Gavin’s Doubletalk
Posted by Jeff Condon on February 8, 2009
I read this post on Real Climate and it sent me through the roof. My Irish temper is taking over again. I hate going over there because these high and mighty elitists feel that us meer mortals couldn’t possibly understand their amazingness. What a f… Joke. Read this below.
I’m not stupid enough to fall for this garbage and neither are my readers. There are hundreds of lines of preparation code for this script. He actually pretends like it’s a least squares fit. The paper doesn’t even say how the AVHRR data is prepped before usage. It is extraordinarily obtuse on the construction and calculation and I’m starting to think it was written that way on purpose.
This is clearly directed at myself, yet Steve McIntyre has been reconstructing the Mannian reconstructions for a long time and quite successfully. I have absolute confidence that I can figure out anything reasonable the team puts on paper but aside from myself how can he claim competence is the rational. HE CAN’T!
I’m sick to deth of this garbage and I will not stop until these bastards are honest. You wait when you see the code finally released. It ain’t gonna be a least squares fit. The total text files are probably less than 10Kb, sitting on someones computer so pretending it is too difficult is well BOVINE SCATOLOGY. LET”S SEE EM.
BTW: I wrote today to the editors of Nature, pointing out Steig’s position and how it trashes an otherwise prestigious journal.
8 Responses to “Gavin’s Doubletalk”
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February 8, 2009 at 4:15 am
Richard M said
I’m gald you wrote to Nature. I hope they get thousands of emails.
In my opinion Steig etal thought they had an iron clad paper and I believe they were planning on releasing the code and data. Then Steve found Harry was corrupt.
I think it’s very likely this negated the paper’s conclusions and those guys are now in a catch 22 situation. They came out and stated the problems weren’t big. But, if they release the code it is likely the opposite will be the truth.
That’s why they will never release the code … unless … and this is their only way out, they recall the paper themselves and claim that all the data errors require them to redo it. That way they can just let it slide forever without letting out the lies.
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February 8, 2009 at 9:16 am
Tim L said
Jeff,
I don’t know if you have played with this, enter the years, and try january, july.
downward trends for both, and july is larger!http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
Base Period:
BegYr: 1898 EndYr:2008hit submit
There is no CO2 in michigan?
as the planet heats, michigan cools?looking at Ice maps some show no ice in grand traverse bays, but sitting on top of Mcree hill
there is ice as far as I can see.“I’m sick to death of this garbage and I will not stop until these bastards are honest”
you can not “make” a lie or one who lie’s true/truthful
Thank you -
February 8, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Phillip Bratby said
I have only posted three times at RC. The last two, in which I stated politely that I knew what I was talking about having written , verified and approved reports for over 30 years and in all that time all the data and code was archived so that all of the work of 30 years could still be repeated were both chopped. They do not allow anyone to contradict them. Those guys just won’t admit that they could possibly be wrong and that maybe in the real world there are people from whom they could learn a thing or two. They are in complete denial of reality. There’s quite a collection of them who pile in and back each other up in their ignorance and arrogance.
A good dose of external auditing would do them all good and show them what life is like in the real world away from their cosseted and elitist ivory towers. I have never in my life experienced such arrogance.
There. I feel better for that.
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February 8, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Chris H said
Gavin is very misleading when he says “real replication is clearly best done independently”. In a normal scientific paper you state the method in as much detail as is required for someone else to repeat the experiment.
For science involving physical apparatus & measuring devices, there is of course a limit to how much detail you can give, so replication may require some trial & error for cutting-edge science. Thus “independent replication” aims to exactly repeat an experiment, although in reality it will not be perfect. Criticism of the science can be based on both the reported method and success/failure of replication.
But for science that only involves mathematics (and perhaps computers), it is incredibly easy to describe your “experiment” in precise detail. You simply provide all the input data + code. Thus “independent replication” can be performed perfectly. Criticism of the science can be based on both the reported method (data+code) and success/failure of replication.
Gavin is wrong.
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February 9, 2009 at 12:50 am
John F. Pittman said
Yep, Chris H, it is hard to understand. I have 2 BS degrees. One in Biology and the other is Engineering. I think that I redid others work about 20 to 25 times in getting those 2 degrees. I did temperatur LD50 tests, urchin avoidance response, strippers, distillation columns, etc. Been done hundreds of times. But we did them to show the repeatability and often, there were equipment shortcomings that had to be explained; or we had to reveiw a paper after our teest and decide if the published paper was good or bad. I looked up the sources cited in mine, and pointed out that the conclusions were not supported as well as the cited references supported theirs, because of both poorer control and writing. Got an “A”. The professor agreed. So the idea that science has to be replicated without having the real details of the work is totally bogus. I was taught, that it is not science if it can’t be replicated. In my profession, refusing to divulge information can get you fined, or even jailed. The regulators would probably be just content to see you fired.
