The Blackboard

Given SteveM’s insinuations of fraud and his own snotty attitude (RC are “vicious little men”) I can’t blame Santer for not wanting to deal with him.

But it is red meat for cold dogs. Always a good show.

Boris–
Where did SteveM insinuate any fraud?

Whether or not Santer wishes to deal with SteveM, Santer is employed by a national laboratory. His work is funded, an the results of the government funded work which Santer is paid to do don’t belong to him.

Analogy time: No matter what Santer might believe about StevemM’s attitude, Santer had as much right to refuse to give SteveM the data as the local librarian has to refuse a library card to a town resident who happened to run off with the librarian’s husband. In neither case is the employee (i.e. Santer or the librarian ) allowed to refuse access to services to an individual for reasons they make up as they go.

Whether you understand Santer’s (or the hypothetical librarians) behavior is irrelevant. He was out of bounds. FOI exists to prevent employees from arbitrarily denying data for personal reasons. It’s a pity SteveM had to resort to FOI: it cost the tax payer money to cover the costs of the FOI officials, the time spent by Bader and the time spent by any other employee who used government funded time to deal with this issue.

Well, surely Santer and Bader had a “motive”, but apparently that is not to be discussed, at least not at CA.

But IMO, what a lot of people don’t realize, is that a scientist’s job is not to advance science, through a heroic and selfish quest for the truth. It is to publish papers. And that is because both promotions, salary, and so on, all depend on how many papers you publish. So once a paper is submitted and accepted, any other task related to it is not only low priority, it has no priority at all, because no one gives a d..n. See: Bader complains about how long it takes to get the paper cleared, because that retards publication. That is already perceived as useless bureaucracy. So the time taken to put data online is just wasted. It doesn’t count anywhere. You could write another paper instead.

That is just the reality of a scientist’s life. Steve M. and his constant demands and criticisms are just a p.. in the a.. for them. Plus, it makes them look as if they had a “motive”. But, of course, we shall not talk about that.

Boris, what you call Steve’s snotty attitude (a bit of sarcasm and irony) seems to some of us like an entirely justified reaction to past behaviour by the Team (remember that was how they chose to desribe themselves). Don’t forget that the Real Climate website seems to have been set up with the express purpose of rubbishing the MacIntyre McKitrick work on the hockey stick before that had even been published in the journals. And Mann described the M&M work as fraudulent very early in the controversy (yes the same work which Wegman found to be entirely justified).

“At that time, we had already begun the process of preparing the Synthetic MSU datasets and their documentation for public release as a low priority activity. In their original format and without documentation, they were of little value to the broader scientific community for which they were intended.”

1. Notice he does not say why the process was begun.
2. Don’t they internally store all studies so someone won’t later waste time doing the same study? They don’t internally document data which was used for a study? If they do, the data should have been described when the study was created, before being sent for publication. It being a published study makes the data processing timeline even more peculiar, as you noted.
3. What is higher priority than processing data? Creating more studies out of low-priority data?

lucia (Comment#9693) February 2nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
“Whether or not Santer wishes to deal with SteveM, Santer is employed by a national laboratory. His work is funded, an the results of the government funded work which Santer is paid to do don’t belong to him. ”

Actually, the results of Santer’s work probably belong to his employer, the Laboratory. The Laboratory is getting government money, but that only give the government license to use the material for government purposes. The Laboratory retains all other rights to their work.

Work done under government contract used to be “government public domain”, but the law was changed years ago. Now U.S. government public domain only applies to work done by a government employee while doing government work (his “day job”). If you taxpayers don’t like it, talk to your Congressman.

Scooter– Yes.

Note I only said it doesn’t belong to Santer. I didn’t say who it belongs too.

The arrangement with DOE labs is a bit odd. The DOE lab is owned by the government but operated by a contractor. The lab is not considered a part of the government itself. A representative of DOE lab has to sign copyright releases for the work so copyright exists. In contrast, document actually prepared by ‘the government’, the copyright would simply not apply.

So.. it’s weird. The fruits of the work is owned by the lab. The lab is owned by the government. What is clear is this: The fruits of the work do not belong to Santer.

Lucia

“They were, evidently, the result of his group giving data access a very low priority and making it available to the broader scientific community at a snails pace. ”

So do you think they would be equally slow for a scientific institution? I thin the problem Steve faces is that he’s not really part of the science community. He doesn’t really do much with his analysis other than blog it. I think that they would deliberately go slow with him, specifically because of what they know he will do with their data/

Nathan–
Are you asking whether Santer would have provided the data to someone else? I guess I could speculate, but yes. I suspect if someone Santer had respected had asked for the data, he would have provided it.
After all:

1) It’s data that he must provide under FOI. That is: the law recognizes whoever wants it is entitled to it.
2) It’s the sort of data request that is routinely granted and
3) His specific response suggests that Santer was grumpy that Steve asked for it.

So, yes, it appears Santer wasted tax payer money and made it more difficult than necessary for people to understand his paper because he doesn’t like or approve of SteveM.

That said, who knows? Maybe Santer would do this no matter who asked for the information.

Lucia
I think Santer probably would have made it easier for someone else. I think SteveM’s methods upset people.
However, I don’t know if I agree with this statement
“So, yes, it appears Santer wasted tax payer money and made it more difficult than necessary for people to understand his paper because he doesn’t like or approve of SteveM.”
I don’t think SteveM makes it easier for people to understand.

But then again, who cares what I think?

Nathan,
You may be right that Santer would make things easier for other people.

The difficulty is that the information does not belong to Santer. So, regardless of Santer’s motives, he did decide to refuse data to a member of the public. This meant the data was only avaialable to that person through an FOI. The FOI was filed resulting in various people doing work at tax payer expense.

Santer’s actions ultimately resulted in a waste of the taxpayer money required to cover Bader and FOI officials time. Had Santer simply provided the data, this money would not be wasted.

It may well be that Santer would have made the data available to others, thus not wasting tax payer money. But how does this hypothetical change what happened?

As for the issue of SteveM making things easier to understand: That’s not what I meant. I meant the data is required for people who read the paper Santer wrote to fully understand the paper Santer wrote. This group of people includes me, you, or anyone who really wants to get into the nitty-gritty details of what Santer did, including verifying they fully understood the methods Santer used to test models. Having the underlying data helps.

Lucia
I don’t think it changes what happened. I was just thinking out loud.

” taxpayer money required to cover Bader and FOI officials time. Had Santer simply provided the data, this money would not be wasted. ”
I don’t want to trivialise this, but it’s a trivial amount of money. The employees are already being paid, so that money would have been spent regardless of whether a FOI was requested. No? Perhaps the only cost would be postage?

“I meant the data is required for people who read the paper Santer wrote to fully understand the paper Santer wrote. This group of people includes me, you, or anyone who really wants to get into the nitty-gritty details of what Santer did, including verifying they fully understood the methods Santer used to test models. Having the underlying data helps.”

Oh yes, I completely agree. Which is why I asked what you thought earlier. I think that if someone else had asked, they would have got the data pronto. I think this is a special effort that was reserved for SteveM.

Maybe you could experiment and ask for the data yourself?

I am a skeptic and I laud SteveM’s efforts. That said:

I can understand reluctance to provide data at the expense of “doing my real job” (research and paper writing).

I can understand reluctance to provide data to a critic.

Sometimes I think I would consider inviting notable yet seemingly objective skeptics like SteveM to read my papers and comment prior to release — might be beneficial to the science. Yet, deciding to involve SteveM would be an uphill psychological battle.

Bottom line: Withholding data may simply be due to a desire to spend one’s time more profitably — not a cover up.

Nathan-
If you think it’s a trivial amount of money, you are unfamiliar with charge out rates at Livermore. Bader, Santer and other people spending time on this issue could be doing other things.

Ordinarily, Santer’s staff are devoted to tasks other than responding to FOI’s. Had Santer simply provided the data, the extra effort would not be expended.

Also consider this:

Bader’s email to SteveM seemed to suggest sparing his staff excess effort to deal with the FOI this was a worthy goal. So, evidently, Bader thinks wasting his staff’s time is not a good idea. In this regard, had Santer simply spent a small amount of time sending Steve the data, or letting Steve know that efforts were already underway to clear the data, the extra effort to deal with the FOI would have been unnecessary.

Maybe you could experiment and ask for the data yourself?

When I feel a strong need for data, I do contact people and ask for it. That said, I don’t go around just flinging off requests to test the system. Why should I waste people’s time?

Because I do sometimes ask for data, I know these sorts of requests are generally granted. It’s rare for the author of a paper to fling off a grumpy paper not only refusing the data, but copying 16 co-authors explaining why he refuses to provide data. So, I found it suprising Santer did not provide the data.

It’s a shame Santer did not follow customary practice and provide data since
a) providing the data appears to be required under FOI and
b) ultimately, the data was provided, but in a very time inefficient manner and in a way that results in poor public relations for Livermore.

With luck Bader will explain this issue to Santer, and in future, Santer will provide data of these sorts to whomever requests them, regardless of Santer’s opinion of the person requesting the data. Granting the data would have been the right thing to do.

Allen63–
I’m not suggesting a cover up. I’m only suggesting that Santer’s actions
a) increased the amount of work involved and
b) resulted in PR fallout for Livermore.

The increase in work arose because rather than just resulting in a small amount of work for Santer, the task expanded to include FOI officers, and Santer’s boss having to look into the issue, understand it and try to deal with it.

With luck, Bader will explain this issue to Santer, and in future, Santer will swallow hard and fork over data, or failing that, inform people that the data is being made available, but that it will take 2-4 weeks to format and then get the data cleared for public consumption.

Lucia,
So how much did it cost? What are the charge out rates? I guess we should define what we call ‘trivial’.

“Bader, Santer and other people spending time on this issue could be doing other things. ”
Evidently they did do other things for some time, that’s why it took so long. I would suggest they waited until they had spare time before doing it. I don’t think any extra effort was expended. If extra effort was expended surely it would have been quicker.

“So, I found it suprising Santer did not provide the data.”
I think everyone knows why he didn’t give out the data. He wanted to make SteveM fight for it.

We all agree Santer should have just provided the data, but it’s certainly not a big deal that he didn’t. I don’t think it’s a big mystery as to why he didn’t.

Nathan

So how much did it cost?

Enough for Bader to suggest that sparing his staff this excess effort was a worthy goal. Otherwise who knows.

What are the charge out rates?At Livermore? They have very high overheads. I’d guess $250-$300 an hour for a senior scientist. It could be more.

I guess we should define what we call ‘trivial’

Sure. We could all decide what we mean by trivial.

Suppose Bader spent 3 hours he did not otherwise need to spend and FOI staff spent two hours accepting the paperwork, filing it and doing various things. Then maybe someone above Bader spent an hour discussing this issue. Was it worth $1000 of tax payer money to indulge a scientists desire to for SteveM to pursue this costly means of getting data that should have been available without all this overhead activity?

What if Bader spent half an hour reading Climate Audit, writing his first email, reading Steve’s second email and responding to that? That’s $125-$150. Is that a worthwhile extra expense just because Santer was grumpy about who asked for data?

