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.
-
- 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)
-
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
Katherine says:
March 31, 2011 at 7:37 am
Aren’t words fascinating? Thank you for that information I wasn’t aware the word was that old. Either way, it can be very aptly applied to much in the climate arena!
Enjoy the interglacial, while it lasts!
seems to be the same meaning in America given to “rigged” and it’s variants, derived from “Jury-Rigged”, an old British nautical term referring to temporary, emergency repairs.
“Duck” tape is a bastardization of “duct” tape; a sticky substance unsuited for ducts or ducks. Especially ducts, which get warm, rendering the applied “quack ribbon” a soggy mush of melted adhesive and fibrous mesh supposedly there to keep the duct from leaking and whistling. This product is always hovering on the border of bodge and botch, depending on strength requirements…and has been used, with mixed results, on hockey sticks, again with temperature being the essential variable.
Fudge factor is interesting. A fudge is a deliberately misconstrued representation
A “bodge job” is used in the UK here to mean a poorly executed task
So many commenters! Divided by a common language.
btw Gaffer tape (UK-only term?) is superior to the duck/duct variety in bodging.
Bodge Furniture.
Ingredients – cheap glue, sawdust, bark and various assorted scraps pressed together with a highly polished and well-laquered veneer. You get what you paid for.
That bloomin` barmpot, Briffa the bodger, botched the bloody thing…blimey!
I believe the letter `b` to be the funniest letter of the alphabet.
http://www.thedialectdictionary.com/view/letter/Black+Country/54/
From Briffa’s response to the query by Ed Cook about whether he “bodged” the latter part of the curve “(I assume that you didn’t apply a bodge here)” in which they discuss Vaganov’s explanation of the decline as due to much longer-lying snow on the ground during the (decline) period.
Briffa: “… My instinctive first reaction is that I doubt it is the answer but we do get results that support a recent loss of low-frequency spring temperature reponse in our data that may be consistent with their hypothesis of prolonged snow lie in recent decades”
Wait for it!!! Prolonged snow lie in recent decades would indicate …. colder temperatures during that period. If this was the case, there was, indeed, a decline that wouldn’t have had to be covered up. Briffa didn’t see this saviour of his dendro proxy and apparently no one else did at the time. I think this could provide an out for the bodge (defining the decline as due to local conditions) but, of course, the reliability of the rest of the proxy doesn’t get any support.
Steve McIntyre is performing a distinguished public service by continuing to study and analyze the “Hockey Team”s strange and sometimes bizarre data-handling techniques, as he has from the beginnings of his blog. Bravo!
Rereading http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/27/briffas-tornetrask-reconstruction/
— from 2005! –I see this explanation for an early Briffa Bodge, from “Steve” (Mosher?):
It’s worse than we thought. Pure wish-fulfillment fantasy. Utterly indefensible, sfaict. This is science???
Technically, this is power-fantasy —-
“I, King Keith, Lord of the Rings, will bend these unruly data to my will!”
And, Lo, it was made so, with a few keystrokes. All hail King Keith, Master of Statistical Magic!
Read these graphs, ye Skeptics, and despair!
—
“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.”
— David Hume.
Cue Cartoons by Josh…
@UK Sceptic says:
March 31, 2011 at 3:34 am
Briffa bodge? More like Briffa bollocks.
Blast it, you beat me to it!! Cheers!
A few of the above have got the origin of ‘bodge’ more or less right. It was the use of an obverhanging branch and a rope to turn a simple lathe, in woodland. The natural spring of the branch gave the return half of the cycle. It didn’t need to use green wood. But over time the bodgers’s art came to mean second rate workmanship.
To ‘model’ will probably go the same way.
Bodge is probably an inappropriate term to use in this context. It implies that sometime after the bodge was completed, the thing actually functioned in some fashion – even if only for a short time.
This functioning may be due more to the power of wishful thinking, and fervent prayers to dieties than the laws of physics – but work it must.
“Botch” doesn’t require it to actually work.
Ian B,
you said
“…For example, fettling is something you might do to an old car engine or a computer program to make it work better.”
So if you succeed in making it work better, is it then in fine fettle?
or as an acquaintance of mine once commented after submitting a dodgy quote :
that was well bodged; ample use of fiddle’s factor and crook’s constant meant I got a way with it …
I suspect that not only has there been much bodging; but also that massive applications of crook’s constant and fiddle’s factor means the whole Jerry Rigged (a bodged type of Jury rigging) lash up that is AGC theory will continue to confound those who can’t see the emperor is in fact; bollock naked.
