*
Steve McIntyre reports (via commenter AMac) that Mann’s inverted Tiljander sediment data lives on in Kemp et al 2011 like some zombie that will not die. I feel for graduate student Kemp, who will forever have the stink of Mann’s inability to admit and correct this simple issue tied to his paper.
AMac: Upside Down Mann Lives on in Kemp et al 2011
AMac writes:
Yesterday, Kemp et al. 2011 was published in PNAS, relating sea-level variation to climate over the past 1,600 years (UPenn press release). Among the authors is Prof. Mann. (Kemp11 is downloadable from WUWT.) Figs. 2A and 4A are “Composite EIV global land plus ocean global temperature reconstruction, smoothed with a 30-year LOESS low-pass filter”. This is one of the multiproxy reconstructions in Mann et al. (2008, PNAS). The unsmoothed tracing appears as the black line labelled “Composite (with uncertainties)” in panel F of Fig. S6 of the “Supporting Information” supplement to Mann08 (dowonloadable from pnas.org).
This is one of the Mann08 reconstructions that made use of the four (actually three) uncalibratable Tiljander data series.
As scientist/blogger Gavin Schmidt has indicated, the early years of the EIV Global reconstruction rely heavily on Tiljander to pass its “validation” test: “…it’s worth pointing out that validation for the no-dendro/no-Tilj is quite sensitive to the required significance, for EIV NH Land+Ocean it goes back to 1500 for 95%, but 1300 for 94% and 1100 AD for 90%” (link). Also see RealClimate here (Gavin’s responses to comments 525, 529, and 531).
The dependence of the first two-thirds of the EIV recon on the inclusion of Tiljander’s data series isn’t mentioned in the text of Kemp11. Nor is it discussed in the SI, although it is an obvious and trivial explanation for the pre-1100 divergence noted in the SI’s Figures S3, S4, and S5.
Peer review appears to have been missing in action on this glaring shortcoming in Kemp11′s methodology.
More than anything, I am surprised by this zombie-like re-appearance of the Tiljander data series — nearly three years after the eruption of the controversy over their misuse as temperature proxies!
For those that don’t know this story, here’s some links to get yourself up to speed. In a nutshell, Mann took some sediment data, inverted it in sign, and even though the scientist (Tiljander) who gathered and published the data says it is inverted, Mann has done nothing about it, and it continues to find its way into peer reviewed literature.
AMac has more at his blog: The Tiljander Data Series Appear Again, This Time in a Sea-Level Study. Apparently, realclimate.org won’t allow him to comment on the issue.
Here’s a graph from an earlier CA post: More Upside-Down Mann
The difference is shown below:
Imagine the caterwauling if we published the bottom graph regularly:
Here’s some links for background:
Upside-Side Down Mann and the ”peerreviewedliterature”
Upside Down Tiljander in Japan
IQ Test: Which of these is not upside down?
Here’s an interesting use of upside down graphs followed by a consensus insistence that the orientation of the data is correct:
* That’s an actual company http://www.zombiedata.com/
By now people should have learned to avoid using material from Dr.Mann.
It’s oficial, then. The Warmist strategy is to batten down the hatches and to never retreat on any claim, no matter how faulty or fraudulent.
Do we need anymore proof of the corruption and fallibility of current climatology? I am a layman. I know that any and all uses of the Tiljander series should be banned from literature except as a teaching tool for showing students how not to conduct science. (But also how to pass on garbage as science in order to bilk and mislead the public.)
Climatology—– corrupt beyond redemption
Peer review—– and again, corrupt beyond redemption. This goes for all schools of science. If it can happen in this contrived field with the light of truth continually upon it, it can and probably does happen in others. I don’t know what should replace it, but to use it as a proxy for valid science has been shown to be folly.
Scientific journals —— they have lost all credibility. Where’s the editors? Where’s the retractions and apologies to the readers and subscribers. Some people pay very good money for some subscriptions.
Where are the governing bodies of science? Are they too, complicit? Where are the statements and condemnations for using this tainted series?
Point of Information.
The Kemp et al study as published in PNAS on 20th June is at the receiving end of a lot of flack from other academics in Germany.
The name Rahmstorf is given as an author of the paper.
In essence, colleagues do not accept the validity of the conclusions.
In German from Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,769424,00.html
The headline: ” Meeresspiegel-Studie entzweit Forschergemeinde”
Trans: “Sea level study divides researchers.”
Very helpful to have the old Climate Audit posts on upside-down Tiljander in one place.
For some people exposing themselves is ‘all they got’.
Ok, I know Mann has done some shaky (read dishonest) things to promote global warming, but this seems so blatant that he could not possibly get away with it. I’m new to the inverted data. Has he or anyone else responded to these claims?
aNY BODY WHO STUDIES UNDER dR. mANN SHOULD BE READY FOR AN “inverted world” WHEN IT COMES TO ACADEMIC EXPECTATIONS. tHE NORMAL APPROACH, WHEREIN dR. mANN ACCURATELY REVIEWS HIS STUDENT’S WORK, SHOULDN’T BE EXPECTED. mY HOPE IS THAT someday dR. mANN’S STUDENT’S WILL BE ABLE TO CRITIQUE HIS WORK. /cAPS sARC oFF.
