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.
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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.
mods ~ oops, that should have been 4.3 b,e,f above. Not 4.3 a,b,e
noloctd, Why did the conspiritors make huge blunder in having the paleodata uptick occur decades before the instrumental data? That surely this just creates problems for themselves? Why not do as Pielke suggests? Chop off the paleodata which does not fit the “orthodoxy”. A very odd piece of chicanery.
Following the Philip Shehan new rules for science ethics now scientists can just put in their papers rubbish that is “not statistically robust”, ” cannot be considered representative ” ” and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.” at the same time trumpeting precisely that in the media.
davidmhoffer. I am not at my own computer now and do not have the link handy but it is a pdf file of Marcott’s thesis. You can try and find it yourself.
Seven figures is not a lot for a 200 plus page thesis. There are in fact more than seven in chapter 4. You are not restricted for space in a thesis as you are in a published paper which is why Marcott could present the data with and without the instrumental data in his thesis but combined them in the paper.
People have picked on one panel of figure 4.3 from the thesis and pointing out that it is different to the paper (well yes, for the reasons just given) without acknowledging the presence of the tick in the other panels. I guess most of them did not bother to check themselves but are just parroting what they have read. Just one example of the critics getting it wrong.
AlexS is talking rubbish. An artefact covering a few decades at the end of 11,000 years of data which does not matter as reliable instrumental data exists for that period does not invalidate the rest of the data in any way.. I tend to agree with Pielke that they could have easily discarded those data points as statistical outliers due to limited paleo data, but then you lot would have been screaming about them “hiding the incline.”
Philip Shehan;
People have picked on one panel of figure 4.3 from the thesis and pointing out that it is different to the paper (well yes, for the reasons just given) without acknowledging the presence of the tick in the other panels.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Uhm….no. They’ve picked the prominent figure from the publication and shown that it doesn’t match the corresponding figure in the thesis. Marcott et al have since admitted that the figure published figure isn’t supported by the data, and have asserted that it doesn’t have anything to do with the paper.
But keep spinning… I’m sure you’ll come up with something that doesn’t make me LOL at some point.
davidmhoffer:
Here is the link to Marcott’s thesis:
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/21129/MarcottShaunA2011.pdf?sequence=2
With regard to your Uhm…no; Uhm…no
They’ve picked a prominent figure from the publication because that’s the one McIntyre presented to them, and one of eight figures from Chapter 4 of Marcott’s thesis, the one without the tick due to the statistical artifact from limited data in the 20th century, because that’s the only one McIntyre presented to them, and they could not be bothered checking for themselves to see what the real story was. Actually McIntyre himself was just following the lead of a reader, “Jean S”.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/14/no-uptick-in-marcott-thesis/
Here is what McIntyre says:
“The differences will be evident to readers. In addition to the difference in closing uptick, important reconstruction versions were at negative values in the closing portion of the thesis graphic, while they were at positive values in the closing portion of the Science graphic.”
The reason for the differences is clear with a cursory examination of the graphs. The figure in Science includes all the data including the artefact and “the positive values in the closing portion of the Science Graphic.”
In Marcott’s thesis he did what Pielke said he should have done, removed the artefact and the later data leaving “the negative portion of the thesis graphic”.
There is no inconsistency whatsoever. One simply covers a few extra decades of data. People have just been lazy in the examination of the two graphs.
Whereas Marcott is the sole author of his thesis, with input from his supervisor, he is only one of the authors of the Science article.
Whether because of the input of his coauthors or at the request of the journal referees the journal referees, or for some other reason not apparent to me as I do not have the full text of the Science article, the article included the later paleodata artefact and all.
There is no requirement whatsoever that figures in a journal article have to exactly represent a figure that appeared in one of the authors thesis. I speak from experience.
Figure 4.2 a-d in Marcott’s thesis contains the uptick from the instrumental data because it compares the paleo data with it.
