It's Google's fault

Phil Jones also appears in the Telegraph today, where he seems to blame Google for the lack of progress in persuading people of imminent catastrophe:

Prof Jones, 58, blamed the way that research papers are posted on Google for providing people with easy access to long lists of dismissive blog postings by sceptics, while making it difficult to source original research papers that support climate change.

He said: "It’s way down there because of the way Google works. People will potentially get the misinformation first."

David Holland clip

As I mentioned a few days back, David Holland was recently interviewed for a BBC East Anglia programme about Climategate. There is a very short clip here.

Update on Nov 15, 2010 by Bishop Hill

The full programme is now available here.

Jones in Nature

David Adam is a name that may well be familiar to readers here - we have come across him before in pursuit of the Institute of Physics regarding their submission to the SciTech committee inquiry, and also at one of those "how do we persuade people now they know what we're up to" meetings that were held in the wake of Climategate.

Adam has now left his position at the Guardian and has moved on to Nature, where I'm sure he will fit right in. Today he has written an in-depth interview with Phil Jones himself, which can be seen here. I found this a very frustrating experience. Take this for example:

So why did he urge colleagues to delete messages in which they discussed, among other things, the preparation of a report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? An attempt to thwart critics, perhaps? “That was probably just bravado at the time,” he says. “We just thought if they’re going to ask for more, we might as well not have them.”

The question we have to ask is whether David Adam was aware that the email in question had as its subject line David Holland's FOI request number the words "IPCC & FOI" - clearly relating to the request in which David Holland asked for emails relating to the IPCC assessment report.  Either way, the reader comes away from from Adam's article completely misled.

UEA Literary Festival

The University of East Anglia is holding a literary festival in November. Strangely, they haven't invited me to speak, but there is at least one event that should prove interesting:

Sir John Houghton, Phil Jones and Sir David King - Friday 12 November 2010.

If anyone is going, a report would be welcome.

UKRIO on retractions

The UK Research Integrity Office has issued new guidelines on retractions of journal articles (H/T COPE). I thought it was interesting to compare the guidelines to the events surrounding Phil Jones' 1990 paper on urban heat islands, which is now of course the subject of a fraud allegation from Doug Keenan. Keenan's claim is that Jones continued to cite the paper even when he knew that some of the underlying data could not be relied upon. Jones' defence is that a subsequent paper he published has shown the findings to be broadly correct.

UKRIO says that papers should be retracted

when there is clear evidence that the reported findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct, such as fabrication of data, or honest error, for example. miscalculation or experimental error;

I think on the basis of this statement, Jones would still argue that the findings were reliable since they were backed up by his later study. However AFAIK, there was a gap of several years in the middle when Jones knew of the problems with his 1990 paper, but hadn't yet published his new findings. This suggests that his conduct at the time was not up to the standards required by these new guidelines (although I am not aware of what rules applied at the time).

The guidelines also make the interesting point that one of the reasons for retraction is so as not to bias future meta-analyses:

A retraction can help reduce the number of researchers who cite an erroneous article, act on its findings or draw incorrect conclusions, such as from ‘double counting’ redundant publications in meta-analyses.

It is therefore interesting to consider the effect of Jones 1990 on any metaanalysis of UHI papers. One assumes that such a study would still pick up Jones 1990 because it has never been retracted. It therefore seems to me that it is incumbent upon Jones to retract the paper, even at this late stage.

Wonky code

Nature has an article up about wonky computer code, with particular reference made to the Harry Readme file and Nick Barnes' efforts to get climatologists to do better on the coding front.

This struck me as interesting:

When hackers leaked thousands of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, last year, global-warming sceptics pored over the documents for signs that researchers had manipulated data. No such evidence emerged...

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the inquiries actually looked at the computer code, apart from there being a brief word from Tim Osborn in evidence to Muir Russell, denying that the bodges he'd mentioned affected published results. I'm pretty sure the Harry Readme was not looked at by any of the inquiries.

There is an accompanying comment piece by Nick Barnes here.

Jones in Times top 100 scientists

Apparently Phil Jones appears in the Times top 100 people in British science (not online).

In July, Phil Jones was reinstated as Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia after every report into the “Climategate” e-mail scandal exonerated him from any wrongdoing.

