Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach 
Folks have said that I’m far too hard on Dr. Richard Muller of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST Project). So let me stick to the facts. I fear I lost all respect for the man when he broke a confidentiality agreement with Anthony Watts, not just in casual conversation, but in testimony before Congress. So there’s your first fact.
[NOTE: ACTUAL FIGURE 1 PHOTO REMOVED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF FACTUALITY FOR INSUFFICIENT FACTITIOUSNESS.]
Figure 1. Actual un-retouched photo of a verified fact.
Next fact. Dr. Muller has put in motion an impressive publicity machine, including an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, to draw attention to his four new papers. He did this before the papers had been through peer review. He has been criticized by many people for doing this. I among others have wondered, why release the papers to with a big PR blitz before peer review? It made no sense to me. What is his official response to these criticisms? From the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature web site FAQ:
Why didn’t Berkeley Earth wait for peer review?
Some people think that peer review consists of submitting a paper to a journal and waiting for the anonymous comments of referees. Traditional peer review is much broader than that and much more open. In science, when you have a new result, your first step is to present it to your colleagues by giving presentations, talks at local and international conferences, colloquia, and by sending out “preprints.” In fact, every academic department in the sciences had a preprint library where people would read up on the latest results. If they found something to disagree with, they would talk to or write the authors. Preprint libraries were so popular that, if you found someone was not in the office or lab, the first place you would search would be in the preprint library. Recently these rooms have disappeared, their place taken over by the internet. The biggest preprint library in the world now is a website, arXiv.org.
Such traditional and open peer review has many advantages. It usually results in better papers in the archival journals, because the papers are widely examined prior to publication. It does have a disadvantage, however, that journalists can also pick up preprints and report on them before the traditional peer-review process is finished.
Now, that stuff about it being like traditional and open peer review among colleagues, that sounds great. Heck, it even sounds progressive, it seems to include the blogosphere, who could oppose that? It’s all logical, or at least seens possible, until you hear what Dr. Muller’s unofficial explanation is for the big PR push. Judith Curry reports it like this, as a result of talking about it with Dr. Muller:
… Second, the reason for the publicity blitz seems to be to get the attention of the IPCC. To be considered in the AR5, papers need to be submitted by Nov, which explains the timing. The publicity is so that the IPCC can’t ignore BEST. Muller shares my concerns about the IPCC process, and gatekeeping in the peer review process. SOURCE
There’s a few problems with that explanation.
• If Dr. Muller’s real reason for not waiting for peer review is so that it can get into the IPCC report … then why is he being so very much less than accurate and candid on his website?
• Dr. Muller is claiming that somehow the IPCC is not aware of the BEST project, that he needs to advertise because the IPCC scientists never heard of him … … I’m just hanging the facts out on the line here. You can decide if he needs to advertise.
• Dr. Muller is also claiming “gatekeeping” by the IPCC, presumably to keep out climate alarmists like himself … I’m just reporting here, sticking to the facts. [FACT] If there is gatekeeping in the IPCC to keep out climate alarmists, the guard at the gate post is not asleep. He is pining for the fjords.[/FACT]
• There is no IPCC deadline in November of any kind. To be eligible for assessment by WG1, the cutoff date is not until next summer.The papers have to be submitted for publication before August 2012. And even then, the papers do not have to be published until the following year, by March 15, 2013. Here’s the timetable
IPCC AR5 Timetable
CMIP5 and WG1 milestones and schedule
2011
• February: First model output expected to be available for analysis.
• July 18-22: Second Lead Authors Meeting (LA2) • October 24-28: WCRP Open Science Conference will include a CMIP5 session (Denver, Colorado)
• December 16 – February 10, 2012: Expert Review of the First Order Draft (FOD)
2012
• April 16-20: Third Lead Authors Meeting (LA3)
• July 31: By this date papers must be submitted for publication to be eligible for assessment by WG1.
• October 5 – November 30: Expert and Government Review of the Second Order Draft (SOD)
So why the hurry to get these papers out now? Why the sudden emphasis on the manyfold virtues of pre-prints? My best guess is that Dr. Muller wants to get his papers considered by the December-February Expert Review of the First Order Draft.