From the thesis:
“In order to compare our globally stacked record directly with modern climatology, we mean shift our temperature record to a common period of overlap with a reconstruction for the past 2000 years (Mann et al., 2008) (Figure 4.2), which is itself reported as an anomaly from the A.D. 1961-1990 period and is cross validated with the Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia) instrumental surface-air temperature dataset (Brohan et al., 2006).
Figure 4.2. Time series of globally stacked temperature anomalies.
a, Mean of globally stacked temperature anomalies for arithmetic mean calculation (purple) with 1error (blue band) and Mann et al.’s (2008) global CRU-EIV composite mean temperature (dark gray) with error (light gray) for last two millennia…”
Fig 4.3a serves a different purpose:
“To test the reproducibility of our two methods for reconstructing the temperature stack, we experimented with various ways of calculating the globally stacked temperature anomalies (Figure 4.3 a,e).”
Ah jeez Shehan, give it up, the Marcott study is toast and your focus minutiae is a waste of everyone’s time . Stop defending the indefensible and get your head out of your posterior so you can see the mess they created. Start by reading Ross McKitrick’s essay on the main page.
omnologos says: March 31, 2013 at 11:04 pm
“Ps Marcott’s abstract explicitly mentions “the last decade”.
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Gavin at RC says that Marcott ends at 1940. However, if Marcott does end at 1940 as Gavin claims, why all the press buzz from the authors over modern temperatures?
The world was a much different place prior to 1940. Before 1940 there is little CO2 based warming due to human activity because human fossil fuel use prior to WWII was minimal. So if the Marcott spike is showing us anything it is that we should expect warming spikes to occur naturally if we increase the resolution of the proxies.
Philip Shehan says:
April 1, 2013 at 3:45 pm
…The new “hockey stick” is no such thing as Marcott et al. has no blade.
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hockey pucks. The spike on the right was most certainly intended to duplicate the blade and give the rest of us the shaft.
Philip Shehan says:
April 1, 2013 at 11:17 pm
“To test the reproducibility of our two methods for reconstructing the temperature stack, we experimented with various ways of calculating the globally stacked temperature anomalies (Figure 4.3 a,e).”
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and cherry picked the ones that showed the result we wanted to achieve. and then declared to the world that our results were proof positive. Only after we were caught with our hands in the cookie jar did we confess that our results were not robust. (in other words, the results disappear if you use different methods of calculation)
So, Mr Shehan, let’s cut to the chase. Does Marcott et al. tell us anything about the rarity of the speed and scale of 20th Century warming?
I’d say that it can’t, because the resolution of the paleo reconstruction obscures any such historical warmings/coolings. What is there in the paper of validity that suggests otherwise?
Marcott is playing with a ringette stick. He knows he looks like a girly-man doing so so he tapes on a flimsy plastic blade and calls it a hockey stick. Looks like the real thing to those who know nothing about hockey but he can’t shoot with it.
In real hockey he would receive a penalty for playing with a broken stick.
In a just world, he would be mocked out of the scientific community and forced to look for a more honest line of work.
Is it time to sue the IPCC and the lying green groups yet?
Mrt Watts. Well pardon me for focussing on “minutae”. So much easier to make a general smear without examining the “minutae” The accusations against Marcott were based on the “minutae”, and I have examined them. That’s what scientists do. That’s what science is about. If you can’t hack having the claims in your articles examined, don’t put them up.
REPLY: Oh I can hack it, I just find your hacks tiresome and pointless- Anthony
How would you ever compare proxy anomalies with modern temperature anomalies and perform a splice? Maybe I’m missing something here.
Anomalies are each relative but relative to what, they cannot be relative to the same base simply can they? If so how?
Sure seems somewhere there has to exist absolute temperature scales for each to even splice on that uptick and I, as I am sure many others, would sure like to see those absolute temperature bases for each. And if they do in fact have such temperature bases values, where did those originate? Or, have they just matched wiggles with assumptions?