The saga of the hacked e-mails took a considerable toll on the climatologist, who has spoken of his thoughts of suicide during the outcry. Jones is renowned in the science community for his work on hemispheric and global surface temperatures. He has spent his entire career at the CRU and, as one of the most cited researchers in geosciences, he will be welcomed back to the fold.

H/T JG-C

Update on Oct 7, 2010 by Bishop Hill

According to Fraser Nelson in the Spectator, the list of the top 100 scientists was preceded by a Ben Webster article outlining a list of the five top bad people (i.e. global warming sceptics). The list was apparently as follows:

• Lomborg
• Lawson
• Sarah Palin
• Monckton
• McIntyre

As Fraser Nelson notes, Ben Webster, the author of the piece in question, is normally better than this:

Even journalists, whose job is normally to probe and question, have become cheerleaders for a cause. There is a mood of hysteria - and before CoffeeHousers go the other way and attack Webster, I'd like to say that he is not one of those journalists. His reporting in Copenhagen and afterwards fully reflected both sides of the debate - which is why it's so strange to see this piece from him today.

I agree with Nelson's assessment of Webster. I sometimes wonder if what is coming out of the Times these days are the collected thoughts of the greener members of the Murdoch family rather than the expensive journalists they employ.

GWPF report press

I'll post up links to any news coverage of the GWPF report here.

James Delingpole:

Climategate whitewashers squirm like maggots on Bishop Hill's pin

Here's Fred Pearce in the Guardian:

Andrew Montford's report for Lord Lawson's sceptic thinktank raises some valid criticisms but will most likely be ignored for its brazen hypocrisy

Roger Harrabin

[Montford's] report complains that the enquiries commissioned by UEA did not offer sceptics the chance to give oral evidence. He points to many instances where he says the enquiries failed properly to investigate serious allegations against academics at UEA.

Louise Gray in the Telegraph

[A] report for GWPF by Andrew Montford, a well known blogger, said the inquiries failed to ask the opinions of sceptics. He also said they were rushed and failed to ask a series of questions about why requests for information were refused or probe allegations of fraud in scientific papers.

Fiona Harvey in the FT

[I]n the latest salvo, the Global Warming Policy Foundation – a think-tank started by the UK’s former finance minister Lord Lawson – published its critical assessment of four of these inquiries on Tuesday.

“None of the panels mounted an inquiry that was comprehensive,” the GWPF concluded. None “managed to be objective” or “performed their work in a way that is likely to restore confidence in the work” of the UEA scientists who wrote the e-mails.

The press conference

Whew! That was quite a tough couple of days, but I think it went pretty well in the end. The turnout for the press conference was reasonable, although it was a worry at about two minutes to 11 when there were fewer than ten people in the room, and four of those were on the top table. In the end though we had the Times, Guardian, FT, Express and a few others. 

The presentations were fine - perhaps I might have made it a little shorter if I had my time over again - but of course the meat was in the questioning. I was a bit waffly on one of them, but chatted to the journalist in question after the event and made things a bit clearer. James Randerson's questions were interesting - were you paid for the report and how much - that kind of thing. This was pretty feeble stuff after the other journalists' questions. The other question he put, where I made a slight error in my reply, was when he asked why, since I was criticising Oxburgh for being partisan, the public should trust my report, given that I am also a partisan. My reply was that it wasn't enough to point to the partisanship, but to point out the subsequent errors or omissions, and I invited the press to check the citations in the report out for themselves. But I also began my reply with "Yes I am a partisan" or words to that effect. This is frankly, undeniable, but I saw James leap for his pen at that point, so I guess he will try to make something of it. 

The moment of excitement was at the end, where Graham Stringer piped up from the back of the room. I hadn't noticed he was there before then, but his comments did bring a certain focus to events. After the trivia of James R's questions, hearing from a member of the Science and Technology Committee that what was going on at CRU was literature and not science made the question of how much I was paid for the report seem somehow deeply irrelevant. 

So, I'm reasonably content with how thing went. It just remains to be seen what everyone makes of it.

Jones in El Pais

This is my adaptation of a part of a machine translation of an interview Phil Jones gave to the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Q. How do you think Climategate will be seen in 20 or 30 years? Do you think it will be important or considered a story?

R. I hope people will be back to believing in science, but I think it will take some years. There are two different cases. Many people believe that the planet is warming. It is ridiculous to question the warming, which is clear and no scientist disputes it.  Then there are people who say that even so is not due to human activity.

