Hunkering Down
I do feel bad for Phil Jones, the scientist caught in the maw of climategate. It’s obviously taken an enormous personal toll on him. But he appears to still be in the same bunker that got him in trouble in the first place. He comes off fairly defensive in this interview with Olive Heffernan in Nature. Here’s just one of the passages that is bound to raise eyebrows:
But he fears that the aftermath of the climategate affair is undermining the integrity of the scientific review process. “I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process,” says Jones.
That’s probably not a smart thing to say, given he’s the guy who wrote this (in one of those infamous emails) to Michael Mann:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow “” even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Here’s the kicker in Olive’s interview:
It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. “[I’d] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they’re being drowned out.”
By who? Those very same bloggers, I presume.
I think that there’s way too much compassion with the likes of Phil Jones. What he said about “hijacking” is completely compatible with everything he wrote previously.
In more detail, he says that “our clique of crooks has hijacked and redefined the peer-review process, so that what is published is determined by how much it is convenient to us personally, independently of the evidence and the scientific quality. The peer review process has been our property, and the skeptic blogs are trying to steal it back from us and return the peer review process to science. All crooks on our side should mobilize and attack the blogs because objective science is our greatest enemy and we have thought that we have already killed it for good – so why should we accept a situation that is suddenly worse for us again?”
Sunshine, as they say, is the best disinfectant. Mr. Jones is in need of a good disinfecting, apparently.
P.S. Lubos is the man!
It is acceptable that these people made a hypothesis that did not turn out to be true. Whether or not anthropogenic global warming is happening or not, the unacceptable act was not letting science guide them, instead using “tricks” like merging data sets for biased reasons. I’ve read and heard some people explain that the word trick was a clever way to deal with the problem. If you are merging data sets and selectively determining which data best fits your needs, I believe that to be incorrect, no matter how clever it was. Also, trying to keep anyone not of the same opinion as you out of the peer review literature, to me, is being very biased. If their case is so bulletproof, why is there such a need to perform these types of acts? Until that question can be answered adequately, I will continue to be very skeptical about AGW.
Here here Lubos. Great post. I will cut and paste that for posterity.
When you think about it, Jones,et al, are the real climate deniers.
They refuse to acknowledge that the data does NOT support their preconceived agenda and they will do anything hide the truth.
Thanks to them, every other enviromentalist claim needs to be thoroughly examined to see if their ideology has trumped the data.
The safest course is to consider all enviro claims to be utter bullcrap until all data and programming is fully disclosed so the people can determine the truth. The ultimate peer review!
My advice to Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth is to “Lawyer Up” immediately. Even when the interviewer is lobbing easy questions they come across as arrogant fools.