More strange adventures in TSI data: the miracle of 900 fabricated, fraudulent days
Funny things happen on the Internet sometimes. Rather spectacular claims were made that 900 days of data “were fabricated”. This claim was described as not just speculation, but “a demonstrable fact”, and worse, the crime was apparently even “admitted to” by the man himself! Except that none of it was real, and three tiny misunderstood dots were not fabricated, not data, and not important. Welcome to a Bermuda-Triangle-moment in blog-land, where facts vanish, ships full of misquotes appear from nowhere, and ghosts-of-malcontent and misunderstanding roam freely. This post here is to slay the last loose ghosts, lest anybody think they might still have life in them, or indeed, think they ever did.
Usually a live debate is a brilliant way for spectators to learn. But in that particular science thread, the main lesson is not science but manners. Common courtesy may seem a quaint anachronism, but without it, logic and reason die on the sword of uninformed passion. A simple polite email and an open mind could have saved the world from a cloud of nonsense.
Thanks to the many valiant souls who fought for common sense.
It’s rare in a complex situation that the answer is so simple. (You won’t believe how small and irrelevant it all was.) The short answer is that the 900 days of fabrication was a fuss about three dots covering three years of data at the end of a 400 year graph. The tiny blue dots were described on the graph as “assumed as average” and added to the end of a solid red line. In other words, they were obviously not actual data, the description made it clear they were estimated, they were colored differently, and nothing was hidden. What’s more, their presence or absence made little difference to the arguments or the predictions. (So there was no incentive to fake them up.) It was kind of like a handy-hint was misinterpreted as a constitutional law and the trial went on for days before anybody noticed. Time for a cup of tea instead, then? We think so.
https://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/more-strange-adventures-in-tsi-data-the-miracle-of-900-fabricated-fraudulent-days/
