Bishop Hill IJoC to institute new data policy
Jan 4, 2010 Climate: other FOI Journals Progess is glacial, but is nevertheless in the right direction - this in today from Professor Hardaker at the Royal Meterological Society in response to my query as to how the RMS publications committee had decided to address the issue of availability of data and code.
The Scientific Publications Committee did agree that the Society should formalise its policy for all of its journals on this and that the spirit of the policy should be to make available supporting information and data where possible within the licensing and copyright rules – we think this follows best practice. The Committee have asked me to finalise a draft policy for their approval at the next meeting.
The devil will be in the detail of course, but at first sight "supporting information and data" might well be construed as covering data, intermediate results and code. Let's hope so. It will also be interesting to see if they adopt a policy of demanding all this information up front, or if they go for the normal physical science journal approach of making information "available upon request". I hope they don't choose the latter, a sure recipe for conflict in the future, but we will have to wait and see.
Reader Comments (8)
Hi Bishop,
Great news. Hope you will continue to follow up.
Geoff (Smith, yes that one)
Hi Geoff
It's in the diary.
Why not e-mail him back and suggest that public policy clearly should never be made on the basis of science "findings" that are announced in studies which cannot be readily replicated by others. Why not add a caveat to their policy that advises public policymakers -- "we at the RMS believe in replication, but there may be situations where we cannot insure that everything necessary for replication is available. We may choose to publish such a study because it introduces something of interest to the scientific process, but we would caution policymakers to avoid using it to make policy. Replication is essential to quality science."
"policy should be to make available supporting information and data where possible within the licensing and copyright rules "
Hasn't the hockey team been hiding behind this "data licensing/copyright" nonsense already? Seems they will all be singing from the same "licensed to authorised persons only" hymn-sheet well before the Scientific Publications Committee makes any moot submission policy.
It's as if someone collaborated with "interested parties" to make a mutually beneficial policy IMO.
As a medical reporter, I've seen a sea change in media policy I think also benefits honest climate science. It's simple. Until a few years ago, reporters and editors tried to ignore the internet as source material for their stories, but now they visit more sites and blogs and take note of what they find. I have no doubt this has influenced the tenor of some press stories.
Re climate change---there are great blogs that actually tackle the science. So reporters and editors are even more prone to take note.
What could help even more? Bloggers should find email addresses for reporters and send them, on a continuing basis, updates on revelations about false and true climate science. Keep that pressure on. It will have an effect.
Yes, Jon, you are absolutely correct. That is the way to win this fight.
If it is anything like the NAS report, it will be loaded with enough caveats to be completely toothless.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12615&page=R1
Andrew:
I was following up on the point you raised in HSI, page 438 - prior to writing a belated Amazon review. The RMS now has a data policy. I have no idea how they actually operationalize their policy nor how rigorously they enforce it.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-0088/asset/homepages/Policy_on_availability_of_data.pdf?v=1&s=611e4e204efb866303e80229cacb702c843f99dd&isAguDoi=false
As for HSI, I had delayed reading it because I thought I was pretty familiar with Steve's work. The Steyn lawsuit got me thinking about whether Steyn's lawyers had read and might use your book as part of their case preparation - rather than plowing though ancient posts on Climate Audit. Your superb and easy-to-follow write up put things into context. I greatly enjoyed reading it. If Steyn read HSI, it is no wonder he took such a dim view of Mann and his work.
One final query. Do you know if Naomi Oreske has reviewed or commented on your book?