So, if each climate scientist had to field 5000 FOI requests per year, that would be no problem, right? Are you saying it would serve the public interests to spend money paying scientists to research while also requiring them to spend 99% of their time responding to FOI requests?
It seems to me that we all agree that the number and tone of requests is relevant. I think that everyone here will accept that once the number of requests prevents scientists from doing any research, than we have a serious problem. So the question is not "is the number or tone relevant?" but "what fraction of scientist time should we expect researchers to spend responding to FOI requests before we consider them unduly burdensome?"; given this question, tone seems very relevant. If researchers are responding to questions from professionals who have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are scientifically literate, then we should expect them to be more willing to respond to inquiries. But if they're responding to scientifically illiterate people who don't understand the basics of climate modelling, then I don't think we should expect them spend any time at all.
I mean, the FOI process can be abused. I think it is important that we differentiate between using the FOI process as a way of harassing researchers and serious questions from people who understand enough to actually deal with the data. In that sense, requiring people to write their own code (which is better for finding errors anyway) serves as a way to tax the harassers without unduly burdening real scientists. Real scientists will probably have planned on writing their own code anyway, but people abusing the FOI process for harassment probably don't have the capability to do so.
In my own neighborhood, I've watched crazy citizens groups use demands for data as a way to harass experts. They go to town meetings and yell and scream about data. When experts give them the answers they need (which costs time and money), they start poring through the data looking for inconsistencies. Inevitably they find something that looks suspicious if you're completely ignorant of math and science and then they pounce on it at the next town meeting. "Gotcha!" they say. But they're ignorant people who don't understand basic math and they inevitably turn out to be completely wrong. Most of the time, the truth is exactly opposite what they've claimed. Meanwhile, an expert has to explain in great detail why exactly they're wrong. The whole thing is just a huge waste of time and taxpayer money. It doesn't cost them anything to demand data and when any expert fails to give them everything (including the kitchen sink) because they're worried that these ignorant people will misunderstand things, they only scream all the louder.
Public policy is hard. Even very simple questions like "will this development make traffic on this side street worse" is actually fairly tough to answer. The vast majority of people don't have anything close to the skillset needed to intelligently review an analysis of these questions. But many think they do.
I believe apache is capable of handling 5000 requests per year with very little human intervention.
The CRU folks actively avoided going that route. They avoided putting data on a public ftp site because they didn't want people they disliked to download it.
Apache will not answer questions about the data or code. What do you think happens when FOI requests can't make sense of the data/code researchers give them? Either the researchers have to answer questions OR they will be accused of deliberately obfuscating their results. It is a no win situation.
Of course it's a win. They can say "look, it's all there, not our fault you can't understand it." They could even behave like scientists and answer reasonable questions about their work [1].
Answering Frequently Asked Questions with little human interaction is actually a solved problem.
Your arguments might carry some weight if they were flooded with an unreasonable number of FOI requests. Or if they were flooded with a large number of unreasonable and not-repeated questions. None of that actually happened. All that happened is that a few critics asked for the data and they conspired to hide it.
[1] Last month a guy from Princeton emailed me asking for help using code he downloaded from my website. Instead of conspiring to hide it, I emailed him a more recent version of the code told him what to tweak. I'm not even a professional scientist anymore.
Seriously, what more would you want in the way of proof? Videotape of Mann/Jones writing the email? A brain scan showing they weren't joking? I'm beginning to have doubts that you are arguing in good faith.
Quote from Phil Jones: “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
In theory, yes. In practice, people are only human, and tend to not react well when faced with a vitriolic "tone".
The police may be required to protect and serve, but try berating a police officer and see how well he serves you when your house gets robbed. He shouldn't treat you any differently, but he probably will.
In fact, if you don't want to reveal your top secret source code/data, don't publish in science journals. It's utterly ridiculous that journals still exist which don't require source/data to be released.
Comments
The number and "tone" of the requests is irrelevant.
If they want to ignore or not "fully comply" with FOI requests - they shouldn't take public funds.
So, if each climate scientist had to field 5000 FOI requests per year, that would be no problem, right? Are you saying it would serve the public interests to spend money paying scientists to research while also requiring them to spend 99% of their time responding to FOI requests?
