I learn something new every day. “Bodge” – here’s the definition from Wikitionary:
Etymology 1
The term “bodge” derives from Middle English boccen, which means “to mend.”
Verb
bodge (third-person singular simple present bodges, present participle bodging, simple past and past participle bodged)
- (UK) To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair.
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- All the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connexion at all. (A book of characters, selected from the writings of Overbury, Earle, and Butler, Thomas Overbury and John Earle, 1865)
- Some cars were neglected, others bodged to keep them running with inevitable consequences (Original Porsche 356: The Restorer’s Guide, Laurence Meredith, 2003)
- Do not be satisfied with a bodged job, set yourself professional goals and standards (The Restauration Handbook, Enric Roselló, 2007)
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Noun
bodge (plural bodges)
- (UK) A clumsy or inelegant job, usually a temporary repair.
Yeah, sounds about right. Here in the USA we have a website called “There I fixed it“, which could just as easily be named “There, I bodged it”.
Here’s what Steve McIntyre has to say about it:
==============================================================
Muir Russell and the Briffa Bodge
By Steve McIntyre
There has been some recent discussion of the Briffa bodge – an early technique to hide the decline. I had drafted a post on the topic and its handling by the Muir Russell “inquiry” in early July 2010, but did not publish the post at the time. In today’s post, I’ve slightly updated my July 2010 draft.
The term “bodge” was used for the first time in a comment (not a post) on November 8, 2009 by me here less than two weeks before Climategate). I had noticed the term “Briffa bodge” in a preprint of Briffa and Melvin 2008 2011 (see here), where it was used to describe a “very artificial correction” to Briffa’s widely used Tornetrask chronology as follows:
Briffa et al. (1992) ‘corrected’ this apparent anomaly by fitting a line through the residuals of actual minus estimated ring widths, derived from a regression using the density data over the period 501–1750 as the predictor variable, and then removing the recent apparent decline in the density chronology by adding the fitted straight line values (with the sign reversed) to the chronology data for 1750–1980. This ‘correction’ has been termed the ‘Briffa bodge’ (Stahle, personal communication)!
Bodging of the Tornetrask chronology had been discussed in much earlier CA posts – e.g. in March 2005 here and again here.
The term “bodge” also occurs in Climategate correspondence, as pointed out by Jeff Id on December 1, 2009 here.
In July 1999, Vaganov et al (Nature 1999) had attempted to explain the divergence problem in terms of later snowfall (an explanation that would seem to require caution in respect to the interpretation of earlier periods.) On July 14, 1999, Ed Cook wrote Briffa as follows:
Hi Keith,
What is your take on the Vagonov et al. paper concerning the influence of snowfall and melt timing on tree growth in Siberia? Frankly, I can’t believe it was published as is. It is amazinglly thin on details. Isn’t Sob the same site as your Polar Urals site? If so, why is the Sob response window so radically shorter then the ones you identified in your Nature paper for both density and ring width? I notice that they used Berezovo instead of Salekhard, which is much closer according to the map. Is that
because daily data were only available for the Berezovo? Also, there is no evidence for a decline or loss of temperature response in your data in the post-1950s (I assume that you didn’t apply a bodge here). This fully contradicts their claims, although I do admit that such an effect might be happening in some places.
Cheers,
Ed
See here for the response.
I raised the Briffa bodge as an issue in my submission the Briffa bodge to the Parliamentary Committee and Muir Russell as an example of “data manipulation”.
Although Muir Russell expressed disinterest in opining on the proxy issues that dominated the Climategate dossier, they reluctantly expressed an opinion on Briffa’s adjustment of the Tornetrask chronology, agreeing that the bodge was indeed “ad hoc”, but found (without giving any evidence) that there was nothing “unusual about this type of procedure”. While I presume that this reassurance was intended to comfort his audience, I wonder whether readers should in fact be comforted by this observation.
read the full post here
Anthony,
Are you sure he didn’t misspell “dodge” as in dodge the bullet?
The term accurately describes the spin doctoring that has gone on around these ‘models’ from the start.
As a computer programming friend often reminds me – Garbage in= Garbage out.
Briffa bodge? More like Briffa bollocks.
dictionary.reference.com has a definition that’s close to the bone:
2. informal ( Austral ) to make or adjust in a false or clumsy way: “I bodged the figures”
Same thing as a kludge. Though some sources define a bodge as “to make a mess of; botch” or “to make or adjust in a false or clumsy way: I bodged the figures”
Bodge and botch come from the same place and were used indistinctly for a time, sometimes in the sense of fixing something in an inept or clumsy way, and sometimes in the stricter sense of ruining or making a complete mess of something, but always when trying to fix it.
Looks like botch has come to specialize in the second meaning (ruining something) and bodge is now used mostly in the first, softer sense, a clumsy fix.
Shorter Oxford Dictionary (in part):
bodgie /0ˈbɒdʒi/ noun. Austral. & NZ. Now hist. M20.
[ORIGIN Perh. from bodger adjective + -ie.]
A young lout, a larrikin; a Teddy boy.
Reminds me of my youth!
