Agreed, and you demonstrate some bravery saying so, considering the litigious turn of Mann’s defenses.
Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by NW
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by M. carey
“Now consider Michael Mann, favorite whipping boy of the skeptics, as author of these papers. I suspect that the research would be characterized as fraudulent. Fraud seems to be a favorite word of skeptics/deniers for denigrating a paper or author that they don’t like or is found to be deficient.”
Steve McIntyre over at Climate Audit has a new whipping boy in former Penn State University President Graham Spanier, who the University recently fired over failure to properly investigate child molestation accusations against former coach Jerry Sandusky, and who Steve has in the past suspected of failing to assure a proper investigation of Michael Mann for research misconduct, despite Mann’s exoneration by an Inquiry Committee.
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Comment on Ludecke et al. respond by HAS
How do we judge the best model (given there is no future)?
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Comment on Disinformation and pseudo critical thinking by tempterrain
How come you aren’t asking me to leave too? You must reckon Robert is doing better than me! I’m offended 
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Comment on Letter to the dragon slayers by Andrew Skolnick
Kumquat, you’re starting to squeal like a stuck pig, now that the misdeeds of your fellow denier Mr. O’Sullivan are starting to catch up to him. Can’t wait to hear your squeals when the other shoes drop.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by chriscolose
I haven’t really been following the philosophical back and forths between here, collid-o-scope, and other places about this.
Of course it is natural to have expectations of a particular argument’s quality based on an authors reputation, but that expectation doesn’t extend very far when scientists have a chance to poke holes in other people’s methodology (which they absolutely love!!!). I went to a talk by Kerry Emanuel a few days ago, someone who commands enormous respect amongst the graduate students and atmospheric scientists in the audience, but that didn’t stop a number of them from criticizing segments of Emanuel’s presentation. That is what happens at science talks and in the peer-reviewed literature. The difference between that setting and the blog setting, however, is that in the scientific environment everyone has a very solid grasp of the basics (and even many of the technical details), and so we can intelligently dispute details. In the blog atmosphere, it is often rare that you can get so many people to even agree on undergraduate-level physics stuff. This is why, to be blunt, people who work exclusively within the blogosphere virtually never matter (sorry).
Of course, that reputation is different depending on the group you ask (if you ask the majority of bloggers about Mike Mann, then ask the majority of the climate science community, I suspect you will get radically different critiques of his work). The same can also be said of people like Anthony Watts or Pat Michaels, people who have zero relevancy in the academic community (and whom support arguments that are almost always wrong or misleading) and yet somehow manage to stir up a lot of attention on the internet.
Part of the expectation naturally evolves from the publication and contribution record from the speaker/writer. Isaac Held has made more contributions to climate science than almost anyone can hope to achieve, and (aside from some of the contributors at RC) has a publication record unparalleled on the climate blogosphere. His blog is also only dedicated to scientific topics, generally geared toward a graduate student or higher level audience, and thus receives an extremely small readership when compared to user-friendly “talking points” or summary articles. Of course, the flipside is that if Issac Held wrote the Ludecke article, he would attract an enormous amount of negative attention, and likely would have a large number of peers scratching their heads. Of course, the attention would dissipate quickly, as people have to move on with their life and focus on different developments– to the scientist, that is preaprin their next research article, writing a proposal, etc, and to the bloggers that is forming an opinion on the most up-to-date “topic of interest.” If a random person wrote the article, it would get cited on some blogs, and disappear in a week, with far less attention. Really, this is what will happen with the Ludecke article.
The arguments geared toward Judith Curry are no different than many of the ones geared toward her on a multitude of occasions. It boils down to many people thinking she has a different responsibility (based on her credentials) than she thinks she does. Her aim is to create an open forum for discussion, regardless of the quality of work that becomes the focus of that discussion. Others feel she has a responsibility to call out nonsense based on her position as an authority. I can understand that argument, but of course this is her blog, and she is free to do with it as she will…just as everyone is free to make up their mind about why she is doing it.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by M. carey
Accusations of fraud without evidence are no better than lies.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Don Aitkin
I can’t think how anyone could have an absolutely unbiassed, objective reaction to a criticism of something he or she wrote. When we write something that purports to improve humanity’s knowledge of something we think is important (and here the context is the scholarly domain) we have invested our knowledge and our acumen in the article/paper. An attack on that piece of work is all too easily seen as an attack on ourself. One has to sit back, recognise that one is not perfect and can make errors, or miss obvious points — and that any paper can be improved. I’m much better at this now than I was when I was a young researcher trying to make my way in the big world of scholarship.
In time I found that if I tried not to react at once, but just listen, and wait for 48 hours, that was a good start. Criticisms seemed to fall into one (or sometimes more) of three groups.
(1) ‘Root and branch’. The critic wishes I had done something else entirely, or starts from a philosophic position that is quite different to my own. For example, as a data-monger and counter-of-things I am what used to be called a logical positivist. So if I find that, for example, only 35 per cent of Australians see themselves as ‘working class’, an estimate based on a good sample and on well-constructed questioning, a quasi-Marxist critic might say that the numbers and methodology are irrelevant, because people suffer from’ false consciousness’ — they are working class whether or not they think so. There is not much you can do to counter such an objection. You and the critic are living in different intellectual worlds.
(2) ‘Yes, but’. Here the critic doesn’t disagree with your main finding or suggestion, but shows how his/her work enhances it, if only you had taken account of that in the first place. As the critic feels you should have. Sometimes the critics are completely right, and sometimes they are half right: you didn’t go down that path, but if you had, you would have used the work in question. Sometimes they are just wrong.
