Whitewash: Climategate enquiry papers "endorsed by Phil Jones"

Judge and jury at his own trial

The problems for Phil Jones and UEA/CRU just won’t go away. It has now been revealed that the eleven academic papers supposedly independently chosen for the Oxburgh enquiry were in fact reviewed and approved by Phil Jones himself. Bishop Hill reports:

When the original emails were released I reported on an inquiry made to Lord Oxburgh by Oliver Morton of the Economist about how Oxburgh’s Eleven papers were chosen. When he replied, Oxburgh said in essence that he didn’t know.

What I received was a list from the university which I understand was chosen by the Royal Society The contact with the RS was I believe through [name redacted] but I don’t know who he consulted. [Name redacted], when I asked him, agreed that the original sample was fair.

Well, now we know who the redactions were. The contact through with the Royal Society was through Martin Rees – we knew that already. The other redaction, the other person consulted about whether the sample of papers was reasonable, was…Phil Jones.

Now, whichever way you look at it, this is a funny question to put to the accused if one’s objective is a fair trial. I mean, what could Jones say? “You’ve picked all my bad papers”? And of course Jones must have known that the sample was not representative. (source)

And Anthony Watts again summarises the lunacy of this:

The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. And, to add insult to injury, when you let the accused endorse which pieces of evidence might be a “fair sample”, is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”? (source)

Once again, we see climate alarmists fudging results to achieve a pre-conceived outcome. This is not the way that science, or independent investigations of scientific integrity, should be carried out.

But I’m not complaining – while this goes on, the warmists’ credibility is slowly but surely seeping away.

UPDATE: Even warming-crazed “Non Scientist” magazine calls out the enquiries:

Russell’s team left other stones unturned. They decided against detailed analysis of all the emails in the public domain. They examined just three instances of possible abuse of peer review, and just two cases when CRU researchers may have abused their roles as authors of IPCC reports. There were others. They have not studied hundreds of thousands more unpublished emails from the CRU. Surely openness would require their release.

All this, plus the failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws, makes it harder to accept Russell’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned “are not in doubt”.

Some will argue it is time to leave climategate behind. But it is difficult to justify the conclusion of Edward Acton, University of East Anglia vice-chancellor, that the CRU has been “completely exonerated”. Openness in sharing data, even with your critics, is a legal requirement.

But what happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done. Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be. (source)

Ouch, that must hurt.