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From Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Herald Sun:
Professor John Quiggin complains of smears by sceptics:
In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace… Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.
Ethically unconstrained, Professor John Quiggin smears a sceptic:
In writing my previous post on the “Climategate” break-in to the University of East Anglia computer system, I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud. Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…
So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.
OK professor, let’s see your evidence beyond this missive.
Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. He doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to use that as “evidence” against McIntyre. It’s comical.
Here’s Professor Quiggin’s page at the University of Queensland:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898
Douglas M. Chatham (05:41:38) :
Note to Professor Quiggin:
When someone takes something that they legally have a right to, IT’S NOT THEFT!! In addition, the fact that McIntyre used information that should have been available through the FOIA process does not make him a thief.
=====
Better tell the police. They are wasting a lot of time trying to find who did it.
Wren (15:14:30) :
Do McIntyre defenders know if he is the person who organized a campaign that harassed the University of East Anglia with FOI requests?
The University of East Anglia received 58 FOI requests of similar nature asking for details on confidentiality agreements with different countries, many of which were identical except for the specific countries mentioned. Apparently, this was an organized effort, but the following rather amusing request was from a participant who failed to follow instructions:
Yes, those of us who participated in the organized campaign know exactly what happened. I can even tell you how we organized the effort to make sure that all the countries got covered. Go read the comments. I put a list of all the countries in a comment. People then selected 5 countries, took those countries off the list and then posted the shortened list. It was hilarious because some people could not follow the simple instructions. But what do you expect from Volunteers. it was fun.
Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
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If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.
kim (20:21:03) :
There are 137 comments on Quiggin’s original post. The link just takes you to the last page. Shameless self-promotion alert.
Using the fine-structure constant there is the probability that one of those comments either absorbed or emitted a photon, right? 8^)
“Wren (00:45:39) :
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
As a former UK resident and taxpayer, I don’t like the fact Dr. Phil Jones has received a massive 13 million pounds sterling in taxpayer funded grants over the course of ten years from ~1990 on wards and yet he feels completely at ease with the fact he’s lost critical raw data that I partly paid for.
Yeah, that’s one hell of a prank!
Why refute his “arguments” when he’s doing such a bang-up job himself?
I think I saw recently some info that Dr Hansen was in Australia this past week.
I know it is a weak correlation, but was Hansen’s presence the stimulus for Professor Quiggin’s silly diatribe?
John
Wren (00:45:39) : =>Wren (15:14:30) :
”””Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
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If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.””””
Wren,
What are you talking about?
Do you understand the purpose & nature of FOIA/FOI laws?
And do you understand the scientific method?
Do you understand the essential necessary critical roll of skeptics in the long history of western civilization and science?
It is reality [nature] that is deciding the arguments, not beliefs in AGW theories.
John
Wren (00:14:25) :
mark (14:16:07) :
“WHY not check out the CRU data for yourself? I made it available on my website, I know from my stats that lots of you go there, but I also know you dont actually look. What does this tell me?”
======
It looks like only sum of the CRU data. Anyway, I’m not sure people want to check it out, and run the risk of not having anything to complain about anymore.
Why, Wren — I’m shocked, nay, shocked and dismayed! That doesn’t sound very “even-handed” of you, lad — you *do* realize that you run the risk of compromising your painstakingly established street cred as a sceptical sceptic
Sorry. Laughing too hard to continue. My bad…
R. Gates (16:52:53) :
Here’s what I am waiting for:
1) Will 2010 (or possibly 2011) turn out to be the warmest year on instrument record? So far, the trend looks very favorable based on the global warmth we’ve seen in Jan. & Feb.)
The instrument record only runs thirty years. The *geologic* record shows we’re in a pretty *mild* period.
If 2010 does turn out to be warmer than 1998 or 2003 (depending on which data you’re using, and they were close), then how do the AGW skeptics account for that?
You’re making an assumption and then asking your question as though that assumption was an established fact.
1998’s El Nino was stronger than the current El Nino, plus we’ve just come through the deepest solar minimum in a century, so if the potential record heat in 2010 is not caused by GH gases, than what will the skeptics attribute it to?
See comment immediately preceding.
