Excerpts from the Daily Mail article here:
Head of ‘Climategate’ research unit admits he hid data – because it was ‘standard practice’
The scientist at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ row over global warming hid data ‘because it was standard practice’, it emerged today.
Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.
The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university’s server and posted online.
Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.
Prof Jones today said it was not ‘standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.
He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.
Appearing before the committee’s hearing into the disclosure of data from the CRU alongside Prof Jones, the university’s vice chancellor Prof Edward Acton said he had not seen any evidence of flaws in the overall science of climate change – but said he was planning this week to announce the chair of a second independent inquiry, which will look into the science produced at CRU.
h/t to WUWT reader Richard Lawson
UPDATE: Steven Mosher writes in comments about some relevant history that disproves Dr. Jones claim of “standard practice”:
==========================
OK. Everybody write the UEA committee.
Jones says its standard practice NOT to share data.
1. in 2002 PRIOR to the publication of MM2003 Jones shared
data with Mcintyre. Jones was aware of confidentiality agreements.
“Dear Steve,
Attached are the two similar files [normup6190, cruwld.dat] to those I sent before which should be for the 1994 version. This is still the current version until the paper appears for the new one. As before the stations with normal values do not get used.
I’ll bear your comments in mind when possibly releasing the station data for the new version (comments wrt annual temperatures as well as the monthly). One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. With monthly data I can use even one value for a station in a year (for the month concerned), but for annual data I would have to decide on something like 8-11 months being needed for an annual average. With fewer than 12 I then have to decide what to insert for missing data. Problem also applies to the grid box dataset but is slightly less of an issue.
I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available. I would like to see more countries make their data freely available (and although these monthly averages should be according to GCOS rules for GAA-operational Met. Service.
Cheers
Phil Jones”
http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/06/a-2002-request-to-cru/
2. After the publication of MM03 he refused to share that data with Hughes in Feb 2005:a month after MM05 was published and a month after Wigly and he discussed ways to avoid FOIA. He refused
again with Mcintyre in 2007, citing confidentiality agreements.
3. Fully aware of the confidentiality agreements Jones shared the data
with Webster and with Rutherford.
His standard practice was this.
If Jones had no reason to suspect you as an individual he would violate confidentiality agreements and send you data. If jones didn’t like your results or your treatment of his co author Dr. Mann, then he would refuse you data.
There is nothing standard about this practice.
===================================
It appears once Dr. Jones learned that Steve McIntyre had skeptical views, his unwillingness to share data became “standard practice”. – Anthony
Phil Jones: “You’re only seeing a tenth of one per cent of my emails in this group. l don’t think there’s anything in those emails that supports any views that I or the CRU are trying to pervert the peer review process in any way. I’ve just been giving my views on specific papers
What about a FOIA request for the 99.9 per cent missing?
Douglas Cohen (12:58:34) : The article “Big Science Poker Game” at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5221 explains how non-profit researchers acquire this attitude.
I tend to agree with this point of view, many primitive areas of science resembles cargo-cult-science more than real science, in fact this is exactly what Richard Feynman concluded:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
However, the closer you get to the difficult parts of science like physics, mathematics and chemistry, the less cargo-cult-science you find. Why so much cargo-cult-science is found in climate science is an interesting question, in particular since climate science is so strongly based on both physics and mathematics.
Again, a claim without any explanation is pointless. Imagine Einstein stating that that the speed of light is constant without an explanation, now what could we learn from that?
Why would any sane person get their news from the Daily Mail?
@Nick (12:29:22) :
“Not many scientists here, are there?”
Plenty, myself included, but even if there were not, most people can see that your post is full of nonsense.
No one asked for interim values, only the raw data and the methodology used to produce the results. Without those, there is no way to reporduceor falsify the work.
You have a king-sized vision of peer-review. You can’t be be saying that all the CRU papers that were peer-reviewed that way before publication. That was absolutely NOT done by anyone who reviewed CRU papers; they didn’t have the data, either! What you describe is what other scientists want to do in order to coorborate or falsify the work.
However, that was NOT the case with the datasets in question. The only constraints were to include the source of the data, the caveats, and not charge for the data itself. In fact, in the Canadian case, the agreement clearly allows charging for “value added.”
Your responses are classics in discombobulation!
So whats the point of “peer review” if the datas not shared as standard practice?
And why does is called climate “science” ( such as we see it now) the exception?
Its just as bad as we suspected, in fact its probably worse, with Mr Jones and his pals virtually destroying the idea of science in short order in favour of a faith based system.
I cannot understand how things have been allowed to go this far.
Jail the lot of them.
As there are many ‘climate scientists’, why not ask some of them (the non-CRU ones) what the standard practice is in climate science.
This could prove/disprove Jones’ statement.
I was also distrubed that in Steve Moshers’ comment, Jones is quoted as saying:
“One problem with this is then deciding how many months are needed to constitute an annual average. With monthly data I can use even one value for a station in a year (for the month concerned), but for annual data I would have to decide on something like 8-11 months being needed for an annual average.”
Statistics is not my forte so I was a little surprised that Jones could develop a monthly annual temp value with ONE data point. Any statistician care to comment in terms that us laymen can understand (and believe).
Gee, you would think temperature data should be treated with the same level of secrecy that nuclear bomb design is.
Of course if you have something to hide, maybe it should …
A major start from scratch do over is needed. First up, prove CO2 can do what it presumed to do. And can’t we just measure that point?
