Although Geoffrey Boulton was the lead author, the Royal Society report on data sharing published today was surprisingly even handed. (h/t Bishop Hill.)

Climate Audit and McIntyre S receive a cameo mention on page 40:

At the other extreme, there is a small, but increasingly numerous body of engaged “citizen scientists” that wish to dig deeply into the scientific data relating to a particular issue. They are developing an increasingly powerful “digital voice,” though many lack formal training in their area of interest…. Some ask tough and illuminating questions, exposing important errors and elisions.102 (102 McIntyre S (2012). Climate Audit. Available at: http://www.climateaudit.org/)

The term “citizen scientist” is not a term that I use nor one that I like. In addition, most of the core Climate Audit commenters not only have formal training in statistics, but their formal training in statistics generally substantially exceeds that of the authors being criticized. The dispute is between formally trained statisticians and statistically-amateur and sometimes incompetent real_climate_scientists.

The Report refers to FOI events more accurately than either Nature or the Muir Russell report:

The potential loss of trust in the scientific enterprise through failure to recognise the legitimate public interest in scientific information was painfully exemplified in the furore surrounding the improper release of emails from the University of East Anglia.99 These emails suggested systematic attempts to prevent access to data about one of the great global issues of the day – climate change. The researchers had failed to respond to repeated requests for sight of the data underpinning their publications, so that those seeking data had no recourse other than to use the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) to request that the data be released. The need to invoke FoIA reflects a failure to observe what this report regards as should be a crucial tenet for science, that of openness in providing data on which published claims are based.

Nature and the climate community have been wilfully obtuse to CRU’s obstruction leading up to FOI requests.

There are many comments about adverse results which are ones that I endorse.

Perhaps even a comment that applies to the screening fallacy as applied and/or endorsed by real_climate_scientists:

Good science , simply put, “looks at all the evidence (rather than cherry picking only favourable evidence), uses controls for variables so we can identify what is actually working, uses blind observations so as to minimise the effects of bias, and uses internally consistent logic.”103 To ignore this kind of rigour is at the least poor practice.

All the evidence. Not just the evidence selected by ex post correlation screening.



