Monday
Oct102011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Campaigning academics
Oct 10, 2011 Climate: other The Constitution Unit at University College London has launched a project to examine the state of play in the area of FOI/EIR, apparently as a result of Climategate.
Let's just say I don't get a warm feeling from reading the project proposal or this presentation that sits alongside it.
Reader Comments (45)
Reading that presentation you might almost get the impression that they had made up their minds what they want to 'discover' about FOI.
– It is a drain on resources.
– It is vexacious.
– It is our research, Goddammit!!
It is worth repeating that from Jan 2005 to January 2009, the UEA/CRU was bombarded with SIX FOI requests. During 2009 it received 97 further requests, 59 of which related to the attempt by Climateaudit readers to see any agreements that curtailed the CRU sharing temperature data provided by foreign met offices. A further fifteen were received before Climategate, and the balance after Climategate.
Harassed they were not!
If the intention is to limit it's scope by showing that it's a burden, that could well backfire.
A clearly constructed timeline showing which FOI requests were in response to which refusals will rebut criticisms of a co-ordinated campaign and show that they brought any administrative difficulties on themselves by refusing to respond in the letter and spirit of the act.
There are many stones they should not want turning over again.
I have made a comment at the associated blog, which is awaiting moderation. The mention of QUB and several references to Climategate tell us what this is about. Without MP's expenses and the the climate debate no one would be getting so excited about freedom of information. In both cases powerful people were unhappy that their misdemeanours were exposed to the public, and threatened their private gravy trains. This seems to me to be yet more public money being wasted by people seeking to protect their own interests.
What I have pointed out is that getting (S=Scottish) FOISA clause 27(2) into the FOIA - which is what academics want will not stop EIR requests which is what is really hurting climate scientists. Getting a FOISA clause 27(2) into the EIR is a hill too far, but it is what they want.
Essentially FOISA s. 27(2) delays the disclosure of any information held by the public authority that might undermine substantially research being done by anyone anywhere. If for instance the information held was showing that someone was "hiding the decline" it could be withheld until after the research in which it was hidden was published.
What would have happened if Sir Richard Doll’s (smoking), or Herbert Needleman’s (lead poisoning) research was covered by FOI?
I'd imagine exactly the same as happened without FOI. I'm not aware that FOI is in anyway an impediment to carrying out and publishing research.
Re: mrsean2k
You are making 2 assumptions.
1. The project conclusions will be based on all available evidence.
2. The project will except evidence from external contributors.
From reading the presentation material, my suggestion to these academics is that they seek R&D jobs and careers in a the private sector so that they can do "proprietary" research. No problem.
I see climate scientists are getting their knickers in a twist over what is causing the colder winters we have been experiencing recently in the NH.
Remember the forecast that the prospect of our children of ever seeing snow would diminish considerably.
Remember too the Met Office said there is a 1 in 20 chance of a cold winter. Now we have had three cold winters in a row with the prospect of another one.
Remember in Dec 2010 scientists were claiming that these cold winters were due to man-made global warming. Oh yes they did.
Now scientists are reporting that that it is all due to the Sun, namely the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions. Unfortunately these scientists phyiscally cannot explain the link but their models say one exists (so it must exist).
BBC News: "Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum. By Richard Black"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
Now we have scientists actually speculating that the Little Ice Age is connected to solar activity, but claiming at the same time that this has nothing to do with global warming, nor that the Little Ice Age was an actual ice age but simply a redistribution of temperature.
We are dealing with meta-physics here. AGW's influence is now beyond normal physical meaning.
Only humans can lay claim to warming the planet on a global scale now. The Sun can only redistribute this temperature we created in a spotty fashion.
Not only that global warming can mean less/more snow, more mild/more cold winters, increased/decreased chances of a cold winter, more certainity/less certainity.
It must be wonderful to be a climate scientist, they truly live in their own virtual world.
