherford.

His standard practice was this.

If Jones had no reason to suspect you as an individual he would violate confidentiality agreements and send you data. If jones didn’t like your results or your treatment of his co author Dr. Mann, then he would refuse you data.

There is nothing standard about this practice.

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It appears once Dr. Jones learned that Steve McIntyre had skeptical views, his unwillingness to share data became “standard practice”. – Anthony