NOTE: since this is clearly an important finding with far reaching implications, this will be a “top post” at WUWT for the next couple of days. I urge other bloggers to spread the word. – Anthony
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Just when you think the bottom of the Hockey Stick rabbit hole has been reached, Steve McIntyre finds yet more evidence of misconduct by the Team.
The research was from Briffa and Osborn (1999) published in Science magazine and purported to show the consistency of the reconstruction of past climate using tree rings with other reconstructions including the Mann Hockey Stick. But the trick was exposed in the Climategate dossier, which also included code segments and datasets.
In the next picture, Steve shows what Briffa and Osborn did – not only did they truncate their reconstruction to hide a steep decline in the late 20th Century but also a substantial early segment from 1402-1550:
As I’ve written elsewhere, this sort of truncation can be characterized as research misconduct – specifically falsification. But where are the academic cops? Any comment from Science magazine?
Steve also discusses the code underlying the plot and you can see how the truncation is a clear deliberate choice – not something that falls out of poorly understood analysis or poor programming.
In the comments, Kip Hansen posts the following:
In reference to Mann’s Trick….obliquely, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on Zicam (a homeopathic nasal spray) ruled in part:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/health/23bizcourt.html?_r=1&hpw
The Supreme Court has said that companies may be sued under the securities law for making statements that omit material information, and it has defined material information as the sort of thing that reasonable investors would believe significantly alters the ‘total mix’ of available information.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court on Tuesday, roundly rejected Matrixx’s proposal that information can be material only if it meets standards of statistical significance.
‘Given that medical professionals and regulators act on the basis of evidence of causation that is not statistically significant,’ she wrote, ‘it stands to reason that in certain cases reasonable investors would as well.’
Thus, hiding or omitting information, even if one feels it is ‘erroneous’ or ‘outlying’ (or whatever they claim) is still possibly fraudulent ( or in this case, scientifically improper) if it would ‘add to the total mix of available information’. Statistical significance is not to be the deciding factor.
In the case of Briffa and Osborn, no statistical fig leaf was applied that justified the truncation of data, so far as I can see.
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SteveE says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:59 am
“Instrumental temperatures (1871-1997) are in black” [quote from the paper]
However the paper mentions that other temperatures go back further in to the 17th and 18th centuary that aren’t included on that line:
“Others also incorporate the longest instrumental series stretching back into the 17th and 18th centuries.”
They shuold probably be sent to jail for not showing these older temperature records as well based on the majority of comments on this blog.
SteveE, you are changing the topic. So is there some reason we should consider your otherwise illogical diversion onto the admittedly not shown older instrumental records? Maybe there is something not shown that should be shown, or maybe not. But what does that have to do with the fact that the paper already does not show the proxy divergences, whose divergent function means and proves that the proxy displayed there simply cannot be used as temperature and raises the question as to why the authors used it at all and falsely portrayed it as “temperature”?
As soon as the name of a Team-member is recognised as an author of a paper, the automatic reaction will be; Hmmm, I wonder ………??
It will be the same reaction as when you see the name of that stoat-guy….what was his name again? The Wikipedia bully? Hmmmm. I have forgotten it.
Ralph, you need to research what dendro chronology is. As you mention, trees respond to many things, however trees that grow in the same area often have wide and narrow rings in synch with each other, since they are facing pretty much the same climatic conditions.
Dendrochronology takes many trees of known ages, and constructs a pattern of wide and narrow rings. Then when a tree of unknown age is found, it’s ring pattern is compared against the standard. If a match is found, that is the time period during which the tree grew.
The key is that you must have a unique standard for every area you want to investigate. A tree from England cannot be compared against a standard from Germany for example.
>>MarkW says: March 25, 2011 at 10:48 am
>>Ralph, you need to research what dendro chronology is.
I know very well what dendrochronology is – and you are wrong.
Firstly, you DO need to compare with trees outside your reagion, because very few areas have trees that go back thousands of years. That is why bristlecone and Irish bog rings are in great demand.
Secondly, the whole isue with YAD061 (hide the decline) is that this tree was different to all the other trees innthis region, so all trees do NOT grow in the same way. Competition for light and nutrition being prime reasons why some trees will have different bands of large and small rings.
But if trees are responding to VERY local growth issues, such as crowding from other neighbour trees, then they will not be reflecting the wider climatic issues of the day. And if trees are not reflecting wider climatic issues, as YAD061 was clearly not, then you cannot use tree ring widths to determine a chronologicsl sequence, and you cannot use tree rings to determine an age for a particular wood sample.
Even if the bristlecone sequence was reasonably reliable, because the trees were widely spaced and in similar conditions, the wood sample you are trying to date may be a YAD061 – a non-regular tree that had a stunted youth and old age, but a vibrant middle age, and thus a tree ring sequence that has nothing to do with wider climatic conditions, and nothing to do with the wonderful chronological sequence you have derived.
.
Steve McIntyre is a genius.
Anything short of “Einstein of the 21st century” is not giving enough credit.
I have trouble just keeping up, backtracing this fraud is astonishing.
12 years, i’ll bet they thought they had gotten away with it.
peace
SteveE says, “They should probably be sent to jail for not showing these older temperature records as well based on the majority of comments on this blog.” — Can’t speak for everybody, but I don’t believe they deserve to be in jail. Here are a few other places I don’t believe they should be: in academia teaching our young; in pharma; on wall street; in the clergy. They should be working in professions where their particular skills are valued and admired, such as politics, law, advertising and selling used cars.
