Congressman Seeks Scientists' Personal Data 632
jfengel writes "The Washington Post reports that House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) has requested raw data and personal financial information on three scientists who published a paper which claimed that temperatures rose precipitously in the 20th century. Colleagues (including other Republicans) are calling the investigation 'misguided and illegitimate.' Barton has long been an opponent of government action on global warming."
Re:Al Gore's presentation... (Score:4, Informative)
HJ
Joe Barton is a Boob (Score:3, Informative)
At the time, I laughed when he was elected. Now, I'm not laughing anymore.
And in the other corner ... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=274#more-274/ [climateaudit.org]
The head of the Energy Committee is asking for the source code for the statistical calculations that "prove" we're experiencing global warming. Code that was developed with US Government money.
No more than an open source advocate would expect.
The source has now been released.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:4, Informative)
Rep. Joe Barton financial stats (Score:5, Informative)
Top contributors
Any questions?
Peer reviewed (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Rep. Joe Barton financial stats (Score:1, Informative)
They gave it to him... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How do you tell if a scientist is a crackpot? (Score:3, Informative)
I research global warming (interrelationship of Paleogene temperature and sea-level and how that translates to the present day).
Global warming is real.
The CAUSE is uncertain.
Read all about it (Score:5, Informative)
Some main points that don't seem to have come out so far in the Slashdot discussion so far are that
Anyway, follow the link and read what the main scientific institutions think of this episode before you come to your own conclusions please.
Also, if you don't mind signing in, see the recent editorial [nytimes.com] in the New York Times. It includes the following:
Who funds who? (Score:3, Informative)
Scientists funding history is detailed in thier individual responses to Barton [realclimate.org]. (not to mention 'Nature' requires this info before publication).
Re:Corruption Certain, Only Question is Extent (Score:3, Informative)
There is, to my knowledge (and I am a professional in the field, yes) no such computation. There were a couple of conceptual models bandied about in the 90s, but they didn't pass observational tests, and no one has been able to make them work in a computational climate model.
No, it's just sniping. There isn't a coherent alternative theory as to why rapid and accelerating increases in greenhouse gas concentrations should magically have no serious effect on the surface temperature.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:3, Informative)
No personal financial information was requested (Score:5, Informative)
You will see that what was requested was:
That is not personal financial information - that is information that bears directly on his disclosure responsibilities. NSF grants require disclosure of the resultant products (data and algorithms). Asking about funding serves to establish what disclosure obligations result.
Re:And in the other corner ... (Score:2, Informative)
Ray Bradley http://www.realclimate.org/Bradley_response_to_Ba
Though the NSF does not require the disclosure of code, the procedures used have been available for years, as well as the FORTRAN codes.
"Hockey stick not real", I call bullshit !!!!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not black and white. (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing wrong with asking for the raw data, and who funded the study. Many times the funding of papers are included in the acknowledgements section. The abuse of power comes from asking for the personal financial records of the scientists. Unless a corruption (i.e. bribery) or some crime is suspected, which none is, then the move is nothing more than harasment.
It comes down to an interesting question. If personal and professional finances are off-limits, how else can politicians determine whether a complex statistical report has been "paid for" by an interested party?
Because the papers come from "centers" in universities and think tanks. These centers are well known, and make no bones about who support them. The papers, like those published in Nature and JAMA, include finacial disclosures. When studies are funded by the government, they are clearly marked as such. (e.g. "This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. IIS-######## and IIS-#######. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.")
So before attempting to make some pseudo-insightful comment, you should actuallly learn about how science is actually funded.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?
Oil&Gas as expected.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:5, Informative)
http://opensecrets.org/races/indus.asp?ID=TX06&cy
Re:The only real test (Score:5, Informative)
-Stephen Jay Gould [stephenjaygould.org]
Re:Rules (Score:1, Informative)
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Letters/06232
The letter asks for financial information from studies, not his own bank records.
This is liberals trying to build something out of a reasonable request.
Fair is fair (Score:4, Informative)
But all that was really asked for was the financing of the research. See Skippy's post for details. Whenever someone claims there is no warming, or no human caused warming, there's always questions by the other side about who funded the research.
So now we have someone asking who funded the research that said warming is happening. Is this so unfair? Full disclosure of funding for ANY research should be mandatory.
Along with that, the research itself should receive the most scrutiny. Too often research is dismissed because of the funding source. Well, maybe, just maybe, someone funds research because they are actually right, and wish to prove a point before vast policy decisions get made based on myth and lies.
In the end, the problem is too much politics and ideology in the sciences.
On the other hand, according to a friend in Texas, Barton is a bit of a tube steak.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:3, Informative)
Rejecting the null hypothesis is a method for gaining confidence that something interesting is happening. If there are other competing hypotheses, you test those too.