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February 9, 2009 at 4:04 am
Jim Owen said
Jeff –
I understand your frustration, especially in the face of statements that the code and data are all “out there”. And yes – that is, as I tend to put it when I’m trying to be polite, bullfeathers. Of course, I’m not always polite.Anyway – I worked as a NASA contractor for over 40 years. What’s happening here is no surprise to me, although I find it dishonest at best. One of the programs I worked was UARS – 10 science instruments on board, each of which had unique scientific and operational requirements. And each had scientists who were more secretive than the CIA or NSA. The data acquisition, processing and distribution requirements were wrapped in total secrecy and the data was kept sequesered for a contractual 1 year period. The science output was jealously guarded until the reports/papers were released for publication.
What I’m saying is – hang in there – this is nothing new, especially for NASA. I don’t think much of the process, and in this case, my view is that it’s just plain unethical and dishonest. But I suspect that at some point the details will surface. Eric DID (or at least he says he did) give the whole load to those he thinks will confirm his work – possibly to those he thinks won’t look too closely at it. That may be insulting to you – it certainly is to me. But I’ve found that with a little patience, I can usually find what I’m looking for – or work it out – or someone gives it to me. I’m a hunter – and the key to hunting is – patience and persistence.
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February 9, 2009 at 4:43 pm
AEGeneral said
According to Dr Tim Ball, the codes were never released for the hockey-stick graph. I’ve never read anything else to the contrary.
So unless something has changed, I wouldn’t expect these codes to be released, either.
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February 9, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Jeff Id said
#7
Mann 08 released their code.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/code/
Maybe there’s hope.
6 February 2009 at 2:00 AM Eric, you snark: ” What is there about the sentence, “The code, all of it, exactly as we used it, is right here,” that you don’t understand? “
I don’t understand how you think that could be true. You link to a nicely documented and from all appearances elegant library of matlab functions. Where are the data files? Where is the script that invoked those functions and plotted those graphs?
There is absolutely no substantive reason this should not be distributed along with the relevant publication. You shouldn’t be sniffing at people who want to replicate your work in toto. You should be posting a complete makefile that converts input data into output data. This is common practice in exploration seismology, thanks to the example of John Claerbout at Stanford University, and that in a field where there are sensible commercial reasons for confidentiality. A related effort, called Madagascar, is being developed at U Texas and is 100% open source.
The paradoxical backwardness of science in regard to adopting the social lessons of high tech is well analyzed in this blog entry by Michael Nielsen.
RC again climbs on its high horse, doing none of us any good. You guys are the good guys. Please act like it.
[Response: Michael, with all due respect, you are holding climate science to a ridiculously high ideal. i.e. that every paper have every single step and collation available instantly upon publication for anyone regardless of their level of expertise or competence. I agree that would be nice. But this isn’t true for even one of the 1000’s of papers published each month in the field. It certainly isn’t a scientific necessity since real replication is clearly best done independently and science seems to have managed ok up til now (though it could clearly do better). Nonetheless, the amount of supplemental information has grown enormously in recent years and will likely grow even more extensive in future. Encouraging that development requires that the steps that are being taken by the vanguard be praised, rather than condemned because there are people who can’t work out how to set up a data matrix in Matlab. And what do we do for people who don’t have access to Matlab, IDL, STATA or a fortran 95 compiler? Are we to recode everything using open source code that we may never have used? What if the script only runs on Linux? Do we need to make a Windows GUI version too?
Clearly these steps, while theoretically desirable (sure why not?), become increasingly burdensome, and thus some line needs to be drawn between the ideal and the practice. That line has shifted over time and depends enormously on how ‘interesting’ a study is considered to be, but assuming that people trying to replicate work actually have some competency is part of the deal. For example, if there is a calculation of a linear trend, should we put the exact code up and a script as well? Or can we assume that the reader knows what a linear trend is and how to calculate one? What about a global mean? Or an EOF pattern? A purist would say do it all, and that would at least be a consistent position, even if it’s one that will never be satisfied. But if you accept that some assumptions need to be made, you have a responsibility to acknowledge what they are rather than simply insist that perfection is the only acceptable solution. Look, as someone who pretty heavily involved in trying to open out access to climate model output, I’m making similar points to yours in many different forums, but every time people pile on top of scientists who have gone the extra mile because they didn’t go far enough, you set back the process and discourage people from even doing the minimum. - gavin]