From the Scientific Misconduct Blog, 2 May 2009 (h/t to Benny Peiser)
by Dr.Aubrey Blumsohn
Professor Wei-Chyung Wang is a star scientist in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University at Albany, New York. He is a key player in the climate change debate (see his self-description here). Wang has been accused of scientific fraud.
I have no inclination to “weigh in” on the topic of climate change. However the case involves issues of integrity that are at the very core of proper science. These issues are the same whether they are raised in a pharmaceutical clinical trial, in a basic science laboratory, by a climate change “denialist” or a “warmist”. The case involves the hiding of data, access to data, and the proper description of “method” in science.
The case is also of interest because it provides yet another example of how *not* to create trust in a scientific misconduct investigation. It adds to the litany of cases suggesting that Universities cannot be allowed to investigate misconduct of their own star academics. The University response has so far been incoherent on its face.
Doug Keenan, the mathematician who raised the case of Wang is on the “sceptic” side of the climate change debate. He maintains that “almost by itself, the withholding of their raw data by [climate] scientists tells us that they are not scientists”.
Below is my own summary of the straightforward substance of this case. I wrote to Wei-Chyung Wang, to Lynn Videka (VP at Albany, responsible for the investigation), and to John H. Reilly (a lawyer at Albany) asking for any correction or comments on the details presented below. My request was acknowledged prior to publication, but no factual correction was suggested.
Case Summary
- The allegations concern two publications. These are:
- Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169–172. (PDF here)
- Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377–2380. (PDF here)
- The publications concern temperature at a variety of measuring stations over three decades (1954-1983). Stations are denoted by name or number. A potential confounder in such research is that measuring stations may be moved to different locations at different points in time. It is clearly important that readers of publications understand the methodology, and important confounders.
- The publications make the following statements:
- (Statement A) “The stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times.” [Jones et al.]
- (Statement B) “They were chosen based on station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times….” [Wang et al.]
- The publications refer to a report produced jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) which details station moves, and the publications further suggest that stations with few if any moves or changes were selected on the basis of that report. However:
- Of 84 stations that were selected, Keenan found that information about only 35 are available in the DOE/CAS report
- Of those 35 stations at least half did have substantial moves (e.g 25 km). One station had five different locations during 1954–1983 as far as 41 km apart.
- It therefore appears that Statements A and B must be false. If false, readers would have been misled both in terms of the status of the stations and the manner in which they had been selected (or not selected).
- Keenan then communicated with the author of one of the publications (Jones) to ask about the source of location information pertaining to the other 49 stations that had not been selected using the described methodology. Jones informed Keenan that his co-author Wang had selected those stations in urban and rural China based on his “extensive knowledge of those networks”.
- On 11 April 2007 Keenan E-mailed Wang, asking “How did you ensure the quality of the data?”. Wang did not answer for several weeks, but on 30 April 2007 he replied as follows:
“The discussion with Ms. Zeng last week in Beijing have re-affirmed that she used the hard copies of station histories to make sure that the selected stations for the study of urban warming in China have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times over the study period (1954-1983)”
- Keenan points out that the “hard copies” to which Wang refers were not found by the authors of the DOE/CAS report, who had endeavored to be “comprehensive” (and that the DOE/CAS report was authored in part by Zeng, one of the co-authors on Wang). Keenan further notes that any form of comprehensive data covering these stations during the Cultural Revolution would be implausible.
- In August 2007 Keenan submitted a report to the University at Albany, alleging fraud. Wang could at that stage have made the “hard copy” details of the stations selected available to the scientific community. However, he failed to do so.
- In May 2008, the University at Albany wrote to Keenan that they had conducted an investigation and asked him to comment on it (see the rather odd letter). However they refused to show him the report of the investigation or any of the evidence to allow any comment (further odd letter).
- In August 2008 the University sent Keenan an astonishing letter of “determination” stating that they did not find that Wang had fabricated data, but that they refused to provide any investigation report or any other information at all because “the Office of Research Integrity regulations preclude discussion of any information pertaining to this case with others who were not directly involved in the investigation”.
- Wang has still not made the station records available to the scientific community. If he provided such records to the University as part of a misconduct investigation, then the University has apparently concealed them.
Comments
- In the absence of any explanation to the contrary, it seems that the methodology for station selection as described in these two publications was false and misleading.
- Wang maintains that hard copy records do exist detailing the location of stations selected by himself outwith the published methodology. However the refusal to clarify “method” is inappropriate and a form of misconduct in and of itself. It does not lend credence to Wang’s assertion that fraud did not take place. It would also be necessary to see records of stations that were not selected, in order to confirm that selection was indeed random, and only “on the basis of station history”.
- The University at Albany is in a difficult position.
- If the University received such records as part of the supposed misconduct investigation, then they could easily resolve the problem by making them available to the scientific community and to readers.
- If the University does not have such records then they have been complicit in misconduct and in coverup of misconduct.
- If the University at Albany does have such records, but such records are not in accordance with the stated methodology of the publications, then the University has more serious difficulties.
- “Investigations” of scientific misconduct should themselves align with the usual principles of scientific discourse (open discussion, honesty, transparency of method, public disclosure of evidence, open public analysis and public discussion and reasoning underlying any conclusion). This was not the case at the University at Albany. When you see universities reluctant to investigate things properly, it provides reasonable evidence that they really don’t want to investigate things properly.
For further information on this case see here and here.
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(2) THE FRAUD ALLEGATION AGAINST SOME CLIMATIC RESEARCH OF WEI-CHYUNG WANG
Informath, April 2009
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm
Douglas J. Keenan
Following are some remarks about my exposé, “The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang“.
Wei-Chyung Wang is a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He has been doing research on climate for over 30 years, and he has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles. He has also received an Appreciation Plaque from the Office of Science in the U.S.A., commending him, “For your insightful counsel and excellent science. …”. The plaque resulted in particular from his research on global warming.
I have formally alleged that Wang committed fraud in important parts of his global-warming research. Below is a relevant timeline.
| 03 August 2007 | My report, “Wei-Chyung Wang fabricated some scientific claims“, is sent to the Vice President for Research at Wang’s university. |
| 31 August 2007 | The university notifies me that it is initiating an inquiry into suspected research misconduct by Wang. (The notification includes a copy of the university’s Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship.) |
| 12 November 2007 | My exposé on Wang’s alleged fraud is published (reference below). |
| 07 December 2007 | Myself and the university’s Inquiry Committee have a conference call. |
| 20 February 2008 | The university sends me the Report of the Inquiry Committee. The Committee unanimously concluded that “there was no data” (thus implicitly concluding Wang must have fabricated data) and that a full investigation should be undertaken. |
| 23 May 2008 | The university sends me a notice: the Investigation Committee has completed its work and found no evidence of fraud. The investigation was conducted without interviewing me, which is a violation of the university’s policy. The university asks me to comment on the Committee’s report; I am, however, not allowed to see the report. |
| 04 June 2008 | The university informs me that I am not allowed to see the report because they did not interview me when preparing it. |
| 06 June 2008 | I submit comments to the university, listing ways in which I believe the university has acted in breach of U.S. regulations and its own policy. |
| 11 July 2008 | I submit a complaint to the Public Integrity Bureau at the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, alleging criminal fraud. |
| 12 August 2008 | The university sends me the determination for its investigation, saying that there is “no evidence whatsoever [of] … any research misconduct”. |
| 07 October 2008 | I telephone the Public Integrity Bureau and am told that it might be some months before the Bureau begins to review the complaint. |
| 17 March 2009 | I telephone the Public Integrity Bureau and am told that the complaint is under review by an attorney. |
| 18 March 2009 | I file three requests under the Freedom of Information Law of New York State: for a copy of the full report by the Inquiry Committee; for a copy of the full report by the Investigation Committee; and, given that the relevant federal funding agencies are required to be notified when a misconduct investigation is initiated, for copies of all such notifications that were sent by the university and pertain to the investigation of Wang. |
| 24 March 2009 | Given that Wang received funding for the fraudulent research from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and that the DOE has since supplied more funding to Wang, I report the fraud and the university’s apparent cover up to the Office of Inspector General at the DOE. |
This web page will be updated with news about the case, as the investigations progress.
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(3) KAFKA AT ALBANY
Freeborn John, 15 March 2009
http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2009/03/kafka-at-albany.html
Peter Risdon
Last June I reported on the allegations of academic fraud levelled by a British mathematician, Doug Keenan, against Professor Wei-Chyung Wang of New York State University at Albany.
Dr Keenan alleged that in work that has come to be widely cited in climate studies, work that included the collation of data from temperature measuring stations in China, Professor Wang made statements that “cannot be true and could not be in error by accident. The statements are fabricated.”
In August 2007, Dr Keenan submitted a report (pdf) of his allegations to the Vice President for Research at Wang’s university and an inquiry was initiated. In February 2008 this was escalated into a full investigation by the Inquiry Committee.
All this was summarised in my earlier post, together with quotations from Dr Keenan’s allegation.
So far, things had run as might be expected. A fraud had been alleged, the University at Albany looked into it and decided to hold a formal investigation. Dr Keenan waited to be contacted by the investigation and asked to put his case, in line with the university’s Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship (.doc). The relevant section of this document runs as follows (emphasis added):
III. A. Rights and Responsibilities of the Complainant
Rights: The Vice President for Research will make every effort to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of complainants. The University will protect, to the maximum extent possible, the position and the reputation of those who in good faith report alleged misconduct in research.
The Vice President for Research will work to ensure that complainants will not be retaliated against in the terms and conditions of their employment or other status at the University and will review instances of alleged retaliation for appropriate action. Any alleged or apparent retaliation should be reported immediately to the Vice President for Research.
The complainant will be provided a copy of the formal allegations when and if an inquiry is opened. The complainant will have the opportunity to review portions of the inquiry and investigation reports pertinent to the complainant’s report or testimony, and will be informed in writing of the results of the inquiry and investigation, and of the final determination. After the final determination and upon request to the Vice President for Research, the complainant shall be given access to the full documentation.
Responsibilities: The complainant is responsible for making allegations in good faith, maintaining confidentiality, and cooperating fully with an inquiry and/or investigation.
Dr Keenan lived up to the responsibility as stated in the final paragraph above so far as he could. He had made the allegation in good faith and given Professor Wang an opportunity to explain how he had reached his results, an opportunity the Professor had not taken. Keenan maintained confidentiality. In order to cooperate with the investigation, though he would first have to be contacted by it. Dr Keenan waited.
Late in May 2008 a communication arrived from Albany. It said:
After careful review of the evidence and thoughtful deliberation, the Investigation Committee finds no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results and nothing that rises to the level of research misconduct having been committed by DR. Wang.
As the institutional official responsible for this case, I have accepted the Committee’s findings and the Report. You have fourteen (14) calendar days from the date of this letter to provide any comments to add to the report for the record.
Contrary to its own rules, the Committee had not given Keenan the opportunity to “review portions of the inquiry and investigation reports”.
That’s astonishing, but here’s where it becomes Kafkaesque. Keenan was being asked, in this most recent communication, to comment on the report of the Committee. But he was not sent a copy of the report. When he challenged this, he received an email from Adrienne Bonilla explaining that:
[Keenan] did not receive a copy of the Investigation report because the report did not include portions addressing your role and opinions in the investigation phase.
Per the UAlbany Misconduct policy:
VI. E. Investigation Report and Recommendations of the Vice President for Research
“…The Vice President for Research will provide the respondent with a copy of the draft investigation report for comment and rebuttal and will provide the complainant with those portions of the draft report that address the complainant’s role and opinions in the investigation. The respondent and complainant will be given 14 calendar days from the transmission of the report to provide their written comments. Any written responses to the report by either party will be made part of the report and record.
Keenan then wrote to the Vice President for Research at Albany, Lynn Videka, pointing out the various ways in which the University had breached its own policy, stating that its behaviour was consistent with a cover up, and pointing out that Professor Wang has received more than $7 million in grants from a couple of US federal agencies.
In August 2008, Lynn Videka wrote to Keenan enclosing a final copy of a “determination” of the investigation. In her covering note, she stated:
I am notifying you of the case outcome because you were the complainant in this case. The University’s misconduct policies and the Office of Research Integrity regulations preclude discussion of any information pertaining to this case with others who were not directly involved in the investigation.
To summarise, the university initiated an investigation, then broke its own rules by not involving Dr Keenan. It then produced a report that carefully avoided mentioning Dr Keenan, so it could claim he was not entitled to see a copy of this report. It then asked Keenan to comment on the report. It has completely disregarded its own policy that “After the final determination and upon request to the Vice President for Research, the complainant shall be given access to the full documentation.”
But Doug Keenan is a tenacious man. In July 2008, after being refused sight of the report, he submitted a formal complaint (pdf) to the Public Integrity Bureau at the Office of the Attorney General of New York State, alleging criminal fraud. In this complaint, he said:
Wei-Chyung Wang is a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He has been doing research for over 30 years. For this research, Wang has received at least $7 million. The funds have come primarily from the Department of Energy, with additional funding from other federal agencies (DOD, FAA, NSF). I have formally alleged that Wang committed fraud in important parts of his research. My allegation was submitted to the University at Albany; a copy is enclosed.
The university conducted a preliminary inquiry; a copy of the report from the inquiry is enclosed (redacted, by the university). Briefly, Wang claimed that there were some documents that could exonerate him. The inquiry concluded that there should be a full investigation, which should be “charged with obtaining and reviewing any such additional evidence … so that a final resolution may be made regarding the allegation against Dr. Wang”.
Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist. Moreover, the report was published as part of the Department of Energy Carbon Dioxide Research Program, and Wang was the Chief Scientist of that program.
The university conducted an investigation. The investigation concluded that Wang is innocent. I believe that the case against Wang is strong and clear, and that the university is trying to cover up the fraud so as to protect its reputation. Wang is one of the university’s star professors. The conduct of the investigation violated several of the university’s own stated policies: details are given in an attached e-mail (dated 06 June 2008).
The e-mail was sent to Lynn Videka, Vice President for Research at the university: Videka was in charge of overseeing the investigation. Note, in particular, that the documents that Wang was relying on were never produced.
I have only examined a little of Wang’s research; so I do not know the full extent of the fraud. It is difficult to examine more in part because Wang has not willingly made his data available: when asked for the data from the research that I later reported as fraudulent, Wang refused. For that research, though, Wang had a co-worker in Britain. In Britain, the Freedom of Information Act requires that data from publicly-funded research be made available. I was able to get the data by requiring Wang’s co-worker to release it, under British law. It was only then that I was able to confirm that Wang had committed fraud. Details are given in my report to the university (page 4, last paragraph). I would be willing to help examine other research that Wang has done, if more data were made available.
There was another case of research fraud with a professor at the University of Vermont, in 2005. There, Prof. Eric Poehlman was convicted of making false statements on federal grant applications; he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Wang has done the same as Poehlman. The fraudulent work described in my report dates from 1990; Wang has been relyingon that work in some of his grant applications since then. As I understand things, each of those applications is a violation of statute. (Additionally, Wang has been using the grants to go on frequent trips to China.)
In October 2008 Dr Keenan was told there could be a wait of several months while his complaint is investigated.
I’ll let you know when there are any further developments.
UPDATE: I didn’t mention this in the main piece above, but I did mail the relevant person at Albany myself, some time ago, asking for news of the investigation against Professor Wang. I received no reply.
However, within a couple of hours of this being posted, someone at Albany came to look at it, from the host aspmini-cc326.cc.albany.edu (169.226.172.35), having apparently been sent an email about it.
So even if they are not communicative about this case, it seems someone at Albany is keeping their eyes open for reports of it.
UPDATE: On reflection, the hit from Albany is also consistent with someone using Google Alerts to monitor coverage of this issue.
UPDATE: Doug Keenan has been told on the telephone that this case is now under review by an attorney at the OAG Public Integrity Bureau.
UPDATE: Also see new findings on the effect of urban warming.
The lack of disclosure of data methods supporting research claims of AGW seems to be rule rather than the exception. That is one reason why it is so difficult to take their claims seriously.
Meant “data and methods”, not “data methods”.
All is well at the Schloss.
Follow the money.
In May 2008, the University at Albany wrote to Keenan that they had conducted an investigation and asked him to comment on it (see the rather odd letter). However they refused to show him the report of the investigation or any of the evidence to allow any comment (further odd letter).
