Many climateaudit readers will remember Mann’s “CENSORED” directory, in which Mann calculated principal components on a network that excluded bristlecone pines (which needless to say didn’t have a HS shape. Now Juckes et al introduces us to a new type of climate data: “restricted” data. The Team has introduced a novel data classification system – PG and R. Juckes et al say that the Indigirka series is R-rated and so it can’t be used in their reconstruction. Yes, R-rated tree ring data. Data so salacious that you have to keep it under lock and key.
Is it only under-18s that are not allowed to see R-rated tree ring data? Can we show it here if Kristen Byrnes promises not to look?
Or are all climateaudit readers prohibited? Is this a bit like pornography that is only available to priests? You think that I am juck-ing? Here are their exact words from the Euro Hockey Team for excluding the Indigirka series:
The Indigirka series used by MSH2005 is not used here because it is not available for unrestricted use.
I wonder what went through the minds of editor Goosse when he read that this was a “restricted use” proxy? Did Goosse ask what the restrictions were? Or referee Gerd Bürger or the other two anonymous referees? Since they don’t appear to have asked or weren’t bothered by the answer, let’s ask the question here. And, by the way, for readers who may be offended by salacious tree ring data, proceed at your own risk as the R-rated data is shown graphically in the post continuation. Yes, you too can see what the climate priests keep in their secret cupboard. If you are not over 18, please do not continue without parental guidance.
OK, sorry to disappoint you, but the issues are not salacious at all and have nothing to do with XXX-rated tree ring data. They have to do with whether Nature policies that require data to be publicly available apply to the Team and to whether a very weak rider attached to Moberg’s dissemination of the Indigirka data prevented Juckes from including the Indigirka series in his composite.
Moberg et al 2005 and the Indigirka Series
The Indigirka series has been discussed here on a number of occasions, for example, here here here here among others.
The series was used in Moberg et al (Nature 2005), whose lead author was a co-author of Juckes et al. Moberg et al 2005 atttributed the Indigirka proxy to Sidorova and Naurzbaev 2002 and illustrated it in their Nature SI as follows:
Excerpt from Moberg et al 2005 SI showing Indigirka series x-axis here and in subsequent plots as years AD (not BP).
So this proxy is actually illustrated in Nature of all places. Nature has the following policy on availability of data:
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available in a publicly accessible database (as detailed in the sections below on this page) or, where one does not exist, to readers promptly on request….Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed at the time of submission of the manuscript, and the methods section of the manuscript itself should include details of how materials and information may be obtained, including any restrictions that may apply.
No such restrictions were reported in Moberg et al 2005. After the publication of Moberg et al 2005, I sought digital versions of a couple of series, including the Indigirka series, which Moberg said that he was unable to provide. I accordingly filed a Materials Complaint under the above policy. I presume that Moberg sorted things out with the data originators as a Corrigendum, was issued, stating that the data could now be obtained from the authors, and, for the Indigirka data in particular, they said:
they [the tree-ring-width data from the Indigirka river region (series G)] may, however, be obtained through A.M. [Anders Moberg]
Under Nature’s data policy, of which all parties were aware, Moberg had an obligation to report any remaining “restrictions that may apply” in the Corrigendum. He did not disclose any.
Shortly after the publication of the Corrigendum, I wrote to Moberg and obtained the Indigirka data, which, when plotted, shows an elevated MWP relative to the modern period, clearer in a re-plot than in the compresed Nature graphic shown above (one also sees an elevated MWP in the Polar Urals Update, also suppressed by Juckes et al.) [Update Oct 7, 2007: Upon re-reading the data file as transmitted by Moberg, I have temporarily removed a graph of the data provided to me.] Reviewing the situation: Nature’s data availability policy states that authors are required to make data available under “an inherent principle of publication that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims”. Let me ask a question: under what circumstances can tree ring data published in Nature be “restricted use” data? I don’t think that there are any. Under what circumstances can Moberg attach restrictions to data access without disclosing them in his methods? I don’t think that there are any. So if Moberg attaches restrictions to his data published in Nature, then hasn’t he breached the terms of his Corrigendum?
Update Oct 8, 2007: Included in the Indigirka data file sent to me by Moberg is the following post hoc text purporting to attach restrictions to the Indigirka data that Nature policies require to be publicly available:
The user of this file is asked to note that, although the Indigirka series has previously been discussed in the literature (Sidorova OV, Naurzbaev MM 2002: Response of /Larix cajanderi/ to climatic changes at the Upper Timberline and in the Indigirka River Valley, Lesovedenie 2, 73-75, in Russian), they are anyway unpublished data that have not been made publicly available, as explained in the Corrigendum (Nature 439, 1014).
The authors of the Moberg et al. paper therefore ask the user of this file not to publish these data anywhere, neither in printed nor in electronic form. The authors behind the Indigirka series plan to publish an updated version of their series in due time.
There are two distinct issues here: first, whether Moberg et al are again in non-compliance with Nature data archiving policies by a) failing to archive the data in a publicly accessible database when one is available (WDCP); b) whether the rider is in breach of NAture data policy; c) whether the failure to disclose the rider is in breach of Nature policy. A quite spearate issue is whether the exact language of the rider, even if valid and complied with, prevented Juckes from carrying out the analysis that I illustrated here, showing the effect of the Indigirka series. The language of the rider asks the recipient not to “publish” the data in printed or electronic form – does this prevent the inclusion of the data in a composite as was done in Moberg et al or from testing the sensitivity of a Moberg composite to its inclusion? That’s a big jump and, in my opinion, not supported by the express language of the rider.
The Indigirka Series
If one simply looks at the Indigirka series, one notices a strong Medieval Warm Period. The originators of the Indigirka series (Sidorova et al) said so explicitly as follows:
The Eurasian long-term tree-ring chronologies are revealed the global climate fluctuation (Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, current warming). Current warming started at the beginning of the XIX-th century and presently does not exceed the amplitude of the medieval warming. The tree ring chronologies do not indicate unusually abrupt temperature rise during the last century, which could be reliably associated with greenhouse gas increasing in the atmosphere of our planet. The current period is characterized by heterogeneous warming effects in the subarctic regions of Eurasia.
Here is their illustration of Eurasian tree ring chronologies (including Indigirka):
From Sidorova et al.
In a previous CA post, I discussed the Indigirka series at length, answering Juckes’ question:
But seriously, if you can stop posting extended discussion of your problems coming to grips with trivia long enough to say anything serious, do you have any authorative information about the Indigirka data in your possession which would justify its use as a proxy? If so I think it would be really useful if you could write it up and get it published.”
In this post, I observed that the “Indigirka” proxy was an alter ego for the “Yakutia” proxy which had been widely used in short versions – all of the short versions seem to have had PG ratings. It’s only the version with the medieval portion that is R-rated.
Impact on Juckesian Reconstructions
In previous commentary at CA, I observed the direct impact of minor variations in proxy selection involving the Indigirka series. For example, in this post, I showed the impact on the Juckesian version of the Moberg CVM series by varying Indigirka (instead of Yamal) and Sargasso Sea (instead of the Arabian Sea G Bulloides monsoon wind speed proxy), noting that “the medieval-modern relationship is reversed.” In addition, I observed that the correlations of the two versions to modern temperatures were virtually identical – putting into question exactly what it meant to say that either reconstruction was “99.8%” significant.
Figure from CA p.887, showing impact of varying two proxies in Juckesian Moberg CVM reconstruction. LEft – Juckesian CVM version of Moberg reconstruction from previous SI (I’ll check the present version.) Right – the same thing substituting Sargasso and Indigirka for G Bulloides and Yamal.
This point was re-iterated in both my Comments and Willis’ Comments in the Climate of the Past Interactive Public Discussion in connection with the Juckes paper. I stated:
3. I have tested some of Juckes CVM reconstruction, finding that trivial variations can yield different medieval-modern relations e.g. Esper CVM without foxtails; http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=885 ; Moberg CVM using Sargasso Sea SST instead of Arabian Sea G Bulloides wind speed and Polar Urals update instead of Yamal – see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=903 and http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=887 Juckes justification for not using Sargasso Sea SST is not convincing http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=898 , nor is the exclusion of the Indigirka River series of Moberg et al 2005, which is an extension of the Yakutia series used in MBH98 – see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=901
Juckes and Moberg purport to show that their reconstruction is “robust”, but evade the Indigirka and Sargasso problem through flimsy and insupportable pretexts. Once again, Juckes and Moberg:
The Indigirka series used by MSH2005 is not used here because it is not available for unrestricted use.
Excuse me – as noted above, the Indigirka series was used in a Nature publication. Access to this series has already been established by the Nature Materials Complaint process. I have a digital copy of this series subject only to a very weak rider (in itself probably not permitted under Nature policies.) In my opinion, the rider does not prevent the sensitivity analysis that I carried out and does not prevent its use in a composite.
The issue of the Indigirka exclusion was raised in theInteractive Public Discussion where it was expressly noted that Juckes’ excuse for excluding Indigirka was inadequate. Goosse did not require Juckes et al to “adequately answer” the issues raised in the Interactive Public Discussion and then permitted the vague excuse in the revision that the Indigirka data was not available for “unrestricted use”. Well, maybe it wasn’t available for “unrestricted use”, but it was available for the relevant use of testing its impact on a Moberg-style composite. At this point, Juckes, Briffa and his coauthors, Goosse, Bürger and the 2 referees all know that the Juckes et al results are unstable to variations of the Indigirka and Sargasso data. And they justify this only through calling the data “restricted”.
Update: I sought clarification from Anders Moberg, one of the coauthors of Juckes et al, as to whether there were any restrictions on the Indigirka data which prevented its use by Juckes in calculating composites or in assessing the impact of inclusion or exclusion of Indigirka data as follows:
Anders, thank you for your prompt and courteous response. Im still unclear about exactly what you are asking of users. You say I simply ask users of the data to not publish them. I understand that you are asking readers not to post a digital version of the data (regardless of whether you can prevent it). But to clarify, when you say that you are requesting readers not to publish the data, do you consider that request to include readers not doing any of the following (regardless of whether you can enforce the request) or do you consider any of the following to be permitted activities within your request:
A) using the data in a larger composite even if the composite does not show the Indigirka data separately.
B) showing a graphic of the data;
C) discussing the impact of inclusion or exclusion of the data in a larger compositeGiven the use of the term published data in the Corrigendum to only mean the archiving of the data, it is my interpretation of your request that each of the activities A), B) and C) would be permitted activities within your request provided that the digital data itself was not posted, but I wanted to verify this.
Regards, Steve McIntyre
Moberg promptly and courteously replied that there were no restrictions on the data that prevented any of the above analysis as follows:
Steve,
The following can be read under http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/availability.html
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols available in a publicly accessible database (as detailed in the sections below on this page) or, where one does not exist, to readers promptly on request.
Following your request some time ago, I made the Indigirka available to you. My interpretation is that you (or anyone else) are allowed to do both A, B and C (as you define them in your last email).
In other words, I make the same interpretation as you do.
Regards,
Anders
Thus, even Juckes’ co-author, Moberg, does not share Juckes’ view that he was “restricted” from including the Indigirka data in his calculation of a composite (and note that Juckes does not merely calculate a Union composite but a “Moberg” composite – and, even in the calculation of the Moberg composite, Juckes excluded the relevant Indigirka data.
References: Anders Moberg, Dmitry M. Sonechkin, Karin Holmgren, Nina M. Datsenko, Wibjörn Karlén and Stein-Erik Lauritzen, 2006. Corrigendum: Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature 439, 1014(23 February 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04575 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7079/full/nature04575.html
Olga V. Sidorova, Mukhtar M. Naurzbaev, Eugene A. Vaganov, 2006. CLIMATIC CHANGES IN SUBARCTIC EURASIA BASED ON MILLENNIAL TREE RING CHRONOLOGIES http://www.holivar2006.org/abstracts/pdf/T3-016.pdf
Sidorova O.V., & Naurzbaev, M. M. Reakzija na klimatitcheskie izmenemija listvennizi Kajandera na verchnei granitze lesa i v doline reki Indigirki (Response of Larix Kajanderi to climatic changes at the upper timberline and in the Indigirka River valley). Lesovedenie, 2, 73-75 (2002).)
PS: For new readers that may not be familiar with Mann’s “CENSORED” data, here is a quick summary (see our NAS presentation as well.) Mann’s CENSORED directory contained no description of what was done it, but by some difficult reverse engineering, we were able to determine that it contained calculations without bristlecones and the PCs did not have a HS shape (e.g. here). Now Mann made the following claim (which I’ll return to in discussing Juckes as well):
We have also verified that possible low-frequency bias due to non-climatic influences on dendroclimatic (tree-ring) indicators is not problematic in our temperature reconstructions Whether we use all data, exclude tree rings, or base a reconstruction only on tree rings, has no significant effect on the form of the reconstruction for the period in question.
From his CENSORED directory calculations, Mann knew that exclusion of bristlecones removed the HS shape, but still made the above claim. We raised this issue in MM (EE 2005) and the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked Mann about it. Mann replied:
certain key tree-ring data (including the series mentioned above) were essential, if the reconstructed temperature record during early centuries were to have any climatologic skill (that is, any validity or meaningfulness). These conclusions were of course reached through analyses in which these key datasets were excluded, and the results tested for statistical validity.
Are these two claims mutually consistent? You tell me. Out of one side of his mouth, Mann says that excluding tree rings (a fortiori, bristlecones) has no “significant effect” and out of the other side of his mouth, Mann says that the exclusion of “key tree-ring data” has a significant effect on climatological “skill”. I” consider Juckes’ ventriloquism on this matter in another post.
Climate Audit 
242 Comments
Steve, it would be helpful if you labelled the x-axes in the various graphs in your post.
Steve, for clarification, are the x-axes in the top two plots AD dates or before-present dates?
What the heck, why not both?.
AD (now added).
I think the right approach is to push for a CopyLeft type arrangement for the IPCC. Something like,
The IPCC shall not use data or methods for its reports that have not been put into the Open domain
Prior to publication of the IPCC report.
This post
#5. Please do not get into this issue on this thread. I’ve posted on this topic on other threads. I’ve raised the issue with Susan Solomon – suggesting that IPCC require this of contributing authors. She said that they were not going to interfere with journals – not a good enough answer. Please take this to another thread as this issue will spiral off. The issue here is not that the Indigirka was unavailable – it is available. I have a copy of it. The issue is Juckes’ excuse for not using it and the acquiescence of CP editors and referees.
Steve,
The omission of the Sargasso proxy has confounded me. WHOI has a pretty good reputation to be snubbed that way. BTW, several of the glacial ice cores had neat MWP indications. Peru is in the southern hemisphere still isn’t it?
RE 6. Sorry. I Have not read those comments RE Soloman. Had I, I would not have repeated
your suggestion here. Or rather I would have referenced them, as is my custom.
The Sargasso Sea proxy was discussed in connection with Juckes here http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=898 . I’m planning to review this separately as Juckes’ revised is disgusting on this series as well.
Re: 6
Steve M
“Grotesque” it certainly is. What would this be called if an audit turned up something similar in a non “climate science” context? Say a medical clinical trial or in business? Possibly that particular word Ramberg accused CA of using re: Hansen?
On the positive side, as flagged elsewhere on CA by Wills E., this sort of contortionist behaviour is having the effect of causing co-authors to step away.
#10. In mining exploration, like medical trials, you can’t just report the “good” drill holes.
And the situation here is exacerbated by the fact that this isn’t the first time that these problems are being identified. They were identified a year ago and then reported in the open review process and then Goosse ignored the open review comments in breach of EGU open review policies.
you cant just report the good drill holes.
That’s rather imprecise in the sense that it can be done. The consequences of being discovered doing it range from derision to spending some quality time with SEC investigators and US attorneys (in the States, anyway).
The Juckes et al study was financed in Holland. The Memorandum on Scientific Integrity online here applies to institutes financed through Dutch public funding and prohibits the following:
Did Juckes and Nanne Weber et al “omit” an unwanted result? You tell me.
It is characteristic of fringe medical types to claim great results for their favorite herb or diet, but won’t release any data and did not do double-blind studies. But, you can’t get new meds approved that way!
Great work Steve Mc.
Ok, I’ll tell you. Yes, they omitted an unwanted one.
Maybe Erik can tell us why.
snip
I like that Goosse gets to edit a paper that cites his work.
snip
[snip]
JohnV Where are you on this, please gentle please? Steve Mc : Great work yet again:) but is this a gripe or do you want some help?
