Royal Society Bemoans Freedom of Scientific Information
This is a collection of articles related to the In an interview with the Guardian by Sir Paul Nurse of the Royal Society that in connection with FOI:
I have been told of some researchers who are getting lots of requests for, among other things, all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions. If it is true, it will consume a huge amount of time. And it’s intimidating
For the record, I personally have never submitted an FOI request to any UK organization. The Bishop Hill article linked below shows the depth of known claims.
Here’s the reactions:
Freedom of information laws are being misused to harass scientists and should be re-examined by the government, according to the president of the Royal Society. Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse told the Guardian that some climate scientists were being targeted by organised campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, aimed at intimidating them and slowing down research. He said the behaviour was turning freedom of information laws into a way to intimidate some scientists. -– Alok Jha, The Guardian, 25 May 2011
It’s rather as if the science has taken a leave of absence from the Royal Society and only the scientists remain. -–Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 26 May 2011
The solution to Sir Paul’s problem is simple: If academics do not like the scrutiny that comes with being paid by the taxpayers, they should stop accepting public money. –Richard Tol, 26 May 2011
Bob Ward says that the intention is to trawl through scientists work and find errors. He obviously doesn’t like the idea. There is a name for the process of looking for errors in someone else’s work. It’s called science, —WardRe, 26 May 2011
Dear Climatologists: It is very simple. My taxes have been used to pay you to collect data on my behalf. If you do not feel able to allow me access to that data, I feel no need to continue paying you. What you do on your own time is yours. But what you do on my dime is mine. Simple. —Joe Sixpack, 26 May 2011
The problem with the tactic of denying information and protesting is that no-one believes it any more. So it makes the communication and sales problem worse and worse. The general public concludes that there must be something wrong or they would release it all. What this is doing, its producing ever more skepticism about AGW and climate science. You cannot get there from here. The only solution is to publish the lot, immediately. It then might be that all kinds of holes will emerge. But trying to keep it all secret is not going to work either. You cannot avoid the conclusion that climate science is really in crisis. It is destroying itself as a credible discipline by the public conduct of its most aggressive advocates. —Michel, 26 May 2011
Barack Obama has snubbed Britain’s most eminent scientists by refusing to attend a Royal Society banquet in his honour at which he was to be awarded with a prestigious medal. The US President rejected the invitation from the world-leading group of scientists and instead chose to visit a south London state school. Sources close to the state visit said members of the Royal Society were “deeply offended” by the snub and had accused Mr Obama of being obsessed with his “street cred”. –Heidi Blake, The Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2011
I want to look at what they’ve given us and examine what they’ve withheld and see why it’s been withheld. The more they stonewall, the more they’re making Richard Nixon look like a choirboy. — Robert G. Marshall, The Washington Times, 25 May 2011
I haven’t heard of any incidents in which anyone requested “drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive version”, let alone “lots of requests” of this nature to multiple scientists.
Are any readers aware of any such requests? Or is this more fantasizing by climate scientists? Like the time reversal mechanism assumed by Nature when they blamed data obstruction by climate scientists back in 2005 on FOI requests in summer 2009. –Is this a Nursery Story? Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit
Is this a Nursery Story?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The “draft” appears to to be East Anglia on Yamal. See Steve.
Douglas Brenner:
“I’m a published astronomer. All the raw data used in my published papers is stored, as is the reduced data. Any request from a colleague would probably be granted; if every amateur astronomer wanted a copy of something, it could probably be put on line but I don’t have the time to deal with every nut that sees little green men in my data. Besides, for the two instruments I have used over the years, it took years to develop data reduction code. I’m not going to show everybody how to use it.”
Sorry hit the wrong button. I can understand Mr. Brenner’s reluctance to publish his reduced data. He has spent considerable effort on reducing the raw data into a form that can be of use to himself and others and therefore has a proprietary interest in that reduced data. What I cannot understand is why he feels that the raw data should not be made available to others who would wish to use it and who, presumably could collect it for themselves.
