This just in from U.S. Senator David Vitter’s office here’s now the official press release:
For Immediate Release Contact: Joel DiGrado (Vitter) (202) 224-4623
December 8, 2010 Emily Lawrimore (Barrasso) (202) 224-6441
Vitter, Barrasso Introduce Bill to Ensure Open, Accurate NASA Climate Data
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sens. David Vitter and John Barrasso today introduced S. 4015, the Public Access to Historical Records Act, which would dramatically improve the transparency and accuracy of NASA’s historical records and guarantee public access to the data.
“Recent incidents, such as the investigation showing that the Obama administration manipulated data to justify the drilling moratorium, have raised concerns that some scientists and government agencies are using misleading data to support their favored viewpoints,” said Vitter. “This bill would open NASA’s temperature records to public scrutiny and establish an objective set of data to ensure that influential climate research is protected from political agendas.”
“Each year, Americans are forced to spend billions of their hard-earned dollars to support climate change research. Since this administration promised to be the most open administration in history, it should immediately share NASA’s temperature data with the American public,” said Barrasso. “There are too many questions regarding temperature models not to allow all Americans access to this data. This legislation will ensure that our nation has the most accurate and transparent historic temperature record in the world.”
The bill by Vitter and Barrasso is consistent with the Data Quality Act, which requires that scientific information from government agencies be accurate, clear, complete and unbiased. The Public Access to Historical Records Act would require NASA and the National Climatic Data Center to immediately release relevant climate data that outside groups have long been attempting to review through the Freedom of Information Act.
The bill would also force NASA to make all of its raw historical temperature data available online to the public and would require the agency to compile an official U.S. historical temperature record with oversight from an independent council of appointed meteorologists and statisticians. The resulting temperature record would be routinely reviewed for accuracy by an independent auditor and would be required for use as a primary source by any scientists or groups accepting federal money for climate research.
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The full bill as presented is available here Temperature-Records-Act-2010 (PDF)
I had a small hand in this, reviewing some language, but the thrust of the bill came from NASA’s stubborn refusal to provide FOI requested data and documents to CEI. Don’t these guys ever learn? Of course this bill is in its infancy, so there’s no telling if it will make it to law, and if it does, how much it will be modified, or if some pork will be added to it.
Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
— Otto von Bismarck
So, we’ll watch the sausage being made here, and hope for the best. – Anthony
How about we just zero budget the EPA and NASA until they provide raw data ?
Then they will say they don’t have the funding to comply.
I think it is a good straight forward attempt to get things back on track. They need to keep the message simple that if you take Tax money and build something then you must accept the quality controls and of course oversight of the methods and data.
Quality control starts with maintaining the best Historical data and reasonable access, and its on that point the hard part starts. Should it be free and available to all and sundry without some recognition of the value in its compilation, checking and validation or by a process where commercial users pay a commercial price and research institutions pay nothing or nominal fees. Should some value added information be restricted in its redistribution? (National security, state secrets) or requests evaluated prior to release.
Knowing government organizations, how will the present “lead” organizations evolve, will they become secretive and selectively “privately” funded research entities under a labyrinth of umbrella trusts and philanthropic research foundations that are themselves funded largely from Tax grants, but also from endowments and bequests to those foundations, therefore those researchers become exempt from the effects of this law?
Lots to think about.
“I would prefer to see the new GOP president (after a damning audit exposing the fraud) re-assign Hansen, Schmidt, Serreze, et al, and appoint legitimate scientists to monitor and report on GMT.”
Hansen: “Greenwhich Mean Time doesn’t seem to change much from year to year.”
Schmidt: “That’s BEFORE we adjust historical records to show signifigant time shifting caused by CO2!”
Leif Svalgaard says: December 8, 2010 at 3:53 pm Blogging might help, but is also at times a hindrance due to the junk being peddled, and the venom spewed.
Yes, well, free speech and all that. The blogs and websites FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT are no better, IMHO, when it comes to junk and venom. And scientific illiteracy is a common characteristic of government scientists these days.
The highway robbery inflicted by the “journals” is not going to be fixed by throwing more tax dollars at them. They are tax funded now. The pay walls are there for union closed shop reasons, the hijacking of science, not for any commercial justification. $11,000 to publish? You are a victim of extortion, sir, and I sympathize. You didn’t have to dig into your personal finances, though, did you?