The reason I say that, is there’s an oddity about the first order draft (FOD). To be in the final IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), in theory the work must be peer-reviewed. The only exceptions seem to be for WWF opinion pieces.
But to be considered in the IPCC FOD, the rules are much more lax (op. cit.). For the FOD the bar is lower because
preprints, papers submitted, accepted, in press, and published are all eligible for consideration
Which seems to me to be the final link in the chain connecting why he is talking so much about pre-prints on his website, while at the same time telling Judith that it’s a propaganda show to convince the IPCC to notice him. (In passing, does the push for preprints mean he hasn’t submitted the paper yet? Unknown but possible …)
Disquieting conclusions from the above:
First, from Dr. Muller’s actions it seems to be considered business as usual to try to persuade the IPCC to consider your claims by putting on a huge media blitz so that they can’t “ignore” you. Presumably this is because if the New York Times prints it, it must be science.
Is this how low we’ve fallen? Is this the scientific process the IPCC really uses to select what to consider? I don’t know … but clearly Dr. Muller thinks it is the process the IPCC uses, and that it is a legitimate way to get in the door.
Second, while solid, verifiable pre-print results might be worth a look-in for a first-order draft, these four papers were released without the accompanying data. You might have thought that Dr. Muller released the data when he released the four papers … but if so, you have been fooled by Dr. Muller. I was fooled for a bit, too, I didn’t read the fine print.
Someone pointed out that the bottom of the README file released by Dr. Muller it says:
… This release is not recommended for third party research use as the known bugs may lead to erroneous conclusions due to incomplete understanding of the data set’s current limitations.
In other words, to match the pre-prints, we have pre-data. Isn’t science wonderful?
Now, recall that Dr. Muller’s explanation of putting his papers out into the world right now was to subject them to “traditional and open peer review”. Recall that he is out hyping the results of these papers to anyone who will give him some publicity. He is discussing them in the media. And he is claiming he has put them out for “traditional and open” peer review.
Perhaps Dr. Muller can explain why either we or the media should believe his results when we cannot subject them to any kind of review at all without the code and data.
To summarize, here’s what I think are facts:
• The four papers appear to have been published in pre-print to be eligible for consideration for the first order draft of the IPCC report.
• A very different explanation for that was given in public on the BEST website.
• Dr. Muller thinks that the way to get the four papers into the IPCC report is a full-on media blitz.
• Dr. Muller may be right about that.
• The four papers have been prepared from some unknown subset of a “buggy” dataset.
• The subset was determined by looking at the “current limitations” of the buggy dataset.
• We do not know what the rules for extracting the subset were.
• We do not know what the current limitations of the buggy dataset might be.
• The actual data has not been released.
• Code for the individual papers has not been released.
• Their “homogenized” dataset, containing the result of all of their scalpel slices and adjustments of all types, has not been released.
• Finally, the dataset that they did release was not even the raw data. It was processed by removing the monthly averages … but we don’t know what those averages were, or how they were constructed.
So, despite a promise of transparency, to great fanfare BEST has released four pre-prints, based on admittedly “buggy” data, without the accompanying code or data to back them up.
That’s what I think are the facts in the case. I leave you to draw any conclusions.
My regards to all.
w.
Legatus says:
November 1, 2011 at 7:59 pm
… the UHI effect is local,… However, half of the official temperature measurements stations from other datasets, and a completely unknown number of stations in the BEST dataset, are from urban stations, or stations which have mini urban environments around them. Thus, saying that they do not impact the “global average temperature” is frankly dishonest. They may not effect the temperature of the earth, but they very definatly effect the temperature measurment of the earth.
Frankly, this statement, far from building my confidence in BEST, causes me to seriously doubt whether this is an honest attempt to measure temperature at all.
___________________________________
I totally agree. BEST was never about science it was about trying to undo the damage done by Climategate and the Hockey Schtick.
That is specifically why Judith Curry and Anthony Watts were roped in and Muller posed as a “Skeptic” The message was four fold.