In the section of the presentation entitled "What's in it for me?" it was stated "there are no career-related rewards for publishing datasets."
Why on earth not? Surely it would look good on a CV if you compiled a data set that proved to be very useful to other researchers and also was of use in informing public policy.
I can think of one scientist who became famous as a result of a data set he compiled. That is Tyco Brahe. With Brahe's data Kepler was able to deduce his laws of planetary motion and with those laws Newton was able to devise his theory of gravity that explained the findings of Kepler and Brahe.
You could hardly hope for a more illustrious precedent than that. I assume that the person(s) responsible for the presentation have heard of Tyco Brahe but some modern scientists often give the impression of knowing little or caring little about history.
It's UV but nothing to do with global warming [as they know it]?!
"Recent cold winters that brought chaos to the UK and other places in northern Europe may have their roots in the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions.
The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.
A UK scientific team now shows in Nature Geoscience journal how these changes lead to warmer winters in some places and colder winters in others.
The researchers emphasise there is no impact on global warming."
then................
/Mike Lockwood of the UK's Reading University, who also studies possible associations between solar changes and climate, suggested that if the Sun's ultraviolet output varies as much on long timescales as its does across the solar cycle, that could provide the connection between the Maunder Minimum and the temperature changes.
"The Little Ice Age wasn't really an ice age of any kind - the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking, but there was a larger proportion of cold winters," he told BBC News.
"We now have a viable explanation of why that happened - nothing to do with global warming, but in terms of temperature re-distribution around the north Atlantic."/
You see, it's all to do with UV now.......................whose barking?
No mention of the LIA volcanic activity either Mike...?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
Whoops sorry MAC! ........in my haste - hmm.
The fact Jones planned to avoid FOI requests BEFORE CRU even got any is not a small point , as its show malice a forethought . But the bottom line is this , the scientific approach requires the data to be available to others check and verify the claims on the back of it. If they don't want to do this then they should not claim their doing science.
The word "opponent" is used... sums up the mid-set?...
Interestingly that the world of Open Source is full of people who shared COMPLETELY what they have done, and moved onto to bigger and greater things...
Academics have made themselves the enemy of the truth--certainly the enemy of open inquiry, which right they reserve to themselves alone.
There shouldn't be need of any FOI requests. If a scientist publishes a paper all the data, metadata, software and methods should be documented and archived for scrutiny by others should they wish to do so. It seems inconceivable to me that a scientist could publish his/her results and then refuse to show how they got them in as much detail as is necessary. If they followed that simple procedure why would anyone want to get information via a FOI.
Are scientists other than those in climate science receiving burdensome FOIs
Re: geronimo
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-14744240
Silly me. I thought the world was in danger. I thought billions of lives are supposedly at stake.
Why the fear of FOI?
If I had discovered something that would save the life of just one person I would be shouting it with a bullhorn in Trafalgar square. I would be giving it away.
I wouldn't be saying, "You can't see it. It's MY information. My discovery. I worked hard for this. I want my reward" and siccing lawyers onto anyone asking to check the info.
What moral giants climate scientists are.
Stuck-record: Well put and well said.
Are climate scientists moral pygmies in claiming exemptions from FOI laws?
There is a puzzling section in the presentation titled "Access - to whom?" which contains this bullet:
"Charlesworth – what would have happened if Sir Richard
Doll’s (smoking), or Herbert Needleman’s (lead poisoning)
research was covered by FOI?"
What can be the point here, I wonder? Well, there is an academic called Andrew Charlesworth at the Univeristy of Bristol Law School who has noted:
"The importance of [academic] autonomy becomes apparent when one considers how groundbreaking research, such as Sir Richard Doll's research linking smoking to health problems or Herbert Needleman's research into the neurodevelopmental damage caused by lead poisoning, might have fared had the tobacco and lead industries respectively been able to subject those researchers and their teams to repeated FOI requests in the manner currently available under the UK FOIA/EIR regime."
