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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….Just thought I’d share this….
–As T.H. Huxley once observed, there is nothing more tragic than “the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
One day, maybe, in the future a bust will be engraved…
“Steve McIntyre – The man who saved the world.”
God bless him. Send him money.
David UK,
No problem. The denizens of the realclimate and climate progress echo chambers tiptoe out occasionally to try and make a difference here, but all they’re really doing is adding to the amazing traffic stats of WUWT: over 70 million unique hits, and more than 560,000 reader comments in only four years.
People like to comment here because they know that their opinions will be read by many thousands of interested readers, instead of languishing in endless realclimate censorship/moderation. WUWT’s zero-censorship pollicy is a major reason that it has won the Weblog Awards category for “Best Science” site twice in a row.
Ian W says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:55 am
“So what else should they have said?”
They should have said that tree ring data for the last forty or fifty years diverges from temperature data. At this time, we do not know how to explain the divergence. Until we have a scientific explanation of the divergence, which will include explanatory physical hypotheses about this kind of tree rings, we cannot use tree ring data as a proxy for temperature.
Regarding the graph which shows rising temperature, and does so by replacing tree ring data with temperature data in a seamless fashion, it is just a joke. Scientists are like everyone else and enjoy a joke at times. You like a joke, don’t you?
Signed: The Team.
SteveE says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:52 am
They do actually mention these parts in the paper though.
“How can we distinguish the growth-promoting effects of warm temperatures from the possible influence of increasing CO2 and perhaps even other anthropogenic growth enhancers such as nitrogenous pollution?”
“I personally don’t see what the problem is, perhaps someone can explain?”
In asking the question above, The Team reveals that they do not understand their own data. That would be OK if they had also published that for forty or fifty years, years in which they collected the data, the tree ring data diverged radically from thermometer temperatures and, therefore, can no longer be used as a proxy for temperatures. What about that do you not understand?
Failure to publish that fact is failure to publish the most important result of their research. They did so to protect the global warming narrative.
“Where are the Academic Cops?”
There are NO Academic Cops! If there were, Mann, Jones, et al, would have been burned years ago. Science and the World of Academia rely on “time” to tell the truth of anything and everything. It may take a month or two, it may take a year or two, or a decade, or a century, or a millenia or two. But eventually, the truth will out. (Or so goes the popular myth.) There are no academic cops. But… the way the federal government has been taking over and managing everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have some soon and people like you and me and McIntyre aren’t sent to some issolated Yukon Gulag to learn how wrong we’ve been. Ever get the impression we were in “The Twilight Zone”?
Isn’t the real question, what is their motivation or who are they working for, to what end?
Here’s a joke for you:
How many climate papers do you have to read to find an equation predicting the surface temperature of the earth?
Hint: the answer is in the space above! I.e. you don’t get an answer.
Honestly, I’ve now got a pile of papers around an inch thick, every single book that Glasgow University Library has on climate modelling, and I eventually found an equation that I could use not in any of the above papers or books, but in a project to calculate the temperature of gutter water.
I wonder how with such a low opinion I could be any more horrified than before, but they’ve done it I am even more horrified by the state of this “science” not because their maths is often carp, nor because the models have massive changes from one to another which just defies belief in a “settled” science … no it’s the way they simply seem institutionally incapable of providing basic information – anything that you or I could actually use for any good purpose other than getting them a grant.
The only paper that really make sense in the whole pile of waste paper is this one: What surface temperature is your model really predicting for which I’d thank Roy Clark if I knew how to contact him
And the flip-side to this is: If tree rings are not a good proxy for temperature and climate, then tree ring widths are not overtly governed and influenced by temperatre and climate.
If that is so, then perhaps the entire tree ring chronological record is also bogus. If trees are responding more to local nutrient, overcrowding, and parasite issues, than global temperatures, how on earth can you compare tree ring series going back thousands of years. Is the science of dendrochronology also a wishfull thinking fabrication?
.
>>jorgekafkazar says: March 24, 2011 at 12:49 pm
>>Ray, dendrochronology has been valid, established science since the early
>>20th Century and is quite accurate. The problem is with dendroclimatology.
But dendrochronology depends on the ancient trees in your wood sample behaving and growing in the same way as the reference sample (bristlecones or Irish bog oaks).