(3) ‘Nitpicking’. Here the critic doesn’t deal with the central point at all, but notes that you missed Bloggs’s seminal paper in your footnote 1, or that the numbers in one column in Table 14.2 don’t add to 100 but only to 99, or that you have an error in one reference. You can take these in your stride.
(If there are in fact devastating errors they will be pointed out, and they will mean that you should not have published the paper in the first place.)
Two days later you will see that there’s nothing much you can do, WRT the paper, to deal with critics in group one, while those in groups two and three can be useful. Humility is a great asset here but, to repeat, it seems to increase in quantity as we age. I can remember my anger at criticisms when I was young…
And we come to see that people who are philosophically in another camp will never like what we do, and vice versa. Nonetheless, it is not sensible to ignore them, because they will have insights from their perspective that you will miss from yours.
It follows, at least to me, that I care little about where people come from, or whom they write for, or what journal they publish in. The question is: are they saying something that I should take notice of? And to answer that question I need to read the paper.
In the climate debate I have slowly begun to fashion my own position about what is likely to be right — not in the sense of its being 95 per likely that something is more than half made of green cheese, but of what is likely to be the case when the hyperbole has been stripped out.
And there is a lot of hyperbole about, on both sides.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by David Young
Sometimes, I wonder if a lot of this isn’t related to what I regard as a general decline in honesty as a fundamental value. This is not new, but does seem more pervasive to me. Science was at one time done by wealthy people. Now its done by working stiffs who perhaps secretly want to be rich. Putting money in the background can work wonders
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by pokerguy
“With Ludecke et al. as authors, the “convinced” made charges of purveying disinformation.”
Yes, and I’m pretty sure a certain “expert on quality control” is regretting that charge more by the hour
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by M. carey
Brandon, I’m not sure you are the most accurate reporter when it comes to Michael Mann, so I am skeptical of your accusation that he knowingly made false claims. Will you provide verifiable evidence?
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Comment on Ludecke et al. respond by WebHubTelescope
I see that too now that you mention it, but a large statistical analysis is what I did and I specifically avoided cherry-picking data. When I said there is 3% probability that you will find a temperature change of 0.75 degrees in 100 years, that says is should happen about 100 times in a data set of 3300 points at 100 year intervals.
If there are greater sized fluctuations during more recent times or the fluctuations are greater when the climate is warmer as it is now, that may be an influence. If that is truly the case, it is interesting on its own as it may indicate that cool periods fluctuate less.
The random walk ft the the data should scale over all ranges. Because the sampling is 100 years interpolated, I can’t say anything other than what I fit works best in the 1000 to 100,000 year level and it scales backward. I discuss this elsewhere in this thread.
In any case, if someone wants to do the DFA on this data set, they are free to see if they can come up with a different statistical result across the entire range.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by M. carey
I’m glad the more money you have, the more honest you are. My wealth has grown as I have aged, and now I am more honest than I have ever been in my life. I look forward to getting even more honest.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Wagathon
To be among the “convinced” you have to believe that a relatively small subset of Western academics have the courage to stand up to all of humanity and save it from itself and save the world from capitalism. We would all be in serious trouble now if our putative saviours were more like Castro, Chavez, Lenin, Stalin Al Gore and Jim Jones instead of school teachers in our dropout factories?
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Willis Eschenbach
Do I consider the author? Sure, but only for the smell test. The smell test proves nothing. It just points out where to search for something rotten.
The part that is missing in your analysis, Judith, is that some of these folks have lied to us in the past. Not made mistakes. Not been wrong about their results. They lied to us, and they stand convicted of that by their own words.
As a result, you can be damn sure that we apply different standards to their further work … and very reasonably so. We would be fools to do what you suggest, to treat their reported results the same as we treat the work of honest people.
That’s just simple self-defence, Judith. Nothing to do with science. Self-defense.
So I fear that as often happens, you are busy solving the wrong problem … you haven’t even touched on the “should we treat the work of known liars just like we treat say Judith’s work” question at all.
w.
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Comment on Tol’s critique of the Ludecke et al. papers by smithy
No, the proxies and Hockey Stick are just one of several streams of research. There are multiple, independent streams of research being done because redundancy is important for making the case. The IPCC statements still stand without any reference to paleoclimatology.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by David Young
Well, yes and no. I seem to recall that the number of retracted papers has been growing. We have had credit bubbles before but this is the first one where mathematical models played a significant role. At least in the 19th century politicians didn’t say much of anything during the campaigns. Nowadays dishonesty is common in politics. In the 50′s theology was an area where dishonesty was not challenged much. In the last 20 years, science has become an area where dishonesty is not challenged much. Climate science has provoked a resurgence of an atmosphere where “critique has once again become a word of honor.” And that’s the positive in all this. Some bloggers are taking on the scientific theology of the day very effectively. What would Walter Kaufman write about today? It’s interesting to speculate.
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Anteros
Bart R -
Very interesting and thoughtful. Implicitly tolerant too in these particularly tribal waters
Just one thing – I agree that Judith invites debate. And I too come here for that reason among many. However, apart from some comments on the IPPC, Climategate and how issues could be better framed, I don’t hear Dr C issuing anything like statements. I wouldn’t even find it easy to pin down her ‘view’ which is refreshing [it's why I do my basic learning about climate science at Science of Doom - same reason]. And you agree that she doesn’t indulge in motivated release of information…..
I just wonder how it is that you find yourself disagreeing with 17 out of 20 of her statements. Where do you find them all in the first place? Am I missing out on some declarative pronouncements somewhere?
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Comment on Climate scientists are different(?) from the general public by led flast light
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Comment on Disinformation vs fraud in the climate debate by Brandon Shollenberger
I’m flattered!
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