Now I see what they're getting at, but it is only a question and it could be answered in many ways. It is not obvious that the critical scrutiny of people with vested interests at odds with the conclusions of research cannot occasionally be beneficial in the search for truth. The idea that scientists are totally pure in the pursuit of knowledge but that opponents with vested interests try only to obscure the truth, is risible.
While we are on the subject of Richard Doll, it should be remembered that he was Austin Bradford Hill's research assistant on the link between lung cancer and smoking. Later Doll research on the links between diet and cancer was insufficiently scrutinised and blundered badly in the way it overlooked the effect of the factor of age on outcomes.
I just glanced over the ppt, but I don't see what you have a problem with. There's no statement for or against the scientific consensus. There is a description of how academics *perceive* FOI requests. Is it that you would have liked some balance there in that also your *perceptions* of FOI were described? That I can understand, but it hardly invalidates what they're setting out to do imho.
So what is the physical mechanism by which variations in UV output make one part of the globe colder but another hotter, and what evidence does Mike Lockwood have in support of his theory?
Geronimo, exactly. As I wrote in my submission to the Russell Review,
"It is important to appreciate that the only reason that several FOI requests were made is because of CRU's refusal to comply with the earlier ones. For example, the requests for confidentiality agreements were made because Jones had tried to use these as an excuse for not supplying data.
Furthermore, one should ask why these FOI requests were made at all. The reason is that CRU had previously refused to supply data when requested politely and informally. And in turn, these earlier informal requests were only necessary because CRU had not followed accepted scientific practise of making full data and methods available in their scientific papers and supplementary information."
I see that David Holland's comment is now up at the Constitution Unit Blog.
Bart
The post is nothing to do with global warming. It's about FOI. The premise of the project reads to me as being "there is a problem with FOI and universities, how bad is it?". This perception is reinforced by the citing of the QUB and Climategate cases without questioning. From a public point of view FOI and EIR are working reasonably well.
Having spend many years in high tech marketing, I could take that slide presentation and give five totally different presentations, each with different points of view and conclusions while TALKING to those slides. They are meaningless without the concurrent verbal presentation.
However, I agree with Stuck Record's initial comment -- it is just a bunch of left wing elitists screaming now that they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
I'd like to see David Holland's comment, but can't find a comments link on the Constitution Unit Blog. Can you help?
The sun is very sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.
H/t Noel Coward, heard distantly through Plum's orchard of pomegranates.
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We hear all the time "THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH", but when we ask for the direct evidence we get this response;
"The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send it to anyone."
Surely the responsibility under such extreme circumstances is to release data, not protect it or even delete it.
Mac
In the US, they would plead the Fifth Amendment.
Heh, DBdlS, they've opened the floodgates on that stressful reservoir of doubt and deceit. Can't stop the line of questioning now.
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"The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought."
Has Richard Black spent the last five years locked in a cupboard( if only!)
This information has been knocking around on blogs for ages. It was of interest because although total solar irradiance changes very little, this is not true of UV which may affect say, ozone or cloudiness.
It is the argument that FOI compliance is "burdensome" that really gets my goat the most.
Governments routinely place burdens on business - routinely and repeatedly. That's what business regulation is - a burden on business to achieve a state enforced aim.
The FOI/EIR regime is precisely that - a burden placed on those subject to it in pursuance of a state sanctioned aim - in this case transparency and openness.
These academics and their institutions have been subject to these requirements in most democracies for YEARS now. ALL of their work since these regimes applied to them and ALL of their contracts with whomever surely MUST have included or aniticipated this obligation.
That academics all over he world are just starting to wake up and whinge about what a drag it is to have to comply just shows how utterly useless they have all been in incorporating these obligations into their working environments and/or that they STILL arrogantly think that they shouldn't have to do it. Neither argument is in the slightest persuasive or evokes the slightest sympathy.
gw, I think it's gonna be the sun through Ultry-violet rays or cosmic rays, maybe both, to clouds.