This kind of (mis)conduct seems to be widespread. We even had a case right here on our very own blog where a blogger issues a challenge, but refuses to say what the challenge is. From another thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/25/examining-sorce-data-shows-the-sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence/#comment-125654 :
Leif Svalgaard (19:07:44) :
Paul Vaughan (13:40:34) :
“And I wonder how many decent scientists choose to not participate because…”
It is normal and decent scientific behavior that if a challenge is issued, the scientist challenged gets to know what the challenge is and gets a forum to rebut the challenge. In the usual Journals there are rather strict rules for how this should play out: you can submit a ‘comment’ [usually negative] on a published paper, to which the scientist being challenged has a right to rebut with a ‘reply’. The ‘comment’ and ‘reply’ will then be published back-to-back…
phew… what to say. Amazing really. Read the original post on the Scientific Misconduct blog just a few hours ago and thought: Wonder how much attention this will get?
And BAM!!! WUWT to the rescue! – or at least assistance. With the attention at this site we can hope the story will be picked up by some of the MSM. As it is an issue that does not as such “weigh in on the topic of Climate Change” it is possible journalists won’t be to scared of diving into the issue. The scientific community needs a good whooping and pressure to clean up their act. Will be interesting to see how the story plays out.
Oh what a tangled web they weave,
it, frankly, makes me want to heave.
Prof. Wang brings in big money. No wonder the university wants to protect him:
Before she retired, Mrs. Smokey was a Principal for 17 years. I saw first hand how school districts fight like ravenous hyenas over the relatively few individuals who are able to successfully write grant proposals. It is a specialized skill. The ones that have a proven track record of winning big grant bucks are coddled and protected, and they can pretty much write their own ticket.
The university jettisoned its integrity to protect Wang. Anyone who brings in an extra $7 million is more precious than some pesky old non-paying ethics policy. It will be interesting to see where this leads.
If it wasn’t fraud, it was very wrong. Even if it was not fabricated, the data chosen gave a completely incorrect view of what was really happening.
Even Phil Jones effectively repudiated the original study last year by publishing a new estimate of 0.1C per decade Urban Heat Island effect in China since 1951.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
This was one of the cornerstones of global warming theory, that the Urban Heat Island had not significantly impacted the global temperature trend.
Well that pillar is now gone. It rates up there with the “we must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” – “we must get rid of the Urban Heat Island.” But they still have not corrected the overall record with the new “obvious from the start” results.
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit had similar problems getting information about the Chinese stations. See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3255 for example for a response from NOAA’s NCDC that they did not have the Chinese data.
The same paper cited above was involved in McIntyre’s request as well: Jones, P.D., P.Y. Groisman, M. Coughlan, N. Plummcr, W.C. Wang and T.R. Karl, 1990, Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land, Nature 347,169-172. I.
Unfortunately, this ethical problem is may not be an isolated incident. There are plenty of similar examples of withholding data, denying access, and questionable methodology.
This looks similar to the story of “Arming America, The Origins of a National Gun Culture” by former Emory University professor of history Dr. Michael A. Bellesiles (Sept 2000). Critics went through several cycles of debate with him about his evidence, eventually proving the sources he stated did not have the data in question.
Eventually “On the day that the report was released (July 2002), Bellesiles resigned from Emory. The trustees of Columbia University then rescinded Bellesiles’ Bancroft Prize, after which Knopf withdrew the book from distribution. From Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America,_The_Origins_of_a_National_Gun_Culture#Emory_Ethics_Investigation
Thanks for bringing this to light Anthony. This appears symptomatic of the climate ‘science’ being purveyed these days. Steve McIntyre seems to run into the same closed methodology over and over again. Out of curiosity, I did a search recently, looking for ice-core drilling to bedrock in Greenland and Antarctica, trying to discover the length of continual glaciation. A paper on Greenland which made several claims denying aternatives to AGW by CO2 had eleven citations for references. Every one of the citations was written by one or more of the same group in the original paper. It is getting ever more difficult to find anything worth reading. Even Science News has an editorial this week by the secretary-general of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, just another politician angling for perpetual existence. He claims the “WMO is working on a global framework for developing and providing climate services to meet users’ needs.” To be released 8/31-9/4 at the WCC in Geneva. He seems to draw a sense of importantance in advising based on the IPCC’s projections of the predicaments to come via climate change. This is absurd.
Clear evidence that ALL climate scientists are just in it for the money.
amirite?
This has been discussed at CA in 2007:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1741
UHI claim at 0.005 deg C/decade is obvious nonsense for anybody with experience of living in a city. Recent correction by Jones stated that “urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1 degree per decade over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period. .” – can you see hiding the 0.53 deg UHI, creating 2/3 of total warming?
Would this be the paper that has allowed Phil Jones to claim that there is no significant UHI effect and therefore no need to correct for it in the HadCRUT dataset?
If so, the warmists will circle the wagons no matter how egregious the offence.
There are six co-authors with Wang for the two papers. I am surprised that not one of them saw the data or was suspicious of the data. It makes you wonder what the co-authors’ contributions to the papers were. If I were a co-author of a paper, I would want to be pretty certain of the contents of the paper to which I was putting my name and reputation.
These people either have no integrity or they just want to get their names for citation on as many papers as possible, regardless of the content.
A sad day for science . . .
I fear that bogus research is unfortunately becoming all too common everywhere (not just Climate science). Many professors publish as many as five papers a year. The powerful PC allows prolific output and keeps people at a distance from proper mathematical and statistical analysis – as well as making it possible simply to generate papers without doing any fundamental lab work or proper research of one’s own. Often there is no time to follow proper scientific protocol. The peer review process seems to be a joke and the sheer volume of bad science out there means that inevitably as much as 25% (if not more) journal papers are complete rubbish.
For example, how many thousands of PC word-smithed papers cite or leverage data gathered from a few bristlecone tree ring plugs made by one fellow in Colorado more than 20 years ago?
We stand on the shoulders of those before us….unfortunately, in science at least, more and more often, we are discovering that those before us were standing on a heap of bull manure.
It seems to me that if Professor Wang’s research is being funded through DOE and NSF that Dr. Keenan should take his complaint to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for both those agencies. They would be the persons most directly responsible for verifying that there was no fraud involved.
I have the dubious distinction of being on the NYC alumni committee for UofAlbany. Our group’s purpose is supposed to be to help support the University financially and to further its reputation. It appears that by it’s action (or should I say inactions), that the University is working against us. I will bring this to the attention of others in the group.
Thanks to all that contribute to WUWT; it is very informative and a great read for those like me who have an interest in the climate debate but do not work directly in any of the related areas.
Bad data. Analysis that is not reproducible. Key Assumptions not stated explicitly.
I spent a career with the Federal Government and these things happened over and over again. Unfortunately, people who want promotions only pay attention to such things when the conclusions go against what the ruling class wants.
Hello!
We’re are talking about a science that has been politically corrupted.
All of this here is nothing new.
Whose bread one eats, whose words one speaks.
I read the linked email from Adrienne D Bonilla at U. at Albany, explaining why they did not provide a copy of the report to Keenan. She said:
“You did not receive a copy of the Investigation report because the report did not include portions addressing your role and opinions in the investigation phase.”
This clearly misapplies the university’s policy; and Keenan, as complainant, is, in any event, entitled to a copy of the final report.
(From s. III.A. “Rights and Responsibilities of the Complainant”, in the University at Albany Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship)
“The complainant will be provided a copy of the formal allegations when and if an inquiry is opened. The complainant will have the opportunity to review portions of the inquiry and investigation reports PERTINENT to the complainant’s report or testimony, and will be informed in writing of the results of the inquiry and investigation, and of the final determination. After the final determination and upon request to the Vice President for Research, the complainant shall be given access to the full documentation.” (emphasis added)
The question, therefore, is not whether the report specifically referenced Keenan or his complaints – he has a right to review those portions that are “pertinent” to his complaints, a far broader concept. He also has a right to the “full documentation” upon request to the VP for Research.
It is a fraud.
The energy driving this behaviour is not truth, but rather it is the desire to deceive in order to reach a political end.
McIntyre and others have exposed it time and again.
How about climate science fraud by the State Secretary Steven Chu still using the debunked Hockey Stick Graph from Mann in current presentations?
How about climate science fraud by EPA declaring CO2 a toxin?
How about telling plain lies to the American public by the President of the United States about out climate?
How about climate science fraud by Al Gore?
How about climate science fraud by the UN IPCC?
Are these the next cases?
Jim Watson (10:24:54) :
Oh what a tangled web they weave,
it, frankly, makes me want to heave.
“….Now the tapestry is unraveling…he´s come to take me back”
(Carole King:”Tapestry”)
..of course, back to where they belong…
Steve Keohane (10:40:17) :
Science News as in http://sciencenews.org/ ? I don’t see it there, in their search engine, or at news.google.com. Pointers welcome!
I suppose I should go check my paper copies, but that seems so 20th century. 🙂
“He maintains that ‘almost by itself, the withholding of their raw data by [climate] scientists tells us that they are not scientists’.”
I agree, if you omit the “almost”. The kind of stuff highlighted at Climate Audit is what prompted me to dig on my own and convinced me that fraud is involved on the AGW side.
Publicly funded research on which public policy will be founded should be required to make all data publicly available. If the data cannot be verified, if the results/conclusions cannot be replicated, then the “research” should be ashcanned.
Folks shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to confirm what the establishment pronounces, as did the team that re-did Graybill’s bristle cone pine cores study that Mann used in his hockey stick paper (and found it inaccurate).
Perhaps I should have said “taxpayer funded research on which taxation
increasespolicy will be rationalized.” The whole global warming debate would be mere entertainment for geeks like moi, were it not for the drive to DO something about it.Professor Wei-Chyung Wang is a Climate Fear Profiteer Scientist. The University at Albany, State University of New York is a Climate Fear Profiteer University. GE-NBC is a Climate Fear Profiteer Propaganda Division. GE is a Climate Fear Profiteer Transnational Corporation.
“GE is wholly or partially liable for at least 78 Federal Superfund Sites.”
http://www.cleanupge.org/gemisdeeds.html
However, don’t pay attention to the man behind the Green Smokescreen CO2 Curtain. If the public focuses on superfund sites, people might expect the Government to GET MONEY from GE. If the public fears “man-made CO2 global warming”, people will demand that the Government PAY GE for windmills and other inefficient “green” products.
“….the tapestry is unraveling..
so don´t stop WUWT, keep unceasingly unweaving!!
Interesting.
If you Google his name, he certainly has bona fide whistleblowing credentials. No corporate shill here.
I wonder how the usual crowd is going to try to attack him.
Hope he has an unlisted phone number and address.
Mike McMillan (12:18:11) :
Publicly funded research on which public policy will be founded should be required to make all data publicly available
If not make available then funds should be returned.
You can duck some of the peer review all of the time
And
You can duck all of the peer review some of the time
But
You cannot duck all of the peer review all of the time.
“WMO is working on a global framework for developing and providing climate services to meet users’ needs.”
Once you start doing things at that scale, modifying whole climactic regions, the dominoe effect will cascade around the globe. Keep doing it and there’s no way to stop, because if you do, the consequences are waiting to be paid.
Nations ordering this climate will ruin their neighbors downstream, like dumping toxins kills the fish downriver. Back up enough of nature’s relentless efforts to balance out and the climatic alteration capability is overwhelmed.
If you want cause & effect testing, go dig up the Hurricane seeding experiments that were called off.
These people don’t intend to get along with nature, they intend to defy it, modify it, channel it and charge for it.
You might as well call this the Climactic Bubble, because it will surely pop when it can no longer be controlled.
A real Frankenstein Monster straight out of the horror movies.
What the heck is “google alerts?” I’ve never heard of this.
Re David Holliday (11:29:58):
I submitted a report about Wang to the Office of the Inspector General at the DOE on March 24th. This is mentioned on my web page about Wang (with a link to the report); the direct link is
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b090324.htm
There is a pointed and amusing account of this matter and related matters, placing it in the context of the Hockey Stick, and putting all the various arguments and considerations in their place, at
http://www.oftwominds.com/journal/global-warming6-07.html
It seems to have been written about a year ago.
If for-profit scientists behave this way in the oil and gas industry behave this way…They get fired…If not sued.
Fortunately…we don’t often get fired for butchering the English language…;)
Methinks the level of greenwashing is increasing faster than global sea ice as the realization sets in that the window of opportunity for climate change legislation is quickly closing. Will Obama keep his word to put science ahead of politics, or will the fruitless (and deceitful) search for AGWMDs be his administrations undoing?
“24 March 2009 Given that Wang received funding for the fraudulent research from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and that the DOE has since supplied more funding to Wang, I report the fraud and the university’s apparent cover up to the Office of Inspector General at the DOE.”
Given that Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy at the DOE, and that he himself uses the questionable science of the Mann Hockey Hockey Stick graph, there may not be much concern coming from the DOE to crack down on activities like this that are related to global warming.
And thus, isn’t it perfectly in keeping with the political power of global warming “that the DOE has since supplied more funding to Wang”? That’s something to think about.
ref.
Steven Chu :
http://www.energy.gov/organization/dr_steven_chu.htm
Steven Chu using the Mann Hockey Stick, on page 7 of this pdf :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/plenary/Chu.pdf
at this conference :
http://www.eia.doe.gov/plenary/plenary_main.html#DrChu
This appears to not be just a case against Wei-Chyung Wang but against something much bigger than him. It looks to be a shout against the entire global warming farrago.
The delays to its resolution may just be beginning.
It is likely that Jones wrote:
The stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times.” [Jones et al.]
And likely that Wang wrote:
“They were chosen based on station histories: selected stations have relatively few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location, or observation times….” [Wang et al.]
The language ‘relatively few’ is meaningless, since there is no comparison given for the term ‘relatively’. This might give Wang an out on fraud charges, but hopefully this situation can lead to opening of the Chinese records.
Right on, Bulldog! Chase him to ground and chew off his taxpayer funded shorts!
You can sue a scientist or a University for Climate Science Fraud, but what if the fraud is performed by the President of the United States”.
Looking for a role model anyone?
[snip – we’ll leave this OT out of the current discussion. The issue is a peer reviewed science paper, not presidential politics – Anthony]
I find it highly implausible that any Chinese researchers gave a damn about keeping accurate temperature records (or any form of reliable data recording) for half a century when they had a hard enough time dealing with hunger and development in the face of poverty and state sanctioned murder. Climate change is not an issue for the poor or developing nations. It is only an issue for well off, well fed armchair socialists and elitists in the West…who can’t get temperature data recording or climate modelling right even with all the creature comforts and best technology that the modern world has to offer.
Re: Leif Svalgaard (10:07:59)
Leif, I thought we had reached the stage of respectful disagreement and now I discover you dragging out the past here.
–
Leif: “In the usual Journals there are rather strict rules for how this should play out”
Leif, we are not “in the usual Journals”. We are in a fully public forum populated by volunteers.
The respectful thing for you to do is let this matter rest.
REPLY: I would agree, if only for the reason that it is off-topic to the subject being discussed, Wang et al. Review methodology however, is fair game.- Anthony
What am I missing in this whole issue? If anyone denies UHI then why are the temps greater in the city measurements? I have lived in rural areas most of my life and its commonly known that it gets colder outside the city!! Why is it so hard to test this and get a “correction factor” or whatever they want to use (and not the ridiculous one suggested in the paper above)?
Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to follow the guidelines on how to measure temp., but I guess nobody’s going to put out the money it would take to get the locations up to spec!
From the intro above: “It adds to the litany of cases suggesting that Universities cannot be allowed to investigate misconduct of their own star academics.”
This statement is eerily true – an ominous reminder of the darker side of human nature that many know from their own first-hand dealings with the politics of such institutions.
The allegiances are not confined to single universities, so a lead investigator is tasked with a formidable exercise, particularly if a case involves a narrow specialty.
Mark (12:49:44) :
“What the heck is “google alerts?” I’ve never heard of this.”
Google has a cool feature, a google alert, by which one can have google’s search engine scan thousands of websites for a keyword or phrase, then report any findings back to any email address.
click here to get started. Enjoy…
http://www.google.com/alerts
Anthony: “Review methodology however, is fair game.”
Thank you for clarifying this.
I have been attacked in the past for using the term ‘fraud’ when addressing issues with various climate data / research. One individual I have applied the term to has been Wang. At the very least he has been guilty, as it appears to me, of misrepresenting the integrity of his data and making false statements in that regard.