Mr Watts, This section contains complaints by Pielke and commentators of some specific points Marcott’s thesis and the Science article he coauthored. These complaints and alleged inconsistencies are used to claim that Marcott and others is guilty of fraud, misconduct deceit lying etc etc.
I recognize that there are many commentators who think that comments should be confined to unexamined cheering agreement, mutual backslapping and rounds of “Boo Hiss Marcott Sucks and Shehan too LOL.”
I take the attitude that on what is billed as The World’s best Science Blog”, there are actually some here who have the interest, scientific understanding and or intellectual ability to actually examine these claims in a scientific manner.
I know from experience that if I don’t go into “minutae” I have to keep coming back to correct misinterpretation or plain pigheaded stupidity and explain things in further detail.
For example. I pointed out that contrary to the rumour started by one of McIntyre’s readers and accepted without examination and repeated everywhere as established fact, Marcott’s thesis contains seven graphs with an uptick. I also pointed out that McIntyre’s puzzlement at the differences in the two graphs is in plain sight for anyone who wished to spend more than a few seconds looking at it.
I then get asked for a link. I provide it, but knowing people will still not read it before hitting the keyboard, nor after (ferd berple take note), I briefly quote from the thesis to explain what the graphs are showing. This is not pointless, but for those who are to stupid , lazy or ignorant to engage in a truly scientific debate and who do not want their prejudices challenged it may well be tiresome.
If people wish to critically examine my assessment of the evidence, they are welcome to do so with a clear reasoned argument with enough “minutae” to establish their case. Politely. That is how real scientific discussion is supposed to work
Wayne: If I may be so bold. The baselines chosen by different investigators from which the anomolies are measured are somewhat arbitrary. Some make an efffort to use the same ones, sometimes a former baseline is updated to a new one. The global average temperature from 1969 to 1990 is one such commonly uused baseline.
It does not really matter as long as everyone knows what the baseline is and can convert from one to the other. Like giving a temperature in the Celsius or Kelvin (absolute) scale.
When splicing one type of temperature measurement onto another the important thing is to have an overlap of temperature measurements from both sets to establish a common baseline.
Sorry that should have been 1961 to 1990
Philip Shehan:
I write to thank you.
Some days ago, at April 1, 2013 at 4:35 am, I wrote a post in this thread which began saying
I then ‘itemised the facts of the ‘Marcott paper issue’ before concluding saying
Jacob ‘dropped out’, but you have fulfilled my request more than I could have imagined possible.
Nothing has amended or altered the facts I listed, but you have continued to provide the laughs with increasingly desperate ‘arm waving’. Indeed, when Anthony Watts pointed out that your cause had already drowned you continued in your failed attempts to ‘tread water’ in a manner which kicks your cause deeper under.
Now, whenever I need a break I call up WUWT and read this thread to see what you have recently posted. I always put down my coffee first because some of the laughs you have provided are side-splitting.
Many, many thanks. Please continue because I have reached the stage of valuing the laughs you are providing.
Richard
Shehan says:
“I know from experience that if I don’t go into ‘minutae’ I have to keep coming back to correct misinterpretation or plain pigheaded stupidity and explain things in further detail.”
Pure projection. Shehan is crying like a baby as usual, because other commenters disagree with his pseudo-scientific nonsense. Shehan’s own pigheaded stupidity is the problem, not the fact that other readers disagree with him. And referring to Anthony as ‘pigheaded’ does not help Shehan’s case. What other blog would allow a despicable character like Shehan to insult his host like that?
Shehan labels readers as “to stupid, lazy or ignorant to engage in a truly scientific debate” with him. But Shehan is so blinkered himself that he wouldn’t know a scientific debate from his repeatedly falsified, assertion-based alarmist propaganda.
There is no evidence whatever that anything either unusual or unprecedented is happening with the planetary climate. What we observe now has happened repeatedly before — and to a much greater degree. Only propagandists like Shehan falsely assert otherwise. But skeptics have solid scientific evidence showing that nothing unprecedented or unusual is occurring. Thus, catastrophic AGW is falsified, and nothing Shehan falsely asserts can change that.
