If I had a persistent gadfly like Stephen McIntyre who would use every opportunity to twist my data and words to his own political ends -- and the media accordingly -- I might also behave in such an untoward manner regarding the release of data and internal communications.
I find the theft of internal communications abhorrent, the politicalization of the issue uninteresting, and I seriously doubt there's any real science to be gleaned from this entire sophomoric debacle.
Stephen McIntyre who would use every opportunity to twist my data and words to his own political ends
I read McIntyre's site regularly, and find very little evidence of this. His 'political ends'? By design, there's very little political discussion on his site. But one of few times this veil was dropped was after Obama's election, where he allowed it to be known that he was rooting for Obama: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4265
"I don't often talk about my political views - though I've sometimes taken pains to point out that I do not share the political views of many readers. In American terms, Canada would be a blue state along the lines of Massachusetts; Toronto would be a liberal city in a blue state; and I live downtown in one of the most liberal constituencies in the city. None of this is unrelated to my political views. I realize that many Climate Audit readers have opposite political views, but we try to get along."
"I think that Obama's election is also very healthy for the U.S. in world terms. The U.S. stands for both good and bad in world terms. While U.S. economic dominance has faded, it is still the leading world nation and leadership from the U.S. is important. Obama is in a position to provide such leadership in a way that would have been impossible for McCain."
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error. Like most of the 'skeptics' on his site, his goal is to insure that we are basing our decisions (whatever they may be) on sound science rather than on propaganda. Certainly he has some readers who do not share this goal, but I feel very certain that his personal goal is good science.
I read McIntyre's site regularly, and find very little evidence of this. His 'political ends'?
McIntyre spent 30 years in the oil/gas exploration business ("mineral exploration"). You don't think there are some vested politics here?
You might argue successfully that his pedantic insistence on sources, data, and algorithms gets in the way of 'progress', but to say that this is because of his political views is a gross error.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News consistently claims to present "the facts" in a "fair and balanced" manner.
You don't think there are some vested politics here?
I understand the sense that there could be, but as a regular reader of his site, with strong environmental leanings myself, I don't see any evidence of any such bias. He's a hard core statistician who happened to find his skills in demand by energy companies. I wouldn't presume a nuclear physicist is necessarily biased towards atomic war, and I wouldn't presume that Steve has any particular fondness for drilling in wildlife refuges.
There's plenty of room to distort the facts while reporting them. Fox News...
I agree with you that that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. The snippets I've seen while sitting in airport terminals make me recoil in horror. It's very similar feeling to the feeling I get reading some of these leaked emails: a nausea induced by demagoguery and propaganda. I do not get this feeling when reading Steve's posts.
How dare he ask for data series and attempt to reproduce analyses on his blog! How dare he uncover faults and discrepancies which are subsequently acknowledged in published research! If science and data are not interpreted by the right people, how can we be sure that the world is getting the right message?
I can't believe people would defend deleting data rather than responding to a FOI request. Well, actually, I can. You just did. Which is sad.
He has a clear political agenda. He's not an independent scientist (he's not even a scientist).
What possible good can come of interacting with someone who -- in addition to being grossly underqualified -- has a consistent history of applying a political agenda without fail to their "science"?
This is the equivalent of Fox News factual reporting. Sometimes they get the facts right, but that doesn't mean they aren't twisting them.
So who does have a right to look at the data, assuming we first disqualify anyone that antonovka thinks has the wrong political opinions? Isn't the scientific ideal all about openness and reproducible analyses? These emails make it look like the new ideal is supporting the "correct" political agenda.
If Stephen McIntyre is all about openness and taking advantage of the abhorrent disclosure of internal communications, why doesn't he follow suite by posting all of his personal e-mail correspondence, unedited for external review?
I'm sure there are more than a few gems.
Isn't the scientific ideal all about openness and reproducible analyses?
Yes, but when someone applies such a strong political ideology to twisting those analyses, how do you propose scientists respond?
Climate change has been so politicized by unqualified ideologues that I can hardly blame scientists for wishing to defend themselves from the worst of them.
If anything, these e-mails demonstrate that the data IS shared independently evaluated, but that the community has established political defenses to deal with political -- not scientific -- opponents.
To do otherwise would be naive. Complex topics fall easily to those who would politicize them.
These emails make it look like the new ideal is supporting the "correct" political agenda.