Amazingly one of the defenses offered is that the work was “peer reviewed”. However, the peer review process makes assumptions and is not geared to detect fraud. To an extent the term “peer reviewed” in modern times is not necessarily a signifier of good science.
As a lay person I, anymore, find that the information openly debated on blogs such as WUWT, CA, etc to be far more accurate and honest than many papers published by Nature or Science. If nothing else the data, codes, debate are available and openly released.
On top of what appears to be corruption of the “peer review” process in modern times within the ‘climate’ sciences world the apparent actions of Wang serve to further cause a public distrust of science in general. Perhaps the worse thing is that funding dollars go to the seemingly corrupt like Wang while those desiring to produce good, honest, scientific work are denied funds. Since some of those funds come from tax dollars, as a taxpayer, I strongly object.
Isn’t this what the DATA QUALITY ACT all about?
Phillip Bratby (11:07:00) :
“There are six co-authors with Wang for the two papers. I am surprised that not one of them saw the data or was suspicious of the data. It makes you wonder what the co-authors’ contributions to the papers were. If I were a co-author of a paper, I would want to be pretty certain of the contents of the paper to which I was putting my name and reputation.
These people either have no integrity or they just want to get their names for citation on as many papers as possible, regardless of the content.”
You shouldn’t be surprised. Steve McIntyre has had numerous go arounds on this having to resort to FOI docs to try to get datasets. The most recent, I believe was Ben Santer. All the co-authors denied ever having seen the data. There is a definite “scratch each others back” mentality and some very lazy behavior on the part of both co-authors and peer reviewers. Steve likes to refer to the as “The Team”. I think of them more as “The Club”.
Recent correction by Jones stated that “urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1 degree per decade over the period 1951–2004…
Have any of you actually bothered to read Wang’s (supposedly ‘fraudulent’) paper? –
“The rate of warming at urban stations is over 0.1C per decade relative to more rural stations”
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b23.pdf
Did you get that? Did you spot the purported fraud? Wang was saying back in 1990 what you are now claiming is the statement of ‘correction’ to the supposed fraud!
(And no, I am not planning to take up posting here again, beyond a reaction to this piling on).
I don’t agree that all this misbehavioiur is driven primarily by a desire for money on the part of scientists. What really drives scientists is a desire for status and recognition from their peers and the wider community. Under the banner of AGW, climate science has grown from run-of-the-mill into the most important field of science in the world. This must be heady stuff for those at the center of it all.
Monetary gain is secondary, probably more important to the universities than to the scientists.
I hope this doesn’t affect Keenan’s future prospects. Whistleblowers in the UK are treated worse than paedophiles. Hopefully he’s delivered a staggering blow to the warmist cause. If true his actions will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.
Keenan is a very brave man. A man of integrity. I hope there are more where he comes from.
I’ll be following this story with interest. Thanks WUWT for putting it in the public domain.
Once again into that minefield called peer review. And what a mess it is. I have a rather admittedly simplistic way of looking at the matter; if the data upon which a paper is built isn’t there, the paper isn’t there. It is a curio, nothing more. Pure speculative fantasy. It’s on a level with an opinion piece written for and appearing on the editorial page of your local newspaper.
Coincidentally, there is a piece on the subject of peer review entitled Peer Review Needs Improvement that appeared today on American Thinker.
There are a few lines in that piece I think worthy of mention:
“…as John Moore writes in Nature,
‘It’s been peer reviewed so it must be right, right? Wrong! Not everything in the peer-reviewed literature is correct. Indeed, some of it is downright bad science.'”
(John Moore, “Perspective: Does peer review mean the same to the public as it does to scientists?,” Nature, (2006), doi: 10.1038/nature05009)
Or this one:
“Yet, the term ‘peer review’ is often equated with ‘gold standard’. Hence, the politically motivated, lazy or unscrupulous can use the peer-reviewed literature selectively to make arguments that are seriously flawed, or even damaging to public policy.”
Check it out; it’s an interesting opinion piece. And it’s not only about peer-reviewed climate studies, it also covers medical studies as examples of the problem with the whole concept of peer-reviewed literature.
It’s about damn time….
This whole affair will get about as much attention as USC or Notre Dame being investigated by the NCAA for football violations or UNC or Duke for basketball violations. Not happening. The word will be “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
The challenger should at this time start fearing for his personal safety.
Be armed at all times.
I have been wondering where all the scientist are hiding. I was taught that scientist should be skeptical. For example, triple check that you don’t have a systemic error in your own experimental setup. Don’t believe results until independently replicated by others.
When I look at published scientific papers on climate, I don’t see scientist as much as I see apparatchiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik).
Has the education of our scientist totally collapsed?
When I look at what the press (e.g. BBC) publishes on climate, I am reminded of what Thomas Jefferson wrote long ago.
“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
I wonder if the main stream press has been concentrated into too few hands and that those hands have lost their regard for “truth or to what should be like truth”.
God save WUWT.
–Mike Ramsey
Jeremy (11:09:53):
I fear that bogus research is unfortunately becoming all too common everywhere (not just Climate science). Many professors publish as many as five papers a year.
Yes, you’re right, although climate science is under beholder scrutiny due to its constant violations to the scientific methodology. Paleontologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers, biologists, etc., are suffering also of “viral modelitis”.
Almost all arguments on biodiversity’s depletion are coming from models, not from nature.
Corals bleach, honeybees’ colony collapse disorder (CCD) and frogs’ population collapse, for example. When a scientist in his/her five senses have assessed the problems, that scientist immediately finds the misguiding side of modelitis. On honeybees’ CCD, for example, biomodelers said it was a problem derived of anthropogenic global warming; when investigated consciously the problem, biologists found it was a quite common acute paralysis virus disease which caused a pandemic. This kind of pandemic among honeybees’ colonies has been happened many times before humans drove cars.
Isn’t the Jones study the one where he used the “dog ate my homework” defense regarding a request for his data?
AGW is to climate science what eugenics was to evolution: both are frauds.
Fantastic article and a great piece of work. This is my number one concern: public trust in the integrity of the scientific process. I care not about SUV’s and power stations. What will be, will be. It’s clear to me that this kind of thing is all too common and it’s about time that people started filling charges. The lack of integrity in Climate Science is bewildering and extremely depressing.
Anyway, applause to the author ;).
Dave Middleton (13:23:19) :
If for-profit scientists behave this way in the oil and gas industry behave this way…They get fired…If not sued.
This is true in every private company not funded by “nobody”´s money, when it is “other people´s money” and no one can possibly appear asking what you did with his/her money you just happily and irresponsably spend it.
That is why socialism did not work even among so disciplined a people as germans in “Democratic Republic of East Germany “, not to mention in a caribbean island.
BoM declines to give Australian journalist Antarctic temperature data
May 3rd, 2009 by Warwick Hughes
Read this latest illustration of the famous saying by Sir Walter Scott along lines, “..what a tangled web we weave when we set out to deceive..”
May 2 article in “The Australian”, no compromise over the length of this headline.
“Bureau blows hot and cold over Antarctica warm-up as Bureau of Metereology backs down from a claim that temperatures at Australia’s three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades”
You need to read right to the end of the article for the lines,
“Dr Watkins declined to release the temperature data to The Weekend Australian. He said it had still to be fully analysed by the bureau.”
Can I please add – but it was quite OK for Dr Watkins to trumpet his version to the media.
Here you can see some graphics of BoM data from Australian Antarctic stations, thanks to Geoff Sherrington and to the stalwart observers who ventured out in thick and thin to record these data over the decades.
Below here for the article text, in case it vanishes.
Bureau blows hot and cold over Antarctica warm-up as Bureau of Metereology backs down from a claim that temperatures at Australia’s three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades
Greg Roberts | May 02, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE Bureau of Metereology has backed down from a claim that temperatures at Australia’s three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades.
A senior bureau climatologist had accused The Weekend Australian of manufacturing a report that temperatures were cooling in East Antarctica, where Australia’s Mawson, Davis and Casey bases are located.
The trend of temperatures and ice conditions in Antarctica is central to the debate on global warming because substantial melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90 per cent of the world’s ice, would be required for sea levels to rise.
While calvings from ice shelves in parts of West Antarctica have generated headlines, evidence has emerged that temperatures are cooling in the east of the continent, which is four times the size of West Antarctica.
Contrary to widespread public perceptions, the area of sea ice around the continent is expanding.
The Weekend Australian reported last month a claim by Bureau of Metereology senior climatologist Andrew Watkins that monitoring at Australia’s Antarctic bases since the 1950s indicated temperatures were rising. A study was then published by the British Antarctic Survey that concluded the ozone hole was responsible for the cooling and expansion of sea ice around much of the continent.
The head of the study project, John Turner, said at the time that the section of Antarctica that included the Australian bases was among the areas that had cooled.
Dr Watkins said The Weekend Australian had misrepresented the results of the BAS study, which made no findings about temperatures at Australian bases.
When it was pointed out to Dr Watkins that Professor Turner had been quoted directly, Dr Watkins said his bureau, and not the BAS, was the agency collecting temperature data.
“You kept going until you got the answer you wanted,” Dr Watkins said.
“You were told explicitly that the data collected by the Bureau of Metereology at the Australian bases shows a warming for maximum temperatures at all bases, and minimum temperatures at all but Mawson.”
However, Professor Turner told The Weekend Australian the data showed a cooling of the East Antarctica coast associated with the onset of the ozone layer from 1980 onwards. Professor Turner said the monthly mean temperatures for Casey station from 1980 to 2005 showed a cooling of 0.45C per decade. In autumn, the temperature trend has been a cooling of 0.93C per decade.
“These fairly small temperature trends seem to be consistent to me with the small increase in sea ice extent off the coast,” he said.
Dr Watkins did not dispute the figures referred to by Professor Turner.
Referring to the bureau’s data collection since the 1950s, Dr Watkins said Professor Turner’s figures were “only half of the full data set”.
However, Dr Watkins admitted that analysis of the data might show “an ozone-induced cooling trend in the latter half of the record” — a reference to the past three decades.
Dr Watkins declined to release the temperature data to The Weekend Australian. He said it had still to be fully analysed by the bureau.
Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said he hoped all government agencies would co-operate in helping to inform the global warming debate.
“These agencies need to be able to dispense the facts without fear or bias,” he said.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=217
” I have lived in rural areas most of my life and its commonly known that it gets colder outside the city!! Why is it so hard to test this and get a “correction factor” or whatever they want to use (and not the ridiculous one suggested in the paper above)?”
Since there is less area of city than non-city on earth, try only taking measurements a long way from cities, side-stepping the UHI argument.
Alternatively ignore all data from city influenced stations.
Oops, signal to noise ratio goes silly.
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” –DDE, Jan.17,1961.
UHI claim at 0.005 deg C/decade is obvious nonsense for anybody with experience of living in a city.
Well, I did look at raw results for USHCN sites designated as urban. They showed 0.05°C more warming per decade than non-urban.
BUT
Urban sites comprise only 9% of the USHCN network.
THEREFORE,
If the adjustment is applied to the overall statistic for ALL sites and not merely to urban sites, it is probably in the ballpark.
This assumes that the FILNET data on USCHN trends I am provided with does not include “final” (i.e., UHI) adjustment, and I am informed (reliably) that it does not. There may be some sort of miscommunication, but that is my understanding.
I can’t speak for China at all; I only am looking at US HCN stations.
Note also, I am speaking trends, not offsets. Temperatures in cities are a LOT higher than rural areas. Trends are a different matter, though US trends are higher than non-urban (about half that of the urbanization trend delta of China).
Right. The DOE can simply stonewall, by saying it is “looking into” the matter, but “these things take time.” If the accusations of scientific fraud could be presented to the media as a large-enough scandal, conceivably the DOE and Chu might be pressured to act. The usual strategy is to then throw the miscreant “under the bus,” saying, “It’s just an isolated incident.”
The real trick would be to convince the media that the whole edifice of ‘global warming’ claims is at stake, in which case some might bite. Another couple of such scandals, ones that are easy for the public to understand, would help immensely.
/Mr Lynn
I’ve been following this story since the start. I originally thought “fraud” was too strong a term to use.
I sense a lot of covering of arses, although with such transparency we can all see …
First rule of scandal – the cover-up only makes it worse!!
Albany has only one option now – PRODUCE THE HARDCOPY RECORDS!!!
History of station moves in the US seems very spotty, and I do not trust it, either the comprehensiveness or the given coordinates.
I cannot imagine China is anything but much worse. I would not trust Chinese records, especially not as an aggregate.
I think there is fraud going on in the Arctic.
It was supposed to be ice free last summer. My new shipping venture is based on that premise. Anyone want to invest?
I finally know what the “CAP” in Cap and Trade means- it is simply Climate Alarm Profiteering and Trade.
Thanks Buffalo Bill
One thing for sure; it doesn’t stand for “Capitalism”.
Just Want Truth… (13:53:55) :
This appears to not be just a case against Wei-Chyung Wang but against something much bigger than him. It looks to be a shout against the entire global warming farrago.
—————————
I hope so, and it could be just what the doctor ordered for a huge number of people suffering from advanced cognitive dissonance. A huge fraud scandal could end this debacle once and for all. Imagine all the pontificators, outraged about dastardly man-made global warming for the past decade or more, at dinner parties, at cocktail parties, at their Mum’s house, and on AGW sites. Now they can be outraged at the fraud instead, especially since they’re pretty good at being outraged. NIce exit strategy.
The entire “global temperature anomaly” stuff has looked extremely fishy to me ever since I got interested in this, and it would be fitting if the UHI effect card was the one that brought down the whole house of cards. For example, how is it scientifically possible that the past 10 years, purportedly 7, 8, or 9 or whatever (I don’t commit that **** to memory) years have been the hottest in history, but yet the global sea ice extent is above the mean ?? Ocean experts, how could that be possible ?? It defies logic. For this, I think we can a) discount the “data” that we know is coming from the Catlin crew relating to new calculations on ice volume. It’s become pretty obvious that this was a planned fraud from the start. Similarly, b) the new ozone hole hypothesis for Antarctica doesn’t quite work for multiple reasons.
Just on it’s face though, current sea ice extent alone seems to me to require changes in the laws of nature to be above 1979 levels, with purportedly 10 years of hottest-in-history temperatures.
Sea levels are going to be fun to look at too. Will cooling oceans have a law of nature change too, and not contract at lower temperatures ??
Well let’s see……Wang, Mann, Santer, Steig, Hansen, IPCC etc. etc……. nah, I’d better not.
Darn, I already clicked on Submit.
Evan Jones, the rating systems in place seem odd in and of themselves.
From the Surface Stations project, the “truly rural” sites seem quite rare. When UHI is judged a minor issue – just thousandths of a degree in the worst cases – then it doesn’t really matter.
But if UHI is larger, it -does- matter that a site marked ‘rural’ is actually dead-center of a small city. In other words – UHI isn’t just a problem for a major metropolis. The sensors all over the place aren’t in the vast wild spaces outside of any city limits.
This is completely separate from the “well-sited” micro-site issues. A perfectly sited station in a large metropolitan park with a barbeque-deflecting fence might have zero micro-site issues, but a strong UHI effect.
I wonder if any of the researchers used this work in getting funding for more research. Are there penalties for false claims on grant applications? Maybe there are statutes of limitations, but there may be more recent poisoned fruit.
Ric Werme: The WHO quote is in April 11 Science News.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/42214/title/Bracing_for_global_climate_change_is_a_local_challenge_
If the University is found to violate grant processes, the entire school might not be allowed to get more grants. If they’re not investigating well, they should quickly put someone in charge who can do the job properly.
Indeed, Wegman pointed this out. Where you have a closed cabal of relatively incestuous relationships between scientists, reviewing each other’s papers, peer review doesn’t provide you with any real safe-guards.
Steve in SC (16:24:42) :
[..]
The challenger should at this time start fearing for his personal safety.
Be armed at all times.
It’s not that bad yet. What you should expect is a James Carville style character assassination similar to Paula Jones, a state employee, being referred to as “Arkansas trailer trash”. Such ad hominem attacks only work if you let it get to you and affect your behavior. What I love about the con-artists is how transparent they really are.