1. The climate is still warming.
2. Questions raised by skeptics about the data (poor placement) have been resolved.
3. The data and papers was release for open reviewed by the skeptics. (That is why Anthony was sent a paper)
4. The skeptics questions have been resolved and they are now in agreement with BEST. (Thats why Muller said nothing about anything but the temperatures)
Pretty slick piece of propaganda wasn’t it???
The Climate Change Conference is in 25 days on 28 November – 9 December 2011. With the news stories in The Economist, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on TV, Politicians can agree to Cap & Trade or whatever international treaty is floated and CLAIM they thought the issue was resolved, Global Warming is real. The skeptics LEAD by Dr. Muller, Dr Curry AND ANTHONY WATTS agreed.
Remember the reporters called and ASKED Anthony and he did not REFUTE the paper or data.
THAT was what the confidentiality agreement was all about To keep Anthony muzzled until the damage was done.
Gail Combs says:
November 1, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Gail,
were over due for the next glacial cycle..
one need only look at how the earth itself is compressing itself to see that cooling has already started. massive earth quakes globally are a sign of compression stress. volcanic unrest is a sign of compression stress. while gravitational bodies can cause this were not near a gravitational climax of any kind. so what is causing this compression stress? crust cooling… ?
in a few years gravitational stress will occur as we pass close to other planets.. add that to the current crust compression… things are about to get very ugly..
Bill
David Ball says:
November 1, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Perhaps getting the PR juggernaut going BEFORE winter hit was important, too.
________________________
Seems Mother Nature had other ideas and decided to spoil Muller’s PR campaign. (Snicker)
What a great job of analysis, all polished by a very funny style. That took a lot of work. My hat is off to you, Willis. You nailed all the details.
What has caused Dr. Curry to go all squishy on matters regarding Muller? How could her pretty good analytical mind buy Muller’s BS?
Sierra Rayne says:
November 1, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Yep, same here. Muller is so full of it and of himself.
Do you think Muller is after Pachauri’s job? How about Pachauri’s spotlight? I bet Muller has a draft of a novel about the sexual exploits of a sixtyish rockstar professor. Can you imagine Muller and Pachauri on the same stage?
Bill H says:
November 1, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Gail Combs says:
November 1, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Gail,
were over due for the next glacial cycle…..
__________________________
That is one of the reasons I looked at a map of the Wisconsin glaciation before buying my farm. No reason not to be safe. Besides living in upper state New York and New Hampshire, I have had my fill of snow shoveling.
And yes you are correct things are looking to get ugly. VERY UGLY, Cooling earth or no cooling earth. The grab for control of the world food supply is happening now. It is not just in third world countries either.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/savePolishCountryside.php
Through “Harmonization” of regulations and the just passed “Food Safety Modernization Act” in the USAAmerican farmers are about to find themselves saddled with the same “vicious of anti-entrepreneurial weapons: ‘sanitary and hygiene regulations’ “ as are the other farmers in countries who are members of the World Trade Organization. The USA has lost 2/3 of her farmers since 1965 and Mexico lost 75% since NAFTA. (1995) Australia, with an “official policy” of “Encouraging farmers to voluntarily leave farming” saw a 60 per cent decline in the number of younger farmers since 1976. (The USA grows 25% of the world food supply.) Canada also has a “get big or get out” policy.
At the rate we are going we are going to see “Fuel Poverty” thanks to this CAGW nonsense, along with very high unemployment and spiraling food costs as land is transferred into the control of large corporate entities. All of it carefully instigated by the same bunch of Meglomaniacs.
I do not think those supporting CAGW are going to like the results.
Thanks Willis, good work.
I can not say the same about Dr. Muller’s Berkeley though, sorry.
From my recent blog essay Is the Language of Science Apolitical? (http://retreadresources.com/blog/?p=911#more-911)
“The recent actions of the climate sciences BEST research team headed by Muller are shall we say bazaar. The WUPT blog has been following this closely along with a number of others. No matter what the stated reasons for their pre-review and pre-publication media blitz is puzzling to everyone including many of the co-authors of the papers. You readers know I am the last one to propose some kind of conspiracy, however this time I can offer no other logical explanation. Muller’s action are either self destructive or at the behest of some political agenda.