The Yamal series has played a key role in this drama. Here are the GPS coordinates for the site in which the Yamal trees were cored: 67 08’N, 69 57’E. If you use Google Earth to visit this location you will see that it is a barren landscape where the only trees that grow there grow immediately on the banks of the rivers. It is obvious from the conditions at Yamal that the growth patterns of these trees are highly influenced by annual flooding. Nowhere has the Team established that they can reliably recover a temperature signal from these tree rings (an no peer review has ever bother to ask them to justify this audacious claim). Given the tenuous nature of the treemometer claim, it is incumbent on the Team to fully disclose any and all adverse data that could shed light on the suitability of these tree ring series as temperature proxies. To do otherwise is simply dishonest and intentionally misleading.
What the Team is claiming is that the trees were temperature responders from 1550 to 1960 but not from 1402 to 1550 and from 1960 to 2000. Based on what!?!?! It is more likely that any correlation between temperature and tree rings is purely coincidental.
All of which means nothing, Mark W. Yes, tree rings may all vary consistently within a given area, but that in no way means that temperature is the driver of the variance. Trees respond to many stimuli from year to year. Depending on the species, temperature is one of the least significant of those drivers.
This is more than just and everyday scandal, it is proffessional misconduct with intent to push the political aganda into areas where money was to be wasted on a colossal scale and livelyhoods ruined. It is something that every scientist should stand up and distance themselves from, that goes for the IPCC too.
Don’t hold your breath, they will try to sweep it under the carpet and deny it and censor it. I never use the word conspiracy, but somehow if they do not withdraw and apologise for the way this pseudoscience was used, I cannot find a more apt word.
Bunch of “jackwaggon” CO2 con-men.
Not long, now. The Interweb is going to do to Scientific Doctrine what the engine did to the horse and buggy.
Which is GETTING THE HORSE OFF THE FRONT OF THE BUGGY.
What a disgustingly greedy and adolescent self-professed ‘brain’ of the social body.
I think this only the tip of the iceberg. Once they begin to decipher all the comments in the code (they are already starting to see fishy notes). more artificial declines/omissions will be seen probably mainly in the adjusted global temperatures. One wonders if the mole was not Harry……
BTW no change whatosever in SST’s ht R Spencer
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/03/global-sst-update-through-mid-march-2011/#comment-13787
Apologies correct link
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/03/global-sst-update-through-mid-march-2011/
I think that there are two answers to the central question: “Where are the academic cops?” Answer 1. Having academic doughnuts at the metaphorical coffee shop.
Answer 2. It’s a citizen militia, go look in the mirror.
TallDave says:
March 25, 2011 at 8:48 am
“This is the difference between fact-based policymaking and policy-based factmaking.”
Very clever play on words, TallDave. The policy-based factmakers are usually communists who are quite eager to mold science to fit their policies.
What disappoints me are the so-called “inquiries” which ended up being nothing but EPIC whitewashes.
SteveE:
At March 25, 2011 at 7:09 am you say to me:
“This is hardly a big scandal that you’re trying to whip it into.”
Say what!
I am not trying to “whip” this into anything. I do not need to because it is the greatest scientific scandal since the Piltdown Man. Historians of science, of scandals, and of frauds will study it for generations to come.
Indeed, the similarities to Piltdown Man are striking: i.e.
(a) the unjustifiable stitching together of parts of two different artifacts
(b) in attempt to claim that the resulting construct provides a single indication,
(c) followed by strong assertions that there was nothing wrong with the construct.
Richard
Moderators:
My recent response to a comment to me from SteveE seems to have disapeared perhaps because it includes the f word. I would be grateful if you were able to retrieve it.
Richard
So, when will we see all this on MSNBC? /sarc
Maybe Fox?
JDN says:
March 25, 2011 at 7:47 am
@Scottish Sceptic says:
March 25, 2011 at 2:09 am
That’s a fantastic summary. I would love to read an expanded version. Are you blogging this somewhere?
Yes – click on Scottish Sceptic and it will take you to his site.
YAMAL, Hide the Decline, McShane and Wyner, yet we still have AGW groupies baying the mantras; this isn’t science anymore, it is a pathology.
PhilInCalifornia,
Thanks. This is not the place to get into a mud-slinging contest about pharma, but blithering idiots sometimes evoke an involuntary response from me. I compare what the Team has done with their data to medical clinical trials and can’t believe they get away with their assertions of significance and certainty. And pharma years ago went to archiving ALL trials done–whether positive or negative for a drug. Wouldn’t it be funny if the Team had to call a government agency and report whenever a citizen had a complaint about their “product?” Wouldn’t it be funny if the government could fine them billions of dollars for making claims based on scientific data that the government hadn’t approved in advance?
Yes, people’s lives are at stake with the pharma industry–are they not also at stake with the AGW industry? And in far greater numbers, with no oversight, and government complicity. It sickens me.
Richard S Courtney says:
“Indeed, the similarities to Piltdown Man are striking: i.e.”
You forgot two:
(d) The fraud does not detract from the related scientific theory (evolution)
(e) The scientific theory turned out to be true
David T. Bronzich says:
March 25, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Answer 2. It’s a citizen militia, go look in the mirror.
Yup, dead right, I for one am punching below my weight in this.
Up to now my MP has ignored my emails, so now is the time to “gain people’s attention”