What if the discussion went further and program monitors begin what’s up with PCMDI? Their mission is to facilitate data transfer to the public, and here we have then refusing data actually requested. . What if the program monitors spent an hour talking with Santer or Bader about this? We don’t know if that happened, but that could rack up the costs.

Sure– compared to launching a satellite , this cost is trivial. But any amount of money is a waste if the goal was to block access to data that the people are legally entitled to obtain.

Lucia
“Enough for Bader to suggest that sparing his staff this excess effort was a worthy goal. Otherwise who knows.

What are the charge out rates?At Livermore? They have very high overheads. I’d guess $250-$300 an hour for a senior scientist. It could be more. ”

So you don’t know either?
And no, $1000 is not very much in the overall scheme of things.

There is no disagreement that money need not have been spent, but it’s certainly not that important.

“But any amount of money is a waste if the goal was to block access to data that the people are legally entitled to obtain.”
Umm I don’t think his goal was to block Steve. Rather just not to have to deal with him. FOI exists to allow people access, he couldn’t have blocked him.

I guess we can just have a different perspective on this. You see it as important, I see it as pretty trivial. Maybe I should say petty and trivial. Santer being petty, SteveM being trivial.

Lucia
“Why did Santer refuse SteveM’s data request back in October or November 2008? ”

I thought this is pretty obvious. Santer doesn’t like him.

Nathan,
I work partime at a national lab. My husband does also. Charge out rates vary from person to person. But for those are realistic for a senior scientist at Livermore. But now, I do not know Santer’s charge our rate, Baders rate nor that of any clerical staff of FOI officers.

Your theory is this money was wasted simply because Santer doesn’t like SteveM.

What’s trivial about SteveM’s request? SteveM wanted data to better understand Santer paper. The government funds the work and pays for page charges to permit the public to learn more. Santer’s behavior obstructed that goal. To facilitate dissemination of information Congress passed FOI.

Why shouldn’t Steve have access to this information?

Assuming your theory is correct: Santer not liking Steve is very poor justification for refusing to grant access to data. It’s positively childish.

On the cost thing, if the personnel who collated the data were salaried, they would have gotten paid whether they were collating data or taking a cigarette break. The only real cost is the opportunity cost: what else could they have been doing during that time that would have brought money into the lab.
.
Unless, as a result of the FOIA request, money was actually spent that otherwise would not have been, the real cost was about zero.

Nathan: your

Santer being petty, SteveM being trivial.

I agree with the former, but not the latter.

If SM uses Santer’s data and validates Santer, its not trivial to the climate community.

If SM finds errors in Santer, its also not trivial, to the same community.

Lucia
I agree it’s childish.
I don’t think SteveM’s request was trivial.

As to the money, frankly it is trivial.

I think that the event is trivial. I think that making this into an issue is trivial.
FOI exists exactly for this reason. To enable people to access information when people won’t give it up.

You say this is the important issue in your original post

“Why did Santer refuse SteveM’s data request back in October or November 2008?”

It’s pretty obvious why Santer refused.

But in the end, so what? Did it really make any difference?

I’ll clarify

SteveM complaing at length is trivial. Not his request for the data.

RyanO–
If the alternative tasks would have been pointless, then yes, the opportunity cost of dealing with the FOI is zero.

Presumably, Bader when bader says “Given the demands on my staff’s time”, he believes the alternative tasks are worth government fund expended to support their time.

To the extent that dealing with an FOI prevented them from devoting time to doing these more valuable things, it cost the government money. To the extent that the efforts to deal with the FOI would have been unnecessary if Santer had just provided the data, diverting government workers to this task was a waste of tax payer money which could have been used otherwise.

Presumably, Bader, a seasoned manager, will understand this and advise Santer to behave in more efficient ways in future.

Nathan–
SteveM has a blog. He’s free to explain what’s been happening to him. Even if it were trivial to discuss this… well… so?

For what it’s worth, I don’t see government employees refusing members of the public data as trivial. But if you do, it’s easy enough to not pay attention to the story and read other stories.

With luck, Steve’s filing the FOI and discussing the process will publicize the mechanism. It may also remind government laboratory employees that FOI exists, and that they should take requests for data seriously.

Or… not. Maybe Santer will continue to behave as he does and every data request will waste tax paper money and it will continue to take months to obtain small bits of data.

Lucia: i think SteveM has discovered (with others) a complete mess with Steig’s paper on antarctica derived temps. Can’t believe nature published this. I certainly will not be submitting any work with them in the future.

My recollection of the coverage of Santer at CA was of a pretty fair and vigorous debate over the differences between Douglass and Santer methodology for determining mean trends out of the model ensembles (lots of the many worlds of models stuff, yawn, with a split decision going to Santer over Douglass on points), grousing about endpoint selections, raised eyebrows about revised error bars so wide that a null hypothesis also verified, all punctuated by Santer making a peevish spectacle of himself. Far from deeming Santer a fraud, the paper escaped CA with a gentleman’s C. Lucia continues to use Santer here, not to hoist it on its own petard, but because it has gone through a fair amount of scrutiny and criticism and come out the other side as a plausible method for assembling model results while acknowledging forcing impacts from volcanic events.

Re previous http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5054#comment-323917

Nathan:

“But in the end, so what? Did it really make any difference?”

If you follow this little game to its end, I think you will be forced to agree that it makes a very BIG difference. Santer’s work is serving to emphasize and reinforce just how rotten things are in the Denmark of “Climate Science.” The Religion is taking some very heavy losses these days, with NASA now being ridiculed internationally. Santer should have been smart enough to avoid being sucked into the black hole that all these incorrigible, anti-scientific, political hacks have created with absolutely laughable “science.”

Lucia
That’s why I asked what you thought. Because I was interested to see why you thought it was important.

Nathan–
As always, I am happy enough to share why I think the issue is important. Glad we could get to that point.

Jae.

Ok, so now we come to the REAL debate,
“If you follow this little game to its end, I think you will be forced to agree that it makes a very BIG difference. Santer’s work is serving to emphasize and reinforce just how rotten things are in the Denmark of “Climate Science.” The Religion is taking some very heavy losses these days, with NASA now being ridiculed internationally. Santer should have been smart enough to avoid being sucked into the black hole that all these incorrigible, anti-scientific, political hacks have created with absolutely laughable “science.”

This is the debate that is hiding behind the trivial issue of Santer not liking SteveM and refusing to give him data.

The interesting thing is that Lucia doesn’t address it directly. It’s the elephant in this post that Lucia has ignored. I tried to get her to say what was so important about this post, but she either was unaware of the Elephant or was attempting to ignore it.

No, Jae I don’t agree with you. SteveM will still be able to work with the data. If there is something significant he’ll publish it. If Santer’s work is bad, we’ll find out.

Jae–

The interesting thing is that Lucia doesn’t address it directly. It’s the elephant in this post that Lucia has ignored.

That’s your issue, not mine. Why would I bring up a point I never even thought about? Now that you bring up the idea, I don’t agree with it.

Lucia
I am glad to hear that.
I must admit that this was basically the point you were trying to get to, that was how I read your post. If I was to guess I think a lot of others would read it that way too, so it’s good that you stated what you did.

Re hswiseman#9722, my assessment differs. Since there is no statistical meaning in an arbitrary selection of model runs from different models with an unknown set of varying distributions there is no possibility of using those results to assess the confidence limits regarding climate model compatability with measured temperatures.

Therefore neither Santer nor Douglass can provide any generally useful conclusions without making unjustified assumptions.

As a layperson who has followed the AGW battle for years now I see a continuation of behavior by AGW advocates that raises suspicion, even to the Joe Bubbas of the world.

What is consistent is the AGW advocates publish a paper then take the position it is beneath them to provide underling data to support their position. On the other hand you have the AGW critics that openly post methods/data supporting their position and openly invite criticism and debate.

Calls for public debate by the AGW critics are common. Yet the AGW advocates avoid them at all cost. Perfect example is Al Gore.

Life has taught me if your position is solid, you can defend it with ease and defeat your opponents in public. After a few victories embarrassing the challenger in public for all the world to see usually puts an end to challenges.

Unfortunately, the AGW advocates have taken the opposite position and refused to accept the challenge to vanquish the AGW skeptic. The result is a perception, they can not back up their positions.

Like it or not the AGW advocate is losing the battle and the only way they will regain their position is to stop hiding in holes and publishing a paper, then refusing to transparently support the paper.

To a Joe Bubba it boils down to this…If your AGW position is so solid then get out in public take one and all challenges and put an end to all doubt about the quality of their research. Joe Bubba observes the AGW advocate do just the opposite, which makes them look like the town con-man.

The AGW advocate is losing the intellectual battle and the PR battle. Unless they change their behavior, they will continue not be trusted by the layperson.

Lucia,
yet it does appear that the elephant in your post is visible to quite a few posters here…

Nathan:
I don’t know how you get from

a) critcizing Bader and Santer for withholding data

to jae’s

b) “Santer’s work is serving to emphasize and reinforce just how rotten things are in the Denmark of “Climate Science.” The Religion is taking some very heavy losses these days, with NASA now being ridiculed internationally. Santer should have been smart enough to avoid being sucked into the black hole that all these incorrigible, anti-scientific, political hacks have created with absolutely laughable “science.”"

In my opinion, this incident involving Santer and to some extent Bader reflects badly on the many well behaved climate scientists. As far as I can tell, climate scientists are not anti-science hacks, not rotten, not motivated by any sort of “religion” nor any of the things jae thinks.

The message: Santer should not be with holding data from the public. Bader should not be giving publishing data such a low priority that data required to interpret a paper cleared in March and published in November are not available until January.

The data do not beloing to Santer or Bader. Santer should not do withold it even if he hate-hate-hates SteveM. With regard to Livermore related issues (i.e. this data) Bader should get his employee Santer to learn to behave properly toward the public. Bader should not be soooooo slow about getting data out the door.

After all, the data belong to the lab, the lab belongs to the government. Hence, the data belong to the public, not Santer. The public have also made laws insisting that people like Santer fork over that which belongs to the public to the public.

Nathan– I don’t see where you are getting that idea.

The data do not beloing to Santer or Bader. Santer should not do withold it even if he hate-hate-hates SteveM. With regard to Livermore related issues (i.e. this data) Bader should get his employee Santer to learn to behave properly toward the public. Bader should not be soooooo slow about getting data out the door.

After all, the data belong to the lab, the lab belongs to the government. Hence, the data belong to the public, not Santer. The public have also made laws insisting that people like Santer fork over that which belongs to the public to the public.–lucia

Exactly.
Opening up to potential critics is the primary purpose of the FOIA. The notion that SteveM is somehow less entitled because he is more likely to apply critical scrutiny is nuts.

Also, I am surprised that there would be any additional time needed to put the data in a suitable form for dissemination. How did the supposed internal peer review /clearing take place if the data was not already in a reviewable form?

My impression was not that Bader was circling the wagons to defend the True Faith so much as being annoyed that someone might expose how little internal scrutiny is actually applied and that whatever SteveM finds (and SteveM misses nothing, he a rather scary man at times….) would raise the issue of why didn’t the process over which Dr. Bader presides not catch it sooner?

