If your scientific case is so strong, why won't you freely share the data?

Climate Audit - by Steve McIntyre » CSIRO adopts Phil Jones’ Stonewall Tactic

I wonder whether stonewalling techniques are discussed behind closed doors at Team conferences. We first heard “IPR” as a meme with Phil Jones, now supposedly re-incarnated as the lead author of the PR Challenge, who famously said:

We have 25 or so years 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. There is IPR to consider.

This policy appears to have been adopted by CSIRO as well.

The policy is absurd. If authors want to keep their data private, then don’t publish articles and, especially, don’t issue press releases. If you’re going to publish articles - especially articles the results of which are going to be disseminated to the public, as here - then forget about “IPR” in the data. Let people look at the data. Who knows - maybe they’ll agree.