And the FACT is, (despite the completely vacuous hype you hear) is [sic] that the arctic sea ice has not been in a positive anomaly state for 6 years now…
The fact is that all the vacuous hype I’ve been hearing is that Arctic ice is *the* gold standard by which we’re supposed to be measuring the effects of AGW.
Wren (00:29:35) :
“Wishful thinking won’t make it happen. Remember, El Nino and La Nina come and go, and the globe keeps getting warmer and warmer.”
Yes – without any help from us, since the last ice age.
Anthony, ctm, other:
Could you please add a note beneath my above
R.S.Brown (08:33:37) :
indicating that Mr. Quiggin has revised his “Smoking
Gun” article, and eliminated the logical link between
the FOI campaign and the creation of the foia.zip file.
He made a lot of modifications to the article after
slipping in some snide remarks about the quality of
Mr. McIntyre’s supporters, and sealing the thread from
additional comments.
See above: jaymam (21:42:40) :
Wren (00:45:39) : “If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
Pranksters? Come on Wren. As a tax-paying resident of the UK who has on several occasions successfully used the FOIA to extract concealed but essential information from unwilling public bodies, I applaud the use of the Act to force the truth from the CRU.
Wren,
You say ‘If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money’
I am a resident of the UK and with regard to my negative preferences for state spending, I’d rather UEA/CRU had obeyed the law in the first instance.
If a state-funded organisations refuse to comply with their legal obligations, there is a good tradition in the UK of populist engagement in ‘rough music’ or ‘uproar’; in other words to create a scandal and stink which effectively disrupts the operation of that organisation, in a peaceful manner, until it complies.
Anyway apologies for the lesson on basic civics, but I remain puzzled by your post. Perhaps you could explain why UEA/CRU’s decision not to obey the law was NOT the causation of the repeated flurry of FOI requests?
Also could you give us your view on the proposition that a single response, copied to each and all of those FOI requests, would have sufficed?
@Wren: “If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
It depends on what your views are about public servants complying with the law, or whether you think scientists should make sure the data from which they are drawing conclusions and publishing articles are in the public domain. Here’s the sequence of events:
1. Around 2003 McIntyre asked Phil Jones for the raw data used in one of Jones’ papers (I apologise I forget which);
2. Jones told him it was available publicly already, bit disingenuous this because as Jones must have full well known there was no way that McIntyre could have found the data he actually used;
3. The FOIA came into effect and McIntyre asked for the data under the FOIA.
4. Jones replied that he couldn’t because of contractual agreements made with other met offices (which, way could be true, but he didn’t mention that in years that this had been going on);
5. In 2009 58 FOI requests were made to see these contracts, I think three have been produced.
6. Jones/UEA say they’ve lost the original raw data during office moves – a strange, somewhat naive answer given that what will be now haunting them is why Jones didn’t tell anyone at the beginning, or during the years of requests. It also means that all papers that have been published using these data, or derivitives of them, should now be withdrawn because the results have become unreplicable.
If anybody was wasting British taxpayers’ money it was Jones. Oh and don’t be taken in by the “deluge” theory, only those that had contracts needed to be answered the others would simply need a response which said that no contract existed. Plain and simple the evidence suggests that Jones was indulging in scientific, and now legal, malfeasance by not producing the data when requested.
I think that we deviationists can be called anti-technocrats. We’re suspicious of experts, seeing them as a would-be new priesthood that attempts to elevate themselves above outside criticism, as having occupational-based vanity and motives, and as putting guild solidarity ahead of frankness. Here are supporting quotes from a booklet by Brian Martin, Strip the Experts.
===========
Here are two chapter epigraphs:
“No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts.”
– Lord Salisbury.
“Expert: a person who avoids small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.” – Benjamin Stolberg
……..
P5: How often have you found the experts lined up against you? It happens all the time. “Don’t eat eggs – there’s too much cholesterol. …
In modern society, scientific experts are the new priests. … To challenge the experts is heresy.
Yet it can be done. The experts are vulnerable in a variety of ways. You can dispute their facts. You can challenge the assumptions underlying their facts. You can undermine their credibility. And you can discredit the value of expertise generally. Their weaknesses can be probed and relentlessly exploited.
