<i>by Contadini
Chair for climate e-mail review
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]
Sir Muir Russell will head an independent review into e-mails leaked from a leading UK climate research unit.
[More]
I expect that the denialists are already working out how to slander Sir Russell if his investigation does not give them what they want. Wait, they already know what will happen.
from Wikipedia
People seem to have these odd ideas that scientists are inhuman automatons who collect data, analyze all of it and then publish. They bring no real emotion to the mix. So when lab notebooks or emails reveal that human beings are involved, then some some people just freak.
So, read about Robert Millikan, who discovered the charge of an electron. Anyone who just read his lab notebooks or took quotes from his papers, without context, would call him a fraud. And people have. In books.
But as can be seen from David Goodstein’s defense (As an undergraduate at CalTech in the mid 70s, I heard David discuss this in a lecture and saw the copies of the lab notebooks. It was one of the pivotal seminars of my life), in context, not only is Millikan most like not guilty of any scientific malfeasance but his data were correct.
The supposed fraud comes mainly from this quoted sentence.
It is to be remarked, too, that this is not a selected group of drops, but represents all the drops experimented upon during 60 consecutive days, during which time the apparatus was taken down several times and set up anew.
He showed data in the paper for 58 drops during those 60 days but even the most generous examination of his notebooks reveal that he collected full data on 75 drops. He lied! He cherry picked data.
Of course, if one included all 75 drops, it has little effect on his results. So why did he commit fraud by ‘cherry-picking’ and then lying about it? It looks like he did neither.
First, there appear to be valid reasons for discarding some of the 75 drops. A drop that was too large or too small would be susceptible to other forces than he was examining.
Second, Goodstein makes the point that in the paper, when Millikan makes this statement, he is not referring to all the oil drops he examined in the lab. In the sentence, ‘all’ refers to the 58 drops he mentioned in a previous sentence, not to all the oil drops he might have observed.
The previous sentence:
It will be seen from Figs. 2 and 3 that there is but one drop in the 58 whose departure from the line amounts to as much as 0.5 percent.
The two sentences together from the original paper:
It will be seen from Figs. 2 and 3 that there is but one drop in the 58 whose departure from the line amounts to as much as 0.5 percent. It is to be remarked, too, that this is not a selected group of drops, but represents all the drops experimented upon during 60 consecutive days, during which time the apparatus was taken down several times and set up anew.
Furthermore, the ‘not a selected group’ was being used to determine another number, the Stokes radius (that is what figures 2 and 3 demonstrate), not the charge of an electron. He is trying to say that all of the oil drops that were used to determine the charge of the electron were also used to determine the Stokes radius. He did not cherry pick oil drop data in order to determine the Stokes radius. All the data he used in the paper to determine the charge were also used to determine the Stokes radius.
In context, it appears to be at worst an inelegant sentence. What looked bad in isolation turned out to be fine in context.
That is why context matters. No matter what some denialists say.
Technorati Tags: Science
I appreciate the effort that Robert Geiner at Watts Up with That made regarding the computer code that I also discussed. He demonstrates the fact that many people with scientific training can bring the logical tools they have learned to bear on a wide range of problems, as he has done here.
However, he again does what many of the so-called agnostics are doing with this code. They only examine a fragment that they can then use to sow as much confusion as possible. He does not discuss the immediate lines following the ‘suspect’ code.
He shows the code where it declares a variable using the so-called fudge factor [yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)] and then displays what it would look like when graphed.
He leaves out the following code that was designed to do this exact thing – graph the data:
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
;
I have to wonder why? The code itself contains the instructions to print the fudge factor data. Why did Geiner not just show the exact code?
Perhaps because it is commented out by the semicolons and is not used at all in the execution of the code. This would certainly complicate his discussion.
So, taken at face value, this entire post of Geiner’s was about a fragment of some code that was not executed in a program that has never been shown to be used. And the relevant segment demonstrating this was left out.
Geiner’s post makes me think of the Manufactured Doubt Industry efforts. (See I can also imply connections and connotations when none has been shown to really occur. Speculating on purposes and not examining relevant information to sow doubt is not science.)
Now being skeptical is an important point and we need to be sure that all things are looked at. This is something that all sides of any useful debate need to follow. However, ignoring an important aspect of the code and using a fragment in a way purely to cast innuendo is not the mark of a skeptic to me. Leaving out vital information that does not match one’s viewpoint seems to me to be the very thing that so-called agnostics are accusing the researchers of.
Why would a so-called agnostic with scientific training ignore possibly relevant information that was right there in front of his face? Perhaps it is just an error. We are all human and make mistakes sometimes. We can not know for sure and we do not need to have an investigation to find out.
I just find it ironic, though, that he may be guilty of the same sort of ‘defined’ viewpoint that climate researchers are being accused of. Matthew 7:1-5 might be relevant.
by runner310
Study measures ocean’s CO2 uptake
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]
There are substantial variations in the amount of carbon being absorbed by the North Atlantic Ocean, a study shows.
[More]
You bet substantial variations. The BBC leaves out a few critical points. Luckily we can check out the original paper, if we have a subscription. It is entitled Tracking the Variable North Atlantic Sink for Atmospheric CO2
One thing is that we had better hope that the rest of the world’s oceans are making up for the drop in carbon dioxide uptake by the North Atlantic. Because the flux in the North Atlantic appears to have been dropping from estimated values in 1995. In 2005 it was about 25% less than in 1995.
And in none of the years from 2002 to 2007 did it get above the 1995 value. Only 2005 even came close. So the other years may have seen a drop much greater than 25% from 1995 levels.
If the oceans are soaking up less carbon dioxide, then either the lands of the world must take up more or thethere will be an increase in the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide appearing in the atmosphere as time goes on.
They are now working at getting more monitoring in other oceans. I’m hoping that the other oceans are picking up the slack because the North Atlantic seems to be doing a poorer job soaking up carbon dioxide than it might have 10 years ago.
SpreadingScience
Sustainable Path Foundation Idea Club
