NOTE: since this is clearly an important finding with far reaching implications, this will be a “top post” at WUWT for the next couple of days. I urge other bloggers to spread the word. – Anthony
================================================================
Just when you think the bottom of the Hockey Stick rabbit hole has been reached, Steve McIntyre finds yet more evidence of misconduct by the Team.
The research was from Briffa and Osborn (1999) published in Science magazine and purported to show the consistency of the reconstruction of past climate using tree rings with other reconstructions including the Mann Hockey Stick. But the trick was exposed in the Climategate dossier, which also included code segments and datasets.
In the next picture, Steve shows what Briffa and Osborn did – not only did they truncate their reconstruction to hide a steep decline in the late 20th Century but also a substantial early segment from 1402-1550:
As I’ve written elsewhere, this sort of truncation can be characterized as research misconduct – specifically falsification. But where are the academic cops? Any comment from Science magazine?
Steve also discusses the code underlying the plot and you can see how the truncation is a clear deliberate choice – not something that falls out of poorly understood analysis or poor programming.
In the comments, Kip Hansen posts the following:
In reference to Mann’s Trick….obliquely, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on Zicam (a homeopathic nasal spray) ruled in part:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/health/23bizcourt.html?_r=1&hpw
The Supreme Court has said that companies may be sued under the securities law for making statements that omit material information, and it has defined material information as the sort of thing that reasonable investors would believe significantly alters the ‘total mix’ of available information.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court on Tuesday, roundly rejected Matrixx’s proposal that information can be material only if it meets standards of statistical significance.
‘Given that medical professionals and regulators act on the basis of evidence of causation that is not statistically significant,’ she wrote, ‘it stands to reason that in certain cases reasonable investors would as well.’
Thus, hiding or omitting information, even if one feels it is ‘erroneous’ or ‘outlying’ (or whatever they claim) is still possibly fraudulent ( or in this case, scientifically improper) if it would ‘add to the total mix of available information’. Statistical significance is not to be the deciding factor.
In the case of Briffa and Osborn, no statistical fig leaf was applied that justified the truncation of data, so far as I can see.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Lego Science
No end to the junk these jokers claim is science.
Let me see if I have this right. According to the team, trees are good proxies for temperatures, except when they aren’t.
And how do you determine when they are and when they aren’t? Apparently, when the proxy shows what you want to see, they are valid. When they don’t, they aren’t.
And yet still my students bring in their weekly science articles–ever more and more shrill–that proclaim that the world is coming to an end because it’s warming. No matter how many times I refute it they just don’t believe it because they don’t read it on yahoo news.
As Steve has often said, these are the kinds of activities that would land a stock promoter in jail. Of course, it’s just all in a day’s work for the Team . . .
It is hard to know whether they were intentionally deceptive or just so caught up in the “rightness” of their cause that they literally couldn’t see the discrepancies or couldn’t understand the implications. Amazing that at some point one of them didn’t wake up one night thinking, “Wait a minute, this is wrong.”
My god, what are these charlatans doing to science!
The once thing that has dragged mankind out of ignorance and superstition, that has given great wealth and longevity to the world, and these peopple are destroying it with their lies and deceit.
My god they should be stripped of their qualifications and dishonoured publicly!
However….the CO2 -warming mantra is well and alive.
So if I understand this graph correctly (quite a leap by itself) the dotted line is the part that was “statistically significant” while the pink line was not? Presumably because it didn’t agree with the rest and, therefore, couldn’t be “statistically significant?”
As far as Ms. Sotomayor’s ruling…
Why do I doubt that she had Global Warming in mind when she write this? Beyond that, I think it’s lawsuit bait.
/sarc_on
So is this part of the ongoing “Trial Lawyers Full Employement Process?”
/sarc_off
I wonder why the team didn’t elect to rotate the magenta plot by 180 degrees about its centroid? This would just be a trick to avoid a problem, after all. And I guess the next logical step would be to simply draw the desired plot on the graph with Photoshop.
Another trick from the decline hiders.
where are the academic cops? Any comment from Science magazine?
Good questions. I hope the authors provide an answer. However, before they do, I think it’s fair to ask if this a merely a rhetorical question, or are you actually willing to read a complete response from them?
Saw this a few days ago on CA and nearly fell out of my chair – there’s just no end to it.
Yes Greg. The entire theory is unfalsifable, and that is how you know it is true.
ERIC ANDERSON WRITES:
“It is hard to know whether they were intentionally deceptive or just so caught up in the “rightness” of their cause that they literally couldn’t see the discrepancies or couldn’t understand the implications. Amazing that at some point one of them didn’t wake up one night thinking, “Wait a minute, this is wrong.””
It appears to me that based on the email discussions between certain elite minded folks, there exists a clear deliberate construction of fraud.
Will there ever be any decline in the tricks to hide nature?
@Jenn Oates,
Just remind your students that they are witnessing history being made. Suggest they keep their science articles in a box somewhere, so that when their grandkids ask about what -they’ll- be learning a few decades from now, about the worst scandal in science history (most widespread in all of history?) they can pull out those articles and show them that this stuff really was being taken seriously by scientists back in 2011.
They’ve been lying all along and they continue to lie. It’s time that all of us started to speak plainly about this. It wasn’t a mistake, it wasn’t omitting outliers or anomalous data, or the valid use of a statistical technique or analysis. AGW just had to be true, for a lot of reasons, so they lied, those utter bastards.
I know I just violated WUWT comment policy, and I apologize. But, respectfully, they are utter b*******, and I think that we can demonstrate that. At this point it has got to be what everyone is thinking. What they did was just so wrong.
But wait There’s More!
Now from Ronco science plots we have new and improved multi function plotting software that automatically removes troublesome details from your data.
Call now for a special offer for additional “tricks” you can perform when graphing.
Operators are standing by now!
Call 1-800-bogusdata
Larry
From Paul_in_CT’s comment on CA: Repeat the delete.
Quote of the week?
greg2213
Statistical significance is not the issue. This is another example of not presenting information that is at odds with the main story that you are trying to tell. The pink line diverges from other proxy constructions to a remarkable degree. Truncating the information eliminates the need to explain this divergence. Bottom line it raises more questions as to the suitability of using certain sets of tree rings, if not all tree rings, as temperature proxies. That oit appears to have been a conscious choice on the part of Briffa et al compounds the problem.
Ever get the feeling that they would have gotten the same results using rocks…………
I chair our school’s Committee on Scientific Integrity, which investigates all allegations of misconduct in our sphere.
Training in research ethics is common in the US in biological and medical sciences, but I’m not sure how common it is outside of these disciplines. It’s clear from these examples in climate science that there is a need outside of the medical/biological community for such training.
While I tend to agree that this instance of misconduct was carried out with intent and knowledge that it was inappropriate, there is a significant need for training, even if there are still individuals who will break “the rules”. Enforcement is very very difficult, and the scientific enterprise is highly dependent on the assumption that participants are honest reporters of their data and interpretations.
A hugely important and overlooked part of training in ethical conduct in science is that it is incumbent on anyone observing evidence of misconduct to report it, and that whistle blowers should be protected from retaliation. Training helps with understanding where to report and what to expect as a consequence of being a whistle blower. This knowledge helps the community as more participants are aware of what misconduct is and how they can help to minimize it through their own vigilance.
It’s been my view since climategate broke that there is ample evidence of falsification by these authors. It’s disappointing that their own institutions and the journals involved have been so reticent to carry out proper investigations.
It really is “worse than we thought!” 😉
Uh, they do use rocks (sediment deposits) in some reconstructions.
Mark
Has the pole suddenly shifted?. My compass is pointing the wrong way ?