P11: Especially when a contentious public issue is at stake, experts band together. They are reluctant to publicly expose each others mistakes, since it might hurt their cause.
P60: Most experts are remarkably narrow in training and experience. They are precisely the wrong people to be providing general direction for society.
P61: Experts collectively have a vested interest in expertise becoming a basis for status, power and wealth. This fact provides a basis for attacking expertise generally ….
P62: People rise to power beginning as credentialed intellectuals. Lawyers become politicians; engineers become corporation presidents; economists become government bureaucrats.
These different groups have several things in common. They defend formal training and credentials as essential to gain entry into occupations. … Most important, they promote a kind of society in which specialist knowledge, when linked to power, is seen as legitimate and worthy of great social rewards.
……….
Pp62-63: For the rising New Class, the only tolerable form of democracy is one with representatives who are suitably responsive to the experts. For experts with access to power, populism is dangerous.
Pp63-64: Experts are part of the New Class or Intellectual Class. These are names for a roughly defined group of people who use claims about knowledge to advance their status, power and wealth.
Incidentally, regarding Quiggin’s attack, here’s a relevant quote from Marin (P51):
Wren,
I am a UK taxpayer. I have no problem with people trying to drag taxpayer funded science, data and methods into the light. Whatever way you cut it it is a beneficial process, and leads to progress. It can either show up the science as shoddy and unworthy of being the fig-leaf that politicians hide behind for substantial changes in our way of lives and increases in taxation, or it can strengthen the science by withstanding many minds picking over it.
They were not pranksters. They were trying to get CRU to do something they could and should have done from day 1. It should never have been so painful and difficult to get the information that should have been published as a matter of course.
That begs, nay implores, the question …
(… WHO is really causing a waste of tax money?)
Tsk tsk tsk. The field of academia is all the poorer for Professor Quiggin’s effort. Certainly doesn’t put Australia in a good light. He can’t be a stupid man with all of those letters to his name. He should have known better. What on earth possessed him to say such awful things?
Under Australian law, Quiggin’s statements would be held to be defamatory. Quiggin’s respected position makes his accusations even more damaging.
Even though Quiggin has now modified the post, McIntyre still has 12 months in which to file suit. At the very least, he could insist on a formal apology and payment of McIntyre’s legal costs.
As for Quiggin, well, he’s based in QLD; Nuff said. QLD “personifies” the “state of mind” these “experts” exist in.
Wren,
As a UK taxpayer myself, I am far more concerned about (1) the non-work done by the likes of Phil Jones and Keith Briffa and (2) the implications for the British economy of the policies taken partly because of that non-work.
So actually, to have Jones and Briffa answering FOI requests is not a waste of money – in fact, it’s an investment, since it prevents them from causing the economic destruction as they’d otherwise be doing.
Speaking of Australian professors, back in 1991, an experienced Australian political activist in the peace and environmental movements, Brian Martin, Ph.D. (physics), wrote a brief (69-page) paperback, Strip the Experts, mentioned above, that describes effective tactics that were used in struggles against technical experts in controversial matters like nuclear power, fluoridation, and nuclear winter, among others. It can be bought on Amazon & Amazon UK for about $7 new, or read free here: http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/91strip.html Here are some relevant morsels:
P9: The establishment has one great advantage: endorsements. Endorsements by prestigious experts. Endorsements by eminent professional bodies. The experts don’t even need to offer evidence and arguments. They can just refer to endorsements.
P16: Experts try to define the issue in terms that make their own expertise central.
P17: Raising “other facts” or shifting the focus of debate is of central importance in challenging experts.
P19: It is also vital to study the arguments of the experts themselves. Don’t rely on what the critics say that the experts say. … If you’ve also studied the critics, you should be able to see the weak points ….
It is essential that you check and double-check your facts. … Avoid super-dramatic claims and announcements and wild allegations of fraud and lying. Even if everything you say is true, it is usually more effective to avoid excesses of rhetoric.
Pp20-21: The arguments of experts depend vitally on assumptions, whereas a few facts here or there don’t make that much difference. Assumptions underlie everything we do and say.
Pp30-31: The care taken in designing and using the model is often forgotten in making grand pronouncements based on the results. In many cases an extra political assumption is involved ….
