politics

Another Hockey Stick Scandal!!!

81 Comments

It seems everyone has blogged on Steve McIntyre’s explosive discussions of the Yamal tree rings. Because my understanding of tree-nometers does not extend beyond what I learned of tree rings in grade school, I’ve stayed out of this. But… then…. something got me steamed!*

Yes. I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! to discover that the group at RC presented super mega important research findings related to the hockey stick in the name “Gavin” and did so without proper attribution to me!

This lapse is, appalling!!!!!!

I would like to go on record giving myself credit for having:

  1. Uncovered the important finding of a Gavin baby-name hockey stick back in May 09, 2009. My post included this nifty graphic:

  2. Reported numerous details about the extent of Gavin’s in the US. In comments, I linked to this nifty graffic of gavins by state and summarized:

    Going by the dark blue, viral propagation of American “Gavin” seems to have started in South Dakota, infected Minnesota moved south along the Mississipi, and then spread out. Texas seems to remain an non-Gavin stronghold, as do some states in the east and west.

  3. Discovered the related result that “Lucia” also shows a hockey stick formation:

I realize “the group” over at RC may not read my blog with any regularity. So, I would caution commenters not, not, not to suggest they read my finding and later represented it as their own. However, as researchers, I would expect ‘the group’ to run a literature survey to see whether their important finding have already been reported. A cursory use of Google search for baby name Gavin on their research finding would have revealed my prior discovery listed on the first page of google search results.

I am also disappointed the group did not pass their post by a set of climate-blogging peers, who surely would have been aware of my ground breaking findings and alerted them to the need for citation.

Now, I’m not going to suggest any sort of disciplinary action, fines or sanctions for ‘the groups’ failure to cite my groundbreaking discovery which involved painstaking effort on my part.

But surely, it is a sad day when climate bloggers fail to cite lesser bloggers who have made important discoveries about hockey sticks. I realize the group may feel proper citations of blog findings “doesn’t matter”. Nevertheless, I hope they will come around to using due diligence, reviewing prior research into these matters, and citing where appropriate.

—
* No it’s not April Fools day. But yes. This is a joke.

Update:

Gavin apologized for his oversight and has now credited me with my super important discovery.

81 thoughts on “Another Hockey Stick Scandal!!!”

  1. Lucia, you managed to find a Gavin baby-name hockey stick back in May, 1009? I’m impressed!
    Or did you perhaps mean May, 2009?

  2. Annabelle–
    That was a typo– thanks I fixed.

    But as you know trivial things “don’t matter”. To quote the group:

    It does matter whether something ‘matters’, otherwise you might as well be correcting spelling mistakes for all the impact it will have.

  4. EW–
    Further analysis is required to see whether we can develop an appropriate multi-proxy reconstruction of historic temperatures based on baby names. But I think both “Gavin” and “Lucia” will pass muster on various tests of correlation with the thermometer record. (The eyeball tests suggests “Lucia” could be the “Yamal” of baby-name proxy reconstructions!)

  5. Hmm… Whilst i can’t be sure, i wonder if some selection bias has crept into this work. When I attempted to replicate the google search, I had to extend my analysis to page 3 before I located ‘the blackboard’. I am aware that google tunes it’s search results based on previous searches (with appropriate disclosure) – maybe that happened in the preparation of this blog post…

  6. Sean– Interesting! It’s on the first page for me.
    Still, I don’t think that “matters”. After all, a thorough literature search should have included checking various blogs. . . 😉

  7. It’s becoming obvious that -group / mike / gavin at RC have no intention to address the technical issues that McIntyre has raised.

    This post by lucia contains as much technical information as the post and all the comments at RC.

  8. So RealClimate based their critique of McIntyre on information they found on the internet!

  9. Dan– I expect Steve will be stepping through a bunch of analyses over the next month. Then he’ll write a journal article to submit. The real response will come after that.

  10. I, along with yourself, Lucia, am shocked! Attribution is critical for those grant awards, and support the potential of winning a Nobel Prize. I second your concerns.

    And, even though here it is April 1st (as measured by tree rings, Bristle cones only) this is not a joke comment!

  11. Sorry about that! I would have credited you if I’d seen this (and I’ll put in a note pointing it out now). I thought that I’d got this from a show I saw recently where people were going through baby name stats and that took me to the SSA website. Maybe I had some subliminal recollection of your posts though. You are welcome to all credit for this super important discovery.

