[Bagor]

Originally Posted by puckhog

Believing someone is a dick is not a reason to withhold information. As you and I have discussed earlier in the thread, the assumptions used to treat data are equally as important as the data itself.

Yes it is and as has been mentioned, Mcintyre has the data. The formulas behind the calculations and the assumptions made should be in the publication.
Why waste precious time on a dick when you can simply ignore them. Again there is zero stopping McIntyre going out and collecting his own data and developing his own model. Why doesn't he do that?

Originally Posted by puckhog

I can't help but notice you ignored large sections of my post. Care to comment on the emails dealing with questionable treatment of data?

I already did that wayyyy back when I talked about running models under different scenarios.

So in your book anyone that plays about with stats and models is exhibiting questionable behaviour?

Originally Posted by puckhog

But try to contact a prof for the data and methods he/she used in a publicly funded study and let me know if they deny you that access.

I know for a fact they will, unless you're in direct collaboration with them or sharing a research grant they'll tell you in so many words to eff right off. Do you seriously think profs aren't protective of their data? Research science is nasty dog eat dog world where publications = funding not to mention a decreased teaching workload.

Originally Posted by puckhog

Well, that's a pretty slippery slope you're putting yourself on. I'd say it's a pretty bad precedent to set to say that it's okay to dig up records of "bad behaviour" to have those who don't agree with you banned from certain societys, functions, clubs, etc.

How so? People are fired on a daily basis for having records of bad behaviour. What's your criteria then? Have a, and tolerate a disruptive influence? Nothing to stop them going off and forming their own clubs and societies but exhibit bad behaviour anywhere will get you ostricised.

Originally Posted by puckhog

The negative crowd has been producing results for years, all of which gets downplayed because it disagrees with the "official" source of information. This calls into question the validity of the data that has been generally accepted for years.

They have? Producing their own results? All I'm seeing from the majority of the negative crowd is a load of loud vocal critiquing of publications/data with minimal effort to go out and collect their own data or create their own models.

Let me give you an example.

"These “skeptics” find what they consider to be a weak point in the mainstream theory and critique it. Not by conducting original research; they simply review previous work. Then they find a little-known, not particularly influential journal where an editor sympathetic to their viewpoint hangs his hat.
They get their paper through the peer review process and into print. They publicize the hell out of it. Activists get excited by the study, which has considerable political implications.
Before long, mainstream scientists catch on to what’s happening. They shake their heads. Some slam the article and the journal that published it, questioning the review process and the editor’s ideological leanings. In published critiques, they tear the paper to scientific shreds.
Embarrassed, the journal’s publisher backs away from the work. But it’s too late for that. The press has gotten involved, and though the work in question has been discredited in the world of science, partisans who favor its conclusions for ideological reasons will champion it for years to come.
The scientific waters are muddied. The damage is done."


In early 2003, the small journal Climate Research published a paper by climate change “skeptics” Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which challenged the established view that the late twentieth century saw anomalously high temperatures. The paper didn’t present original research; instead, it was a literature review. Soon and Baliunas examined a wide range of “proxy records” for past temperatures, based on studies of ice cores, corals, tree rings, and other sources. They concluded that few of the records showed anything particularly unusual about twentieth century temperatures, especially when compared with the so-called “Medieval Warm Period” a thousand years ago.
Soon and Baliunas had specifically sent their paper to one Chris de Freitas at Climate Research, an editor known for opposing curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. He in turn sent the paper out for review and then accepted it for publication. That’s when the controversy began.
Conservative politicians in the U.S., who oppose forced restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, lionized the study. Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe called it literally paradigm shifting. The Bush administration attempted to edit an Environmental Protection Agency report’s discussion of climate change in order to include reference to the Soon and Baliunas work. None of this should come as a surprise: The paper seemed to undermine a key piece of evidence suggesting that we can actually see and measure the consequences of human-induced climate change.
Soon mainstream climate scientists fought back. Thirteen authored a devastating critique of the work in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos. After seeing the critique, Climate Research editor-in-chief Hans von Storch decided he had to make changes in the journal’s editorial process. But when journal colleagues refused to go along, von Storch announced his resignation.
Several other Climate Research editors subsequently resigned over the Soon and Baliunas paper. Even journal publisher Otto Kinne eventually admitted that the paper suffered from serious flaws, basically agreeing with its critics. But by that point in time, Inhofe had already devoted a Senate hearing to trumpeting the new study. However dubious, it made a massive splash.

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticle...ll_over_again/