[Vision2020] 96 Responses to "Yamalian yawns": "A Perfect Epistemic Bubble"

[Paul Rumelhart]

Here's more information on this topic: 
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/9/the-yamal-deception.html

My question is, why did Steve McIntyre face so many roadblocks from 
Briffa, the journal Science, and the University of East Anglia?  It took 
a request to the journal Royal Society B (which has a strict data 
publishing requirement that Briffa was abusing) to get Briffa to even 
give up a portion of the data.  Of course, there was no meta data and it 
took months, and they simply posted it on a website without even the 
courtesy of notifying McIntyre, but in the end they did publish it.

How is anyone supposed to verify his published conclusions if they can't 
get access to his data?  In a perfect world, someone would grab their 
own list of bristlecone pines and do their own measurements of tree 
rings, but in reality there are only so many specimens that have been 
found that span the required period.  Publishing their data allows for 
others to look at their choice of data used, their methods of throwing 
out outliers, and the statistical methods they used.

Climate scientists should be welcoming scientific scrutiny of their 
papers.  Why?  Because if it stands up to such scrutiny then there is a 
certain level of confidence in their conclusions.  That's how science 
works.   Or that's how it works when it hasn't been politicized.

Paul

On 05/13/2012 02:04 PM, Ted Moffett wrote:
> A recent Realclimate.org discussion from NASA's climate scientist Gavin Schmidt
>   ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/gavin-schmidt/ )
> regarding Steve McIntyre's (well known critic of anthropogenic climate
> change science) charges against certain climate science work, is at
> the website below.
>
> I was not going to post this rather technical discussion to
> Vision2020, but Gavin Schmidt's phrase, "a perfect epistemic bubble,"
> is such wonderful concise wording, I changed my mind.  Indeed, we all
> live in our own "epistemic bubbles," our self justifying circular
> systems of logic that lead us to interpret the facts of the world to
> suit our preconceptions and biases... The best that can be done is to
> be aware of bias, unavoidable for emotional mammals such as humans,
> and deliberately try to understand the world through as many
> viewpoints as possible, to temper bias.
>
> I only pasted in Schmidt's response to one of the comments in the
> comments section, where he uses this phrase:
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/yamalian-yawns/#more-11699
>
> Actually it won't be that interesting because I guarantee that
> whatever judgement calls that Briffa et al make (on the level of
> coherence necessary, significance levels, magnitude of common signal,
> statistical method etc.) they will still be accused of fudging it to
> produce a desired result - because that is so easy for the 'critics'
> to do. Every analysis involves judgement calls - even McIntyre's. And
> so if people don't like the result, they will attack the judgements -
> regardless of how they actually impact the final result or how
> justified they are. If you are already convinced that scientists can't
> be trusted, then no amount of justification from those scientists will
> change anything because people see nefarious intent everywhere. It is
> a perfect epistemic bubble - impervious to any actual contact with
> reality. - gavin
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
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