by John P. Costella | January 18, 2010
From SPPI
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
Why Climategate is so distressing to scientists
by John P. Costella | December 10, 2009
The most difficult thing for a scientist in the era of Climategate is trying to explain to family and friends why it is so distressing to scientists. Most people don’t know how science really works: there are no popular television shows, movies, or books that really depict the everyday lives of real scientists; it just isn’t exciting enough. I’m not talking here about the major discoveries of science—which are well-described in documentaries, popular science series, and magazines—but rather how the process of science (often called the “scientific method”) actually works.
The best analogy that I have been able to come up with, in recent weeks, is the criminal justice system—which is (rightly or wrongly) abundantly depicted in the popular media. Everyone knows what happens if police obtain evidence by illegal means: the evidence is ruled inadmissible; and, if a case rests on that tainted evidence, it is thrown out of court. The justice system is not saying that the accused is necessarily innocent; rather, that determining the truth is impossible if evidence is not protected from tampering or fabrication.
The same is true in science: scientists assume that the rules of the scientific method have been followed, at least in any discipline that publishes its results for public consumption. It is that trust in the process that allows me, for example, to believe that the human genome has been mapped—despite my knowing nothing about that field of science at all. That same trust has allowed scientists at large to similarly believe in the results of climate science.
Until now.
So what are the “rules” of the scientific method? Actually, they are not all that different from those of the justice system. Just as it is a fundamental right of every affected party to be heard and fairly considered by the court, it is of crucial importance to science that all points of view be given a chance to be heard, and fairly debated. But, of course, it would be impossible to allow an “open slather” type of arrangement, like discussion forums on the Internet; so how do we admit all points of view, without descending into anarchy?
This question touches on something of a dark secret within science one which most scientists, through the need for self-preservation, are scared to admit: most disciplines of science are, to a greater or lesser extent, controlled by fashions, biases, and dogma. Why is this so? Because the mechanism by which scientific debate has been “regulated” to avoid anarchy—at least since the second half of the twentieth century—has been the “peer review” process. The career of any professional scientist lives or dies on their success in achieving publication of their papers in “peer-reviewed” journals. So what, exactly, does “peer-reviewed” mean? Simply that other professional scientists in that discipline must agree that the paper is worthy of publication. And what is the criterion that determines who these “professional scientists” should be? Their success in achieving publication of their papers in peer-reviewed journals! Catch-22.
It may seem, on the surface, that this circular process is fundamentally flawed; but, borrowing the words of Winston Churchill, it is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. Science is not, of course, alone in this respect; for example, in the justice system, judges are generally selected from the ranks of lawyers. So what is it that allows this form of system work, despite its evident circularity?
The justice system again provides a clue: judges are not the ones who ultimately decide what occurs in a courtroom: they simply implement the laws passed or imposed by the government—and politicians are not, in general, selected solely from the ranks of the legal profession. This is the ultimate “reality check” that prevents the legal system from spiraling into navel-gazing irrelevance.
Equivalent “escape valves” for science are not as explicitly obvious, but they exist nonetheless.
Firstly, a scientific discipline can maintain a “closed shop” mentality for a while, but eventually the institutions and funding agencies that provide the lifeblood of their work— the money that pays their wages and funds their research—will begin to question the relevance and usefulness of the discipline, particularly in relation to other disciplines that are competing for the same funds. This will generally be seen by the affected scientists as “political interference”, but it is a reflection of their descent into arrogance and delusions of self-importance for them to believe that only they themselves are worthy of judging their own merits.
Secondly, scientists who are capable and worthy, but unfairly “locked out” of a given discipline, will generally migrate to other disciplines in which the scientific process is working as it should. Dysfunctional disciplines will, in time, atrophy, in favor of those that are healthy and dynamic.