George Tobin–
Like external peer review, internal peer review can be hit and miss. I generally found lab reports received more thorough peer review than manuscripts for journal articles. It’s even obvious why:
1) Reports often represent specific deliverables to the customer who funded the work. They customer generally insists on reviewing the report. (Example: For research to support clean up of tanks at Hanford, the contractor at Hanford received the report. That customer needed to use the report to convince regulators. They often funded multiple people on their side and insisted on multiple people on the research side to review the report.

2) Manuscripts for publication, in contrast, represent the documentation of some particular finding an author decides might be interesting to the wider audience. While these are valued at a general level, no one in particular needs to make sure that article will be useful or survive when presented to a group of regulators who will be giving permission for something. Usually, you picked 1 technical person, for peer review and a copy editor to copy edit. Both signed-off. Then a supervisor etc. would review. Then patents checked for issues, and legal signed.

Both types of reviews are appropriate. It’s just that in one case (lab reports) the review exists to specifically check accuracy to ensure that those later down stream can rely on the specific results and tabulated values to support the sorts of decisions they intend to make soon.

In the case of peer review, the goal is to get interesting new work disseminated to the public, discover new things etc. If it turns out that the results are a little off because the station record for Harry got spliced to Gil… well… The paper and results may still have some value. It may illustrate a new method. It may give more-or-less new useful results etc.

Since, at least from the point of view of the journal and the community in general, no-one is making any specific decision based on that paper, it’s not quite as big a deal if these issues are discovered after publication.

Readers discovering that proposed theories were wrong, mistakes were made, findings didn’t pan out only after publication is part of science. Peer review practices in journals accept this.

lucia, et. al.

“In my opinion, this incident involving Santer and to some extent Bader reflects badly on the many well behaved climate scientists. As far as I can tell, climate scientists are not anti-science hacks, not rotten, not motivated by any sort of “religion” nor any of the things jae thinks.”

In my opinion, those “climate scientists” that refuse to share data and methodology ARE anti-scientific (since science is built on such sharing), and they appear to be practicing some “artform” that is better described as a “religion.” Obviously, I don’t include all climate scientists in this group, just those that refuse to provide data and get angry at those who dare to request it.

1. The amount of time needed may NOT be small depending on how the information was stored and where. For example, you gather a lot of information, look it over, select the parts you need but don’t necessarily physically separate them, but make a note of it. For such a request you need to correlate information from multiple sources to see what actually was used and how. The assumption of many here is that there is an archive that can be pulled off the shelf, rather than working documents, which may have been used and altered after publication.

2. The time of someone working in a National Lab is charged to a lab project or a grant or a contract. Taking the time to do the FOIA request means that the time has to be billed either to a special lab account or to the person making the FOIA request (there is provision in the law for this, for example, copying above a small limit includes the cost of the time of the person doing the copying, it can go to, at least in the past $1/copy)

3. Let me be lazy, was there a formal FOIA request to DOE, or just a letter(s) to Santer. The later is NOT an FOIA request.

Jae–
I have no problems permitting you to express your ideas. The difficulty with your previous point was that you seemed to suggest that’s what my post implied. (Oddly, your theory of how my article suggested this idea was that I didn’t say anything of the sort and that I had simply somehow “ignored” the idea.)

In contrast, Vinnster clearly tells us he is expressing his own interpretation of Santer’s behavior.

To the extent that Santer and Bader’s recent behavior caused people do develop negative impressions of climate scientists, this does cause a PR problem for climate science more generally.

I did say this caused a PR problem– and I can see Vinnster has explained the precise way the PR issue works in lay peoples minds. But, I think you, jae, go way to far in diagnosing some sort of underlying rottenness and/or religiosity in the whole of climate science.

Eli–
Initially, Steve sent a letter to Santer. Santer refused providing the data flat out adding quite a few flourishes. Moreover, Santer informed Steve that he was copying all co-authors on his refusal.

After that, Steve filed FOI as permitted by law. This appeared to be the only way to access the information. (The law exists because the government considers such access a high priority, not a low one.)

Much later, the data appeared at PCMDI. Bader also wrote Steve an Email explaining. Bader’s letter implies that the data were being made available all along.

If the data were being made available (even at a snails pace) Santer could have just informed Steve of this rather than writing a childishly snotty email refusing the data. Santer could even have volunteered to provide draft-copies early in the clearance process. (Or, if he was not the one putting this stuff together, sending an email to the person who was putting it together and asking them to send the stuff to Steve.)

Had Santer provided such information, Steve would not have been required to write the FOI. It would have been very little effort for Santer.

Providing this level of support would have eliminated all the work and overhead required to deal with the FOI.

So, assuming what Bader says is true, Santer’s refusal and childish email resulted in quite a waste of tax payer funds.

lucia:

“…But, I think you, jae, go way to far in diagnosing some sort of underlying rottenness and/or religiosity in the whole of climate science.”

Fair enough, if you delete the word “whole.” I have great respect for many folks that I would call “climate scientists,” ya know .

And I will try to stay more OT and PC.

Eli Rabett (Comment#9738) February 3rd, 2009 at 8:08 am

1. Yet another Naked Strawman. I’m sure you can think up an unlimited number of these.

2. In my career, supplying information to the people who paid for the work and who request it is considered part of my job description. When you have real customers who have vital stakes in the work and results it can be no other way.

3. The data and information belong to the people who paid for the work. At the National Laboratories, that means the public own the data and information; Period, no ifs ands or buts. A formal FOIA request should not have been considered necessary.

Jae–
You are on topic, and you don’t need to be PC. It’s just
a) You should not decree that I have really made your point (particularly if your theory is that I expressed this idea by not saying it!) and
b) If you say something I disagree with, I get to disagree.

The purpose of discussion is to permit people with alternate points of view to say things. But, that doesn’t mean anyone– including me– must supress their own idea in favor of yours.

You get to say what you think. So do Nathan, Fred, Dan…. &etc. I get to express mine too.

If we happen to disagree, we disagree. My disagreeing doesn’t mean “shut up”. But, if you do (a) above, I will need to point out that I did not say that, I don’t mean that, and you, jae, are not my spokes person.

Eli says:

“2. The time of someone working in a National Lab is charged to a lab project or a grant or a contract. Taking the time to do the FOIA request means that the time has to be billed either to a special lab account or to the person making the FOIA request”

A fair point but – Santer could have explained this and politely suggested to Steve that a FOIA request is a quickest way to get access the data because of the nature of bureacracy.

His snarky reply that implied that Steve had no business asking for the data is just one more example of the arrogance that infests the climate science community and one more example of why many people distrust their scientific claims.

SteveM insinuates fraud all the time. Where do you think jae and Raven and kim get their bright ideas?

As for snotty attitude, SteveM has it in spades and it is not surprising it is returned to him in kind. Not the way I would handle things, but it’s sort of fun to watch, I admit.

Boris–
Why do you think Raven and kim’s ideas originate with SteveM? When you answer that, could you also answer this: Who originates your ideas?

I’ve never read SteveM insinuate fraud. I read Steig’s accusation SteveM insinuated fraud in a recent post. I re-read the post and comments, and I could find no such insinuation thinly veiled, thickly veiled or even hidden behind a thick concrete wall.

Do you have examples of what you consider to be insinuations? If you do, we can see whether we agree those are insinuations of anything. Otherwise, I just don’t see them.

I corresponded with Ben Santer in December requesting that he provide Steve the data and materials he had earlier requested. His response to me on Dec 30th 2008 made no indication that the information was going to be made available to the public in any way shape or form.

The reply I received is posted on CA but includes the following:

“Mr. McIntyre has access to exactly the same model and observational data that we used in our IJoC paper. If he is truly interested in replicating our results, he has all the information necessary to do so. This would require effort on his part. It appears that Mr. McIntyre is unwilling or able to do the work necessary to replicate our findings. It is much easier for him to portray himself as an innocent victim of evil Government scientists.”

If it was standard practice to make this information available and it was just taking time to get it together I would have expected a response that might have said: ” Thanks for inquiry. We are working to make that information available to the public as part of our normal procedures.”

Draw your own conclusions about what can be learned from this.

Boris

Steve never insinuates fraud, and moderates any posts that do so off his board. He is constantly telling posters that attacks on motives are not allowed on his site, and anyone – including yourself – who follows his site knows it.

Boris:

“SteveM insinuates fraud all the time. Where do you think jae and Raven and kim get their bright ideas?”

I guess you are just trying to get a rise out of people again, eh? I have NEVER suggested fraud on anyone’s part, just crappy science. I get most irritated by elitism, which is what I think is behind much of this refusal to cooperate. The thought process may go something like this: “Why should I, a relatively famous PhD climate scientist, with xxxx peer-reviewed publications, submit essentially to a DEMAND from a statistician with only a master’s degree, who worked for the dirty mining industry? ” I know it irks these guys to have to spend a little time “helping” a very brilliant critic. That is human nature. But it is a bad part of human nature, a part that even explains wars (me and mine are better than you and yours). One of the great things about the scientific method is that it safeguards against this flaw of human nature.

Lucia, Mark et al. – While I agree that I haven’t read posts by Steve that insinuate fraud, thinly veiled or not, let’s not kid ourselves and face it that his posts are filled with much biting sarcasm and snippy comments. Further, while he does make a strong effort to edit posters’ comments that directly make accusations of fraud, there are more than a few posters’ comments that do slip through and could reasonably be interpreted of, at least being thinly veiled accusations of total incompetence, if not, as thinly-veiled accusations of fraud.

Now before anyone gets up in arms, let me state clearly that if Boris, Eli, Dr. Steig, Dr. Schmidt, or anyone else wants to complain about the tone at Climate Audit, they better first have a long hard look at the posts and particularly the regular commenters at sites such as Open Mind, Real Climate, Climate Progress, Eli Rabett’s blog, etc. regarding the Pielke’s, Steve M, Lucia and others. In brief, any such complaints amount to the pot calling the kettle black.

One final point, Lucia, I do appreciate the tone and tenor at this site. People can disagree on subjects without all the extraneous junk. A very good example was the recent exchange between you and Zeke H (who also seems to have good demeanor.

To Boris and Eli and others –There was a great line in a Michael Douglas movie, called Disclosure: “Fix the problem. A Friend” Verification is part of science. It is what builds trust in science. How can someone verify something if the data and code is withheld or hidden or locked away? The attitude of the person asking for the information doesn’t matter. What matters is that the information be made available. And it shouldn’t take an FOI request to dislodge it. That is a failsafe device for a systemic failure. Transparency, transparency, transparency. If there is something wrong with the procedures to provide transparency at a lab — fix them! Then you don’t have to defend against accusations of fraud. And blog debates don’t have to devolve into who’s calling who names — or not.
FIX THE PROBLEM! A Taxpayer

Steve M doesn’t insinuate fraud. Some readers take it that way, but what Steve actually insinuates (and sometimes flat-out says) is incompetence. And if he can show how things are in error, that insinuation/accusation is accurate.
.
There’s a big difference between fraud and incompetence.
.
Note: Incompetence != stupidity. Steve doesn’t call/imply/suggest the folks he audits are stupid.

