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How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

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Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#11

Post by wolfgke »

bertil wrote: post #7
jkot wrote: post #3

> Meanwhile, our team received a flurry of hate mail and an onslaught of time-consuming Freedom of Information requests for access to our raw data and years of our emails, in search of ammunition to undermine and discredit our team and results. > The mammoth process involved three extra rounds of peer-review and four new peer-reviewers. From the original submission on 3 November, 2011, to the paper’s re-acceptance on…

My understanding is that for climate science, a lot of effort is spent to debunk claims, by well-financed groups who will publish without independent peer-review but with a clear goal in mind. Allowing those groups to access the same data means that the researchers will have to spend a lot more effort explaining why those claims are unfounded. That means the researchers are not really encouraged into sharing the data…

> Will more people who can contribute positively to climate science help if they had free access to those data?

I think if we only consider it as science if it can be verified independently, also the "opposite side" (your "well-financed groups") has to provide evidence of the same high standard, which would strongly increase the level on which the debate is pursued (i.e. the opposing side also cannot get away with outlandish "evidence").

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#12

Post by XorNot »

jkot wrote: post #9
bertil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that for climate science, a lot of effort is spent to debunk claims, by well-financed groups who will publish without independent peer-review but with a clear goal in mind. Allowing those groups to access the same data means that the researchers will have to spend a lot more effort explaining why those claims are unfounded. That means the researchers are not really encouraged into sharing the data…

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).

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#13

Post by vixen99 »

jkot wrote: post #9
bertil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that for climate science, a lot of effort is spent to debunk claims, by well-financed groups who will publish without independent peer-review but with a clear goal in mind. Allowing those groups to access the same data means that the researchers will have to spend a lot more effort explaining why those claims are unfounded. That means the researchers are not really encouraged into sharing the data…

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.

If astronomy includes the possible detection of previously unknown sizeable objects in space which might put an end to our activities on this planet, then I don't agree. Climate alarmism (that's not intended as a perjorative word: it's sensible to be alarmed if there is something to be alarmed about) is based on the validity or not of statistical conclusions regarding climate data. Objects in space can and do collide with Earth if that's their trajectory. No theory or hypothesis is required - just data.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#14

Post by wolfgke »

XorNot wrote: post #12
jkot wrote: post #9

Earlier 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).

> 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

While I agree that this is a problem in the current copyright law, there is still a way for researchers to "circumvent" this copyright restriction without violating the scientific principle of independent verifiability that I outlined in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099720:

Let's say that the data is generally distributed by the owner in a standard format, say, a zip archive, which we will name foo.zip here (for simplicity). If you can't distribute the data itself, you write into your research paper a short explanation of the license terms that disallow the distribution of foo.zip. But you also add a notice what the SHA256 sum of foo.zip is. If some person who has also access to the data (say, from another university) has interest that the research result can be checked independently, they will leak foo.zip somewhere (I can imagine that sci-hub would be willing to provide server space for this).

This way access for independent verifiers can be "assured" without the original researchers having to violate copyright law.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#15

Post by dzdt »

Global 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.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#16

Post by tremon »

DasBlob wrote: post #5
wolfgke wrote: post #2

I 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…

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…

both data and analysis software should be available

I think that goes too far. The data alone is sufficient for independent verification, I don't think we should mandate that scientists publish their tools. However, I would very much support scientists using open tools to begin with. But if the tool is closed, that should not invalidate any results in the paper.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#17

Post by frankquist »

wolfgke wrote: post #11
bertil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that for climate science, a lot of effort is spent to debunk claims, by well-financed groups who will publish without independent peer-review but with a clear goal in mind. Allowing those groups to access the same data means that the researchers will have to spend a lot more effort explaining why those claims are unfounded. That means the researchers are not really encouraged into sharing the data…

> Will more people who can contribute positively to climate science help if they had free access to those data? I think if we only consider it as science if it can be verified independently, also the "opposite side" (your "well-financed groups") has to provide evidence of the same high standard, which would strongly increase the level on which the debate is pursued (i.e. the opposing side also cannot get away with ou…

But then I wonder, how do you enforce the latter rule? ('the "opposite side" has to provide evidence of the same high standard'). Generally it seems like a lot of the media at least, which serve as a gatekeeper of sorts for which information gets disseminated to the broader public, do not really seem capable of or interested in enforcing such a rule. Policymakers, who should be quite interested in climate studies, might be more persuadable to having standards, at least when they're not in some interest group/ideological pocket.

(EDIT: of course, journals could serve as enforcers, but then the "opposite" should have to publish their science in well-policed journals. The OP's article claims that this generally isn't the case) (EDIT: disclaimer, I am not trying to argue against the broader point that data should be open)

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#18

Post by frankquist »

jkot wrote: post #8
lostlogin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its coming with hate mail and or has a generally offensive tone, I don't think it unreasonable to be unhappy. The author doesn't appear to have blocked access. One can cross examine without being a dick.

Read linked article, offensive language was used AFTER they refused to provide raw data. It took lawsuit to get them.

Context was not provided however - an article that calls researchers bimbos is not one I take on its word. Was the raw data refused? And why was it refused? Perhaps because they were, as the original article states, prepping the study for publication, or because they had put it on hold? Or because they put the paper on hold and wanted to focus on doublechecking it before spending work on making the data available? Perhaps they still had to retrieve the rights to publish the data, or find a way to publish it in a good way? Context is lacking to state that there was a non-benign refusal of data.

Re: How a word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking

#19

Post by wolfgke »

tremon wrote: post #16
DasBlob wrote: post #5

Earlier 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…

both data and analysis software should be available I think that goes too far. The data alone is sufficient for independent verification, I don't think we should mandate that scientists publish their tools. However, I would very much support scientists using open tools to begin with. But if the tool is closed, that should not invalidate any results in the paper.

> But if the tool is closed, that should not invalidate any results in the paper.

As I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100008: If it cannot be verified independently as far as possible, this does not mean it is wrong, but also should not be considered as science (since independent verification and the ability to do so as far as possible is central to science). Instead it is just a marketing statement with the author providing evidence for truth.

Marketing statements are also not wrong per se (if they were, at least in Germany this would be a criminal offense because of the "Gesetz gegen unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG)" (which according to the internet dictionary corresponds to "Act Against Unfair Competition" or "fair trade law")), but you strongly have to trust its author to tell you the truth, since you can hardly verify the truth independently.

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