> I did send some of the data to a person working
> with Peter Webster at Georgia Tech. The email wasn’t to
> PW, but he was in the CC list. I don’t know how
> McIntyre found out, but I thought this was a personal
> email. This was one of the first times I’d sent
> some data to a fellow scientist who wasn’t at the
> Hadley Centre. As I said I have taken pity on African
> and Asian PhD students who wanted some temperature and precipitation
> data for their country. The email has only gotten me grief,
> so this is another reason for being much less helpful to
> people emailing CRU. This goes against my nature, but
> I’ve been driven to it. You’d better not say this, otherwise
> McIntyre will request the emails where to prove I’ve been
> unhelpful!

Apparently Steve is responsible for a general change in collegial policy on Jones’ part. More to the point, Jones knows he is being unhelpful.

>
> I should have just said to the GA person – use GHCN, like I do to
> everyone else.
>
> I also don’t see why I should help people, I don’t want to work
> with and who spend most of their time critisising me.
>
> Years ago I did send much paleo data to McIntyre but have also
> had nothing but criticism on his blog ever since. As I said,
> this criticism on blog sites is not the way to do science.
> If they want to engage, they have to converse in civil tones,
> and if people don’t want to work with them, they have to respect
> that and live with it.

Evidently, he doesn’t find criticism helpful.

Frankly – I work in a field where my reports are often reviewed by people from several agencies – I look forward to “substantive” comments. Dealing with someone’s problems about how to spell labour and colour, or whether a comma is necessary or not is boring beyond belief. An honest disagreement is a joy.

Because of the Publish or Perish ethic, top scientists have too much to lose from being open, so must be dishonest to survive?

Jones wasn’t bothered sending data to Webster though was he? Is this because he thought Webster supported the Cause, and so would endorse any mistakes that supported it ?

Although the Climategate 2.0 release won’t be useable as evidence or even
background material in the appeal arguements, the Commonweath of Virginia’s
Supreme Court has scheduled January 20th, 2012 for arguments in:

20: #102359:
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, in his capacity as Attorney General of Virginia
v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Re: Micheal Mann emails, attachments, grant application forms, documentation & data

Begin at:

http://www.courts.state.va.us/courts/scv/docket.html

Unfortunately I think this attitude is not one that is sustainable at senior levels, whether it’s in academia or industry. Nobody at senior level can ever admit to making a mistake or being less than up to the job. Therefore I think it’s unsurprising that the first reaction is self-preservation rather than openness. There’s too much to lose from being open. In the academic world, I think this has partly been brought about by the funding approach which is now very much “publish and be cited or die”, where research for its own sake is not funded and where scientists must compete for funding on designated topics — in other words it’s just like running a business.

It’s possible that Prof Jones may have feared the truth would eventually emerge, but then without CG1 and CG2 who else would have known apart from his close circle, all of whom were clearly not going to blow the whistle on him? And he had strategies in place to protect him from his enemies — delete all emails after copying them to memory sticks so there was no public trace of his comments. It so very nearly worked.

I think therefore that there is the specific issue of CRU deviousness but also the wider one: if this is happening in one bastion of AGW then we must assume it’s happening elsewhere. And that betrays an attitude to openness and the scientific method that are at odds with what governments are being told by the IPCC and what the general public believes scientists are like (think of cuddly Brian Cox, sweet Jim Al-Khalili, logical Steven Hawking, et al — none would hurt a fly and they’re all doing science for the good of humanity). When so much of the AGW message is based on “trust us, we’re the consensus of scientific opinion”, governments and the general public need to know that there’s a small core of untrustworthy non-scientists who are doing all they can to hide their results from scientific scrutiny. This is not science, and it’s not being done by real scientists. But one day it could shatter people’s trust in science as a whole.

Excellent piece!

Regarding your comment: “newspapers no longer have the resources to do this sort of in-depth analysis on small stories. No need to complain about it.”

Sadly, this is true, however other parts of the the media do have the resources but seldom use them for real investigative journalism.

Thanks for another well referenced post!

Brooks