Muller has betrayed the trust of his coauthors and drawn his objectivity into strong question. Apparently he did not have the courtesy to share the pre-publication text with his coauthors. Now public (read that MSM and blog) fights are happening. Hence the cartoon at the header.
This fits with your comments Willis. I hurts my sensibilities to say this. I fear you are as correct as I am. That being the probably case, science as a profession just got more embarrassing . It is like being a TV preachers following after Jimmy.
Sierra Rayne says:
November 1, 2011 at 3:07 pm
“Huh?”
I’m with you on that call, Sierra. That is total bullfeathers about preprint libraries. Even the language is odd…the tone is sort of “well everybody knows that, sillies”….Uh, FAIL!
That is not what was said. A model tuned to give a good representation of certain key observations may be one that has had the physics on some components fine-tuned so that the model run represents very well the characteristics of those components in the real world. Eg, if much of the programming is devoted to precipitation characteristics, then runs of the model may turn out to represent what precipitation patterns and cycles look like in the real world. Other components less specifically fine-tuned may not resemble real world observations – eg, local temperature variance may be much smaller or larger than normally observed. That may or may not matter for whatever the model is testing.
No observational data need be used to do this tuning.
“there’s an oddity about the first order draft (FOD)”
Agreed. It should be called the First Unified Draft (FUD). As for the rest, agreed also. “It’s science, Jim, but not as we know it.”
To be honest I think you are being too kind to Muller. When this whole BEST thing was announced it smelt to me. It seemed to muchy like “Global Warming Reborn”. Here are the smelliest parts:-
1] Al Gores “Nobel” was tainted by the fact that he is a dimwit. Team AGW needed a proper “Nobel” to do the re-launch. Any old “Nobel” would do. Even a cosmologist. As long as he was on Team AGWs side.
2] They knew that one of the previous criticisms of Team AGWs work was no release of data. So they said they would release all the data and algorithms. They said it in a press blitz so Joe Average takes them at their word – but in fact they haven’t released any of the data to anybody. Not even to other scientists.
3] They claimed that prominent skeptics had funded their research. This was clearly done to give the impression that their research was unbiased. Except that nobody appears to have known these skeptics and the percentage of money they gave to the cause was pretty small.
4] They were aware that the “peer review” process was considered to be corrupted, so they didn’t subject the paper to peer review. They trumpeted this fact as a virtue in the press. They then claimed that their paper was subject to something better than peer review – some sort of open process of examination by anybody. In fact this is not true. Nobody has been able to view any of the data before the media blitz.
5] They released graphs to the media that were deliberately misleading, suggesting dramatic warming since 1975. In fact the full graphs show a stalling in warming in the last 10 years which make the warming since 1975 look unspectacular when compared to the underlying warming that has gone on since before the industrial revolution.
Basicallly the whole thing was nothing more than a sad PR stunt that would fool only those that don’t really care. Muller has created a steaming pile of dung which he is going to slowly sink in.
The explanation for the pre-release stinks, but so what?
The so what meme also applies to the data set itself. I really do not see the fundamental importance of the BEST data set. Surely the issue is why prefer BEST, GISS, HadCru over the satellite data?
Is it not the case that, from an objective point of view, the most infrmative and reliable data sets (ie., the least corrupted) are the satellite data set and ARGO. The only limitation is that they are not lengthy but these data sets tell us the most as to what is going on now, and as regards the satellite data set what has happened these past (approximate) 40 years.
Reverting to BEST the two most interesting points to emerge is that the warming dates back to 1800 (no surprise there – no doubt it dates even further back if only there records as would appear to be the case from CET) and that approximately one third of stations show no warming (even a slight cooling). The significance of the latter point seems to have been missed since this strongly suggests that there is a problem with land surface data collection. Certainly, the greenhouse theory cannot explain why one third of stations should not be showing warming (and even cooling).