Eli says

1. The amount of time needed may NOT be small depending on how the information was stored and where. For example, you gather a lot of information, look it over, select the parts you need but don’t necessarily physically separate them, but make a note of it. For such a request you need to correlate information from multiple sources to see what actually was used and how. The assumption of many here is that there is an archive that can be pulled off the shelf, rather than working documents, which may have been used and altered after publication.

I believe this may be true of very amateur efforts but is completely untrue of competent professional work. My time is precious. As I sometimes make errors early in a process that cause me to repeat prior effort, I find it is good practice to checkpoint and archive everything and keep copious notes. We even go so far as to try to beat the habit of sloppiness out of all of the undergrads we teach with these things called “labs” where we require items like lab notebooks and comments on source code produced. Some practices are so strict that modifications to things like lab notes are considered fraudulent and will get you “moved on to pursue other interests”. Also, what about old work ? I want to be able to use the fruits of my previous efforts. How am I to do this if I don’t maintain some minimum standard of discipline ?
I don’t see that some special form of sorting of data would be required for FOIA. It would take me about 5 minutes to forward notes and archives to someone requesting them. Yes, in some data sets where only a few items of interest are examined in my effort, the amount of gold to coal would be low, but the goal is to be able to come back and use other data sets if I so desire. If the FOIA requester has to pull a few MBytes of extra data, I don’t view that as my problem.
I suspect that the desire not to release data, code and notes is driven more by the fear of pitying looks from their more competent and organized colleagues than anything else.

Bob–
I agree that SteveM does sometimes resort to biting sarcasms. He admits it himself, stops for a while, and it recurs. And yes, some posters comment alleging fraud get in. That type of thing will occur at blogs that don’t moderate every post individually.

Steve policy is to “zamboni” these. I prefer to respond and say I disagree. I’m at home pretty much all the time, so I can generally catch these things. I don’t know which method is better. Things could slip through in either case.

But, Boris accused SteveM himself (not his readers) of something alleging fraud not committing sarcasm. I haven’t seen Steve make any allegations of fraud.

I do agree with your assessment of “pot-kettle-black” with regards to any complaints about other-blog-comments by those who run RC, OM, RR or CP.

Boris,

SteveM just puts the information out there. It is not his fault that people look at the information and come to the logical conclusion that there are many climate scientists who do not deserve to be trusted.

If you have a problem with that perception then you should take it up with people like Santar and Mann who, through arrogance or ignorance, act like people who should not be trusted.

IOW – you need to get off your high horse and stop insisting that climate scientists must be assumed to be paragons of virtue unless there is inrefutable evidence proving otherwise. No one deserves that kind of unquestioning trust – trust must be earned and once it is lost it takes a long time to get it back.

RyanO–
I think Steve a) uncovers errors and b) discusses those in public.

Though, possibly, those whose errors are uncovered would prefer they are not discussed in public, discussing errors is not same as insinuating incompetence.

Everyone knows even competent people make errors. Nevertheless, knowing whether there are errors in the analysis used to support a claim is something people want to know before deciding if the believe the claim. So, for this reason, it is traditional both in science and politics to discuss errors that might affect our confidence that a particular claim is true.

Artflex–
I too find it difficult to believe the information requested by SteveM would take a long time to gather together and provide.

Fulfilling SteveM’s request would have required:
1) Finding the files on a hard-drive.
2) explaining what the columns meant. This could be done in an email.
3) Attaching the folder to an email and sending the email.

It’s difficult to believe Santer or someone in his group did not have the files in a directory on his hard drive. Of course, maybe the didn’t. But, still… it’s difficult to believe he would have deleted the files.

When I say Santer’s forcing Steve to file the FOI created work that cost money, I mean it did so indirectly.

The indirect costs included Bader spending time to write his email “clarifying”, Bader’s negotiations with FOI to ask whether posting at the publically accessible web site would fulfill the needs etc. Costs will have accrued as a result of internal discussions at Livermore.

As for the final posting at PCMDI: That posting required a lot of work. But that work was not required to give Steve copies of the data. That work was required to distribute the data to even more people.

To some extent, in his email, I suspect Bader is using the time required to post information at the publicly accessible web site as an excuse to further delay getting Steve a set of files. FOI does not require a lab to create an publiclly accessible web site to disseminate the requested data to everyone on the planet. (Mind you, I don’t mind that they did that. But FOI would not require that.)

IMHO, stated or unstated, what is projected by the “team” regarding Steve’ s work is: “Who are you to have set yourself up as the expert Climate statistical Auditor of our work?”

I’ve never published in the scientific world but have written and performed music and I would be very sensitive to negative citicism about how I could have better written or performed a song I had worked countless hours on.

I have to guess someone publishing a scientific study might feel the same way, however their work is subject to review and verification while a song is a take it or leave it propostion.

William–
I do understand why those who are criticized would feel bad.

That said, if you perform in public, and people happen to pan your work, you do have to lump it, right?

Or, you could set up a blog explaining that your song and performance were really, really, really good, and your critics, who are not musicians, and probably can’t read music aren’t qualified to notice any lapses in your performance. You could provide some “context” to explain that your stumbling and playing a few wrong notes during your performance of “The Prestissimo” was inconsequential because you still made a contribution by holding the E above high C for two minutes straight during the triumphant closing! (You could further buttress the case against the incorrect notes by pointing out The Prestissimo” is atonal, and you’ve found when performing atonal work, the wrong notes really don’t affect the overall effect.)

Or you could suggest that anyone who noticed you made mistakes during “The Prestissimo” is suggesting you are an incompetent musician (as opposed to a competant musician with the audacity to even attempt a “The Prestissimo” in public!)

Finally, you could tell the critics: Well, academics like my stuff.

Or.. you could just put on your big boy pants like these guys:

“It is much easier for him to portray himself as an innocent victim of evil Government scientists.”

I could infer that comment as Dr. Santer believing Steve to be a conspiracy theorist, and a lazy one at that. As to a more subtle interpretation; the heavy handed ones being that Santer doesn’t understand the meaning of replication, or that he just pretends not to understand the requirements for exact replication and is acting as an elitist. A lighter touch of subtle being that he simply doesn’t understand what Steve is trying to do, and doesn’t care to try and find out. One thing is clear, anyone that thinks Steve plays the victim, especially in that manner, is uninformed.

William– BTW I don’t mean to my post to read that you have been panned or that you deserve it. In the above, “you” would be a hypothetical person who was panned, not “you, william”.

I hope that didn’t come across as snide.

After a performance where I knew that I had played a few too many wrong notes, my friends are always quick to point out that the audience was not made up of musicians and enjoyed the music just the same since “they could not tell the difference either way”.

William–
Luckily for many musicians, your friends are partly correct. I think performers are often aware of clinkers that the audience really does miss.

Darwin, I agree with your post. The time and cost associated with gathering information for an FOI request is a red herring. Public data should be accessable to the public. It is not the fault of the one requesting the data if people are diverted from important work. If this is so costly, then maybe there is a problem with way that data, code, and processes are archived. Policy on data and code archiving, and process documentation should be designed with public accessability in mind.

Lucia: He does more than point out errors. He has more than just implied, on many occasions, that Mann is incompetent as a statistician, for example.
.
Pointing out errors is a good thing (typo, bad data point, bad calculation), but it doesn’t make a blog. Most of Steve’s commentary is on poor/invalid use of statistical tools, deliberate use of known suspect/bad data, poor (or missing) validation, etc. These are more than simple errors. They are demonstrations of incompetence.
.
Part of science and engineering competence are the methods used to arrive at conclusions. Would you deem a bridgemaker incompetent who used data that is known to be suspect for the load bearing capacity of a span? I would.
.
Does Steve point out simple errors, too? Yep. But the most important parts of his blog are those that focus on systemic errors, either in the data or the methods used to analyze the data.
.
Everybody makes mistakes, but systemic misuse of a statistical tool is not a mistake. It is incompetence, and to me, that seems to be Steve’s focus – and I applaud him for that.

RyanO

I didn’t say the errors Steve points out are necessarily simple errors. He mostly discusssed complicated errors that people who read articles would rarely notice unless they tried to replicate the computations.

As an amateur musician myself, I enjoyed the musical performance analogy. Your comments about musicians being more aware of their errors than most members of the audience is usually true. However, you also encounter musicians who seem to be blissfully unaware of the hash they are making of things. I’m afraid there seem to be some of both types in client science. Incidentally, I’m using “amateur” in the classical sense of it not being done as a vocation, not as a measure of competence. There are degrees of competence in both the amateur and professional categories, in music and in client science.

Duane #9768
I agree 100% with you. When paying large sums of money to see the Chicago symphony one expects a result commensurate with the price of the ticket and their reputation. When the curtain comes up, you would not expect to find a first time performance by a gradeschool that plays from two different scores, in the wrong key and using the wrong instrements with a director who refuses to acknowledge the audience and who adamantly maintained that you were actually seeing a Chicago symphony performance.

Lucia, snip this in it’s entirety if this analogy is getting old!

SteveM doesn’t insinuate fraud. He doesn’t insinuate incompetence: he demonstrates it. But he does insinuate motive. I got snipped because I attributed a motive to Mann for the Steig paper. I merely said that he wanted to get rid of Antarctic cooling the same way he wanted to get rid of the medieval warm period. Now there’s SteveM saying that “motives are off limit”. But that’s quite hypocritical. The reason most working scientists are mad at him is because he insinuates motive, not incompetence. the reason so many people read him is because they all believe that climate scientists have a motive. That’s the entire point, and that’s all because of one of the Mertonian “norms of science”: disinterestedness.

No scientist in his/her right mind will admit violating one of the norms, because they would expose themselves to institutional sanctions. Again, read Merton.

Yet attribution of motives has been the subject of numerous studies in the sociology of science. The classic one is the “Millikan case”. Did Millikan select only the data that fit his preconception of the electron charge? Was that fraud? Is motive good or bad? then there’s Newton and his religious motives, and so on and so on.

If SteveM, or Lucia, or all the other bloggers were merely accusing those scientists of incompetence, there wouldn’t be such a fuss. They would just defend themselves. Scientists constantly accuse each other of incompetence, in the coded language of scientific papers. But there are always implicit accusations of “motive”. The question of whether those accusations are true or not is irrelevant. it is just something that no working scientist will ever admit, and that will lead to aberrant behavior, as that seen from Santer and Bader, but also all of the Team etc.

Maybe it’s time to stop that silly game. Maybe it’s time to stop the snark and the implicit accusations, because it just polarizes the debate. However valuable Steve’s contribution may be, it is improductive because of that.

Lucia: ” I didn’t say the errors Steve points out are necessarily simple errors. He mostly discusssed complicated errors that people who read articles would rarely notice unless they tried to replicate the computations.”

Lucia, isn’t that the scariest part of all? I keep seeing references to “peer reviewed” literature in reverential tones best reserved for Sundays, yet it becomes clearer paper by paper that SM analyzes that peer review is more like club membership than scrutiny. The Stieg/Mann paper on Antarctica is a perfect example. Out there for months, peer reviewed, published in Nature, and exactly one day after data release, SM finds an error which could only be described as fundamental. It appears no one read more than the author’s name’s to make sure they were Team/club members.

