Comments on: The FOI Myth #2

By: John Pollard

John Pollard — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:13:43 +0000

When is someone going to tell the science community that an FOI request does not have to have anything to do with some form of expression related to ‘academic interest’? A basic principle behind most FOI legislation is that the burden of proof falls on the body asked for information, not the person asking for it. The requester does not usually have to give an explanation for their request, but if the information is not disclosed a valid reason has to be given. It matters little what the requester will legally do with the information or even the purpose of the request. It is up to the organisation as to whether or not they can find a plausible reason to reject the FOI request. If they cannot find such a reason then they must release the requested information. This spurious claim by the science community that the release of information must be for ‘academic purposes’ is simply rubbish.

By: Joe Horner

Joe Horner — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:00:20 +0000

There’s now a response to an FOI request submitted by Charles Arthur asking for a list of FOI requests received by UEA that relate to CRU:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/request_for_list_of_foi_requests#incoming-61611

Note that he specifically askeds for all requests going back to the commencement of FOI. The first request they detail in their response is for 2007.

Doing a quick count of the response it seems there were 105 requests for information about CRU, which on the face of it does seem quite a lot of paperwork for these poor, hard-working scientists.

If you look just a tiny bit closer, though, you see that there were 4 in 2007, 2 in 2008 and all the rst were in 2009 – mostly, it seems, after “Climategate” hit the news.

So, it would appear that their complaints avbout endless and unreasonable FOI requests were, at most, based on:

2007: 1 regarding Durbin-Watson statistics (released): FOI_07-21
3 regarding station data (all refused): FOI_07-04, -09 and -13

2008: 1 regarding data sets (refused): FOI_08-50
1 regarding CRU correspondence (refused): FOI_08-23

Which hardly seems like an ecxessively onerous distraction!

By: Steven Mosher

Steven Mosher — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:58:41 +0000

Steve,

I apologize for the slightly OT post, But I got a request for extension today:

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 – INFORMATION REQUEST
(Our ref: FOI_09-187)
Your request for information of 5 December 2009 is under consideration and we are currently assessing whether, if held, it is in the public interest to provide the information. Pursuant to section 10(3) of the Act, I am writing to you to inform you that, due to the complexity of the issue at hand, and the approaching closure of the University over the holidays, it is anticipated that this assessment will require an additional twenty (20) working days to complete above and beyond the original statutory timeframe of 20 working days. I apologise for the late notification of this extension but the need for it did not become apparent until very recently.
We certainly hope to provide you with a response prior to this and should this timescale need to be revised you will be advised as to the reasons and provided with a revised timescale.
I will write to you as soon as possible with the outcome of the assessment.
If you have any queries or concerns, then please contact me at:
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
Telephone: +44 (0)160 359 3523
E-mail: foi@uea.ac.uk.
Further information is also available from the Information Commissioner at: Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: +44 (0)1625 545 745
Website: http://www.ico.gov.uk

By: Phil B.

Phil B. — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:35:48 +0000

Who actually wrote the editorials? I didn’t see any names associated but the spin is consistent.

By: Dave McK

Dave McK — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:16:07 +0000

You are right. I checked.
Paul was the first to verify the authenticity of any of the emails. The link he gives to what he says is the ‘chain of emails’ he received is this:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1052&filename=1255523796.txt

Paul said “I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October”

The first email was from Narasimha D. Rao to Stephen H Schneider on the 11th. It was an alert of a skeptical report on the BBC by Hudson.

The second email was Schneider to ‘all’
(“Hi all”) – soliciting someone to straighten out Mr. Hudson. That appears to have been forwarded. All the remaining emails appear to be Oct. 14th, which Paul would not have known about if he received his copy on the 12th, as he said.
These are the list of cc recipients:
Cc: Tom Wigley , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Paul Hudson is not on the cc list, so it was either one of the people on the list who sent him a copy or it was an unknown person privy to the emails at East Anglia. The known possible sources seem unlikely. It’s a mystery to contemplate.
K – I’m sorry for so much OT stuff. This belongs with a thread on questions about the whistleblower/haxxor.

By: Curt Covey

Curt Covey — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:12:45 +0000

By “climateauditor” I mean a person without a PhD climate-related science, but willing and able (with help) to work through the data. One could say “someone like Steve,” but actually our typical user in this category was a biologist or social scientist assessing climate-change impacts. I think we were helpful to such people, as well as to climate skeptics without too much modeling experience (e.g. Lindzen and Choi, Geophys Res Lett 36, L16705, 2009). I believe that helping such people is a goal worth pursuing, but the CMIP experience shows that it requires much more than conforming to the FOI. It requires dedicated time from mainstream scientists — which means dedicated money from DOE, NASA, NSF, etc. I’d be glad to write a letter to Nature saying so.

Steve: Curt, once again, you are confusing different issues. I’m sorry to be abrupt but your proposed letter would totally misrepresent the CRU situation and seems all too typical of climate scientist spin. The CMIP experience has precisely NOTHING to do with the paleoclimate experience.

In paleoclimate, we’re talking about authors sending data sets to the friends that they are unwilling to send to critics. These are pretty simple data sets and do not present any handling problems comparable to CMIP handling.

By conflating the CMIP issues with the simple paleoclimate and station data issues, you would confuse matters.

By: Bob MacLean

Bob MacLean — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:30:21 +0000

Absolutely right, Bishop Hill (and Jeff Alberts. I should have included that caveat in my post. Thanks for mentioning the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website. It’s doubly useful because it enables any interested party to see what has previously been requested. Perhaps a Lister with more knowledge than me could have a quick trawl to see if any of the requests have thrown up anything new or interesting.

By: Jeff Alberts

Jeff Alberts — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:09:44 +0000

Well, as anyone knows, 10 requests will quickly fill up an ivory tower mailbox.

By: Dave Dardinger

Dave Dardinger — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:51:53 +0000

Re: ianl8888 (Jan 2 09:03), Are you sure you don't have it? On my computer it's in yellow and on the top banner which makes it easy to overlook.

By: ianl8888

ianl8888 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:24:14 +0000

There’s no doubt that the email dump was illegal (and nobody’s saying it was legal, despite fordprefect’s straw man), but that does NOT exclude an inside leak

At this point, we don’t know who or how

And, of course, all whistle-blowing is initially considered illegal, just as outside hacking is