FOI: Coyne ridiculous

As many readers are aware, our old friend Stephan Lewandowsky has recently published a paper in Nature that sets out his views on the circumstances in which scientists should release their data to others - the thrust of the piece being that he thinks that a favourable answer need only be given to his mates.

I had rather rolled my eyes at this and wondered if I actually wanted to give him the attention that a rebuttal might bring, so I had resolved to ignore it. However, a post by Professor James Coyne, a psychologist who works in Groningen in the Netherlands, suggests that Lewandowsky's article is just part of a wider trend in academia.

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All change at the SMC

Here's something I missed last year. There has been a major clearout of the board at the Science Media Centre, with Nature's Philip Campbell, Bob Ward and Simon Singh departing to be replaced by names who are all less familiar (although Dorothy Bishop has recently been in the news as a ringleader in the the Huntwitchhunt). As far as I can see the changes took place last summer.

Not sure I've noticed much change in their output though.

What is the Science Media Centre for?

I'm grateful to a reader for pointing out something interesting about the Science Media Centre, and in particular about the experts it selects for reaction to major stories. Take a look at the most recent rapid reaction articles on its website and consider the institutions represented:

Bengtsson story*

Expert	Institution	SMC funder?
Hulme	KCL	y
Lewis	UCL	y
Ward	LSE
Haigh	Imperial	y
Maslin	UCL	y
Palmer	Oxford	y
Allen	Oxford	y

National Care of the Dying Audit

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Myles out of line

The reverberations from the Lewis/Crok report are still playing out in the blogosphere. In particular there are some interesting comments at Ed Hawkins' blog.

One of the memes that is being pushed by our climatological friends is the idea that the Lewis/Crok range for transient climate response (i.e. short-term warming) is similar to that of the IPCC models. Myles Allen was the first to promote this idea, in his comments at the Science Media Centre.

Their 5-95% range of uncertainty in TCR (kindly provided by Nic Lewis) is 0.9-2.5 degrees C, almost exactly in line with the range of the models shown in their figure (1.1-2.6 degrees C).

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Comedy debate

I always like it when upholders of the scientific consensus hold a debate, because they never fail to give us the opportunity to have a good old laugh at them. Take this major event later this month when the Press Gazette is going to look at whether sceptics should be heard or not:

Chaired by Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre it will ask whether it is time for journalists to rewrite the ethical rulebook and simply acknowledge a few scientific truths.

Among the panelists are broadcaster and geneticist Professor Steve Jones who published a report for the BBC Trust in 2011 in which he argued that the corporation gave too much weight to fringe scientific viewpoints on subjects such as climate change, GM crops and MMR.

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Science Media Centre hits new lows

Read this from the Science Media Centre.

...the slowdown has risked becoming the bête noire of climate science.  It has been unfairly framed as (another) nail in the coffin for global warming – ‘You said it would get warmer and it hasn’t!’ – as though the failure of the temperature record to conform each year blows the whole evidence base out of the water.  Triumphant claims are made – erroneously – that the failure to warm has finally been revealed and that scientists (part of the conspiracy, naturally) have been keeping quiet about it. 

"..conform each year"?! "Conform at any point since the turn of the millennium" is the criticism.

Science Media Centre spins the pause

The Science Media Centre is best known to readers here for its press release about the Oxburgh inquiry, in which they managed to quote only scientists implicated in wrongdoing over Climategate.

Today the centre has released a statement on the failure of global temperatures to rise in line with the models. It can be seen here.

It's spin of course, although perhaps not quite as blatant as we are used to from Fiona Fox et al. As one might expect there's a lot of emphasis on natural variability and not a lot on why the observations are on the cusp of falling out of the uncertainty bands. Lots of "our understanding is getting better" and not a lot of "nobody has a clue what's going on".

There's a complete misrepresentation of science's level of understanding of the reasons why this is happening:

It is becoming increasingly clear that absorption of heat in deep oceans is part of the explanation.

I think what they mean is that this is a somewhat implausible post-hoc rationalisation of the failure of the models to conform to reality; perhaps the copyeditor missed it.

As I said in Parliament, the inability of climate scientists to admit their ignorance is one of the reasons nobody trusts them. The Science Media Centre are just helping that process along in the wrong direction.

Update on Jul 22, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Lucia tweets out that the SMC's remarks about climate sensitivity make no sense:

"we are becoming more confident of mid-range figures." why not 'mid-range or lower?

