Bishop Hill UQ doubles rather than quitting
May 20, 2014 Climate: Sceptics When Brandon Shollenberger announced that the University of Queensland was threatening him with a libel suit, Anthony Watts noted that the university administrators were almost certainly releasing the unpredictable forces of the Streisand effect.
I guess they don't read Watts up With That in the admin block at the University of Queensland. Today, in their wisdom, they have decided to issue a press release in response:
Recent media coverage (The Australian, 17 March 2013) has stated that The University of Queensland is trying to block climate research by stopping the release of data used in a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
This is not the case. All data relating to the “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature” paper that are of any scientific value were published on the website Skepticalscience.com in 2013.
Only information that might be used to identify the individual research participants was withheld.
This was in accordance with University ethical approval specifying that the identity of participants should remain confidential.
Brandon has written a response here, which makes the statement, which appears under the name of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and International) Professor Alastair McEwan, look monumentally retwardian. It might be interesting to see if it really was McEwan's idea or whether he has just been misled by John Cook (or perhaps a joint effort), but I don't suppose we will ever find out. Bitter experience suggests that there is no crime so heinous that a university administrator is not capable of covering it up.
Reader Comments (28)
Let's celebrate...the climate crisis is evidently no more, as UQ and Cookie spend the otherwise very precious remaining 99 months or less wasting everybody's time with lies and the inconsequential.
Yes, obviously climate change just went away. H/t the GWPF which used that cartoon alongside the story of Aussie premier Tony Abbott slashing the budget for climate science yesterday.
Amazing. They are claiming that the raters were to be protected due to the ethics approval? So are they admitting that this "research" was actually a study about the raters skills to classify scientific papers according to a set of parameters and not about the actual content of the papers at all? Otherwise, why would they need ethics approval for rating scientific papers? This is going to get really entertaining, time to dig up the ethics approval?
Perhaps the key phrase is "that are of any scientific value". If not, they might be off the hook.. :-)
"Recent media coverage (The Australian, 17 March 2013)"
So the U of Q don't even know what year it is...
"... there is no crime so heinous that a university administrator is not capable of covering it up."
This kind of rhetoric is just silly. If it means that every uni admin type will cover up heinous crimes, then it's ridiculously false. If it means that for any heinous crime some uni admin type would cover it up, then it is pretty much vacuous, since the same could be said of any big enough segment of humanity.
If it's just a low-rent rhetorical way of saying that uni administrators as a group have an unusually high propensity to cover up, what's the basis for believing that uni admins are especially worse in this regard than other bureaucracies?
redc, not only don't they know what year it is they don't know the difference between March and May.
One assumes that the "University" of Queensland is twinned with the "University" of Delaware...
Szilard
Sandusky springs readily to mind, but in climate matters there's the Jones shenanigans at University of Easy Access to name just one.
Szilard @1:48 PM
There is obviously a normal distribution in academic scruples and many diligent, honest and capable folk are being tainted by the inability of academia as a whole to get its house in order. That said - the grandstanding, cover ups and "tarting for funds" indulged in by teaching staff keen to garner extra lolly (and a "research profile") for their departments left the boundary of professional integrity behind long ago... It's just toe curling to see institutions of learning transparently manufacturing evidence - watching this bunch of idjits using public funds to go after somebody whose only transgression was to offer an evidenced critique... is just headshakingingly p*sspoor.
Somebody ought make a study to see if inappropriate behaviour is encouraged/rampant at 2nd- and 3-rd grade Universities, all too keen to join the Big Leagues and thereby uninterested in ethics and the law.
Perhaps somebody should do a study to illustrate or examine if the burnings by the Inquisition were in any way related to the MWP?
Another clear case of consensus science, being wholly agreed that it must deny the facts to skeptical science.
Only skeptical science needs the data - consensus science just needs an opinion!
May 20, 2014 at 1:57 PM | John B
Well said! The same thoughts had struck me, tho' I should emphasize the role of (let's just say) 'non-academic staff' in the cover-ups. (I could also mention another case where comments by 'non-academic staff' regarding the number/size of the grants brought in reflects something or other creditable, but given the severity of British libel law ...... ) . Anyway, I think it is fair to indicate a higher propensity ..... contra the emotional comments by Szilard. (The policies [aggressively!] advocated by Jones and he whose name I choose not to mention would kill millions).
