This is a scathing and revealing comment from another scientist regarding the Marcott et al affair. The context of it all has an odor of hydrogen sulfide about it.
There are a few bad eggs, with the Real Climate mafia being among them, who are exploiting climate science for personal and political gain. Makes the whole effort look bad.
-Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. in a comment (#6) on his blog
The larger posting is also quite interesting where Dr. Pielke suggests that “misconduct” might be an applicable term.
Dr. Pielke writes:
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In 1991 the National Research Council proposed what has come to be a widely accepted definition of misconduct in science:
Misconduct in science is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, in proposing, performing, or reporting research. Misconduct in science does not include errors of judgment; errors in the recording, selection, or analysis of data; differences in opinions involving the interpretation of data; or misconduct unrelated to the research process.
Arguments over data and methods are the lifeblood of science, and are not instances of misconduct.
However, here I document the gross misrepresentation of the findings of a recent scientific paper via press release which appears to skirt awfully close to crossing the line into research misconduct, as defined by the NRC. I recommend steps to fix this mess, saving face for all involved, and a chance for this small part of the climate community to take a step back toward unambiguous scientific integrity.
The paper I refer to is by Marcott et al. 2013, published recently in Science. A press release issued by the National Science Foundation, which funded the research, explains the core methodology and key conclusion of the paper as follows (emphasis added):
Peter Clark, an OSU paleoclimatologist and co-author of the Science paper, says that many previous temperature reconstructions were regional and not placed in a global context.
“When you just look at one part of the world, temperature history can be affected by regional climate processes like El Niño or monsoon variations,” says Clark.
“But when you combine data from sites around the world, you can average out those regional anomalies and get a clear sense of the Earth’s global temperature history.”
What that history shows, the researchers say, is that during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit–until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F.
The press release clearly explains that the paper (a) combines data from many sites around the world to create a “temperature reconstruction” which gives a “sense of the Earth’s temperature history,” and (b) “that history shows” a cooling over the past 5000 years, until the last 100 years when all of that cooling was reversed.
The conclusions of the press release were faithfully reported by a wide range of media outlets, and below I survey several of them to illustrate that the content of the press release was accurately reflected in media coverage and, at times, amplified by scientists both involved and not involved with the study.
…
Let me be perfectly clear — I am accusing no one of scientific misconduct. The errors documented here could have been the product of group dynamics, institutional dysfunction, miscommunication, sloppiness or laziness (do note that misconduct can result absent explicit intent). However, what matters most now is how the relevant parties respond to the identification of a clear misrepresentation of a scientific paper by those who should not make such errors.
That response will say a lot about how this small but visible part of the climate community views the importance of scientific integrity.
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Read his entire essay here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/03/fixing-marcott-mess-in-climate-science.html
Given this concession in the recent Marcott et al FAQs:
20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.
It seems there is a lot of walkback to do not only for the people who did the study and pushed the press release, but those who reported on it as if that uptick was valid, when clearly if has been demonstrated to be nothing more than an artifact of statistical methods and data manipulations.
It seems a clear case of noble cause corruption by “the team” for “the cause”. Will the NSF do anything about it? I doubt it, as their herd circling has already begun over at Real Climate. Being institutionalized science, they’ll worry more about how to spin it up and down the climate food chain than to come clean about the issue in my opinion.
Perhaps the best way for regular folks like us to counter the damage done is that anytime Marcott et al is mentioned, to always refer to the Marcott et al graph as this version below, along with the quote from their FAQs since the uptick “is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes”:
![marcott2[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/marcott21.jpg?quality=83)
I have to wonder, given the fact that Marcott’s thesis paper didn’t contain such an uptick, and then after being welcomed into the “climate syndicate” (or as Pielke Jr. calls them, “Real Climate mafia”) with all of the features, upgrades, and connections that membership provides, maybe this is simply a case of them making young Mr. Marcott an offer he couldn’t refuse.