Update on Jul 22, 2013 by Bishop Hill

David Shukman's take is here.

...the scientists say, pauses in warming were always to be expected. This is new - at least to me.

It is common sense that climate change would not happen in a neat, linear away but instead in fits and starts.

But I've never heard leading researchers mention the possibility before.

Science Media Centre's casual misrepresentation

The Science and Technology Committee's first hearing on public understanding of climate science was, as expected, a bit of a charade, with softball questions being tossed by green-tinged MPs in the direction of like-minded witnesses. There was little by way of truth-seeking behaviour and precious little truth and light either, and the impression you get is that most of the MPs on the committee have little or no interest in the issues being discussed. It really leaves a very poor impression of Parliament.

As one would expect, the Empty Statement on consensus was tossed around a great deal, without anyone on the panel apparently wondering what it was that scientists were (allegedly) agreeing about.

Click to read more ...

Birthday gongs

The Queen's birthday honours list was announced today. Climatologists were not in evidence but there were a couple of familiar names: Iain Stewart of Climate Wars fame and Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre.

The Black departure

The Carbon Brief is surveying the state of climate reporting in the mass media, and includes an interesting observation about Richard Black's departure from the BBC.

...climate change journalism in the mainstream media is under pressure. For one, the New York Times announced it has dismantled its nine-strong environment desk. This leaves the Los Angeles Times the only one of the US's top five newspapers by readership left with a designated environment desk. And last year, BBC environment correspondent Richard Black left the BBC amidst wider job cuts at the corporation.  

I must say, I thought at the time that he had resigned to try pastures new. I wonder how I got that idea?

There are also some amusing comments from Fiona Fox about Black's expertise in the area:

Climate change is a complex scientific and political subject. On his departure from the BBC, the Science Media Centre said Black's familiarity with the climate beat stood him in good stead to cover the leak of climate scientists' emails from the University of East Anglia in 2009:

"The reason that climate scientists bemoan the loss of Richard is not because he gave them an easy time but because he knew his stuff so well and questioned them from a high level of understanding of the science involved and years of experience of following the complex and messy political machinations on this story."

Leveson

Lord Leveson's report is out. I'm afraid I'm not going to have time to say much tonight, but suffice it to say that he has ignored everything Tony N and I had to say. In fact he has even gone as far as to repeat the incorrect statements made by Fiona Fox.

Ho hum.

David Whitehouse has more considered thoughts here.

The science cringe

The Science Media has also issued this video about how wonderful they are.

Yuk.

Ten years of the Science Media Centre

The Science Media Centre is celebrating ten years of doing whatever it is it supposed to do and has issued a glossy brochure to celebrate its greatest hits. Prominent among these is, of course, Climategate.

I've attached an extract below.

It's a pity they don't mention their work on the Oxburgh report, when they managed to wheel out a series of big hitters in the scientific world, all of whom were willing to describe the five pages of the report as "thorough". That one of them was implicated in wrongdoing in the Climategate emails and another in the cover-up added a certain air of unreality to the whole affair.

Extract from SMC brochure

The Bishop, the Sky and the Leveson Inquiry

The Leveson Inquiry has just published a submission from me and Tony Newbery of the Harmless Sky blog.

The submission was prompted by Fiona Fox's evidence to the inquiry, which told a tale of wicked journalists distorting the results of noble scientists. Tony was aware, however, that the origin of the distortion was not in fact in the media but in a press release prepared by the scientists themselves, with assistance from Fox's own Science Media Centre. We have attempted to fill in some of these details for the inquiry.

The submission also covers the BBC's handling of climate science and controversies over Climategate.

Update on Aug 17, 2012 by Bishop Hill

Leo Hickman has pointed out a minor error. In para 22, we say that he didn't give us credit for our efforts in disclosing the fact that Outside Organisation were paid £113k by UEA. The original FOI came from Graham Stringer, but the story was broken by me. Leo did link to the copy of the Stringer response letter at BH, but we missed this because the link was only part of a text string (see the letters PDF in this post). Hope this clarifies.

NZ Science Media Centre hides the evidence

The Science Media Centre's press release on the Heartland documents has yet to appear on their website, but as readers here know, it was posted up by their counterpart organisation in New Zealand - I gave a link a couple of days ago.

Not unexpectedly, the New Zealand Science Media Centre has now taken down the story and you get a 404 if you try to visit today. However, as I said, this was not unexpected, and I took the precaution of sending the URL to Webcite. If you want to see the story, it is here.