From the “he who must not be named” department, comes this sure to be future McI-fodder.
UEA/CRU responds in a press release, authored by Tim Osborn, an excerpt:
===========================================================
Tim Osborn comments on “Yamal, Polar Urals and Muir-Russell”
Recent accusations (here, leading to embellishment across parts of the blogosphere, e.g. here) that the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) promoted tree-ring results that fit some preconceived view (e.g. of modern temperatures exceeding those during Medieval times) or curtailed other work because it did not support such a view, and that CRU deceived the Muir-Russell inquiry about its work in this area, are all false. (emphasis is Osborn’s)
Two key points to begin:
1. The raw tree-ring data used in our published work are available; anyone is free to use them in any way they wish.
2. We already responded in detail to criticisms concerning the Yamal chronology. The figure on that webpage (reproduced at the end of this document) shows the impact of including additional tree-ring data (black line) compared to our previously published data (blue and red lines). The impact is relatively small, though note the caveats in the text on that webpage. We are currently working towards a new paper that incorporates additional tree-ring data from the Yamal and Polar Urals region.
…
It is misleading, therefore, to imply that because we have not yet published all of our work in this area, we are somehow restricting the advance of scientific knowledge in this area. A recommendation of the Muir Russell report that is directly relevant to the issue of scientific advancement and to the current accusations is: (bold mine)
We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication. We believe this is necessary if science is to move on, and we hope that all those involved on all sides of the climate science debate will adopt this approach.
Full press release is here: http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/rebuttalsandcorrections/yamal
ALTERNATE LINK: http://www.webcitation.org/681asTi21
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…much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…
Oh, well that makes it OK then. /sarc What a laughable defense to cite now. What greater condemnation of CRU’s methods could be written? Do these guys understand what they are doing when they cite things like this? I think not.
Recall the bullying of CRU’s Phil Jones regarding the “scientific method” and peer review:
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by “MM”, thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying,
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Source: Wikpedia on the CRU emails – Alleged exclusion of papers from IPCC report
This episode reminds me of a famous movie line:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” – General Yamamoto in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!,
Maybe the coded battle message now will be Yamal! Yamal! Yamal!
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Mr. Watts,
One aspect of WUWT that originally gave me confidence in its intellectual integrity was its very light moderation and ( unlike a certain other well-known climate blog ) its willingness to accept criticism.
The quick recognition, admission of error and correction demonstrated in this thread reinforced my confidence in WUWT’s honesty and intellectual integrity.
“Truth will out.”
Yep – they’re blaming blogs for criticising their work. Sniff.
Stacey:
An account of which subset of the data they analyzed has not always been freely available—One operating principle in science is replicability.
If you don’t tell people what you did in enough detail that it can be replicated, you aren’t following established guidelines for responsible conduct of research.
What we have here, given the disparity between the CRU Yamal reconstruction and that of Steve McIntyre ,
is the apparent cherry picking of a subset of data that gave a desirable result.
Even if they had good reasons (especially if they did), they need to have explained which data they used and which they excluded at the time of publication, and the prior reasons for inclusion or exclusion of data.
Hearing weak-minded apologists give lame excuses framed by Osborne in the context of “standard scientific practice” seriously doesn’t do anything to help Ken Briffa’s case here.
Phil C’s defense seems to be that Anthony made an editing error, corrected it and admitted that he corrected it and apologized for it.
How is that a credibloe defense? Isn’t what Anthony did after recognizing his error what CRU should have done rather than double-down and continue the claim that everything they did was on the up-and-up?
I do not think Shakespeare could write a comedy as funny as the CRU Yamal saga. It would take Monty Python. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno
Do not forget Willis’s tussle to get data from CRU
Some choice E-mails: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/14/reading-every-one-of-the-5000-climategate-2-emails/
250 note worthy e-mails http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/06/250-plus-noteworthy-climategate-2-0-emails/
Now that the citation error has been corrected. How about a Yamal-Yamal-Yamal T-shirt. That poster was as creative and funny as anything Josh has illustrated.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
May 29, 2012 at 10:21 am
Isn’t this the same Tom Osborne, who in the climate gate emails sought to strip the PhD of a skeptic that he did not agree with?
