"No malpractice" at UEA's Climatic Research Unit

searcher

277 Posts

April 14 2010 12:51 GMT

Whenever some vaguely suggestive bit of news comes up that fans the flames that keep conspiracy theorists warm at night it is deliberately misconstrued and blown out of proportion. Usually these incidents, which sober-minded observers immediately know to be innocent, are nonetheless investigated by independent organizations and the conclusions drawn are what sensible people knew all along. But of course these conclusions are never given the same media attention as the initial controversy and we rarely get the opportunity to hold the idiots to their word.
With that in mind we can now say unimpeachably that nothing the UEA's Climatic Research Unit did in relation to the leaked emails represented something outside of normal scientific practices and they were not part of an attempt to deceive anyone:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8618024.stm

Here is the original teamliquid topic:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=106176

Thanks to people in that thread for their unqualified opinions that ensure misinformation and ignorance shall persist for many a time to come:

There is clear and obvious intent to hide information, if you read some of it. The files are still on torrents/rapidshare/etc, if you want to read them.

Possibly, but in this case the field is highly manipulated. If you dig into the link I provided, you will realize that the entire field is being given false data, so naturally they will arrive at false conclusions.

As a final disclaimer, I am not criticizing those who don't believe in global warming, I am criticizing those who jumped to unreasonable conclusions about this "scandal" because their agenda is to tell everyone it's all a hoax.

Chupacabra(UCSD)

Mexico225 Posts

April 14 2010 15:47 GMT

yeah well the UAC doesn't exactly have the best track record after the whole Mars incident but that's besides the point.

ZeaL.

United States5955 Posts

April 14 2010 16:35 GMT

I believe the standard response to this is to say that the independent panels are not really independent, and that because the conspiracy is so large, you really cannot trust any authorities that speak on the matter. The only person they can trust is themselves as they have a deep understanding of how the world works and could not possibly have made a judgement error due to previous biases.

TanGeng

Sanya12364 Posts

April 15 2010 14:31 GMT

Go read the report for yourself:

UEA is touting it as some kind of aid to its credibility when it hardly engenders any confidence in their science:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/Report of the Science Assessment Panel

The report is about whether or not a group of 7 scientists were able to detect intent to mislead on the part of the CRU. Basically, it's about malicious malpractice rather than the inadvertent type - read "incompetence." Malice and intent is hard to establish - especially when the 7 scientists limited their investigation to talking with the CRU and reading its published papers.

Such allegations are not going to be proven true. But they aren't going to be proven false, either. People will believe what they want to believe - especially conspiracy theory adherents. As for the science though, the report got around to noting a glaring procedural mistake and a possible lack of expertise.

CRU accepts with hindsight that they should have devoted more attention in the past to archiving data and algorithms and recording exactly what they did. At the time the work was done, they had no idea that these data would assume the importance they have today and that the Unit would have to answer detailed inquiries on earlier work.

This is bad, bad, bad. Lab scientists would get into trouble even if they documented results and procedures carefully and then had a freak accident destroying part of those notes. Failure to know that they would "have to answer detailed inquiries of earlier work" is downright idiotic.

We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians. Indeed there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the CRU's competency.

As for the Oxburgh report itself. It strikes me as a totally pointless exercise.

Funchucks

Canada2113 Posts

April 15 2010 22:54 GMT

On April 14 2010 21:51 searcher wrote:
With that in mind we can now say unimpeachably that nothing the UEA's Climatic Research Unit did in relation to the leaked emails represented something outside of normal scientific practices and they were not part of an attempt to deceive anyone:

Uh, no. What we can say now unimpeachibly is that one group of people has decided to announce to the public that there was no wrongdoing.

"Lord Oxburgh is currently president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables."

Yeah... not exactly unbiased. In fact, that is a huge conflict of interest which should discredit this "independent panel" completely. The fact that they try to present themselves as having no conflict of interest is, in itself, an act of blatant fraud.

I don't see any reasonable interpretation you could make of this that doesn't further discredit the mainstream climate research community.

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"No malpractice" at UEA's Climatic Research Unit

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