The Vice Chancellor has presumably been ill informed. The published paper itself listed and acknowledged all raters who were not coauthors. Thereby providing the complete list of individuals who participated. Rubbish announcement, flat out wrong. Either an astounding level of ignorant incompetence, or an even more astounding attempt to dissemble in order to deflect the gathering storm. Either way violates the first rule of holes, which is when in one and you want out, stop digging.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, John Cook could have cooperated with Richard Tol to get him the analyses Tol wanted done without disseminating the full data set.
Sorry but this is just clumsy stonewalling, followed by more clumsy stonewalling.
From the hacked/leaked SkS Forum – The Consensus Project – Ari hits 3000 [ratings]
John Cook:
“Damn, I only find out now that I could’ve been rating all this time on the iPad? So much lost opportunity! I just did a half hour exercise on the cross trainer and knocked off 30 ratings while I exercised. I could have spent the last month of exercise racking up 1000 ratings!”
Ari Jokimäki:
“I also have had rather pleasant moments with rating; in the other day I practiced my guitar playing and rated papers at the same time. :) “
In purely Lewandoskian tone we can now safely assume and declare...all the stonewalling is because they are perfectly aware the so-called data is absolute complete total unadulterated rubbish.
What if we get independent corroboration of the media reported claim by Alastair McEwan (UQ's acting Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and International)) that the Cook et al paper’s ethics approval prohibited public disclosure of the names of abstract raters? If we get that independent corroboration, then one would reasonably expect John Cook to be formally investigated by the UQ ethics committee for blatantly violating the McEwan claimed ethics approval when Cook published abstract rater's names in the 'Consensus' paper.
John
Rud Istvan, it turns out not all raters were listed in the paper (either as authors, or in the acknowledgements section), and not all people listed performed ratings. There's been some discussion of that in the comments section of this post:
http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/a-direct-challenge/
The hiding of the time stamps is because they would be a dead give away that the 'reviews' where done so quick has to be worthless. I bet they did quick word finds and based much on that , never brothering to actual look at the contents.
In the end its the very fact they 'match' the 97% ,. not over not under , that this was the whole purpose of the exercise. Nothing to do with any honest review.
I remain amazed that the mythic 97% still lives on given its never had any more 'quality ' than the claim that nine out of ten cats prefer whiskers . But it does show how once something has entered AGE dogma it becomes 'immaculate, unquestionable and unchallengeable' no matter what the reality, a position that has nothing to do with science a great deal to do with religion.
KNR,
yes, the time stamps MUST be revealed.... there is no good reason to conceal them, only the fear that they will reveal how shoddy the entire "study" proves to be....
{this comment was also posted at WUWT}
Here is an example of subjective Integrity => UQ demarcates climate science to include Cook. Cook demarcates climate science to exclude people who want to see all his data.
Here is a flawed hidden premise of UQ and Cook claims => they falsely presume to be in a position to demarcate correct climate science, but only the climate can demarcate what is climate science. The climate so far only supports demarcation of climate science to exclude the UQ’s or Cook’s imaginary consensus.
As to the publication of Cook’s ‘Consensus’ paper, the journal ERL lacked the intellectual tools to understand the flawed demarcation efforts of UQ and Cook.
John
Cook is a pathetic creature who has an unknown physics qualification. He was dragged into the climate change bear pit by the nasty corporate thugs of the Guardian, desperate for status free idiots to promote their lies.
many a troll who opined that SkS, as opposed to BH, Wuwt etc was INdependent, just a poor site from a poor honest hardworking leftist.
Now, it seems the poor honest hardworking leftist has a whole huge leftist university behind him that OWNS him ??
Aw, c'mon Bish, it's "doubles up". I'm sure your American readers could cope with translating that into their own "doubles down".
Look. One thing is to write a paper claiming that specifically-named individuals suffer from psychological problems. That's perfectly ok. Something entirely different is to figure out who conducted a study. That must remain secret at all costs. However disagrees is clearly evil.
Cook is a pathetic creature who has an unknown physics qualification. He was dragged into the climate change bear pit by the nasty corporate thugs of the Guardian, desperate for status free idiots to promote their lies.
May 20, 2014 at 7:54 PM | Unregistered Commenteresmiff
Yes, pathetic. But I remember he wrote that he could have, had he wished to do so at the time, registered for a PhD degree. (And then done the original research, written a thesis and submitted it, passed his viva examination, and been awarded the degree.) Therefore (by implication), he is the equal of those with doctorates.