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2009-11-29 Science

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Posted by tipover 2009-11-29 03:18|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 "value-added" data. Lolz....

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2009-11-29 09:24|| 2009-11-29 09:24|| Front Page Top

#2 admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data

What a surprise! In REAL science, if it's not reproducible and independently verifiable it's NOTHING.

Posted by DMFD 2009-11-29 10:59|| 2009-11-29 10:59|| Front Page Top

#3 Only two things you can do with garbage, throw it out or put it in a computer

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2009-11-29 11:14|| 2009-11-29 11:14|| Front Page Top

#4 Remember when Tony Blair was accused of 'sexing up' the intel on Iraq. One set of rules for me, another set of rules for thee. It's about power, baby.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-11-29 12:06|| 2009-11-29 12:06|| Front Page Top

#5 They dumped the data "to save space" when they moved to a new building? WTF???

Unbelievable. And we're supposed to call these people "scientists"??? And acquiesce to a radical, top-to-bottom re-ordering of the world's economic system as a cure for the environmental catastrophe their alleged "science" allegedly predicts???

No, thank you. Pull a stunt like this on a high school physics lab report, and it'd earn you an "F"-- certainly for that lab assignment, more likely for the entire course. This shit doesn't cut it.

Isn't there some law under which these people can be prosecuted for gross malpractice? Sheesh...

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2009-11-29 12:08|| 2009-11-29 12:08|| Front Page Top

#6 Is this supposed to set an example of the 'Scientific Method'?

At a minimum take away their 'Doctor' and 'PHD's.

If only because they give the title(s) a bad name.

Posted by CrazyFool 2009-11-29 12:13|| 2009-11-29 12:13|| Front Page Top

#7 Pull a stunt like this on a high school physics lab report, and it'd earn you an "F"-- certainly for that lab assignment, more likely for the entire course. This shit doesn't cut it.
Dave D.
I think you are confusing post-normal science with normal science.
Post-normal science is about belief formation. Facts are best left to the "experts"

Posted by tipper 2009-11-29 12:26|| 2009-11-29 12:26|| Front Page Top

#8 I call shenanigans! (If only....)

Posted by Uncle Phester 2009-11-29 12:26|| 2009-11-29 12:26|| Front Page Top

#9 "Dave D.
I think you are confusing post-normal science with normal science."

Nah. It's just that being a 60 year old fudd I'm locked into obsolete, reality-based normative thinking paradigms that give undue weight to outdated social constructs like "truth." And "don't jigger the data to make the results come out the way you'd like." And "don't deal with criticism by blacklisting the critics." And other quaint stuff like that.

I wonder if science is dead. Seriously.

Posted by Dave D.">Dave D. 2009-11-29 14:39|| 2009-11-29 14:39|| Front Page Top

#10 DD's back!

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2009-11-29 15:09|| 2009-11-29 15:09|| Front Page Top

#11 CRU admitted to losing the data back in August. This is NOT new news. From CRU in August:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.

Why nobody raised hell about it back in August is anyone's guess but at least it is finally getting play in the context of Climategate.

Steve McIntyre published the above on August 11.

Posted by crosspatch 2009-11-29 16:48|| 2009-11-29 16:48|| Front Page Top

#12 CP- I think the implication of the McIntyre Aug11 post has shifted dramatically since it's suddenly more difficult to write him off as a skeptic crank.

Posted by Free Radical 2009-11-29 18:04|| 2009-11-29 18:04|| Front Page Top

#13 Think shelves and shelves of reels of bubble-chamber photos, and boxes of dusty lab notebooks of retired or deceased professors. My office is stacked with hundreds of boxes of 8mm tapes of 10-year old muon events (luckily they are duplicates). I don't know if the calibration database to reprocess them is still online, and in any case a hundred times as much data is available online for Run 2.

After a while you have to ask if any human being will ever look at these again. Of course we're not the ones claiming the the sky is a toaster and agitating to take control of the world's economy...

Posted by James">James 2009-11-29 18:21|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2009-11-29 18:21|| Front Page Top

#14 real scientists do NOT lose their data

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2009-11-29 18:33|| 2009-11-29 18:33|| Front Page Top

#15 The problem isn't the loss of the data, it is the loss of the metadata.

Lets say you got data for 250 German stations from 1850 to 1975. If you have a list of the stations, you can throw away the data. If you need it again, you can go back and get another copy. The crime isn't in tossing the original data, the crime is in losing the list of data they had so they can't go back and get it again.

Incompetence doesn't BEGIN to describe this.

Posted by crosspatch 2009-11-29 19:03|| 2009-11-29 19:03|| Front Page Top

#16 Substitute Exxon for the CRU and imagine the outcry.

Posted by Formerly Dan 2009-11-29 20:10|| 2009-11-29 20:10|| Front Page Top

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