SteveMc. Need to check their creative commons licence in more detail. They might be in violation.
Stephen Richards:
I don’t know anything about paleo-climate reconstruction, Juckes, Mann, Wegman or any of it. So I’m staying out of it. Why do you ask?
Has anyone seen the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons? In one of them, Calvin and Hobbes are playing a game (“calvinball”). Every time Hobbes starts to win, Calvin shrieks “NEW RULE! NEW RULE!”. He can then introduce a new rule which completely changes the balance of the game.
The hockey team’s approach to this is abysmal, and I can’t help thinking of Calvin shrieking “NEW RULE!” every time the topic of sampling criteria comes up in these temperature reconstructions. Their rules for what samples to include are vague and unrepeatable, being based primarily around expert judgement (entirely open to researcher bias and intrinsically unscientific) and data snooping (don’t get me started on that one). When someone points out that something doesn’t fit their existing criteria, we suddenly witness new rules popping out of the woodwork to justify the exclusion of inconvenient samples.
http://www.simplych.com/cb_rules.htm
Spence_UK,
Perhaps this should be called Kelvinball because you’ve certainly nailed the basic correlation in principles.
Stephen Richards, It is an easy thing to ask JohnV to explain what the hockeyteam does.
I know, I did it and it’s fundamentally unfair. In all my dealings with JohnV, he has been
a fair guy. He’s not here to speak for them, he is here to speak for his self. That said,
they could take a lesson or two from him, as could some of us. Present company not excepted.
snip
Re #13,
How about a letter to the boss of KNMI (Dr. ir. F.J.J. Brouwer, Director General, KNMI, PO Box 201, NL-3730 AE De Bilt, Netherlands, fax +31 030 2210 407) asking whether the Institute accepts that it is bound by the Memorandum of Scientific Integrity in funding and participating in papers, and if so whether it believes that that the Memorandum’s provisions have been observed in the case of this paper? In case of an unsatisfactory answer you can then seize the National Council on Scientific Integrity (page 4 of the reference you give).
Steven M
No criticism of JohnV meant that’s why the please gentle please. I have always sort both sides to any argument because the truth usually lies somewhere in between. I get the feeling that the truth is closer to this side than the other and JV comes with the integrity we don’t always see from the other side of the house hence I wanted to know his thoughts. We anglo-francs don’t always express ourselves so well, ask SteveMc 🙂 (I can’t use the smilly) Sorry for any offence!!
You see what I mean. “can’t use the smilly et voilà”.
Re #19:
Was that really Erik Ramberg?
It seemed out of character from previous posts and might be worth an email or IP verification.
The puzzle to me is how y’all can keep sloggin’ through this stuff and maintain you senses of humor, balance, and smell.
Its getting quite embarrassing now. I’m not surprised though given the behaviour of Juckes on previous CA threads that there is restricted data. You have thought that cherry pie gets unpalatable after a while.
Free the data, free the methodologies, free the code and behave like real scientists please.
snip
Data selection has no place in this field if one is trying to use the scientific method.
Since it seems to be so common in the paleo-climate reconstruction area, do we have any faith that it is not occuring in the recent climate reconstruction field as well?
The Dilbert comic strip for Monday is applicable. In the first frame he is asked why he charges less time than the other project engineers. He responds that he is trying something new – called honesty. In the last frame he is told to stop doing that.
Re #30 re #19,
John V,
Out of character? Based on two previous posts here, one at RC, and one email,
you would form such an opinion? Permit me to suggest that people may be
complicated.
I do hope that a particulary atrocious comment posted at 1:33 pm CA server
time finds its way to where it belongs.
Why not submit a letter or a short correspondence to the journal describing these issues?
With this publicity, they would have a very difficult task to justify not publishing it. The authors would have a very strong incentive to reply.
re 36
I concur about the 1:33pm posting. It should be deleted
snip
Re 17:
It is common practice for editors to use the author of a cited reference in the submitted paper as a referee. It makes sense from the point of view of expertise but can cut both ways — you might get a “supporter” or an “opponent”.
40, which just underscores the point that Steve’s been making that the worlds of science and business operate on very different paradigms. I don’t think anyone outside of the scientific realm ordinarily cares whether or not the checks and balances in the scientific review paradigm are as rigorous as in the business world, until the outcome of the scientific literature proposes to leverage trillions of dollars of everyone’s money. Then, all of this scrutiny starts coming from everywhere, and the scientists, who were doing what they were doing all along, are shocked. They’re just going to have to understand that when you propose draconian changes and burdens, you’re going to get more scrutiny than you’re used to.
Okay, I peeked. At least it wasn’t as bad as the movie “Hostel.”
RE 40. What planet do you you live on? The Rules for editors are simple and clear. AVOID THE APPEARENCE
of impropriety. In business I am not allowed to take a 50cent day planner from a sales guy.
Goosse was CITED in the text, favorably. How can he edit that? He can’t. Would you trust a paper written by George
Bush that cited Donald Rumsfeld, edited by Rumsfeld? Extract your north end from your south end.
Goosse is young, inexperienced, and he screwed up. Sheesh. It doesnt mean that AGW is false.
[snip]
In Australia, in mining, it’s not just the duplicate data that have to be officially filed. Drill core has to be divided down the middle and one half kept in a repository approved by government – by law, punishable. (That’s a summary, there are minor exceptions). It adds a lot to processing costs – but integrity costs.
Story: Two grizzled old Queensland guys were drinking and bored one night. Two gecko lizards were crawling up the wall to the light where the food insects collect. They guys took bets as to which one would reach the light first. The losing guy, seeing he was losing, pulled out his pistol and shot the first lizard. Explanation? “Local rules”.
snip
snip
snip[
snip
Re: 47
[?]
Yet another troll?
Now that I’ve seen the Indigurka series I feel slightly dirty. I hope no children are watching.
snip
McIntyre’s post on restricted data is blatantly dishonest. He is aware that Sidorova and Naurzbaev are responsible for the restrictions on redistribution of this data. This is precisely the point raised in item #5: the Indigirka data is not open access.
some nerve, answer the questions first, you are a disgrace to the scientific community.
Which questions, Hans?
You must be new on the block…
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2105
Steve, you really need to wind in some of the more aggressive posters, comments like #53 make this site look petty.
x-axis for R-rated contents on hockey sticks, hmmmm !
Please, children are watching.
you talking to me? 😀
Dr. Juckes, thank you for participating.
Unlike Hans Erren, the questions that I would like you to answer first are the questions which were raised in the Open Review section of the CoP process. I was assured by Dr. Goosse that these questions would be answered. He said:
There are still a host of questions raised in the Open Review which have either not been addressed at all, or have been addressed in a very perfunctory manner.
Those are the questions that I was assured by the Editor you would answer before the paper was published … and while it is obviously impossible at this point to follow your stated procedures, I’m still waiting for the answers to the questions, and would greatly appreciate your answering them now. Better late than never.
All the best,
w.
PS the details of the Goosse communications with me are located here. As is detailed there, I relied on the assurances that these questions would be answered. I put in days of work analyzing the papers and collecting and collating the contributions of other reviewers.
In return, despite the stated policies of the CoP, and despite the assurances of Goosse, I got only the most puerile and trivial answers to the questions. I am hoping that you will now provide real answers to the questions, and I hope that I will not be disappointed again.
Hello Willis, I gather you don’t like the answers I gave — sorry about that. It might be useful if you could say why you don’t like the answers I gave. What is it you find puerile, for instance?
Re #56: surely not; all the contributors to this site are independent aren’t they?
#60: Wow! New readers to the site might want to take a look here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1230
Hello Jean. New readers?
Dr. Juckes,
Given your answers to Willis’ questions, Jean is simply giving you the benefit of doubt – clearly you did not have the time to read Willis’ questions before answering at CoP. Please take the time to read them, and I’m sure you will do a better job on the answers this time around.
Cliff
A non-technical summary
The Wegman committee advised not to use bristlecone pine data
Juckes et al did not not even refer to Wegman, they used bristlecone pine data they did not explain why they used the data.
The Indigirka dataset was available for research
Juckes et al did not use the data, claiming the data was not public although the data can be obtained from Moberg wothout restrictions.
For North Siberia an updated dataset is available
Juckes et al used the non-updated version without explaining why.
When omitting the bristlecones and using Indigirka and the updated Northern Siberia set, the result is vastly different from Juckes, demonstating that the Juckes et al method is not robust, which was claimed in the paper.
Steve: Moberg added a restriction but the only restriction was that the data not be published by another party. Moberg breached the terms of his Corrigendum by attaching the rider. However, even accepting the rider at face value, this did not prevent Juckes from doing the sensitivity analysis illustrated here if he “wanted to”.
Based on the level of answers of our “Martin Juckes”, I dare to say that he’s a troll. Of course I hope that “Dr. Juckes” is real, but to prove that he should improve his answers a bit.
I checked the website, but it has been last update last year. I got the feeling that the site is not up-to-date and some troll just linked it to the name.
Well, if he really is who he says he is, then with this way I do not expect any big progress with this matter. I just cannot understand why he decided to show up now. What’s the gain for him now?
#64: Hello Hans, I’ll try to be brief to avoid causing further confusion:
(1) Wegman’s advice is not supported by any data on bristlecone pines.
(2) The Indigirka data is not available without restriction, as stated clearly by Moberg et al.
(3) The explanation is in the paper.
(4) In what way does this indicate non-robustness? You appear to be selecting rather a large number of series based solely on your personal preferences, which is not a recognised statistical technique.
#63: I read them and answered them, its just that Willis doesn’t like the answers.
#64,65: Is this the kind of thing McIntyre winds in?
LOL A robust method is independent of proxy selection: the proxies would be mutual predictors.
QED
RE:#62, #63, #68
Dr. Juckes,
You say:
Ok, Jeans’ ‘benefit of doubt’ was misplaced. Perhaps you can find a professional that specializes in reading comprehension therapy. It’s really sad to see a good mind wasted by a correctable disability.
Cliff
#68:
I didn’t like them either. I’m still to find a person (except you) who actually thought that they were really answers.
Your answers didn’t answer anything, they were simply non-answers. Anyone can check that from the link in #61. A thing I don’t understand right now is why you want to make a more clown of yourself than what is needed. You got your paper published despite serious flaws. If I were you, I would be quietly happy with the outcome.
Dr Jukes # 68,
Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately the briefness of your answers did cause confusion, at least for me.
on #1, could you elaborate a little please?
#2) Could you please explain what it means for something to be unavailable due to restriction?
3) Could you please copy and paste the explanation from your paper or give a summary of it?
4) Does the inclusion or exclusion of these things really change your end result? If so, would it be better to amend your paper to include the possibility of a different outcome?
Thanks for your consideration.
To 68:
My apologize to Dr. Juckes. I was just confused a little bit. I meant no harm. As far as I know Mr. McIntyre has nothing to do with me, so please do not accuse him about my scepticism regarding your identity. I’m just lurking and reading in here.
#74: Sorry you don’t like the brevity.
If you want to understand where Wegman’s advice comes from, you need to read his report.
The restrictions on the Indigirka data are described in Moberg et al., you can get more details from Sidorova and Naurzbaev, who rae responsible for the restrictions.
No. The paper is published — you can read it there.
That was your assertion — are you retracting your previous comment? You will note that the paper presents reconstructions with different choices of data and the results are different — this is described in the paper.
Am I right in thinking McIntyre has asked people not to respond to my comments in #52?
C’mon, are you nuts? If you don’t tell anybody I can reveal that Steve has a secret mailing list (hsss, funded by the ExxonMobil) where he gives orders to the rest of us (puppets), and we then follow blindly his advice. His wish is our command.
RE 74 and 77. Kristin, I don’t know why Dr. Jukes won’t explain #2. Let me try. Climate of the past
requires that the work presented be duplicatable by ones peers. Further, it utilzes a Creative Commons
Licence. Essentially, this means it cannot use restricted data. It is a rather convient method for
ensuring that some data can never be used. That is, Moberg, by restricting the data, removes it from
consideration by others who publish under Open Science guidelines. Neat trick. So, there are these
questions. One, is the data legallaly and legitamately restricted, when in fact it is allready public
domain? Two did Juckes know it was publically available and merely hide behind the Creative Commons
licence, three will his analysis hold up if it is repeated wiwth the series in question utilized
snip
i’ll bite
but it’s available, you are playing Calvinball. 😀
Here we come to the nitty gritty question whether a published dataset is the public domain.
Dr. Juckes, thank you for your reply. You say:
If you would please read the questions listed here, along with your answers, you will see that many of them are not answered at all. Often, a page of text containing a variety of questions is followed by one-sentence answer. Surely you cannot believe that is adequate?
Let me take the very first example. I had written:
Let me summarize the major points of what I said here. The first thing was that the Durbin-Watson test established the presence of significant autocorrelation. The second was that when we adjust for autocorrelation, the results are not statistically significant. The third was that the Monte Carlo test did not establish that the results were significant. Using these standard statistical methods, we have shown that the result is not significant.
And as a side issue, I said that a Monte Carlo test of the type you used (showing that the your results are better than a particular type of red noise) can never show that your results are significant … all it can prove is that it is better than a certain type of red noise. You might just be using the wrong kind of red noise. However, it can show that your results are not significant, by showing a type of red noise that outperforms your reconstruction … and in fact, we showed a type of red noise that outperformed your reconstruction.
Here is your answer in full:
Do you seriously think that the objections have been answered? We have shown that your reconstruction is not significant, using standard statistical methods. We have shown that your red noise method cannot establish significance, only the lack of significance. Your answer is that the “statement of significance is using standard statistical terminology” …
Dr. Juckes, I don’t care if you used the proper terminology. Your result is wrong, for the reasons stated. If you don’t think so, then tell me what is incorrect about the analysis. You did not deal with the issue of autocorrelation in your answer. You did not deal with the issue of red noise outperforming your reconstruction. You did not deal with the Durbin-Watson test showing a misfit between the model and the data. You are right that Durbin-Watson statistic only tests for autocorrelation of the residuals. But you failed to grasp the relevance of that. If the model (the reconstruction) is significantly correlated with the data (the temperature), there will be little autocorrelation in the residuals. But if there is significant autocorrelation in the residuals, then … ? I leave you to fill in the blank.
All you said about all of this was that your answer used standard statistical terminology. What does that mean? Look, I’m sorry I used the term “puerile” to describe your response. But you didn’t even try to answer the questions or deal with the issues.
Also, what do you mean by “The switch in sign of the Chesapeake Bay data was an error.”? Do you mean that the data was wrong, or that it was wrong to switch the sign of the data before averaging it? This kind of one-sentence answer provides more heat than light.
Remember, this was only the start of the list of issues that I raised. In all cases, you gave the same kind of answers that didn’t answer anything, that evaded the issues, and that made no attempt to come to grips with the problems. Let’s look at the next section of my review. I won’t quote the whole section, you can read it on the page cited above, but in summary, I wrote that the NAS panel said not to use bristlecones in temperature reconstructions, and the Wegman Report said the same, and Rob Wilson and Graybill & Idso said there were problems with bristlecones, and the Biondi paper said don’t use them, but despite that, you used them. To quote again from my review:
Now, that’s a problem, it’s well documented in the literature, and I have detailed the reason why it is a problem. Your response, in full?
Say what? I don’t care about CO2 fertilization. I have pointed out the problem very clearly, and it’s not CO2 fertilization. The problem is, as Biondi state, that the last 150 years of the record are not reliable, and thus, as I pointed out, you can’t trust it during the calibration period. What does CO2 fertilization have to do with that?
And if you have recent literature that “suggests” that this is “probably” a minor issue, then trot it out. I have quoted and cited literature that say it is a major issue, so your “suggests” and “probably” don’t carry much weight, but if you believe it, then CITE IT.
Again, your answer doesn’t address the questions raised. Is it puerile? Perhaps not. But is assuredly and absolutely unresponsive. You say you read and answered my points, but that is simply not true. You have not answered them at all. You have said that you used the proper statistical terminology. You have said that Biondi introduces no new evidence for CO2 fertilization. You have said that you have read something somewhere that suggests that bristlecones probably are a minor issue. But you assuredly have not answered my questions. And the issues I just discussed are only the start of the list.
You now have the chance to answer all of the questions posed by the review, and as I said before, I fervently hope that you avail yourself of the opportunity.
w.
RE 56:
“Steve, you really need to wind in some of the more aggressive posters, comments like #53 make this site look petty.”
That’s exactly what this site is: petty.
I suggest everyone waits until Steve M. wakes up and responds to Juckes. Assuming Juckes engages, that will be the main game.
