Sure, we’ve all made some doozies (me included) but you have to admit this exchange between top climate scientists Tom Wigley and Phil Jones is downright hilarious.
No wonder he has trouble with Excel.
Tom Nelson nails the decadal scale error:
Email 3235, Mar 2004, more stellar paleo work by Phil Jones. Given that he was born in 1952, he calculates that he must have been 28 in 1970
[Phil Jones] Tom, I presume you meant Jan 18, 2005 ! In 1965 you would have been 25 – your heydey. Mine was when I was 28 in 1970 ! Some people do work beyond 65, but the examples I’ve heard of have only been doing teaching
[Wigley] Phil, Good news. You are correct, my 65th bithday is Jan. 18, 1965. I thought retired persons were allowed to be employed up to one-third time for the next 5 years?
Phil Jones (climatologist) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philip D. Jones (born 1952) is a climatologist at the University of East Anglia,
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Oh come on, are we really calling him out for typos now?
A PhD is someone who has gone through university learning more and more about less and less until he eventually knows everything about nothing.
[snip. Invalid email address. ~dbs, mod.]
TheFlyingOrc says:
Yes, yes we are.
(He’s not alone though; I’ve experienced complete brainfarts where I’ll type one thing and then type it again when I mean something different. Sometimes I type my password in where my username should be.)
How odd. What seems strange to me is not so much that he has failed at really basic arithmetic but that his memory of his earlier life is so messed up. The stuff that I was doing when I was eighteen was entirely different from the stuff that I was doing when I was twenty-eight, how would it be possible to get the two mixed up? Interestingly, while thinking about this, the one thing that really jumped out was pop music.
Is this blog still about science?
Come on Anthony, delete this iem , not worthy. The guy is hanging himself without this stuff as well. Just nail him on the science, the lies and the FOIA.
A somewhat amusing, somewhat dyslexic-type of error, but I would note that ‘errare humanum est’ etc!
Uh… Phil? You don’t need to use that fake ID any more unless its for the senior citizens discount. And you probably don’t even need it for that any more.
[Wigley] Phil, Good news. You are correct, my 65th bithday is Jan. 18, 1965.
It appears both have a mathematical (science) issue.
How many other ‘typos’ are there in their work? One can excuse the occasional slip but these incidents are too common (or deliberate) to excuse them all.
“Oh come on, are we really calling him out for typos now?”
Those who claim to have all the answers better have them. Those who call others stupid better damn well be perfect.
Alternate headline: Phil Jones uses climate model to calculate his age.
It is worse than the headline. This is just arithmetic, not math.
But maybe Jones can now use this as an excuse for all his junk science. He can suddenly discover that he has [insert politically correct term for someone who messes up numbers due to the stress of evil capitalism, bullying by right wingers as a child, or relentlessly increasing temperatures] and play the victim.
So we really shouldn’t criticize him, because it is all society’s fault.
So, here is Jones denying access to his work because he’s afraid of somebody finding errors? Then he flubs math 101… hehe
Perhaps he was 28 when he graduated from high school. Would explain a lot.
Climate scientist typed a 2 instead of a 1. And therefore global warming isn’t happening. Fabulous.
Now how about you release an equivalent volume of your own e-mails for us all to root through? If you don’t want to, can you explain why not?
[REPLY: Because Anthony’s work is not publically funded and is not being used as the basis for a multi-trillion dollar re-ordering of the world economy. As for your logic…. this was filed under “humor”. -rep]
Leave the post up! If you can’t kick a man while he’s down, you don’t deserve to kick him. And seeing him kicked is too darned fun. We’ve all been kicked in the ‘nards and learned a lesson.at some point. This one is harmless fun, but fun none-the-less.
“There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who can do math: and those who can’t”
Between Mann and Jones, we have evidence that climate scientists would go “of course!” to the above statement.
Is Wigley still around? By his math, he is 112 years old. That is working a tad past the 5 years after age 65.
Isn’t “How old are you?” one of the standard questions asked when doing an evaluation for the onset of senile dementia? You have to give Wigley some credit though, he seems to be holding up quite well for a guy who was 104 years old.
Who cares? My back-of-envelope calcs sometimes gain or lose a zero on the end, and I’m a mathematician. But then, if they’re important at least I check them. This isn’t remotely important. Please, stick to the real issues.
I say these sorts of mistakes are important, but then I am a pedantic b@ur momisugly@tard. Scientists are supposed to be interested in accuracy. To me, the lack of accuracy in their written communications is a sign that their official work could suffer from a similar lack of attention to detail. These emails show they do not proofread for even the obvious mistakes before hitting the send button. You only need look at the IPCC reports, lauded by politicians worldwide for their accuracy, to see similar failures in fact checking.
Climatezheimers…..
Gotta say, a bit trite. But then again, I’ll now have to watch my pees and queues. I think I have a valid email address.