Bishop Hill Boulton's editorial
May 14, 2011 FOI Geoffrey Boulton has an editorial in the Lancet discussing the Royal Society project on science and the public, which he is leading. In particular, he discusses the first phase of the project, which looks at data availability. Climategate is mentioned:
Conventional peer-reviewed publications generally provide summaries of the available data, but not effective access to data in a useable format. Increasing calls for greater accessibility have not only come from peer reviewers and those who wish data to be more efficiently used, but also from citizens who wish to interrogate scientific conclusions in depth. The latter in particular have often been frustrated by the apparent resistance of scientists to the release of data, and are increasingly making use of freedom of information laws to obtain it. Recent high-profile cases in the UK include the global temperature data sought from the University of East Anglia, which culminated in the so-called Climategate affair, and the tree-ring data series eventually obtained from Queen's University Belfast through the intervention of the Information Commissioner.
The full article is here (free registration required).
Reader Comments (6)
How did Jones put it , they never asked for the data before , so the standard method of review within climate science does not actual require the data to be available, it merely being enough to known your 'friends' have written the work .
"Recent high-profile cases in the UK include the global temperature data sought from the University of East Anglia, which culminated in the so-called Climategate affair"
That seems to be an admission that frustration of FOI requests was behind the hacking/leaking/release or whatever of the Climategate emails. Does he know something we don't know?
Is this the same Geoffrey Boulton who served on the infamous Sir Muir Russell panel to whitewash the University of East Anglia? Is he the one who, in the wake of the climategate scandal, signed a petition to show his confidence that global warming was caused by humans, but didn't have the good grace to resign from panel? Is this the man who worked at the University of East Anglia – the establishment at the centre of the scandal? Is this the same Geoffrey Boulton who expressed concern in an interview in The Scotsman that public belief in climate change might be damaged by the scandal? The man who said that "The argument regarding climate change is over" ?
If so, I am sure he can be relied up on to be as fully impartial as before.
Let's see:
Geoffrey Boulton on climate change:
Environmentalist writer Brian Merchant Brooklyn on the Treehugger website
@Bomber_the_ cat
This Geoffrey Boulton uses the same email address as the one who sent UEA's Keith Briffa an email with a couple of allegations and told him:
Only it was not. What Boulton sent Briffa was only 25%of the submission that the Review had received, but not published. Without indicating that anything had been redacted, Boulton removed from what he sent to Briffa all the the important references to evidence in the public domain and made undisclosed cunning changes to what was left to make it possible for Briffa to construct a plausible rebuttal.
This same Geoffrey Boulton used this same Edinburgh University public authority email address for his Russell Review work and just days after the Review Report was published - deleted it all ensuring that it could not be disclosed under the Environmental Information Regulations.
Boulton's boss Russell then told a Commons Select Committee that Briffa and his colleagues had seen the submission in question, but did not tell them that it was only a a heavily massaged fraction that his team gave to UEA. He told MP's
Given Boulton's documented behavior - why is he still employed in any position?