I disagree with you Francis, at least on the details and conclusions.

Steve demonstrates sloppiness, shows errors that demonstrate a lack of attention to detail or over-reliance upon the processed work of others, and shows that polite requests for the data used and the methods to exactly replicate the finished product are met with haughty denials, snotty remarks about re-doing the work using incomplete or misleading materials, and edicts to no longer speak to the recipient. If the stuff was there in the first place, he wouldn’t need to ask for it, right? Anyone paying attention to the efforts at reproducing much of this knows it’s not replicable as is, and often not even with what exists when it’s provided. How many capable persons at CA have worked on a number of issues that still aren’t completely working?

He demonstrates a broken process, a good-ole-boy network, sloppy work with no oversight. Stuff like that. Incompetence? I wouldn’t call it that.

Now as to motive? Why does Hansen make announcements about Gorillas and Court Jesters?

I don’t see pointing out timelines, what was done, what could have been done, and the way things were and could have been done as being motive-based. Neither is testing to see if you can have your coffee and still core some tree rings while being on a limited budget. Neither is pointing out the lack of cooperation with mainstream statisticians.

Using satire, sarcasm, wit and humor to point out rain in France is just like rain in Spain, and there’s little difference between Florida, Kenya and Russia is hardly unproductive. I don’t think.

On the other hand, did anyone here know the Prime Minister of Iceland is a lesbian?

re: Francois O (Comment#9771)
“SteveM doesn’t insinuate fraud. He doesn’t insinuate incompetence: he demonstrates it. But he does insinuate motive. … The reason most working scientists are mad at him is because he insinuates motive, not incompetence. the reason so many people read him is because they all believe that climate scientists have a motive.”

I also disagree. I think that he wryly comments that that the peer review process does not automatically correct human nature. The author and the reviewers seem to frequently have the same cognitive gaps. This is not necessarily motive, or even incompetence, but a process in at least one scientific community that is broken. We are all only human, we come into relationship with others to, in part, have them fill in our gaps.

Sam, for some reason I thought the PM was a bloke. So no, I did not know. Would never have guessed it actually.

If the issue of AGW was not such an important public issue, one could understand (not condone) a bit of sloppiness in archiving and maintaining data. One could also understand a certain reluctance to spend time and money (for the scientists, probably the time is the biggest bugbear) servicing FOI requests and so on.

But the AGW issue is one of enormous public importance. Each and every citizen has a vital interest in the decisions which may be taken in relation to it. Each and every pocket will be affected.

Surely it behooves those who produce the scientific information upon which decisions are, or may be, taken to ensure that it is made available for the widest possible study and evaluation by and on behalf of those citizens. This is so, notwithstanding the niceties in relation to the intellectual property in the results of such studies.

It is in any case the policy behind FOI legislation that the workings of Goverment and Government Authorities should be open to scrutiny by the people whom they are meant to be serving. Only in special cases should government information be protected from public scrutiny. The FOI request and the machinery for dealing with such requests is the vehicle by which open goverment is delivered to the citizen.

So the availablity of information is the norm, not the exception. I hardly think that being a climate scientist justifies one in reversing this state of affairs. This is not petty, nor is it trivial. Rather, it goes to the heart of responsible government – ‘for the people, by the people’ etc etc.

Francois,

Unfortunately, I think you are wrong when you talk about ‘disinterestedness’ in relation to climate science because this has become a highly politicised arena.

Remember the background many of the more recent, and prominent, of these scientists have grown up in, especially in the US. They are, to coin a phrase of my own, ‘the environmental generation’ of scientists. They are not disinterested, many want to go into the science to support their worldview.

A gal stepts out to get a cut and color, buy crochet thread and discussions of sexual orientation of icelanders erupt! (I think I may need to decree discussions of sexual orientation off limits. Still… I think it was a joke, right? )

On the motives issue: I understand why SteveM prohibits direct discussions of this. Yes, everyone has motives. But it can be very difficult to reverse engineer what some people’s motives might be based on what they do.

I figure I can guess Marc Morano’s motives with some accuracy. But beyond that, I’ll admit that I can come up with zillions of theories for almost anyone’s motives. (I actually love to do this– but not on the blog!)

In many cases, the group discussion of motives is a time wasting distraction. Even if we identify the motives of two parties arguing over an issue, that often tells us nothing about who is correct. (Heck, both people could be incorrect.)

Unlike Steve, I don’t have any outright prohibition on motives. But, I don’t exactly want to encourage those discussions either.

Lucia says:

“Unlike Steve, I don’t have any outright prohibition on motives. But, I don’t exactly want to encourage those discussions either.”

One could say ‘by their acts you will know them’ which is all very biblical and everything so I won’t say it.

The essential difficulty with motives is that one can’t read another’s mind. By definition then, motives which remain in another’s mind cannot be known.

The safest course is to take what others say more or less at face value and treat it on its merits. If it is inconsistent with facts, or with something else that person has said then that is the point at which a counter argument, ‘attack’ is properly mounted. Delving into what is hidden is just speculation.

But it’s fun isn’t it?

Maybe Nature should withdraw that paper:http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/going_cold_on_antarctic_warming#48360

Boris I’m sorry but if somebody accuses me of being a fraud you better damn well believe that I will stuff my data and methods in his face and say: “go ahead make my day” but then I’ve got nothing to hide.

aka moshpit

Lucia

I acknowledge that you don’t intend for there to be a misunderstanding about your post, but it is quite clear that this is how it is being read by both myself and others in this blog.

“In my opinion, this incident involving Santer and to some extent Bader reflects badly on the many well behaved climate scientists. As far as I can tell, climate scientists are not anti-science hacks, not rotten, not motivated by any sort of “religion” nor any of the things jae thinks.

The message: Santer should not be with holding data from the public. Bader should not be giving publishing data such a low priority that data required to interpret a paper cleared in March and published in November are not available until January.

The data do not beloing to Santer or Bader. Santer should not do withold it even if he hate-hate-hates SteveM. With regard to Livermore related issues (i.e. this data) Bader should get his employee Santer to learn to behave properly toward the public. Bader should not be soooooo slow about getting data out the door.

After all, the data belong to the lab, the lab belongs to the government. Hence, the data belong to the public, not Santer. The public have also made laws insisting that people like Santer fork over that which belongs to the public to the public.”

This is all very well. It’s fine to have an opinion on how quickly labs should respond, but this idea that scientists are trying to keep data from the public is going to be misinterpeted. I find it strange that you cannot see that it will. It looks like a similar tactic seen all over climate blogs, where trivial issues or problems are implied to be huge issues. In reality they make little or no difference.

One interesting thing you haven’t examined is whether or not it is actually Santers responsibility to release data, if people want the data should they request it through him? In many organisations they actually have positions that actually deal with public enquiries and requests. Often they are called data administrators.

Nathan,

One interesting thing you haven’t examined is whether or not it is actually Santers responsibility to release data, if people want the data should they request it through him? In many organisations they actually have positions that actually deal with public enquiries and requests. Often they are called data administrators.

Nice try. But Santer is, as they say, the man with the asterisk.

*Correspondence to B. D. Santer, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.

So when McInyre dutifully followed the procedure 99.9% of the readers of a scientific article who were interested in additional data would follow, Santer’s response was to basically say “why should I?” Not only that, he e-mailed all of his co-authors to tell them what his stance was.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4314

If he had a “data administrator”, why not just forward the request?

It’s worth recalling the start of this idiocy. McIntyre wrote his usual demand letter to Mann for the data that was used in MBH 98. Mann had a graduate student who had not worked on the MBH papers, Scott Rutherford, create an Excel file with the data in columns. This did not occupy all of Rutherford’s attention.

McIntyre’s initial hissy fit came with a long list. Way back then Eli went through the files that Mann had sent to McIntyre and Mann’s FTP site and found essentially all of the data and the programs and how both were used. It took a couple of weeks, with a lot of back and forth with others on USENET. The file that was sent to McIntyre had issues, but nothing that anyone who tried could not work out as a number of us showed. A couple of the files listed in the original Nature paper were not used (this did not affect the result as the correction published a couple of years later showed) McIntryre preferred the hissy fit. BTW, if you find the discussion Eli was someone else, McIntyre was someone else. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

What Santer said was pretty much correct and the normal practice: Follow the description in the paper, see how far you get, then come talk. Santer did what he was employed to do, the research. McIntyre sure didn’t pay for the research, he’s Canadian. Something that appears to have escaped notice. He can make an FOIA request according to the law, but folks shouldn’t pretend he “paid” for the research. What McIntyre also CANNOT do under FOIA is demand that Santer himself provide anything. FOIA is a requirement for departments, not individuals in the the department.

Nathan,

“It looks like a similar tactic seen all over climate blogs, where trivial issues or problems are implied to be huge issues. In reality they make little or no difference.”

I think that you miss the point really. The problem that the real climate scientists have is that every time an issue like this comes up, and they are not able to demonstrate best practice, they take a hit on credibility.

Just think about where the debate would be if the Real Climate Scientists had ensured that

+ all of their papers were soundly and logically argued, that
+ data was sound and well kept,
+ the “adjustments” to the data happened to go in one direction some of the time, in the other direction some of the time (as would be expected by most who deal with data) rather than the picture we see of nearly all of the adjustments just happen to go in the direction of emphasising warming etc.
+ they had encouraged open discussion, disclosed data and methods,
+ they had accessed real expertise in specialist areas (statisticians for example)
+ responded to sincere questions.
+ if they had not engaged in “science by press release”.
+ if they had not engaged in ad hominems and other logical fallacies.

With a few exceptions, my view is that the skeptics are seriously interested in sound science, and will “let the chips fall where they may”. The Real Climate Scientists are now between a rock and a very hard place. The longer that they try to defend obviously bad practice, the more their credibility will suffer.

So it isn’t really about the data at all. It is about the serious loss of credibility that results from an unwillingness to adhere to widely accepted norms of sound practice, or at least, an APPEARANCE of unwillingness to accept sound practice.

John M
In that email, Santer actually tolld him how to get the data that SteveM needed. He told him that he could acces the raw data straight away and do the calculations himself. This is probably what a scientist would do. They would start with the raw data.

And again, it’s no mystery why he would refuse to give SteveM his calculated data. This is entirely due to the way SteveM conducts his business.

Nathan:

“As far as I can tell, climate scientists are not anti-science hacks, not rotten, not motivated by any sort of “religion” nor any of the things jae thinks. ”

You are being very simplistic here, again. Jae does not have ANY labels for ALL climate scientists. He has great respect for many climate scientists* (and even some statisticians . But he also has GREAT disdain for those climate scientists, like Santer, that refuse to cooperate with auditors, such as Steve McIntyre, since such coooperation is DEMANDED by the scientific method (period.). And in jae’s view, there are no wholesome reasons for refusing such cooperation. Jae has never seen an instance where such lack of cooperation and outright nasty responses has led to a positive outcome. And, remember, it is not just Santer, but it is indeed so common in the “climate science” profession that it is maybe even endemic. We have the same lack of cooperation with Jones, Thompson, Mann, etc. etc. etc. (see McIntyre’s list).

