That subpoena is fairly damning evidence that these politicians don't understand how science works. Instead of scrutinizing the published data they have to dig into communications - where all sorts of theories might be floated and dismissed - so they can find something to take out of context.
Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
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Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#12On one hand, the aims of the politicos here are bald-facedly wrong. On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - courts don't generally look upon that with favor, and besides, NOAA is a public institution, so the emails are public record, regardless of the aims of the people seeking them. Being in a contentious field is not free license to ignore the law, and it tends to make people thin…
Following your logic the emails of politicans should be public record also, shouldn't it?
Who on the NOAA part does ignore a law?
And if you don't let complete strangers in your house, do you hide something?
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#13On one hand, the aims of the politicos here are bald-facedly wrong. On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - courts don't generally look upon that with favor, and besides, NOAA is a public institution, so the emails are public record, regardless of the aims of the people seeking them. Being in a contentious field is not free license to ignore the law, and it tends to make people thin…
But breaking the law has a place in protest.
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#14Politics and science really have no place together. Politics is about pushing the most favorable agenda, and science is about the pursuit of truth. Politicians and liars have always had close association. Politics and science are thus inherently at odds. That said, I have seen, on more than one occasion, scientists become untruthful for the sake of grants and political agendas (and this is not necessarily referring t…
Grants, careers and reputations aside there are fields like Mathematics where there can be no political agenda because the findings are not input to political decisions. Climate change is definitely not such a field and people are wary of agendas in either direction. Given the huge interests involved it is impossible for even the most well-intentioned layman to arrive at a safe conclusion without spending an unreasonable amount of energy (pun intended).
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#15On one hand, the aims of the politicos here are bald-facedly wrong. On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - courts don't generally look upon that with favor, and besides, NOAA is a public institution, so the emails are public record, regardless of the aims of the people seeking them. Being in a contentious field is not free license to ignore the law, and it tends to make people thin…
Following your logic the emails of politicans should be public record also, shouldn't it? Who on the NOAA part does ignore a law? And if you don't let complete strangers in your house, do you hide something?
Of course they should - at least the ones pertaining to their official duties.
I do not understand your next two questions.
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#16Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…
The data should speak for themselves. Unfortunately people who don't know statistics think they can't, because as we found out from emails, the data were "manipulated" via statistical methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c... Honestly I'd rather we press scientists of all sorts for all their source code and modeling tool configurations including the raw data that hasn't been post-processed to hell in an "acceptable" way (recalling that the statistics involved in generating p-values were "acceptable" for psych journals until recently).
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#17Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests. E…
In theory, yes. Among ideal rational agents, yes.
But in practice, science depends on the trust that scientists aren't actively subverting the process: failing to consider alternate hypothesis, fabricating data, ignoring data, deliberately filtering for confirmatory data, groupthink, etc.
So an import safeguard is the ability to detect when someone is doing the above, even if the detector doesn't know the literature well enough to refute it.
With that said, that doesn't mean there's enough evidence of misconduct to justify a subpoena in this case; I'm just saying, it's not simply a matter of "just look at the data rather than the people".
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#18I think the scientists should release all of their personal emails if these politicians are willing to submit themselves to the same level of transparency.
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#19These Republicans are shameful. The sad part is that they will all be dead when their grandkids are cursing their names for assisting in the destruction of the environment.
Most likely, their obstinant attitude will be whitewashed in history by those on their side.
Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress
#20"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade." Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-face…
It's indeed an exercise in douchebaggery, but the fact is, Smith has the right to subpoena the emails. They're public property.
If you saw The Martian, you might remember the arguments among NASA managers about how much information on Watney's predicament should be revealed to the public. It was pointed out that their only legal option was to lay it all out there. That's pretty much how government agencies actually work, and it's not a bad thing.