No, I’m afraid the science system is broken. It’s been hijacked. Government funding/control is the source of the problem. The economics of Socialism are as big a failure in science as they are in any other endeavor.
Be wary of passing new laws. Can’t the old laws work to identify those who will not enforce the current law (refusing FOI, altering or destroying raw data to which all scientists should have access)? Let the scoundrels be fired, fined, given prison time, and hve their pensions taken away. Let them know that representative democracy is serious business. Throw the bums out.
How much will this help (assuming “honest” compliance) when the sites for collecting the data are bad to begin with? I suppose it is a start.
None of the above.!
If their results differ significantly from the results you get from a audited data set with known quality controls, their results would simply be ignored unless in the body of the paper, they explained why there was a difference and how they arrived at the conclusions they did.
I do not want either the government or any organization to censor papers either directly buy dropping information or indirectly by refusing to publish. The only entity that can and should pass judgment on the paper are the readers after it is published who are technically competent to evaluate its merit.
I see your point and understand that perhaps the regulations might need to be reworded.
I think the plain language intent is, that for any research project to qualify for federal funding, it must as part of its work product include an evaluation which uses the certified data set, and satisfied the requirement to compare the results of that evaluation with what ever data source they might choose to use in addition to the certified data set.
How you would make it so the peer review process would not block such papers is a different issue and perhaps better addressed at the journal or professional association level.
In my view, the current Peer Reviewed Journal process has committed professional suicide with its manipulation and skewing of the review process. I suspect that in time those pay wall journals will die on the vine as publication moves to an open source web model (just like the subscription media is dieing on the vine in favor or blogs like WUWT). Perhaps a model like the open source software community uses where an author posts a paper to a web site, and lets the world community at large take shots at it. Then the author modifies the paper as they see fit in view of the posted criticism.
Then after some reasonable period of open review, publish it in open domain PDF or ODT format and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps with a means where other professionals can go on record endorsing the paper. If enough people of stature in the appropriate disciplines endorse the paper, it would have the same credibility as a Journal endorsed paper, as the journals simply act as proxies to perform that endorsement (or at least that is what everyone thought up until recently).
I suspect some sort of open source publication model will evolve and leave the professional societies out in the cold unless they choose to publicly and openly participate in that open review process. This and similar forums already provide much of that sort of review, except the review is off the cuff and informal.
At least that is my hope and expectation. I am sure politics both political and professional will find a way to try to intrude on that ideal solution, but I think the open software process should be looked at closely as a possible model for such a system that would be much less prone to scamming and manipulation.
Larry
‘Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
– Otto von Bismarck’
With right light (transparency) would keep out the infected meat.
My last comment probably got snagged by the spam filter.
Larry
I like the idea of this bill, I hope it passes.
Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
– Otto von Bismarck
So, we’ll watch the sausage being made here, and hope for the best. – Anthony
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This is a promising start. Let’s hope it turns out to be a good Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage. 🙂
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 8, 2010 at 4:38 pm
The whole ideas of an ‘official’ dataset is flawed. What is needed are well-documented data [and metadata] that are open for anyone to use as they see fit.
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Agree 100%. The general idea of the bill is great (although it is unfortunate that it is needed) but an ‘official’ data set would create a new set of handcuffs for science and as Leif remarks, would throw up further roadblocks to publication to those who find problems with the data set or different interpretations of how the data should be organized. This is like a question of censorship: officials or busybodies decide what is appropriate for people to read and be exposed to. Those opposed to censorship argue that information and ideas should be open, and people should be able to decide for themselves based on the evidence.
hotrod ( Larry L ) says:
December 8, 2010 at 7:31 pm
it must as part of its work product include an evaluation which uses the certified data set
There cannot be, and should not be a ‘certified dataset’. If we go down that road, we not only have that ‘the science is settled’, but now also that ‘the data is settled’. If a dataset is good [open, accessible, documented, free, etc] it will be used on its own merits.
I hate it when someone tries to tell me what I can and cannot do. Though just a wee little redheaded lass, I can get my dander up way higher than I can reach.
I am truly puzzled as to why this politician wants to introduce yet another law to enforce an action that an earlier law covers but the earlier (FOI) law is not enforced – WUWT?
What’s the status of this legislation?