Dr Jukes # 77
I think you misunderstood my questions in 74, so I added them with your responses in # 77 with clarifications.
Thank you for your comments. Unfortunately the briefness of your answers did cause confusion, at least for me. Dr Jukes answered: #74: Sorry you dont like the brevity. Dr Jukes, its not that I did not like the brevity, it just caused confusion for me as I stated.
on #1, could you elaborate a little please? I was asking Dr Jukes to elaborate on his comment, Wegmans advice is not supported by any data on bristlecone pines.” Dr Jukes responds, If you want to understand where Wegmans advice comes from, you need to read his report. Dr Jukes, I was hoping to understand you comment better, not Wedgmans.
#2) Could you please explain what it means for something to be unavailable due to restriction? Dr Jukes responds, The restrictions on the Indigirka data are described in Moberg et al., you can get more details from Sidorova and Naurzbaev, who (are) responsible for the restrictions Dr Jukes, I was hoping to hear your side of the restricted issue. Is there some sort of copyright protection or something? If not then what?
3) Could you please copy and paste the explanation from your paper or give a summary of it? Dr Jukes responds, No. The paper is published you can read it there. Dr Jukes, it is fair that you cannot violate any copyright, but can you please summarize it? It would be fair that your view of the restricted data issue is given fair consideration. I am just an inner-city high school student from a family with limited means and cannot afford to buy a copy. Could you send me a copy of it if you do not have the time to summarize it? (ponderthemaunder@earthlink.net)
4) Does the inclusion or exclusion of these things really change your end result? If so, would it be better to amend your paper to include the possibility of a different outcome? Dr Jukes responds, That was your assertion are you retracting your previous comment? You will note that the paper presents reconstructions with different choices of data and the results are different this is described in the paper. Dr Jukes, I think you have me confused with someone else. I had no previous comments. All I was asking is if the inclusion or exclusion of these things (bristlecone pines, Indigirka and updated North Siberia) would have changed your final result. If you did not include (or exclude) these things but it has been brought to your attention that these things will change your final result, wouldnt it be better to simply check to see if they would change the final result, and if so, amend your paper to account for this?
#95: true, I mistook you for someone else: you thanked me for answering the query and I thought you were the person posing the query. As I said earlier, there needs to be some rational basis for the choice of data.
#87: As I said, I understand that you don’t like the answers. Your use the Durbin-Watson statistic is simply irrelevant, there is nothing more that needs to be said about that. The proof of insignificance you refer to is erroneous — it uses a different reconstruction technique and has no relevance to our paper. I’m not sure what you find confusing about the statement about the Chesapeake Bay data. The sign was erroneously switched in the original submission, this error has been corrected. The relevant literature is cited in the paper.
RE 93.
By publishing in Nature Moberg agreed to provide data without restriction.
He was eventually forced to abide by this agreement and furnish the data without restriction
thereby placing it into the public domain. He provided the data. This vitiates
any claims of IP. That he continues to assert a right which he has surrendered is a ethical
question that should be addressed by his employers.
Moberg gave up his rights when he provided the data without restriction.
In order to maintain your IP rights you have excercise a certain amount of diligence in protecting
those rights. Moberg released his data without restriction or compensation.
By making the data available to certain parties without restriction
and without obligation he put the data into the open domain. Moberg would have no colorable
claim whatsover against the distribution of his data. Were he to make such a claim, after disseminating
it freely and without restriction, it would be tossed in a New York Minute.
Steve: In his distribution of Indigirka data by email, Moberg – in breach of Nature policies – attached a rider that somewhat restricted use of the data. I’ve added the exact language of the rider. The rider did not prevent Juckes from using the data in a composite or from doing the analysis that I illustrated. It only restricted Juckes from archiving the data himself; Juckes, like the Moberg Corrigendum, could have directed interested readers to email Moberg.
RE 98.
Dr. Juckes. You seem to be having some difficulties handling the questions of a 15 year old and keeping
people sorted out. It’s less complex than tree rings. I helped you out on the creative commons issue
because frankly you needed the help. Although you knew that the Moberg was in the public domain, you
knew that there was no colorable claim of restricted rights, you feigned ignorance and hid behind
creative commons.
#106: Last time I checked, Moberg is a scientist working at the University of Stockholm — I guess you could say this puts him in the public domain.
It is up to data producers whether they place restrictions on data use or not. It is very simple. Your refusal to accept this is ridiculous.
RE 107.
You were aware that the series in question was supplied without restriction because of publishing
requirements of Nature. You were aware that this vitiates any colorable claim to restrictions.
You feigned ignorance of this and continue to do so.
Steve: AS noted below, although Nature’s policy require the availability of data without restriction and there is no indication in the Corrigendum that there would be any restriction on the data, Moberg pulled a rather sly trick by saying that people could get the data from him and then including in the data file a request that the data not be “published” – see my comment below. It’s reasonable to assume that the Nature editors thought that Moberg had sorted things out, whereas he doesn’t appear to have. However the form of restriction in the Moberg email would not preclude the use of Indigirka in the Juckes’ analyses – see my note below.
Dr. Juckes, RE #98, please expand on why, as you state: “Your use the Durbin-Watson statistic is simply irrelevant, there is nothing more that needs to be said about that. The proof of insignificance you refer to is erroneous it uses a different reconstruction technique and has no relevance to our paper”
Thanks for any clarifications. Its hard sifting through this thread trying to pull out any semblence
of discourse on the relavent questions/issues. I for one greatly appreciate any additional light you can
shed on Willis’ original questions.
Thanks
Re 124
The famous Granger and Newbold paper in the Journal of Econometrics 1974 (nb 33 years ago) drew the attention of economists at least to the likelihood that an insignificant DW statistic in a regression involving time series was a sign that the relationship between the series was spurious in the technical sense that it could have arisen simply by chance, given that the variables of concern each have their own time series behaviour. I am not sure whether Dr Juckes is aware of this result, and, if he is, why he thinks its irrelevant to his work. It seems to me to be one of the main problems with a lot of the work on proxies – spurious regressions (in this technical sense) compounded by cherry-picking only those series that have already been seen to correlate with temperature or whatever in the in-sample period. Perhaps he could explain.
Could someone please post the specific restriction and release text(s) associated with the data in question?
I for one do not have access to all of the relevant documents.
However, I do have some significant experience with working through the practical and pragmatic elements of restricted releases, NDA’s, and so forth. Without seeing what has really been declared, it is impossible to untangle this mess, even to form a useful personal opinion.
Steve: Pete, see post below.
Did Juckes ask Moberg for permission to use the dataset in question?
If Juckes doesn’t respond to this question I will take it that he did not ask Moberg for permission. I don’t think Moberg would have refused such permission.
Dr.Juckes
SteveM says,
If you choose not to use “restricted use” data, can you confirm whether that rule applies to all your data selection?
SteveM continues,
No paper should be submitted or published in Nature unless the data is freely available. Your co-authors should withdraw papers which use “restricted data” and Nature should withdraw from Publication, the issues containing said papers, as their Publication breaches intellectual property rights. As they have named themselves as co-authors of the Juckes et al paper, they are by their own admission in breach of copyright.
Rats! No one asked why the Sargasso Sea study by WHOI that was not restricted and indicates SST change was not included.
Dr Juckes has given only access reasons for excluding Indigirka. No scientific reasons have been put forward, which appears to confirm Indigirka as a valid sample if the availability issue could be resolved.
This suggests that, unusually, we have an opportunity to use out-of-sample data to test Dr Juckes’ methodology with. This can be done legitimately in one of two ways:
1. Anyone can request the Indigirka data set from Moberg, download the software to perform Dr Juckes’ analysis, assess the consequences for themselves.
2. If someone else could persuade the owners of any IP to release the data for publication, they could perform some out-of-sample tests on Dr Juckes’ paper as an assessment of robustness of his analysis method and sampling techniques.
Mind you any such paper would get thrown out during the review process (new rule, new rule: you can’t publish a rebuttal whilst in a red flag zone, unless doing it whilst hopping and … erm… submitting it by telex)
So anyone wondering which is which, as a pure exercise in curiousity? Bill Tarver that is. Just a little brainstorming as to possibilities.
1. Has read a lot of the site and is unconvinced of Steve’s stated motivations or his endeavors and their purpose.
2. Hasn’t read enough of the site to understand what’s going on.
3. Isn’t intelligent enough to understand what’s going on.
4. Thinks everything everyone writes on here is Steve’s position on it. (I just bring it up, obviously this one is pretty silly…)
5. Knows fully well what’s going on, and is trying to pick a fight.
I know my guess.
Corrigendum: Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data
Anders Moberg, Dmitry M. Sonechkin, Karin Holmgren, Nina M. Datsenko, Wibjörn Karlén and Stein-Erik Lauritzen
Nature 433, 613617 (2005)
The authorship of this Letter is amended to include Stein-Erik Lauritzen. Details of the Søylegrotta Cave record (series 8), which should have been accredited to S.-E.L., were not supplied in the paper but are available from the corresponding author (A.M., Email: anders.moberg@natgeo.su.se) on request.
In addition, the tree-ring-width data from the Indigirka river region (series G) were inadvertently used without the proper permissions: although the series has been discussed in the literature, they are unpublished data that have not been made publicly available; they may, however, be obtained through A.M.
Question: did Juckes ask? If not, why not? Was he not aware of the literature and the controversy?
Was he aware, but unwilling to ask because he needed a pretense to exclude the series.
This is simply answered by Juckes.
1. I didnt know.
2. I did knew but didnt ask.
3. I asked and he denied.
4. I asked, he sent me the data, I didn’t like what it did to by results.
Simple questions. one word answers will suffice. You won’t answer because each is an indictment of your behavior.
It is unfortunate that the scientists who generated the Indigirka do not wish it to be released. I don’t know the reasons for this, there may be good reasons to delay its release, for example, it may be part of a PhD. While the data set is now in the public domain, following a complaint to Nature over Moberg’s paper, it would be courteous not to disregard the wishes of the data generators. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, this restriction would appear to have nothing to do with Moberg, and I think you should remove this suggestion.
Mosh,
I’d like to buy the Russian poster for some of my grandkids. Dendrochronology at a glance – including the Medieval Warm Epoch – which not everyone can find.
Steve’s quotation of the Nature publication policy seems appropriate to reiterate at this point:
Put simply, Nature has made a policy decision to require authors to make their data available as a condition of publication.
Steve’s central point is that either: (i) Moberg et. al. (Nature 2005) doesn’t comply with this policy and/or the associated corrigendum or (ii) Juckes’ claim that the Indigirka data is “restricted” is bogus. The Team simply can’t have it both ways.
The jousting over IP law concepts is interesting but irrelevant to this point.
Back from the cottage. There is much imprecise discussion on this thread, some of which I would have snipped or edited back earlier if I’d been around. #99 has got it right.
The concept of “confidential data” presents no problems. It’s the concept of “restricted use” data that puzzles me. If one searches the term “restricted use data”, one finds that this applies to issues of identification of individuals. The NSF has a standard Licence agreement according to which researchers undertake not to to reveal any information
This obviously doesn’t apply. So one wonders what are the precise “restrictions” on the Indigirka data, which permit Moberg to send it to people on request and prevent Juckes from using it in an analysis which might show a warm MWP.
In addition, the issue is not confidentiality per se, but whether the purported “restrictions” are consistent with publishing an article, and, in particular, in publishing an article in Nature. While an author may have the right to keep his data “confidential” as long as he wants, he waives rights in order to publish in Nature. So let’s review the matter again. Nature’s policy says:
Discussion of copyright is irrelevant. If an author wants to keep his data confidential, don’t publish in Nature.
Examining the policy closely, if data is archived in a publicly accessible database, as called for in the policy, it obviously cannot be “restricted use” data. So what happens if an author uses the less desired alternative – provision “promptly on request”? The only plain reading of this clause is that, in circumstances, where authors make available to “readers promptly on request”, that must come on the same terms as if it had been downloaded from a “publicly accessible database” – as the only reason for emailing is the supposed absence of such publicly available database. Supplying by email does not entitle a Nature author to make the data “restricted use”.
Given that there is a perfectly good publicly accessible database for paleoclimate http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo , for Moberg et al to be compliant with this policy, they were (and still are) “required” to place the Indigirka data that they used in a “publicly available database”. Obviously, they breached this condition of publication and Nature, with the indolence so characteristic of paleoclimate articles, failed to ensure that they had complied with this condition at the time of publication.
Now the problem originated because Moberg used the Indigirka data without permission. Thus when I filed a Materials Complaint under this policy and Nature told Moberg that he had make the data available, he had a problem. Here’s what the Corrigendum states:
I’m rather puzzled how the Indigirka data can be “discussed in the literature” and at the same time be “unpublished”. At face value, this could apply to many paleoclimate series. But let’s proceed, Moberg et al then state:
At face value, it looks like the problem has been sorted out. Any Nature editor reading the Corrigendum would assume that the matter was fully resolved and that any interested reader could now email Moberg and get the data under the same terms as if he had obtained it from a publicly accessible database. But here’s what happened when I emailed Moberg. He promptly sent me a datafile which included a rider as follows:
There are a couple of interesting aspects to this. First of all, the restriction is inconsistent with Nature policy on data availability. I doubt that Nature editors handling the Corrigendum were informed of Moberg’s plan to attach conditions to the use of the data and, had they been appraised of this plan, I doubt that they would have agreed.
Secondly, the restrictions on this particular version of the data set are attached by the “authors of the Moberg et al paper”; the reason for the restriction may be the wishes of Sidorova et al, but the specific restriction here is from Moberg.
Third, let’s look at the exact language of the restriction – and because the restriction itself is inconsistent with Nature policies, my inclination is to take the most literal and narrowest interpretation of the restriction, which again says:
This clearly does not prohibit or restrict the use of the Indigirka series as part of a composite. Thus, if Juckes “wanted” to illustrate the effect of substituting Indigirka and Sargasso for Yamal and G Bulloides in the example shown above, there was nothing in the Moberg condition that prevented him from doing so. Now Juckes might say – you, McIntyre, have argued that everything should be publicly archived, and I have. If Moberg attached conditions to the provision of data (regardless of whether those conditions originated from a prior author), Juckes had the alternative of filing a Materials Complaint at Nature against Moberg, objecting that Moberg was attaching a restriction to the data which was inconsistent with Nature’s policy. Juckes failed to do so. In this case, he had a conflict of interest because Moberg was a coauthor, though I wonder what Moberg actually did, other than contribute his compilation of data.
If Juckes “wanted” to use the Indigirka data, there was another easy solution – he could have archived all data versions as he used them except the Indigirka data and included a note saying that interested users could email Moberg and get a copy of the Indigirka data – or better, a copy of the collated data with Indigirka included. It’s not ideal, but it’s hard to completely unring the bell from Moberg’s original unauthorized use of the Indigirka data. This would be a better alternative than ignoring the data.
In summary, it appears that the conditions attached by Moberg to the data in his email are inconsistent with Nature’s policy; Moberg remains in breach of Nature’s data policy and pulled a fast one on Nature editors in the Corrigendum. Second, the specific restrictions in the Moberg email – even if accepted at face value – do not prevent the sensitivity analysis presented above, showing the non-robustness of Juckes’ results.
Dr. Juckes, you say:
Dr. Juckes, it’s not that I don’t like the answers. The problem is that most of the questions raised in my review did not receive any answer, or a flip answer like saying it is “simply irrelevant”. It may be … but this is science, show your work.
I’m still not clear what you mean by “the sign” of the Chesapeake Bay data. In the original dataset, the Chesapeake Bay data was the only dataset of the 13 used which had a negative correlation with the instrumental record. I just checked the new data (available at cp-2006-0049-sp2.zip). The Chesapeake Bay data is still the only dataset with a negative correlation with the instrumental record.
Which sign was “erroneously switched”, and where?
Thanks,
w.
PS – saying that something is “simply irrelevant” is not an example of what is commonly known as science. A quick search on the internet reveals, among many others, the following quotes:
and
(THE POWER OF THE DURBIN WATSON TEST WHEN THE ERRORS ARE PAR(1), K. ALBERTSON1; J. AYLEN2; K. B. LIM, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Volume 72, Number 6, 2002 , pp. 507-516(10))
The critical lower band value for the Durbin Watson test with N=150, p less than 0.05, is 1.654. Thus, the presence of a Durbin-Watson statistic of 1.4 in your case reveals that your model is mis-specified.
