Saturday, November 26, 2011

Phil Jones on not responding to FOI requests: "Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school - the head of school and a few others) became very supportive"

Email 344

[Phil Jones] When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions - one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school - the head of school and a few others) became very supportive.

...At 01:17 03/12/2008, Ben Santer wrote:

...One of the problems is that I'm caught in a real Catch-22 situation. At present, I'm damned and publicly vilified because I refused to provide McIntyre with the data he requested. But had I acceded to McIntyre's initial request for climate model data, I'm convinced (based on the past experiences of Mike Mann, Phil, and Gavin) that I would have spent years of my scientific career dealing with demands for further explanations, additional data, Fortran code, etc. (Phil has been complying with FOIA requests from McIntyre and his cronies for over two years). And if I ever denied a single request for further information, McIntyre would have rubbed his hands gleefully and written: "You see - he's guilty as charged!" on his website.You and I have spent over a decade of our scientific careers on the MSU issue, Tom. During much of that time, we've had to do science in "reactive mode", responding to the latest outrageous claims and inept science by John Christy, David Douglass, or S. Fred Singer. For the remainder of my scientific career, I'd like to dictate my own research agenda. I don't want that agenda driven by the constant need to respond to Christy, Douglass, and Singer. And I certainly don't want to spend years of my life interacting with the likes of Steven McIntyre.

I hope LLNL management will provide me with their full support. If they do not, I'm fully prepared to seek employment elsewhere.

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