The problem with the 1991 definition of scientific misconduct is the second sentence:
“Misconduct in science does not include errors of judgment; errors in the recording, selection, or analysis of data; differences in opinions involving the interpretation of data; or misconduct unrelated to the research process.”
As soon as scientists are no longer primarily interested in finding out what really is going on and instead become primarily interested in practicing politics to get more grant money, or influencing public policy, or getting a promotion, or helping out a friend, or getting a favorable mention in the media — and on and on — then what is being practiced is no longer science but rather advocacy in one form or another. Smart advocates will only attempt to get poorly informed individuals to agree with them and will always arrange matters so that they can claim to have suffered “errors in judgement, etc., etc.”
It is the corruption of motives that destroys science, and making up, withholding, or lying about the data is only a symptom of the corrupted motives. For example, smart advocates know that withholding data or lying about it can often be passed off as errors in judgement because they can say that the awkward bits of information were thought to be not representative, poorly recorded, etc. — the list of potential excuses is endless. As we have seen, even outright making up of data can be described as “adjustment” for supposed biases or the output of “sophisticated algorithms” for interpolating between or extrapolating from known data points. And of course no one expects to examine every little detail of what goes on inside the computer model — even the people who put together the model can’t know everything (You mean the subroutine package we got from our colleagues does not really do what we thought it did? Gee, I guess we should have tested it more. Sorry about that.)
Unless some group is making a ton of money using a new scientific discovery on the open market — grants and government mandates do not count — it’s hard to be sure that a true advance has occurred. There is always, of course, the test of time — but for this to work requires the scientists who have promoted or bought into the mistaken “discovery” to pass on or lose their influence, and that can take decades. Look how long it took for Piltdown man to be exposed.
Nick writes “We know about the last century temperatures primarily from thermometers, not Marcott’s proxies. And that is usually what he is referring to.”
Its quite a simple argument Nick, but utterly undeniable. If the proxies cant/dont reproduce today’s temperatures then they cant reproduce similar temperature variations over similar timeframes in the past either. And hence it cannot be said today’s warming is unprecedented or anything of that nature.
From the video… For Shakun, it is all about “the boom”. That’s the bit he’d impress Obama with: the bit that is obviously total “climate bollocks”.
Negligence can become culpable when an unintentional misreprepresentation becomes an intentional cover-up.
But the climate change priesthood consists of both Gaians and Gnostics.
I have read the details and explanations on realclimate, there is only one explanation. In England right now it is mid-day of April first. Wait for the gale of laughter.
“You took that seriously. How dumb are you?”
The team cannot afford to let this paper be withdrawn, retracted they would lose everything Revkin ect, probably all mainstream media, the show would be over and they know it.
I mean look at what they did.A complicated scenario that resulted in a series that was the term by term average of 73 proxy series, plus each term also includes the average of 73000 random “perturbations” that should average to zero. Similarly 73000 random time “perturbations”
Then they “mean-adjust” (is that a technical term?) the lot until it agrees with Mann’s results.
Then they carefully tell you what they have done, Then say parts are not robust.
Oh My God, I have just realised who is the butt of the joke…. BRILLIANT. SUPERB….UNPARALELLED
Philip Shehan says: Blah blah blah…
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Without even getting into the dating of proxy issues, the proxy graph does not begin to have a resolution that can detect a decades long trend. The made an invalid comparision, they have retracted that comparision, and they screwed up the proxy report anyway.
D. Cohen,
If the authors had wished to “withhold data”, they would not have included the problematic post mid 20th century proxy data that gives rise to the clearly incorrect uptick for that data when compared to the instrumental record.
Jacob and Philip Shehan:
Please keep your posts coming because I am enjoying your expressions of desperation. Indeed, Philip Shehan, observing the number and frequency of your posts is like watching the flailing arms of a drowning man.
The issue is clear.
1.
Marcott provided a thesis which showed declining global temperature through the Holocene with recent global temperature being the lowest for about ten thousand years. However, fluctuations in the global temperature show recent periods of warming and cooling which coincide with the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and generate the Little Ice Age (see the diagram in the above article).