Now, you may believe that the Durbin-Watson statistic is not applicable in your case for some reason. Or you may believe that I have not applied it correctly, or calculated it correctly. But saying that it is “simply irrelevant” is … well … well, it’s simply irrelevant. Science is what is relevant, not opinions such as you have provided. Please provide some citation to back up your claim that your model is not mis-specified.
#99
Since the Indigirka data have already been “inadvertently used the without the proper permissions” by Moberg, he can scarcely use it again without receiving this permission.
#101. Richard T, you’re missing the point. Yes, in 2005, they used two series without the permission of the authors. In the case of Lauritzen, his price was being added as a co-author, which they did (and Nature appears to have held its nose on any concerns about substantial contribution.) They also worked out some kind of deal with the Russian authors, under which Moberg was presumably allowed to email people the data with a rider that they next party couldn’t publish the data. Moberg had to have worked out some sort of agreement to do that, as he had refused my original request (which prompted the Materials Complaint.) So the situation in 2007 was not the same as in 2005.
There is also nothing in this restriction preventing Juckes from carrying out a sensitivity analysis of the type that I presented at CA last year – of, for that matter, merely confirming my results, which he was aware of. If he is aware of such results, can he ethically make claims of “robustness”>
Even though you keep deleting my posts, I’ll say it again. The only way that they are able to make any restriction is that they own the copyright. If not, they have no authority to prevent anyone from publishing it.
Steve: People can supply confidential information to other parties expecting the other parties to preserve the confidence. People do this in business all the time. You don’t need to “copyright” the information for confidentiality to attach. The issue of confidentiality is more general than copyright. Gunnar, I do not think that copyright issues are relevant to this other than as to how they pertain to confidentiality and I do not wish you to monopolize the thread with what I believe to be irrelevant considerations. Please allow me some editorial discretion as I have the interests of others readers to consider besides you.
The Russians had the right to expect Moberg to preserve confidentiality. One set of issues pertain to what happens once Moberg has broken the egg and his duties of confidentiality to the Russians are inconsistent with his obligations as a Nature author, and, what agreements, if any, Moberg made with the Russians to resolve the pickle that he was in. The other set of issues pertain to Juckes’ obligations, if any, as recipient of Moberg’s data with the purported rider.
http://en.bio-soft.net/draw/GetData.html
>> There is also nothing in this restriction preventing Juckes from carrying out a sensitivity analysis
Your premise is that the text that Moberg included in his e-mail is some sort of extremely primitive NDA. Even if it were, you presume that this is the entire text of the restriction. You also presume to be able to read the text to your advantage when you say “This clearly does not prohibit or restrict the use of the Indigirka series as part of a composite”. I think it’s pretty clear that to include it in a composite would be to “publish the data”, either implicitly, or explicitly as part of the publication.
However, the evidence against the view that it’s an NDA is 1) it’s too primitive to be an NDA, 2) nothing was signed and 3) Moberg mentions their plan to create their own work based on this data. No signature is required for copyright. #3 is a reference to derivative work, ie copyright. Therefore, the restriction more likely translates to:
All rights reserved, ie the right to create derivative works is reserved for us.
And including the data in a composite, and then publishing that composite, is a derivative work.
Steve: Gunnar, I’m familiar with contract law and non-disclosure agreements – probably far more familiar than you are, as I have many years of experience with contracts containing such clauses and the legal issues of such agreements have been the topic of major litigation in Canada. I’m not interested in discussing your views on copyright. I do not agree with your interpretations set out above. I’m not interested in debating the matter with you.
Dear Dr. Juckes, as a regular reader and occasional contributor to this blog, it pains me to see a fellow scientist engaged in the kind of “factual economy” and sophistry that I have come to expect of politicians. Surely we are better than this? Some reasonable questions have been raised by people who have contributed to the open review process. I believe that it show climate science in a much more positive light if you would answer Willis’s questions in the detail that he requests.
>> The issues, in my opinion, are compliance with Natures policy requiring public availability and whter any purported restrictions were relevant to Juckes
Steve, in one of the posts you deleted, I clearly explained the illogic of approaching it from that point of view. Nature’s policy is an agreement bewtween Nature and Moberg. If Moberg violated his agreement with Nature, a third party cannot in effect, enforce the agreement for Nature. That’s assuming the role of judge and jury. In other words, if Dr Juckes received the data with restriction, he is still bound by that restriction. The alleged Nature dispute with Moberg is irrelevant to Juckes.
Steve: Gunnar, I understand this; I’ve been through a lot of contracts. I observed that Moberg’s rider is a violation of Nature’s policy and the remedy for that is a Materials Complaint to Nature. If Juckes felt “restricted” by Moberg’s rider (which was perhaps meaningless), then he should have filed a Materials Complaint with Nature and got Nature to force Moberg to sort things out. In any event, the rider did not prevent Juckes from using the data in a composite.
RE 103.
Gunnar. Yes. the rider Moberg attached is meaningless.
Steve Mc: I agree that it’s probably meaningless legally, but it would have some moral force. Personally, I would be reluctant to disregard the rider and archive the data here (and did not do so), even if the rider is legally unenforceable. So that’s not my issue with Juckes. If Juckes “wanted” to archive the data as part of his package and received it with a rider that was inconsistent with Nature data policies, then he was obligated to complain to Nature about the rider that Moberg attached – even if the Russians were the problem – and get Nature to put some heat on Moberg to resolve the problem. Moberg was the person who broke the egg. Let him try to fix things with the Russians. Alternatively, as I observed earlier, he could easily have used the data in a composite – which would not constitute “publishing the data” in the sense used in the Corrigendum – and referred readers to Moberg for the data. Juckes knew what results with Indigirka looked like from CA postings. The “restricted use” argument is a pretext for not reporting these results, as the results themselves are obviously not robust as claimed in the article itself.
[snip – Gunnar, I’m not interested in debating your incorrect interpretations of what I thought. I’ve been required to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to tidy this thread from my weekend away and the inability to preserve numbers while deleting posts makes it very time consuming. I removed many excessive and hyperbolic statements. ]
Also here is the Dilbert comic strip link
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071008.html
>> People can supply confidential information to other parties expecting the other parties to preserve the confidence. People do this in business all the time.
(Strange, you delete my postings, but then answer my point anyway.)
Actually, people do not supply confidential information to external third parties without an NDA. I have many years of experience in the business world, and what you say just isn’t done south of your border.
>> You dont need to copyright the information for confidentiality to attach.
You simply don’t understand copyright. Your familiarity with confidentiality is causing you to look at the world exclusively through that prism. It’s incorect. You need to take NO ACTION to copyright something. Just by writing it down, it’s automatically copyrighted. It’s a non sequiter to say “copyright the information for confidentiality to attach”. The purpose of copyright is NOT to attach confidentiality. The two are completely unrelated.
>> The issue of confidentiality is more general than copyright
Completely wrong. Copyright is FAR, FAR more general than confidentiality. Confidentiality is a specific contractual agreement between two parties. Confidentiality is useful for information that cannot be protected by other means.
Steve: Gunnar, you’ve had your say. So hold your peace for a while please. I’m not deleting your posts on copyright law because you disagree with me, but because the connection is tangential at best in my opinion; it’s now just a hobbyhorse of yours and I don’t want to discuss it here. Go discuss it on your own blog.
I will attempt to make my point, from an earlier post that was deleted, in the form of some sincerely asked questions.
Do not what Nature and other science publications do with their interpretations of their rules depend primarily on the predilections of their administrators/editors? And do not their rules generally allow rather flexible interpretations? And in reality are these interpretations very much unlike a legal system where a more independent judgment is reached and has a means of enforcement with punitive punishments and damages? Is it not true that the publishing editors/administrators are very much part of the science community on which they pass judgment, and with such a relationship, is it not the involved science community that, in effect, decides the interpretation of these rules?
These questions lead to my final question: When some members of a particular science community come here to defend their publishing activities in their community by way of the rule interpretations without any references to or discussions of the intentions involved and whether they support good science, do not those reactions speak directly to the state of their science community?
Gunnar – let me be blunt. Nobody cares about these distinctions which are tangential to the matter at hand.
Re #111 (Gunnar at 10:14 am)
Copyright (U.S. version) on data is moot, as data are excluded from copyright. The data from the Indigirka reconstruction, which presumably is a scientific reconstruction, are the factual outcome of a process developed by the Russian authors. The resulting data are not a work of creative art (I hope!) and hence not protectable by copyright. So please give copyright a rest.
The issue of confidentiality is indeed one of breaking the egg. Once a secret is out it is not secret anymore. The only parties liable for then reproducing once-confidential data are the parties that breached any non-disclosure agreement.
I am not “you folks”. I never said such a thing. If you noticed, most of the comments regarding these points of law have been deleted. The question here is very narrow, and we don’t need a general seminar on IP law. Can you please stick to the narrow issue, and stop debating the irrelevant?
Steve Mc, thanks for providing the actual text of the restrictions. It is very helpful to clear understanding of the issues involved.
My only (potentially useful) contribution is to recognize a few things that I haven’t seen so far in this thread, either the currently visible or already-deleted portions.
1) The data is not “public domain.” Unless you want to get into legal details, for most purposes, public domain access is not the same as unrestricted access.
* Unrestricted access, as I’ve seen it defined above, means EITHER publicly available OR available promptly on request. At present, the latter is the only defined means of access.
* Public domain means that I can do ANYthing I want with the data, including sell it.
I agree with Steve Mc that I would feel quite uncomfortable treating the data as if it were public domain.
2) The data access/inclusion issue is not about copyright. It is about whether data made available “with restrictions” is actually complying with an “unrestricted access” policy. Sounds contorted, which is why Moberg was/is in a delicate position.
3) Juckes claims above that the data is not available for “unrestricted use.” In reality, I find no restrictions on its use but only on its publication. This is crucial. Essentially, the source is saying “you can use it any way you like, but I reserve the right to release the data itself.”
Essentially, there are only two logical options here. If someone sees another, I’m interested in hearing it:
a) Nature has decided that Moberg’s access process is sufficient for their policy, and so the data is available for “unrestricted access” by their definition. And Juckes is incorrect in claiming it is “restricted.”
OR
b) Juckes is correct that the data is “restricted.” And has a responsibility to push back on Nature’s acquiescence to Moberg’s access process, which by Jucke’s definition is “restricted.”
My conclusion: If this is really about science, then the issue is one of the ability to use the data for further study and replication. I see zero restrictions on such use (even if I’d prefer it were more easily available.) I don’t see how Juckes has a leg to stand on in this.
(That probably sounds a whole lot like what Steve McIntyre said above. Probably true… I think he’s basically got this one nailed.)
I think Mr. Pete summarized it correctly:
You can’t have an open process with closed data. If you publish, you publish openly.
Otherwise, don’t publish. It’s not more complicated than this. You can’t say only A, B and C get to use the data, but nobody else. Particularly if you agree to the policy as a basis for publication. When Nature publishes an article, it is assumed that the article was published as per the requirements of Nature. If you don’t like those requirements, then make a deal with Nature, but then Nature better state, up front, that your article isn’t published under the regular rules of the their game.
Yes, Mr. Pete’s (3) illustrates the core logical contradiction. Gunnar, leaving aside copyright and downstream issues for a moment, do you find any flaws in Mr.Pete’s (3a) and (3b) options?
To All:
The fact that IP issues are at the heart of this matter is clear from Dr Juckes’s web site:
http://mitrie.badc.rl.ac.uk/disclosure_1
You may disagree with people protecting their IP rights, and you may wish to live in the virtual Steve McIntyre world, but you cannot ignore this issue and remain intellectually honest. Dr Juckes’s comment in #52 stand, along with my reasoning in various posts, deleted and undeleted.
The reality is that science isn’t the only goal. Some people are trying to earn a living from their interest in science. Ignoring this, and deleting every post that points this out is simply burying your head in the sand.
>> do you find any flaws in Mr.Petes (3a) and (3b) options?
Armand, Yes, I do, as I said in a post that was deleted. If I were an editor, I would craft a policy that satisfies the correct goal: verifying the result. Therefore, if the data were made available for that purpose only, it would satisfy the goal of providing articles with replicable results. Based on this, all someone could do is report “yes, I confirmed the results” or “no, I could not replicate the results”. They could not publish graphs of the data, as Steve M has done, and which he apparently expects Dr Juckes to do.
However, item 3 is invalid, since he says “In reality, I find no restrictions on its use but only on its publication.” This ignores the legitimate IP rights that the owners have, and which are specified on Dr Juckes web site, and which he indicates in #52. Pretending that there is no such thing as IP rights is intellectually dishonest, as Dr Juckes says in #52.
The whole context of this article is a comparison to R rated movies, which so completely misses the point, that it’s amazing. And for the response to be deletion of all posts that defend Dr Juckes really, really confirms the “petty” criticism.
Juckes #52 was fully responded to. I am aware that Moberg et al used the Indigirka without permission. To my knowledge, in order to comply with Nature’s policies, Moberg worked out some sort of deal with Sidorova to permit him to re-distribute the data under which he could do so and thereby try to bring himself into compliance with Nature’s policies. It looks like Moberg moved the pea under the thimble a little with Nature in the Corrigendum as the rider that Moberg attached to the Indigirka data appears inconsistent with Nature policy.
Nature’s policies say:
They don’t permit authors to publish in Nature and hoard their data. Gunnar’s concept of what editors should do – release data for yes-no verification – is not Nature’s policies. Nature requires that data be available for use.
The underlying problem arises from Moberg’s tort in breaching confidentiality and his subsequent efforts to have things both ways. If Moberg wished to honor his confidence agreement and was thereby unable to comply with Nature’s data policies, one option was to withdraw the article. Unpleasant perhaps, but it was an option that was available to him. On the other hand, if Moberg decided that he wanted to keep the article and the benefits and prestige of a Nature publication and take his chances with the Russians, then the Russians would presumably have a cause of action against Moberg for whatever damages they might have suffered through his tort (the economic interests that Gunnar talks about.) But that’s their claim against Moberg. What Moberg can’t do is have the privileges of a Nature article without the obligations – one of which is making the data publicly available. Torts often make difficult situations and that’s what we have here.
The issue for Juckes is quite different: interesting as the Moberg predicament may be, there is nothing in the actual restrictions that “restricted” Juckes from using the Indigirka data in his composite or from carrying out the sensitivity analysis that I carried out or on reporting on the sensitivity results. USe of the data may not be “unrestricted” and the data may not be “open access”, but the restrictions turn out to be limited to the publication of the data and do not prevent its use in a composite (as was done in Moberg et al ) and which could have been by Juckes. Furthermore, if Juckes thought (incorrectly in my opinion) that Moberg’s rider prevented him from doing these analyses, he had an obligation to file a complaint with Nature and, given Moberg’s conflict of interest, to request that Moberg not be a coauthor.
Steve, confidentiality is NOT an IP issue. Therefore, your point is a straw man. The owners IP rights are not terminated by one alleged infraction. They still apply to you and Dr Juckes. You are still pretending that IP rights don’t exist, or your too stubborn to admit you are wrong in this post. Again, Nature’s policy is irrelevant, since they do not affect the russians IP rights. If Moberg used someone else’s IP without permission, the owners could sue Nature. It’s very likely that Moberg signed an indemnification clause, so Moberg would have to pay for Nature’s defense in the suit.
Steve: Gunnar, this is absurd and you continue to miss every point. You’re wasting my time and everyone else’s. If it is impossible for Moberg to observe Sidorova’s IP and comply with Nature’s policies, then he can and should withdraw the article. That’s an alternative for him. Nature presumably believes that Moberg sorted things out with the Russians – hence the Corrigendum. There’s no way that Nature would get involved with an indemnification agreement with Moberg – your comments are ridiculous.
Rading further down the NAture data policy, it says:
Obviously Moberg breached that condition at the time of publication. The Corrigendum did not state that “any restrictions” would apply to data only that it could be obtained from Moberg. If the Corrigendum were to be consistent with the actual rider, then Moberg was obligated to insert the rider in the Corrigendum.
Gunnar:
I don’t understand your endorsement of Juckes in #52, where he accuses Steve of being “blatantly dishonest.” Even if one accepts your position on the relevant IP issues, Steve would be merely “wrong” or “misinformed.”
It seems that Juckes made no effort to use the Indigirka data, and given the manner in which it would have affected the results, I find it rather hard to believe that Martin Juckes sat in his office thinking “darn, I only I could have used the Indigirka series…”
And if you’re right on the IP stuff, I gather Steve will be hearing from some Russian lawyers soon.
Dumb question, but why would the Indigirka data be restricted and the Taymir data not be?