No, they demonstrate a clear interest in defending against the attacks of a very specific set of ideologues.
As someone who has had to defend engineering projects and people from angry corporate politics, I don't envy these climate change scientists in the least, and I certainly don't begrudge them their defensive positions.
I can too. Once you have people acting in bad faith (see, climate change denial community), combined with the subtleties of statistics, I totally understand not wanting to release your data.
Okay, the whole "I'd rather delete data" thing sounds really sketchy, but...
If science and data are not interpreted by the right people, how can we be sure that the world is getting the right message?
You know, I suppose you're trying to be sarcastic here, but this is actually a valid point. Analyzing scientific data is not something that most people can do properly without a lot of training and education. When the "wrong people" interpret the data and publicize their "results" it absolutely can and will mislead people, which is kind of counterproductive to the whole purpose of this "science" thing.
To my mind, a responsible scientist has an obligation to promote understanding, not follow some notion of proper behavior. So, yeah, if someone with a fairly large audience, a lack of relevant expertise, and an apparent vested interest in interpreting results in a predetermined way asks for huge volumes of data the correct response is probably somewhere between ignoring them completely and telling them to fuck off.
It sounds like these people were dramatically overreacting (Deleting the data? Really, guys?), but after seeing how well it worked when the biologists tried to engage in a civilized scientific discussion about evolution, I can at least sympathize.
Biologists have NCBI, which is completely open. It would be a colossal fail to try to hide data, because even the most basic multiple sequence alignment shows that evolution is real.
And yet rejection of evolution remains widespread, around 30%-60% of the population in most first-world nations, and evidence that demonstrates evolution's reality is still twisted and misused by those with ideological objections to it.
Of course, the core of the climate change premise is also pretty well established (the extreme alarmism and many proposed solutions, not so much), and plenty of evidence is out there, but unfortunately HN continues to disappoint me whenever the subject comes up.
The political groupthink around here is pretty strong and it's starting to sour me on the whole site. I know complaining about HN turning into reddit is cliche but seriously, all the threads about this story (how many have there been by now?) have been worse than reddit.
Yeah, because this is definitely the argument this article is about...
You're saying that your solution isn't to develop for Free Software platforms?
I apologize for making assumptions based on your comment history. If that's not your solution, then how do you propose we developers resolve our issues instead of voicing our complaints?
If you stopped developing for the iPhone and started developing web applications or desktop applications or, indeed, almost any other type of software, you wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission to sell your software or improve your software.
Not everyone wants to write desktop or web applications.
My choice to work with the iPhone is a technical decision -- the hacker in me will stick with the platform because I love writing code for it -- at least until it's clear that it makes no sense for my business.
I'll continue to voice my concerns because I see the technical value of what Apple has created and the potential for Apple to improve.
If I were writing desktop applications, I would be writing them for the Mac, as well. I don't want to see Apple turn to the darkside, on the iPhone or otherwise.
[Edit] The downvoting to -0 on this comment and others in this thread is, in my opinion, entirely inappropriate. My argument is cogent, and if it doesn't match your worldview I might suggest that you attempt a cogent reply in return, rather than downvoting opinions you disagree into the negatives.
Please support the claim that they "hid" their data. Note that citing an unqualified politically biased source is not adequate support for such a serious scientific claim.
I was specifically addressing the claim that any scientist not entirely forthcoming with their data clearly has something to hide. This is clearly false - in the same way that one cannot presume someone is guilty because they won't let you search them.
Think of this from their perspective: they're sick and tired of crackpots and conspiracy theorists taking their data, running ludicrous analyses on them, and misinforming the public. They don't have the time to shoot down every single terrible interpretation of the data there is, so the best action is to hide it.
Not saying this was the right move, but entirely understandable given their situation. The fact that they were not volunteering their data around is certainly not by itself damning evidence of any sort.
Nobody is being payed to help some random fool. If he wants them to assist him sign up for a masters at a major university and plenty of people will help him because they are then being payed to be helpful. It's not that they are trying to cover something up they just don't feel like wasting time when they get zero benefit from it.
PS: Call up a research assistant and say I will pay you 200$ an hour to help me, and they will fall all over themselves to help you out. Although buying the computer time to actually run some of these simulations would get real expensive really quick.
As a scientist why would I invest my time in providing additional support to someone that will simply twist whatever assistance is provided to support his own agenda?