–Mike Ramsey
To get action on this, I encourage you to contact Congress, the Office of Inspector General at NSF, DOE, and President Obama. Here are contact details
——————————————–
House Committee, Science & Technology
Subcommittee on Investigation and oversight
Contact the Committee
Subcommittee Members
Democrats:
Brad Miller (North Carolina),Chair
Kathy Dahlkemper (Pennsylvania)
Steven R. Rothman (New Jersey)
Lincoln Davis (Tennessee)
Charles A. Wilson (Ohio)
Alan Grayson (Florida)
Bart Gordon (Tennessee), ex officio
Republicans:
Paul Broun (Georgia), Ranking Member
Brian P. Bilbray (California) (Vacancy)
Ralph M. Hall (Texas), ex officio
Office of Inspector General National Science Foundation
Phone: (703) 292-7100 | Fax: (703) 292-9158 | Room: 1135S | Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Website
Inspector General Allison C. Lerner (703) 292-7100 1135 S alerner @nsf.gov
* Deputy Inspector General
Thomas (Tim) Cross (703) 292-7100 II-705 tcross@nsf.gov
* Associate Inspector General for Audit
Deborah H. Cureton (703) 292-4985 II-705 dcureton@nsf.gov
* Associate Inspector General for Investigations
Peggy L. Fischer (703) 292-4889 II-705 pfischer@nsf.gov
———————
Office of Inspector General of the Department of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Inspector General
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585
Phone: (202) 586-4128
Fax: (202) 586-7851
Contact Us: To report an allegation of Fraud, Waste and Abuse:
* Call: 1-800-541-1625 or 202-586-4073
* E-mail: ighotline@hq.doe.gov
* Fax: 202-586-4902
———————-
Contact President Obama, The Whitehouse
Paul Vaughan (14:40:50) :
Leif: “In the usual Journals there are rather strict rules for how this should play out”
Leif, we are not “in the usual Journals”. We are in a fully public forum populated by volunteers.
This is a fundamental question about review and criticism. There is no difference I can see. Journals are public too and both authors [and especially reviewers] do their work voluntarily.
You speak about ‘respect’:
The respectful thing for you to do is let this matter rest.
yet show none by disregarding a fundamental principle [even enshrined in the US Constitution]. Just as UofA.
So, I think this is very much on-topic. But shall let it rest, not out of respect, but out of disgust.
Richard Sharpe (17:40:28) :
I think there is fraud going on in the Arctic.
Do you think only up there?
I think your nowadays reality has surpassed, in every aspect, the weirdest of science and/or political fiction authors in the 1950´s thought of.
You have gone too far.
You really are in the “naked king” situation. Fortunately every common citizen of the rest of the world knows it….but nobody will tell you a word about it.
Believe me…you have super,over,extra, broke any supercalifragilisticexpialidocious measure.
You are the ones!!…with “the prophet” at the top.
And along the same lines…
REF: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Cheers G
Good Lord! Listen to this!
Is this a parody? Anthony, are you and others here members of this World Meteorological Organization, of which this fellow MIchel Jarraud is the Secretary-General? If so, can you lodge official protests?
I am tempted to cancel my subscription, though of course Science News has been in the AGW tank for a long time (witness the recent hysterics over the seas swamping the Maldives, which of course they are not doing).
How about polling the members of the WMO?
/Mr Lynn
Is Wang really any worse than publishing a paper with the statement below not mentioning cloud feedbacks in the entire article? I don’t think there’s much difference. How does such garbage get past peer review?
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf
“The existence of a strong and positive water-vapor feedback means that projected business-as-usual greenhousegas emissions over the next century are virtually guaranteed to produce warming of several degrees Celsius. The only way that will not happen is if a strong, negative, and currently unknown feedback is discovered somewhere in our climate system.”
“The only way….”??? “….currently unknown…”???
No statistical test of the hypothesis anywhere either. This is the result of rigorous review by an impartial referee? Was the same sort of ‘wink wink’ given to Wang?
Robinson (16:53:06)
“Fantastic article and a great piece of work.”
Agreed.
–
Robinson: “This is my number one concern: public trust in the integrity of the scientific process.”
One really simple thing that could be done in the short-term to alleviate the intensifying mistrust:
Require that raw data and unedited data-log-notes be published on the net.
–
Robinson: “It’s clear to me that this kind of thing is all too common and it’s about time that people started filling charges.”
It will be most strategic to first target organizations & agencies that do not make their raw data publicly available on the net (since they are the ones “building in delays”, which is almost always the preferred tactic of administrators).
Such challenges (collectively) will send the clear message that there might be a convenient, easy, sensible way to avoid costly disputes & public mistrust.
Moving forward, we need to introduce guidelines that require all assumptions that go into any modeling (&/or statistical testing) to be very clearly & very explicitly spelled out in any related publications &/or policy. This is a very serious matter. Wherever possible, assumptions should be stated in terms which lay-people can understand, so as to engender public trust in scientific & policy processes. Untenable assumptions must be clearly visible.
In a way, it is good that much of the research is being conducted with public money, as it gives grounds for demanding access to data. Any efforts to firmly establish precedent quickly will likely encounter very substantial & concerted resistance. If such obstruction occurs, this will be both insightful & highly newsworthy.
–
Point of Clarification – further to Paul Vaughan (14:40:50) & Re: Leif Svalgaard (10:07:59)
I have never in my life run a blog.
–
Robinson (18:26:52)
“Where you have a closed cabal of relatively incestuous relationships between scientists, reviewing each other’s papers, peer review doesn’t provide you with any real safe-guards.”
I could tell you stories …
” David Holliday (11:29:58) :
It seems to me that if Professor Wang’s research is being funded through DOE and NSF that Dr. Keenan should take his complaint to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for both those agencies. They would be the persons most directly responsible for verifying that there was no fraud involved.”
I second the motion. Recently a USF researcher was convicted of fraud for taking millions from NASA on a nuclear propulsion grant.
We need a lot more people filing fraud complaints against these people.
I do, however, agree with Steve in SC, having myself been targeted after doing some whistleblowing. However dont worry about being armed, these people aren’t going to whack anybody, they will simply try to smear and ruin people’s good names, and otherwise shut whistleblowers out of the “system”.
They find out where you work and who your employers main customers are in the AGW-industrial complex. Then phone calls get made and suddenly you are in your bosses office getting laid off, or at the least they start the documentation process of writing you up for any little thing until they have enough negative reports on you, no matter how minor, to justify canning you.
If you are in academia, they make sure that “their” people in your university’s faculty know you are not one of “their kind”, “anti-intellectual”, “anti-liberal”, etc etc. If you are a grad student, they threaten or nix entirely your hopes for your PhD. If you are a relative of one such, they will get to you via such threats (happened to me).
I’ve published only one “peer reviewed” technical paper in my lifetime and it was accepted as a “transactions” paper for international distribution by my professional society; the highest and most stringent category awarded. The massive thing went through the review process like pork through a goose because, I suspect, I’d had the presence of mind to include as references various works by the anticipated “peer reviewers”. It’s a racket, boys and girls!
As to one commentator’s contention that “scientists” are not particularly vulnerable to the enticement of money, all I can say is, “Come in out of the rain, honey! You’re getting all soggy!”
Graeme Rodaughan (18:44:25),
I was going to post that, but you were quicker on the draw. That link is well worth reading, as is this one posted way up by anon: click
Re: Leif Svalgaard (18:42:44)
I made an effort to clarify my concerns:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/25/examining-sorce-data-shows-the-sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence
Paul Vaughan (14:47:31) [April 30, 2009]
Paul Vaughan (13:40:34) [May 2, 2009]
Further point of clarification:
We are not all bound by the same constraints in our online activities. I share what I can when I can.
Thank you for the answers you have provided about atmospheric & solar science.
Mike Ramsey-
Speaking of con-artists, it seems ecoAmerica has been caught red-handed promoting verbal malleability. From the NYT’s:
==============
EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations…
Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
=============
Simon Evans (16:05:20) :
I suspect you’ve missed something obvious here. I don’t care WHAT the conclusions are, if the data was not gathered properly or if there is outright fraud in the methodology then the paper is meaningless.
I know that many on the “other side” are willing to overlook these kinds of problems, but even if something appears to back my personal position I expect it to be honest work.
There have been many posts and threads on WUWT and CA where we have been asked to not use the word “Fraud”, however in this case the word is an essential part of the story. I despise fraudulent “science” no matter what the conclusions are, because it harms the conclusion and it harms science in general. From what I have seen, a massive amount of AGW “work” is fraudulent for the same reasons: lack of data transparency or dishonest data gathering, or unsupportable conclusions masquerading as fact.
As I’ve said before, I used to believe in AGW, and what turned me around was what I believe to be fraudulent or otherwise dishonest data and conclusions, or in some cases conclusions that simply disregard the data. It’s a decent theory, but the overwhelming weight of evidence is against it.
Mike Lorrey (19:16:35)
“[…] they will simply try to smear and ruin people’s good names, and otherwise shut whistleblowers out of the “system”.”
You show a thorough understanding of how it works Mike.
Your post is a bright light cast upon a sinister process that is undermining the sustainable defense of civilization.
Simon Evans at 16:05:20:
… points out that it was not Wang who did the manipulation here, it was really Phil Jones – the director of the Climate Research Unit (responsible for the Hadcrut3 global temperature series) and responsible for a huge proportion of the current thoughts on global warming including being the lead author on chapters of the IPCC.
The follow-up paper with Jones as the lead author (which is the real source of contention here):
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b90.pdf
… is completely different than Wang’s original paper (from the same year);
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b23.pdf
Phil Jones is on the same level as James Hansen in terms of having an impact on global warming science.
The guy even uses a picture that is more than 20 years old.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/pjones/
It is very good that we now have the satellite temperature series to keep these guys reasonably honest because the three individuals who control the other global temperature series are Phil Jones, James Hansen and Thomas R. Karl (also a co-author on both these papers and the guy who gave us the +0.35C time of observation bias adjustment in addition to 3 other positive adjustments to the temperature record).
Mann, this sometimes gets to me.
Leif Svalgaard (10:07:59) :
In May 2008, the University at Albany wrote to Keenan that they had conducted an investigation and asked him to comment on it (see the rather odd letter). However they refused to show him the report of the investigation or any of the evidence to allow any comment (further odd letter).
This kind of (mis)conduct seems to be widespread. We even had a case right here on our very own blog where a blogger issues a challenge, but refuses to say what the challenge is. From another thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/25/examining-sorce-data-shows-the-sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence/#comment-125654 :
Leif Svalgaard (19:07:44) :
Paul Vaughan (13:40:34) :
“And I wonder how many decent scientists choose to not participate because…”
It is normal and decent scientific behavior that if a challenge is issued, the scientist challenged gets to know what the challenge is and gets a forum to rebut the challenge. In the usual Journals there are rather strict rules for how this should play out: you can submit a ‘comment’ [usually negative] on a published paper, to which the scientist being challenged has a right to rebut with a ‘reply’. The ‘comment’ and ‘reply’ will then be published back-to-back…
***************************************
Too right Leif,
Here is further evidence of this deplorable behaviour from the warmist camp, excerpted from an article I wrote circa 2005 and published in E&E:
Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
Scientists opposed to Kyoto have now been vindicated. As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.
**************************
Later, the Wegman committee issued a scathing condemnation of the Mann hockey stick conclusions.
We knew Mann’ hockey stick was wrong all along, but it took Steve McIntyre to show us exactly how it was wrong.
However, it took years for Steve to uncover the truth. Meanwhile, the warmist camp has hatched many new alarmist falsehoods.
Detailed rebuttals a la McIntyre take much longer to prepare than it takes the warmists to fabricate new scary stories.
Better to just assume that everything that comes from the warmist camp is self-serving, alarmist and false. Recent history has shown that there is a 99% probability that you will be correct in this assumption, nine times out of ten.
*****************************
As a way of spreading the message outside WUWT I have sent the following message to an old friend still in the academic realm. Feel free to fill in the xxxxs appropriately and send to anyone you know that could be remotely interested.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
XXXXX,
There is an issue about data integrity and scientific responsibility at SUNY Albany. I’m wondering if this has made any ripples in the XXXXXX university community? Find a discussion here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/03/climate-science-fraud-at-albany-university/
Or here: http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2009/05/allegations-of-fraud-at-albany-wang.html
This isn’t the only such case documented. This site specializes in looking into such matters:
http://www.climateaudit.org/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This work was done at a public institution (SUNY at Albany) by somebody who appears to be a public employee using public funds (grants, etc.). In order for him to cash his checks he implicitly warrants the honesty of the work he does on the public dime. If he’s committed fraud then it’s fraud against the government and thus against all us taxpayers; and the OIG should be all over this. The state attorney-general may want a piece of it as well, although suing your state university is probably political suicide. …Other legal angles might be prosecution under the False Claims Act. If there was a pattern here, and the university participated in it, maybe there is RICO jurisdiction. Not my field but somebody conversant with white collar crime could probably build a pretty nice looking set of cases here.
If people blow the whistle on fraud they can bring a qui tam action and collect bounty. Maybe a few qui tams in the academic lab will encourage the fraudsters to find another line of work, or at least make those who own and run the labs, do a better job of it.
OT Mt. Redoubt is acting up a bit.
Paul Vaughan (19:46:10) :
I share what I can when I can.
What you cannot share [what a concept!] you should keep to yourself. Scientists take a challenge seriously and have the right to know what it is. If you cannot tell what it is, withdraw the challenge. Simple as that.
In addition, you make this disgusting comment:
Paul Vaughan (13:40:34) :
I wonder how many scientists read this blog.
And I wonder how many decent scientists choose to not participate because…
What does that suggest about the few scientists that do?
Anyway, as I said, I’ll not ask for my right one more time, but it seems to me that your attitude is very much like the what is described in the original posting on this topic:
“usual principles of scientific discourse (open discussion, honesty, transparency of method, public disclosure of evidence, open public analysis and public discussion and reasoning underlying any conclusion). This was not the case at the University at Albany. When you see universities [LS: or anybody else] reluctant to investigate things properly, it provides reasonable evidence that they really don’t want to investigate things properly.”
Shame on you as on them.
Allan M R MacRae (20:41:03)
“[…] Leif,
Here is further evidence of this deplorable behaviour from the warmist camp […]”
Clarification:
Nothing I’ve said should suggest to anyone that I have affiliations in any “warmist camp”.
CodeTech (19:58:28) :
Simon Evans (16:05:20) :
I suspect you’ve missed something obvious here. I don’t care WHAT the conclusions are, if the data was not gathered properly or if there is outright fraud in the methodology then the paper is meaningless.
I know that many on the “other side” are willing to overlook these kinds of problems, but even if something appears to back my personal position I expect it to be honest work.
There have been many posts and threads on WUWT and CA where we have been asked to not use the word “Fraud”, however in this case the word is an essential part of the story. I despise fraudulent “science” no matter what the conclusions are, because it harms the conclusion and it harms science in general. From what I have seen, a massive amount of AGW “work” is fraudulent for the same reasons: lack of data transparency or dishonest data gathering, or unsupportable conclusions masquerading as fact.
As I’ve said before, I used to believe in AGW, and what turned me around was what I believe to be fraudulent or otherwise dishonest data and conclusions, or in some cases conclusions that simply disregard the data. It’s a decent theory, but the overwhelming weight of evidence is against it.
Same here – the turning point was the sea ice watching on CA (2008), and the way the Hockey Stick team conduct business.
Flawed method = Flawed result.
Re: Leif Svalgaard (21:06:41)
I explained myself here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/25/examining-sorce-data-shows-the-sun-continues-its-slide-toward-somnolence
Paul Vaughan (13:40:34) [May 2, 2009]
And anyone following my posts in this thread will probably realize that I’ve had (more than) my share of exposure to the flaws in the system.
I only followed WUWT for a few weeks and have appreciated what I’ve seen as a forum that considers all reasoned points of view (unlike many sites with an agenda). Not that there isn’t an agenda amongst the majority of contributors and commenters; that of unearthing the truth.
I doubt exposing a fraud such a Wang, should it turn out he has followed in the footsteps of Steig, Mann, Santer, et al will be the tipping point to “expose” this entire AGW fraud. This isn’t about science … its about politics and power. Exposure of the “hockey-stick” fraud should have been enough to blow the entire AGW theory to kingdom come if it were about the scientific process.
There is far more at stake here than science.
Paul Vaughan (21:37:35) :
I explained myself here:
And I wonder how many decent scientists choose to not participate because…
And whom do you have in mind not fitting that description?
And SUNY also explained themselves just as well.
I think you are all missing something.
Read the odd letter as a lawyer rather than a layman and it all makes sense.
The letter says the “the investigation committee finds no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results and nothing that rises to the level of research misconduct having been committed by Dr. Wang.”