______________________________________
Team ugliness – a call to get a skeptics PhD thesis revoked: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/02/team-ugliness-an-call-to-get-a-skeptics-phd-thesis-revoked/
There was also this one:
Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/20/regulatory-czar-wants-to-use-copyright-protection-mechanisms-to-shut-down-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories/
Anthony, in the passge you quote from Muir Russel, I believe you highlighted the wrong sentence. It is the last one that is important: that BOTH sides must follow the established rules, seek to falsify conclusions or provide alternate hypothesies, not just the skeptic side. So it seems that MR were not just pointing to the skeptics otherwise the reccomendation would clearly have stated such–tho’ the tought part would be to get the other side’s work peer reviewed and past the gatekeeprs.
I’m sure that any paper that questions the Briffa paper will not make the peer reviewed journals even if they have to redefine the peer review process so this is an empty complaint.
I believe that “We note that much of the challenge to”, which you left out, changes the meaning of the highlighted phrase to mean that critics of the CRU are not using the scientific method. But never mind that, I noticed the incredible shrinking population of trees in the graphs shown in the release. The population went from a high of about 75 trees up to 1930, to a low of about 7 or 8 trees around 1998 or 1999. The decline was most precipitous between 1990 (about 55 trees) to 1998-99 (7 or 8). Now I’m no statistician, just an accountant, but I do know when the population of your sample decreases, the weight of the individual units that make up that sample increases. What is the explanation for the reduction of sample size? Cherry picking?
Is there a difference between the scientific method and the ‘conventional’ scientific method? One can only assume that Tim Osborn believes there is.
Friends:
I think this is an excellent article and a good thread.
I agree with the brief post by omnologos at May 29, 2012 at 10:15 am that says
And the adjacent long post by Carrick at May 29, 2012 at 10:16 am is superb. Among many other good points, Carrick says of Osborne’s press release:
Nothing more needs to be said, really. Except, of course,
I want a Yamal, Yamal, Yamal T-shirt .
Richard
In response to t-shirt and mug requests, I’ll work that up tonight with a higher resolution image, since the low res one above won’t reproduce well on such printings.
It was McKitrick and Michaels.
CRU do not seem to realise that they have betrayed the trust of the British public. They have supported the insupportable actions of the Team where they deliberately lied, cherry picked data, manipulated data to meet pre-conceived conclusions.and refused reasonable requests for data and how that data was processed.
So this statement is little more than arrant rubbish.
Bottom line: They realise they have been found out and they are squealing.
We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication. We believe this is necessary if science is to move on, and we hope that all those involved on all sides of the climate science debate will adopt this approach.
=====================
Anthony, I’m uncertain as to whether you really needed to reconsider your first interpretation of the statement with regards to the above quote by the review panel. But you have made an ethical move to reflect your integrity with regards to that ambiguous statement.
Considering the whitewash factor by the review panel that statement could have been artfully crafted with the intention of ambiguity.
This will be an interesting thread. I hope someone with more time than I have now will publish the definition of ‘ambiguous’ as that will be a cornerstone in the upcoming discussion in the comments if the first few are any indication.
But I believe Yamal! Yamal! Yamal! is ringing in the CRU and the team’s ears. They hear it loud and clear. Just take a look at the recent PR from every angle to cover-up or draw attention away from the hockey stick. It has caused a lot of twisted panties! The closet door has opened and all the players have come out in a last ditch effort to try to bail out and save the sinking ship of CAGW.
Ahh, I get it. You disagree, go out and do your own data gathering – full stop.
Review and criticism of another’s work is not permitted in the Climate sciences. If you haven’t done your own field work, you have neither the knowledge nor the scientific right to have an opinion on the subject!
And whatever you do has to go through our acceptable peer-review group before you can talk about our work relative to your work.
This is how we maintain positions and get grants, dude. We publish a paper, and if there are mistakes, we fix it with the next money we get, unless that would be embarrassing, in which case we study something else. Remember, there is no grant money for reviewing the work of others, because that is really cheap work. And by they way, why would we do it? It will just make us look incompetent, which will make the next proposal harder to sell.