The Climategate emails show that these self-regulating mechanisms simply failed to work in the case of climate science—perhaps because “climate science” is itself an aggregation of many different and disparate scientific disciplines. Those component disciplines are extremely challenging. For example, it would be wonderful if NASA were able to invent a time machine, and go back over the past hundred thousand years and set up temperature and carbon dioxide measurement probes across the breadth of the globe. Unfortunately, we don’t have this. Instead, we need to infer these measurements, by counting tree rings, or digging up tubes of ice. The science of each of these disciplines is well-defined and rigorous, and there are many good scientists working in these fields. But the real difficulty is the “stitching together” of all of these results, in a way that allows answers to the fundamental questions: How much effect has mankind had on the temperature of the planet? And how much difference would it make if we did things differently?
It is at this “stitching together” layer of science—one could call it a “meta-discipline”— that the principles of the scientific method have broken down. Reading through the Climate-gate emails, one can see members of that community usually those with slightly different experience and wisdom than the power-brokers questioning (as they should) this “stitching together” process, particularly with regard to the extremely subtle mathematical methods that need to be used to try to extract answers. Now, these mathematical and statistical methods are completely within my own domain of expertise; and I can testify that the criticisms are sensible, carefully thought-out, and completely valid; these are good scientists, asking the right questions.
So what reception do they get? Instead of embracing this diversity of knowledge— thanking them for their experience (no one knows everything about everything) and using that knowledge to improve their own calculations—these power-brokers of climate science instead ignore, fob off, ridicule, threaten, and ultimately black-ball those who dare to question the methods that they—the power-brokers, the leaders—have used. And do not be confused: I am here talking about those scientists within their own camps, not the “skeptics” which they dismiss out of hand.
This is not “climate science”, it is climate ideology; it is the Church of Climatology.
It is this betrayal of the principles of science—in what is arguably the most important public application of science in our lifetime—that most distresses scientists.
[snip – off color]
I assume that many the original Climategate files still exist and are subject to subpoena. I presume those files, especially if they are subject to freedom of information requirements, would constitute the primary legal peril for all those involved. Of course, there may be some question as to whether they might have been modified in situ by the hacker team.
If the release of the Climategate files had been an inside job, I think the authorities should have identified the perpetrators by now.
Re Nick (19:05:18) : | Reply w/ Link
Your comments on this matter are entirely misguided, unless you have some very specific information to hand regarding what would be an extremely idiosyncratic provision of the Russian tax system in 1996.
You talk about “lump sum taxation rules on money transfers between sovereignties” as if this were an established procedure, of which “… every casual international traveller” is aware; but this is simply not the case, if only because people cannot be aware of something that does not exist. In general, transfers are not directly taxable; the recipients (and/or senders) are, according to the nature and purpose of the transfer, and the applicable tax legislation in the countries concerned.
The request made of Keith Briffa is that he transfer a sum of more than $10,000 to the personal accounts of the individuals concerned, by means of dividing it into a series of transfers, each below $10,000.
As a practical matter, larger transfers are generally subject to greater scrutiny by the tax authorities, with reporting requirements on the part of banks often linked a given threshold – with $10,000 being a common figure in this context. Making a series of smaller payments can therefore make it less likely that the income will be detected and taxed.
However, if the recipient is potentially taxable on the receipts (which is stated explicitly in the relevant e-mail), then a deliberate failure to declare them is very likely to constitute tax evasion.
If the sender of the money colludes with such a request, knowing the reason is for the receiving party to evade taxes, there is clearly the potential for the sender also to be guilty of a criminal act in either or both territories. There is no suggestion that actually occurred in this particular instance; as only the request is documented in the Climategate files, not Keith Briffa’s response.
In summary, Dr Costella’s use of the phrase ‘tax evasion’ is well grounded; and your criticism of it is not.
John Hooper (16:09:33) :
Need I also point out the “Science and Public Policy Institute” is a right-wing think tank with a clearly biased agenda, and should therefore be given the same credibility as Greenpeace and WWF.
Except where the former are making up BS to save trees and whales, the SPPI is making up BS to save corporate dollars.
It’s like watching rats fighting over a corpse.
REPLY:
So you throw the baby out with the bath water???
I find it very useful to read BOTH sides. Often there is some truth in among the lies. AGW and several other “Politically Correct” media stories would never work on the general public without the mixing of a generous dollop of truth in with the falsehood. The trick is to figure out which is which and reading both sides gives you a better chance of that. Also right, left or center does not mean an article can not be completely true.