The operative phrases in this two part sentence are (1) fabrication of RESULTS and (2) having been committed by Dr. Wang.
The way I read the letter – and I have written many similar ones in my career – is that Albany found something. And it was large and was research misconduct. It involved the fabrication of DATA not results and it involved research misconduct by someone other than Dr. Wang. I have my suspicions of whom they are referring to but they are just suspicions.
This letter is true, accurate and very deceptive. It covers Albany’s posterior while not actually lying.
I would venture to guess that Albany has a definition of “research misconduct” that does not include failing to supervise a grad student or failing to thoroughly check the work of your co-author.
This would also explain why Dr. Keegan was not given the report and why he was not interviewed.
My guess is that the preliminary inquiry quickly established that real malfeasance had happened on this file but that it was not directly attributable to Wang.
The Investigation Committee investigated Wang and someone else. Found the someone else culpable. As a result it never needed to go back to Keegan and would legitimately have to keep the report from Keegan because it deals with a misconduct that is different than the one he reported.
Always read these letters looking for weasel words and deceitful language and you will likely get closer to the truth.
Some access to information requests on the other authors and other investigations on this paper may be in order.
Just my wild speculation.
evanmjones (17:28:12)
Thanks for your input. The thing that bothers me is this: It was my understanding that UHI is not generally recognized by the AGW crowed and therefore is only taken into account occasionally and to varying degrees. When you are talking about the small measurement increases that they are crying about, this becomes significant and makes so many studies questionable, does it not?
Re Ron de Haan (16:54:54) :
Thanks for the complete text of the Australian article. In regard to the comments by Watkins, it’s hilarious. First he re-asserts that Eastern Antarctica is warming, then he says it’s improper to state otherwise until he has a chance to analyze the data, and funniest of all, is the statement: ‘…Dr Watkins admitted that analysis of the data might show “an ozone-induced cooling trend in the latter half of the record’. Note that he arbitraily adds “ozone-induced” as a cause of the cooling. In other words, as long as he can find some anthropogenic root to a trend in climate, he’ll allow that maybe it is cooling.
[Of course, we all “know” that man is responsible for the ozone hole. At least that ‘s what the members of the Montreal Protocol stated back in September 1987. That document led to the virtual elimination of CFCs and other HFCs. Forget that when they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the meeting in 2007, the ozone hole had just recorded it’s largest size since measurements began. Good work guys!]
One can only imagine how many pucks have been driven by the “hockey stick” toward the goal of AGW, not to mention more than a few slap-shots aimed at their critics. It’s about time some of those pucks got iced.
So now another one of the naked king’s tailors has been outed with hopefully more to follow. Nevertheless, we poor taxpayers are still being charged for the clothing material.
“Simon Evans (16:05:20) :
Recent correction by Jones stated that “urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1 degree per decade over the period 1951–2004…
Have any of you actually bothered to read Wang’s (supposedly ‘fraudulent’) paper? –
“The rate of warming at urban stations is over 0.1C per decade relative to more rural stations”
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b23.pdf
Did you get that? Did you spot the purported fraud? Wang was saying back in 1990 what you are now claiming is the statement of ‘correction’ to the supposed fraud!
(And no, I am not planning to take up posting here again, beyond a reaction to this piling on).”
———————————————————–
But Simon…. It is not only just Wang’s work, it is also Wang’s conduct that is under investigation. That and the University’s apparent complicity in covering up a possible fraud.
If Wang’s conduct ends up compromising any good work he has done. Well that is his own fault….. However in my experience people who hide their data and methodology… Usually have an ulterior motive for doing so.
Of tangential interest, WRT grant money.
Has there ever been the equal of the slush fund now being put at the disposal of scientists in the Obama stimulus fund for the National Institute of Health (NIH)? As of May 1, 38,000 grant applications have been written to get a piece of the 10 billion dollar stimulus package being handed out through the NIH. The only stipulation? Spend it fast.
http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=234&target_pg=com_search
It will be interesting to follow the evolution of some of these projects (many of which will no doubt be linked to AGW) – that is, of course assuming that grant recipients demonstrate more openness, accountability and responsiveness than has been shown at the University at Albany.
Thanks, Mr. Keenan, for your tenacity, and for sharing this.
It is more than probable that grant money is the driving force behind this behavior from the university . As for the individual scientists, having observed many over these last 40 years, glory and acclaim in their field mean more to them than money, though money is respected too.
It is time for the west to rethink the way research is financed. Of course it has to be public funds. When I started in research in Greece in the 1960s, it was the Queen at the time who was responsible for setting up the funding pushed through the parliament for the Greek Atomic Energy commission ! She was taking private physics lessons !!
By retirement time ten years ago we had to be pen pushing for grants. When I visit, my colleagues complain that they spend an enormous productive time filling up, replying etc bureaucratic stuff for funds they have had from the ministry and the EU.
This has to change
1) because it creates science bureaucrats right in the middle of a research group
2) it gives competitive incentive to money, and as we say in Greek ” whoever holds the ladle to the honey pot, gets to lick it”. This is disastrous for the scientific ethic.
Science is a bit like athletics. The competitive incentive is and should be in the race for good data and the next illuminating discovery/theory. Having lived for years in the international particle physics community based at CERN I can vouch that there are very many dedicated, practically ascetic, scientists chasing their dream. It is proving if not disastrous at least distractive to put money temptations on their way.
A way could be that money is given to institutions without yearly tags. The institutions should be responsible for the distribution of the money within their research community. Government should review research outputs from institutions periodically, to check that research is coming out, but not in the huge detail that is happening now in central bureaucracies.
This would break the lock step of research funded centrally by a biased possibly research committee. Institutions would be able to come out with research that questions the results of each other, and researchers would have to compete within their institution for funds. Not that this will eliminate politics and diplomacy within the institution, but it would introduce a diversity that is being eliminated by the central organization of research funding.
CERN of the 1960s and on is a good example: governments funded the institution according to their GDP, and funded national groups according to their internal rules, and the institution outputted research, very good research imo.
“old construction worker (15:34:13) : Isn’t this what the DATA QUALITY ACT all about?”
We’ve been told ‘We’re a Nation of laws,” and I won’t argue that. But are we a Nation of enforcing laws?
Graeme Rodaughan (18:44:25) :
I agree that the link you gave makes a good read.
If nothing else, it shows that McIntyre has been asking for openness, and that Wahl and Amman have been throwing wrenches into the workings of openness.
Why should anyone fear openness? Why fear Honesty? Why fear Truth?
Over and over we see the same phenomenon: People are asked to show their methods and their data, and they flat-out refuse to do so.
Why?
When someone comes up with a neat idea, a fellow like me immediately responds, “What a neat idea! How did you come up with it!” If they then respond, “None of your cotton-picking business,” I am taken aback.
When Galileo stated, “The earth revolves around the sun,” and people asked him, “How did you come up with that idea,” he exclaimed, “Take a gander through my telescope, and you’ll see for yourself!” Unfortunately, some people back then refused to look through his telescope. However he offered them the chance.
Climate Scientists seem a different breed. They refuse to allow others the chance to look.
I confess to being so curious that I can be a bit of a pest, and I tend to respond, “O come on, pleeease? Pleeeease let me see?”
On other internet sites, the response I seem to get is, “Why should I waste my time? Bumpkins like you are too stupid to understand.”
To this I can only respond, “Pleeeeeese? Pleeease tell me what I am too stupid to understand?”
They refuse. Therefore one can only conclude they don’t want to be understood.
Their minds are made up. They require no feed-back. The opinions of others have no weight. The vote of the voter means nothing. Democracy means nothing. Peer review means nothing. They are mentally petrified.
I find myself wondering, “What are they so petrified about?” After all, the word “petrified” is connected to “being afraid.” Is that why they won’t release their data? Because they are afraid?
Why be afraid? In my experience, Americans are pretty kind and generous people. Even if it turned out these so-called scientists withheld data because they didn’t want to admit they had joined a scam and con-job because they needed money, a heck of a lot of Americans would guffaw, and nudge them in the ribs about it.
They’ll admit no such thing. Nor will they release data. They are in hiding.
It’s hard not to be offended when a person runs away and hides, when you are friendly. You say, “Hi! How’s it goin’? What cha up to?” How can you NOT feel offended if they scowl and act snooty and say it is none of your business, “what they are up to.”
Even if you had no interest in “what they were up to,” before, their scowling behavior makes you wonder just a bit. You may have asked, “What cha up to?” in a most innocent manner, but now you find you are wondering, “Are they up to something?” in a much more serious manner.
If you say “What cha up to,” to James Hansen, he takes immediate offence, and states he is being oppressed, even crucified. However there is a distinction between Jesus and Hansen. Jesus was crucified because he released data to the general public. Hansen has refused to release data.
It all seems to boil down to being petrified. If climate scientists actually possess some tidbit of truth, they are petrified about having it. They are very afraid, even scared speechless. The fear which they get around to daring actually speak, namely, “This world is coming to an end, right before our eyes,” is only the tip of a melting iceberg, compared to the fear which makes them afraid to release data.
In conclusion, I’m starting to think climate scientists are big, fat scaredy-cats. They are so based-in-fear that they actually are the epitome of what FDR told us to fear, when he stated, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”
The alternative to this cowardly behavior is to love truth. Rather than withholding data you release data. You free the truth. And, if you free the truth, (and if the poet Keats was correct when he stated, “Truth is Beauty,”)
then, by releasing dry data, you release something which isn’t dry, drab, and mere mathematics, but is in fact beautiful and “lovely.” And when you get to “lovely” you are right next door to a mysterious subject called “Love.”
The cynical will assert I am becoming too romantic, but I assert that Science, and true peer review, and true two-party democracy, and Truth itself, are based on a truly romantic foundation.
However I’ll concede cynics, perhaps embittered by this rough life we all experience, do express an alternative view. Just as Tina Turner musically snarled, “What’s Love got to do with it?” James Hansen has every right to scientifically snarl, “What does releasing data have to do with it?”
And the answer is: Everything.
Alan S. Blue (17:58:44) :
Maybe the determination of what is urban and what ain’t is odd. But I can tell you flat-out that those stations USCN1 rates as urban heat at 0.5 C per century faster than those rated non-urban (raw data). That’s a lot.
But you may have a point. Sites classified as rural are indeed often in the middle of small towns, whereas suburban sites usually aren’t. This may explain why raw data for rural sites shows a slight warming and suburban sites have slightly cooled.
(These results are not yet debiased for warming vs. cooling regions. But as far as I know I am the only one actually doing that at the moment. I’ll get to it when I get a chance. Not a bad idea to debias those results, at that.)
And yes, macro and mesosite issues are separate considerations from microsite.
Profiteers do not frighten me. But propheteers I fear greatly.
It was my understanding that UHI is not generally recognized by the AGW crowed and therefore is only taken into account occasionally and to varying degrees.
USHCN1 treats in in a commonsense manner. They simply compare the differences, prorate and subtract them from the total. Or so I understand.
But USHCN2 has no UHI adjustment, just something they are pleased to refer to as “homogenization”, which is a polite word for “spreading the error around so it doesn’t show up. The errors get hidden like tunnel dirt from the Great Escape.
Over on Aubrey’s site, BigCityFib is performing his usual seagull act.
Re: an observer (22:08:56)
Thank you for your very interesting post.
FYI: Undergraduate research assistants are often trusted to clean, adjust, & estimate (missing) data – and I assure you that at times such work demands experience, instinct, & judgement skills which I would not necessarily expect even a brilliant undergrad to have.
Anyone interested in data fabrication will likely be interested in another great WUWT thread at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/01/australias-bom-backs-down-on-warming-at-antarctic-bases
– – –
Anthony: You are running a very important website. If fortune has already smiled upon you, I hope it smiles upon you again.
– – –
anna v (22:58:49)
“It is more than probable that grant money is the driving force behind this behavior from the university”
You raise an important point – and this has become a serious source of controversy at institutions where funding has been aggressively slashed.
anna v: “When I visit, my colleagues complain that they spend an enormous productive time filling up, replying etc bureaucratic stuff for funds they have had from the ministry and the EU.”
Many of the ‘researchers’ I know locally almost only have time to apply for grants, teach, & tend to administrative duties. Some complain that they only get research done during the summer (when there are less students around) – and it is worth noting that most also take long vacations in summer, so there isn’t much room for research productivity.
anna v: “Not that this will eliminate politics and diplomacy within the institution, but it would introduce a diversity that is being eliminated by the central organization of research funding.”
As in nature, in business, and in our planning to be prepared for EM pulses, diversity is the key to survival. This is a language people from different backgrounds understand.
– – –
Re: Leif Svalgaard (21:59:55)
I respect your knowledge about atmospheric & solar science.
You frequently launch ad hominem attacks (on more than one website); it is sensible to not cooperate with your demands & badgering.
I see the word ‘fraud’ or derivatives are used about 75 times so far. So, I get the impression people here think there is a fraud going on… That, somehow, the more you allege it the more it become true – a kind of guilt by blog vote?
Myself I’m amazed at the levels of abuse of a scientist no one here has ever met people here will descend to. The kangaroo trial by blog going on here is truly shocking. As shockingly is that it seems that here there is unanimity that allegation is proof.
Anyway, I’m the first voice of doubt in this thread. The first not to utterly , totally, and without reservation condemn the Dr. Either I’ll get a fair hearing or I will be condemned as well. I offer no prizes…
Peter Hearnden, I’m not sure you’ve read the top part, above the “Comments”. In it you will find a painfully detailed description of what we’re talking about. In fact, the details are so complete, with references even, that I’m not even going to summarize it for you… except to say that just because your friends and patrons find you not guilty of a charge does NOT mean you are not guilty (see Simpson, Orenthal James).
And I’m also going to reiterate that more of these sorts of exposures need to take place, ESPECIALLY in Climate Science, and ESPECIALLY with federally funded Science. It would not take very long for the entire house of cards to come tumbling down. Imagine basing gigantic world-altering decisions on the USHCN stations as documented at http://www.surfacestations.org
Ohhhhhhhh,
So this is the “Scientific Consensus” Al Gore was talking about. Now I understand.
What is all the fuss about? What’s new? You expect scientist to be more honest then politicians, bankers, economists, etc. As most of you are aware wars (thousands died) were justified by flawed research and data.
Peter Hearnden (02:10:05) :
People here (myself included) are cynical about much of the science connected with climate change. That undeniably colours the views expressed.
However, even if Dr Wang is not guilty of a ‘fraud’ his institution is investigating as his conduct is inappropriate for a scientist. Let us assume for a moment he has nothing to hide, then why would he not make his data available? The only reason I can think of is for competitive reasons and that is inappropriate – data from publicly funded research should be public.
In the UK I have been aware of several instances where the Research Councils and even Journals threatened action against researchers over failure to share data, programmes and other materials.
an observer
Interesting observation.
Could you redraft Keegan’s allegation to encompass all the other issues that they may have found but which they are avoiding by legalistic hair splitting?
an observer
Interesting observation.
Could you redraft Doug Keenan’s allegation to encompass all the other issues that they may have found but which they are avoiding by legalistic hair splitting?
(apologies for typo)
Re an observer (22:08:56).
See the item from my web page for 12 August 2008: the university’s Interim President sent me a copy of a letter that he wrote to Wang. The letter says “there is no evidence whatsoever that you have committed data fabrication or any research misconduct with respect to this allegation”. The letter is at
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b811/c625.pdf
Also, Wang was the Chief Scientist of the DOE/CAS Carbon Dioxide Research Program, which published the report on which Wang relied for data. Additionally, Wang knows China well.
I agree with those who suggest that Wang is likely motivated much more by prestige than by money per se.
anna v, your experiences at CERN sound really interesting. I would be interested in hearing more (perhaps by e-mail, if it gets off-topic).
Dr. Keenan,
Thank you for your efforts. I’ll make mention of this on Traders-Talk.com where appropriate.
(If I knew how to reach you off blog, I’d have done so) Please feel free to contact me privately at trader at i a c dot com if you want to participate in any of our discussions (trading or climate).
Best,
Mark
Re: an observer (22:08:56)
“My guess is that the preliminary inquiry quickly established that real malfeasance had happened on this file but that it was not directly attributable to Wang.
