I've just picked up this excerpt from Sir John Beddington's evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committe. Note that this is from the uncorrected transcript. This formed part of the panel's inquiry into the Goverment Office for Science's work in 2009. The session came just after the Russell/UEA hearings. It looks as though Graham Stringer still had UEA on his mind.
Q26 Graham Stringer: What do you think the implications for the Freedom of Information Act are from the reviews into the University of East Anglia affair? Apart freedom of information, are there any other things that you would like to say about that?
Professor Sir John Beddington: I won’t comment on East Anglia. I think that has been a well-worn area of discussion in terms of the East Anglian e-mails. But in terms of the scientific data, I think there are some really quite difficult issues. First of all, I think the basic principle is that, if it is publicly funded science, then the data should be available. This is funded by taxpayers; it should be available. Within that, there are obviously some constraints on timing. I think we need to be pondering quite how data collected on, say, a particular research grant-you do at least give the principal investigator a chance to publish it first, but then the data should be available. I think there are some quite thorny issues there.
David Willetts has actually charged Adrian Smith and me to examine this issue in a lot more detail, looking at the complexities, and that is work in progress. Maybe we will announce a consultation but that hasn’t been firmly decided. But, certainly, I think that is a real issue.
In the case of some of the climate data, the problem you have is that the collection of these kind of data was actually taken on the basis of some degree of confidentiality. This was given to the Met Office and said, "You are very welcome to work with it, but it’s our data and you mustn’t pass it on to a third party." That is a problem, obviously, and we are actually dealing with it. The question is: should we refuse such data? I don’t think we should. I think we should use it as best we can, but there are quite thorny issues out there and I don’t have any slick answers on it at the moment.
The emphasis, which was added by me, is to point readers to the part of Sir John's evidence that was, ahem, questionable. As I'm sure many readers here know, UEA have been unable to come up with any agreements that would prevent them releasing data to other researchers. They were repeatedly able to release the data to their pals. So where did this idea come from that release was prevented by confidentiality concerns?
More on this another time. In the meantime, isn't it just extraordinary how little of the evidence presented to Parliament about the CRU affair is accurate?
[Updated 7/11/10 to make it clear that the transcript is uncorrected]