  12. Thank you Gavin!

    I saw you’d plotted the data yourself instead of using the online javascript tool. I think I’ve discovered that boy names starting with Q make a pretty good multi-proxy. (However, the temperature drops during the 30s instead of the 40s.)

    I’m sure this finding will be an even more important breakthrough!!!!

  13. Lucia and Gavin: Did you cherry picked those names to guarantee a hockey stick? Are they adjusted to reflect an exponential growth in population? Temperature? More analysis is required.

  14. Lucia,

    “I realize “the group” over at RC may not read my blog with any regularity.”

    I think Gavin and colleagues probably read your’s and other blogs several times a day like everybody who is interested in this topic (i.e. AGW, Climate Change or whatever it is called).

    Cheers!

  15. Lucia,
    Have you seen “Reconstructions on Mideval usage of Gavin based on names carved on trees” by Arglebargle, et al (2003)? It clearly shows the spike in modern usage is hardle unprecedented.

    Tim

  16. Timo–
    If I were cherry picking, I’d pick names starting with Evan

    Evan

    Tim– That is truly a master work. I also think if we collect together the Medieaval Gawains and Gavins, we can easily show that the current spike falls well within natural variability of baby names.

  17. “This lapse is, appalling!!!!!!”

    —

    Actually, Lucia, THIS is appalling…

    http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=43715&dcn=e_gvet

    “NASA scientist pleads guilty to directing contracts to wife’s firm”

    “By Robert Brodsky rbrodsky@govexec.com September 30, 2009″

    “An award-winning NASA scientist has admitted to directing thousands of dollars in sole-source agency contracts to his wife’s firm and failing to report the income on a financial disclosure form.”

    “Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, Md., a senior manager and scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., to one count of felony conflict of interest.”

    …

    This guy even tried to direct “stimulus” money to his wife’s company…

  18. “Steve” is at its lowest popularity IN HISTORY. No wonder McIntyre and Mosher are so hard on Gavin. Jealous much?

  19. Lucia,

    Gavin et al for sure read your blog frequently. What goes on here is worth reading.

    OK, maybe not when you argue with Andrew_KY about data validity. 😉

  23. “See, the ad nominem attacks have started already….”

    Actually, I feel honored to be attacked in the same thread as Steve Mc. This is the only place ‘in print’ where my name and his will be anywhere near each other, for any reason. 😉

    Andrew

  26. I looked around and steve seems to be the #100 most popular name for boy babies in 2008. However, it was more popular in the past.

    Gavin now exceeds Steve in name popularity, but it was once pretty unusual.

    Boris must have been popular when Bullwinkle was in first runs.

  27. Speaking of baby names, I recall being quite fascinated by the study of correlations between baby names and mother’s education level (among other factors) in Freakonomics.

  28. Lucia,

    “I think Gavin read my blog when I link RC. I don’t know if he reads it otherwise.”

    If not, he should. Might help keep him grounded a bit.

  30. I’m pretty disappointed with RC’s attempt at demonstrating there are numerous “Hockey Sticks” (that is similar to THE hockey stick)… They didn’t follow my rules that they had to always go back to before the MWP. That’s terrible.

  31. Oh no, Nathan, they went back before MWP when they showed CO2, but cut it off before people could see lots of CO2 in the past.
    And of course CO2 is not temperature.

  32. But look at the others MikeN – they have Hockey Sticks that only go back to 1600. OUTRAGEOUS. And the Gavin Hockey Stick doesn’t even reach the 17th Century.
    Ohhhh this is the end of SCIENCE. AGW will never recover from this scandal. It’s all a big hoax.

  35. All those reconstructions that don’t look like hockeysticks… and then have CRU thermometers pasted on the end.

  37. “All those reconstructions that don’t look like hockeysticks… and then have CRU thermometers pasted on the end.”

    That’s so dreadful isn’t it. To put the temp data against the proxy temp data… How DARE they do that. I mean really, it’s obscene.

    Hey Andrew_KY, reckon Steve McI will publish his new Yamal results? Remember this “The second image below is, in my opinion, one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit.”… Yes very disquieting… Probably about six papers in that little beauty…

  39. Well of course I am back. This is one of the best sites. Its neutral and I like that, not extreme. I still think though, Lucia Temps in Illinois aint increased!!!

