Working scientist Derek Lowe has a look at the Climategate scandal, and pulls no punches:
I do not want the future of the world economy riding on this. And what’s more, it appears that the CRU no longer has much of their original raw data. It appears to have been tossed over twenty years ago. What we have left, as far as I can see, is a large data set of partially unknown origin, which has been adjusted by various people over the years in undocumented ways. If this is not the case, I would very much like the CRU to explain why not, and in great detail. And I do not wish to hear from people who wish to pretend that everything’s just fine.The commentator closest to my views is Clive Crook at The Atlantic, whose dismay at all this is unhidden. I’m not hiding mine, either. No matter what you think about climate change, if you respect the scientific endeavor, this is very bad news. Respect has to be earned. And it can be lost.
I have lost trust not just in the scientific community involved in this scandal; I’ve lost a great deal of trust in the entire scientific community and their obviously broken peer review process. This goes well beyond one issue for me.
You can read the rest of Dr. Lowe’s piece right here, and I do recommend it.
As I’ve said, I think it’s safe now to use the words “conspiracy” and “fraud” to describe the “Global Warming” scandal. And no, I do not have any great sympathy for these scientists; people who depend on public money should subject to public scrutiny and accountability. Doubly so if they’re busy making public policy recommendations. Especially ones this big. This scandal is starting to look bigger than Watergate to me, and arguably much more important. Hiding incriminatory data, admitting to attempting to evade the law, conspiring to silence critics and to obfuscate damning information? Yeah, if that’s not a conspiracy I don’t know what is.
{ 9 comments }
Climategate Global Warming Quiz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB_UL6d1S64
It’s done, it’s over. It’s definitely a conspiracy, and it definitely gives a black eye to not just this group of scientists but all who uphold the current system of science funding.
How awful it is that people who accept public funding and who make hugely influential public policy recommendations are subject to public scrutiny. [/sarcasm]
There’s a herd mentality in science. Nearly all funding comes from the gov’t (NIH) — so whoever pays the piper calls the tune. If the tune is “Global Warming,” the scientists will play it loudly and badly.
To its credit, the Wall Street Journal has published articles by Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, who, in my view, is one of the best authorities on the issue.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html
The mere fact that he was blackballed and had his funding threatened, showed me that there was something rotten with global warming/climate change years ago.
–HB
Lindzen has been criticized himself for receiving (some) funding from oil companies, and from getting speaker’s fees and such from libertarian and right-wing think-tanks who also accept oil money.
This does not make Lindzen wrong, but it is a matter of full disclosure. I don’t take offense at those who note where Lindzen (and others like him) has potential conflicts of interest, and I think the same should be given to those who insist that man-made global warming is real. Let the sunshine in and all that.
As a long-time skeptic of AGW (or ACC) I have to say this scandal could be damaging to the environment because climate change could actually be happening.
But,
We. Don’t. Know.
Because the data is now completely untrustworthy.
We have to begin again from scratch. Since, to begin good and effective measures to battle climate change, we have to start with good data.
But, as a skeptic who has hated the arrogant “the science is in” attitude of the proponents of the theory, I have to say watching them now is disturbingly hilarious. For years (decades) they have had the data to turn to and had looked down their noses when the more ineloquent amongst the skeptics said things like “It’s not happening, look how cool this summer is”; now, deprived of hard data they are resorting to “I KNOW it’s happening! Look at the video of the ice-shelves melting! Look at the polar bears!”
Sad, really.
This is part of what I posted on my own blogsite:
“Ours is a family of science. It is what we do. Not me personally but my husband has always been, and still is in retirement, a scientist. Our children were raised with inquiring minds. Our vacations were always associated with field trips. We collected fish, we watched dolphins, we walked the beaches and collected shells, we noticed what was going on around us in nature. One son has found new species of cycads, salamanders and scorpions, even though that is not his life’s work. We’ve known how science works.
“The people who perpetuated this fraud as shown in these emails and files are not using proper science. They have soiled the name of science. It means a lot to me and eventually it will effect every thing we do in our country, how we live, how we travel, our quality of life. This is why it has affected what I have posted.”
There is also this:
“This from Don Surber of the Daily Mail
Detroit News: Climategate prof raked in $22.6 million in grants
University of East Anglia Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit that fudged data in order to con people into believing Global Warming, raked in £13.7 million ($22.6 million) in grants, Frank Beckmann of the Detroit News reported.”
That is a lot of money and it means more than the conflict of interests others think big oil can buy. These guys want the money, the power, the prestige, and the grad students to do the work.
Any book on basic ethics in business and government would cover this on the undergrad level. There is absolutely no reason to suggest that by dint of being scientists, these people are immune to the problems inherent in conflict of interest when not just prestige but money and power are on the line.
But where it trips over from simple conflict of interest–which anyone may have, and is not a sin in and of itself so long as it’s openly acknowledged–is when you have people conspiring to destroy the careers and reputations of anyone who dares to question them. Or when you have outright destruction of data that might threaten your position. Then you really do trip over into conspiracy and fraud.
The peer review process was not broken. In fact the reason the people involved here were colluding to pull their publications out of specific journals was to try and discredit the criticism coming from these journals. They tried to break the peer review process and failed. I guarantee you that this was leaked by someone who knew what was going on in there. Why else would the “hacker” know where to find these e-mails or even where to look for them. Apparently some scientists (most actually) still believe in ethically presenting data for your claims and admitting defeat when your theory is deemed implausible.
Also, funding from the Government also is done in a backwards fashion. Experiments that are marketed into hot button issues will get preferential treatment, while say a form of insect control that is non-toxic and yields better crops will get no funding. Hell discovering new species of plants and insects, good luck getting funding for that. The cure for cancer could be in some plant, but we’ll never find it because we’re more concerned with lowering the Earth’s temperature (sun from a cucumber), and defeating AIDs so we can go back to indiscriminate fucking. All science should be funded, even if that means the “important” issues get less.
It isn’t scientists as a whole or peer review that are the problem, it’s the opportunists that have adapted to survive in what is a backwards system that needs to be revamped. There’s lots of science out there it does not stop at global warming and AIDs research.
Well I sort of agree and sort of don’t, JRogge. Credible scientists in this (and other) fields have been complaining for years that these attempts to destroy people with backroom maneuvering happen all the time, and have been repeatedly accused of lying and of being “conspiracy theorists.” We now see that this is apparently not the case.
Many have made the point that a very good reform for the peer review process, particularly for funding, would be to demand that the peer review teams be multi-disciplinary, and include people with absolutely no vested interest in the outcome. That important source data and code be subject to the same open scrutiny as the papers they’re based on. These are not unreasonable requests, and yet they get shouted down regularly by people who claim that *only* someone with a PhD in the specific field a paper is based on is even *qualified to comment,* so, for example, in this case, they airily shoot down any suggestion that climate change science research be open to auditing by mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, or even meteorologists: climatologists, and only climatologists, are considered qualified to scrutinize any paper or data and draw any reliable conclusions from it. (Ditto in other fields.)
Any child ought to be able to look at that attitude and notice the problem.
Comments on this entry are closed.