*e.g., Roger Pielke, sr and jr., Ferenc Miskolczi, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Bob Carter, the Idso guys, Steve McIntyre (he most certainly deserves the climate science title by now and should post haste be awarded an honorary doctorate in climate science by Al Gore and James Hansen). There are many others: http://www.thedailygreen.com/e.....s-46011008

“Nathan (Comment#9712) February 2nd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
And no, $1000 is not very much in the overall scheme of things. ”

Please send $1000 to the U.S. Treasury so I don’t have to pay that trivial amount.

Oh, and Nathan, Mondo is EXACTLY on target with his/her post! The extremists are rapidly losing their credibility, exactly because they are extremists in a land of relatively level-headed people. LOL.

Mondo
This is exactly the point I am making to Lucia.
She somehow doesn’t understand how this particular issue isn’t going to be interpreted to be “Climate Science = bogey man and bad”.

“Just think about where the debate would be if the Real Climate Scientists had ensured that”

Interestingly enough I think it would be pretty much at the same place.

“So it isn’t really about the data at all. It is about the serious loss of credibility that results from an unwillingness to adhere to widely accepted norms of sound practice, or at least, an APPEARANCE of unwillingness to accept sound practice.”

Ok, now that’s interesting. Compare your remark to the one made by Jae up near the start.

“If you follow this little game to its end, I think you will be forced to agree that it makes a very BIG difference. Santer’s work is serving to emphasize and reinforce just how rotten things are in the Denmark of “Climate Science.” The Religion is taking some very heavy losses these days, with NASA now being ridiculed internationally. Santer should have been smart enough to avoid being sucked into the black hole that all these incorrigible, anti-scientific, political hacks have created with absolutely laughable “science.””

So you see this post as about a lack of credibility. Do you see your post reflected in what Jae thinks?

The problem I have here is that people see the unwillingness of Santer to give SteveM data as reflecting a more pervasive problem. People here seem to think that because Santer wouldn’t give Steve M the data that therefore Climate Scientists are trying to hide the data. It a very simplistic and not very well thought out theory. Why would an obviously poor relationship between two people be used as a ‘typical’ example?

SteveM could have quickly accessed the raw data and done all the work, himself. However he chose to use an FOI. Perhaps we should ask why SteveM just didn’t do the work himself? Is he too lazy? He didn’t need to use an FOI, he could have made the calculations himself, so any money wasted could just as equally be blamed on SteveM.

Jae,
Thanks, yes I got what Mondo was saying… I wonder if Lucia will tell him he’s wrong?

Nathan

This is all very well. It’s fine to have an opinion on how quickly labs should respond, but this idea that scientists are trying to keep data from the public is going to be misinterpeted. I find it strange that you cannot see that it will. It looks like a similar tactic seen all over climate blogs, where trivial issues or problems are implied to be huge issues. In reality they make little or no difference.

Little or no difference to what?

What to misinterpret?

Steve made a legitimate data request using the commonly accepted practice; i.e. Contact the corresponding author as listed on the paper. Santer turned down a legitimate data request. The data belongs to the public and the normal practice.

Santer’s behavior will be interpreted to mean that Santer turned down a data request when he should not have done so.
Your theory is that Santer did this silly, childish thing because he doesn’t like Steve. Your theory, as posted by you, will be interpreted to mean that you thin Santer behaves in a silly childish way.

One interesting thing you haven’t examined is whether or not it is actually Santers responsibility to release data, if people want the data should they request it through him? In many organisations they actually have positions that actually deal with public enquiries and requests. Often they are called data administrators.

Oh?

1) I work part time at one national lab. I used to work full time at another. I’ve never heard of any such job at any national lab.
2) If such a office exists, Santer could have responded to Steve’s request with “That sort of request is handled through the data administrator. Their email is dataAdministrator@myNationalLab.com.
3) You are arguing by making things up.

Eli–
What are you talking about normal practice? People in other fields send data all the time for various reasons.

Because Santer, the corresponding author, behaved in a rather unusual way, an FOI was filed to obtain the data.

Sure, Santer himself didn’t have to provide the data requested through non-FOI means. But it’s routine to do so. Had Santer behaved in the ordinary way , government funds would not be wasted doing this through the FOI route.

So what if Steve is Canadian? I’m American, and I want scientist to grant access to data. The alternative that involves wasting my tax payer money because Santer or possibly you don’t like Steve and/or think there is some history to justify treating his request differently from other’s request seems fiscally imprudent to me.

Nathan

The problem I have here is that people see the unwillingness of Santer to give SteveM data as reflecting a more pervasive problem. People here seem to think that because Santer wouldn’t give Steve M the data that therefore Climate Scientists are trying to hide the data. It a very simplistic and not very well thought out theory. Why would an obviously poor relationship between two people be used as a ‘typical’ example?

I’m not sure what your point is. If you are telling jae that he shouldn’t generalize, I agree. This is a Santer problem and possibly a Bader problem for giving data access such a low priority.

It is true that some people may generalize. This is particularly true since Eli and others are suggesting refusing to hand out data is normal practice in science. It’s not. Normally scientists grand data requests of this sort.

Because granting the data request is normal practice, Santer’s idiosyncratic refusal causes climate science a PR problem. The fact that the motives for this refusal might be seen by people — like you– as steming from a childish grudge held by Santer, makes Santer seem even worse. To the extent that people like Eli justify this, some people are likely to get confused and believe that this childish behavior extends beyond Santer.

But, that generalization is entirely unfair to climate scientists: The problem here was Santer (and possibly Bader for moving so slowly to make data accessible.)

With luck, Santer will behave better in the future and people at climate blogs will stop suggesting that it’s fair for climate scientist to deny data request. With luck Bader — Santer’s supervisor– will emphasize the need to behave more reasonably. With luck, people like Eli will stop explaining how it is perfectly legitimate for climate scientists to refuse data based on their own notions of who deserves data.

When that occurs, the stories will go away; the speculation over motives will diminish; the PR problem that worries you so will vanish.

SteveM could have quickly accessed the raw data and done all the work, himself. However he chose to use an FOI.

Huh? And even if he could, so?

It is this sort of justification for withholding data that is feeding the speculation that the problem goes beyond Santer.

Insisting that member of the public replicate tax payer funded research at their own expense defeats the whole purpose of having tax payer funded research. Congress provided for FOI precisely to permit members of the public to have access to products paid for by tax payer money.

Likewise, we do not require members of the public to build their own bridges, roads, or build and stock their own libraries reserving use only to those people who were paid to build or stick the libaries. Sure, you or I could build our own bridges for our own personal use reserving use of the government funded ones to the people who the government hired to build them. But, how would that be a good idea?

If a bridge contractor decides to set up a road block on a public bridge and I was not permitted to cross, I would feel legally entitled to call the police to deal with this issue. No one would think the costs incurred were my fault. The problem would be the contractor who had developed odd ideas about his relationship to the publicly owned bridge.

Even people who don’t do research understand there is something wrong with scientist acting as gate keepers from data paid for by tax payer money and refusing to give it to those who request it.

Lucia
Little or no difference to climate science.
Misinterpreted that this is a larger problem than just between SteveM and scientists.

“will be interpreted to mean that you thin Santer behaves in a silly childish way. ” It may be, but what I mean is that he behaved in a childish manner in this instance, I certainly don’t think he’s childish, and if people attempt to interpret that Santer behaves in a silly childish way then they aren’t very good at interpretation.

“You are arguing by making things up”
I am not making things up. Believe it or not in many organisations Data Adminstrators do that job. Whether or not they exist in a ‘National Laboratory’ is another thing.

“Had Santer behaved in the ordinary way , government funds would not be wasted doing this through the FOI route. ”
Santer did tell SteveM how to get the raw data and that he could get to the same point as Santer. You’d have to agree though that SteveM could have got the raw data and done it all himself without going through an FOI.

Do you acknowledge the elephant in your post yet? It seems many people are interpreting your work the same way as Jae.

Lucia
“Santer’s idiosyncratic refusal causes climate science a PR problem. ”
This is a PR problem because you are making it into one.

“Santer will behave better in the future and people at climate blogs will stop suggesting that it’s fair for climate scientist to deny data request.”
Has he behaved badly on any other occassions?
I’m not suggesting what he did was “fair”.

“Huh? And even if he could, so?

It is this sort of justification for withholding data that is feeding the speculation that the problem goes beyond Santer.”
Santer told him in the email that he could access the raw data and the processing steps they took. He could have arrived at the same point as Santer. Would this have not been a better idea anyway? You are one of the people feeding that speculation.

Your bridge analogy (like your music one) aren’t very good. Why are you using analogies anyway? Why not just deal with the actual case.

Natha

Little or no difference to climate science.

What does this even mean?

Believe it or not in many organisations Data Adminstrators do that job.

Nathan, you are lecturing me for not checking and implying that asking Santer for data was somehow inappropriate based on your speculation that such a job exists at Santer’s lab. In this case, the onus is on you to check rather than to just make up a theory that such a job exists.

As you see from my previous response: No. I do not agree that Steve should just re-do an entirely government funded research project. I think he should have been provided the results of the government funded research.

And no, I don’t see the elephant in my post. Jae is interpreting my post the mean something. You are worried others will interpret it the way Jae did. You and Eli are providing the theories that would justify jae’s interpretation. I am not.

If you want people to stop thinking this is a climate science, you and Eli might want to stop posting theories explaining why climate scientists might be justified in refusing to grant access to publicly funded data. Posting those theories can only serve to make people like Jae jump to the conclusion that many climate scientists agree with your theories, and would, like Santer, behave similarly.

Nathan,

Your bridge analogy (like your music one) aren’t very good. Why are you using analogies anyway? Why not just deal with the actual case.

Sorry you don’t like the bridge analogy. Howver, I have dealt with the actual case in the main post and numerous comments above.

It is this sort of justification for withholding data that is feeding the speculation that the problem goes beyond Santer.”

Santer told him in the email that he could access the raw data and the processing steps they took. He could have arrived at the same point as Santer. Would this have not been a better idea anyway?

No. Steve could not have done what he wished to do from that start point. Santer’s suggestion was a very poor idea for several reason, some of which are provided above.

Your suggestion that Steve should start from scratch to redo all the work Santer had received tax payer money to do the sort of suggestion that may cause some scientists refusing access to the fruits of publicly funded work is routine.

It is precisely people like you suggesting this behavior is reasonable that feeding speculation that the desire to block access to information is a broader problem than Santer.

Now, I don’t think it’s fair to generalize based on your suggestion that what Santer did was reasonable. You, as a blog commenter, don’t speak for the many climate scientists who routinely grant these sorts of reasonable requests. The problem was Santer (and as I said, possibly Bader for slow-tracking dissemination of data.)

WOW! Somehow jae is becoming the central problem here? This is absolutely nuts. Bye-bye lucia and friends!

Lucia,
Santer’s refusal to give SteveM the data will have little impact on climate science, there is no loss to cliamte science (this is what it’s all about no? SteveM attempting to improve climate science). The data was evetually given to SteveM, he can now do whatever he chooses with it. The total impact is close to nothing.

