Bishop Hill The closed archive
Apr 6, 2014 Climate: Parliament Royal Society While looking for something else I chanced upon the Royal Society's webpage documenting its official records. On a whim I looked at the record for the minutes of the Science Policy Advisory Group and was surprised to see this:
;)
Although the society's archives are not public - it is a private organisation, at least in form - the statutes give the Fellows a right of access.
Except, it seems, these most important ones; the ones relating to the Society's involvement in public policy, the ones behind the society's public statements on important matters, where it uses the authority of the Fellows' standing in society in support of one public policy objective or another.
Intriguing, I'm sure you will agree.
The Science Policy Centre is directed by a body called the Science Policy Advisory Group. When I first came across this body while researching Nullius in Verba it was headed by Sir John Krebs, a man who needs no introduction to most BH readers, being the head of the Committee on Climate Change's Adaptation Subcommittee.
Today, the chairmanship has been taken over by another familiar figure in the shape of Geoffrey Boulton. And do take a look at the full list of members.
Professor Geoffrey Boulton FRS (Chair) Regius Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Edinburgh
Sir Roy Anderson FRS Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College
Dr Philip Campbell Editor-in-Chief, Nature
Professor Richard Catlow FRS Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Faculty, University College London
Mr Clive Cookson Science Editor, Financial Times
Dame Anne Dowling FREng FRS Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Head, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
Dr Matthew Freeman FRS Head of Division of Cell Biology, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge
Dr Julie Maxton Executive Director, The Royal Society
Professor Susan Owens OBE FBA Professor of Environment and Policy, University of Cambridge
Professor John Pethica FRS Physical Secretary and Vice-President, Royal Society (ex officio)
Professor Martyn Poliakoff FRS Foreign Secretary and Vice-President, Royal Society (ex officio)
Dr David Roblin Formerly Senior Vice President, Head of Research and Site Director, Sandwich Laboratories, Pfizer Limited
Professor Geoffrey Smith FRS Head, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge
Dame Jean Thomas FRS Biological Secretary and Vice-President, Royal Society (ex officio)
Baron Willis of Knaresborough Former Chair, House of Commons Science & Technology Committee
I half expected to see Phil Jones' name on there.
Reader Comments (33)
Fellows of the Royal Society are under the misapprehension that membership is something other than a badge of infamy.
So how do you know when an institution has been taken over by the left?
It starts behaving like the Stasi.
Why are there five non-Fellows on that committee (not counting the Executive Director)?
Just when you think these people cannot let themselves down any further.......
Nice little RS stratplan:
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/governance/Strategic-Plan.pdf
Looks like they've set their cap at Global Warming until at least 2017.
"89. The Royal Society receives the majority of its funding, £47.1 million a year, from the Government. Block 2 of its delivery plan up to 2015 is for Science Communication and Education but, of the £515,000 a year allocated to science communication since 2011, very little appears to have been spent on communicating on climate science."
The Royal Society is being castigated for not spending enough money on promoting alrmist "Climate Change". Now we know why, the proceedings of the Science Advisory Group are locked up for 30 years. With The Royal Society being funded primarily by the tax payer I would have thought they were more like a Quango and, therefore, subject to FOI and transparency.
Si nihil occultans, nihil est te.
[Courtesy of Google Translate.]
The Royal Society is an anachronistic oxymoron whose respectability is only based in an authority it never possibly had apart from in the eyes of the science ignorant
Might one FOI the communications between the RS and the relevant ministries? Are they being ordered to promote a position on climate?
To find this on the RS site, go to Library, Collections, Administrative records, committee minute books.
The one under discussion is at the bottom of the long list.
And how does the Editor of <I>Nature square concealing his policy views from scrutiny with the magazine's vigorous pursuit of public candor and scientific transparency.
Any increase in seismic activity in Snowdonia may be attributed to the rotation of the microplate containing the remains of the late Sir John Maddox.
30 years is a career protecting time limit.
As a btw - I thought Clive Cookson was an interesting chap to see on the list of names - I do hope he is going to cover the RS/DeptBIS cock up of slotting Lewandowsky in at Bristol but, given the Common Values of the World Conference of Science Journailists, I'm not holding my breath.
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Mr Clive Cookson
Science and Health Correspondent
Financial Times
Clive Cookson has worked in science journalism for the whole of his professional life. Mr Cookson graduated in chemistry from Oxford University in 1974. After journalism training on the Luton Evening Post, he became science correspondent of the Times Higher Education Supplement in London and then spent four years in Washington as American Editor of THES. He returned to London in 1981 as Technology Correspondent of The Times and moved to BBC Radio as science correspondent in 1983. He joined the Financial Times as Technology Editor in 1987 and has been Science Editor of the FT since 1991.
http://www.ftconferences.com/futurehealthcare/Page/Speakers---Amsterdam/
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Eligibility requirements
Applicants can be of any nationality.