As I remember, Steve referred to the “Bodge” as a “gross manual adjustment” on another occasion.
What’s more interesting is the complete lack of interest by the peer reviewers in this kind of post hoc adjustment. I mean, if you can get away with altering data to fit your preconceptions about tree ring widths and temperature, there’s no end of fun you can have.
A Bodger was originally a wood-worker who worked in the forest using a simple foot operated lathe. If you had a chair with a broken leg or stretcher I suppose you would go to the bodger to get a replacement fitted. Hence a bodge.
I always liked the term ‘fudge factor ‘ but they are making the rules so who am I to argue?
Regards
Michael
It gets worse, if that is at all possible.
They say in Russia that “the fish rots from the head”, which just about sums up the current condition of climate “science”.
Definitely, “kludge” fits. “Something that works for the wrong reasons.”
Interesting the implicit relationship of intent with evolved usage, building on Francisco’s comment: “Bodge and botch come from the same place and were used indistinctly for a time, sometimes in the sense of fixing something in an inept or clumsy way, and sometimes in the stricter sense of ruining or making a complete mess of something, but always when trying to fix it.
Looks like botch has come to specialize in the second meaning (ruining something) and bodge is now used mostly in the first, softer sense, a clumsy fix.”
It appears that in “bodging”, while one intends to fix, the intent to fix it properly is absent–one starts out from the get-go with little more than some scotch tape and paperclips to hold it together until it’s time to bodge it again.
The intent is not there to BOTCH it, which may happen any time during a bodge, when the tape and rubber bands give way, and the item is perhaps ruined beyond any repair at all.
Seems to sum up the climate junkies quite well: bodging along as needed, and lo nad behold the stove explodes, and it appears they’ve really botched it after all!
I’m sorry but every time I hear the name Briffa I think of this lot.
http://www.biffa.co.uk/
Francisco says:
March 31, 2011 at 3:52 am
is on the nail;
To botch is to really foul it up. A botched job is broken.
To bodge is to get the thing working but in an unprofessional way, not something that you would necessarily be proud of.
In Kiwi parlance: “She’ll be right, mate, I bodged it together with a bit of No 8 fencing wire, some araldite and an angle-bracket.”
Originally a “Bodger” was a skilled man who made furniture, farm implements and hurdles out of green wood (usually coppiced). The furniture in particular is still highly prized today.
It was a comic character “Uncle Bodger” which went on to extend the meaning to include an ineffectual repairer and his inability to fix anything gave the English Language a “Bodged Job”. This is, I suspect, to what you refer.
Muir Russell botched ‘the bodge’.
Without knowing any proper definition the first thing that came to mind was screw up as in doing a job badly.
Bodge. The word has been part of my vocabulary since the ‘thirties, and has always meant “a poorly done repair”. A ham fisted person, such as me, often bodges a household repair because of mechanical inadequacy, but never because of willful cussedness. The user of the word in the case in question seems to me to have used the word euphemistically – in a kindly manner. A more bluntly spoken person, such as me, might have chosen language indicating deliberation.
I think that this a seminal McIntyre post. I wanted to say this there but the company was too august. The article is made doubly noteworthy, by the attempted rebuttal posts of Nick Stokes and his demolition by Stephen Mosher, Hu McCulloch et al. and Steve.
The attempt by Stokes to explain and justify the unjustifiable and the logic and “worked examples” used to blow him away, are a clear and elegant use of reasoning.
This is on top of Steve McIntyre’s incredible essay on the “bodge”.
Magic Stuff!
Anyone in the UK who is married, and has attempted some home DIY, will know what the word ‘bodge’ means. It will be ringing in their ears.
That this same word is being used in the context of serious scientific research is a serious worry. Are they scientists, or charlatans?
.
I think a bodger was someone who made rough wooden furniture from green / unseasoned wood.
So they started with the wrong materials for the job and ended up with something that might work in the short term, but as the wood dried out I expect the furniture began to fall apart.
Sounds like the ideal description of Mann et al.
(I agree with the other descriptions as being the more recent meaning, but feel it’s worth going back a bit further)
The French word “bricolage” might be in between bodge and fix that lacks the negative connotations. I agree that the words “bodge” and “botch” are often now used almost as synonyms in the UK. I think the word “bodger” was used in the film The Great Escape to refer to someone who could sort out any problem with a quick fix, but I could be wrong.
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
Did you happen to catch Obama’s babbling biofuels bodge yesterday? http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/30/remarks-president-americas-energy-security
A teaser: “By 2035, 80 percent of our electricity needs to come from a wide range of clean energy sources — renewables like wind and solar, efficient natural gas. And, yes, we’re going to have to examine how do we make clean coal and nuclear power work.”
Yep, there’s that hopey changey thing again.
Perhaps he didn’t attend the EIA presentation: http://www.eia.gov/neic/speeches/newell_12162010.pdf “Renewables grow rapidly, but under current policies fossil fuels still provide 78% of U.S. energy use in 2035” . Complete with colorful charts and graphs. Maybe somebody should explain it to him.
Lets clear this up now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/bodgerandbadger/