Q. The debate about the influence of man is relevant?

A. There are scientists who still doubt it, but they are few. And when asked how to explain the warming that has occurred they have much difficulty because it is very difficult to find a rational explanation other than greenhouse gases.

Q. They say that there was a similar warm period in the Middle Ages.

A. We need more evidence on that period, about which information is very limited, and only for the northern hemisphere.

Q. But there were periods as warm as the present.

A. Yes, but we know why there were warm and cold periods in the past. The amount of solar radiation was different and so we will have ice ages in the future.  These processes are still happening and will continue, but they have a completely different timescale to humans.  Here we are talking about climate change in a century that is very fast compared to the past.

Is New Scientist making things up?

New Scientist has published a rather remarkable leader to go alongside its interview of Phil Jones:

For years, ruthless climate sceptics have harassed scientists, drowning them in freedom of information requests and subjecting them to vicious personal attacks. Climategate was merely the public face of this insurgent war. In that hostile climate, some scientists fired off personal emails that occasionally lacked decorum. The CRU accepts this. When will their opponents apologise for their own excesses?

It would be interesting to see whether the leader writer at New Scientist can explain from where they got the idea that CRU had drowned under FoI requests. This was not the finding of the inquiries. The Information Commissioner specifically told the Parliamentary Inquiry that the level of FoI requests was nothing out of the ordinary:

I am also bound to say that I think a figure of around 60 [requests] has been mentioned. That does not strike me as being an absolutely huge number...I do recall one example—I think it involved Birmingham City Council—where an individual made about 200 requests about a particular allotment site in Birmingham and how that was being developed.

I'd like to invite whoever it is that wrote this column to provide some backing for their claim - perhaps someone who is registered at the New Scientist website can pass the invitation on.

Snippets

I have guests at the moment, so no time to blog. Here's some interesting links though:

Phil Jones interviewed in New Scientist

Kerry Emanuel op-ed.

More media

GWPF have responded to the Times' silly "sceptics funded by big oil" story, pointing out that their articles of association preclude them from accepting oil money. Despite this the Times have tried to link them to big oil and have refused them a right of reply.

Richard Black discusses global warming scepticism alongside consideration of neo-nazi attacks on Stephen Schneider. Nice.

Adam Corner, writing in the THES, says that the CRU scientists were exonerated (H/T Doug Keenan) and argues that peer review is still effective. Doug Keenan has written to him putting him right. There is an accompanying editorial which repeats the central theme but at least seems to think there are lessons to be learned.

Dear Dr. Corner,

Your article asserts that researchers at the Climatic Research Unit have been exonerated of wrongdoing. I dispute that.

I have alleged that Phil Jones committed fraud in his work on the 2007 IPCC Report. My allegation was published in a peer-reviewed paper. It was also widely publicized, including in a front-page story in The Guardian. Yet neither the Russell Review nor the Oxburgh Review considered any of the evidence for the allegation.

Other people have also had their allegations against researchers at CRU not properly investigated. David Holland’s allegation, for example—where the Russell Review just asked CRU researchers and their supporters if the researchers were guilty, and then accepted the replies without question, or asking Holland for comment.

The Reviews were plainly not attempting to reach justice. That, however, is not the problem. The real problem is that the lack of systemic accountability. The reviews were ad hoc responses and should never have existed. There should be some general mechanism in place whereby allegations of improper behavior are dealt with.

There are tens of thousands of scientists in the United Kingdom. As far as I know, none have been convicted of research fraud in at least twenty years. That is not credible. What kind of society would we have if there were no police, judiciary, or prisons? That, in effect, is the system in place in science today.

The result is a culture of impunity. The main problems with the peer review system are consequences of that culture. There are many other consequences: bogus research is widespread.

Sincerely,

Douglas J. Keenan

Arthur Smith on the trick

Another defence of the Nature trick has been published. This time the author is Arthur Smith.

The Climate Files

Updated on Jun 9, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Fred Pearce has new book out on Climategate and will be speaking about it at the Royal Institution on Monday. Readers will remember Pearce as the author of a detailed series of postings on the Climategate emails in the Guardian at the start of the year. The book sounds pretty interesting...

To coincide with the launch of his new book, The Climate Files, the veteran environment journalist Fred Pearce discusses how the emails raise deeply disturbing questions about the way climate science is conducted, about researchers' preparedness to block access to climate data and downplay flaws in their research."

Click to read more ...