Monday, November 30, 2009

Waterboarding the Data

A computer scientist in Colorado is digging deep into the data dump just executed by CRU in the wake of (no, the beginning of) the "Climategate" scandal and has found solid proof of how badly the data is being handled to create the desired results. It's a little tedious unless you are a computer nerd, but he is drilling down on the "Read Me" notes that are attached to some of the data and finding pearls like this:
I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.
This is written by one of their programmers! This is a scandal worthy of a congressional investigation if not a grand jury. This will make the Piltdown hoax seem inanely trivial when all is said and done. Read the rest of the post here.

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