[puckhog]

Originally Posted by Bagor

So .. basically you think the data is being forced?

Well, getting back to the initial post, it seems like a definite possibility, from quotes such as the following:

From Michael E. Mann (witholding of information / data):

Dear Phil and Gabi,

I’ve attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don’t pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

Seems like there's an attempt to avoid any critical review process here.

From Dr. Phil Jones (modification of data to hide unwanted results):

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

This may be innocuous, with a bad choice of words; or it could be, as you and I previously discussed, a treatment of the data to arrive at a pre-conceived result.

From Phil Jones (destroying of emails / evidence):

Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

So we're all on the same page (I had to look it up) AR4 is referring to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. Having a group of 4 people erase all records of communication about a landmark, possibly policy-guiding report seems a little off, doesn't it? (I know this is speculation on my part)

From Thomas R Karl (witholding data) :

We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the "derived" model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL's Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.

If their research is being funded in any part by government, their results and findings are part of the public domain. Trying to stop someone from getting their hands on the data simply because they're a pest is not okay.

From Tom Wigley (ousting of a skeptic from a professional organization):

Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

Blackballing someone from any organization because they don't share your views is detestable, IMO.

From a document titled "jones-foiathoughts.doc" (witholding of data):

Options appear to be:

1. Send them the data

2. Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

3. Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Again, we have possible treatment of data in a manner to avoid sticky issues.

Overall, I've read arguments from academics on both sides of the debate, and to me, those on the side against AGW seem to make more sense. They argue more about real data whereas the AGW side uses a lot of modeling and forecasting (which I've already discussed my viewpoints on).