Btw – Anthony’s blog is definitely the dog’s danglys .. ah – two great nations separated by a common language (thank you Mr Churchill)
Dave Bob says:
March 31, 2011 at 1:14 pm
indeed – ‘fine fettle’ is a machine in ‘good nick’ – or it can apply to a horse in in excellent health
but
it wouldn’t be a bodge if it was in fine fettle – quite the opposite
Alexander K and Seagull,
from the few pictures that I have seen of Keith Briffa, he looks more ‘post-hippie,’ rather than ‘ex-bodgie.’ The first picture that I saw of him had him beaming like a kid with a key to the candy store. In the later picture Mr Briffa look to be burdened with the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Frazzled,’ would be a good description.
Bodgies as such were almost dying out when I became an adolescent. I do however remeber being called a bodgie by a primary school (grade school in the U.S.) kid as I walked past his house. I was wearing flared denim jeans, a black tee shirt, and a sleeveless denim jacket. I was a bit gutted to be called a bodgie back then, because at the ripe old age of 13 I considered them, bodgies, to be passe. In New Zealand these days, someone dressed like that would be termed a ‘Bogan,’ a la, a West Aucklander, or ‘Westie!’
Well, that certainly explains where the Australian term a “bodgie job” comes from. It means exactly that, careless, slapdash, a temporary fix.
“Bloke down the pub says:
March 31, 2011 at 4:11 am
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.”
Or maybe a fix on a table leg?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/10/friday-funny-the-new-and-improved-4-legged-agw-table/
Charlatists.
Bodges? We ain’t got no bodges. We don’t got to show you any steenkeen bodges!
A bodged job is a term that was in common usage in Australia in the Fifties, it means an irreparably stuffed piece of work.
@Katherine:
March 31, 2011 at 7:37 am
=============
The big Webster’s Unabridged I have in my hard drive (1963, I think) gives bodge as merely an alternative form of botch, and in the definition of botch it gives the current meaning of bodge as its first meaning. Both words clearly have the same origin and were used indistinctly for a long time, but not so much anymore it seems.
BOTCH:
Main Entry:2botch
Pronunciation:*
Function:transitive verb
Inflected Form:-ed/-ing/-es
Etymology:Middle English bocchen
1 : to repair, mend, or patch usually in a bungling clumsy inept way *a pair of old trousers that had been botched up with blue patches* : make over, redo, adjust, or alter usually unskillfully *my best suit had been botched, and I could no longer wear it*
2 : to make a mess of through clumsiness, stupidity, or lack of ability : foul up hopelessly : BUNGLE, SPOIL, RUIN *one of those natural incompetents who botches whatever he puts his hand to Farley Mowat*
3 : to assemble, construct, or compose in a makeshift or bungling way *the rest of the report was a patchwork of data botched together Dwight Macdonald* *botching up jingles to produce what he fondly thought was a poem
Gary Pearse says:
March 31, 2011 at 11:14 am
From Briffa’s response to the query by Ed Cook about whether he “bodged” the latter part of the curve “(I assume that you didn’t apply a bodge here)” in which they discuss Vaganov’s explanation of the decline as due to much longer-lying snow on the ground during the (decline) period.
Briffa: “… My instinctive first reaction is that I doubt it is the answer but we do get results that support a recent loss of low-frequency spring temperature reponse in our data that may be consistent with their hypothesis of prolonged snow lie in recent decades”
Wait for it!!! Prolonged snow lie in recent decades would indicate …. colder temperatures during that period. If this was the case, there was, indeed, a decline that wouldn’t have had to be covered up. Briffa didn’t see this saviour of his dendro proxy and apparently no one else did at the time. I think this could provide an out for the bodge (defining the decline as due to local conditions) but, of course, the reliability of the rest of the proxy doesn’t get any support.
________________
Hey, what Briffa didn’t realize at the time is that snow is actually proof of warming. We know this now (since we’ve had all this snow the last couple of years and AGW apologists have lined up to tell us so) and so he can redo his work and change his signal. He won’t have to hide the decline, he simply reverses it. It’s a privilege to watch the evolution of climate science right before our eyes. Imagine the primitive thinking of the time, Briffa actually thought that snow was a sign of cooler conditions. He probably thought that in warmer times moisture would descend as rain and in cooler times it would snow. How quaint. Well now we know better.
For anyone interested in seeing a real bodger at work.
http://www.bodgers.org.uk/
Means the same thing as kludge. No?
I always thought it was “botch”, which also means to clumsily mend or repair something. I guess there is a difference… but I’d bet both come from the ME “boccen”.