  40. How far back is needed for CO2? Well enough to get the ice ages at least, so we can see some variation, and response time. I just thought it odd they wouldn’t link a graph on the one that does show higher levels in the past. The others went as far back as the studies.

  41. Nathan,

    I know in the climate blog community there is a segment of people who think ‘publishing papers’ is dreadfully important. But there is a wider world out there that doesn’t care about such things. -A much bigger and wider world than AGW believers probably want to know about. Communicating effectively doesn’t necessarily include ‘publishing papers.’

    Andrew

  43. This site is good because I think LUcia respects CA and WUWT and also believe it not, RC. I note that RC today put an argument against CA Hockey stick but in fact allowed considerable criticism about themselves this only increases my respect for them, After all they probably have our/Earths interests at heart. I don’t think Co2 has anything to do with climate change. I think overpopulation/land use (see Pielke et al), may have some effect on LOCAL climate but this will not affect GLOBAL climate in my view. I think the warmistas should concentrate on this and forget about Co2. You may be surprised to see how many skeptics would actually agree with this!

  45. Lucia
    I thought it was only cheating if you just attached the CRU directly to the proxy data. If you label it and have it in a different colour etc. i.e make it clear that they are different data sets, it’s fine.

    Andrew_KY
    So I guess it’s a “no” from you then.

    “But there is a wider world out there that doesn’t care about such things. -A much bigger and wider world than AGW believers probably want to know about.”
    If you want to be taken seriously in science, you have to publish. If you want to be taken seriously in Major League Hockey, you have to play Major League Hockey. To be taken seriously in science you have to play the game of science, and publish formally.

  48. Nathan,

    “If you want to be taken seriously in science, you have to publish. If you want to be taken seriously in Major League Hockey, you have to play Major League Hockey. To be taken seriously in science you have to play the game of science, and publish formally.”

    I don’t think so. What a person needs to be taken seriously is honesty and consistency.

    Good, I daresay even great hockey, can be played anywhere without the consent of the NHL. What you are doing is resorting to the Appeal To Authority argument. Neither science, nor hockey, need the stamp of approval from Group A just because it’s Group A.

    Andrew

  49. Lucia,

    PUBLISH OR PERISH!!!!!

    Without a peer reviewed paper in publication it DOES NOT MATTER!!! 8>)

  51. kuhnkat–
    What you say is both true and not true. Gaia don’t care, but some people do. And peer review means greater dissemination and respect for a point.

    Still…. El Nino, La Nina, the AMO, NAO etc. are all going to do what they are going to do. So, we can still watch and comment.

  52. Andrew_KY
    Well just fluff around on your Blogs then. All you will do is a get a political result. You may sway somme public opinion, which will result in some political change – but it aint science.

    kuhnkat
    I didn’t make the rules, but that’s what they are.

  53. Andrew_FL
    “What gross snobbery! Sir, watch you you talk down to!”
    It’s only an insult if you decide it is.
    If I went down the street to some adults playing football in a park and said to them “You guys aren’t no pro-footballers”, they probably wouldn’t care. They’d probably say “So what. we’re just playing in a park” (or they’d hit me). But if they video taped themselves, posted it on the net and claimed to be great Pro-footballers because of the fancy tricks they did – would you believe them? If they didn’t actually play Pro-football?

  54. Soapbox:

    Science is not the exclusive domain of self-appointed judges, and it is not defined according to the politics of academics.

    Science also belongs to all of us.

    Andrew

  55. More sports analogy:

    The Cleveland Browns are a pro football team.

    The Cleveland Browns also suck. Perhaps coaches will be fired and players released.

    Meaning- You can claim your name/status demands that people defer to you.

    But that ain’t the whole story.

    Pro scientists can suck, too. 😉

    Andrew

  56. The judges do not appear to be ‘self-appointed’ to me. After all, you have to get a PhD before you can be a reviewer. So there is at least *some* merit-selection involved in the process. It is also a fact that many things in science simply *cannot* be evaluated by the vast majority of the population, including other scientists. There is too much to know.

    So, while science belongs to all of us, not all of us are equally able to contribute to any particular aspect of it.

    As to some professional scientists sucking, sure. They are only human.

  57. Fair enough, David. So we have to evaluate all of this on a case by case by case basis. No free passes. Doesn’t matter who you claim to be or what status you claim to have.