Come on! It’s hard to get money to study stuff, so leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. The last thing we need is someone suggesting we didn’t use the last tranch of money well. Don’t be so high-and-mighty. People in glass houses, and all that.
Why was YAD061 not removed as an outlier? Remember in Steig’s Antarctica paper that the slight cooling trend in Comiso 2000 was changed to a slight warming trend simply by removing outliers:
The reference is to Reynolds 2002: An Improved In Situ and Satellite SST Analysis for Climate., which seems to be mostly about Sea Surface Temperatures and Ice concentrations and not about Air Temperatures above ice sheets as in Antarctica:
Nevertheless, it seems that when a result can be obtained that agrees with CAGW, then outliers are removed, even though it is not clear that this was justified for Steig 2009, yet in Yamal, YAD061, a clear outlier, was retained because, without it, the hockey stick shape was hard to come by.
We are not talking about picking ordinary cherries here. These are Jurassic cherries.
Here’s the deception: Osborne says “the raw tree-ring data used in our published work are available”.
That’s true. But they pre-filtered the data. The published paper was based on non-transparently selected data, the reasons for rejection of all other considered time series was not published, nor were the excluded time series made available.
So when Osborne says “are all false”, he’s being carefully true, and carefully deceptive.
Delicious. Here’s my favourite bit:
“all sides of the climate science debate”
It’s been a while since they admitted that there is a debate at all.
We won’t know that until you publish all of your work in this area.
Regarding restricting scientific knowledge need I remind them about efforts to get editors sacked for not following the party line. Deleting emails, re-defining the peer review process etc.
Phil C says:
May 29, 2012 at 10:22 am
Such is the issue when I try to fit in a story before heading to the office.
And it speaks loudly as to why scientific findings are subject to lengthly peer review by qualified scientists before publication.
REPLY: But what about “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow”?
What about it, they weren’t kept out and Trenberth was quite clear that under the rules of the IPCC they could not be.
I’m surprised at the respect that Muir Russell commands in this thread.
Going with the flow and bending the rules to advance science (you hope) is an error that, with group think, leads to folly.
Investigating folly with blinkers on leads to establishing a false premise as authenticated truth.
It’s Muir Russell who established the fraud (yes) and the courts will note that.
Phil, I’m not a fan of deleting outlier data unless 1) the reason why the data is an outlier is known and 2) that reason has nothing to do with the affect being studies. Natural variation occurs — that is why we have 3rd SD — and even if rare it still needs to be acknowledged. Goodness knows that I’ve often wished I could just lose an outlier or two.
The “rebuttal” comes a good bit of the way to where McIntyre already is. The “rebuttal” (the “responded in detail” link above):
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
If you look at the second graphic in the “rebuttal,” you will see that temperatures as estimated by the larger group of treemometers than in the original Briffa papers now show very similar temperature peaks in the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. VERY different that in the first graphic (the earlier Yamal chronology that McIntyre critiques), where there is a pronounced peak only in the last decade or so — in other words, a very strong hockey stick shape — and temps in the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, etc., are all very low, nearly as low as in the previous 1900 years (according to that graphic).
Compare on the same scale: in the second graphic, the peak temps in the new, more comprehensive analysis just noted all are between 2.5 and over 3 on the vertical scale provided. In the both graphics; however, none of the temps in these same time frames in the original article with much fewer trees, get over abourt 1.5 on the same scale, until the last decade or so.
No matter how these folks spin the results, they have now created a temperature proxy, using a more complete inventory of trees, that shows 20th and 21st C temps, starting from about 1925, with only a slight apparent temperature trend starting in the 1920s, basically what looks like an oscillation every 10 to 20 years with a similar peak at the end of the oscillation.
NOT a sudden hockey stick with a huge jump in temps in the last decade or so. See for yourself.
How ironic is it that Osborn’s statement:
“We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication”
at first glance appears to say: “that much of the CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…”
which is demonstrably true beyond any shadow of a doubt.