The Investigation Committee investigated Wang and someone else. ”
“The allegations concern two publications. These are:
Jones P.D., Groisman P.Y., Coughlan M., Plummer N., Wang W.-C., Karl T.R. (1990), “Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land”, Nature, 347: 169–172. (PDF here)
Wang W.-C., Zeng Z., Karl T.R. (1990), “Urban heat islands in China”, Geophysical Research Letters, 17: 2377–2380. ”
Is this Karl individual our pal in Asheville at NCDC????
Paul Vaughan (02:00:13) :
it is sensible to not cooperate with your demands & badgering.
“When you see Universities [or someone] reluctant to investigate things properly, it provides reasonable evidence that they really don’t want to investigate things properly”
RE: Peter Hearnden (02:10:05) :
**Anyway, I’m the first voice of doubt in this thread. The first not to utterly , totally, and without reservation condemn the Dr. Either I’ll get a fair hearing or I will be condemned as well. I offer no prizes…**
Well, Peter, if I would have heard you calling for Dr. Wang to archive his data, you would have had some support. So you get no prize here.
I have been in the Ivory Tower and know of what Leif has posted. As a result of the reluctance on the part of the connected grant awarding entity to investigate properly my alleged abuse of research privilages, I did the only thing I had the power to do. I walked away from research supported by that entity. The only thing that I kept working on was the publication of my thesis (which was not directly related to abuse of research privilages) with the stipulation that it would be published using the original data and equipment. I made sure that happened with a few devious tricks of my own (I kept the original biological tracings, the hand entered original of all the data, and the data file submitted to ANOVA, which I did myself, using Statview SE). They knew that if the final submission did not show the same data and results I had in my possession, I would have screamed bloody murder and published that original raw data myself. It worked. My challenge was clear with hard data to back it up. The thesis was subsequently published in good faith. But in order to do that, I had to make a decision about the agency I worked for.
If you think there is a wolf, you have data that says there is a wolf, and you cry wolf, you have to be willing to make personal decisions if no one else is willing to investigate that there is indeed a wolf. Whining will not get you anywhere.
Douglas J. Keenan (06:04:33) :
I agree with those who suggest that Wang is likely motivated much more by prestige than by money per se.
anna v, your experiences at CERN sound really interesting. I would be interested in hearing more (perhaps by e-mail, if it gets off-topic).
Fire away and we can take it to e-mail if it does get off topic. I am reluctant to give my e-mail on a blog, and I can understand you might also be careful because of all this fuss. Maybe I can establish a hotmail account if necessary.
@ Simon Evans (16:05:20) :
@ Bill Illis (20:12:52) :
From the abstract in Wang, et al. (1990): (http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b23.pdf)”The changes in heat island intensity over three decades studied suggest a general increase in heat island intesity of about 0.1°C, but this has not been constant in time.”
This would seem to indicate that the total UHI attributed heating is 0.1°C over three decades, whereas the passage quoted by Simon Evans is from the conclusion, in which Wang states that the 0.1°C UHI is PER DECADE. This is quite a difference between two statements in the same scholarly publication. Since many people initially read only the abstract, this is either terrible editing, terrible writing or both.
Further, in Wang et al (1990), Wang seems to criticize the Jones et al. (1990) paper (http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b90.pdf): “Our work differs from the recent study by Jones et al. (1990). They have shown that any urban bias in their data has been mitigated over Eastern China. The reasons for this are not clear.”
Wang et al (1990): “The temperature data used in this study are based on 42 pairs of urban-rural stations compiled under the United States’ Department of Energy and People’s Republic of China’s Academy of Sciences joint research program on the greenhouse effect (Koomanoff et al., 1988).”
Jones et al. (1990): “We assembled a network of 42 station pairs of rural and urban sites in the eastern half of China … The 84 stations were selected from a 260-station temperature set recently compiled under the US Department of Energy and People’s Republic of China Academy of Sciences Joint Project on the Greenhouse Effect.”
What Wang does NOT make clear in the body of his publication is that he was a coauthor of both Jones et al (1990) and Koomanoff et al (1988).
Paul Vaughan says of Leif Svalgaard:
Sigh. Another word I have misunderstood for all those years.
I think this is a lie although I would be willing to characterize it as playing fast and loose with the truth.
I comment regularly here under another name. anna v’s (22:58:49) observations are true but only the highlight the tip of the iceberg. I can honestly say that science research stinks due to the political in-fighting and very stiff competition. There has always been some element of this but it is very different than when I started out as a postdoc nearly 20 years ago.
In my current position there is a lot of control and diktat over what funding you can apply for, who you can collaborate with (is their research of sufficient quality?) and what and where you can publish. The pressure to bring in funding is enormous. We are encouraged by the university to go for funding that has a high level of ‘overheads’, such than it not only funds the research but contributes more to financing the central services of the university. There is more competition for this funding, which means a lower success rate and therefore more time spent writing more proposals.
I have turned into a scientific administrator. I don’t teach (I’m lucky) but I spend a high % of my time writing proposals, filling in time sheets (yes!) for my involvement in EU projects and doing other administration directly related to grants. I work extensively with industry; surprisingly this is not popular because of the way it is counted for university rankings, and I cannot publish as much.
I can see why people would fabricate or massage data – publish or be damned! It is soul- (and career-) destroying to spend time and hard-earned research money to come up with (at best) inconclusive data. If you get a paper into a high ranking journal the benefit to your career is enormous, if not, get as many papers out as you can. Reworking the data and getting it into three papers is so much better than just publishing one paper straight.
I have just reviewed a paper for a journal. Much of the paper was concerned with statistical analysis which I felt was ‘padding’ since the experimental data plus error bars showed very clearly where the significanct difference lay. Removing this padding reduced the paper to two (small) graphs, although the paper referred to other work from the same study as ‘submitted for publication’. Two of the conclusions were based on a trend or relationship which the stats showed to be of low significance. This was clearly an attempt to squeeze another publication from the data. The pressure to do this is enormous.
I feel sometimes like (to quote Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen): “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere [else], you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle
“In United States politics, ‘the iron triangle’ is a term used by political scientist to describe the policy-making relationship among the congressional committees, the bureaucracy (executive) (sometimes called ‘government agencies’), and interest groups.”
Interest groups do not have to be businesses. An interest group could be an association of research scientists. An interest group could even consist of Marxists who hate transnational corporations.
An individual working within an American university does not need to be motivated by the desire for money in order to engage in fraudulent science. Ironically, a scientist who thinks that he is “fighting Big Oil” with his scientific propaganda, may be enriching a transnational corporation that is willing to sell “green” junk to the US Government. Even “Big Oil” can join the green special interest groups in their quest for research funds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle
“Central to the concept of an iron triangle is the assumption that bureaucratic agencies, as political entities, seek to create and consolidate their own power base. In this view an agency’s power is determined by its constituency, not by its consumers. (For these purposes, politically active members sharing a common interest or goal; consumers are the expected recipients of goods or services provided by a government bureaucracy and are often identified in an agency’s written goals or mission statement.)”
“Much of what some see as bureaucratic dysfunction may be attributable to the alliances formed between the agency and its constituency. The official goals of an agency may appear to be thwarted or ignored altogether at the expense of the citizenry it is designed to serve.”
Douglas J. Keenan (05:59:46) :
You make my point for me again.
The letter says “there is no evidence whatsoever THAT YOU HAVE committed data fabrication or ANY RESEARCH MISCONDUCT with respect to THIS allegation”.
Note what they do not say. They do not say that the Investigation Committee failed to find data fabrication. They do not say that the Investigation Committee failed to find research misconduct with respect to these two papers.
Great care and attention goes into these letters – Lawyers make money reviewing them. When the exoneration is not whole and complete, always look more carefully.
A legitimate exoneration would say that something like “the Investigation Committee found the allegations to be without merit. No data was fabricated and there was no research misconduct.”
Whenever you see anything less start parsing the words.
I really believe you should broaden your complaint. I suspect that a broader complaint letter would be met by a “we have already investigated that matter and are taking appropriate remedies” response. A broader complaint will likely lead to a correction being published somewhere. Right now there is an opportunity to weasel away from a correction since the latest Jones et al paper backs away (albeit in a weasely way) from the findings of the two papers referenced.
It might be interesting to see the curves represented by these sites. Anyone know a link?
Re: Temp curves. Nevermind. The graphs in papers cited above.
Re: Bill P (09:04:19) :
It might be interesting to see the curves
Nevermind. Links were provided in the thread intro above.
Sorry.
“Urban sites comprise only 9% of the USHCN network.”
constitute!
Claude Harvey (19:19:02) :
“As to one commentator’s contention that “scientists” are not particularly vulnerable to the enticement of money, all I can say is, “Come in out of the rain, honey! You’re getting all soggy!” “
further to the point:
“Physical scientists probably deserve the reputation they enjoy for incorruptibility and unswerving devotion to pure truth. The reason for this is that it is not worthwhile to bribe them.”
–Anthony Standen, Science is a Sacred Cow, pp. 168-69
Douglas J. Keenan (12:55:37) :
I submitted a report about Wang to the Office of the Inspector General at the DOE on March 24th.
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b090324.htm
Direct from the source! No wonder WUWT is best. Doug, would you start on James Hansen next?
Looks like SUNY research is supposed to flow through the SUNY “Research Foundation”, so they should be involved also.
“Grants and contracts for research and training programs at SUNY are awarded to the RF – not directly to the principal investigator or to the campus.” If that is the case, the research applications over the years may have gone to RF so they’d be interested in any fraud or false claims in later applications.
And RF has its own ethical requirements and procedures. https://www.compliance-helpline.com/rfsuny.jsp
If SUNY at Albany research money flowed through SUNY RF, would fraud of federal funding threaten all SUNY research funding rather than only SUNY at Albany research funding?
frustrated researcher (08:20:43) :
Thanks for the peek into the tent.
Even if the Chinese data suddenly appeared, (found lying on a table in the White House for example), there is good reason to view it with suspicion. Not only as someone pointed out above, records kept in the past, especially during the Cultural Revolution, are suspect, but the Chinese government has a very strong interest in promoting AGW theories. If heavy carbon taxes/caps are imposed in North America and Europe, they will accelerate the movement of heavy industries to China and other developing countries.
Pamela Gray (07:37:22) :
I have been in the Ivory Tower and know of what Leif has posted. As a result of the reluctance on the part of the connected grant awarding entity to investigate properly my alleged abuse of research privilages, I did the only thing I had the power to do. I walked away from research supported by that entity. The only thing that I kept working on was the publication of my thesis (which was not directly related to abuse of research privilages) with the stipulation that it would be published using the original data and equipment. I made sure that happened with a few devious tricks of my own (I kept the original biological tracings, the hand entered original of all the data, and the data file submitted to ANOVA, which I did myself, using Statview SE). They knew that if the final submission did not show the same data and results I had in my possession, I would have screamed bloody murder and published that original raw data myself. It worked. My challenge was clear with hard data to back it up. The thesis was subsequently published in good faith. But in order to do that, I had to make a decision about the agency I worked for.
I, with others, submitted an application for funding to the American Soybean Board back in 83 I believe. If memory serves it was titled “Aerial determination of plant stress in soybeans using videography”. It was not accepted for funding for various inane reasons. We did not resubmit the following year and were unpleasantly surprised when one of the funded grants, with almost plagiarized verbage and methods, was awarded to a grant reviewer who sat on the board. You shouldn’t wonder why I’m understandibly cynical of cone-head academia.
Re an observer (08:57:49) .
Kind thanks for explaining further. On March 18th, I filed a Freedom-of-Information request to get the report of the investigation (amongst other things); a copy of the request is here:
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620/b090318.htm
The university has given me an initial refusal. The text of their refusal is as follows.
“This agency has determined that the records that you requested are not required to be made available to the public pursuant to Public Officer’s Law §§ 87(2)(b) and 89(2) which permits agencies to deny access to records or portions thereof that if disclosed would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Accordingly, your request for records is denied.”
The “personal privacy” might fit with your suspicion.
My request was also for copies of e-mails that notified the DOE, NSF, etc. of the investigation though. Personal privacy does not fit for that part.
What do you think?
New Chinese Proverb
He who is good at writing grants for research well,
can also fake data well.
AnonyMoose (11:15:51): Thank you much for the recommendation. I have just filed a report about Wang and Videka with the Research Foundation.
Paul and Leif
I no longer have any idea what you are arguing about. Please clarify or better yet just stop. I know it is hard when you feel slighted but your posts are confusing me and are off topic.
Caught this on my WordPress dash board. Very interesting reading.
If we only really knew how much “Wing-Wang” goes on…
It is very difficult to get your hands on any actual research these days.
They assume their conclusions, based on their status as research institutions justify their summarization charts and percentages.
It’s a business with no checks and balances and all the power of religion. Science, today produces only toys and is otherwise masturbatory and sterile.
But that prestige must be maintained…
An enemy, I’d say, Global Hoax, let’s create a problem so we can be paid taxpayer money to fix it. Just another arm of the racketeers we call government.
A fascinating and much needed dialog. At this forum continues the work needed to restore a semblance of integrity to greatly maligned science.
Douglas J. Keenan (12:55:37) :
“I submitted a report about Wang to the Office of the Inspector General at the DOE on March 24th.”
UK Sceptic (16:12:17) :
“I hope this doesn’t affect Keenan’s future prospects. Whistleblowers in the UK are treated worse than paedophiles. Hopefully he’s delivered a staggering blow to the warmist cause. If true his actions will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.”
Mike Lorrey (19:16:35) :
“We need a lot more people filing fraud complaints against these people. I do, however, agree with Steve in SC, having myself been targeted after doing some whistleblowing. However dont worry about being armed, these people aren’t going to whack anybody, they will simply try to smear and ruin people’s good names, and otherwise shut whistleblowers out of the “system.‘”
Paul Vaughan (19:59:20) :
Mike Lorrey (19:16:35)
“[…] they will simply try to smear and ruin people’s good names, and otherwise shut whistleblowers out of the “system”.
You show a thorough understanding of how it works Mike.
Your post is a bright light cast upon a sinister process that is undermining the sustainable defense of civilization.”
On discovery of a purse snatcher, petty thief, Peeping Tom or Ponzi schemer – a citizen who demands investigation is heralded a hero. We embrace their integrity and good will. Shine a similar light on a government funded research project fraught with questionable methodology – you become anathema.
The citizenry of science can no longer allow this to happen. Those who fearlessly speak out against corruptions are not different than a Ponzi-scheme buster. They do the thing that is right. Thank you Mr. Keenan, Lorrey, Vaughan etc. It’s your voices and those on this forum that will force these immovable institutions to finally move, (as does the Earth about the Sun;)
Caleb (23:34:36) :
The cynical will assert I am becoming too romantic, but I assert that Science, and true peer review, and true two-party democracy, and Truth itself, are based on a truly romantic foundation.
In this you are not wrong Caleb. Science, Art, and Romance are indeed one and the same – only viewed by mortals through a narrowed window.
Long ago in the Paris Herald Tribune, there was an excellent food writer, one Mr. Waverly Root. He was writing a book on the origins of elements of food, and discovered by doing forensic research on sources. That the source for one of the origins of a vegetable came from a paper in which he had speculated about a possible origin. The paper was subsequently cited, then that paper was cited, and about 5 or 6 levels in the reference was no longer speculative, but rather given as fact.
He called it the “muddying of the waters of human knowledge.” How right he was!
While I was attending USC in the 60s, a student in one of my classes said that he was going to specialize in the environment because, “I want to tell people what to do.” I get a chill down my spine when I think how prescient that statement was.
anna v, I had been assuming that the journal system was the primary force for corruption. It used to be that researchers were respected for their research; nowadays, though, it is not What you publish, it is Where you publish that matters most.
I thought that the introduction of impact factors was involved: after that, researchers competed to get in the journals with the highest impact factors. To do that, they need big results; so the temptation to stretch (or break) the truth is larger.
I am trying to find ideas that I can push that will bring about greater integrity in science. There is nothing unusual about global-warming science–many other fields are just as corrupt, if not more so. (For a few examples in medical science, see the first web site linked to in this post, http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com .)
Some people have suggested using open peer review. But Nature trialled that, and it did not work: nobody submitted reviews (see http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html ).
Other people have suggested that all data should be made available when a paper is published. But competitive pressures make that difficult: the first journals that imposed such strict rules would lose some good papers to their competitors; so no journal wants to make the first move.