Whilst I realise that there can be a race to publication surely true scientists wish to advance science and this can only be done if (after publication) the raw data is made available to others who may assist in that progress, either by substantiating the conclusions of the original paper or by attempting to refute it.
This is where Sir Paul Nurse seems to have placed politics ahead of science. Under him and some of his recent predecessors the Royal Society seems to have become a lobby group for AGW/Climate Change rather than an open forum where unfashionable scientific theories can be advanced.
Some people seem to think Nurse is a climate science. He’s actually a bioligist and, judging from his execrable BBC Horizon program ‘Science Under Attack’, he knows very little of climate science. He also seems to know little of the scientifc method – or, at least, what used to be the scientific method.
Because Nurse is ignorant of climate science, the NASA climate scientist was able to run rings around him. When he showed Nurse a computer simulation and the actual data, Nurse was impressed by how close the two were. But this was several days of weather, and had nothing to do with climate (if you look carefully, the video on the big screens was actually looped, though the program makers tried to hide that).
The climate scientist also told an enormous and demonstrable lie: that mankind emits seven times more than nature. If Nurse knew the first thing about climate science he would have known that the truth was the exact opposite: that nature emits roughly thirty times more than mankind.
Obviously impressed by this lie, he than asks why people would deny it. Well, here’s a shot in the dark: maybe people deny it because it’s a lie.
The sad, sad thing is that most people who watched the program probably assumed the NASA climate scientist was telling the truth.
The program certainly demonstrates how science is under attack – but not in the way he thought. He appears to have got completely the wrong end of the stick. Climate scientists are only being ‘harassed’ by FOI requests because they refuse to meet the basic requirements of publicly funded science – indeed, many of them still fight tooth and nail to keep their data secret. If they don’t have anything to hide, their behaviour certainly doesn’t give that impression.
Chris
To be frank it looks like Nurse doe not agree with the RS moto of ‘take nobodies’ word for it ‘, perhaps has RS president he can ask for it be changed to one he likes better such as ‘trust me I am scientists’
No problem. Just publish all the raw data and calculations along with the paper (including demonstration of statistical significance), and do your referencing properly. Journal editors can help by refusing to publish contributors who withhold their data or calculations. Once upon a time, that was standard scientific operating procedure. Of course, not all research gets published — think research with national security implications, or for patent development. You can’t claim the prestige of science, though, or the public funding, AND claim private ownership of your data/procedures/results. It’s a pity the Royal Society, some universities, and the IPCC have elected to jettison our wonderfully productive tradition of PUBLIC science in favour of a system more familiar to theosophy.
Repost from Tips & Notes on 20 May:
Has anyone flagged up that the Royal Society (of London) has launched a study to look at how open science is?
The press release mentions benefits and risks of sharing data, the responsibilities of scientists, their institutions and funders for open data, standards, openness v. IPR, etc.
The chair is geoscientist Professor Geoffrey Boulton FRS, who was a member of the Muir Russell review around “the UEA email leaks” (as the press release describes them), but the three other members seem to have more of a pharmaceuticals background. There’s mention of an article co-authored by the team in the May 14 edition of the medical journal The Lancet.
Submissions invited from Friday 13th May at http://royalsociety.org/policy/sape
You would think that they would have logged all these ‘vexatious’ requests, just to prove the point. Why doesn’t Nurse just read them out?
“… it took years to develop data reduction code. I’m not going to show everybody how to use it.”
Guys, he’s not saying that he won’t release his data reduction code or method, he says he won’t waste time showing other people how to use it.
On the other hand, if I had developed a special technique for manipulating data in my job, and I took that attitude, my boss would show me to the door.
Part of your job is first making sure the interface to your code is easy to use, the second is to document it so that anyone can use it. As my boss always says, we have to code as if we are going to get hit by a bus tomorrow.
If your code is not written so that someone else can step in tomorrow and take over, you have failed as a developer.
I wonder if Mr.Nurse is on to something.