It seems to me that we all agree that the number and tone of requests is relevant. I think that everyone here will accept that once the number of requests prevents scientists from doing any research, than we have a serious problem. So the question is not "is the number or tone relevant?" but "what fraction of scientist time should we expect researchers to spend responding to FOI requests before we consider them unduly burdensome?"; given this question, tone seems very relevant. If researchers are responding to questions from professionals who have a good understanding of the fundamentals and are scientifically literate, then we should expect them to be more willing to respond to inquiries. But if they're responding to scientifically illiterate people who don't understand the basics of climate modelling, then I don't think we should expect them spend any time at all.
I mean, the FOI process can be abused. I think it is important that we differentiate between using the FOI process as a way of harassing researchers and serious questions from people who understand enough to actually deal with the data. In that sense, requiring people to write their own code (which is better for finding errors anyway) serves as a way to tax the harassers without unduly burdening real scientists. Real scientists will probably have planned on writing their own code anyway, but people abusing the FOI process for harassment probably don't have the capability to do so.
In my own neighborhood, I've watched crazy citizens groups use demands for data as a way to harass experts. They go to town meetings and yell and scream about data. When experts give them the answers they need (which costs time and money), they start poring through the data looking for inconsistencies. Inevitably they find something that looks suspicious if you're completely ignorant of math and science and then they pounce on it at the next town meeting. "Gotcha!" they say. But they're ignorant people who don't understand basic math and they inevitably turn out to be completely wrong. Most of the time, the truth is exactly opposite what they've claimed. Meanwhile, an expert has to explain in great detail why exactly they're wrong. The whole thing is just a huge waste of time and taxpayer money. It doesn't cost them anything to demand data and when any expert fails to give them everything (including the kitchen sink) because they're worried that these ignorant people will misunderstand things, they only scream all the louder.
Public policy is hard. Even very simple questions like "will this development make traffic on this side street worse" is actually fairly tough to answer. The vast majority of people don't have anything close to the skillset needed to intelligently review an analysis of these questions. But many think they do.
I believe apache is capable of handling 5000 requests per year with very little human intervention.
The CRU folks actively avoided going that route. They avoided putting data on a public ftp site because they didn't want people they disliked to download it.
http://junkscience.com/FOIA/mail/1107454306.txt
Apache will not answer questions about the data or code. What do you think happens when FOI requests can't make sense of the data/code researchers give them? Either the researchers have to answer questions OR they will be accused of deliberately obfuscating their results. It is a no win situation.
Of course it's a win. They can say "look, it's all there, not our fault you can't understand it." They could even behave like scientists and answer reasonable questions about their work [1].
Answering Frequently Asked Questions with little human interaction is actually a solved problem.
Your arguments might carry some weight if they were flooded with an unreasonable number of FOI requests. Or if they were flooded with a large number of unreasonable and not-repeated questions. None of that actually happened. All that happened is that a few critics asked for the data and they conspired to hide it.
[1] Last month a guy from Princeton emailed me asking for help using code he downloaded from my website. Instead of conspiring to hide it, I emailed him a more recent version of the code told him what to tweak. I'm not even a professional scientist anymore.
they conspired to hide it
This is a flat out lie. The data is publicly available.
The fact that data is publicly available from other sources does not change the fact that the CRU conspired to hide their data set.
The conspiracy is proven conclusively by the hacked emails. The email linked here is part of the conspiracy: http://junkscience.com/FOIA/mail/1107454306.txt
Seriously, what more would you want in the way of proof? Videotape of Mann/Jones writing the email? A brain scan showing they weren't joking? I'm beginning to have doubts that you are arguing in good faith.
Quote from Phil Jones: “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Maybe "conspired to hide it" is too nuanced.
In theory, yes. In practice, people are only human, and tend to not react well when faced with a vitriolic "tone".
The police may be required to protect and serve, but try berating a police officer and see how well he serves you when your house gets robbed. He shouldn't treat you any differently, but he probably will.
If you're a university researcher in the UK it's impossible not to take public funds. All universities (bar one) are publically funded.
Then don't be a university researcher.
In fact, if you don't want to reveal your top secret source code/data, don't publish in science journals. It's utterly ridiculous that journals still exist which don't require source/data to be released.
The data was available.
If you want to independently verify it, the best way is to write your own code and see if it spits out the same/similar results.
"All universities (bar one) are publically funded."
That's a problem isn't it. Maybe the UK should fix that.
If only that logic worked on the DHS...