My e-mail address is
d o u g dot k e e n a n at i n f o r m a t h dot o r g
I am no expert, but I thought this an interesting paper on the Chinese land station data as it discusses a significant topographic terrain induced error problem between raw station data and gridded data, using the reanalysed gridded ERA-40 and NCEP/NCAR data sets
http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/Reanalysis2008/Documents/Posters/P4-34_ea.pdf
I looked up ERA-40 and, for those interested in obtaining the ERA-40 data, this site looks like the place to start?
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/ecmwf-e40/
It seems that this global warming thing is simply a case of “this is the answer”, “find me the question”. There are huge sums of money available for this research, but the catch is that ultimately the the results must support the predetermined premise. I agree that integrity is paramount, however is must be very tempting to bend the rules in order to share in this largess.
– – –
Re: Leif Svalgaard (06:30:10)
My theory was that Leif Svalgaard would quote that out-of-context, omitting [without making it clear] the important part about personal attacks before the semi-colon.
Leif: ““When you see Universities […] reluctant to investigate things properly, it provides reasonable evidence that they really don’t want to investigate things properly””
I agree. (See note below about university policy.)
– – –
Richard Sharpe (07:51:34) “I think this is a lie […]”
The personal attacks occur. This is a fact. I will give one example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/01/australian-antarctic-division-can-solar-variability-influence-climate
See: Paul Vaughan (14:13:11) [May 2, 2009]
And note the acknowledgement “I agree […]” at: Leif Svalgaard (19:54:29)
Go ahead and have a look – it’s very insightful.
(Other examples are not difficult to find.)
– – –
If you perceive someone to be harassing you obsessively for a week about a minor misunderstanding Richard Sharpe, do you consider that sensible conduct?
– – –
Leif Svalgaard (10:07:59) [May 3]
“[…] refuses to say what the challenge is […]”
This is distortion &/or misunderstanding.
– – –
Re: Wondering Aloud (13:27:41)
Thank you for your comment.
My understanding of WUWT Policy is that flame-baiting is strongly discouraged:
“[…] those without manners that insult others or begin starting flame wars […]”
“[…] flame-bait, personal attacks […]”
When I began participating in WUWT discussions it was on the assumption that participants who might engage me are held to WUWT Policy.
As indicated above, I perceived respectful disagreement to have been reached, but I discovered another (new) attack when I arrived in this forum.
Despite Mr. Svalgaard’s re-launch of an old dispute in this thread, I am willing to give Mr. Svalgaard another opportunity to agree to disagree respectfully (or to respectfully & efficiently agree that there has been a ‘misunderstanding’ [possibly related to the limitations of online discourse]); this will be my final post addressing the dispute if Mr. Svalgaard stops referring to, quoting, & addressing me. (I’m hoping there is nothing grievous in the moderation queue as I submit this comment.)
For the sake of clarity – once again:
I respect Dr. Svalgaard’s knowledge of atmospheric & solar science.
– – –
Pragmatic (13:49:56)
“The citizenry of science can no longer allow this to happen. Those who fearlessly speak out against corruptions are not different than a Ponzi-scheme buster. They do the thing that is right. Thank you Mr. Keenan, Lorrey, Vaughan etc. It’s your voices and those on this forum that will force these immovable institutions to finally move, (as does the Earth about the Sun;)”
Confronting an increasingly sterile establishment is a treacherous pursuit, but our survival depends upon the absence of sterility. My motivation is simple: the sustainable defense of civilization. The polite thing to do is not to topple those who currently hold power, but rather to put a respectful warning shot across their bow and give them a chance to clean up their ways. If they fail, we are ready to succeed in their place. Thank you for your comments.
– – –
University administrators will be having increasing concerns about threads like this one. I imagine policies being drafted that will further limit the participation of employees on sites like this one (regrettably). (Keep in mind that Anthony asks that we use our real names. [See the Policy link at the top of the page for details.])
– – –
Further to Paul Vaughan (21:07:11) & Re: frustrated researcher (08:20:43) & Gerard Woodhouse (15:20:57)
I will share 2 anecdotes:
1.
I once had a contract that consisted of spending months doing nothing but cooking data.
2.
Recently when I was shopping around for some new channels of funding I was coming across websites instructing as follows:
“Successful applicants will:
1) demonstrate global warming,
2) demonstrate impacts of global warming, &/or
3) demonstrate projected impacts of global warming.”
Those aren’t the exact words used, but if you filter off the fluff, that’s all there is.
I won’t be surprised if there are soon some waves of funding for natural climate research because a lot is invested in the climate-alarm models and they will need to be tweaked towards reality. If such waves of funding arise, first recipients are likely to be those who “served well” in the past. (The waves may not be large enough to reach others.)
Orders of magnitude more (not less) research funding is needed to ensure the sustainable defense of civilization; however, …
… The trick is in the channeling of that flow. My experience has been that nasty administrative folks can make a real mess of anything. (I call it “adminabalism” – that’s a combo of administration, ballistic, & cannibalism — as ugly as it sounds – patently unethical.)
– – –
This is one of the best WUWT threads I’ve yet seen.
(…and there have been a lot of great ones)
Re: Douglas J. Keenan (14:18:46)
Since much of the science is unsettled-speculation [for example, see many aspects of solar dynamo theories, which are now entertaining shallow & distributed dynamos], there is likely to be ongoing [merited] disagreement.
It might be sensible to consider liberalizing the publication process while at the same time insisting on the use of appropriate qualifiers. [Many communicate in absolutes where absolutes are not warranted — See CYA note below.]
Paradox
I will share a [non-exhaustive] list of concerns I regularly have when inspecting papers/claims — I am often concerned that authors/claimants:
1) do not differentiate between correlation, phase concordance, & coupling.
2) have never carefully studied the variability of parameter estimates with variation of measurement (&/or summary) scale in the context of spatiotemporal heterogeneity.
3) do not instinctively consider (or acknowledge) the possibility of nonlinear relations.
4) fail to acknowledge (or fail to realize) that if someone says there is a relationship, it does not mean they are suggesting causation.
5) fail to acknowledge that there can be relationships in the absence of known mechanisms.
6) do not distinguish randomness from chaos.
7) do not instinctively consider lurking, conditioning, & contrast variables.
8) have possibly never been trained in the practice of data analysis, even if they may have been trained extensively in experimental design and formal hypothesis testing.
9) fail to emphasize the limitations of untenable assumptions.
10) prematurely draw conclusions (i.e. before looking under every stone).
11) fail to accurately qualify statistical interpretations and related statements.
#11 is a CYA opportunity for all; this is why liberalization is worth (at least) considering (possibly to stimulate better ideas) in light of the unsettled nature of much of the science and in light of the need to avoid sterile discussion.
Regardless of [wise] concerns about practical obstacles to data publication, a way will have to be found in order to maintain trust. Without trust, the whole discussion is neutralized.
Wondering Aloud (13:27:41) :
I no longer have any idea what you are arguing about. Please clarify or better yet just stop. I know it is hard when you feel slighted but your posts are confusing me and are off topic.
We are arguing as per the topic of this thread whether a scientist is challenged or slighted in public has the right to know what the challenge is. Paul thinks not, I think, as Keegan, that he has such right.
Paul Vaughan (15:42:37) :
Despite Mr. Svalgaard’s re-launch of an old dispute in this thread, I am willing to give Mr. Svalgaard another opportunity to agree to disagree respectfully (or to respectfully & efficiently agree that there has been a ‘misunderstanding’ [possibly related to the limitations of online discourse]); this will be my final post addressing the dispute if Mr. Svalgaard stops referring to, quoting, & addressing me. (I’m hoping there is nothing grievous in the moderation queue as I submit this comment.)
So, are you saying it was a misunderstanding on your part and that you should not have challenged me in the first place?
I respect Dr. Svalgaard’s knowledge of atmospheric & solar science.
Respecting a person’s knowledge is not the same as respecting the person. In fact, just the opposite when the knowledge is stressed, and not the person.
Wang Chung (08:27:34) :
It was an innocent mistake.
Wang Chung
Are you really Dr. Wang Chung? Please, expand on your assertion.
Reply: It was a troll. I have deleted the original ~ charles the day late moderator
– – –
Paul Vaughan (15:42:37): “[…] ‘misunderstanding’ […]”
Leif Svalgaard (16:52:34): “So, are you saying it was a misunderstanding on your part […]?”
For at least the third time:
‘Misunderstanding’ is a polite term.
New Elaboration:
Some of the wisest, most practical, & most-trusted managers & high-ranking officials I have ever known project the term with a suggestively-peculiar intonation. The (seemingly) implied objective is usually that everyone can respectfully – & efficiently – save face and get back to work …
And a clarification:
I respect all people (but not necessarily all conduct).
– – –
For All:
A reminder of what caused me to start engaging in discussions like this one:
I saw projections showing that daily minimum temperatures are going to overtake daily maximum temperatures. These projections were made by an organization that calls itself an “Institute for Climate Studies”. This organization is funded by a government that has implemented a substantial carbon tax. (Note: I have verified that many other jurisdictions employ the same methodology.)
If modeled future nighttime temperatures are allowed to regularly exceed daytime temperatures, what effect does this have on forecasted mean temperatures if mean temperature is defined as the average of max & min?
– – –
Paul Vaughan (17:33:12) :
For at least the third time:
‘Misunderstanding’ is a polite term.
New Elaboration:
Some of the wisest, most practical, & most-trusted managers & high-ranking officials I have ever known project the term with a suggestively-peculiar intonation. The (seemingly) implied objective is usually that everyone can respectfully – & efficiently – save face and get back to work …
I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you saying that you screwed up royally and are afraid to say it outright and use ‘misunderstanding’ to save your face and that you therefore withdraw the challenge [as it was a ‘misunderstanding’}?
Please clarify. In plain talk.
Reply: Leif, please refrain from terminology, such as “screwed up royally”, although it does make it appear that we of similar vintages ~ charles the moderator
Last Call? …
Leif: “[…] Are you saying that you screwed up royally and are afraid to say it outright […]?”
No.
Leif: “Paul thinks not, […]”
Your words do not reflect my thinking.
Leif: “We are arguing as per the topic of this thread whether a scientist is challenged or slighted in public has the right to know what the challenge is.”
Correction: This may be what you are arguing about / perceiving. Things look a great deal different from my perspective — we’re nowhere near the same perception.
Suggested acceptable conclusions:
a) “We disagree.”
b) “There has been some ‘misunderstanding’.”
c) (a) & (b)
Take your pick Leif? (& spare the internet of a re-launch moving forward?)
Paul Vaughan (18:06:46) :
we’re nowhere near the same perception.
I give up. You wore me down. You won’t tell me what it is we are supposed to disagree on or what your misunderstanding was, so be it then. Case closed.
Paul Vaughan,
Not sure I understand what your dispute is with Leif, but I’ve been a long time reader here and can vouch for Leif’s integrity and objectivity. I think you guys have been misunderstanding each other here. Happens easily enough, esp with a diverse international audience (or just people from different regions of the same country). I’m from New England and tend to debate strongly with all the facts, no attacks, but my opponents often, when left with no viable arguments, pull out the “he’s mean” card. Such folks are invariably from the west coast of the US, Canada, but not exclusively so, their sort of behavior tends to be typical of those who are what a friend once called “politically fragile”. I’m not describing anybody here that way, btw, so please don’t read into this, this is just a reflection. Having gone back over past comments by you both, I think there’s more common ground here and would suggest there’s been some misunderstanding on both sides. It is very easy to let comments read hastily set you off if misread, I’ve done it myself, why I try to reread things in entirety, particularly with topics that I am vested in.
Regarding unpublished data:
(i.e. raw data & unedited data-log-notes)
Perhaps we can require that it be referred to as “alleged data” everywhere & anywhere discussed (including in journal articles, at conferences, & in the news) until such time as it is made fully publicly available – and published on the internet. Use of “alleged” would cost $0 and result in no publication delays. (If the preceding idea fails, perhaps it will stimulate efforts to construct better ideas for building public trust with regard to public access to raw data & unedited data-log-notes.)
Delays, delays, delays … meanwhile time & energy is wasted while more minds could be on these shared problems. (If there is a need for ‘adjusted data’, they can be published later.)
– – – – – – – –
Leif Svalgaard (19:40:38)
“You won’t tell me what it is we are supposed to disagree on or what your misunderstanding was […]”
For the record: I disagree with the above statement.
–
Re: Mike Lorrey (20:16:08)
Thank you for your comments.
I agree that regional/cultural differences & commonalities exist.
Summing up:
=
Leif: “Case closed.”
=
Douglas J. Keenan (13:04:39) :
I would file the exact same complaint against each of the co-authors. Start with any at Albany. Don’t give up. I strongly suspect you are on to something.
I would also file a broader complaint against Wang. Something along the lines of research misconduct through reckless disregard to review and ascertain the quality parameters of co-author’s work. Or just a broad complaint about data fabrication and results falsification on the paper. Identify that the data does not appear to exist to justify the results. Mention the Bellisle (early American gun ownership) scandal in your complaint but don’t be specific enough for them to weasel out of it.
Hope this helps.
Douglas J. Keenan (13:04:39) : Because the single FOI request failed, perhaps you should file a separate one for the communications between SUNYA and the funding organizations. That way it’s harder for one rejection reason to get spread across unrelated documents. Also, don’t request only the “notifications” of the funding organizations because then you might only capture the initial notice — request all communications between SUNYA and the funding organizations which are related to the investigation. I’m intentionally using the general term “funding organizations” because the SUNY Research Foundation might be involved, and we might have missed other relevant organizations. But I’d have to reread the FOIA rules as to how specific the phrasing should be.
Paul Vaughan (20:41:27) :
“You won’t tell me what it is we are supposed to disagree on or what your misunderstanding was […]“
For the record: I disagree with the above statement.
Actions are bigger than words, and you haven’t told me yet, but, as we agree: case closed. [meaning that I’ll never know 🙁 ]
Douglas J. Keenan (14:18:46) :
anna v, I had been assuming that the journal system was the primary force for corruption. It used to be that researchers were respected for their research; nowadays, though, it is not What you publish, it is Where you publish that matters most.
In the paragraph above, it is the verb “matters” that is the clue. What defines the values that make things matter?
Unfortunately, my observation is that our society has come to define more and more money as the most desirable objective that matters in the planning of a life. Follow the money.
This has not always been so. Humans in aggregate in other times have put other values far ahead ( with of course exceptions) even of life itself. God, Country, Honor, Status, and many more that a sociologist could analyze much better. Think of the large monastic and ecclesiastic orders. What mattered most?
In a sense, my generation of physicists that worked at CERN was lucky, because it offered almost a monastic prototype where what mattered most was the experiment and the next brilliant exposition ( there were exceptions too of course). Money was a means to becoming a group leader not a target per se. The carrot and the stick were the appreciation or not of one’s peers. We were also lucky because publications, though necessary, became meaningless when the coauthors are 300 and in the future experiments will be 2000 ( I have signed such a proposal 🙂 ). What was important ( I cannot speak for the present) was the real peer review in the conferences and the lectures and the huge group meetings where one had to push one’s specific publication. That was how one advanced, by the acknowledgment of one’s peers.
The above is an idealized picture, but that such an ideal existed, as the idea of a religion or an ethic, was a compass that kept the science on target.
Now why do I say that it is the money that is driving publication fury:
As a small satellite group from Athens, with relatively small funding, we had to work hard on the experiments and compete fiercely to get the respect and attention of the group we belonged to each time. We had to fight within our institution for resources which came each year with the budget from the government. An almost Nobel winner of greek ancestry had convinced back in 1965 the government to put a relatively large amount of money on the budget for our group and we managed with that until 1981, because it is hard to remove writings on the wall by governments.
Then the EU came, and a change in government and directorship mentality in our institute, where the new director decided he would use the HEP budget for the microelectronics department, since it was connected with industry. That was the insidious way the whole research effort has been corrupted in the EU. connection with industry. We had to start finding industrial partners to put in proposals, many of them fake for which the industry got money for doing very little and things deteriorated further and further, as grants started becoming centralized from the EU. Publications come in because one has to give a long list to compete for the funds.
So, from my experience it is the funding that creates the publication problems.
If the funding decouples from the central bureaucracy, there is a chance that in the day to day workings of an institute real peer evaluation of colleagues, even in different disciplines, will be restored to the real contributions and not the contrived ones to which the institutes themselves collaborate and wink so that they get a share of the money.