But the trees in your sample may have grown many thousands of kilometers away, and will have had the many different influences you listed acting upon them, from nutrients to microclimates. So if trees are not growing continent-wide to global climatic influences, and are responding instead to local influences, then you cannot compare your sample with the reference samples of bristlecones and Irish bog oaks. The widths of the tree rings will record local issues, and not global or continental issues.
Thus the entire concept of dendrochronology becomes bogus. You cannot compare ships timbers grown in Holland with reference bristlcones from California or Irish bog oaks from County Cork.
.
.
Richard S Courtney says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:42 am
It’s well documented that the tree ring data doesn’t fit the the modern temperature record so it’s hardly needed to re-explain it. Papers published 20 odd years ago mention it so why reinterate something that is common knowledge and well published?
They also don’t include the full dendrochronology record all the way back to ~11,000 years ago. The reason being it’s meaningless.
This is hardly a big scandal that you’re trying to whip it into.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:19 am
Ian W says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:55 am
“So what else should they have said?”
They should have said that tree ring data for the last forty or fifty years diverges from temperature data. At this time, we do not know how to explain the divergence. Until we have a scientific explanation of the divergence, which will include explanatory physical hypotheses about this kind of tree rings, we cannot use tree ring data as a proxy for temperature.
———–
They did.
They also explained the possible cause of this and referenced sources.
Read the paper.
Because this forum is on ethics, I would like to make a comment that is about ethics but a bit off topic. The Diversity Dean at my institution has just been given the new title of: Dean of Equity and Diversity. Dean of Equity??? I am thinking that I will demand to be declared Dean of Ethics or Dean of Scientific Method or Dean of Logic.
The Left engages in semantic warfare all the time. We must resist.
This has been touched upon, but not expanded upon. This isn’t simply an indictment of Briffa’s work, but rather the entire body of work leaning on dendrochronology. It isn’t believable that 1) the others didn’t know about this, and 2) the others didn’t get similar results.
Who are the “others”? Start on page 38 of the Wegman report.
“Michael Mann is treated as a separate block because he has connections with every one of the other 42 researchers.”
“However, it is immediately clear that the Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others.”
“Figure 5.6: The social network of the 75 most frequently published authors in the area of climate reconstruction.
Discussion: There are some interesting features. Although Michael Mann remains an
author with high centrality, Tett, Briffa and Cook emerge as belonging to their own
cluster and they also exhibit high centrality.”
75? Isn’t that pretty much the 97% consensus?
“Figure 5.8 illustrates the proxies that are used more than one time in
twelve major temperature reconstruction papers.”
Just out of curiosity what would happen if you remove the light blue line from that graph entirely?
Doesn’t every other line on there show pretty much the same trend?
Yes, it does. If you value your reputation as an honest researcher, it definitely adds value.
You know how I know you’re not a scientist? You just suggested that it’s fine to hide data that is not in “agreement” because agreement is the sole or primary condition on which evidence is judged to be material/immaterial to the “broader evidentiary conclusions”. If every researcher in the world worked like this, we would have never discovered, X-rays, Penicillin, Artificial sweeteners, Vulcanized rubber and hundreds of other physical phenomena that were a result of data that was not in “agreement” with the “broader evidentiary conclusions”. People with your mindset would have the whole world simply accept a fixed set of beliefs with regards to how the universe works and never embrace unknown or unpredicted results.
Looking for dirt where there is none? Scuff in the paint?
The world was told the world was warming in an *unprecedented* manner. The star evidence for this “unprecedented” warming were primarily tree-ring proxies that we were told showed us a world temperature that doesn’t vary much over the last 2000 years, and then shoots up dramatically. Now the very same spaghetti plots that were put front-and-center in the reports to illustrate how stable the earths climate has been are shown to not be in agreement amongst themselves, and in fact it’s looking very much like the period of best agreement was chosen rather arbitrarily to coincide with the thermometer record.
If this is a scuff in the paint, I’ve got to see what you drive to work. I’m imagining it’s a toyota prius with 500,000 miles, no paint, no working doors, and a smoky 1950s diesel engine implanted where the entropy-inefficient toy hybrid drive sat.
@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?
I suggest a crash course in floor sweeping. Pity the custodial manager that must put these people to work, given their tenure may deny they be fired.