As Climategate for the moment revolves around the UK CRU at East Anglia Univ. – we submit a fine summary from Delingpole in today’s Telegraph:
“It’s an important thing to remember when we talk about AGW: many of the activist-scientists pushing it passionately want the earth to be getting hotter and it for it to be largely man’s fault. These watermelons certainly don’t want the opposite to be true, because then they wouldn’t have the excuse they so desperately need to destroy the capitalist system and take us all back to the agrarian age.”
Spector (06:25:53) :
If the release of the Climategate files had been an inside job, I think the authorities should have identified the perpetrators by now
No. If it was a whistleblower leak, by a government or University employee – they are protected by the UK Employment Act. The long time line and selection of emails suggests that they are a FOI response by the University and as such are neither stolen or a hack. They are communications properly subject to FOI, leaked by an insider.
In any case they have done a yeoman’s job of exposing the corruption in climate science and the dangers of unchecked power in the hands of a few inflated egos.
It is the involvement of politicians which has caused the biggest problem. They have seen a means to extract more taxation by playing on the emotions of the untrained masses and promoting speculation as if it were proven scientific fact.
John Phillips (16:32:39) :
The science peer review process is not good enough when the IPCC is recommending such drastic measures to counteract what they say is happening to the climate…..”
Reply:
Adding more bureaucracy doesn’t work. Like you I was impressed by how the USA FDA worked to keep people honest, that was until I worked in industry as a lab manager/Quality Engineer for thirty years and saw what went on behind the scenes. When there is a lot of money involved any system can be gamed and that is my main objection to the whole ISO/just-in-time Quality system that has taken over industry. Paperwork and a management system does not guarantee quality, only testing does. ISO just makes “gaming the system” easier. I suggest you take the time to read:
The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/contributors/nicole-johnson/
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job: http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html
Here is an example of how the US food safety system was gamed by the big boys in industry.
The efforts of Food inspectors to bring the problems with HACCP were and still are ignored by USDA management, a management that is drawn from the prominent members of the very industry they are supposed to police. In the Apr 17, 2008 testimony of Mr. Stan Painter, Chairman, National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals,
Mr. Painter, stated that in December of 2004 he receive reports from union members that SRM regulations were not uniformly enforced. Painter then wrote to the Assistant FSIS Administrator for Field Operation about the enforcement problem. The USDA responsed by placing Painter on disciplinary investigation status and contacted the USDA Office of Inspector General about filing criminal charges.
Testimony: “…It [the recall of Hallmark/Westland Meat] highlights one of the problems that we have attempted to raise with the agency ever since 1996 when the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points [HACCP] inspection system was put in place. There seems to be too much reliance on an honor system for the industry to police itself. While the USDA investigation is still on going at Hallmark/Westland, a couple of facts have emerged that point to a system that can be gamed by those who want to break the law. It (HACCP) shifted the responsibility for food safety over to the companies…”
December 2004: Freedom of Information Act requests by the Union
August 2005: Over 1000 non-compliance reports – weighing some 16 pounds — were turned over
http://domesticpolicy.oversight.house.gov/documents/20080418113258.pdf
Despite this Congressional investigation and a similar Congressional investigation instigated by John Munsell, nothing has been done to correct the problem. Istead Congessmand Waxman’s “Food Safety Enhancement Act” specifically states that HACCP is to remain untouched!!!
This is a short piece on how HACCP actually works written by the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN http://www.mfu.org/node/276
Re: debusk. Police” violate” the exclusionary rule all the time–it only becomes an issue if your planned investigative activity ends up in court. Consequently, a lot of issues, crimes, never make it to peer review evaluation before a judge or jury; sometimes the crimes, facts, just lack jury appeal, as I’ve had prosecutors say. True, replication of the crime, facts, isn’t an issue in court as it is with doing science, but to paraphrase Heraclitis, the same water never passes over the same rock in the river. In short, there’s a lot of game playing with the exclusionary rule, and better outcomes could probably be had through the tort system rather than excluding facts from peer review. I will be surprised if any of the climategate miscreants are “sanctioned.”
