Via WUWT;
In a landmark ruling, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled that Queen’s University Belfast must hand over data obtained during 40 years of research into 7,000 years of Irish tree rings to a City banker and part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan.
This week, the Belfast ecologist who collected most of the data, Professor Mike Baillie, described the ruling as “a staggering injustice … We are the ones who trudged miles over bogs and fields carrying chain saws. We prepared the samples and – using quite a lot of expertise and judgment – we measured the ring patterns. Each ring pattern therefore has strong claims to be our copyright. Now, for the price of a stamp, Keenan feels he is entitled to be given all this data.”
Keenan revealed this week that he is launching a new assault. On Monday, he demanded the university also hand over emails that could reveal a three-year conspiracy to block his data request.
Keenan has become notorious for pursuing a series of vitriolic disputes with British academics over climate data. Two years ago, he accused Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia of “fraud” over his analysis of data from weather stations in China. Jones recently conceded he may have to revise the paper concerned.
The latest ruling comes from Graham Smith, deputy information commissioner, who in January said information requests to CRU from climate sceptics were “not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.” In the Belfast case, as well as insisting the university hand over the data, Smith has accused the university authorities of “a number of procedural breaches.”
Pithy observations in the comments there;
Prof. Baillie has no copyright on his data. He has first use rights. That means he can keep the data under wraps until he has had the opportunity to analyze it fully, and to publish his results.
As a research scientist myself, I know that this can take some time — some projects longer than others. I’m still slowly wending toward publication of data I acquired 10 years ago, in one project, for example.
So, Prof. Baillie does have some rights. However, if he has acceded the use of his data for public policy, he has given up all right of priority.
This qualifier seems entirely invisible to climate scientists. They both actively, even aggressively, push their results into public policy decisions and then clamor to keep their data private, both at the same time. This is academic want to have my political cake and to eat my academic cake, too. Sorry guys. One or the other, but not both. They’re being either dishonest or terribly ingenuous. It’s hard to know which.
Related or coordinated? Hide The Decline goes dark, while closer to home, a new episode in the Continuing Exploits of Dr. Nefarious Forces Funded By Big Oil Broke Into My Offices At U-Vic*….
Chain saws? CHAIN SAWS? Here I thought so-called “climate scientists” got their information from worshiping volcanoes and praying to trees.
Even better . . now since the data is public they claim it can’t be used for temperature proxy work.
Somebody better call Dr. Mann . . .
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/21/mann-of-oak/
I wonder about the use of tree ring data to determine climate proxy measurements.
the ring spacing may show good growth years and bad but how do you attribute the gap ping to any particular cause?
maybe they just grew on Finnebars old outhouse site.
Here in BC tree ring spacing has been used to try and identify peak salmon run years as it is thought that bears leave portions of carcasses in the riparian area and thereby fertilize the trees.
Climate research needs to be far more transparent. The public pays for most of this research, and billions — perhaps trillions — of the public’s money is at stake based on the results.
I suggest that climate research journals demand that every paper accepted for publication be accompanied by a web site that contains (1) the raw data used in the paper, (2) the software used to analyze the data, and (3) detailed descriptions of statistical methodologies.
The goal is that other climate scientists can reproduce each paper’s results without excessive effort.
I presume Queen’s University Belfast is a public university, in which case it was taxpayers’ dollars which paid Baillie’s salary as he trudged over the landscape. Seems to me it’s taxpayers’ data as well.
“In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed.”
The cynic in me suggests the professor wanted a new computer, and the “disturbed papers” were moved by the cleaning lady.
Yep, if the research was funded by taxpayers, it doesn’t belong to him.
Climate research needs to be far more transparent. The public pays for most of this research, and billions — perhaps trillions — of the public’s money is at stake based on the results.
I suggest that climate research journals demand that every paper accepted for publication be accompanied by a web site that contains (1) the raw data used in the paper, (2) the software used to analyze the data, and (3) detailed descriptions of statistical methodologies.
The goal is that other climate scientists can reproduce each paper’s results without excessive effort.
I presume Queen’s University Belfast is a public university, in which case it was taxpayers’ dollars which paid Baillie’s salary as he trudged over the landscape. Seems to me it’s taxpayers’ data as well.
Posted by: rabbit at April 22, 2010 11:52 AM
Well said. I’ve been saying for years that climate science needs to move to an “open source” model. Fortunately, we’ve seen a move to this model somewhat with the rise of the internet, and the ability for people and ideas to communicate globally, instantly, and cheaply.
Jones, Mann and their ilk can try to horde their data and methods, but in the current communications age, it’s like pushing a string, and they’ll ultimately fail.
Frankly, I shudder at what the fraudsters at CRU and elsewhere would have achieved if not for the internet, and the tireless efforts of McIntyre, Watts, et. al.
I find this lack of willingness to disclose strange.
In the areas of research I have been involved in, even if it took months to produce an animal with constructed genetic changes, once published it was expected that anyone else could ask for that genetic line to do their own work with. It would have been unthinkable to deny someone who asked.
During talks I get asked about hard data, and it is expected I show the data to whoever asks later.
Secrecy in science doesn’t usually end well.
Love it. And so far, it’s only a surface scratch.