Per astra ad asperum.
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Also, this sudden apprehension of Ultry-Violet Rays is a Deus ex Machina. It's the get out of jail free card for the mass of climatologists. Most will be issued it as a matter of course. Of course, some won't.
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Jack Maloney
Its a bit deeply buried. This is it
http://constitution-unit.com/2011/10/05/academics-foiled/
His comment might have been received with grace. Not so. The Bishop has skill reading runes.
I have a lump on my LEFT testicle, my NHS GP says if I vote Labour he will arrange to have the right testicle cut off.
What indeed? The implication seems to be that, had these fine scientists been forced to share their data, we would still be unaware of the dangers of smoking or lead poisoning.
This is, of course, utter nonsense - what difference could it possibly have made? And could you possibly imaging that Doll or Needleman would have refused to share their data (which is well and truly in the public domain now). These are real scientists, drawing valid conclusions from real data, and as such would have had nothing to fear from FOI's.
Except I doubt very much that a legal weapon like FOI would have been necessary. Any real scientists will share their data, once published, without any compulsion whatsoever, to allow replication and review.
To me, the most damning part of this whole sorry affair is the assumption that FOI's are required in order to force scientists to share data. Data should be shared as a matter of course and without complaint by any scientist working in the public domain. That legislation is required to compel this is unforgivable.
Copyright on tree ring patterns? Quick, get Naomi Klein!
"We are the ones who trudged miles over bogs and fields carrying chain saws. We prepared the samples and - using quite a lot of expertise and judgment – we measured the ring patterns. Each ring pattern therefore has strong claims to be our copyright. Now, for the price of a stamp, Keenan [the requester] feels he is entitled to be given all this data (Pearce 2010)."
It's mine, I tell you, all mine!!
Mike Baillie quoted in the Research Proposal section
Doll's results on smoking were challenged at the time by statisticians like Berkson, Neyman and Fisher - none of them amateurs at the game. The controversy went on for quite a few years and it was as a result of the correspondence between them, and the insistence of the critics that all the many ways researchers could be fooling themselves were eliminated, that epidemiology went from a fuzzy semi-anecdotal science to the mathematical rigor it has today. Doll turned out to be right, but he was only able to prove it as a result of Fisher and Neyman challenging the hypothesis at every turn.
Doll would never have got away with witholding data.
Sadly, many of the lessons learned in that titanic struggle have since been forgotten.
I thought this comment in the PowerPoint presentation was amusing:
Prof Phil Jones: ‘Why should I make the data available to
you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with
it?’ (reported in the Times, 27 Jan 2010)
perhaps I'm being naive here, but I thought the objective of scientific research was to find out whether something was wrong with previously accepted ideas?
Alice Cook
UK Bubble, UK Economy
Re: UV - some interesting reading in this post at RC in 2005:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
Most scientists have football like notions of statistics: they have a vague theoretical notion what a ball is , but they do not know any of the rules , how the field looks like and have never played the game.
statistics and probability theory I believe now, is a vast canon similar to electromagnetism , quantum mechanics and say, calculus.
I understand its theoretical foundation is even more recent than those 3: Apart from the heavyweights from the 50s nullius in verba mentions there are people like Markov, Kolmogorov , von Mises this is all late 19th begin 20th century
This is indirectly relevant as it is a comment on a comment - but might prove of interest.
It is insufficiently recognised that the prime purpose of many a floodgate is not to flood but to prevent flooding. Such gates are open against the side walls of a tributary or drainage channel facing the rising flood tide and are so balanced as to slam shut, like a pair of lockgates, if the flow is unusually strong.
Nice, Bob, and thanks. What I meant was the overflow channels cut to protect dams from having their design limits exceeded by the impeded water.
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Pharos, thanks for that link, it was very helpfull.
So cute! I already like you on FB and also get your posts on Google Reader. :) nxszuf nxszuf - 2012 Jordan 11 Concord.