My general feeling about Judith Curry‘s stuff over at Collide-a-scape was that it was all tolerably vague. But there was one specfic.
Over there, she copied Bishop Hill and proposed “Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006″ as key neglected papers.
More directly she has proposed:
1. The Spatial Extent of 20th-Century Warmth in the Context of the Past 1200 Years
Timothy J. Osborn* and Keith R. Briffa (Science 10 February 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5762, pp. 841 – 844
DOI: 10.1126/science.1120514)
2. Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia Michael E. Mann and Philip D. Jones, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 15, 1820, doi:10.1029/2003GL017814, 2003
3. Jones, P. D., K. R. Briffa, T. P. Barnett, and S. F. B. Tett, High-resolution palaeclimatic records for the last millennium: Interpretation, integration and camparison with General Circulation Model control-run temperatures, The Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.
Although I notice – pure co-incidence no doubt – that these are exactly the ones McI choses as “Every CRU hockey stick article “. Well all right: this isn’t co-incidence. She clearly has copied Montford, then McI. Which rather suggests that she isn’t doing a great deal of independent thought around this issue, but is merely picking up the septic blogosphere.
The actual 11 papers examined are given at the end of the Oxburgh report.
So the question is, is Curry (or her source, Montford) correct to regard 1 and 3 (and optionally 2) as “key” papers that obviously should have been included? Why are these papers so key? Curry says (pers comm., but also comment 111 at c-a-s, so I can use it the main issue re the selection of papers is that they didn’t examine the main paleo reconstruction papers, which many identify with the “hockey stick”, which is the main issue for the skeptics and that has the highest profile with the public but I think this is an error. The Oxburgh report wasn’t an inquiry into the Hockey Stick – as I said before, we’ve had those, we know the answers (and yes I know that different people have taken different things away from the NRC report; but I don’t see any great evidence that doing it again would make anything new). Nor was the point of the Oxburgh report to placate the skeptics, or the public. The panel’s stated purpose was that it was asked to come to a view on the integrity of the Unit’s research and whether as far as could be determined the conclusions represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation
of the data. If you don’t like that, then fine, start your own panel.
Over a c-a-s Curry also says (comment 96, see I did read that far) William, my source for the specific papers and why i think they are relevant to the UEA investigation is the documents submitted to the Parliamentary Select Committee. The issues and papers mentioned in these documents are the ones that are of the greatest relevance to the skeptics’ concerns. Well again this is tolerably vague. There are an awful lot of docs submitted to that inquiry, am I supposed to read them all to guess the ones she means? Quite apart from that, she says again are the ones that are of the greatest relevance to the skeptics’ concerns. This seems to be a persistent misreading of the Oxburgh report. It wasn’t set up to pander to the septics.
Is Curry really suggesting that an examination of any of the three papers above would have shown up problems? If so, what are the problems? Does she know what they are, but won’t say, or does she just have a feeling that there is something lurking in the background that close examination would spot. If so, why not examine them closely?
I’ll be grateful for any input on why these are so key, or pointers to other blogs that have made such suggestions. Please no personal comments, let us try to stick to actually examine the question at hand.
[Updated (oh dear this will be ahrd to follow) from c-a-s comment 269 My whole point is that I thought the Oxburgh committee should have done better than to select essentially the same papers that were listed in the UEA submission to the select committee, which are presumably the ones that shed CRU in the most favorable light. I thought they should have paid some attention to the main papers that the skeptics have issue with, which is why i parroted the papers listed by Montford, McIntyre, Hughes, etc. Or even a random selection of papers would have been better. My personal choice for the most interesting 11 papers isn't all that relevant.
[Update: I added this as an extended comment at c-a-s; I'll reproduce it here:
[Ah, but to note (thanks SB): I got Barton and Inhofe mixed up. Oops!] Also (comment 282) JC pretty well retracts everything she said about Wegman that I’ve commented on (the bit she doesn’t retract is something about Wegman shuold have been used by IPCC, or should have been rejected more politely; I don’t agree with that as far as I understand it -W]
@Judith: first of all, my thanks for your persisting in answering questions here. While I disagree with a large part of what you are saying, you definitely deserve credit for coming out here.
However, there is still a rather strong feeling of vagueness about much of what you’ve said up to now. Really, it needs writing down carefully (you’ve added some more detail in comments here, I now see, but some of it is wrong and (obviously, being a succession of comments) it is fragmented, so it needs checking and writing down coherently).
One of the few things you have been specific about is the “key papers” neglected by Oxburgh. I’ve even just blogged it: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/04/curry_part_2_the_papers.php . But I think you have questions to answer: your first 2 key papers were lifted from Bishop Hill; and your second 3 from McI. So, as I said over there, ” Which rather suggests that she isn’t doing a great deal of independent thought around this issue, but is merely picking up the septic blogosphere”. So (this is a real question, not rhetorical): are you indeed thinking for yourself over the paper selection issue, or are you just repeating what BH/McI say?
Oh, and you ought to know by now: people with monikers like “Freespeech” on blogs are not the people you want to be agreeing with :-).
@JC, 114: “And also contact David Holland d.holland at theiet.org, he has written an essay that documents much of this” – why contact him? Why hasn’t he published the thing? Free web space is not hard to come by. I’m sure Keith would be happy to host it if he can’t find any other space :-)
@JC, 114: “This reconstruction was a marked departure from what appeared in the 2nd IPCC Assessment Report”. I think you’re betraying you ignorance, and your sources, here. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWP_and_LIA_in_IPCC_reports – or perhaps go the whole hog and actually read the SAR. It doesn’t say what the septic blogs are telling you it says. Wegman: was commissioned by Inhofe Barton. You know that; can’t you speak his name? And since when was “was read into the House record” of the slightest relevance to scientific worth?
@JC, 125: “Wegman is very unpopular with the warmists because his 2006 NRC report” – err, you’ve got confused here. Wegman was the Wegman report. The NRC report was by North. also… aren’t you being just a little easy on Wegman, and dismissing DC’s criticism? Are you applying the same standards to Wegman that you seem to be applying to the IPCC? Is Wegman’s process important? Does it matter that the has plagiarised material? “Let me say that this is one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen, and the so-called tsunami of accusations made in regards to climategate are nothing in compared to the attack on Wegman.” – no; this isn’t plausible at all. You’ve lost your perspective on that one.
You say: Wegman… was asked to chair this effort by the NRC since he was Chair of NRCs Committee on Applied Statistics. – well, someone is very badly wrong here and I think it is you. Wegman was appointed by Inhofe, not NRC. NRC was North. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph : “In 2006 a team of statisticians led by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was assembled at the request of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield”.
Or read the report: http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf (Hank thoughtfully provided a link, but should really have picked up on your NRC error. But I see SB has done the honours).
-W]