I wasn’t lecturing you. I was suggesting that there could be other avenues for investigation. It did seem strange from my perspective that the author would be responsible for giving data to the public. I work in the Geological Survey of WA and the geologists here don’t have to deal with the public like that. The data we have is available through the Data Administrator. It would seem like a poor choice to expect the author to provide it.

“Jae is interpreting my post the mean something. You are worried others will interpret it the way Jae did. ”
Others did interpret it that way. It’s not a “worry” for me, but I see threads like this as disappointing. It’s strange that such a trivial incident is treated like a catastrophe. I thought you may be worried that people seem to keep misinterpreting what you mean. I don’t understand how you can’t see that you post will encourage people to think there is a big problem with the dissemination of data by climate scientists.

“If you want people to stop thinking this is a climate science, you and Eli might want to stop posting theories explaining why climate scientists might be justified in refusing to grant access to publicly funded data. Posting those theories can only serve to make people like Jae jump to the conclusion that many climate scientists agree with your theories, and would, like Santer, behave similarly.”
I have never attempted to justify Santers response. I have consistently said he was childish. I haven’t posted theories as to why climate scientists might be justified in refusing data. I have proposed reasons as to why it might not have been forthcoming. I am certainly advocating that data be available.

Lucia
“Now, I don’t think it’s fair to generalize based on your suggestion that what Santer did was reasonable. You, as a blog commenter, don’t speak for the many climate scientists who routinely grant these sorts of reasonable requests. The problem was Santer (and as I said, possibly Bader for slow-tracking dissemination of data.)”

I have never suggested what Santer did was reasonable. I said that it was probably because he doesn’t like SteveM.

I don’t speak for any climate scientists.

Lucia: “With luck, Santer will behave better in the future and people at climate blogs will stop suggesting that it’s fair for climate scientist to deny data request.”

I don’t know about Santer, but Steig does not seem to have gotten the message:

“A good auditor doesn’t use the same Excel spreadsheet that the company being audited does. They make their own calculations with the raw data. After all, how would they know otherwise if the Excel spreadsheet was rigged? Mike Mann articulated this distinction very thoroughly in the discussions with the National Academy during the “hockey stick” debate. You should read this material; it’s enlightening (I will post the link when I find it). In any case, you’re pushing this analogy too far. Science is not the same as business. The self-appointed auditors of climate science don’t seem to understand that science has a built-in-auditing system — the fact that by proving someone else wrong, especially about an important issue, is a great way to get fame and success. There is no comparable mechanism in business. The analogy between auditing business and auditing science is therefore a poorly conceived one. But as long as the analogy is out there, consider how auditors are chosen and regulated in the business world. You don’t get to be an auditor merely by launching a blog, and you certainly don’t publicly speculate about your findings before (or even after) you’ve done the analysis. Above all, you have to demonstrate competence and integrity, and the company you work with has to trust you, or they won’t hire you.–eric

Re: Alan Wilkinson (Comment#9730),
As a young lawyer I spent some time slumming around Hart-Scot-Rodino getting anti-trust approvals for mergers. The answer to the question “Does this business combination create or result in a monopoly?” would often depend on how you defined the relevant market. Of course we Cherry-Picked and ended up with the largest possible relevant market and smallest possible concentrating effects. In Santer, the selected market is the models that are used to composite the trend. I don’t think that Santer says anywhere that the model outcomes used represent a statisically meaningful representation of all possible model outcomes under any set of conditions. So in that sense your criticism is valid. If you ran each model hundreds/thousands of times and used ensemble results of each model, you move slightly closer to your version of ideal, but what about all the other possible initiations of those models and models not even included in the composite trend? Santer presents a modest proposition based on a limited snapshot universe that does not disprove the null hypothesis within its own universe, let alone the one you propose. One could fairly call Santer 2008 sophistry or a cute parlor trick, but as a ’state of the art’ review, it damns the models with faint praise indeed, as the trend squeaks through the CI only after Santer’s orthodonture on the error bars. I guess my point is that if you accept the limited sample for what it is, Santer’s actual compositing technique is probably acceptable and the results tell you something limited about the limited universe.

BTW, when did the 2SD CI become okay? I kind of remember that 99 percent (1SD) was the gold standard, at least in drug studies…until we came to the second-hand smoke studies, which couldn’t get through the small CI.

I see threads like this as disappointing. It’s strange that such a trivial incident is treated like a catastrophe

It’s not strange at all. The point is to make climate scientists look bad so that laypersons will question the science. That’s the point of Climate Audit. If it were a real audit, then one would expect finished analyses, clear discussions of impact, and, if anything actually mattered, a pub in the literature so that other researchers would be aware of the issue. Very little of those things happen at CA.

SteveM complains about Mann’s citations, and then cites a paper from what is essentially a skeptic newsletter. It’s a joke.

Santer’s refusal to give SteveM the data will have little impact on climate science, there is no loss to cliamte science (this is what it’s all about no? SteveM attempting to improve climate science). The data was evetually given to SteveM, he can now do whatever he chooses with it. The total impact is close to nothing.

What would constitute a loss or gain to climate science? That’s an almost meaningless concept. So, no this is not about anything so utterly meaningless.

Santer’s refusal impeded the ability of readers to fully digest the meaning of his paper. It placed an artificial barrier to comments on the paper. It impeded peoples ability to fully understand the methods or implications of the paper. This slows the growth rate of knowledge. Worse, it the artificial barrier was set in place by the person who was funded to write the paper. This means that the public was not getting the full benefit of the expenditure of their tax dollars.

I consider that an impact, or if you prefer “highly negative consequence”. I consider it an important one. That’s one of the reasons I commented on this sort of behavior.

I have no idea whether you or anyone considers this an “impact on climate science” or whether you or others think authors blocking comment on papers is or is not a “loss to climate science”. However, I think it’s worth commenting on this process. I also think it’s worth making sure people know that when authors do block access for their own idiosyncratic reasons, FOI seems to work.

I wasn’t lecturing you. I was suggesting that there could be other avenues for investigation. It did seem strange from my perspective that the author would be responsible for giving data to the public.

I didn’t way you were lecturing me. I said you were trying to buttress the case against SteveM contacting Santer by making up the theory that Livermore must have something called a data officier and that SteveM should have contacted that person. With regard to USGS, you are describing an entity that has some unique functions that are not relevant to getting access to the paper-specific data SteveM wished to obtain from Santer.

So, you were arguing by making up the theory that this particular office must exist and that SteveM should somehow figure that out and contact them.

With regard to journal articles, it is routine for the corresponding author to serve as the gateway for information on the paper. This author is indicated with an asterick on the paper, and the journal provides a note. IN the case of Santer’s paper, the note says,

” Correspondenc to B.D. Santer, Program for Climate Model Diagnostics and Intercomparison (PCMDI), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA 94559, USA. Email: santer1@llnl.gov“.

If there is any such thing as a “data officer”, those reading a journal article would nevertheless note the article specifically indicated Santer as the corresponding author to whom questions should be addressed. They would contact him. Then, if there was a data officer, Santer would inform that of that fact, and send them the data officers email.

The author facilitating rather than blocking access to data required to fully understand the paper’s results is traditional in science.

Santer inhibited access.

Boris and Nathan,

No one treated this as a catastrophe. I commented on the behavior.

Quite honestly, I don’t know why some people react as if discussing a topic and exchanging opinions about the issue is treating it as a catastrophe.

It’s an incident:

Santer behaved badly. Bader sent a note that explained that making data is publiclly accessible is a low priority. It is so low that supporting data for a paper that was cleared for publication by March 2008 was unavailable until Jan 2008. Bader also seemed to point to the notion that the extra effort required to specifically responde to the FOI burdened his staff with work.

Had Santer not behaved badly,
a) Bader would not have had to burden his staff with the extra effort,
b) Bader would not have to waste time responding to these sorts of pesky FOI’s
c) SteveM would have had data months ago and
d) There would be little to discuss.

Had Bader not made data posting such a low priority, the data would have been available when the paper was published. Then, there would have been no incident whatsoever because the data would have been available to everyone the moment the paper was published in October.

I don’t know why you think discussing the incident that makes climate scientists in general look bad. I admit it does make Santer look bad. Some tax papers will think it makes priorities at LLNL look a bit skewed.

But it doesn’t reflect badly on all climate scientists. It appears you, Boris and I agree that few climate scientists would behave like Santer. Many would disapprove of his behavior.

Santer’s behavior reflects badly on Santer. No, that’s not a catastrophe. The earthquake I lived through in 1965 was a catastrophe.

But that happened long ago. So, I tend to discuss more recent incidents, even if they are trivial compared to the earthquake.

Lucia
Recommend reviewing Wally’s
Four Factor Model

I have completed the four factor model matching the MEI,. Optical, CO2 and Sunspot data to the UAH temperatures for 1979 to 2000.

His results look very interesting. Might be worthy of some statistical help.

Lucia
Fair enough that you want to discuss the topic, that’s fine.

“I didn’t way you were lecturing me. I said you were trying to buttress the case against SteveM contacting Santer by making up the theory that Livermore must have something called a data officier and that SteveM should have contacted that person. With regard to USGS, you are describing an entity that has some unique functions that are not relevant to getting access to the paper-specific data SteveM wished to obtain from Santer. ”

You did say I was lecturing you.

“Nathan, you are lecturing me for not checking and implying that asking Santer for data was somehow inappropriate based on your speculation that such a job exists at Santer’s lab. In this case, the onus is on you to check rather than to just make up a theory that such a job exists. ”

“What would constitute a loss or gain to climate science? That’s an almost meaningless concept.”
If there was an opportunity missed then that would constitute a loss. No opportunity was lost. SteveM can make his analysis.

I don’t know why you say things like this:
“So, you were arguing by making up the theory that this particular office must exist and that SteveM should somehow figure that out and contact them.”
I never made up a theory. I proposed an alternative, that actually does exist in other organisations. I never said it did exist, I suggested it was a possibility.

“But it doesn’t reflect badly on all climate scientists. It appears you, Boris and I agree that few climate scientists would behave like Santer. ”
True.

Lucia,

“No one treated this as a catastrophe. I commented on the behavior.

Quite honestly, I don’t know why some people react as if discussing a topic and exchanging opinions about the issue is treating it as a catastrophe. ”

You wrote over 1500 words (close to 2000 I reckon) in the original post, this looks more like an editorial than merely commenting on behaviour.

“Still… I think it was a joke, right? ”

It was an example of a true fact that has nothing to do with the subject, a little non-sequiter red-herring type of remark that is so out of place. But in this case is noticeable as such. Still, the possibilities to waylay the conversation are large. On the other hand, it’s pretty much along the lines of many of the conversations in climate science. True but out of context, or just generally meaningless. Or not.

Although it’s also a bit like speculating at motives; it’s all guesswork unless the person under consideration confirms it. And then it might not be exactly the answer that anyone expected.

I’ve also hear the monarch of this island near France is female also, but I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Nathan,
You said this.