What does “restrictions on redistribution” mean? Too vague.
If “Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data” uses charts and graphs utilizing the data at all, is that what is meant by the material having been “inadvertently used without the appropriate permissions?” Why give it to Moberg then? Or did including any of the data at all in the work violate “the permissions”? Or was there raw data in the Letter, was that it??
What are the “appropriate permissions” and what exactly was it “inadvertantly used” for?
Now wait, if I can get it from Moberg, but he doesn’t have it where you can just grab it, is that “publicly available” or isn’t it? If it’s been in more than one Letter, “unpublished data” or not? Published meaning what, the raw stuff? Included in a graph with a bunch of others? Part of a combined data set used for charting?
We don’t even know what anyone’s saying. “Then the authors of the Moberg et al. paper therefore ask the user of this file not to publish these data anywhere, neither in printed nor in electronic form.” What does that mean? Is what the authors are asking (whatever it is they’re actually asking) does that match the original terms? Without that being known, we end up with these pointless arguments about minutia and levels of degrees.
Look at that.
“The user of this file” Using it how? For what? In what way?
“publish these data” The data itself? Any derivative of it?
“publish” meaning what, the file? Combined data set chart in a study? A spreadsheet using it?
Why not just say what it is and can be used for?
“This material, and anything derived from it, with it, or by it, can not be published in any way, shape or form, for any reason, anywhere, ever. You can only look at it yourself.”
or
“Do not give anyone else the file or publish its contents, but otherwise use the data for anything you want.”
And not a clear answer from Moberg or Juckes M, from the people that originally restricted it, from the time they did it.
Perhaps somebody can quote what exactly Sidorova OV and Naurzbaev MM told Moberg A were the restrictions on redistribution of Indigirka river region (series G) data? A direct listing of what was said when the data was handed over. What their terms were originally are the only important thing, not what Moberg or Nature. That’s a different issue, as is why Juckes didn’t use it. Please, one thing at a time.
So here’s our first question:
Sidorova OV and Naurzbaev MM, what specifically did they tell Moberg A were the exact restrictions on redistribution of Indigirka river region (series G) data when it was given over, and how did they define the meaning of redistribution?
This whole argument seems to be about technicalities when Steve Mcs real point in this thread was that Dr Juckes looked for an excuse to come to a predetermined outcome. Dr. Juckes may have a technical point about using someone elses data but it does not excuse him from mentioning the Bristlecone Pine or Russian data as potential uncertainties (or at least amending his paper to include such). Given that he was CLEARLY evasive to my question about that issue, it tells me that either he has something to hide (he set things up to come a result he wanted) or that he is trying to avoid admitting that he made a mistake.
Steve: Kristen, he did mention bristlecones, but his comments are self-serving and inaccurate.
Gunnar
I’m sorry but your posts on IPR are irrelevant in my opinion and are only meant to serve as a distraction to the main point of this thread and the previous threads on this topic. Namely that the Juckes report is fundamentally flawed and has been ‘push through’ by members of the euro-HT inorder to provide support for the now equally flawed ‘hockey-stick’.
Sadly Steve M has removed my previous post in which I hopefully made clear Juckes motivation in regard to authoring (and with help of fellow euro-HT members publishing) this report. While I know this is against blog policy I sincerely hope that Steve M lets my second post here stand.
Martyn Juckes is a member of the UK Green Party and has stood (unsuccessfully) for election as a councillor in Oxfordshire on several occasions. To date he has not been elected. Since he is an ‘atmospheric physicist’ employed at the UK tax payers (including therfore my own) expense at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, I can think of no other reason why at this stage in his carrer he should be involving himself as the author of such a clearly flawed report on proxy temperature re-constructions other than for eco-politically motivated reasons. perhaps he feels that by increasing his standing within the Green Party by being involved in this report he made be selected to stand for election in a somewhat better ward?
As a UK taxpayer I strongly object to this clear mis-use of my hard earned taxes for eco-political purposes. The fact that the paper is clearly flawed and is of little or no scientific value to the current debate on global climate change just adds further insult to injury.
Regards
KevinUK
“either he has something to hide (he set things up to come a result he wanted) or that he is trying to avoid admitting that he made a mistake.”
Kristen,
You may be correct but there aren’t enough facts on the table to justify the accusations. Perhaps it is only embarassment over error that is involved – one professional not wishing to draw attention to another’s action. I’ve found reading minds to be extraordinarily difficult regarding motive.
Rick Ballard # 133,
Your point is included in my statement “or that he is trying to avoid admitting that he made a mistake.
Is there any way to preserve index numbers when intervening entries have been snipped? How about showing comment numbers instead?
Rather than speculate further, I’ve written to Moberg as follows asking him to explain the precise meaning of his rider:
[snip =legal]
This is the issue: What are the restrictions and what are they on? We don’t know what conditions the Russian scientists put on the data, do we? What are they trying to enforce? What’s okay with them? What did they tell Moberg? What did they expect he was going to do with the data (or anyone else using it)?
Is this simply a person stuck between some exclusive written contract (or basic law for a database between a Russian and somebody from England, or professional courtesy, or whatever, it’s immaterial) and Nature’s data disclosure policy — who was lucky to have scientists either unwilling or unable to enforce their rights? (whatever they are, it’s immaterial)
Or is this simply a person who was given data to produce charts that the owners gladly told him he could use the data in charts as long as he didn’t publicially publish (which could mean a book or an FTP server or both or neither) the underlying data file?
Or did they even ever really have any kind of an issue with it anyway? Do they even care?
So heres our first question:
Sidorova OV and Naurzbaev MM, what specifically did they tell Moberg A were the exact restrictions on redistribution of Indigirka river region (series G) data when it was given over, and how did they define the meaning of redistribution?
Did Juckes ask this question? Did Nature ask this question? Did Moberg ask this question? As far as we know, Juckes is hiding behind this to exclude inconvenient proxy data. Or maybe he believes it’s immoral and/or illegal to use it. Did he ask? Or maybe even he never thought to ask. Or didn’t want to ask. Or asked and got shot down. I don’t know. I don’t care. He seems evasive about the entire matter, to me at least, but whatever.
So the issue is, did Juckes try and ask Sidorova and Naurzbaev if he could use the data, for completeness, regardless of their deal with Moberg? What was their take on the use of their data? Was he even interested in finding out, or in using their data at all anyway? Did he ask Moberg what they told him?
If you don’t want your data used by other scientist, then why publish a graph?
For my first peer reviewed paper, I digitised a graph from Marlies Teichmüller, I sent her my paper. I received a cordial letter, thanking me for using her data, accompanied with five of her monographs.
Re: #132
Each index number has a permanent link number assigned to it (permalink). If you right click the index number and select copy link location, you can use the URL directly or create a link to the note that will always go there as long as the post has not been deleted or moved to a different thread. If you look at the URL, there is both a page number referring to the thread and a comment number. The comment number doesn’t change, but the page number will change if the post is moved to another thread.
I have only one question, and Steve can snip this — what is the valuation of the Indirka tree ring right that would sustain an IP claim? In short, what’s the copyright, patent or other IP restriction protecting? Why should a court care about it, considering that the only purpose for IP protection is to promote innovation and transfer of information and products into the public domain? Silly question, but usually in laws involving civil damages you have to demonstrate a tangible harm.
In this context, copyright law is a red herring.
The only questions that are germane here are: does Juckes et al’s paper represent good, complete science and are its conclusions consistent with all known data on the subject.
[snip]
S and N have pre-published at least one paper that was water marked. That may have been the cases here, citing and unpublished or pre- as in not ready for publication paper.
That is what is confusing me about Indigirka versus Taymir. S and N seem to have originated both of these data sets and the other two they used were attributed to colleges in the very nice paper they wrote ( I like short and sweet). Juckes using Taymir and not Indigirka is puzzeling.
This is all very frustrating. Legal stuff asside, can someone of a stats background please comment on the validity of the issues that Willis has mentioned (Jean S, perhaps?). Alternatively, I suppose this has been discussed at lenght already…could someone offer a link to a previous thread if available? I would prefer that Juckes respond in more detail…but it appears that is not going to happen.
[snip of legal discussion]
And, no, I ask a lot of rhetorical questions that are what the discussion is about. Did Juckes check into the ability to use the data, and if so, did he make up an excuse to not use it for some reason.
So I’ll say this again, the very simple issue working from the bottom to the top and cutting out all the clutter:
Did Juckes try and ask Sidorova and Naurzbaev if he could use the data, for completeness, regardless of (or in spite of) their deal with Moberg? What was their take on the use of their data? Was he even interested in finding out, or in using their data at all anyway? If they were unavailable or he didn’t have their contact info, did he ask Moberg what they told him so he could at least here it second hand?
I hope you get your answer from Moberg, Steve.
I’ve edited the text slightly to explain that, in case people were confused (which I doubt)that the issues are not salacious at all and have nothing to do with XXX-rated tree ring data. They have to do with whether Nature policies that require data to be publicly available apply to the Team and whether the very weak rider attached to Mobergs dissemination of the Indigirka data prevented Juckes from including the Indigirka series in his composite.
“Juckes using Taymir and not Indigirka is puzzeling.”
captdallas2,
Take a look at the table at the bottom right of this poster (prepared by the Russian team) for a comparison of the two. The last three centuries of the Indigirka series are the most interesting (to me anyway). No blade on that hockey stick. Crooked handle to boot.
ref; 143 I saw that. I also saw that the Yamil (?) was a better cherry. The Peruvian Ice core selected was middle of the road as well. What is missing is realistic evaluation before selection or use them all damn it.
RE 137. clever queries grasshopper.
There is no commercial value. None. NADA. ZIP. This data is worth less than
the toy in a cracker jack box horded by a beer bong besotted berkely bohemian.
Open a tree ring data stand in Venice beach if you think you cant sell it!
“I got your early morning wood here! come and get your late wood density.”
[snip]
Steve Mc: The value for academics is presumably measured in citations. Lauritzen parlayed Moberg’s mis-step into being added as co-author in the Corrigendum and now has a Nature co-authorship. Nature appears to have agreed to hold their nose on requiring substantial contribution. You’d think that Moberg would have offered the same deal like that for Sidorova and Naurzbaev. I wonder what happened.
interesting pdf
Click to access T3-016.pdf
ref 146 Hans that statement would have been true even if the Indigirka data set had been omitted. Which brings me back to my previously snipped comment that tree rings are not a valuable temperature proxy unless many other tree growth influences are considered first. The sub-arctic is a better location for tree ring proxies than most because of fairly stable alternate growth factors. The Sierra Nevadas have factors that make trees in that area questionable proxies.
RE 145. SteveMc this whole thing sickens me. Had Moberg tried to impose his restrictions
on me, I would have gone Houdini on him and freed the data. That’s my ethic. I respect that you honored
his fatuous claims.
I did want to point out that everyone involved in this (Nature, this blog, Juckes, Mosberg, Sidorova and Naurzbaef) is not in the United States. So discussions about the U.S. in this are meaningless.
Steve Geiger, your mention of the previous questions/answers and your other comments on the details of the issues:
I don’t understand all of the details of the issues related to the questions about Juckes et al (for example, I am not qualified to comment on what “Durbin-Watson” means to this all, pro or con) but what I do get about it tells me that I do know that Willis, Jean S, Hans and Steve McI know what they’re talking about. When they ask pressing detailed questions, and get hand waving and non-answers, evasionary tactics, and the like… I don’t distrust them about it, but the other party(s)…. Just take a read of the questions asked just in this thread, and see which ones were answered and how. And what was ignored.
Threads:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1230
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2105
I’m guessing he hasn’t been over there to participate. Perhaps I’m in error.
Now back to this thread. I’ll try to summarize it for a while before I get sick of it and quit. I’ll be paraphrasing sometimes.
Did Dr. Juckes come in here to answer any of the questions in those threads (or this one for that matter) in a way that would satisfy anyone? No, it does not seem so. He calls this post blatantly dishonest. (At least he understood when Hans fired back with something similar in retaliation, that all contribs are independent (telling that to DaveR), and asked Hans what he meant.) Hans then pointed him to a thread with all the questions. Plenty of opportunity to answer them.
But the greater issue in the first response is that “Sidorova and Naurzbaefv are responsible for the restrictions on redistribution” And what are those, exactly, Dr. Juckes? What was their response to you on the openness of the Indigirka data? May we see the communications?
Then Willis points out what Dr. Goosse told him about the answers would be answered adequately, and the response is ‘sorry you didn’t like the answers, what don’t you like about them, what do you think is puerile’. Given that reading those other two posts above made my head hurt with the level of detail, I don’t think somebody that has any doubt about what Willis’ issues are, but instead asks questions back as Dr. Juckes did (rather than answering them): they are not going to be very helpful.
Jean S points out the other topic / link, and then we get the very curious post by Dr. Juckes: “New readers?”
What is there to not understand about this simple linking back to things that have been gone over already as an answer to why somebody wouldn’t like the answers?!
Hans gives a very short non-technical summary, which is answered by:
(1) A blanket statement about the debate over Wegman and bristlecones
(2) A “blame it on Moberg” with some vague statement
(3) The famous “read the paper” (also a circular answer given the question is about the paper!)
(4) I don’t even get this one, um something like “How does your non-recognized statistical technique of selecting a large number of series out of your personal preferences indicated non-robustness”. Um, if you start varying random series and start getting all sorts of goofy answers, what else is it but non-robust? I think even I understand that.
Obviously Dr. Juckes does not agree that “clearly [Dr. Juckes] did not have the time to read Willis questions before answering at CoP” As Jean S later mentions, Dr. Juckes seems to be basicially the only person that doesn’t agree that he didn’t read it.
Now we get a complaint about Jonde wondering if Dr. Juckes is a fake name for a troll and what would be in it for the real Dr. to show up now (clearly a rhetorical technique given Dr. Juckes’ earlier “all the contributors to this site are independent aren’t they?” comment to DaveR) (The later a few posts down appology is pretty lame “Oh, I thought you wre someone else”)
Now we have the answers to Kristen. Let’s see how this compares to the ones to Hans’
(1) Read Wegman’s report
(2) Read Moberg and ask Sidorova and Naurzbaev
(3) Read the paper
(4) Gibberish. WTF kinda answer is that? Hans says it well – A robust method is independent of proxy selection. In plain English, “different data giving different results” means that they don’t match each other. Mutual predictors not matching.
Summary over, at this point, the circular logic, misdirections, selective responses to selective questions and the like make it pretty much impossible to come to any kind of conclusion. (Seems a rather often occurance with visitors from the team, doesn’t it?) And of course the meaningless discussion on the nuances of a subject where we have no idea how the primaries feel, about so are mere guesses that don’t apply. Really, by now, nobody’s probably having the same conversation.
As far as the desire to have #52 answered, maybe if we had gotten some answers rather than more questions, “Sorry” and misdirections, like asking why nobody’s answering your charge of “blatent dishonesty”. You had the answer the next post, and it was:
“Coming in here and calling Steve and this post ‘blatently dishonest’ instead of answering the questions already asked of you start handwaving about how Sidorova and Naurzbaev restrict (HOW?) redistribution (IN WHAT WAY?) of this data (IN WHAT FORM), beginning with a confrontational and misdirecting statement about this post, and the implied ad hom against Steve’s honesty by proxy. This is disgraceful. Your actions and behavior are painting a picture, and it’s not a pretty one. Since you started mean, I’m serving you some back — if you want to talk, be civil or I’ll act like you.”
Heck, this entire thread is an answer. I’ll simplify. Saying “the data is not available” is not true. Saying “Mosberg asks the data not be published” is true. Beyond that, Sidorova and Naurzbaev? I have no idea. Again, perhaps you can share the responses from Sidorova and Naurzbaev to you on this matter.
And surprisingly enough, no more answers or contact so far; another typical thing, come over, wrap everything around the axle through a variety of interesting techniques, leave, and rarely if ever come back. Perhaps we simple overwhelmed the good Dr. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure he’ll be back to clean up any misunderstandings.
Short version:
I find it difficult to believe anyone is aware of this post and not the other two, but it’s possible. So is that the non-answers here and elsewhere are a misunderstanding and are not on purpose. I might be able to fly to the moon on my super-powers one day also, who knows.
As far as the rest, saying the data is not available is not true. Saying Mosberg asks the data not be published is true. Beyond that, Sidorova and Naurzbaev? I have no idea. What
“‘not publishing’ ‘the data'” means, I have no idea. Perhaps we’ll able to see the statements or responses from Sidorova and Naurzbaev on this matter. Until then, well.
