For another view of this issue: https://climateaudit.org/tag/gergis/
How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I certainly share your sentiment that both, data and analysis software, should be available, I do see a conflict of interest here that cannot be easily resolved. On the one hand, we do assert (wrongly, IMO) that competition is a necessary element to drive scientific innovation and consequently require scientific actors to adhere to economic principles, i.e. publish more and better-received papers. On the other…
The solution should rather be that society (and publishers) does not consider papers (or more generally: texts) as research that don't also publish everything possible for independent verification (in this case the source code and raw data). If this is not the case, the text is just a plain marketing statement (in contrast to research) comparable to the marketing statements that are made everyday by lots of companies…
The lack of source code does not make everything produced by software "a marketing statement."
There's more than one way to verify a conclusion.
For example, if I say that RSA-130 = 39685999459597454290161126162883786067576449112810064832555157243 × 45534498646735972188403686897274408864356301263205069600999044599 then you can easily verify it by multiplication - you don't need access to the factorization software I used to determine that result.
If I say that the energy difference between two chemical structure according to the Merck Molecular Force Field (MMFF) is X, then you can use any software which implements the MMFF to verify my statement using the raw data - you don't need the source code that I used.
In fact, it would be better to use an independent implementation to verify my result than it would be to re-run the same code. And there are many programs which implement the MMFF.
If you are used to RDKit, then it will likely be faster to use RDKit to reproduce and verify my numbers than trying to figure out the strange VM I provided, which is based around some home-brew code of mine implemented in MORTRAN.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#43General observation is that neither the mathematical models nor the data is perfect.
For example, oceanic thermocline data, from what I understand, is not really collected.
We have an imperfect model being fed incomplete data? Why be surprised at debate over it?
People laugh today at ether and phlogiston debates, but such acrimonious debate pushed forward science to the point where we had exactly the right answer.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#44General observation is that neither the mathematical models nor the data is perfect. For example, oceanic thermocline data, from what I understand, is not really collected. We have an imperfect model being fed incomplete data? Why be surprised at debate over it? People laugh today at ether and phlogiston debates, but such acrimonious debate pushed forward science to the point where we had exactly the right answer.
The problem is that we're not really having debate, as this article makes clear. We are having scientists attacked by 2 groups: climate deniers funded by large corporate masters, and random groups of crackpots. Real debate would be good but I think we're well past that point.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099720 I also suggested to provide a virtual machine image if possible (unluckily providing one is in my opinion not always possible). On the other hand if another team ran the code independently and we really saw that it is numerically unstable in another environment, this would be, in my opinion, a strong case for the importance of providing the source code.
I don't think you understand what elcapitan means by numerically stable. Numeric stability is a function of the environment. If I take an algorithm designed for 128 bit IEEE binary floats and implement it on a system with 64 bit floats, then it may be unstable. That doesn't say anything about the correctness of the original method for the original environment. It only means the method wasn't designed for the new envi…
First: IEEE 754 defines exactly (bit per bit) what the result of any floating point operation in each of the five rounding modes as long as no NaN is produced (but in this case only not all bits are defined exactly, but it will still be a NaN).
Unluckily C allows some optimizations to be done to code containing floating point code that violates this principle of bit-for-bit reproducability of floating point code. If this causes problems the code can be considered as numerically unstable.
In other words: Writing code that uses the IEE 754 defined "gold standard" in its code should be the goal scientific results.
The correct way for independent checking, if we really need 128 bit floating point numbers, is to wrap these operations by a software floating point library.
> It only means the method wasn't designed for the new environment.
If this property (what kind of environment the algorithm depends on) of the algorithm is not documented properly (and an explanation is given why we need this property (say: size of floating points, in particular unusual floating point sizes as 128 bit) for the algorithm to work correctly) any independent reviewer should better not assume these properties to hold. If we indeed find out that this causes problems, this is a strong sign to me that there might be subtile errors in the code. In other words: We should be really careful of the results that the algorithm gave.
> What do you do with a computer program written for Anton, a specialized computer for doing molecular dynamics built using specialized ASICs?
I gave the answer in the post above: "[U]nluckily providing [a virtual machine] is in my opinion not always possible".
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
No we're not. The complete opposite in fact: the planet would naturally be cooling now were it not for the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
> "Technically speaking, we’re living during an ‘Ice Age’ today – in the sense that we have a world with glaciers. However, the present time is a relatively warm phase within a period of geological time when glaciers and ice sheets have typically been larger and more extensive than now." Taken from: http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Schools/Teaching+resources/Key+St... There are other sources, but this is one example that m…
No, that example is correct but you misread it: we're in a warmer period. Not a warming period. The warming stopped about eight thousand years ago. We've been in that warmer period since then.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#/media/File...
We would naturally now have started cooling again were it not for the additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As I've already explained.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#47I see a large problem in the fact that (as it seems) the original data and the computer code is not published, too. This is in my opinion a contradiction to the scientific principle that any result or conclusion has to be able to verified independently as much as possible. Though not publishing data and computer programs (and ideally a virtual machine for independent execution of the program code, too) is unluckily a…
>any result or conclusion has to be able to verified independently as much as possible Well, collecting the data yourself and writing the code yourself would be even more independent.
> Well, collecting the data yourself and writing the code yourself would be even more independent.
I wrote "any conclusion". This does not preclude collecting the data or writing the code yourself (and indeed you should if you doubt, say, the data). But it implies that the code that was used to come to the conclusion must be available.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution should rather be that society (and publishers) does not consider papers (or more generally: texts) as research that don't also publish everything possible for independent verification (in this case the source code and raw data). If this is not the case, the text is just a plain marketing statement (in contrast to research) comparable to the marketing statements that are made everyday by lots of companies…
The lack of source code does not make everything produced by software "a marketing statement." There's more than one way to verify a conclusion. For example, if I say that RSA-130 = 39685999459597454290161126162883786067576449112810064832555157243 × 45534498646735972188403686897274408864356301263205069600999044599 then you can easily verify it by multiplication - you don't need access to the factorization software I…
> For example, if I say that RSA-130 = ... × ... then you can easily verify it by multiplication - you don't need access to the factorization software I used to determine that result.
I didn't write about independent computation, but about independent verification. In your case you need access to a software for multiplying numbers for an independent check. OK, this is rather trivial code to write. But if it weren't that trivial the author would have to provide it.
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paranoid talks about "well financed groups" have no place in science. Climate science is way more important than astronomy. It should have much higher standards for transparency, not other way around.
Get rid of copyright law, then everyone can have the data. People keep ignoring the fact that you can't just release data like that all over the place, because researchers often do not have the IP rights to do so in a general way (whereas within the field other researchers probably do have IP rights to use the same data).
The US[1] doesn't recognized the "sweat of the brow" doctrine for copyright. There is no copyright on a "mere collections of facts", and no IP rights cover collected data.
Give that, what role does copyright law play (at least in the US) in preventing data sharing? I thought it was limited based on patient confidentiality, collaborator agreements, end-user agreements, desire to maximize publications from the same data, and other non-copyright issues which were at play.
([1] Other countries are more restrictive than the US in this regard.)
Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking
#50Global warming denialists are attempting a denial-of-service attack against global warming science. The goal is to keep the science unsettled so no major policy changes are made while those making the most profits from climate-changing activities continue to do so.
Yup; just like tobacco, acid raid, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Very very sad. It shows you how powerful greed is, when people are willing to sacrifice humans lives and even the future of our planet just to maximize profits.
This is one of the main failures of our capitalist economy, IMO. The system needs a built in way to assign a value on sustainability and human well being, rather than just profits.