There’s clearly some interest in the IoP evidence submission and my original letter to the IoP didn’t really go into my objections in great detail. I thought I should go through the evidence submission in one place instead of explaining my views in response to blog comments.
Overall, I’m not objecting to the statement because I disagree with it (although I do). I object to it because, for an evidence submission, it contains no evidence and it is judgemental. The IoP should be embarrassed to have its name associated with it and, in my opinion, should retract this evidence statement. Here are my thoughts on why the first 8 points from the submission are inadequate:
“1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.”
This point contradicts the IoP’s assertion in their recent press releases that they accept the current understanding of climate science as presented by the IPCC. More worryingly, despite the fact that CRU’s research findings have not been undermined by the email leak, this point implies that the integrity and credibility of the whole of climate science is now in doubt. There is no justification for this extrapolation even if CRU’s research were compromised.
“2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.”
This is a rather one sided analysis of the unique issues relating to the data that CRU use – there is what I consider to be a more balanced and better informed overview here.
Further, UEA present a different interpretation of the Freedom of Information issues informed by their correspondence with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
“3. It is important to recognise that there are two completely different categories of data set that are involved in the CRU e-mail exchanges:
• those compiled from direct instrumental measurements of land and ocean surface temperatures such as the CRU, GISS and NOAA data sets; and
• historic temperature reconstructions from measurements of ‘proxies’, for example, tree-rings.”
There’s not much to take issue with here other than the very final part – “for example, tree rings” – which doesn’t really give an indication of the full range of proxy measures that have been used in the reconstructions.
“4. The second category relating to proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.”
“This possibility was evidently the reason…” I read this as wild speculation. Is there any evidence to back this theory up? If not, it has no place in an evidence submission. More generally, though, why have the studies that have investigated the details of the proxy compilation in the IPCC report (The “Wegman” report, 2006 and The National Research Council Report, 2006) not been mentioned and critiqued?
“5. The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.”
For me, this is the low point of the evidence submission. Surely the reason for asking organisations like the IoP to provide evidence is that they have the knowledge to provide context to the issues at hand. This point has not done that – it is merely an ill informed judgement on a quote from an old email (the “…hide the decline…” one).
If this point were to be taken seriously, they would need to have referred to the figures in specific papers or documents where they believe that the proxy records were suppressed.
I suspect that they have not done this because there is no evidence to back up this point. For example, Briffa et al. 1999 (“Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes” in Nature) specifically discusses the issues of dendroclimatology divergence. Chapter 6.6 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report also looks at the details of the proxy reconstructions of the climate of the last 2000 years, including divergence. There are other examples. I cannot see how the IoP can interpret this as suppression.
”6. There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ‘self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.”
This point again seems one sided and gives no recognition to the efforts of the scientists in question to engage with their critics before they were subjected to unfounded attacks on their work and integrity.
In relation to the second issue in this point, peer review, the IoP should surely have looked beyond an account of what people were saying in an incomplete archive of private emails. If we look at what actually happened in the public arena then, as an example, certain papers that were discussed in those emails were not excuded from the IPCC report as was suggested.
“7. Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.”
Again, there are particular issues relating to a small percentage of the data used by the CRU. Newcomers to the field were not excluded from contributing (if anything, the work of CRU in collecting all this data and producing usable girded products promotes the inclusion of newcomers) but the issues relating to the data mean that, at presnt, to replicate the work they would have to request the data from third parties themselves.
This point again seems rather one sided. For example, was the aim of the FoI requests really to replicate the CRU temperature product? This blog post and some of the comments indicate that it probably wasn’t. But I agree that making the data available is still important as a matter of principle.
“8. As a step towards restoring confidence in the scientific process and to provide greater transparency in future, the editorial boards of scientific journals should work towards setting down requirements for open electronic data archiving by authors, to coincide with publication. Expert input (from journal boards) would be needed to determine the category of data that would be archived. Much ‘raw’ data requires calibration and processing through interpretive codes at various levels.”
Similar to the final sentence of point 7, this is a nice recommendation but it does not really address the issues at hand. Incidentally, this proposed “standard” is not even employed by the IoP’s own journals – for example, ERL allows data to be uploaded with papers but it is not required. To imply that CRU have acted badly by not complying with this non-existent standard makes no sense.
Anonymous members of the Institute of Physics Science Board (2010). The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Memorandum