As a programmer I wouldn't certainly not waste my time assisting someone who merely intended to smear my project in his blog to meet his own political ends.
You're ranting like a loon about brainwashing, cheering on the hacking of private e-mail, and you're getting upvoted for it?
If my e-mail was hacked and out-of-context quotes were levied to take ignorant pot shots at my work, I would be beyond livid. This behavior is absolutely inappropriate and I hope the perpetrator is caught and jailed.
Thanks for sharing your valuable insights on this issue.
Of course, the email wasn't private, was it? It's a government funded (your money) institution. That actually, perversely, makes this crime even more illegal. Governments seem to have more rights than private citizens.
So, you're right, it was a crime. You're also right, I'm cheering it. But you're wrong about who is ranting. It's you who is ranting.
I think it's obvious from your constant "out of context" remarks, that you haven't actually read the emails. Instead of me starting a newsletter for you, why don't you download them and read those instead?
Are these people telling me i can't smoke in front of my computer?
No, they're telling you that they won't fix damage caused by smoking, and they won't force their computer technicians to clean up a disgusting and harmful mess of sticky tar and dust.
"they're telling you that they won't fix damage caused by smoking"
I don't think they're saying that. I think they're saying that they won't force a technician to work on a computer that has nicotine residue buildup, because OSHA has identified nicotine as a biohazard. I don't think they're claiming smoking caused the damage, only that the residue makes it unsafe to work on.
I'd be interested to know if OSHA has actually ruled on physical residue, as opposed to second hand smoke.
Other than Lessig, that trio does not even begin to represent me or innumerable other open source developers. RMS and Linus represent GPL and Linux developers, who are are only one component of the broader community.
The GPL/Linux ideals are clearly and fundamentally opposed to my own, and I would be insulted if RMS and Linus accepted the award on behalf of the open source community at large.
Your argument makes the unfounded assumption that those vendors would have done the work you "lost" if the code had been GPL licensed.
As a counterpoint, FreeBSD has progressed at a steady clip -- I fail to see how it is significantly behind Linux, and is significantly ahead in many areas.
It falls behind by not being as popular. I think this is not a result of BSD being inferior, it's just how things came into being. I don't have numbers on BSD developers or the rate of improvement, but I guess one reason for it is that BSD license put off more developers compared to GPLv2.
... I guess one reason for it is that BSD license put off more developers compared to GPLv2.
No, it was just timing. The AT&T lawsuit cast a palor on the BSDs just when Linux started hitting its stride. By the time the lawsuit was settled, Linux had dominant mindshare.
Same reason why MySQL is popular -- PHP gave it the mindshare. Same reason why PHP is popular -- it was one of the few options available at the time, and by the time better things came along, it was already firmly rooted.
So do you think that success of MacOS X (derived from FreeBSD)does not show benefitsof BSD model? Or Microsoft's use of NetBSD?
And also, many developers put off by GPL( I am for example),
The objective reasons for being not as popular I think, that FreeBSD never positioned itself as a desktop system, and many small things (such as how fast it boots) are neglected. Yet, overall simplicity and order is attractive to me; a lo easier to understand internals IMHO.
It shows almost no success because the code that makes MacOS X and Windows what they are is still proprietary. Having a UNIX shell in MacOS X might be nice, but that's only one part of the system.
I do assume that. Linux rapidly caught up with the BSDs despite their huge head start, which demonstrates the industry does have a critical mass of developers who are willing to contribute their work rather than go through the pain of tivoization or building from scratch.
So, its my understanding, that this wasn't do the GPL versus the BSD license, but had more to do with the uncertainty hanging over the BSD distributions due to a lawsuit threat from proprietary Unix.
Now of course I could be wrong, but I think there may be other factors which could explain the difference.
The big appeal of C for me is that it's portable (as long as you know to avoid the non-portable parts, anyway). Sorry, but I won't be using any language extension that will only compile on mac.
I agree, but the compiler changes are open source, and I'm happy to use them on a Mac (where I'm already using ObjC anyway).
And anyway, function pointers aren't that hard to groc.
Function pointers aren't closures. "Groking" isn't the issue -- accomplishing more with less code and fewer bugs is.
I find the theft of internal communications abhorrent, the politicalization of the issue uninteresting, and I seriously doubt there's any real science to be gleaned from this entire sophomoric debacle.