The applicant must:
hold a permanent post at a university in the UK or have received a firm offer to take effect from the start of the award.
have their basic salary wholly funded by the university.
The eligibility of the application must be discussed between the Vice Chancellor of the university or their elected representative (e.g. Head of Department) and the Royal Society Grants Office before an application can be made. Please contact us about this scheme, after which a security code can be obtained for the nominated researcher to begin the application on e-GAP.
http://royalsociety.org/grants/schemes/wolfson-research-merit/
//
Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential.
http://royalsociety.org/news/2013/new-wolfson-research-merit-awards/
//
Newsletter 14 May: Our common values
...Denialism has been defined as “choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth”. In today’s world, science writers need to be aware of the influence of anti-science efforts on the topics they cover, since science denialism efforts have spread more quickly and widely in recent years, aided by the Internet and social media...
http://wcsj2013.org/2013/05/2515/
So presumably one of the fellows could tell us about the content of those archives, unless they had been asked to sign the official secrets act? Conspiracies aside, I'm sure that sub-committee had some ordinary skill in the art when it came to advising the government on such things as biological warfare or bird flu.
Bishop,
Clive Cookson's name on that list explains quite a few things. Such as the FT's and it's sister publication The Economist's unmovable pro-CAGW/CACC stance.
As of its latest issue, the Economist appears to finally have seen reason, but Cookson's role in the FT's Pilita Clark's monotonous, dogmatic, unquestioning parroting of anything alarmist is now explained.
In my book this amounts to co-opting a key media outlet as it firmly preclused Cookson and Co from adopting a more questioning stance.
Regal Stasi
Lord Sir Geoffrey Boulton was a Senior Lecturer at UEA when I was an ENV undergraduate. His Unit, Quaternary Geology, was excellent: well prepared and up to date.
Boulton left a slight distaste in my mouth however. He had all the right kit: tweed jacket, leather elbow patches, cravat, Oxbridge accent. The accent wasn't quite right however. It might pass muster in the south where they don't know about these subtleties, but I read him as a Black Country boy on the make.
So my lord how will you fix this in the far off land of CANADA ;>0
Boulton was titled 'UK Govt's Chief Advisor on Climate Change' when working for a soft drinks manufacturer: http://youtu.be/2VFWYfBEtJ8. Perhaps this appointment simply reflects that responsibility?
How has such a once admired and respected body,sunk so low?
A list of lettered and sometimes honored numpties and nothing more. Might as well be a list of Facebook Friends for all the significance it has.
As so much of their funding is now from the taxpayer, the material is public 'intellectual' property and should not be embargoed like this.
Is 1984's minutes available?
Perhaps there will be interesting tidbits as the leftasi worm their way in?
Royal Society, can the Queen have a butchers at the secret minutes?
The once aspired-to FRS is no longer in this world of post-normal science.
Are they allowed to embargo their own minutes like this? These are publicly-funded notes. Who can over-rule them? Who can order the release of those minutes?
There's a national-interest thing here, because if they choose to try and hide important minutes then (at the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious) they've got something to hide.
Inadvertently they've now attracted a great deal of unwanted attention. Yet again the cover-up may be someone's undoing...
The Society will be secretly proud of that meeting for 30 years.
"How has such a once admired and respected body,sunk so low?" --Peter Stroud
Corruption.
You can already hear the racket of skeletons hammering on the door of the archive wanting to be released. This move will attract a lot of unwanted attention for the Society. Once again it is the cover-up which will be the main problem.
The Science Policy Advisory Group is intended to advise the government.
Its documentation would be normally be released under the same 30 year rule as other government documents.
EM - interesting idea but that isn't my reading of the situation.
http://royalsociety.org/policy/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_year_rule
Not banned yet
The issue revolves around the precise definition of the documents.
If they are regarded as "records of a government department, not normally available to the public", or as cabinet papers, then the 30 year rule applies, subject to FOI requests.
If the Royal Society is a private organisation then there is no legal requirement for the minutes to be published.
If it is a legally a quango, I am uncertain which rules would apply.
How odd...
To see four Cambridge scions, and not one from Oxford...
Shorter EM - "I don't know"
vs
"Its documentation would be normally be released under the same 30 year rule as other government documents."