One interesting thing you haven’t examined is whether or not it is actually Santers responsibility to release data, if people want the data should they request it through him? In many organisations they actually have positions that actually deal with public enquiries and requests. Often they are called data administrators.

Presumably, when posting this rhetorical question you were suggesting that failure to investigate whether or not such an office existed is a deficiency on my part for not checking. By the same token, you seem think there is no need for you to check. You just simply theorize the existence of such a thing.

“What would constitute a loss or gain to climate science? That’s an almost meaningless concept.”

If there was an opportunity missed then that would constitute a loss. No opportunity was lost. SteveM can make his analysis.

Introducing long, unnecessary delays means SteveM lost the opportunity to do the analysis promptly. So, an opportunity was lost. Since this is a topic in climate science, then by your definition, an opportunity was lost to “climate science”.

Moreover, SteveM was burdened with the opportunity cost of having to try to file FOI’s, write letters and do unnecessary work in his attempts to do the analysis. This may not be a loss to climate science, but it is an unnecessary burden imposed by Santer on Steve. So, it represents a cost.

Oh.. on this

You wrote over 1500 words (close to 2000 I reckon) in the original post, this looks more like an editorial than merely commenting on behaviour.

I’m wordy. At my knitting blog, I’ve written longer posts on knitting stockinette. In any case, editorials are comments. In this case, it’s a comment on behavior.

For catastrophes you organize helicopters to drop food. (That’s what happened after the earthquake in El Salvador. Mom said watching the food drop from US aircraft was her proudest day as an American.)

Lucia,

seriously…
“Presumably, when posting this rhetorical question you were suggesting that failure to investigate whether or not such an office existed is a deficiency on my part for not checking. By the same token, you seem think there is no need for you to check. You just simply theorize the existence of such a thing. ”

No, I was simply pointing out that I understand these positions exist and that you had not investigated it.

This
“Introducing long, unnecessary delays means SteveM lost the opportunity to do the analysis promptly. So, an opportunity was lost. Since this is a topic in climate science, then by your definition, an opportunity was lost to “climate science”. Moreover, SteveM was burdened with the opportunity cost of having to try to file FOI’s, write letters and do unnecessary work in his attempts to do the analysis. This may not be a loss to climate science, but it is an unnecessary burden imposed by Santer on Steve. So, it represents a cost.”

Is actually quite comical. It’s so trivial that it makes me laugh…

This has been a very inetersting discussion, and in the end I think we are actually in agreement about most things. That Santer behaved poorly, for example.

Nathan–
You are already on record as thinking wasting $1000 or more in taxpayer money is trivial. So… as usual, we can debate the threshold for trivial.

I think self indulgent behavior on the part of Santer that results in these sorts of costs to taxpayers of private individuals is sufficiently important to merit a comment.

That said: Yes. We do agree on many things.

Nathan- I may be mistaken, but most journals have limited windows of time for someone to submit a comment on an article, often on the order of 3 months or so. Therefore, Santer’s initial refusal to provide the requested data did deprive McIntyre (or others) of the opportunity, if he so desired, of submitting a comment for publication. I personally will not opine as to exactly what Santer’s motivation was for not providing the data, though his correspondence with McIntyre seems to leave several hints. However, I will say this, IF Santer knew that his data was subject to FOIA and IF he refused to release the data initially for strictly personal reasons, then, in my opinion, ANY incremental cost (be it $1 or $10,000) to the American taxpayers of having to go through the FOIA process is nontrivial.

Lucia – I essentially agree with all your comments here. Steve M has legitimate issues with the initial refusal, the tone of the refusal and the handling of his follow up FOIA request. I believe his initial request was legitimate and reasonable and the events that followed are a comedy of errors due to subsequent mishandling of the FOIA. The FOIA appeared necessary to get some movement.

The one issue I have with Steve M’s handling is more to do with tactics. The initial contact from Bader appears to be a tentative approach trying to seek closure. Steve immediatly blew him away by escalating a secondary issue concerning handling of the FOIA. In my opinion this lost an opportunity for some constructive engagement with someone of a more senior position than Santer which Steve could have used to influence their policy on data requests. Steve had the legitimate issues available as some leverage.

clivere–
Maybe steve could have responded better. When I reread it, having read what has been said at ClimateAudit.comorg, my first question would have been “What misimpressions are you trying to clarify”.

Maybe the correct response should have been

Dear Dr. Bader,

Thank you for the note. However, I am puzzled. What mis-impressions are you trying to clarify? Your note creates more questions than it answers, would you be willing to answer questions I find puzzling?

Lucia Liljegren

Lucia – Climateaudit.com?????? Dont want to go there! Looks like more than one person can make that typo after all. I wont tell Mark R about you.

Regards

Clive

Oupps! I must have been possessed by the typo demons.

Perhaps you mean a reply along the lines of the following email (which I sent prior to posting anything about this at CA):

What is the factual information that you wish to correct? I am quite prepared to correct any errors: could you please provide me with specific points of fact that you believe to be in error, as I have reviewed the posts in question and cannot any “errors” in what I posted.

Regards, Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre,

Thank you for filling in the information. It appears your first response was, indeed, of the form I would have considered most appropriate. It appears clivere and I both jumped to the conclusions about your first response based on incomplete information.

Lucia – unfortunately I cant give Steve the thumbs up on this point because the email he outlined above was not his initial response. Steve outlined the timeline of the exchange at CA.

I can understand why Steve would be prickly in this exchange because his issues with the handling of his requests are legitimate. I understand he also had more pressing family issues occupying his attention.

From a tactical perpective I still believe Steve would probably have been better off trying to keep Baden neutral particularly if more information is eventually needed from Santer.

I dont believe that when Baden initiated the exchange he ever really had any specific issues with what Steve had written on CA otherwise he would have referred directly to them. To me he was making a positioning statement “the FOIA was not really necessary because independently we were actually releasing the information anyway. Honest guv”.

I also interpret the final email from Baden as a further positioning statement given Steve’s declared intent to formalise his complaint. Baden would need to exercise damage limitation because his email to Steve triggered the complaint

Regards

Clive

clivere–
SteveM says that was his first response, but that he didn’t post every single thing at his blog. I’m taking his word for that, just as I’m taking Bader’s word for the idea that they had begun steps to post the Santer data before Bader received the FOI.

On Baders letter: He was bound to know that it would puzzle the recipient. It leaves open nearly every open question debated at CA, and answers almost nothing of any importance. Bader’s motive in writing it, I cannot guess.

Lucia – fair enough. I am largely supportive of what Steve is doing and any issues I have are usually to do with how he interacts. He is a busy guy and some mistakes are inevitable. From your last comment I believe you have misinterpreted what Steve actually says above re “which I sent prior to posting anything about this at CA” . However I have stated my opinion which still holds based on the timeline in the post by Steve at CA and can probably end the discussion here.

Regards

Clive

Clive–
Fair enough. Maybe your interpretation is correct.

It’s certainly true that people often mis-understand each other. Maybe there is something Steve could have done better in the exchange with Bader. I haven’t read every email and don’t have everything on a time line.

Lucia, to be clear, this was a follow-up letter and, as I reported at CA, my first reply recounted the Santer incident with the sort of documentation that Bader probably didn’t want to receive. I was definitely feeling blue for unrelated reasons on the day in question. I think Mosher’s comments in another context on the prerequisites for moving on are correct. Mosher: to move on, you have to 1. admit you were wrong; 2. say you are sorry; 3. then move on.

If this was Bader’s attempt at an olive branch, it was a very poor effort. He could have said, for example, that, in the future, they would give higher priority to timely archiving of data. Or he could have apologized for my experience with PCMDI and said that they would try to improve on this front. Whatever. I’m pretty fair about putting myself in other people’s shoes and I would have done something like this in a heartbeat. I would probably have thrown in a meaningless invitation to visit the facility and meet him if I were ever in the area. You learn to do stuff like this business even if it isn’t in your nature or something that you want to do. Nothing wrong with it either.

SteveM,
I agree that if this was Bader’s attempt at an olive branch, it was poor.

Mostly, I see Bader’s initial letter as creating more questions than it resolves. Had he made himself aware of time lines or read actual posts or comments at CA, he might have written something that could have acted as an olive branch. As it stood, his letter was designed to preplex the recipient.

If your first response failed to achieve a level of perfection, I wouldn’t fault you. I’m sure I would not have written the perfect response!

Bader’s “we were already doing it” statement may be perfectly true. I don’t know the guy, and I’d like to assume good intentions. On the other hand, I’ve spent a lifetime calling automotive shops at 4:00 PM only to be told “It’s up on the jack now – we just started it.” How is it that the car has been sitting there since 8:00 AM, it’s an hour’s worth of labor, and they always “just started it” when I called near the end of the day? The same thing is standard with various bureaucratic requests. The job isn’t done for weeks – you contact them, and they’ve always “just started it.” It is entirely possible that this request was, in fact, already being worked on, but if I was a gambling man, I’d have to put my money against it. Experience would require me to bet with the probabilities and against good intentions.

MarkB (Comment#10067)

The same thing is standard with various bureaucratic requests. The job isn’t done for weeks – you contact them, and they’ve always “just started it.”

By a remarkable coincidence, the same thing just happened to me with an insurance company.

Funny how much of that is going around, and always with outfits that are renowned for their responsiveness.

Lucia/Steve – following Steve’s comment one further post from me after all.

I notice I got Baders name wrong so I definitely have some reading issues myself!

I agree that Baders initial email was not an olive branch but it did represent an opportunity for mutual airing of views. I still believe he was tentively seeking closure. His opening email contained some factual info about his management position and the release of data and was not in itself hostile.

I do not have any problem with Steve forcefully reminding Bader of the issues with handling of the original request and with handling of the FOIA. It was just the escalation to a formal complaint I believe was premature and changed the dynamics of the correspondence. Bader was forced to go into a defensive mode and effectively stop further correspondence.

As to the confusion about the mis-impressions that Bader was referring to with his first email I actually regard them as trivial though I can understand why the first would matter to Bader. The following are likely candidates for what he was referring to.

I would point you the CA thread – Submitted Article on Tropical Troposphere Trends by Steve McIntyre on January 27th, 2009.

For Bader’s 1. have a look at post number 4 Mark T.: “I wonder if the new administration’s new policies regarding visibility are to blame? Hmmm” and reply post 5 by Steve M ” #4. You’d have to think so. Imagine sitting in the chair of a bureaucrat and being asked to sign off on refusing to provide climate data in the face of the new directive. You’d say – Ben, you’re on drugs”. Posts 8 and 15 are also examples that represent similar views that the FOIA had triggered the movement by Baders department. His position is that they were releasing the information anyway. Does it matter much which version of events is true provided in future they are more cooperative with similar requests?

For his 2. I would point you to post 9 by Steve M and the follow on post 18 by Jeff Id “No responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed — Got that right didn’t they.” Also post 29 by Neil Fisher “Hope there’s nothing in here that will come back to bite you in the nether regions. Perfectly understandable if you snip this, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that supplying this data is actually a poisoned chalice – hope you have considered this and investigated it before you archive any data and offer it publicly. Wouldn’t want to see you get in trouble.”

Regards

Clive

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