    So this Denier tonight will chant the Lukewarmer War Cry! (even though the Lukies probably don’t want me to associate with them)

    Free the data! Free the code!

    I wanna see the process from beginning to end, or I’m not going to believe a stinkin’ syllable of it. 😉

    Andrew

  58. Andrew_KY,

    Personally, I do not need to see the process from beginning to end – especially as I would not be able to pretend to understand much of it. (Rather like the discussion between Arthur, Lucia et all on two-box models – it is not possible for me to come to an opinion on any of that, as I understand it insufficiently.)

    In general, I am a conservative, and that means that I tend to trust processes and institutions that have produced good results in the past, which includes the scientific community in general and the processes that are involved in it.

    However, if people wish to see data, I see no reason why it should be withheld. Code might be a little different, as I can see how it might be proprietary. But if it can be released, I have no objection to that.

  59. David, I hate to nitpick before I go to bed, but…

    “In general, I am a conservative, and that means that I tend to trust processes and institutions that have produced good results in the past, which includes the scientific community in general and the processes that are involved in it.”

    This is kinda vague. What institutions and processes specifically do you trust?

    And speaking of amorphous blobs… the ‘scientific community’… what/who is that exactly? What makes a person a member of this community? 😉

    Andrew

  60. Andrew_KY,

    How long a list do you want? 🙂

    How about NAS, CSIRO, BOM to begin with?

    I trust the peer-review process. (This does not mean that I believe that it is perfect: just that it tends to produce the correct results over time). I tend to view ‘cutting edge’ science with more scepticism than established science, if that helps clarify things.

    As to what makes a person a member of this community, there is no specific criteria. The amorphous blob that makes up the scientific community has delivered for humanity over the past two centuries in particular. While I can certainly name specific members of that community – Darwin, Einstein, Bohr – there are many contributors who I have no knowledge of at all.

    If it helps any, on any particular specialisation I will tend to trust a scientist who speaks on their specialisation more than a scientist who speaks outside their specialisation. If someone has no qualifications in a particular field and is saying things at odds with the generally accepted viewpoint, I would tend to not accept their opinions as valid. I would wait until their view became accepted, especially as I would not likely have the skills/ability to judge it.

    I think that this is a pretty fair summary of a conservative viewpoint.

  61. Oh, and I tend not to include psychology or any of the social sciences within my definition of ‘science’, although there is certainly science involved in those fields of study.

  62. Your Gavin graph is from May, 2009. But I clearly remember first seeing the Gavin hockey stick graph back in late 2008…on RC.
    Maybe Gavin is more generous than he’s usually protrayed.

  63. Andrew

    “Pro scientists can suck, too. ”
    Of course they can, but until they do their publishing we don’t know if they suck or not. If they’re not publishing, they won;t even be rated.

    For example, I have a science degree, but don’t call myself a scientist because I don’t actually publish anything. It is publish or perish, there’s a reason that saying started.

  64. David

    I think those were wise words, David, you said that much more clearerer than my mangled typings.

  65. VG, RC is being a bit less censorious than before, but not much. They have already cut my comments about whether they think Briffa should release all his data, and whether people should ignore them since they are on the internet.

  66. Nathan,

    The ‘publish or perish’ statement is about science as a career not science as an investigative process. There is a field of study called the Scoiology of Science that will often point to the distoring effect of the drive to publish and the long history of bias in the review process — for many years having a ‘weird’ non-Anglo-Saxon name or a obviously female name reduced the chance of being published. Fortunatley such crude discrimination is a thing of the past but the climate war seems to have reopened some of these issues, to cite the treatment of David Bellamy as one example. Also yo umay wish to read John Ioannidis work “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” you can find it at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1182327

    Yet another Andrew

  67. Andrew Kennet
    You may be right about the source of the saying, but it still holds in the examples I gave. You can’t say your work is something that it isn’t. If you can’t get your work published then it isn’t science. That’s the first step, like getting drafted into the NFL. You can’t say (with any credibility) that you are a Pro-footballer until you have at least been drafted into a team. You might think you’re good enough, but you need to respect the profession enough to try and get in, no?