P33: The credibility of experts as experts depends to a surprising degree upon their credibility as individuals.
P33: Exposing failures is a powerful way to discredit experts. Nothing they can do in response is really effective.
Pp35-36: It is relatively easy to come up with an explanatory theory afterwards. Scientists know that whatever the evidence shows, a theory can be generated to explain it. It is much harder to come up with a successful prediction.
P37: Most people ignore their own inconsistencies and are not even aware of most of them. Experts are no different. To find inconsistencies, you will probably have to dig ….
P39: To determine whether or not a small percentage of people are suffering from a fluoridation-induced health problem requires special statistical skills. The specialist required is called an epidemiologist. Most doctors have no special training in this area.
P41: Financial interests can be indirect, in which case they can be called career or professional interests.
P42: Then there is psychological interest. The people who back a cause frequently tie their reputations to it. Its success represents their personal success, and vice versa. As a result, they are reluctant to recognize any evidence or argument that questions their cause.
P44: Whenever an issues enters the public debate, the “facts” presented in the debate are carefully selected and packaged for maximum effect. Inconvenient facts are brushed aside, and errors, gaps, assumptions, manipulations, extrapolations, and a whole range of operations on the facts are papered over. Sometimes the technical literature in the area is purged of admissions of shortcomings, since opponents can take advantage of the smallest weakness.
P44: Since the experts typically claim to be repositories of unsullied truth, when you show the smirches on their truth, it rubs off on the experts themselves.
P45: Fraud by scientists is more common than generally realized. But it is seldom exposed. To some people, McBride’s sins would seem small: he had changed a few figures. … But fraud is an extremely serious allegation against a scientist. … It took the persistence of a crusading journalist to bring the matter to public attention.
P57: Sociologists have also looked at the day-to-day activities of scientists. What have they found? Essentially, scientists are involved all the time in making value judgments and in persuading and being persuaded by other scientists and by outsiders. This applies to every detail, including what counts as a fact.
P58: The point of all this is that the process of scientific inquiry is shot through with personal factors which may be influenced by the wider politics of the issue. In the case of fluoridation, the opponents argue that proper checking of claims of harm from fluoride have not been made. If so, this could partly be because antifluoridationists have little scientific credibility, or because little money is made possible for research potentially critical of fluoridation, or because scientists who do research critical of fluoridation have difficulty in their careers.
P59: Strictly speaking, this should not discredit expertise, but simply make clear the context in which it operates. In practice, describing the social processes and political environment of science does serve to discredit it. This is because science has been sold to the public as objective knowledge that is untainted by social factors.
P66 (“Tips”): Keep cool and don’t act in haste. The idea is to open up the issue, not just let off steam.
Keep pressure on the experts. Some of them will do something foolish in anger.
It is more important to persuade sympathetic and neutral people than to win over those on the other side.
Pp67-69: (A good collection of References.)
@Wren (15:57:40) : “Why can’t people be truthful ?”
Yes, yes Wren, you do go on don’t you? How about: “hide the decline”; the attempts (presumably successful) to destroy the incriminating data; turning data upside down; the hockey stick; the ONE Yamal tree; etc; etc. – I too could go on, for a very long time about truthfulness. Most of us here know where the truth deficit lies (and lies and lies)……
jaymam, do you have the original post? I have three versions dating back to March 13th. Can you send me what you have? jbaxter .a t. panscient.com. Thanks.
A couple of pence worth.
While I would love to see SM sue this charlatan and empty his pockets, the many difficulties he would face would include persuading any court that being “accused” (credited?) with one of the most benificent acts by any single human in living memory constitutes a defamation. This should not discourage Steve from trying, though, as, regardless of the outcome, a case like this (provided he refused the inevitable offers of a settlement out of court) would tend to extract all sorts of evidence which the warmists would prefer to remain hidden.
Others have commented that Quiggin’s accusation supports the view that the FOIA.txt file was compiled in response to a FOI request they were resisting, but thought they might have to yield to. But I’ve often wondered whether it might have been a compilation of stuff they were planning to OMIT from such a disclosure?
One question that might usefully have been asked of Acton/Jones by the UK Parliamentary Committee would be “what was the purpose of the creation of the file named FOIA.txt?”