April 18, 2010 09:16 AM UTC

"No Scientific Misconduct"

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• by: ardy39

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

The Oxburgh report, the second of three investigations of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, finds that there was no scientific misconduct by researchers.

(The first report that exonerated Prof. Phil Jones can be found here.)

From the 2nd review panel’s Conclusions:

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention.

But really, outside of rabid deniers and conspiracy “theorists,” is anyone surprised?

The CRU has two research emphases: a) construction and interpretation of tree ring chronologies, and b) studies of temperatures over the last few hundred years.

The review panel found no evidence of misconduct in either research program.

Regarding CRU tree ring research:

After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth, we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified selection of data are not valid.

Regarding CRU temperature research:

In detailed discussion with the researchers we found them to be objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda. Their sole aim was to establish as robust a record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible.

The panel did criticize the CRU for not having closer collaborations with professional statisticians. And for having been a bit lax in their record keeping in the early years. Apparently in the 80’s, the researchers at CRU did not appreciate that their work would be so important and receive so much attention. So, rather than divert scarce resources to record keeping, they focused on continued quality research.

Critics/deniers were characterized as “selective,” “uncharitable,” and “lack[ing] awareness.” The discussions (I use that term loosely) initiated by critics/deniers, and even some supporters/popular-izers, were characterized as:

… oversimplifications that omit serious discussion of uncertainties emphasized by the original authors.

In short, the review panel had strong praise for the overall quality and rigor of the CRU research.

We believe that CRU did a public service of great value by carrying out much time-consuming meticulous work on temperature records at a time when it was unfashionable and attracted the interest of a rather small section of the scientific community. CRU has been among the leaders in international efforts to determining the overall uncertainty in the derived temperature records and where work is best focussed to improve them.

So … can we please wrest our attention away from the petty distractions of “Climate-gate” long enough to look at the latest reports that use real data. Both NOAA and NASA have reported that March 2010 global average temperature was the warmest recorded for March. Ever.



(Careful readers will note a small blue dot in the vicinity of western Colorado in the figure above. Although this is distracting, an accurate assessment of global trends requires focusing on the preponderance of large red dots in the image.)

We return you to your regularly scheduled programming …