Delaware's FOIbles

WUWT has the most extraordinary tale from guest blogger Jan Blits, who reports that the University of Delaware seems to have adopted an FOI policy that involves sceptics handing over anything asked for by anyone, whether falling under the letter of the law or not, while everyone else can withhold what they like. Worse than that, the university seems to have decided that sceptics should also hand over things that have not been asked for at all, presumably just in case environmentalists might find something useful in it.

It's that blatant.

Perhaps readers can suggest what should be done with a public university as thoroughly subverted as this one seems to be?

Fire up the document shredder

As expected, the Virginia Supreme Court has today issued its opinion on the Mann emails FOI case. It has decided that the emails of the university are indeed deemed "proprietary" and therefore not subject to disclosure.

130934 American Tradition Inst. v. Rector and Visitors 04/17/2014 The circuit court was correct in denying a request for disclosure of certain documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The purpose of the higher education research exemption under Code § 2.2-3705.4(4) for "information of a proprietary nature" is to avoid competitive harm, not limited to financial matters.

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Virginian decision

The Supreme Court of the state of Virginia is currently considering the case of Michael Mann's emails and it may be that an opinion will be offered tomorrow, as this Virginia FOI blog explains:

Later this week, probably on Thursday, April 17th, the Supreme Court of Virginia will release its next batch of opinions.  The Court hears cases in sessions, which happen about every 6-8 weeks.  By tradition, the Court releases all published opinions in cases argued at the previous session on the last day of the next session.  The Court isn’t required to follow that schedule; it can take as long as it wants.  But month in and month out, the Court follows its traditional schedule in all manner of cases, complicated and simple, controversial and not.

It is cause for raised eyebrows therefore that the Court missed its usual timeframe on one case (record no. 130934) argued in January: the entity formerly known as the American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Virginia Delegate (and Congressional candidate) Bob Marshall v. the University of Virginia and former UVA professor Michael Mann.  This is pure speculation, but there may be multiple opinions or close questions where the Court wanted to write carefully.  For our purposes, the key points are that a FOIA case has reached Virginia’s top court, with significant implications for all Virginia citizens.

Regulator capture

This is a guest post by David Holland.

BH readers may recall my reporting of Peter Wadhams' unprofessional IPCC Review Editor's report, which featured his spat with MP Peter Lilley. At the time I had received in confidence, from outside the UK, a copy of his then unpublished report. I had also been reliably advised that Thomas Stocker had no intention of releasing any of the Working Group One Review Editors’ reports. For this reason I had made FOI requests at the Universities of Reading and Cambridge.

Reading promptly and fully disclosed the reports of the two Review Editors affiliated to it. Wadhams' university, however, deployed the 'Mitchell' defense, namely that he worked for the IPCC on a personal basis. Stocker did eventually release some, but not all, of the RE reports but the names of Lilley and Paxman which had been shown to government representatives were redacted from Wadhams'.

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Sceptics' new friends

Updated on Mar 18, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The Columbia Journalism Review takes a look at the ongoing attempts to get hold of Michael Mann's emails and revels in the delicious irony of leftie journalists finding themselves filing an amicus brief that will help the evil right-wing fossil-fuel-funded denier conspirators in their nefarious aims.

Organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 17 news organizations, including National Public Radio, Dow Jones, and The Washington Post, submitted an amicus brief in November, supporting the group’s rights to Mann’s emails.

“By defining an exemption to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (‘VFOIA’) as broadly as the lower court has done, this Court Would be, in effect, removing almost all public documents from the ambit of the records law,” reads the brief. By exempting Mann’s emails from public release, the group argues, the court is setting what journalists see as a dangerous precedent—making it much more difficult to gain access to public records.

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More on the secret dissertation

Readers may remember the strange case of the LSE research project that had apparently investigated global warming sceptics in ethically questionable circumstances. Back in July I reported that in response to a request for the related MSc dissertation under the Data Protection Act LSE had contradicted my original source, and said that I was not in fact one of the subjects of the research. They subsequently refused to release details of the project under FOI either.

My appeal to the Information Commissioner has now been concluded, with the ICO upholding the LSE's decision.

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FOI fighters

The Met Office has refused to release the Zero Order Drafts of the Fourth Assessment Report (yes, that's Fourth, not Fifth). This is quite interesting, because a the Information Commissioners have recently suggested that once the assessments have passed into history, the related drafts should be published.

Andrew Orlowski has the full story at El Reg.

The Secret Science Society

Michael Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky have a typically overwrought article at the website of the Association of Psychological Science. Also on the roster of authors are Linda Bauld and Gerard Hastings - anti-tobacco scientivists from the University of Stirling - and a psychologist from the University of Irvine.

One of the principal themes in the article is that bad people keep asking to see scientivists' data and correspondence. This, apparently, is unacceptable behaviour - not a position for which I have much sympathy, or indeed any sympathy at all.

