Why was Karl targeted by Bates - Karl et al. 2015 wasn't producing a CDR?

citizenschallenge

I've just read Bates 2016 - One of the things that has me most confused, and that this reading has reinforced - is why Karl 2016 became a target in the first place? Aren't Bates CDRs major data sets that others turn to for grabbing and using numbers? - climate data record list
http://journals.ametsoc.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/ams/journals/content/bams/2016/15200477-97.9/bams-d-15-00015.1/20161012/images/large/bams-d-15-00015.1-t1.jpeg


When I look at Karl et al 2015, it's a "long-term global temperature analysis" It is a study and not a reference work.
(As in the class of Bates' list of CDRs.)

Wasn't Karl using others CDRs that were already in the verification/maturation/certification process ?

What was it that Karl didn't do to Bates' satisfaction?

citizenschallenge

I'm going to take it in small digestible chunks.

¶1 A look behind the curtain of John Bates’ facade - The John Bates Affair
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/03/1-behind-curtain-of-bates-facade.html

This is a citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal.  For more background you can start here.

Climate scientists versus climate data

by John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 | ClimateEtc.- Curry's blog

“A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.”

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I’ve borrowed John’s subtitle since I intend to explore his wordsmithing and ponder his motivations.

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Bates writes in ¶1   “I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump” (e.g., Washington Post 13 December 2016)." 

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Red flag right out of the gate.

It’s telling that Bates makes light of what the Trump Administration had already done to climate science information.  Given such an intro we must consider the possibility John Bates’ is motivated by politics and opportunism rather than any concern over data records.

(... links to a some articles about Trump actions.)
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>>>>> Bates: “As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA’s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data.” 

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Makes it sound pretty bad.   

But when Scott Waldman asked Bates about it, the story changed: 

>>> Bates: "The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was.” 

As for “disclosed everything it was” - In an article by Warren Cornwall and Paul Voosen, Bates tells a way less dramatic story:

>>> Bates: “The Science paper would have been fine had it simply had a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it was citing research, not operational, data for its land-surface temperatures”

Read those first two sentences together, Bates creates an equivalence between Trump literally purging climate data from the public record and a citation protocol issue.

>>> In reality, the entire methodology was spelled out in the paper, and the ship data correction Karl et al selected had previously been published. 
(H/T Snopes). 

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>>>>>Bates: “I spent the last decade cajoling climate scientists to archive their data and fully document the datasets.” 

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“Cajoling” is known as a “word trick” in this case used to imply scientists were not archiving or properly documenting their datasets.  But such a message would be misleading.

Sou at HotWhopper put it into perspective. 

"His incredibly complex archiving system may have been suitable for some purposes, but it clearly was a thorn in the side of users. The diagrams in his paper show it as a very complex, long process involving umpteen steps and a multitude of different work groups at NOAA. I imagine the procedures manual could run to hundreds of pages. 

To what extent did he even involve or listen to users? Good data archiving procedures are important, particularly for climate data. I doubt anyone would dispute that. But what's the point of a system if it doesn't meet user needs? And why try to stop research being published when it's based on solid and well-tested data, just because it hasn't been through the full seven year archiving process?

Even David Rose admits that the formal process takes a very long time."  { I include images of Figs 1,2,3}

and so on . . .

citizenschallenge

¶2 A look behind the curtain of John Bates’ facade - The John Bates Affair

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/03/2-behind-curtain-of-bates-facade.html

VictorVenema

citizenschallenge said:

I've just read Bates 2016 - One of the things that has me most confused, and that this reading has reinforced - is why Karl 2016 became a target in the first place?

It is clearly not for scientific reasons, even Bates said the data is okay.

It is clearly not for administrative reasons, it was clear to every reader that the paper was about a dataset produced for the paper, not a climate data record.

That leaves personal and political reasons. The news articles on the "scandal" provide evidence for problems working with others and Bates being transferred to a position without personnel to supervise. Thus personal reasons would be the best guess. It very often is.