Nick,
First, I simply disagree with you that spending huge amounts of money on energy will not affect other (potentially life saving) expenditures. Show me some numbers as to how that would work. Will Congress really hold spending on life-saving programs constant when everything else is impacted by higher energy costs? In my own personal finances, I can tell you that if I am spending more money on necessities (like heating my house), that money will come from discretionary funds, which will not then be available for charitable giving.
You make a good point about being careful not to read too much into the emails and to admit up front that some of them could be completely innocent and simply reflect rejection of particular ideas, data, manuscripts, etc. because they are scientifically flawed (at least in the opinion of the writer). Also, I agree it is not productive to propose that alarmists are driven by money or socialism or anything else. In the absence of proof of those things, I prefer to take the high road and not make assumptions about anyone’s motives.
However, I have seen enough in the emails and documents that cannot really be interpreted as innocent to convince me that the Team and their supporters are not nearly as sure of their conclusions as the statements in the IPCC reports would suggest. Even if we ignore their scientific misconduct, the Team reveals sufficient uncertainty in their private communications to raise serious questions about the wisdom of a crash program to decrease CO2 emissions. When Trenberth says we don’t understand why the models don’t predict the lack of warming for the past 10 years or so and this is not refuted by other Team members and is repeated by Gavin in response to a question I asked on RealClimate, I think there is too much uncertainty to proceed with an enormously expensive program that will hurt other causes.
Interesting essay. I think it’s true that the lay public take a lot of what science says on faith. I mean how many of us could recount all the points that make us believe in the existence of atoms – especially remembering that Einstien’s paper on Brownian motion has been said to be a contribution to atomic theory, and that was as late as 1905. I think the lay public have a sense of what is plausible even in scientific “breakthroughs”. To me a breakthrough in superconductivity was much more believable than cold fusion. Clearly the source of a lot of skepticism is the recognition that it is something that greens are all “jonesing” for. I also think though that there is something implausible in the proposition that climate experts can predict future climate. Show me how you did it or I’ll just say to myself, “time will tell on that prediction.”
Gail Combs (08:37:49) :
“When there is a lot of money involved any system can be gamed . . .”
And when money and politics meet there is always corruption.
RE: Indiana Bones (08:25:30) : “If it was a whistleblower leak, by a government or University employee – they are protected by the UK Employment Act.”
If the hypothetical whistleblower’s identity must be kept secret to save his professional career, then I believe his evidence would be inadmissible in the United States, at least, as every defendant here has a constitutional right to confront their accusers.
I believe the real problem right now is the large number of people who still accept the dire need for CO2 emission reduction as Green Earth Gospel.
I’ve gotten to page 58. In general, I agree with the author’s analysis — so far.
Unfortunately, as the pages progress the author resorts to increasingly “over the top” ad hominem and snide remarks that diminish his paper. Scholarly readers are turned off by that sort of thing. Hopefully, such language will diminish as I progress to the end.
This is a very serious topic that must be handled “unemotionally” to maintain credibility, I think. Hopefully, the paper’s verbiage can be edited.
I just finished this. The author is sometimes too prosecutorial in his analysis, and occasionally even deeply unfair (at one point he asks why an innocent man would need recourse to legal advice!), but generally it was a very good read, with a lot of keen observation, and a very good presentation of the emails and why they were objectionable on general “good science” grounds. I suspect the Climatologists will wince deeply every time Costella (himself a Physics PhD) calls them “a soft science” and compares their competence unfavorably to high-school stats and computer programming students.
The diddling of peer review and FOIA is quite damningly and unarguably laid bare here.
Moving on to Mosh & Fuller book now. . .
Richard Courtenay, I’m not making any point about the many reconstructions in the “Hockey Stick”.
I am specifically examining the cited exchanges between Funkhouser and Briffa over material gathered in Krygyzstan, from which Dr Costella draws what I think is an unsupportable interpretation.
Neil R, the email (0826209667) does not support a conclusion of tax evasion,only of advice to minimise tax and therefore maximise what is available for work:
“Only in this case [keeping transfer sums below 10,000USD] can we avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible”
There is nothing illegal about using awareness of tax thresholds to minimise tax. This is standard practice.
