When Graham Stringer quizzed Davies, he probed the UEA man on the question Stephen Metcalfe had failed to pin Davies down on, namely whether the papers went to the panel before or after approval by the Royal Society.
Having been forced to admit that they went out two days before Royal Society approval, Davies made an interesting defence. He introduced the idea of a conversation between himself and Martin Rees, in which it was apparently indicated that the Royal Society would approve the UEA list of papers for use in the Oxburgh panel's work.
It seems to me that the problem with this argument is that Rees has freely admitted that he doesn't know the relevant literature - he is of course a cosmologist.It is hard to square his purported approval at this point with his very cautious passing on of the issue to Sir Brian Hoskins in the email correspondence on 12 March.
Stringer also discussed the absence of the multiproxy studies in the inquiry. Davies responded by saying he disputed the assertion. He said that there had been little discussion of which papers should have been included and says the list in my report seems to have come from a post on on McIntyre's site dated 15 April. Davies seems to think that this is significant. Clearly we are deep into logical fallacy territory here, with the UEA man apparently trying to convince the committee that if a list of papers they should have included postdates the report, they are somehow absolved of leaving out the most criticised papers.
Davies also says the McIntyre list was mostly referenced in the Russell evidence, although again this appears to be fallacious, since the allegation is that they weren't looked at by Oxburgh. Davies notes that some papers on the McIntyre list were in the Oxburgh list, but again it is not clear why he thinks this absolves him of leaving out the multiproxy studies. Davies then goes on to list the papers that McIntyre discussed in his submissions to the original S&T committee and to the Russell panel, listing them all in gory detail. The same points about fallaciousness apply.