    As to your other point, that’s discrimination, which is a different issue. Even now if you don’t publish in English you are unlikely to be read (For a time people made Latin, and then I think French, the language of science, but now it is English). I have spent time helping Russian scientists convert their papers to English, ssimply because it is too good to be ignored by people who can’t read Russian.

  68. Nathan I would be careful about arguing by analogy afterall there is no draft system for scientists otherwise your local community college would have as good a science department as MIT. A better measure than the volume of published papers (and the ‘publish or perish’ principle makes it seem that the more you publish the better) is to look at the quality of the paper, often measured by the citation index. Still people might cite a paper they then critisie so even that is no guarantee. Also publishing is the domain of the acedemic scientist, many scientists in industry or the military can never publish because of confidentiality rules. So even if there is good climate science going on in industry or the military it may never see the light of day although it may be put to good use.

    Yes peer reviewing publishing has often led to good outcomes but it is far from perfect and must coninually be challenged to ensure it is working.

  69. Andrew Kennet

    “Also publishing is the domain of the acedemic scientist, many scientists in industry or the military can never publish because of confidentiality rules.”
    I hadn’t actually considered this…

  70. You are all missing the point. Lucia cherry-picked “Gavin” and in so doing wiped out the MWP. Had she picked Ethelred, she would have gotten a spike at the right period although the name WAS a bit contaminated after Ethelred became known to his cohorts as Ethelred the unready.

    A better choice might have been Norman. With Norman you get a pretty good spike in 1067.

    Mother asks, “Agnes, didn’t you even get his name?”

    “Well he was a Norman and talked funny.”

    “OK, we’ll call the kid Norman”

  71. Andrew Kennet
    “Also publishing is the domain of the acedemic scientist, many scientists in industry or the military can never publish because of confidentiality rules. ”
    .
    You are so right Andrew .
    There is also another variant of the same principle what I call “the Einstein mode” and those who do science in this mode know what I am talking about .
    I have actually collaborated on papers on spatio-temporal chaos and asked the authors NOT to mention my name 🙂

  72. Nathan-no, it’s more like you are saying “you guys aren’t real football players” and you know what? Pro or not doesn’t matter. You either are a great athlete or you aren’t. And in science, your facts are either right, or they aren’t. Labels are irrelevant.

  73. Francis–

    But I clearly remember first seeing the Gavin hockey stick graph back in late 2008…on RC.

    Hmmm…. clearly some research is required on this point. Precedence for this important discovery should be established!!!

  74. Nathan

    It is publish or perish, there’s a reason that saying started.

    The reason has to do with tenure at Universities.

    There are lots of scientists in private industry who never or rarely publish. The reason is unrelated to whether or not their research is real. It’s that private companies sometimes want to keep their findings private for commercial advantage.

    In contrast, the major funding for university research comes from government agencies who want the research published. Tenure panels also count up publications when making tenure decisions. (They do more than that, but there is a saying “The dean can’t read, but the dean can add.” When a committee is reviewing paper credentials, the paper count really matter even though the people on the panel like to believe they can and would judge “impact”.)

  75. Andrew_KY’s Friday Thought:

    If someone has the tendency to obfuscate or go ‘deer in the headlights’ or ignore the truth in their Little Blog Comment Ideas, who’s to say they couldn’t or wouldn’t act the same way about Big Ideas? Ideas are ideas, aren’t they?

    Once a person crosses the threshold where the truth is not what they are comitted to, what idea is off limits to their machinations?

    Carry on.

    Andrew

  76. The word is treemometer. It’s usage in connection with using TREE RINGS AS THERMOMETERS first occured in a comment attributed to yours truly on oct 13 2007 on a thread in CA. SO THERE.

  78. Boris (Comment#20989)

    I’ve stopped being hard on Gavin since the GISS code was posted.

  79. Steven Mosher [21187]

    You mean the GISS code that processes the GISS global grid that inter alia includes the Dutch KNMI De Bilt data, which the KNMI recently acknowledged has had temperature readings biased upwards by 0.5C for over a decade? Acknowledgment accompanied of course by the official comment that this bias had no bearing whatsoever on overall accuracy or “relevance” [sic] in terms of “global warming”.
    Pity those who have to work with that kind of GIGO.

  80. Tretris,

    With the code in hand people are now in a position to see if one bad station ( or more) matters.

  81. steven[21210]
    Are you saying we can now do an Anthony Watts type “surfacestations.org analysis on the GISS grid data?

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