Re: 133
Steve M
Bit harsh snipping all my entries. My first postings substantially made several of the arguments you make in your posting #99 [having come home from the cottage].
My sense is that at this stage, until you get an answer to your query to Moberg, we’re all spinning wheels here and getting lost in an interminable and increasingly nonsensical merry-go-round.
Maybe time to move on to something more useful.
tetris, if your posts are getting snipped, I’d suggest that you are violating the general blog policies regarding staying on topic, avoiding over the top abuse and accusations, staying scientific, and things like that.
Now, I don’t like the fact that Steve has to snip folks here, but I’m glad he does. My experience is that he does so with a light hand, and allows a lot of stuff that I might snip were I in his place.
In any case, I’m sure that you are well aware of whatever it is that you are doing that causes your posts to get snipped. So, at this point you have a choice:
1) Avoid the bad behavior, and continue to post here. That’s my preferred solution. Or …
2) Post on another blog where the rules are different, or …
3) Start your own blog, and snip whoever you want to snip.
It’s up to you. But posting here and bitching because you’re getting snipped doesn’t work. You want to post here, just play by the rules. They’re the same as the rules on any blog, which are bozo simple the owner of the blog can snip whatever he/she wants to snip.
All the best, and I hope you continue to post here.
In friendship,
w.
PS Unlike say RealClimate or the so-called “Open Mind”, my experience here is that posts with significant scientific content, or serious scientific questions, are never snipped. Would that all climate science blogs were so honest …
Willis,
Have you run the data Juckes used according to the principles that are outlined in your questions? I’m pretty sure that I will never understand statistics enough to follow your questions but I believe I could follow an argument based upon “Y method is superior because [insert rationale] and provides answer X, in distinct contrast to Juckes answer K”.
Willis,
Sorry. I missed 100.
Willis. Hat tips to you.
The reviewer comments submitted by Willis Eschenbach et al regarding the MITRIE paper are here. It is a clear and well reasoned set of issues and questions.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=894#comment-74408
Some useful definitions. (And fine example of a clear answer).
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=894#comment-75445
Darn should have said Juckes (not MITRIE).
Au contraire – the conclusion is inescapable: Professor Juckes played his cargo-cult debating game here in the same way and for the same reasons that Dr. Hanson plays his cargo-cult science game: Go through the motions w/out the slightest intention of actually clarifying anything. Motivic speculation is churlish, I agree, but the only one that fits here is that Juckes can limp back to the bench, chin held nobly high, and tell his cheerleaders that he slugged it out in hostile territory. No one at CA was fooled (well, except for that poor naif who thought that tenths-of-a-degree temperature differences were insignificant, or petty, or something).
I hope that Steve and Willis and others keep playing by the rules and documenting the sloppy research that passes for science among too many Climatologists, but I also believe most everyone here understands that no direct answers will be gotten from Juckes, et al, and that the IP issue is a cherry-red herring. Paleoclimatology may be a shakey discipline at this point, but it holds promise. Not so, dendrothermography, which is a total shell-game. There are too many unknowns; it doesn’t take a scientist or statistician to figure that out.
Therefore, Juckes, Mann, ea al, must obfuscate. An entire pseudo-discipline depends on it. What do we expect – that they will all pack it in and go back to school for an M.SW or Juris Dr.?
Re:
Thanks, DeWitt
PaddickJ: You might be mistaking my unwillingness to directly accuse anyone of anything, or otherwise acting as if I’m a mind reader, for myself not drawing the conclusions my rhetorical questions bring up. My comment on “impossible to come to come to any kind of conclusion” is more a comment on the conclusions being rather, at least to me, obvious to anyone paying attention. I don’t think I need to spell anything out, so I try not to. I can’t think for anyone else, so I don’t. 😀 Well usually. Except when I make the point that conjecture is meaningless, when the viewpoint of the principles, or the conclusions drawn by secondary sources, are not questioned nor adequately explained, perhaps. 🙂
The five things I’d say are:
1) This is hardly “hostile territory” (perhaps unless you consider not taking gruff, being direct, or asking about specifics as being hostile).
2) You don’t need to read minds to draw conclusions about people’s actions, and let others come to their own conclusions at the same time.
3) I’m not qualified to make subjective or objective judgements about dendro vs paleo, but I can see how the participants hold themselves.
4) I have enough experience with CIS, business, organizations and behavior to know when an answer is not one.
5) .6 C over 130 years in a system too complex to explain (or agree upon) in multiple blogs, papers, dictionary entries and so on, well, you speak of unknowns, and this is one of them. A quick look at RC in the coments about “freeing the code” on various topics is enough to tell that. We can’t even agree on the worth of releasing algorithms it seems.
This is the best, most open, and most honest blog there is, as far as I’m concerned, and Steve does a great job keeping it fair. I don’t think anyone with any objective viewpoint could really effectivly argue that. Although I’m sure somebody might try! ;0
Willis: If I post, and Steve snips me, I don’t even care if he doesn’t mention it. Although I do understand why as an example, people can see what he leaves in my posts. And I appreciate that. I have some skills at parsing what’s written, and I don’t think that “Steve McIntyre reserves the right to remove inappropriate comments without warning.” is all that difficult to understand.
tetris: It happens to all of us. I’ve actually deleted many of my own paragraphs knowing they wouldn’t fly, or leaving in others knowing they and what I was answering would probably get snipped. Or gone back and thought “what the heck was I trying to say” and deleted or re-wrote.
Summary summarized:
Answers to Hans:
(1) Wegman doesn’t explain bristlecones one way or the other, if at all. Read his report, there is no correlation.
(2) Blame it on Moberg, read his paper, see what he said.
(3) Read our paper, it explains itself quite well.
(4) Getting different answers to random sets of data isn’t that strange and it doesn’t mean anything. You don’t understand the subject, do you?
Answers to Kristen:
(1) Read Wegmans report.
(2) Read Moberg, and ask Sidorova and Naurzbaev for more.
(3) Read our paper, it’s in there.
(4) Are you retracting your claim that picking differnt groups of proxies and them not matching means something? You don’t understand the subject, do you?
“it is not available for unrestricted use.”
That obviously means you can’t get it unrestricted. What does that mean?
Just in case anyone thought I don’t know what “unrestricted” vs “available” means, here’s some brain teasers.
You can’t read it while you’re in the bathtub? You have to ask for it by email? You can’t use it in any of your work? You have to go to Russia and ask to see the tree rings? You have to carry all the heavy eqipment with you to get it yourself and double-check it, and then verify the r^2 before you can use it? You have to be a co-author before it’s available for more than auditing it yourself? You have to pay $30 to get the Letter before you can use the data? You can’t email the database to your friend without permission? You have to wear two left shoes while reading it? You have to give the primary researchers credit in anything you “publish” that the data is used in? You can only use it if it’s printed on paper and you hand-draw the graphs? Don’t post the file or provide it until asked? Find out for what the end-user is going to use it? Promise not to give it to {politician x} or [newsreporter y}?
Sorry I keep harping on this, but it’s easy to solve.
“When we were given the data for our work, we were told by the scientists that gathered the data and have the copyright on it…”
The answer is not “Can you please elaborate further on what you mean by the phrase ‘publicly available OR available promptly on request’ in a 300 page peer-reviewed paper that fully explains the octal numbering system and how it correlates to both binary and hexadecimal? Then we would be more than happy to ask you 20 or 30 more questions to fully be able to understand how this relates to methane’s bond angles being 109.5 degrees and how burning one molecule of methane in the presence of oxygen releases one molecule of CO2 and two molecules of H2O, and the relative forcing of our proxies in relation to that and how tree rings show the levels of sulphates 100 miles away 8,000 years ago? We think that’s what you’re asking for, but we’re not sure because you are not being clear in what you want, and it’s obviously all your fault for not asking the correct questions. Please advise.”
I am simply perplexed what the import is of the secrecy or use of the Indigirka river region data is, and why it’s seemingly so difficult to find out what exactly were the conditions Sidorova and Naurzbaev put upon Mosberg. I wouldn’t think it should be so difficult, although seemingly, obviously it is…. It would almost seem to be prima facie evidence something untoward is going on.
—
On a totally unrelated matter (US FOIA for NOAA web page) http://www.rdc.noaa.gov/~foia/index.html
re 160
1) I think he does, bristlecones don’t correlate with local temperature, therefore are invalid as temperature proxy.
2) If a graph is published then the data is published, if you don’t want people to use your data, then don’t
publish. But don’t say it’s your own data, do acknowledge the source, do sent the source author a copy of your paper, otherwise it’s plagiarism.
3) That’s a Dano-esk reply, it doesn’t work that way, do you have a “linky” and a quote?
4) If a reconstruction is robust, it is insensitive to data selection: take a look a central European temperature
history for an example of a robust reconstruction.
I also let Hansen use my version of the Hohenpeissenberg data, without restrictions.
Sam Urbinto, thanks for your comments. Inter alia, you say:
and
From the Wegman Report (emphasis mine):
and
and
and
Now, I’m not sure what you mean by saying that Wegman doesn’t “explain bristlecones”, since he is clear that he believes that they have a temperature curve that is “highly correlated with atmospheric CO2” … but even if that’s not “explaining” bristlecones, Wegman sure does talk about them, and not in a flattering manner …
Further, your claim that Wegman’s advice “is not supported by any data” is simply not true. Wegman cites Graybill and Idso, and Bondi, and the IPCC, as well as providing detailed examples of how the use of bristlecones distorts the results.
My best to everyone,
w.
PS On related note, could we please move away from one sentence questions and one sentence answers? It doesn’t seem to be furthering the discussion. If you have a question, provide details and citations. If you have an answer, provide details and citations. Otherwise, there is a very real and very grave danger that you might be mistaken for Dr. Juckes …
Sorry for a naïve question.
What will happen when restrictions on Sidorova at al data will be lifted?
The part about the restricted data question that really irritates me is the explanation that:
Now, if being available for unrestricted use is really one of their ex ante criteria for inclusion of a proxy, the following proxies should have been excluded, for the following reasons having to do with their availability:
1) Guliya: differs from archived version, bad dating;
2) Dunde: differs from archived version;
3) Dulan: unarchived;
4) S Tibet 112 (12 separate proxies): starts 1100, ends 1950, unarchived;
5) East China: unarchived;
6) Great Ghost Lake: unarchived;
7) Jiaming: ends 1960, unarchived;
8) Jinchuan: ends 1950, unarchived;
9) Japan: ends 1950, unarchived;
10) Tornetrask: differs from archived version;
11) Taimyr: differs from archived version;
None of these are available for use, either restricted use or unrestricted use, because the versions used are not archived. Does tend to restrict a dataset’s use, if you can’t obtain it …
Sometimes, I must confess, I get into a black mood and fear greatly for the future of science … but then I reflect on the existence of this blog, and things don’t look so black. Dark gray, maybe … but at least not black.
My warmest wishes to everyone, and my thanks for the spirit of free scientific inquiry that persists on this site.
w.
Willis, #164 I’m writing something now. My comments were not my viewpoints, but a summary of a summary of paraphrased posts of how the thread converstaion went with Hans/Kristen and Dr. Juckes’ answers.
So effectivly you are ‘proxy’ arguing with me repeating him. Now, you know that is not robust in the presence of bristlecones, nor is it statistically significant 😀
stand by
Sorry about the smiley, the software interprets the number “8” with a parenthesis after it as a smiley 8), and I keep forgetting.
w.
Sorry, Sam, I though that was you talking as you, not channelling Dr. Juckes …
My apologies,
w.
Re#166 at al
Dr. Eschenbach:
Thanks for your posts on this tread.
I hope thousands of readers of this blog share my appreciation.
No problem at all Willis, I wasn’t clear what I was doing, and it is my fault. See here in the meantime, it might explain all:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2153#comment-146663
Or for more enjoyment:
“A man goes to the hospital with severe chest pain, a shooting pain in his left arm, shortness of breath, and when the intern on call listens with a stethoscope she hears a highly irregular heartbeat, typical of heart attack victims. The intern orders an EKG, which shows the classic pattern of heart attack, so she pronounces that hes suffered a major heart attack and orders the appropriate treatment.” (Attributed to Tamino at an RC post, 1934, #590 out of the 620)
Suddenly, an alien grub bursts out of his chest and leaps up to the ceiling, a copy of the Indigirka dataset in its mouth.
Those around try and grab the thing, but it is too fast. They scream “Why do we not know the restrictions on the release of the data!” But it is too late. Sadly, the patient is dead.
The grub twists around and glares at them. “You have not sufficiently explained the effect of well-mixed gasses versus the positive and negative feedbacks in the rest of the climate system!” Leaping back down from the ceiling, it scampers off. (News at 11)
Hans (and Kristen, since I paraphrased the answers to you from Dr. Juckes also)
They are not my own thoughts. I was just trying to paraphrase/summarize Juckes’ answers to you both, and compare and contrast those answers as well. The list of answers is what I parsed, not my answers to you. I have no answers. But I try and make things clear! 🙂
As far as your post’s points, Hans:
1) I don’t know how exactly it’s possile some trees in a local area could compare to anything globally. So I would tend to agree, they are invalid as a temperature proxy. I don’t know enough to make that scientific. I would hope that the lack of any quantifiable data is proof enough.
2) Hoping not to risk going into areas not appreicated, if the data has been used in Letters/Reports/Studies (or even the IPCC…), it’s published. Others using the information should give you credit and send you a copy, certainly. Attribute early and often. (BTW I may not always make it evident when I am quoting or paraphrasing, but I try.)
3) Juckes was not exactly Dano-esk in that response. At least from what I’ve seen on ‘hossenfeffer’. But as far as I see, what Juckes told both you and Kristen was “Read our paper”. That response is hardly a fair one to questions about the paper itself, but as I said, I a) don’t like to be that direct and b) was paraphrasing/summarizing the response to you, not giving one of my own.
4) I can’t agree more. If I can’t show you that some random calculation equals another one, it’s not meaningful. If I can’t prove by demonstration that 4+7=11 and 7+4=11 (or 8+3 or 10+1 or -20+31 is 11) (picking randomly) then what good is my data? That’s like trying 11 base two and not finding it is the same as 3 base eight.
On the rest, letting other people use your data without restriction is a mark of a scientist, as far as I’m concerned. Would Einstein or Newton tell you that he can’t update his proxies because the equipment is too heavy? Or you tell me that you can’t share the information in Douglass Clader 2002 from GRL without explanation? Or Steve refuse to give me a link to Anthony’s site because he wants me to stay here only?
So let me try this again:
My summary of this topic, summarized as to the answers by Martin to Kristen and Hans on their questions to him, as I gave in my long post that was at some point #149 (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2153#comment-146663)
Summary [of answers by Juckes to the following two people] summarized:
[His] Answers to Hans:
(1) Wegman doesnt explain bristlecones one way or the other, if at all. Read his report, there is no correlation.
(2) Blame it on Moberg, read his paper, see what he said.
(3) Read our paper, it explains itself quite well.
(4) Getting different answers to random sets of data isnt that strange and it doesnt mean anything. You dont understand the subject, do you?
[His] Answers to Kristen:
(1) Read Wegmans report.
(2) Read Moberg, and ask Sidorova and Naurzbaev for more.
(3) Read our paper, its in there.
(4) Are you retracting your claim that picking differnt groups of proxies and them not matching means something? You dont understand the subject, do you?
—————–
Combined and further distilled:
(1) Read the report.
(2) Read the paper.
(3) Read our paper.
(4) We explained that, and you’re an idiot for even asking.
———-
The one FLA answer:
RTFM
———–
This link is up and down: http://mitrie.badc.rl.ac.uk/ Notice the main graphic on the site? Notice the blending of two types of data? Notice that the scale is pushed up by the margin? Notice the link to M & M 2005 from E & E as a main link for “an error”?
Millennial Temperature Reconstruction Intercomparison and Evaluation (MITRIE)
BTW, FYI, JIC; TLA fest: As soon as I find out how to live 1000 years, and why I should therefore care about millennial temperatures, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.
——————————
Ref: Hans’ summary in #64, edited (heavily):
The Wegman committee advised not to use bristlecone pine data. You must now refute the committee’s decision, not some other issue involving bristlecone pine data. Or you can continue to mix up multiple issues as if they are one. We expect a 5 page essay on why your choice involved which, and for what reason.
The Indigirka dataset was available for research, regardless if the specific results were available one way or the other. Whom did you contact about this, and please provide copies of communications.
For North Siberia, an updated dataset is available. Please explain why anything but the latest dataset, but for time or other considerations, was not used.