However, it's interesting to see this cross-disciplinary enthusiasm for secret science. Perhaps these paragons of scientific integrity should form a "Secret Science Society" (although the name is already taken). Most of the scientific establishment would sign up.

Commons to look at data and statistics

The House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee has announced an inquiry into data and statistics.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is conducting an inquiry into statistics and open data in Government, with a focus on the progress of the Government in implementing its Open Data strategy. This is part of PASC's programme of work on statistics and their use in government.

Details of the questions they intend to address are here. Unfortunately, the questions seem to be more about data than the use of questionable statistical procedures, but there is plenty of scope to raise the difficulties over, say, the lack of quality control in CRUTEM.

An ethically dubious research project

Some months ago, I posted a link to a lecture by Chris Rapley. The lecture itself was fairly bog-standard chanting of the climate change sutras (the barmy sutras?), but towards the end was something rather intriguing. After the lecture proper was a Q&A session, and although most of this had been cut from the recording the first exchanges seem to have been missed. The first concerned whether we sceptics really believe the things we say, and Rapley's answer was, to say the least, fascinating. Have a listen here (the audio is slightly muffled at first, but improves).

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Climatologists raise the shutters again

About a year or so ago, the Met Office and CRU announced the release of the CRUTEM4 temperatures series. As John Graham-Cumming noted at the time, they were positively gung-ho in their enthusiasm for transparency:

Given the importance of the CRUTEM land temperature analysis for monitoring climate change (e.g. Trenberth et al. 2007), our preference is that the underlying station data, and software to produce the gridded data, be made openly available. This will enhance transparency, and also allow more rapid identification of possible errors or improvements that might be necessary (see e.g. the earlier discussion of homogeneity adjustments in the SH).

Click to read more ...

The advance of secret science

The Intellectual Property Bill has now been published, and this includes the amendment to the FOI Act relating to scientific research that came out of the post-legislative review that was discussed at BH last year.

At first glance, the government seem to have adopted the Scottish approach to the issue - indeed the wording of the bill closely resembles that in the Scottish Act. This allows information to be withheld where it is held as part of an ongoing research programme with a view to future publication.

There is, however, one significant difference. In Scotland future publication means "within 12 weeks". In the new bill, there is no time limit defined. I think what this means is that universities will be able to defer release of data and code indefinitely, by saying that the information is still being used. One is reminded of the claim by Queens University Belfast that the tree ring data Doug Keenan wanted was (a) still in use decades after collection and (b) inaccessible because it was held on paper.

While climate data should still be disclosable under EIR, the bill look looks very much as though it represents a triumph of the scientific establishment over the public interest.

Orlowski at the IT

Andrew Orlowski has reported on David Holland's most recent visit to the Information Tribunal, this time in an attempt to get details of the IPCC's zero-order draft from the Met Office. Interestingly, DECC appear to have refused to allow their representative on the IPCC to appear:

I actually felt a bit of human sympathy for Stott; you can bet he would have rather been somewhere else, and it transpires that Holland didn't actually want him there at all. Holland had wanted to cross-examine the head of the UK delegation to the IPCC, a Department of Environment and Climate Change official called David Warrilow, head of climate science and international evidence.

The procedural questions under the spotlight are Warrilow's bailiwick, not Stott's, but Holland was refused his man. Stott, we learned, had been pressganged into appearing by the Met Office's lawyers. Stott also had to defend his and allied organisations' refusal to disclose material on a basis - as we shall see - that's highly questionable. No intelligent person should have to waste his own time, or anyone else's time, defending the indefensible.

More on the Holland EIR decision

UK Human Rights Blog has examined the Information Tribunal's decision to allow the Russell panel to withhold its emails. The eyebrows of the author, David Hart QC, appear to have been raised:

It is a little odd that a public authority can commission an inquiry of this sort, pay for it, and use its results, in this case, broadly to clear its name, and then not be able to produce documents which, had the inquiry been internal, it would have been required to produce to the requester.

Making science public

Paul Matthews posted this on unthreaded. I thought it worth flagging up for readers:

The videos from the Nottingham event "Making Science Public" have now been posted on the web.

People might be interested in video 8, a short talk by Warren Pearce on climate communication and scepticism followed by comments. Warren raised the issue of Climategate and also said that recent cold weather could be a significant factor. There's a fairly long comment in video 9 from an audience member (Steve Rayner, Oxford) who mentions two other factors, the economic downturn and 'catastrophe fatigue'.

I was there lurking but kept my mouth shut.

There's also an interesting discusion in video 11 starting at around 9:30 where Mike Hulme talks about climategate and tries to claim, supported by social science literature, that the behaviour of climate scientists was all entirely standard scientific procedure. Then at 20:20 physicist Phil Moriarty speaks out about Climategate:

"For many of us what happened in Climategate, particularly the idea that you protect data .. was absolute anathema...many of us were shocked about what happened...journals stipulate that authors should provide to interested parties the raw data .. "

After that there's a stunned silence and the camera sweeps past Hulme looking a bit sheepish.