Rud Istvan, sends this open letter along for publication and writes: This puts UQ on the horns of a terrible dilemma. The preferred political response is always to sweep such a situation under the rug and ignore it.
The letter follows.
Prof. Alistair McEwan, Acting-Pro-Vice Chancello, University of Queensland
Ms. Jane Malloch, Esq. Head Research Legal, University of Queensland
Mr. Graham Lloyd, Environmental Editor, The Australian
Prof. Richard Tol, University of Sussex
5/22/2014
Prof. McEwan:
On May 20, 2014, you issued a formal statement concerning the controversy published by The Australian on 5/17/14 surrounding Cook et. al, 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024, ‘Quantifying the Consensus’, hereinafter QtC. That statement presents the University of Queensland (UQ) with an ethical and legal dilemma. I call your attention to it expecting UQ will do the right thing.
Your statement makes it quite clear that UQ considers QtC was done under the sponsorship of and with support from UQ. This is indisputable. The solicitation for volunteer raters for the analysis that became QtC was: survey.gci.uq.edu.au/survey.php?c=5RL8LWWT2YO7. UQ released a statement about the importance of QtC in the UQ News on January 16, 2014 headlined, “UQ climate change paper has the whole world talking.”
Your 5/20/14 statement said in part:
“Only information that might be used to identify the individual research participants was withheld. This was in accordance with University ethical approval specifying that the identity of participants should remain confidential.”
And that is precisely your dilemma.
The published paper itself identified all the individual research participants (raters). They were either named authors (with affiliations provided, for example second author Dana Nuccitelli affiliated with UQ associated website SKS, as noted in UQ’s 1/20/14 news release, or were specifically named without affiliation in the paper’s acknowledgement. Lest you doubt this, following is that portion of the paper as originally published.
Your dilemma is this. If the UQ ethical approval exists as you officially stated, then the paper as published grossly violated it. QtC is therefore unethical according to UQ policy, and should be withdrawn forthwith.
We need not cite here all the governing Australian principles that UQ is obligated to follow under such unfortunate circumstances. Those include but are not limited to www.uq.edu.au/research/integrity-compliance/human-ethics
There is 2014 retraction precedent concerning another unethical climate related paper from the University of Western Australia. If, on the other hand, there was no such ethical approval, or that approval did not require concealing rater identities, then you have officially misrepresented grossly invalid grounds for withholding the anonymized additional information needed for replication, such as date and time stamped ratings by anonymous rater. Said information has repeatedly, formally been requested by Prof. Richard S.J. Tol (Sussex University (U.K.), and an IPCC AR5 lead author) for his legitimate research purposes concerning what UQ said is a seminal paper. That data should still exist, and should be provided to Prof. Tol under UQ Policy 4.20.06a §8.2 and §9.1 (as last approved 11/28/13).
Either way, you and UQ both appear in a very bad light. It appears that UQ congratulates itself on gross ethical breaches (especially when basking in so much notoriety), while at the same time withholding anonymized primary data underlying a self admitted important research paper in contravention of UQ written research data policy. Either retract the admittedly unethical paper, or retract the grossly mistaken excuse and release the requested data to Tol.
I note in passing there is a third possibility, to wit Tol’s requested data does not exist. In which case, QtC should be retracted for being unsupportable if not also unethical. As you are probably aware, there have been many recent instances of unsupportable research subsequently retracted. These include but are not limited to papers from Ike Antkare in 2010, and many recent papers from the SCIgen group (which interestingly bears surficial similarities to SKS) now being retracted by Springer and by IEEE. Those two precedents may be particularly germane to UQ’s instant dilemma.
This letter is as copyrighted as those Ms. Malloch writes concerning this matter on UQ behalf. You and anyone else in the whole wide world are hereby granted permission to freely reproduce it in whole or in part. I suspect some may.
I look forward to whichever decision (retraction or data provision) you think best for UQ under the aforesaid circumstances.
Sincerely yours, s/s
Rud Istvan, Esq., JD/MBA
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Checkmate.
I’ve kept the link to retraction watch I made for Recursive Fury as a bookmark….
Not sure I’ll need it in this case, but here’s hoping.
:>
Nice.
Ha ha – an absolutely top drawer response to the idiots at UoQ ! Well done Sir
Oooooh, tricky one. I also note that the Minister of Education is aware of UQ’s conduct.
Here’s how they will respond:
1) ignore it
2) say the author has no standing
3) say “I know YOU are, but what am I?”
Meanwhile Lewandowski will conclude that the author is mentally ill, and write Recursive, Recursive Fury.
Excellent letter, but what’s next if they ignore it?
Did you actually mail the letter to the addressee?
Yagottaluvit!
My goodness. That is one beautiful example of clear and concise logic. I am very interested in how this is going to come down. Surely the university can not ignore it.
popcorn anyone??
I like it. What’s the betting, though, that they’ll just ignore it. They can’t answer it without admitting some fault on their part, and they sure won’t want to do that.
The University of Queensland folks will ignore the letter. After all, it is copyrighted and they cannot admit they have read it.
Doesn’t “research participants” refer to the subjects of the research, i.e. the authors of the papers reviewed, rather than the raters?
I am just a simple Red Neck. I understand the ethics here, but what about the “science”? Most will find the ethics issue somewhat trivial. Since the “science” is not mentioned, it must be “OK”??
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Ignoring it will just prove implicitly that they know they screwed up royally. Thinking I could really use a cold beer with all that popcorn. Gonna be a long season….
Maybe they can download a copy from mediafire or rapidshare and say they didn’t know it was copyrighted.
Mods, not sure if the error is in the original or through transcription, but the addressee at The Australian is ‘Graham Lloyd’.
[Changed, thank you. .mod]
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
Rud Istvan,
A masterful analysis!
Mac
🙂
They will ignore it and hope it goes away. To the left, Integrity is a quaint, outmoded notion; PR is all that matters. “Create your own reality” and such assorted bumper-sticker drivel are examples of the vacuousness of progressive philosophy.
THis is the ONLY way to deal with these people. They WILL take notice because most likely it will appear in major Australian newspapers..I for one as an UQ ex alummi will not be donating any more funds to UQ until all the higher staff and AGW fanatics Vice-chancellor etc are removed as well as Cook et al.
Will any Australian newspaper publish Rud Istvan’s letter?
Will any radio or tv station do news item on it?
Will any member of Parliament bring the letter up in a session?
All of the above I Hope.
Great job Rud Istvan,
here we go
@Eliza –
Good for you, not contributing to UQ so long as it engages in these shenanigans.
I cut off my alma mater, University of California, Santa Barbara, after learning of the extent to which this institution has been subverted by the left and is touting global warming. Not a red cent will they get from me till they clean house of these people.