Would you back up this claim? There is too much rumor and propaganda around about climate science, so I feel we should take extra care to substantiate any claims.
I generally like the idea of scientific data being public, but the theory that there is a conspiracy of climate scientists (of which the claim that data is being 'hidden' is a building block) is tiresome and distracting from the very real, critical problems.
From the IPCC's Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assess- ment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Chapter 9 Evaluation of Climate Models, pp. 749-750.
> With very few exceptions (Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013) modelling centres do not routinely describe in detail how they tune their models. Therefore the complete list of observational constraints toward which a particular model is tuned is generally not available.
From the House of Commons Science and Technology report The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia paragraph 54:
> 54. It is not standard practice in climate science and many other fields to publish the raw data and the computer code in academic papers. We think that this is problematic because climate science is a matter of global importance and of public interest, and therefore the quality and transparency of the science should be irreproachable. We therefore consider that climate scientists should take steps to make available all the data used to generate their published work, including raw data; and it should also be made clear and referenced where data has been used but, because of commercial or national security reasons is not available. Scientists are also, under Freedom of Information laws and under the rules of normal scientific conduct, entitled to withhold data which is due to be published under the peer-review process.78 In addition, scientists should take steps to make available in full their methodological workings, including the computer codes. Data and methodological workings should be provided via the internet. There should be enough information published to allow verification.
Thanks for doing the legwork to find and provide that; while the first cite is a narrow case, the second looks great.
> It is not standard practice in climate science and many other fields ...
I think this statement supports the idea that the actions of climate scientists are not a conspiracy, but normal practice in scientific research. I've read similar things in many other contexts.
On principle, I think all scientific data (and papers) should be open and free. In practice, I would need to know far more about the costs, value, and implications before demanding it.
On a practical level, very, very few would have the knowledge, skill, resources (software, etc.), time, and motivation to make use of the data. Very few outside any particular field even read that field's papers, much less try to work with the data. Likely, anyone in the general public trying to do so would interfere with the 'signal' of discourse by creating only noise - the open data could hurt more than help. If it costs a lot to produce the data, it's very possible that most of that expense would be a waste. OTOH, sometimes that noise and cost is the price of democracy.
Yes, and to be realistic, the researchers themselves are in a very competitive environment. Having done many years of graduate work, I realize just how hard it is for doctoral and post-doc students to break into a good position at a research university, but that's just the beginning. There is serious competition after that for tenure and grants.
Who want's to spend time dealing with FOIA (freedom of information act) requests from kooky skeptics while worrying that some other researcher will scoop your research? There are structural impediments in our university research environments to completely open science.
However, I'm hopeful because of the success that the software community has had with open software. Before Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation I would never have believed that such a transformation of the industry was possible.
Would you back up this claim? There is too much rumor and propaganda around about climate science, so I feel we should take extra care to substantiate any claims.
I generally like the idea of scientific data being public, but the theory that there is a conspiracy of climate scientists (of which the claim that data is being 'hidden' is a building block) is tiresome and distracting from the very real, critical problems.