While it is true that the scientists collected the data, I suspect they didn’t do it as volunteers, but were be paid their usual salaries (from the public purse via the university) and through grants (from the public purse) to pay for graduate students. So the data does belong in the public arena.
Boy, for so called scientific professionals they sure give off an air of a strong emotional attachment to this scientific data, almost bordering on childish and stubbornness. What’s next a public temper tantrum? And don’t dare question their methodology or computer models – predicting their hysteria, propaganda and strong (go eco-green – by law) directive to the whole world. Never mind where their continuous and generous funding came from – their lies and our grants – complete with being fully backed by the LSM.
This “losing” of the data in it’s various forms, from a variety of folks within this little ‘lets legislate and regulate global eco-change regime’ is about the sorriest excuse I’ve ever heard from such a so called group of scientific professionals and experts.
IF this doesn’t say ‘puppets’ or ‘useful idiots’ nothing does.
How can so many ‘professionals’ and ‘experts’ lose and/or screw up so much ‘raw data’ to the point that forever the real facts are now lost and this not be criminal?
The LSM stench is like a backed up sewer, but that’s the UN at work for you. Heavy peddling and heavy influence and now they are coming for the kids.
And yet the Arctic ice continues to retreat. The growing season keeps getting longer, and organisms from warmer climates keep moving further north (see the pine beetle).
Go figure. Nothing happening here.
Oh hey, it’s DNFdaT time.
Off to light the wood stove, clothes dryer is buzzing, washed all the comforters today, expecting it to be a bit cooler tonight.
Happy earth day all.
The surface has been scratched again today. Check out Hot Air.
We prepared the samples and – using quite a lot of expertise and judgment – we measured the ring patterns. Each ring pattern therefore has strong claims to be our copyright.
Now, I don’t know Irish copyright law.
Everywhere I am familiar with copyrights, they apply only to new works; the point, after all, is to encourage artistic creativity.
The fact of having simply measured something does not make the “pattern” that was measured a new creation or copyrightable property of the measurer.
And that Sure As Hell is not how one does science.
It’s doubly hilarious to see a Professor railing about how he shouldn’t have to hand over the data he collected with public money. If you don’t want to play Science, stop collecting a notional Scientist’s salary, I say.
Another thing about copyright law, it eventually runs out, usually around 50 years after the author/creator’s death. So, if dead trees possess copyright, I think they may now be in the public domain, no? Even if God owns the copyright, He’s supposed to be dead, right?
John at 3:31 PM – perhaps you should emerge from your mother’s basement long enough to check out the FACT that the ice has been growing since 2007 and is now close to “normal” again. The temperature anomalies are corrupted by missing minus signs (kind of important in the Arctic wouldn’t you think?) and omitted stations. Keep on clutching your religion to your trembling breast while the rest of us get on with coping with reality.
Colin wrote: climate science needs to move to an “open source” model.
This is true of all of science. The journals used to serve a function that is now much more efficiently handled via wiki and blog.
A scientific paper can be fit in a single blog post. The Abstract gets posted to the RSS feed. Footnotes become hyperlinks. Images, audio, and video are trivial. Raw data can be stored in a ZIP file online.
Arguments for and against a paper’s conclusions can be discussed in a blog comment section far better than in a journal along any metric one cares to name.
The citation index of a paper would be automatically generated by sitemeter or statcounter or Google Analytics or other such web service. That sorts the wheat from the chaff.
As more and more papers get self-published online, the scientific journals are going to have to adapt to competition from an Army of Davids. Sorta like newspapers.
If the dear professor collected this data himself, on his own time and using his own finances, it would be his property.
If he was funded to collect this data on behalf of a private company, it would be the company’s property.
If he was funded to collect this data on behalf of a private university or institution, it would be their property.
If he was funded to collect this data on behalf of a public university or institution, it would be their property. But because that university or institution was publicly funded, it’s also public property.
Oh dear. I guess it is a question of the price of stamp after all.
Poor, poor Professor Baillie, all soggy from trudging over bogs – and his clothes all reeking of oil and petrol from those damned chainsaws.
Oh, the humanity!
Chain saws??
What happened to old fashioned elbow grease and a Swede saw?
Oh, Husquvarna, I get it! Mine leaks oil all over the place when I use it, too. They probably drove up to the bog in a smoking, belching diesel van, too. Hey, probably flew over the Irish Sea to get there in a hurry, so they could get back to Blighty for tea the same day.
The whole Saga of AGW Science demands that an Annual testing & retesting of qualifications & competence be met by anyone claiming scientific expertise… Jones & Mann may be qualified to engineer a municipal sewer lagoon, but shitty models don’t fit every endeavor of man…
Note:
The Economic presentation to Congress last week, by Ben Bernanke, included the warning that Engineers that are unemployed for more than 6 months lose their State of Art expertise…The Obama administration know they are destroying the USA Competitive advantage.. that’s why we don’t have jobs; per the communist plan
Close ALL public universickies
From the Guardian: “…climate-change deniers are mounting a campaign to discredit the work of leading meteorologists before the start of the Copenhagen climate summit tomorrow.”
As a member of the world wide, super-secret cabal of climate-change deniers, I can assure the Guardian there is no such campaign.
However we do plan to continue our very successful pointing-and-laughing campaign. The “work of leading meteorologists” pretty much discredits itself.