Re: what Garacka says:
November 1, 2011 at 5:48 pm
NBC evening news also ran with the Ann Thompson presentation last evening. She spun it as proof positive that CO2 is the culprit, or, as NCAR’s Neil put it, “steroids” for our climate. But Muller has an “out” insofar as his terminology referred to globe’s warming, and not the cause. The various news outlets will weave that into whatever message they want to convey. I do think it rather disingenuous of Muller to be overreaching in his claim, and not include the caveat that this is a land-based dataset, and not necessarily reflective of “global warming”. The silence of the lion. Then again, this seems to be about getting attention as opposed to discerning the truth.
P.S. Interesting piece, Willis.
Willis,
Thank you for putting all the elements of the BEST Project’s unprofessional, discourteous, incorrect and self-conflicted PR strategies in one place.
AGREE => I think you are correct about your 12 bulleted fact points at the end of your post. BEST Project appears to be loose with veracity.
AGREE =>Your final paragraph on lack of BEST Project transparency and open behavior to this point in their project is something I can concur with. BEST Project looks to be playing the old hide the
peadata and uncertainty game up to this point in their process.DISAGREE IF=> I do not explicitly see you supporting the idea that it is incorrect scientific process, per se, to do a pre-review/pre-publication public release of their papers and related SI. But, if you are suggesting that then I disagree with you. NOTE: If BEST Project violated journal policy with their pre-review/pre-publication release then that is an internal issue between the journal and BEST.
BEST Project’s project management appears to be self-destructive to their own goals.
John
I don’t buy the “traditional peer review” as described by Muller.
I’ve used the real, traditional peer review process for every paper I’ve ever submitted (send manuscripts to others in the department, colleagues at other universities, etc). But in no case have I sent a manuscript to a journalist for “review”. And I don’t know of any other case where someone has sent a manuscript to a journalist or media outlet for review, much less organized a media day around it.
I wonder how likely it is that the data used to compile the pre-prints will ever become available. I suspect the ‘limitations’ of the dataset will be forever a moving target.
Who knows; the original data may even become ‘lost’.
Willis,
I hoped there would be nothing wrong with the BEST project and with Mullers steering of the group….but hope and realility are two diferent things as we and Anthony have found out, this looks as if it is another shoddy attempt to muddy the waters and label sceptics as wrong and anti-science,especially as the observations from the real world become further from the models and doom laden predictions.
My fear is that if another hard northern hemisphere winter comes to bear then these people will become even more desperate with their tactics and PR.
I do not listen to anyone who won’t release ALL of his or her data and calculations, full stop. Without data and calculations, it’s religion, not science. You can’t test a hypothesis any other way than by looking at the data. And if the hypothesis isn’t testable …
@hr0001. I enjoyed your “Will the real Richard Muller please stand up.” piece on your blog. Well done and a fine piece of labor. I recommend it to everyone.
It is important that we retain the long-term view of experience and data and your piece ads a solid base line to the debate.
@donkeygod: I do not listen to anyone who won’t release ALL of his or her data.
I understand your reason, but I cannot go that far. When I am looking at a pre-stack depth migration seismic cube, I don’t demand the field tapes. Especially if I have not PAID for them.
There is lots of key insights, tips, learnings and advice that you can get in this world from the wisdom of people you trust. I’ll listen! I’ll consider. I’ll take what they tell me under advisement. I might even think back and fit it into my past first hand experience and memories and see if it is worth believing. But I don’t demand their field notebook before giving them a listen.
It is another matter when advise comes from people you have no reason to trust. I’ll listen, but the advise goes into an In-box for a while awaiting confirmation.
It is a third and final matter when advise and learnings come from people you have verifiable evidence to DISTRUST. You know what, I’ll listen to them, too. What’s more, I will not turn my back on them. Believe them, no. Their advise goes into a purgatory awaiting redemption.
So, no. I do not demand release of all data before I listen to someone. 99.9% of all conferences would have to be cancelled. OTOH, if someone is paid by the public dime, then the public has a right to see the data for the cost of providing a copy or physical access.
Stephen Rasey says: November 3, 2011 at 10:20 am
Thank you, Stephen … I hope you don’t mind that I’ve added a hyperlink to your comment … to make it easier for those who haven’t done so, to follow your recommendation 😉