Is it possible that he, or scientists he has spoken to, have researched the FOIAs and discovered that to comply indeed would legally subject “…all drafts of scientific papers prior to their publication in journals, with annotations, explaining why changes were made between successive versions” to scrutiny? If that is so, perhaps it is time to make such requests!
Clearly this is feared, and the reason for that fear ought to be understood. Is it merely scientific inaccuracy or are there other more nefarious considerations?
Isn’t it bizarre that people working w/public money forget that the public is their employer? What happens when an employee of any other “business” refuses to do what the the employer asks him/her? They would be correctly fired & replaced.
There is a frightening cultural & ethical gulf between regular workers/owners & taxpayer-funded “employees”. It’s like a different planet…
Well I’m with Nurse on this one. It is not unusual for manuscripts to go through dozens of iterations. It really would be onerous to explicitly justify each and every single change made in the process.
I also don’t see the point of such requests. The final, published version of a paper is what the authors agreed on and what they decided to present and defend in public. FOI requests regarding data or methodological details missing from the published version make sense. Requests for draft versions do not, except may be as part of an investigation of fraud.
Baloney indeed, but you miss the point. We are not “throughout history” here. We are discussing the work product of people currently employed by the state (taxpayers). This is not something covered by “national security”, the only reason it has become a problem is that too many ‘scientists’ forgot long ago exactly who pays for their world.
I’m sorry if you find the idea that your “work product” belongs to whoever funded it a bit strange – but that is the way it has always been. Time for the “public sector” to catch up. If you want exclusive rights then I suggest that, like Newton et al, you fund your own R&D.
pwl says:
May 26, 2011 at 5:16 pm
“So Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, FRS, certainly needs to sign up for remedial courses in the philosophy of science and in particular the scientific method, not to mention he needs to abide by the Motto of the Royal Society, or presumably be ejected from it.”
This must be extremely embarrassing for him.
No “bravos” are warranted for Obama. He evidently has some inside dope on what is coming down with respect to the RS’ “cred”, and didn’t want to be associated with yet another PR fiasco. He’s stepped in it more than his share of times already.
Mike says:
Then you’re sharing a large plot* of acreage in FantasyLand. No requests for draft versions ever occurred!
*Tornado warnings are up for your locale, btw.
Unfortunately, the public doesn’t understand how science works. They see these preliminary drafts, etc. as providing evidence of malfeasance by scientists. They’re wrong. As a rule, science proceeds exactly in this way, and the act of writing a paper is very often more like a debate than a science experiment, as the authors struggle to find both the best interpretation of the data AND the best way to phrase that interpretation in natural language.
Anyone who doesn’t get this is unqualified to have an opinion about it. This includes the Machiavellian Anthony Watts.
Fil Salustri,
Read A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. It’s available on the right sidebar. You will see a very well documented account of the scientific misconduct and outright fraud committed by Michael Mann’s clique of scientific charlatans.
After reading it, you will then be qualified to have an informed opinion about how publicly funded science works. Right now you don’t. And calling a straight shooter like Anthony Watts ‘Machiavellian’ makes you sound like a lunatic.
Smokey
I think you are trying to reason with a zealot.
AGW Moriarty said on May 26, 2011 at 9:52 am
“A Nursery Story”
Thanks for some well written words.
And thanks “GregO” for
“1) Exaggeration
2) Groundless assertion
The dual bane of the climate debate.”
Headley: Objection!
You are free to choose the mechanic, I think you’d avoid one you have reason not to trust, or even one who would not tell you things, or ran on his whim.
For example, I once had a shop tell me they should put platinum spark plugs in my vehicle instead of what I asked for (which worked well – just getting old, and were the factory fit). I explained to them that fine-wire platinum electrodes would erode quickly in a dual-polarity ignition system (the design that shares coils between cylinders). They grumbled that they’d check with the vehicle dealer – guess what the dealer told them to use?
Guess how motivated I was to use that shop again?
The problem with climate science is that you do not have a choice of shop (researcher/organization), you are forced to pay for specific ones through taxation.