Money is the root of all evil. 🙂
I will e-mail you
anna
anna v (22:09:20) :
Money is the root of all evil. 🙂
Especially if you don’t have any…
anna v (22:09:20) :
Money is the root of all evil. 🙂
Especially if you don’t have any…
Douglas J. Keenan (14:18:46) :
Other people have suggested that all data should be made available when a paper is published. But competitive pressures make that difficult: the first journals that imposed such strict rules would lose some good papers to their competitors; so no journal wants to make the first move.
It is also a problem if more than one paper can come from the data. In my high energy field all the data of the experiments are on huge files accessible to members of the group, but not to outsiders, since all papers ( over 200 in one case) come from the same data analyzed for different factors.
And pondering the moral vice in which scientists, even dedicated ones, find themselves with respect to funding, I was reminded of a poem by our modern greek poet Cavafy, which talks about a philosopher who went to the Persian court tempted by its riches:
Satrapy
What a disaster, while you were fashioned
for beautiful and grand creations
that this unfair fortune of yours always
withholds you encouragement and success;
that cheap habits hinder you,
and small mindedness and indifference.
And how horrible the day you give in
( the day you let go and give in)
and you start on foot to Soussa
and you go to the monarch Artaxerxes
who accepts you with favour in his court,
and offers you satrapies, and such.
And you accept with despair
these things that you do not want.
For other stuff your soul longs, and weeps for other;
for the praise of the Demos and the Sophists
for the difficult and priceless Brava,
the Agora and the Theatre, and the Wreathes.
How can Artaxerxes give you these,
how can you find these in a satrapy;
and what a life will you lead without them.
—————————–
Note: Satrap-a ruler of a region in the Persian system
The possibility of outsiders analyzing your data at little expense to you is a problem?
More knowledge is a problem?
Pragmatic (13:49:56) : A fascinating and much needed dialog. At this forum continues the work needed to restore a semblance of integrity to greatly maligned science.
I agree wholeheartedly. I also applaud all your quotes from Douglas J. Keenan (12:55:37) : UK Sceptic (16:12:17) : Mike Lorrey (19:16:35) : Paul Vaughan (19:59:20) : Mike Lorrey (19:16:35) and Caleb (23:34:36).
On discovery of a purse snatcher, petty thief, Peeping Tom or Ponzi schemer – a citizen who demands investigation is heralded a hero. We embrace their integrity and good will. Shine a similar light on a government funded research project fraught with questionable methodology – you become anathema. Reminds me of Dom Helder Camera: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist”.
Douglas J. Keenan (14:18:46): Other people have suggested that all data should be made available when a paper is published. But competitive pressures make that difficult: the first journals that imposed such strict rules would lose some good papers to their competitors; so no journal wants to make the first move. All the more reason to build up public pressure to make compulsory upon publication, the full public release of both data and methodology, in the case of research having crucial impact on political decisions and public awareness. Also, letters critical of challenging material should always be published back-to-back with authors’ response – as did not happen with Veizer, Monckton, Svensmark, and others.
Seems kinda obvious.
Thank you Douglas and Anthony for carrying these blazing torches into the public domain with such good faith that there are good people somewhere.
AnonyMoose (08:18:23) :
anna: It is also a problem if more than one paper can come from the data. In my high energy field all the data of the experiments are on huge files accessible to members of the group, but not to outsiders, since all papers ( over 200 in one case) come from the same data analyzed for different factors.
AnonyMoose:The possibility of outsiders analyzing your data at little expense to you is a problem?
Yes. The expense is not little, it is great, and not just in money, but also in dedication and sweat. In my last experiment about 200 people spent ten years of their life building the apparatus and software, and another ten years taking data with this apparatus while analyzing it in parallel.
Your question in another context could be: somebody spent twenty year building a house. Should anybody be allowed to live in it if he/she wants to?
The effective slogan seems to be: no sweat, no data. The whole reason of putting in all that hard work is so as to get hands first on the data. Otherwise why bother?
More knowledge is a problem?
And here we come to the second level of defense of this position as “it is not easy to use the data unless you have worked with the experimental apparatus for a while”. The answer is “what kind of knowledge”.
Do not get me wrong, it was not hard to become member of an experiment if you wanted to analyse the data and if you were willing to spend the time on the esoterica. Any results though would be published under the full author list of the experiment.
Yet another case of [snip] harassing scientists because they don’t like the results. Keenan demanded an investigation and got one. He lost because he has zero evidence. Sorry, Keenan, you don’t get to have your witch hunt on full display. Go back to reading Newsbusters.
Climate scientists do not need to follow normal rules of data archiving and accountability it seems. If a climate scientist lies on his grants, and uses grant money for personal travel, no problem. A privileged breed. They are saving the planet from a fate worse than death. We all must make allowances. U at Albany staffers know this, so they cover up for the poor sod. As it should be.
Leif Svalgaard (22:16:25) :
anna v (22:09:20) :
Money is the root of all evil. 🙂
Especially if you don’t have any…
Especially if you have many
and I don’t have any…
vukcevic (14:44:53) :
“”Money is the root of all evil. :)””
“Especially if you don’t have any…”
Especially if you have many
and I don’t have any…
In such situations the evildoer is often the guy with the lesser amount, trying to pry some loose from the guy with the larger amount…
“In such situations the evildoer is often the guy with the lesser amount, trying to pry some loose from the guy with the larger amount…”
And without the Huns and Mongols pushing from the east Europe would never have evolved the way it did. Bingo! Paradise! But then, if the guys with less had just been content we might still be chimpanzees – paradise?
Evildoers? Every tree has branches, every branch has twigs.
To Anna V. 9:47:49
Excuse me, but was all that sweat paid work? Who paid for it?
We all sweat. It ain’t your data unless you paid for it.
‘AnonyMoose (08:18:23) :
It is also a problem if more than one paper can come from the data. In my high energy field all the data of the experiments are on huge files accessible to members of the group, but not to outsiders, since all papers ( over 200 in one case) come from the same data analyzed for different factors.
The possibility of outsiders analyzing your data at little expense to you is a problem?
More knowledge is a problem?’
anna v already answered this but I counter…
The scientists involved have a head start in analysis of data, their 200 papers would be unlikely to have been impeded unless either their analyses were faulty or their work too slow.
DaveE.
NO
It is the love of money that is the root of all evil.
And if anyone wants to check my family bible is the authorised version printed London 1613, in the US usually called the King James, and although a little worn and rebound by a vandal some one hundred and fifty years ago is still complete and legible although to modern eyes some of the spelling/characters are a little odd.
Unfortunately the same vandal rather did for the beautiful coloured endpapers which denote the calendar etc. It is a She bible and despite his efforts and those of other so called restorers I believe there are only some 150 complete copies of this version known to be extant today.
I prize it much.
Kindest Regards
I understand the problem of using data for multiple papers.
However, if the public paid for the generation of that data, the data belongs to the public, at least the specific data used to generate the final research study paid for by the grant.
If a researcher doesn’t like that arrangement, let him find private funds for his research.
Re: anna v (09:49:47)
Thank you for sharing your experience – much appreciated.
–
anna v: “[…] about 200 people spent ten years of their life building the apparatus and software, and another ten years taking data with this apparatus […]”
“The whole reason of putting in all that hard work is so as to get hands first on the data. Otherwise why bother?”
–
Perhaps a very substantial amount of funding should be linked to (such) data collection, since data collection is clearly of fundamental importance in research – and in the (high) interest of the sustainable defense of civilization, we should find some financially fair way to share data so that more minds can be on problems that concern us all (without incurring costly delays).
–
anna v: “[…]“it is not easy to use the data unless you have worked with the experimental apparatus for a while” […] “what kind of knowledge”.”
–
I can attest to the veracity and fundamental importance of statements of this nature. I spent a number of years engaged in a variety of ecological field work and related analyses. In some ecological field work, data collection rarely goes ‘by-the-book’. At times the norm is a lot more log notes than data (i.e. very detailed notes about quality, uncertainties, etc.) and I can assure you that the sampling is not always representative. A person assuming the cleaned-data later-analyzed is 100% accurate could not possibly draw sensible conclusions – at least not without making heavy, emphatic, appropriate use of qualifiers &/or blanket statements.
Still, my preference is that (just about) everything make it through to the literature, including negative results, so that I can see what hard-working people tried and make my own judgements about any value &/or truth in their work.
The problem remains that we don’t have enough workers on the job. People want the research done right, but a lot of people don’t want to pay what it takes to do it right. As a result, sketchiness creeps into the system via survival instinct.
There are no simple solutions, but I agree that diversity is a key to survival. A central nervous system & vital organs clearly play a critical role, but overly-centralized systems get a body into serious mobility problems. The health of the whole body is the way to avoid an undermined future as we move towards a knowledge society. Bet-hedging looks as sensible as ever.
Lack of data-access is a limiting factor in the sustainable defense of civilization.
Data should be published as soon as possible – raw, with unedited log notes.
(Any ‘adjustments’ can be published later.)
Those who collect valuable data should be commensurately compensated.
We need more competition to promote efficient knowledge-gathering. In the absence of scarce research resources, we can avert some of the sketchiness & protectionism. If we are going to sustainably defend civilization, we are going to need to increase research resources by orders of magnitude – in part to quell the crippling in-fighting in the presently-starved research system.
– – – – –
anna v (22:09:20) “Unfortunately, my observation is that our society has come to define more and more money as the most desirable objective that matters in the planning of a life.”
–
It is not sustainable.
Our civilization would be at very serious risk (down the road) were it not for the important corrective actions currently underway.
It is encouraging to see the focus rising above sleazy short-sightedness.
Now if we could just get the politicians to have a clue about climate ….
I have to admit, “She bible” aroused my curiosity.
http://books.google.com/books?id=W3oVRK4I7UsC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=She+bible&source=bl&ots=uTV0iCmtdW&sig=iW4bc9G88cJyoqgb3VDgwvYFayY&hl=en&ei=9t8ASqjcIoq7mQe-yuWsCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA93,M1
Knock yourselves out.
a related fraud:
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2009/05/merck_creates_fake_academic_medical_journal.html
“The Scientist has reported that, yes, it’s true, Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.
“What’s wrong with this is so obvious it doesn’t have to be argued for. What’s sad is that I’m sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, ‘As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications….’ Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn’t know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility!”
It offers in the comments the following:
That these “physician” researchers haven’t founded a journal paper archive like arXiv.org is telling.
arXiv is all about presenting results directly to other researchers, typically at least a year before journal publication, if not more. It’s mathematicians, physics experts and other technical ephemera there. And pure honesty.
Maybe this is one of the ways to be emphasized, no paper published unless on the arxiv for a year.
fred (17:25:57) :
To Anna V. 9:47:49
Excuse me, but was all that sweat paid work? Who paid for it?
We all sweat. It ain’t your data unless you paid for it.
Now on “who pays for the research”. The donors for research in the years before the big government intrusion were that: patrons and donors of the universities. They did not claim the data as theirs, just an acknowledgement from the universities to which they donated. Actually the research coming out was a by product of the education mill. Professors were payed to be educators, which they efficiently fulfilled. Experiments were a by product at the time, and nobody claimed the results were not in the possession of the researcher. Later universities acquired patent rights if any.
Is the suggestion that the government/collective-public has now become the ultimate feudal lord with rights over thoughts and actions? Droit du segnieur?
DaveE (17:26:31) :
The scientists involved have a head start in analysis of data, their 200 papers would be unlikely to have been impeded unless either their analyses were faulty or their work too slow.
We are talking of the subculture of high energy physics, and I do not know whether this can be generalized, though I suspect so. One has to enter into the sociology of why one becomes a high energy specialist in physics. What follows is my opinion.
Scientists are drawn to particle physics because of the challenge of the “Theory of Everything”, the holy grail. That means that a high proportion are theoretically inclined, equations lagrangians and such. But the hands on experiments require a great number of able and intelligent and highly motivated scientists putting on the back burner their desire for the theory of everything for a postdoc and the possibility of getting the data. This works on the ant hive principle incredibly well, as long as the end motivation is high. If it comes about that because of freedom for data for all, the smart Aleck graduate student who went full for theory can get his hands on the data as soon or even faster in this computer age as the hard working ant, the whole field will collapse. No ants will be found, as simple as that.
All ready there is the problem in the community of the huge authorship and who does really what . In the Higgs discovery(or not) paper there will be over 2000 authors. If not all, certainly half of them could have written it by themselves alone, i.e. could analyze the data and get the correct results, and actually many do. They all have worked for their data.
If the incentive of cornering the data produced is removed, the whole thing will collapse.
Continuing the above:
In order to solve the integrity of the data and conclusions problem, i.e. if the output of the hard work of the particular ant hive is correct data, the “world” community has gone for replication of experiments, i.e. new data gathering. That is why there exist numerous accelerator centers the world round. Because data may be compromised not only intentionally, but unintentionally by unfor seen experimental error. Even within CERN there were three large experiments for LEP gathering the same information, and there are now two large ones for the LHC, to hedge for the unforseen.
That is, the high energy community requires replication of results, not open data, possibly because they trust the integrity of the researchers but not their infallibility or performance of the apparatuses. New independent experiments.
Actually this is the norm in physics. Cold fusion was refuted by new experiments, not by digging into the old data.
It is only in disciplines where experiments cannot be performed that a problem arises.
In the climate science this would be what Anthony with the surface program is doing, gathering the data from the source once more, since one cannot have many earths to repeat the weather/climate.
sorry, that was four large experiments at LEP :
ALEPH DELPHI L3 OPAL , http://greybook.cern.ch/
Re: anna v (21:32:24)
Your patient efforts towards interdisciplinary understanding are much appreciated – thank you.
If someone wants to publish without releasing the supporting material, call it opinion or advertising but not science. If someone wants to spend a lot of public or private money to conduct an experiment and publish something without releasing enough information for others to confirm the paper, they can publish in many ways but scientific journals should not present it as being part of the scientific process. Merck can advertise pharmaceuticals in many ways, and there is no need for unsupported stuff to be presented as science in legitimate journals.
Taxed privately funded research and patents should not be required to publish their raw data and divulge where the funding came from. If they want to produce snake oil, even if the snake oil works, let them. But we should be informed that the product is privately owned snake oil and has not been publicly scrutinized. I believe in the free market and buyer beware philosophy. If the product harms you, get a lawyer and take the company down.
If on the other hand, research has been funded, even if in part, from tax free donations, and/or government or public sources, all data should be publicly available and the research report free to the public, not in a pay-per-view format.
I would imagine this would create a much better climate of open discussion than what we have now.
Pamela Gray (08:42:34) “Taxed privately funded research and patents should not be required to publish their raw data and divulge where the funding came from.”
AnonyMoose (07:02:08) “If someone wants to publish without releasing the supporting material, call it opinion or advertising but not science.”
Interesting – there is this dilemma of whether to trust coyness, which may be sensibly (but not necessarily explicitly) justified. Eerie & ominous – & interesting – maybe sensible… (we are left to wonder…)
Certainly not a scenario for drawing solid conclusions.
AnonyMoose (07:02:08) :
If someone wants to publish without releasing the supporting material, call it opinion or advertising but not science. If someone wants to spend a lot of public or private money to conduct an experiment and publish something without releasing enough information for others to confirm the paper, they can publish in many ways but scientific journals should not present it as being part of the scientific process. Merck can advertise pharmaceuticals in many ways, and there is no need for unsupported stuff to be presented as science in legitimate journals.
You realize that this is not the way traditional science has been handling the issue, but a new way coming out of this climate mess?
For example, when Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869 found out the periodic table he did not release the laboratory notes. He gave the thoughts and and deductions from measurements that led to the thoughts.
The methods had to be clearly outlined so the experiments could be repeated by independent researchers. Only then were the observations verified, all through the incredible burgeoning of science up to this debacle with climate.
To come out with statements as: “if someone wants to publish without releasing the supporting material, call it opinion or advertising but not science.” shows ignorance of the methodology and history of science.
I would agree though that in the climate discipline, and in all disciplines where experiments cannot be carried out, where only one set of data can exist, that data has to be open to all researchers.
anna v (22:27:37) “It is only in disciplines where experiments cannot be performed that a problem arises […] one cannot have many earths to repeat the weather/climate.”
anna v (23:24:35) “[…] in the climate discipline, and in all disciplines where experiments cannot be carried out […]”
^This is an *important* message that needs to get out more. The public is becoming very suspicious of climate science – and some members of the public (perhaps many) may perceive the problem as being science *more generally*. Not everyone (and perhaps only select few) will instinctively pause to contrast scientific *detective work* with scientific *experiments.