When omitting the bristlecones and using Indigirka and the updated Northern Siberia set, the result is vastly different from Juckes, demonstating that the Juckes et al method is not robust, which was claimed in the paper. Please show how no bristleone pines, the Indigirka dataset and the updated Northern Siberia set give different results than your paper. If you are unable to, please explain why in a manner acceptable to at least 10 people, none of whom have personal or professional connections with you.
For confused readers: both Hans and Willis got “caught” by Sam’s summary of Dr. Juckes’ responses, emulating Dr. Juckes’ style.
Personally, I love both Hans and Willis’ clear responses!
CA is such a great community 🙂
Whoops – overlapped Sam’s response. Wow! This is great — Sam, you’re a budding comic science writer 🙂 I can’t wait to see what “formal” scientific interactions will look like in 20 years. So much more fun, and if CA is ultimately successful, so much more scientific.
For some reason, this reminds me of a fun presentation I saw a while back. The treasurer livened up the board meeting by avoiding PowerPoint in favor of PenPoint… scribbling graphs onto overhead transparencies, he acrobatically spun them onto the display, slid them off to the left and right, and in a final creative flourish, slowly lowered one onto the light platform so it went from “blur” to “sharp” — an effect never seen in PowerPoint. The audience cheered… the data was all there in its glory, but it sure was more fun to see it that way!
Steve says in an addendum to a Mosh Pit post:
In that case to maximize value it would be:
May use with attribution. i.e. a Copy Left type restriction.
Under that type of restriction there should be no problem with distribution. In fact the more distribution the higher the value. Just like it is supposed to be in real science. In fact if that is the case the authors of the original data should have an action for NOT making the data available.
My apologies if this was covered down thread from where I picked it up. Some times I can’t restrain myself. I blame the schizophrenia.
I received the following courteous reply from Anders Moberg, although the main questions were not answered clearly.
I’m still not clear as to the scope of what Moberg is requesting users: whether it is simply not posting the digital data or whether he is asking users to “boycott” the data (i.e. totally refrain from using in any way) until it is archived by the originators? So I sent him the following:
If Moberg is, in effect, asking the paleoclimate community to refrain from the use of “grey” versions of data if it has not been archived by the originator, I’m all right with that. However it should be recognized that use of “grey” versions in proxy collections without restriction has considerable precedent: MBH (to a lesser extent, Mann and Jones 2003) is full of grey versions, often inconsistent with archived versions (see MM2003). Mann defended this practice. Mann archived grey versions of data. Crowley didn’t even remember where he got some CL2000 data.
Consider the Yang composite used by Moberg – about which Willis has recently posted. Nearly all the data is unarchived. For the Thompson Guliya and Dunde series, Yang used grey versions of Thompson data that are nowhere archived, versions inconsistent with other versions. Moberg cited Hantemirov and Shiyatov for the Yamal series, but used a version by Briffa that is inconsistent with the version of the originator. So it will be interesting to see what he says.
Maybe it’s semantics, but if they are developing a “revised version,” why would they permit an incorrect and obsolete version to be used in the first place?
Maybe he meant to say “updated version,” as in adding more recent years.
In the spirit of the Mosh Pit:
Is the Juckes Box blowing a fuse?
It seems that what he’s saying is something like, “They said I could use the data in my study, but…”, either (a) “I didn’t ask them whether I could publish it,” or (b,) “When I asked whether it would be OK to publish, they declined.”
“So, as a matter of courtesy to those who allowed me to use it in my study, but requested that I not publish it, I – in turn – ask people not to publish it.”
RE 177. That’s a good one M. I will steal it and pretend that I said it.
Anders Moberg has promptly replied to my email as follows:
My A),B and C) were as follows:
A) using the data in a larger composite even if the composite does not show the Indigirka data separately.
B) showing a graphic of the data;
C) discussing the impact of inclusion or exclusion of the data in a larger composite
Thus, Moberg agrees entirely with my view that the very limited rider attached to the data did not entail any restrictions on its use other than not archiving the digital version. Note that he (like me) refers to the Nature policies. At this point, we have to assume that any issues with the Russians were resolved and that any user can use this data for all usual analysis purposes.
Of course, you asked a third party for their opinion, not the IP owners. That he is not the IP owner is made clear by
>> At this point, we have to assume that any issues with the Russians were resolved and that any user can use this data for all usual analysis purposes
Why not ask the originators of the data for permission? Not because of law suits, but because honoring IP rights is always the right thing to do.
Steve: Gunnar, once again you are twisting things and raising an irrelevant hobbyhorse. We are not discussing whether we are going to archive the digital version of the Russian data. That’s far down on the list of concerns – anyone who wants it can write Moberg and get it, so there’s no urgency for an additional archive. The only issue is using the data in composites etc, which Moberg says we can do. The appropriate way of recognizing the “IP” for tree ring data is by properly citing the data originator and no one has suggested otherwise.
The issue is not my use of the data – it’s the use by Moberg et al and Juckes et al. They published articles and they’re the ones that are responsible for their decisions, not me.
Moberg, as a coauthor of Juckes et al, stated that he did not believe that any additional permissions were necessary in order to do the relevant analyses. He is not a “third party” as to Juckes et al – he is a coauthor. Moberg is more familiar with his arrangements with the Russians than you, I or Juckes. So if he felt that the analyses were legitimate, on what basis did Juckes have for failing to do the analyses? If Juckes felt uneasy about Moberg’s arrangements with the Russians, he was not entitled to simply ignore the matter. If he inquired of the Russians and they told him that he couldn’t use the data, then that would be one thing. But there’s no evidence that Juckes lifted a finger to contact the Russians or that they told him that he couldn’t use the data. All we know for sure right now is that Moberg felt that Juckes could use the data.
re: #180 Steve,
Noberg, eh? I think you’ve been reading too many articles about arctic ice melting.
re 180
I’ve suggested this before. Since Juckes is unwilling to face the consequences of this and other series on the robustness of his reconstruction, why not write a letter or short correspondence to CP pointing out the deficiencies in his paper. With this publicity, they would have to publish it and Juckes would be compelled to provide a reply that was fully responsive.
steven mosher,
I have a private matter I would like to discuss with you. My contact info is on the sidebar at Power and Control.
Steve Mc, sorry for the OT – if I had another way of doing it I would.
RE 182: Funny I read Norberg as Nordberg and wondered if OJ and Leslie Neilsen
were going to show up.
Seriously, I think it’s been adequately demonstrated that Dr. Juckes took cherry picking
to a new dimension. Excluding the russian series used by Moberg on a pretense. It was easily
remedied by a couple of emails to his colleage and sometimes co-author Moberg. He took
the sword of Open Science and turned it into a shield from data he didn’t like. At the same
time he included series that had practical restrictions on par with the Russian series.
The obligation that a CLimate of the Past author accepts is to produce work that can be
replicated. In one instance, Juckes, omitted a dataset from Moberg, because he determined
that a email to Moberg requesting the data was an onerous inpediment to duplication. On the
other hand, he included handfuls of series that have not been archived.
>> Im not deleting your posts on copyright law because you disagree with me, but because the connection is tangential at best in my opinion
Which is the same as disagreement.
>> We are not discussing whether we are going to archive the digital version of the Russian data.
I say this focus on confidentiality and on Moberg/Nature is your hobbyhorse. Dr Juckes has claimed that the data originators are reserving their IP rights concerning this data. Now, Juckes could be lying or simply mistaken about that, but assuming that he isn’t, you have to deal squarely with the IP issue, and not just pretend it doesn’t exist. One of the most important rights in Copyright is the right to create “derivative works”. Your statement above implies that the only way to violate copyright is to publish the raw data itself. This is a completely mistaken view of copyright.
A and B are “derivative works”, so you cannot assume that you can publish A or B, without asking the owners. Asking a third party is irrelevant. C is always allowed, since that is “fair use”.
This is really Copyright 101, and I’m amazed that you will not deal with the issue squarely.
180
Steve:
Again you have nailed the issue. Juckes does not appear to have a fig leaf left to hide behind. You should declare victory and move on.
Bernie
RE 184. Check your inbox
re#171 “I dont know how exactly its possible some trees in a local area could compare to anything globally. So I would tend to agree, they are invalid as a temperature proxy. I dont know enough to make that scientific. I would hope that the lack of any quantifiable data is proof enough.”
Neither do I. I have a PhD in plant Physiology from Cambridge University. If Juckes, Mann or anyone else who thinks that plant growth is responding to climatic events 100’s, or 1000’s of miles away, rather than to local climatic, events they should send their draft papers to any of the major journals dealing with plant physiology. “Plant Physiology”, Journal of Experimental Botany”, New Phytologist”, Plant, Cell & Environment” etc. spring immediately to mind. I am a reviewer for some of these journals and I, for one, would love to see the evidence.
P.S. Correlations do not prove cause and effect.
RE: 180
The question that remains is if this issues and others brought up on this site concerning the fast and loose way “science” is practiced by some will help change things.
Re: 152 Willis. Thx for your comments.
Re: 160. Sam U. Thx for your comments.
Re: 158. PaddikJ. Couldn’t agree more with your views.
I know Stephen and others are having trouble following this, but lets try going through it really slowly.
We have conditions A,B,C helpfully defined above.
Our study requires a 4th condition, that the data can be published electronically.
Lets call it condition D.
This is the condition advocated near the top of the page by Steven Mosher (#5).
As Stephen has finally come to realise, the Indigirka data does not satisfy condition D.
Concerning Wegman — yes he cites Graybill and Idso, IPCC and Biondi. IPCC and Biondi cite Graybill and Idso. Graybill and Idso have data on orange trees. The one thing that is missing is data on Bristlecone pines showing a CO2 effect.
Dr Juckes, I think the legitimate question to ask you is this:
Irregardless of originator restrictions, C) would always be allowed, since that is fair use. Did you do that, and if so, what did you find?
Re #192, Dr. Juckes, please explain why “condition D” exists.
By whom is this condition imposed, and could it not be satisfied by referring individuals requesting the electronic data to Dr. Moberg under the Nature corrigendum?
RE 192.
There is no requirement that the data “can be published electronically”
Cite it.
There is a requirement that the data be available for replication.
Further, point to the electronic copy of all the data you considered.
Finally, Stipulate that you did not have the Series from Moberg in your possesion. That you
did not request it from him and that he did not supply it.
No, the one thing that is missing is data on Bristlecone pines showing a temperature effect.
Ah, but we have to prove to you that the BCPs have a CO2 effect (and proving it for a closely related tree ain’t enough) whereas you are just allowed to assume a temperature effect (oops, sorry, because an expert took a subjective viewpoint).
BTW you include a note in your paper, assuming the S/N of all series were 2, a value was derived for the expected noise of the reconstruction. What would the expected noise be if, say, one series had a S/N of 2, all but four of the other series had a S/N of 0.1, and three series had an S/N of 0.01?
Climate of the Past does not require that the data be “electronically published” . The requirement
is that the data be publically available. So, a paper copy publically available would suffice.
Smoke signals publically available would suffice. data carved in stone and distributed to people
who wanted it would be publically available.
Finally, the Russian series is “electronically published” It is Published every time Moberg sends
you a copy. It is published electronically every time to look at the chart of the data on a
computer screen.
189, Mann has asserted that for climatic reasons, the Sierras are (in his words) a “sweet spot” for representing the climate over the world. So the claim isn’t that the trees are sensitive to climate far away, the claim is that there’s some magical property of that location that makes is climatically representative of the entire planet. FWIW.
Dr Juckes, if your “condition D” is accepted and applied to Indigirka, you have now proven too much.
As Willis showed, by this measure you should have excluded eleven other series, but did not do so.
Re #198, I think Mann and Hansen should caucus on this topic. On the one hand, the entire surface area of the U.S. is insignificant for determining the global temperature trend, but on the other hand a few trees planted in a tiny spot in the U.S. are?
Sheesh, and anyone wonders why there’s skepticism?
#196 should be “all but four of the series”, not “all but four of the other series”, obviously…
Must remember to proofread when there is no edit key…
163 says:
PS On related note, could we please move away from one sentence questions and one sentence answers? It doesnt seem to be furthering the discussion. If you have a question, provide details and citations. If you have an answer, provide details and citations. Otherwise, there is a very real and very grave danger that you might be mistaken for Dr. Juckes
Could anyone please tell me what the ‘Re-‘ in ‘Past Climate Reconstruction’ possibly stands for?
BTW, for any fans of “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter out there, I think Dr. Jukes is playing the role of the Tortise, hoping everyone here will play Achillies. That is, hoping to catch him in a deadly contradiction, we continually try to meet his conditions but he deftly sidesteps and moves up one level. Thus using his actual statement:
You may indeed show that it can be published electronically, but then he will come back with “Obviously I meant ‘may’ rather than ‘can’.” Where is the permission slip from the original data collectors? And so forth forever.
re 203
The sense of word used in climate reconstruction is in the second sense of the dictionary definition given below. The reason thatr Re is sued is apparent from the definition.
RE 204.
Yes. You can see Juckes pathology clearly in the ‘answers’ he gives.
DSMV CRITERIA 301.81
Ns are the bread and butter of the therapeutic enterprise, not because they so often seek professional helpthey are too impressed with themselves to ever think they have a problembut because they drive so many people around them crazy
Re: #175, 180: Steve, maybe you should consider posting these conclusive outcomes within the head post so that casual observers don’t have to dig deep within this thread to find them.
I think we have a TCO impersonator in the house, whom in my view, like TCO, loves to argue for the sake of argument and tends to argue points without the full context.
On the other hand, we have Dr. Jukes who in my view has put things very much back into context with his replies in this thread and particularly with his latest post that not even a friendly and lawyerly defender will attempt to rescue.
The copyright question truly is a red herring, Gunnar.
Moberg, as part of his publication in Nature, is representing to Nature and the world that he will make the data available on request, for appropriate derivative purposes as described above. It is entirely appropriate to expect that Moberg has been licensed to do so, whether formally or informally.
The validity of Moberg’s license is his issue. Why should we have such a low opinion of Moberg that we assume he is not licensed to do what he is doing? Nature believes him in this; we should too.
There are a variety of commercial circumstances where a licensee is allowed to further sublicense data, according to various terms. Copyright does not even require that the orginal owner be disclosed.
We now have a full disclosure of the wording and licensor’s interpretation regarding use of the Indigirka data. Time to “move on” as they say… 🙂
Why do I get the feeling that this is going to go on until Sidorova and Naurzbaev are both standing in the room, and say “Dr. Moberg has control over the data” or “Dr. Moberg owns the data” or “Dr. Moberg financed our original study” or “the data is free to use and it’s okay with us” or “we don’t care what anyone does as long as they don’t publically archive it” or “we don’t own the data” or “this is under a GPL but we have reserved the right to prohibit publicly archiving it” or even “We just authored it, it’s Russian government work and has been released, and while we appreciate Dr. Moberg’s concern and courtesy, but it wasn’t required and we never asked him. When we gave it to him, we didn’t say anything, because we weren’t concerned about anything. Of course we want other people to do science with our work, why else would we go get data from a bunch of tree rings?” (Of course, that will have to be said with their hands on bibles, and they have to sign affidavits stating it afterwards, as well as bringing birth certificates and passports so their identity can be confirmed. Then somebody is still going to say “McIntyre put you up to it!” )
Back to reality.
I’d say the note in the data says something like this, now that it’s clarified as to meaning and terminology:
‘The Indigirka series has been published, but the data has not been publicly archived. Therefore, we, Moberg et al, the provider of the data in this file, only ask in return for providing it that those using this file not publicly archive it either. The authors behind the series plan to do that when they are ready.’
The data is under no restriction of using it. What proof (or even indication) is there that Dr. Moberg doesn’t have the right to make that determination and tell Steve that? Certainly nobody’s even mentioned the subject, which Dr. Moberg certainly had the opportunity to do, twice. People concerned about something make their concern known.
(I don’t even see a prohibition against giving it to somebody else (“We are the only official source, do not distribute”) in the note, but the courteous and ethical thing (at the least) would be to get from Dr. Moberg of course.)
The problem so far with all this is that “publish” has been used both to describe 1)”putting a work into Nature” or “using in a blog analysis” and 2) “publicly archiving the data”. I don’t know how much clearer it can now be that the restriction is on the second meaning and not the first. We have to be able to “replicate and build upon the authors published claims”. I fail to see how that is under dispute.