The fact that Shehan routinely disregardes all scientific evidence that falsifies his belief system is obvious to anyone who reads his cherry-picked nonsense. Whether he is a blinkered fool, or whether he is simply lying about the scientific evidence, depends upon whether Shehan is personally benefitting from the “carbon” scare. If he is not benefitting, then he is of course a blinkered fool on a pointless mission. But if he benefits from dispensing his anti-science cherry-picking, then he is lying for personal gain. Readers can decide for themselves which is more likely; Shehan gets no say in the readers’ judgement. It appears that no other commenter agrees with Shehan, so his response, as usual, is to cry about it.
Thank you Richard Courtney for verifying what I wrote. Yours is precisely the kind of comment I had in mind when I wrote about those who post comments which make no attempt whatsoever to argue the points under discussion but simply make comments along the lines of “Boo Hiss Marcott Sucks and Shehan too LOL.” But you took 226 words to say absolutely nothing of substance.
Then there is DB Stealey. He tops Courtney with 336 words with not a single one debating the science. And as usual he can’t even get the facts right: “referring to Anthony as ‘pigheaded’ does not help Shehan’s case.” I made no such reference to Mr Watts. The remark clearly referred to people who submit comments, not Mr Watts. People like DB Stealey.
Now I know that up until this point I have not commented on the science either. But that is because Courtney and Stealey made a highly personal attack on me including the usual lies and misrepresentations which required a response. If there had been a single comment on the science I would have responded to that, but there was not one. Not one in their entire combined diatribe.
So I issue this challenge to both of them which is the point I made in my comment.
“If people wish to critically examine my assessment of the evidence, they are welcome to do so with a clear reasoned argument with enough “minutae” to establish their case. Politely. That is how real scientific discussion is supposed to work.”
Courtney and Stealey: Put up or shut up.
Shehan says:
“I made no such reference to Mr Watts.”
That’s not how I read it. As Anthony told him: “Ah jeez Shehan, give it up”.
Shehan appeals to non-existent ‘evidence’, saying, “Courtney and Stealey: Put up or shut up.”
While Shehan is scurrying around counting words, I will point out that per the Scientific Method, the entire onus to ‘put up or shut up’ is laid at the feet of those making their runaway global warming claims. Those making their claims carry the onus of proof — not scientific skeptics, who are only saying, in effect: “Put up or shut up.” The one thing Shehan is really good at is his psychological projection when he’s trying to reverse the Scientific Method.
And as I noted above, no one here has agreed with Shehan. Alarmists are always claiming a [non-existent] ‘consensus’ on CAGW. But here, we see an actual consensus: no one agrees with Shehan. He is unable to produce verifiable measurements showing any effect from AGW. None at all. There simply are no such testable measurements, therefore Shehan is forced to resort to his usual bluster. As they say in the great state of Texas: he’s all hat and no cattle.
Unsurprisingly, Mr Stealey has just failed to put up but won’t shut up.
This section is about complaints by Pielke and others about specific details of Chapter 4 of Marcott’s thesis and the Science article he co-authored and alleged inconsistencies therein. “Minutiae” if you will. I have examined those claims, also in detail, with evidence to back up my analysis of those claims. Thus, I have most certainly “put up”.
It is in the context of that discussion only that I have challenged Stealey to ‘critically examine my assessment of the evidence … with a clear reasoned argument with enough “minutae” to establish their case. Politely.’
He has not made any attempt to do so. He simply makes general comments about “runaway global warming claims” etc etc which he produces repeatedly, cut and paste wise in almost every section on this blog, which I have not discussed.
I am analysing the complaints and criticisms made by Pielke and others of the specifics of Marcott’s work which is the point under discussion.
