Did Federal Climate Scientists Fudge Temperature Data to Make It Warmer?

Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine writes:

The NCDC also notes that all the changes to the record have gone through peer review and have been published in reputable journals. The skeptics, in turn, claim that a pro-warming confirmation bias is widespread among orthodox climate scientists, tainting the peer review process. Via email, Anthony Watts—proprietor of Watts Up With That, a website popular with climate change skeptics—tells me that he does not think that NCDC researchers are intentionally distorting the record.

But he believes that the researchers have likely succumbed to this confirmation bias in their temperature analyses. In other words, he thinks the NCDC’s scientists do not question the results of their adjustment procedures because they report the trend the researches expect to find. Watts wants the center’s algorithms, computer coding, temperature records, and so forth to be checked by researchers outside the climate science establishment.

Clearly, replication by independent researchers would add confidence to the NCDC results. In the meantime, if Heller episode proves nothing else, it is that we can continue to expect confirmation bias to pervade nearly every aspect of the climate change debate.

Read it all here: http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/03/did-federal-climate-scientists-fudge-tem

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