The ‘authors behind the Indigirka series’ are no doubt a) aware of Nature’s policies b) in some sort of
contact with Moberg et al. c) aware of what Moberg et al. was going to do with the data d) gave the data to Moberg et al. to use for the Letter in Nature, utilizing, in part, their data. It doesn’t seem they gave any other qualifications or at least nothing’s been said by anyone. There has been no issue with Dr. Moberg doing what he is required to do by Nature; make the data available.
Now, him saying what the note means, which was the issue under contention, it still isn’t enough for some people.
What’s more, the primary source of the data, who is distributing it to all askers in its electronic form, as well as being the originator of the public archival restriction note in the data, has said the data can be used for a) a larger composite regardless if the composite shows the data separately or not b) graphics of the data itself c) discussing including or excluding in a larger composite and the impact of such.
Or as Steve said: “The appropriate way of recognizing the ‘IP’ for tree ring data is by properly citing
the data originator and no one [involved with keeping or using this data in the past] has suggested otherwise.”
Back to the other matter. How long did it take Steve to find out from the custodian “Just don’t publically archive it”. A day?
So, is “the data not available for unrestricted use”? No. It is requested by the provider that the data not be publicly archived, as a courtesy to the authors. The people you get it from ask you don’t archive it. Hardly something that would stop you from creating a paper or Letter or graph with it.
A brief but germane hollywood interlude.
“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could
be considered a rational thought.
Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. ”
Substitute Billy madisons name as you see fit.
I hate it when my formatting gets hosed up…. Forgive the paragraphs too far away above, please.
I think this is the progression, and it is an odd one…
1) The future authors of “Response of Larix Kajanderi to climatic changes at the upper timberline and in the Indigirka River valley” gather data in Russia.
2) They are doing this for themselves and are not working or being paid by somebody to do it. The two are not on a team, they take the samples for themselves.
3) The authors take this data and put it in a database, which they then own.
4) They then take this compilation and produce this Russian Forest Sciences journal article/letter/whatever, so they own that work also.
5) The journal publishes the work (in the literature sense of publish of course) and that keeps the chain of ownership going.
6) Lesovedenie is under MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica which is paired with Pleiades Publishing Inc. which is U.S. based. This gives the work U.S. copyright. Therefore, the Russians now have U.S. protection and can bring action in the U.S. All of this gives U.S. copyright to the data (or collection of data) itself by default as IP. And the authors know this.
7) Sidorova and Naurzbaev provide the data to Dr. Moberg, and since they know they have U.S. copyright on it, don’t tell him anything about their copywritten database since they don’t need to. They have no clue about Nature’s policies. They don’t ask any questions about anything.
8) Dr. Moberg is likewise not aware of Nature’s policies, uses the database and the 2002 work to produce his. Suddenly, he finds out that Nature requires him to provide the data. Sidorova and Naurzbaev don’t read Nature and don’t know that Indigirka River data is used in his work, and never read their reference in Moberg et al. 2005
9) Dr. Moberg has to provide the data to anyone that asks, but so the authors don’t know he’s used their work, provides it with the caveat it can’t be publicly archived, and hopes for the best.
10) There are posts on Mobert et al. [2005] and some discussions on CA.
10) At some point, Steve asks for the data and Dr. Moberg gives it to him, not asking what it’s for or doing anything but having a note in it that’s confusing as to its intent.
11) There is a huge discussion, cross-linked to other blogs, involving many people on the issue of this paper and Juckes et al. [2007]. The underlying issue is on a few threads. A very public discourse on the subject ensues, involving many people even from Nature and associated journals and blogs. Sidorova and Naurzbaev notice none of it, and nobody tells them, even though it’s their speciality and it involves their data.
12) Steve contacts Dr. Moberg asking what the note means, which is unclear on some terminology and says ‘the authors will archive it themselves later as a diversion’ Dr. Moberg answers directly and quickly that it’s mainly a courtesy to the authors, the asking not to freely provide the raw data. It is pretty clear, but not as specific as it could be, to keep the secret from the authors.
13) Steve contacts Dr. Moberg again, and realizing he’s been caught in his subterfuge, tells Steve he can use the data in any way he wants, that the only prohibition is no public archiving, and he agrees with Steve’s assessment of what can be done with the data. This is no doubt to further hide the illegal immoral improper unauthorized use of data.
14) Now we wait for the backlash to hit; it’s only been 5 years since 2002 and 2 years since 2005. Nobody could have found out by now. (shhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone)
So this is what we’re postulating is the sequence of events and meaning of it all?
212. That reads like bad russian fiction
Sam I liked your point 8)
We don’t know that Sidorova et al have expressed any objections one way or another to the archiving of their data in any larger collation. I’ve done a parallel note on Fishers Greenland stack series, which he has never publicly archived; it’s been passed from hand to hand in Team world and Juckes has archived it. But whether anyone along the way had permission from Fisher to do so is unknown and probably didn’t happen. All we “know” right now is that Moberg requested that the data not be publicly archived out of “courtesy” to the Russians. We don’t “know” that the Russians made such a request or that they have objected in any way. I have had no contact with them; all we know is what Moberg said. His rider didn’t actually say that the Russians themselves cared two whits about it. HE didn’t cite their precise language – which I probably would have done in his shoes to avoid another misunderstanding. It’s possible that they care; maybe even probably, but we don’t “know” that their attitude isn’t similar to Fisher’s. Again, I’m not saying that they don’t care – merely that there is no direct statement from them on the matter. So I don’t “know” that “Sidorova and Naurzbaev are responsible for the restrictions on redistribution of this data”; I have no evidence that they are not responsible for the very limited Moberg rider, but it’s possible that the rider originated with Moberg. I’ve seen stranger things in my life.
I can’t help but think that this image:
doesn’t explain it all.
(Source: Here
Steve Mc
why don’t you just email Sidorova and ask her about the restrictions. The email you can find in the paper under the title (Climatic changes in subarctic eurasia…
#207: Good idea. Turns out there is a restriction and Steve doesn’t think there should be, hence all the confusion and distress.
No, it doesn’t, because it does not include the increased global use of toilet paper and the decreased number of pirates since 1860. Neither does it include the depletion of the ozon hole which in turn increases the number of hurricanes on the southern hemisphere.
LOL There is no restriction on use, there is a restriction on automatic redistribution of original data. Data can be obtained from Moberg. If I am interested to use the data, then I write Moberg, Moberg sends me the data, I publish my results, not the original data, I acknowledge Moberg in my paper and I refer my readers to Moberg for the original data, who will send it on request.
What’s your problem? The data is available for study, why didn’t you use it?
#220 Hans Erren’s comment is exactly my view. What’s your problem, Martin?
Or more specifically, what’s the restriction that you say Steve M. doesn’t think should be there?
Try for once to answer a straight question.
Dr Juckes consistently fails to address the issue. It has now been documented that, the Indigirka data is less restricted — more readily available for scientific use and replication — than many of the other series.
That fact is not surprising. Nor is it even surprising that Martin’s bias leads him to such blatantly biased methodology.
What continues to amaze me is how long the science “establishment” turns a blind eye to these matters. The longer this goes on, the more respect and trust is lost for this field, and eventually for other fields of science.
Trust is not easily regained.
Integrity is not easily learned.
#218:
Translation: There’s a restriction on the data, but I’m restricted from telling what the restriction is. Go ask somebody else.
#218, Dr. Juckes, since apparently you are still lurking with occasional tidbits, I would be interested to hear your response to Gunnar’s (short) question in #193.
Thanks
>> Theres a restriction on the data, but Im restricted from telling what the restriction is
You are not understanding that there are inherent restrictions in copyrighted material that do not require enumeration. It’s no secret what they are. Dr Juckes is not responsible for your education in copyright law.
The obvious point that IP rights exist has even sunk into Steve M, as his last entry makes clear. His argument has now shifted to: we don’t know if Sidorova has reserved his/her IP rights. That’s a far cry from “IP rights don’t exist”. I certainly have never argued that Sidorova is actually reserving his/her rights or that he/she should. That Sidorova is reserving rights is indicated by Dr Juckes, and confirmed by Moberg. This whole thread boils down to nothing, since no one has provided any evidence that Sidorova et al are not reserving their rights. That would be the only way to counter the statement made by Dr Juckes. Personally, if I were Sidorova, I would place the data into the public domain in the interest of science. However, the interest of science does not trump IP rights, and all the nonsense in this thread doesn’t change that fact one iota.
The sole reason that original data cannot be redistributed doesn’t prevent CRU from using them for the calculation of global average temperature trends. The “I am not allowed to redistribute”- excuse is not a valid SCIENTIFIC reason to exclude the data in a paper that claims to be a review on millenial temperature proxies..
[snip]
>> a paper that claims to be a review on millenial temperature proxies
There is nothing to prevent him from doing C, which is doing the calculations, and then discussing the effect of that data set. If the results meant that his paper would then not be a true “review of millenial temperature proxies”, then he probably should have withheld the paper until he obtained the proper permissions.
Steve: I over-snipped slightly here. Gunnar observed that legal reasons trump scientific reasons, which is fair enough and then went into his usual spiel on IP property which he’s expressed and IMHO is off-point and which I will continue to snip so that this blog doesn’t turn into a monologue by Gunnar on IP property, on which he’s had his say. Having said that, his last point here is one that has not been made before and is a good one.
Dear Dr. Juckes (#re 192). As you probably know from reading this blog, I am a plant physiologist. I am not at all convinced that any of Bristlecone’s growth responses to temperature can be reliably deconvoluted from other growth affecting factors. Water availabity, atmospheric nitrogen deposition and CO2 fertilisation immediately spring to mind. The latter two factors have increased in a broadly similar manner to global temperature over the calibration period in question.
FYI there is a multitude of published literature about the effects of elevated CO2 on plant growth. (e.g see New Phytologist (2005)165: 351-372.). It is also worth going to any basic text on plant physiology (e.g Larcher Physiological Plant Ecology) to see the effect of raising CO2 levels (which are increasingly limiting as a function of altitude). Just what do you think the effect of increasing ambient CO2 concentrations on a plant which is CO2 limited?
Hans Erren is spot on with #226 (and many others who have echoed similar sentiments).
Even if Indigirka can’t be published, it is a valid scientific out-of-sample test which can be tried out in minutes if you already have the code. It highlights the lack of robustness of the methodology. With this brought to the attention of the author, failure to disclose suggests a certain lack of objectivity.
The real issue is not – should the indigirka data be published – it is should the Juckes et al paper have been published. The question is not about legalistic terms or bureaucracy, but about objectivity in scientific analyses.
#218 made me chuckle though. Why use the word “distress”? There is disagreement on this thread, not “distress”. Disagreement is part of the normal scientific process. Mind you if climate scientists confuse “distress” and “disagreement”, it could explain why they spend so much time trying to build a consensus – disagreement is just soooo stressful… 🙂
235, now that you mention it, that use of the word “distress” is a bit Orwellian, isn’t it?
Spence, you refer to interesting section
SNR or NSR of 2? Anyway, as you observe, correlations in Table 1 do not support the idea of constant SNR. And then, we still need to estimate those scales, and this estimate won’t be exact because of noise. And scaling errors are dependent of signal (temperature), which complicates the error estimation a bit. In these temperature reconstruction papers they seem to apply some kind of optimistic statistics..
Re #231
Yes, relating it to the equation, it is clearly referring to a N/S ratio of 2 when it says S/N ratio of 2…
My understanding of CVM is not in the formal/rigourous/theoretical sense, but to a first order it makes sense; if you have a number of series of similar (but low) S/N ratios, by matching the noise level and averaging, you get a kind of spatial “noise-whitening” effect which should yield a good S/N in the final reconstruction. It won’t be as good as an optimal weighted average, but it should be pretty good…
but… (there is always a but!)
…when using optimal weights, if you have a wide spread of S/N ratios, the weights for the lower S/Ns quickly drops to zero, because the benefit to the signal is less than the noise is increased by. CVM has no way to account for this that I can see. As such, if you have disparate S/N ratios (which Dr Juckes has not checked for), the resulting reconstruction could end up worse than just cherry picking the one series with the best signal. In the example I gave above, I’m pretty sure a standard error of the order of 1K would occur (outside of the overfit cal period), and I’m pretty sure there is nothing done to discount this possibility. Indeed the correlations probably support my example better than Dr. Juckes’ example.
I sent the following to Sidorova 10 Oct 2007. I have not had a reply yet.
Hi,
There has been an active debate on the Internet about the data set popularly known as Indigirka. This is used in Sidorova and Naurzbaefv 2002, and was used in MSH2005. Some say the data is presently freely available without restriction from Nature as part of the MSH2005 archive. However, some still say there are restrictions on it’s use.
To the best of you knowledge are there restrictions on the use of this data set or any other data sets you use? If there are restrictions Indigirka, what they are and why?. Who would we need to talk to relax the restrictions? For example to put on a public accessable online archive eg ClimateAudit or similar.
Sean Egan
snip- IP discussion over to Unthreaqded
Now that this horse has been properly whipped, what is the next reasonable step? Validating proxies or including all reasonably valid proxies? To build a truly unbiased reconstruction how should the proxies be weighted? Trillions of dollars and the fate of mankind rest in the decision. Should twelve proxies alone determine our fate? If it wasn’t a matter of ego, but a matter of survival, what should be done?
Gak. The IP guys have hijacked unthreaded. How about unthreaded #22, and a separate IP thread where Gunnar can pontificate ad nauseum?
I try not to go into it too much more than all the false interlocked assumptions, faulty conclusions and convoluted logic.
But it is moot. I like what http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2153#comment-147199 said.
We do know that the person providing the data, the lead author of Moberg et al. 2002, has stated:
So now that we know that, the question becomes why didn’t Dr. Juckes use it?
I think we know he’s not going to answer that question. Well, except for what he’s already said, and there’s no reason to go over that again.
Ref: 238 The question is deeper than Indigirka.
I’m sorry I can’t resist.
Indigirka dirka Mohammed Jihad!
Spence
You can pick the one with best correlation, or second best, or make Union from these two. Under CVM methodology all these are equally accurate:
Thanks for doing that UC, quite interesting and illustrative.
I need to get the nuance just right for the next comment:
If the S/N ratios of the different proxies have a wide range, the graph in #241 could well be better than Dr. Juckes’ Union reconstruction.
And I’m pretty sure that my comment above is 99.98% significant 🙂
I suspect the graph above may struggle with Dr Juckes’ significance test, as it only assesses spectral behaviour, and the spectral properties of the China proxy (borehole, I think?) are unlikely to be helpful in that regard. But that has far more to do with the uselessness of the test than the quality of any of the reconstructions.
Paleoclimate reconstructions are simplisitic,and do not explain the important coefficients of nutritional inputs, or the quantities of photosynthetic available radiation(PAR) as an amplifier or UV as an attenuating influence in time and space Either of the latter altering growth patterns in magnitudes.
Harold Morowitz, one of the leading figures in biophysics and a major contributor to our collective effort to understand more fully the origins of life, inadvertently provided an illustration of the need for a broad paradigm in his path-breaking (and still valuable) volume on Energy Flow and Biology (1968). Here he proposed that the evolutionary process has been “driven” by the self-organizing influence of energy flows, mainly from the sun: “The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system…Biological phenomena are ultimately consequences of the laws of physics” (p. 2).
In the penultimate chapter, where he explored ecological aspects of energy flows, Morowitz admitted “at this point, our analysis of ecology as well as evolution appears to be missing a principle” (p 120). His conclusion: Although the flow of energy may be a necessary condition to induce molecular organization, “contrary to the usual situation in thermodynamics…the presence or absence of phosphorous would totally and completely alter the entire character of the biosphere” (p. 121).
Furthermore, as Morowitz noted earlier in his text, the lowest trophic level in the food chain is dependent on exogenous sources of free nitrogen, which would otherwise be a limiting condition (Liebigs Limit) for the entire biosphere (as opposed to the abundant supply of energy).(We see this in the elevations of the Tien Shan with lightening induced Nox amplification and UV attenuation) Finally, and most significant, Morowitz acknowledged that the functionally organized cyclical flow of matter and energy in nature requires a explanation. “The existence of cycles implies that feedback must be operative in the system.
The use of selective proxies to extrapolate and fit data to hypothesis, for say Russia (FSU)( view the map in accompanying link) is geographically incomplete and imparts NO knowledge of the initial boundary conditions at the specific measurements for say PAR.
Click to access solomina.pdf
Indeed if we view the central region of Siberia we see the response of growth to enhanced PAR after an event(Tunguska)where Kuliks first expeditions made some observations about forest recovery in the catastrophe area.
One Trackback
[…] http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2153#more-2153 […]