I suppose that your characterization of perception is true, but that doesn't mean that science is actually based upon a fallacy--rather, people are given an oversimplification of how and why it works. (It does not help that philosophers of science cannot agree on how and why it works thanks largely to historical philosophical baggage.)
As a practicing scientist, it's pretty clear to me and my colleagues how and why the scientific method works.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Al Gore's presentation... (Score:4, Informative)
No, global warming was initially a prediction based on observation "Hmmm - if this effect we're observing in the lab holds true to the wider atmosphere, current artificial gas emissions would affect the global climate".
Then more research followed, and the conclusion was reached. The conclusion predicted climate change. At that point, it was announced. (Not only does this follow "postulate-research-announce", but it would be wrong to not announce the results, since the results predict problems ahead, potentially big ones.
"Judging from our models and lab work (and we may be wrong) climate changes will happen and we would expect to see them start to become noticeable in ten to fifty years, and continue to get worse, becoming problematic or even disasterious"
Fast forward ten to fifteen years, and the predicted effects are appearing as predicted.
You seem to be confusing individual scientific studies with a branch of science. Saying climate science announced before researching is like saying Edison announced (and unveiled) a working lightbulb before making it, since subsequent people are still building better and more definitive lightbulbs. The Final Lightbulb does not yet exist. And if Edison wated until a hundred years from now to announce, he would have still jumped the gun because two hundred years from now, the definitive lightbulb will still not exist. Improvements will be ongoing.
Many climate science studies are complete, and announcement of the results of a study only follows once the study is complete. The fact that the studies so far all paint a pretty comprehensive picture is evidence that they're probably somewhat accurate and should be taken notice of, not that they've jumped the gun because entirely seperate lines of research are ongoing.
global temperature fluctuation is natural.
Uh... that makes everything worse, not better. Remember - climate change didn't come from observing climate change, it was predicted from gas experiments long before any change was expected to be observable, and subsequent studies confirmed man-made gas quanitites were almost certain to be more than sufficient. It is known that man-made changes are going to happen (barring some massive intervention), which means any natural temperature fluctuation on top of our changes just means any problems are likely to be that much worse.
Re:And yet, it moves (Score:3, Informative)
The truth is more complex
In this case, the truth is perfectly simple.
McCarthy wasn't censured by colleagues in the U.S. senate for claiming there were Communists in the U.S. government, he was censured [historicaldocuments.com] because he "acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity".
McCarthy's supporters seem to think the Communist threat justified that behavior.
Re:Not black and white. (Score:5, Informative)
"Maybe the congressman should disclose in who's pocket he is."
He's a Republican from Texas, and is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. For Timo and our other friends in the UK: put together "Texas" and "Energy" and you have "oil." He worked in the oil industry before he was elected to congress. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the oil industry is his top contributor [crp.org] -- they gave him nearly a quarter million bucks in 2004.
In an interview on NPR, he stated that he wanted to collect the raw data so that he could pass it along to his own "experts" -- that is, scientists in the employ of oil companies. In other words, he wants to use the scientists' own data against them.
Re:And of course... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How do you tell if a scientist is a crackpot? (Score:3, Informative)
I wasn't implying that you should take MY word for it...just that I have experience in this topic and that my (informed) opinion is that GW is underway. Denying global warming is about as futile as denying evolution (I'm also a paleontologist). As I mentioned in the previous post, however, the causes of global warming are still up in the air (although I personally suspect that greenhouse gas emissions play a role in accelerating warming). Of course Fairbanks (Nature 342/89) demonstrated that there was a two meter per century rise in sea level around 14000 years ago, so rapid change can occur even without human influence.
Here are a few references:
Fairbanks, R.G., 1989, A 17,000-year glacio-eustatic sea level record; influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep-ocean circulation: Nature, v. 342, no. 6250, p. 637-642.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Aerosols/ [nasa.gov]
http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/coral-bleach ing/scr2000/scr-00gcrmn-report.html [aims.gov.au]
http://www4.nas.edu/onpi/webextra.nsf/44bf87db3095 63a0852566f2006d63bb/e4dcc6e935831fc885256a8400588 146?OpenDocument [nas.edu]
http://climatechange.gc.ca/english/default.asp [climatechange.gc.ca]
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From: Analysis of mean, maximum, and minimum temperature in Athens from 1897 to 2001 with emphasis on the last decade, trends, warm events, and cold events, Extreme climatic events
The 105-year (1897-2001) surface air temperature record of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) has been analyzed to determine indications of significant deviations from long-term average features in the city of Athens. The analysis of the whole record reveals a tendency towards warmer years, with significantly warmer summer and spring periods and slightly warmer winters (an increase of 1.23 and 0.34 degrees C has been observed in the mean summer and mean winter temperature, respectively). The tendency is more pronounced for the summer and spring maximum temperature, but marginal for the minimum temperature of the cold season. On a monthly basis, a statistically significant (at the 95th confidence level) warming trend has been observed in the average maximum temperature of May and June. The trend analysis for the last decade of the record (1992-2001) revealed a significant increase for both warm and cold seasons, yet maximum and minimum temperature. Extreme temperatures (high/low temperatures above/below a certain threshold value) and extreme events (prolonged extreme temperatures) have also been studied. The number of hot days as well as the frequency of occurrence and duration of warm events have significantly increased during the last decade, while a negative trend is observed in the frequency of low temperatures and the duration of cold events especially after 1960.