2.
This was a refutation of the assertions of the ‘Hockey Team’ – and especially of the Hockey Stick graph of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) – which say recent global temperature is higher than for thousands of years and global temperature rise accelerated in the twentieth century.
3.
Marcott was encouraged to amend his graph by various improper statistical tricks which provided a sharp up-tick in the twentieth century. Also, the recent thermometer-derived data were added to the graph to increase the misleading implication of recent and unprecedented temperature rise in the twentieth century.
4.
The misleading and improper version of the graph was submitted to Science by Marcott, Shakun, Clark, and Mix, and it was accepted for publication.
5.
The paper which presented the misleading and improper version of the graph was trumpeted to the media as being an indication of recent unprecedented global warming.
6.
Investigations, notably by McIntyre, revealed the misleading version of the graph was a construct of improper statistical procedures.
7.
Had the graph not been exposed as being misleading and generated by improper statistical procedures then Marcott would certainly have obtained the same career benefits as Mann obtained from the MBH ‘Hockey Stick’ graph.
8.
Providing improper and misleading information for personal gain is commonly thought to be fr@ud but – as Pielke points out – in this case it does not fulfil certain definitions of scientific fr@ud.
9.
The ‘Hockey Team’ are attempting damage limitation by pretending that the ‘up-tick’ at the end of the misleading and improper graph is not important. But this is patently false because the ‘up-tick’ was the message trumpeted about the graph.
So, Jacob and Philip Shehan, please keep your posts coming. They cannot obscure the facts of the issue but they provide great laughs.
Richard
to the people trying to cover up the truth read this, http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/31/the-marcott-filibuster/
Philip Shehan, did someone step on your ideology? Facts are facts and Marcott is not entitled to his own. Go back to where all the Gorebots go and help them work on the mess this paper has created for climate science!
Philip Shehan sorry but Marcott went pimping this ‘research’ [as] proof [of] recent events when in reality is was not such thing , if he had not be caught, and why he was not in ‘peer review ‘ is a good question, would he or the other authors have made it the problem public ?
Well given the whoring they done for ‘the cause ‘ on the very thing they now claim does no matter , we can suggest it would be highly unlikely.
“because the ‘up-tick’ was the message trumpeted about the graph”
Correct.
But the up-tick came from splicing the instrumental record (not from proxies).
I think that this splicing can’t be done, it’s false, and missleading.
But Mrcott stated up-front, correctly, what he was doing. He didn’t cheat.
I dissagree with Marcott’s conclusion, but don’t see how one can accuse him of missconduct.
I tried to leave this on Roger Jr.’s blog but don’t understand how to register there.
Roger:
I note one of the paleo temp measures was made using “ratio of magnesium and calcium ions in the shells of microscopic creatures that had died and dropped to the ocean floor;…”
This illustrates a serious problem of the kind that can arise with multidisciplinary sciences.
Any geologist is familiar with the process of ‘dolomitization’in which previously deposited calcite can be subsequently altered in the presence of Mg ions in the water.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/168366/dolomitization
The shells should be studied for the mineralogical signature of this process (coarser particles of dolomite in the calcite, often somewhat euhedral (showing crystal faces).
Thanks Christopher,
Christopher Hanley says:
April 1, 2013 at 12:36 am
That video is just what the Dr. ordered.
Mr. Watts, this video alone is deserving of its own titled post.
There seems to be remarks of the “sauve qui peut” type (at the end of a defeat in a War, the French phrase is a last official utterance: save what you can. Fellows such as the two noted, appeal to the uptick being shown by the instrumental record.
Philip Shehan says:
April 1, 2013 at 1:55 am
Nick Stokes says:
April 1, 2013 at 12:11 am
I don’t know whether Philip S. has any clues whatsoever, but Nick Stokes should know better. If the curve over the holocene is essentially a 300yr smoothing plus error bars, it does not show what spikes upward over decadal, or multidecadal time frames there most certainly were, most probably with as much relief as we see in the instrumental record with the 60 yr cycles. One can’t use a 300yr smoothing to compare with an annual smoothing of the instrumental record. The lost spikes most certainly assure that we are well below any Holocene highs. Let us take the average of the last 150 years, at least to get an approximate comparison with the rest of the data – the spike simply disappears, like the ones that disappeared over the 13,000yr trace.