His idea of “per Scientific method” shows an ignorance of that method when he discusses “the onus of proof” ( there is no such onus in science) and reaches ludicrous levels when he resorts to his argument from authority – the authority being a few characters on a skeptical blog who disagree with me – “But here, we see an actual consensus: no one agrees with Shehan.” Again an utterly unscientific cut and paste argument he produces with monotonous regularity.
I will give Stealey another chance: go back at the specific points I have made in this section, about this section (Pielke’s and others comments) and mount a couterargument, ‘per the Scientific Method’;
‘Critically examine my assessment of the evidence … with a clear reasoned argument with enough “minutae” to establish [your] case. Politely.’
REPLY: Well, he’s right, nobody DOES agree with you here, including me. As I said before, this argument of yours is becoming tiring. – Anthony
And another thing. Regarding Stealey’s excuse for a blatant misrepresentation of my statement which clearly referred to [some] pig headed comment writers ( and again I affirm my belief that there are skeptics here who “have the interest, scientific understanding and/or intellectual ability to actually examine these claims in a scientific manner.”)
The fact that Mr Watts was terse with me does not justify the assumption in any way that I would refer to him in those terms, and the reading of my post offers no evidence that I did. Stealey’s stock in trade is personal abuse of everyone he disagrees with, and he so assumes it must be mine.
I will add that I do appreciate that Mr Watts allowed the posting of my two ‘robust’ responses to his criticisms in full. ( Although to paraphrase Churchill: “Mind you, it would have been reprehensible if he hadn’t.”)
Scott Basinger says:
“This paper is yet another example of how pathological this entire field of science has become.”
That is a good point, and worth pursuing. Nobel Laureate [when that really meant something] Dr Irving Langmuir gave a series of colloquia on Pathological Science, which parallels the current AGW narrative [note that I have never said that AGW does not exist, but only that any putative effect from AGW is too small to measure]. AGW is always just below the limit of detectability. The claims of its existence require assumptions. They are inferred, because there are no direct measurements of AGW that are attributable to human CO2 emissions, and not to some other cause.
Langmuir’s Symptoms of Pathological Science are as follows:
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent [think: CO2] of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect [think: AGW] is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. Claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.
Experimental evidence seems at first to support these Pathological Sciences, but upon later testing, the experiments could not be faithfully replicated.
N-Rays, Mitogenetic Rays, the Davis-Bacon Effect, the Allison Effect, E.S.P., and flying saucers all exhibit the same failure of detection, of testability, and lack of replicability as AGW. They all have one thing in common: they are near — but just under — the threshold of detectability.
This is not to say that AGW does not exist; that would be tantamount to proving a negative. But AGW has never been confirmed, either. That would require testable, replicable measurements that unambiguously identify AGW as a major cause of global warming. But there are no such AGW measurements.
There is no generally agreed climate sensitivity number for 2xCO2, either. That confirms that AGW has never been measured; if AGW had been measured, we would have the exact sensitivity number. Also, AGW has been intensely discussed and studied for more than twenty years now. With the pace of scientific progress so rapid, it is questionable why there still has been no AGW measurement. One of Langmuir’s concerns was over the fact that none of his examples of Pathological Science were ever able to be measured.
Readers can learn more about Langmuir’s Pathological Science here [check out the links at the bottom of the page, especially what R.W. Wood did to Blondlot re: N-Rays].
From everything that Dr Langmuir said, it is clear that AGW is no different from the other ‘sciences’ that are just beyond detectability. Again, AGW may well exist. But without verifiable, testable measurements, AGW is not really science, is it?
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All such comments by anyone should be ruthlessly snipped.
Reply: OK, your wish is my command [snip] – Anthony
Philip, allow me to be the one to set you straight.
You’re the drunk guy at the wedding dinner speaking in tongues. Your bafflegab is so confusing that no one cares to speak to you. In fact, it’s so confusing that you even confuse yourself.
Your arguments are mental masturbation.
You are irrelevant here.
Go home. Tell your granny. She’ll pat you on the head, and pretend she believes what a great scientist you are.