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From: Recent trends from Canadian permafrost thermal monitoring network sites, Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, vol.16, no.1, pp.19-30, Mar 2005
The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), in collaboration with other government partners, has been developing and maintaining a network of active-layer and permafrost thermal monitoring sites which contribute to the Canadian Permafrost Monitoring Network and the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. Recent results from the thermal monitoring sites maintained by the GSC and other federal government agencies are presented. These results indicate that the response of permafrost temperature to rec
Re:Not black and white. (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't say that religion is solely defined by fundamental freaks just as science is not defined by only one set of theories (quantom vs. relativity?).
Re:"relating to your research" (Score:3, Informative)
Bayes' Theorem supplants positivism (Score:3, Informative)
Where p(A|X) is "the probability of A given X" and ~A means "not A"
p(A|X) = [ p(X|A)*p(A) ] / [ p(X|A)*p(A) + p(X|~A)*p(~A) ]
Much knowledge can be derived from applying that: quantum mechanics, statistics, AI theory, the scientific method and more.
This article is long, so here's the relevant bit
from "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning" by Eliezer Yudkowsky
http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html [yudkowsky.net]
Previously, the most popular philosophy of science was probably Karl Popper's falsificationism - this is the old philosophy that the Bayesian revolution is currently dethroning. Karl Popper's idea that theories can be definitely falsified, but never definitely confirmed, is yet another special case of the Bayesian rules; if p(X|A) ~ 1 - if the theory makes a definite prediction - then observing ~X very strongly falsifies A. On the other hand, if p(X|A) ~ 1, and we observe X, this doesn't definitely confirm the theory; there might be some other condition B such that p(X|B) ~ 1, in which case observing X doesn't favor A over B. For observing X to definitely confirm A, we would have to know, not that p(X|A) ~ 1, but that p(X|~A) ~ 0, which is something that we can't know because we can't range over all possible alternative explanations. For example, when Einstein's theory of General Relativity toppled Newton's incredibly well-confirmed theory of gravity, it turned out that all of Newton's predictions were just a special case of Einstein's predictions.
You can even formalize Popper's philosophy mathematically. The likelihood ratio for X, p(X|A)/p(X|~A), determines how much observing X slides the probability for A; the likelihood ratio is what says how strong X is as evidence. Well, in your theory A, you can predict X with probability 1, if you like; but you can't control the denominator of the likelihood ratio, p(X|~A) - there will always be some alternative theories that also predict X, and while we go with the simplest theory that fits the current evidence, you may someday encounter some evidence that an alternative theory predicts but your theory does not. That's the hidden gotcha that toppled Newton's theory of gravity. So there's a limit on how much mileage you can get from successful predictions; there's a limit on how high the likelihood ratio goes for confirmatory evidence.
On the other hand, if you encounter some piece of evidence Y that is definitely not predicted by your theory, this is enormously strong evidence against your theory. If p(Y|A) is infinitesimal, then the likelihood ratio will also be infinitesimal. For example, if p(Y|A) is 0.0001%, and p(Y|~A) is 1%, then the likelihood ratio p(Y|A)/p(Y|~A) will be 1:10000. -40 decibels of evidence! Or flipping the likelihood ratio, if p(Y|A) is very small, then p(Y|~A)/p(Y|A) will be very large, meaning that observing Y greatly favors ~A over A. Falsification is much stronger than confirmation. This is a consequence of the earlier point that very strong evidence is not the product of a very high probability that A leads to X, but the product of a very low probability that not-A could have led to X. This is the precise Bayesian rule that underlies the heuristic value of Popper's falsificationism.
Similarly, Popper's dictum that an idea must be falsifiable can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Bayesian conservation-of-probability rule; if a result X is positive evidence for the theory, then the result ~X would have disconfirmed the theory to some extent. If you try to interpret both X and ~X as "confirming" the theory, the Bayesian rules say this is impossible! To increase the probability of a theory you must expose it to tests that can potentially decrease its probability; this is not just a rule for detecting would-be cheaters in the social process of science, but a consequence of Bayesian probability theory. On the other hand,
Re:Oh, it was that study ... Good (Score:3, Informative)
This study basically claimed that there was no such thing as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.
No, it claimed that thr MWP and LIA were not periods of GLOBAL temperature change - i.e. changes in European temperatures were balanced elsewhere on the globe. This makes the rest of your post pretty misinformed.