The uptick is well established – as far as the NSF is concerned – in earlier published works. The press release says:
“”We already knew that on a global scale, Earth is warmer today than it was over much of the past 2,000 years,” Marcott says. “Now we know that it is warmer than most of the past 11,300 years.””
The next is:
“”The last century stands out as the anomaly in this record of global temperature since the end of the last ice age,” says Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences.”
That could have been phrased more clearly, but in the context of the author’s statement it is not misleading unless you want to be mislead.
Determination of scientific misconduct should have a high threshold. It’s easy to extrapolate beyond the data without having malicious intent. That’s just a failure of self-knowledge and caution. However, it’s journalistic malfeasance that needs to be condemned at the slightest whiff of untruth. Those who publicize scientific research are getting away with pushing an agenda. Doesn’t matter if they’re press release writers, regular reporters, or even the scientists themselves talking about their work through the public media. Hyping is deliberate lying, even if one believes the science at the core is accurate.
‘Christopher Hanley on April 1, 2013 at 12:36 am
Watching Jeremy Shakun interviewed, he must inhabit a parallel science universe.’
Aside from noticing his interesting, revealing eye brow tick (How does he do that?), I also noticed how positively buoyant he was over the dream of being with Obama on an elevator. Of course, that elevator could be (and probably is) plunging down into an abyss of debt. But that’s besides the point. What is important, I think, is his absolute failure to choose to realize that Obama doesn’t pay for his research. We do. Repeat; we do. And once the sticky spider web, woven by these theories, has succeeded in entrapping and ready to feast on every function of the economy, well guess what Mr. Shakun, Obama ain’t gonna’ be able to pay you with our money any more. We won’t have any. And, don’t for a second, Obama’s gonna’ pay you with his money. That came from us too, I’m sad to say.
jacobress:
Your post at April 1, 2013 at 5:21 am quotes me (without attribution) having said
Your post continues saying in total
Well, if you “don’t see” then it must be because you are using a ‘Nelsonian eye’. Please read all of my post at April 1, 2013 at 4:35 am from which you have quoted. And note this
Furthermore, in an FAQ Marcott et al. say:
Assuming the splicing were the only error which created the up-tick (it was not) then such a conclusion is invalid on the basis of the difference between two different data sets with very different temporal resolutions. And it is hard to accept that they did not know this following the MBH ‘hockey stick’ debacle.
If it was not malpractice then it was gross incompetence of such magnitude that it is incredible in light of the MBH saga.
As point of interest, I objected to MBH98 within a week of its publication precisely because of such splicing and I did not then know about ‘hide the decline’.
Richard
Would this not be the expected modus operandi for someone ostensibly (apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually) in the pay of ‘big climate science’ (as skeptics are often assumed of being in the revenue stream of ‘big CO2’)?
Verily, the behavior of someone dedicated to the (or a) cause (as in dedicated to the survival of the organization vs what the organization may do), rather than dedication to the pursuit of the science and objective ‘trvth’ (hence, we arrive at the very heart of the source of “noble cause corruption”)?
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The most damning thing about adding the instrumental uptick is that there’s no way to detect any equivalent historical upticks from the proxy data.
It’s like using a focused telescope to discover Saturn but a very unfocused telescope to look for Jupiter. Of course the conclusion would be there’s only one large planet, but such methodology stinks of desperation and drawing ANY conclusion is fraudulent.
It’s an interesting sleight of hand, however, and displays motive above all else. Such is the sorry state of “climate science” from The Team.
And so are the bad grammar.
Philip Shehan says…
“There is nothing fraudulent or even misleading about the results of the paper.”
It seems it would be a mistake for anyone to trust you with their wallet.