I made a comment here about upside down data but was only joking. I didn’t think there was any way he would try to reuse upside down data. This has to be soooo embarrassing to the journals and the reviewers (even though they are anonymous, I bet they get phone calls from journal editors).
I must try this technique with the old bank manager.
@JHTRazor
Many have responded, none have effectively answered.
The justification relies on the fact that the statistical method used to determine the suitability of the series is insensitive the orientation of the series. That is, you feed a series in, and if it’s a good match in either orientation, it’s included, weighted etc.
There are circumstances where this is justified and some where it is not.
In the examples blindly defended so far, it is not justified because there is no physical basis that links the structure of this series to changes in temperature. The series is contaminated in various ways (mechanical damage etc.) that negate it’s use, and Tiljander herself disavows that the series can be used in this way – the definitive source on the context in which the series was collected goes ignored!
IOW, the “fit” that this series has is purely coincidental and an artefact of statistical processing, not a reflection of a physical process.
I would not be surprised if you don’t believe me.
It is unbelievable this lives on, and the corruption of science with it. It makes it all the more absurd when the regular apostles of AGW troll through and only accept ‘peer reviewed’ references as worth considering.
It boggles the mind when these people know that they are being watched all the time.They either believe what they say or they are stupid, pressured and/or corrupt beyond being able to stop what they are doing even if they know it is nonsence. I pass.
For those just tuning in to this issue, Mia Tiljander authored a 2005 paper in which she detailed her work using sediment layers as a proxy. However, she later discovered that the sediments had been corrupted by being overturned decades prior due to peat digging, road construction, bridge building, and other work that destroyed the original pristine sediment layers.
Mann’s use of the corrupted Tiljander proxy could be passed off as a mistake, but for one thing: Mann was informed before he published that the Tiljander proxy was no good. But he used it anyway, because it gave him the hockey stick graph he wanted.
This is where I draw the flipping line. First it was merely “science”, but now that flipping Mann character is even giving “flipping” more of a bad name than it flipping deserves!
@James Baldwin Sexton: while what Mann et al (climate scientists) are doing is well beyond the pale, your blanket condemnation of “all science” and “all journals” is equally beyond the pale. Many of us still do strive to do the work of science honestly, and many journals still publish valid results. Here’s the link to my latest publication; please tell me how the paper is invalid, and where Physical Review, and the paper’s reviewers, went wrong in publishing the paper.
http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v83/i4/e042701
Andrew Kemp bio @ur momisugly Yale
Michael;
Not tea bags! But don’t you have the H and OH reversed?
———-
JOKING! JUST JOKING!
;p
B-)
Wow, this is really unbelievable. What I don’t understand is that Mann thought he would get away with this – again?
“Hit me with my hockey stick – it’s nice to be a lunatic!”
At what point does this whole AGW nonsense become real, criminal fraud? We must be close to that tipping point.
Has anyone reproduced Kemp et al with Tiljander right side up?
“James Sexton says:
June 22, 2011 at 5:44 am
Do we need anymore proof of the corruption and fallibility of current climatology? I am a layman. I know that any and all uses of the Tiljander series should be banned from literature except as a teaching tool for showing students how not to conduct science. (But also how to pass on garbage as science in order to bilk and mislead the public.)”
Actually, James, other than the contaminated periods (reason detailed in other posts) which Tiljander identifies in her study, the proxy is perfectly acceptable. Her work is perfectly legitimate. The problem is in what Mannian statistics does to her work.
He leaves in the corrupt data, and his mining algorithm sees those periods as negatively corresponding to the signal he is looking for (remember, he compares to the temperature record). So, since the faulty data corresponds, his program flips the whole thing and uses it because “it matches the historic temperature record”. It is a cherry picking exercise, and if you take out the contaminated sections, his program pretty much ignores the series.
I don’t get it. Mann didn’t invert the sign, he just inverted the axis direction. The actual numbers on the axis corresponding to the data are still correct. It actually makes more sense the way Mann graphed it because it’s starts at zero at the origin. This is not the same as your example with temperatures where you invert the data, but keep the axis labels the same!
I’m certainly no fan of Mann, but you have a pretty unreasonable gripe with this one.
because his only defense consists of ad hominem attacks and untrue statements about his critics. He never, to my knowledge, addresses the core issue. Oh his lackeys do, or try to, but their machinations seem so desperate.
I wonder if there is some way for Tiljander to scientifically enjoin Mann from using her data in such a manner. A scientific ‘cease and desist’ letter ha ha ha!
If she were so inclined. Her silence speaks approval to me….