He may be right.
Doing ‘reverse science’, where the result is set and just has to be proven, there are other rules reversed as well.
Don’t you understand?
I bet this wouldn’t have applied only to their temperature data. If that alone had been released, it would not have severely lowered the commercial value of their entire data sets, which included precipitation, humidity, and wind. Most potential commercial purchasers would not have gained the knowledge they wanted from temperature alone.
Therefore, this seems like an unjustified, letter-of-the-law interpretation of the situation by Jones.
Poor Jones, he looks so silly with all his excuses not to share data.
How can we take somebody like him and his work still seriously?
I think with his appearence before the committee he really lost credibility
Whoever leaked those emails last year, if you’re reading this – thank you!
Here is the video
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5979
Jones’ testimony begins at 1:02. At 1:12 he states that all methods are disclosed in the scientific papers. The ‘standard practice’ remark comes at 1:17. It is clear that he is referring to ‘codes’ rather than data, and if you review the question to which he is responding it is clear that this is meant as ‘computer codes’ or software.
Jones is explaining that it is not standard practice to release computer software as part of publishing a paper. Which is no more or less than the truth.
Now where in the video does he say that not sharing data is ‘standard practice’? Time reference please.
For those readers outside the UK – the Daily Mail’s credibility on matters scientific is pretty much zilch.
but climategate shows us (paraphrase)
….don’t you guys tell anyone about the UK freedom of information act……
that is standard too?
I hope the investigation also gets into the issue of why corrections/adjustments/homogenizations/etc/etc/etc are not fully documented for EVERY change to EVERY data point, which I would expect of anyone’s interpretation of scientific method.
It is not only important to know which raw data sets were AVAILABLE to be used by CRU, we need to know which raw data WAS used, then HOW that raw data was manipulated (or discarded) to achieve the results that CRU publish. As we saw with Harry’s readme file, this is not obvious.
Just to be clear – Jones is a Climactic Researcher which is climate
Patchy Morals is a Climaxtic Researcher which is to do with climax.
If it is not standard practice, then why do many journals and societies have an archival requirement for data and methods?
Remember that it was the Royal Society’s requirement that got Briffa to release his data.
Enron leaders are in jail for this reason.
“intangible right to honest services”
Jones can’t release data as he says in his e-mail because people want to see if he is dishonest.
Jone thinks his science is fine and understand otheres can’t repeat his findings.
Just listening to the committee when questioned if the peer reviewers of his reports requested the raw data, methodology and computer codes. Phil Jones said:
“They’ve never asked”
So Phil Jones has admitted in his own words the peer review process was reduced to a simple sign off procedure. How is it possible to peer review the final product without knowing the methodology.
This one admission alone is priceless. And reason enough to scrap the entire output of the CRU. Its reports now boil down to three people (Phil and a couple of post grad researchers) and their opinion.
PJB (12:11:49) :
You submit answers to test questions and get a passing grade.
When asked to show your work you reply: “Why should I?”
GUILTY AS CHARGED!
That’s a great point, and one any University Prof *should* understand. If you don’t show your work you fail.
I recall on a few occasions neglecting to follow the “show your work” instructions and getting correct answers marked wrong for it. I never bitched and moaned and complained to the Dean about it, it was my fault.
Do you struggle to remove those stubborn, hard to hide declines?
Are you wasting hours each day fighting endless Freedom of Information requests?
Are you wasting time and money torturing your data to make it confess?
Help is at hand with Professor Ravetz’s PNS. With PNS you don’t have to let observations get in the way of your theories because PNS sweeps away that bugbear of all climate scientists – falsifiability. With Professor Ravetz’s PNS everything becomes consistent with your theory.
Weather too cold? Hey, no problem – with PNS it’s all part of your theory. Himalayan glaciers not in meltdown? No problem. With PNS you can sweep it under the carpet. Steve McIntyre on your case? No problem with a quick squirt of Professor Ravetz’s PNS.
PNS – kills scientifc methods – dead.
Nick (12:29:22)
Dear Nick,
the harder people like you fight to hide things the more suspicious you look.
So please, put your back into it man! Your not working hard enough. Don’t hold anything back! Fight on man, fight on. Show your true colors!
LET US SEE HOW AWFUL AND CURRUPT THIS WHOLE GLOBAL WARMING FARRAGO IS!
In a normal science, the most powerful test of an hypothesis and its evidence is via experimental replication. In comparison, peer review is a poor second cousin of experimental replication.
With Climate Science hypotheses, experimental replication is generally not possible – there is often no experiment to begin with. The best that can be done is to re-analyse the climate data. This is why it is so important to share the data that climate hypotheses are based on – there is no other way to approximate an experimental replication.
For Jones to say “it was not ’standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research” means that climate scientists are effectively preventing replication tests – and this means that what they are practicing is not science.
Vincent (13:42:07) :
That’s a global warming sham–wow if ever there was one!
Wren (12:40:17) :
Ok. Then the CRU Climate Research data was actually a Climate Survery Response, in which case, it’s much like the IPCC advocacy survey. Opinion, not actual findings.
To be fair, Jones did say the data does not support any warming conclusively, and as far back as 15 years nothing happening.
“The journals never asked to see the data.”
Peer-review process is clearly non-existent for any paper that supports the consensus.
See my post here.
Simon
Australian Climate Madness