The fifth email (0848679780) Dr Castella cites is actually of historical interest because what it shows is the conception of a method designed to meet the ‘silly season’ December media cycle demand for a summary of the years weather/climate.
Dr Castella tries to paint this straightforward response to external demand as a sign of the primacy of pro-active PR over science,and a contempt for impartiality. The last paragraph of his ‘analysis’ is the purest bar-room lawyers hyperbole, equating the issuing of a preliminary annual climate assessment with criminal insider trading!
The researchers don’t want to be caught out without a straightforward media release that can be used by contributing/interested agencies. They already are becoming aware that the media demands that members of scientific ‘communities’ are supposed to sing from the same hymn book over every little matter.The media enjoy making mountains out of molehills. So competent people like Dr Neville Nicholls,then of Australia’s BOM, could be relied on to understand the context and content of a preliminary information release.
This communication discusses the best way of producing a reasonably accurate assessment of the year,without the benefit of having complete December data. The email’s author Geoff Jenkins details which data can be used for an informed estimate for the hungry media. Jenkins clearly states the release information is to be identified as a PROVISIONAL result. Just as clearly ,he states that they will detail how they arrive at the result.
1995 was then the hottest year on record. They know that 1996 will be a little cooler globally than 1995,which will bring ‘skeptical’ attention from the media and doubters who rhetorically expect that warming will be monotonic. Every year the cry ‘what ever happened to global warming’ would be heard,miring the researchers in the usual thankless repetitive rounds of explanations. Sound familiar?
Jenkins also clearly states this will get everyone off their backs until they release the full information after December’s data is in,processed and added to the record. He adds as an aside that nobody will be interested by then anyway.
What is so remarkable about any of this?
Flicking through Dr Castella’s endless confection of long bows,misreadings,sermonising and unwittingnesses,I wonder how he found the time and sheer hubris to pass these judgements.
He quotes-actually, clumsily paraphrases- part of email 1255532032 to press a laughable ‘point’ about climate model proof being validated only by absolute replication of the natural record. The implication of his wild attacks in comments in this part of the email collection is that if several generations of climate scientists,all ‘incompetent’ by his reckoning,had gotten out of the way,Costella and fellow physicists would have done a better job and quicker. Wow.
His opinionating on email 1255523796 is mindblowing. Making a comment like
“As a physicist,these are questions I would have been asking 30 years ago-not stumbling across in October 2009”
is appallingly gauche,and simply ill-intentioned. All it indicates is Dr Costella’s ignorance.
Anybody with the slightest interest in this field would be aware of mathematician/meteorologist Dr. Kevin Trenberth’s CV and publication record, and the fact that he,and climate science, has been asking these questions FOR more than 30 years. Trenberth’s scientific output has advanced knowledge of ocean/atmospheric processes in scale,distribution and detail like few others.
Finished it.
The paper provides a public service. Though some of the “judgments” made are “debatable”, the overall impression regarding the “quality” of the science, “peer review”, and “lack of objectivity” in some cases — seems correct.
Surely calls into question the issue of “settled science” that can be used as a sound basis to spend trillions of dollars.
Nick (22:56:56),
You make some good points. But I have a problem with a couple of the issues you raise:
Using Dr. Trenberth as an appeal to authority disregards other equally [or better] qualified individuals who have different views.
Also, the point about climate model validation doesn’t mention that the climate models haven’t been validated. The IPCC bases its projections on the climate models, and they specifically avoid the term “prediction” in favor of “projections.” Why? Because predictions require validation, and projections do not.
Not one of the ≈ two dozen GCMs was able to predict [or even project] the flat to cooling trend of the past decade; they would have failed validation. So they project instead. That doesn’t inspire confidence in the models.
The great benefit of the East Anglia emails is the picture they paint of the underhanded gaming of the peer review system, and the clear admission that the warming so often predicted has not materialized.