When I did my study on auditory brainstem responses to auditory signals, I chose subjects who readily demonstrated a strong auditory brainstem signal to white noise, and said so in my paper. I also stated my reasons. Some people (like my own brain) have rather busy brains that are quite difficult to read, even when asleep. The auditory brainstem response is very tiny compared to other brain signals. If one can mathematically eliminate random strong synaptic brain signals, one could find out if the auditory brainstem area is sensitive to frequency-specific signals. The problem is finding subjects whose strong random signals can be eliminated, because in some people, they are not random. Some folks just have high levels of regular synaptic energy, and cannot be used to study the auditory brainstem. So I had to choose subjects that readily demonstrated an easily identifiable auditory brainstem response to broad band white noise, and THEN I measured their brains with frequency specific signals. I did not eliminate any subjects after I gathered my data.
The point of my post is this: If subjects are not chosen randomly, you must state this very clearly in your methods. I eliminated all potential subjects but those with auditory brainstem signals that could be measured at such a fine 5 to 6 synaptic peak level, THEN I did my study on frequency specificity. All subjects demonstrated auditory brainstem specificity at each synaptic peak. Had they not shown this (or if some subjects did and some did not, or if parts of the brainstem did and parts did not), I would have had to say the results were not significant across all 5 to 6 peaks, in that frequency specificity was not consistently demonstrated.
The researchers being criticized in this thread eliminated their subjects (or in this case, part of the data collected from their subjects) AFTER the study was completed, and then had the audacity to say that there was significance.
Bad form.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:19 am
Ian W says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:55 am
“So what else should they have said?”
They should have said that tree ring data for the last forty or fifty years diverges from temperature data. At this time, we do not know how to explain the divergence. Until we have a scientific explanation of the divergence, which will include explanatory physical hypotheses about this kind of tree rings, we cannot use tree ring data as a proxy for temperature.
Regarding the graph which shows rising temperature, and does so by replacing tree ring data with temperature data in a seamless fashion, it is just a joke. Scientists are like everyone else and enjoy a joke at times. You like a joke, don’t you?
Signed: The Team.
I think you missed the /sarc 😉
Dendrothermometry based on tree rings must be the most unreliable method of assessing ‘temperature’ that there is. Did anyone bother to speak to a botanist? Or even to a jobbing gardener?
Outside the office where I am typing at the moment are three identical species trees. The closest is very big growing well next to it is a more medium size tree smaller trunk and then same distance away from the smaller tree is a wimp of a tree smaller trunk not growing so well at all.
The medium tree was planted first about 10 years ago. A year later both of the other trees were planted the large one and the wimp. So now a dendrothermometrist can choose which ‘temperature’ is required by choosing trees. At one end there is a history of warm weather and at the other end there is cold weather and in the middle temperate conditions pertained.
On a larger scale anyone who has been in forests knows of some stands of trees that do well and others that for no obvious reason do not. So even large scale cherry picking is possible for the dendrothermometrist.
So ‘cherry pick’ trees to get the results wanted. Then if even those results inconveniently don’t show what is required just use them where they support the hypothesis and auto-discard any that do not.
So it appears that the entire economy of the world depends on reports generated by misused statistics based on selective use of choose your own trees invented data.
And politicians find this acceptable?
This all is very convincing to me.
But there is one question left:
Would it be possible, that the other lines in that diagram (Jones, Mann, etc.) are also wrong, – truncated or massaged?
Has someone checked all the other data?
At least they are from the same CRU gang…
This is the difference between fact-based policymaking and policy-based factmaking.
SteveE says:
March 25, 2011 at 7:13 am
Theo Goodwin says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:19 am
Ian W says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:55 am
“So what else should they have said?”
They should have said that tree ring data for the last forty or fifty years diverges from temperature data. At this time, we do not know how to explain the divergence. Until we have a scientific explanation of the divergence, which will include explanatory physical hypotheses about this kind of tree rings, we cannot use tree ring data as a proxy for temperature.
———–
“They did.
They also explained the possible cause of this and referenced sources.
Read the paper.”
I won’t say that you lie; rather, I will say that you interpret them overly generously. By the way, don’t assign me work that you should be doing. You produce the quotations.
SteveE says:
March 25, 2011 at 7:09 am
Sir, there are incredible questions and rumors about the judgement of Barack Obama. However, if I lie to you about the judgement of Barack Obama, that moral wrong is not made to disappear or diminished by the fact of questions or rumors. Take an Introduction to Ethics course. You are out of your league.