And the admission of scientific misconduct by Wei-Chyung Wang by Tom Wigley is a keeper, as are those emails exposing the extremely unethical strategizing that these scientists engaged in to keep out all skeptical points of view, including their conniving with journal boards and reviewers against another scientist – based solely on the identity of the skeptical scientist, who was blackballed before his paper was even read. And gaming the system in the collusion between referees and those shepherding papers into or out of publication. And the organizing of a conspiracy by Michael Mann to destroy if possible a journal that had the temerity [in their view] to print a mildly skeptical paper by an esteemed scientist. Those conclusions are inescapable when reading the emails – and these are only a small handful of the thousand+ emails available.
I suspect there are plenty more emails and other information available, such as the Harry_read_me file, for either of two reasons: held in reserve to protect the person leaking the first batch, or emails that were deleted from the first batch, which might have implicated the leaker as going along with the rent-seeking scientists. There are plenty of emails that are clearly missing a response, which must be held in reserve somewhere.
I agree that Dr. Costella’s article would have been stronger with fewer opinions. But when someone doing honest science sees the shenanigans that these climate gatekeepers were/are engaged in, the temptation was probably pretty strong to point out why they were being unethical. Many casual readers might have missed the nuances.
Although agreeing with the content of Dr. Costella’s analysis, to varying degrees several commentors [Allen63 (13:38:36), geo (16:47:55), Smokey (09:16:44)] take exception with the tone of his analysis. I understand the commentors concerns and to some degree agree with them. However, on balance I support and even applaud Dr. Costella’s writing style. The problem as I see it is that the issue of AGW is both scientific and political–scientific in that nature and hence science will dictate what will actually happen to the earth’s climate, and political in the sense that man’s response to the perceived or real AGW threat will be decided by the leaders of nations. Let nature be the arbiter of the science, and let the public be the arbiter of the politics. The “tone” of Dr. Costella’s analysis will have zero effect on natue, but it might have an effect on the public. For this reason, I applaud Dr. Costella’s “tone”. I might have worded one or two phrases differently, but then I didn’t take the time to do the analysis Dr. Costella did. And even if I did word things differently, I would likely have been slightly more “over the top” than Dr. Costella. The polictical battle needs to be fought with a combination of science, wit, humor, and explanations that appeal to the general public. By this measure, I think Dr. Costella did an outstanding job.
One of the main complaints I see at this site is that politicisation of science obscures the ‘truth’ at best,or debauches or invents the ‘truth’,so I really cannot understand why anyone would want to promote politically biased conjecture about these emails.
It has to be remembered that the file of emails is the end result of sifting,selecting and collating thirteen years of communications between hundreds of individuals for emails that deal with the PR end of the spectrum,content that focuses on disagreement.
between key figures,and content relating to conflict with external critics. Most of the communication between these individuals is omitted. It is unreasonable to think that scientists should not passionately argue for their research-backed beliefs,and not be able to quantify the strengths and weaknesses of their knowledge bases with nuance and candour,and occasional irony and flippancy.
“..explanations that appeal to the general public.”,Reed Coray,do not necessarily appeal to the truth.
Perhaps, I’m misreading the article – I agtee with the general premise that Science should follow the Scientific method. However, in this case I wish this was just a matter of the data being stitched together incorrectly as research was being done. After reading the emails and knowing as you mention that this is climate ideology, they didn’t just make a mistake putting the data together, they deliberately changed their sampling methods in order to obtain the results that they desired. This is the complete opposite of good science. They were influenced by those paying for the results – they new what results they wanted and that’s what they gave them.
Junk science plain and simple. In each case, real scientists redoing thethe major scientific samplings being used by the climate ideologists to show a hockey stick warming trend at the end of their data plot, proved that this hockey stick didn’t exist. Their Scientific Method based studies showed no hockey stick and rather a normal data curve. This implied that the samplings appeared to be manipulated specifically to cause this. Now that we have the emails we know that they were indeed manipulated to cause this.
To imply that these climate cultists even tried to apply the Scientific method, other than in appearance, is an insult to scientists everywhere.
I have just finished with the document. It was very informative. The bias was a little strong. I would love to see the same emails defended in the smae format.
Argh *same format.