The claim is the data is missing. This is not the same. The presumption that it did exist is the reasonable conclusion, however, for it to be scientifically useful, people need to be able examine the data from the beginning. Correction techniques are routine applied to data across a wide variety of sciences, but are themselves something legitimately subject to scientific examination due to their intrinsic danger.
For all you know, the corrected data underestimates warming due to use of bad correction methods! How would you prove this, though? The data is missing.
Here's a very important point: This isn't about global warming or the skepticism thereof. This is a story about scientific malfeasance. Going to town defending people who can't produce their data, in accordance with the basic scientific principle of reproducibility, is an enormous flashing warning sign that you are deciding positions based on politics and not science. The scientific principle is clear: The data should be readily available for others to examine, full stop. That examiners may challenge it is a feature of the scientific process, not a bug!
There's really no room for debate on this, unless you are willing to admit up front that science is not a relevant consideration to your position, in which case, yeah, sure, go nuts defending the guys who won't produce their data. But you should be aware you've left science behind.
Am I personally a skeptic? Yes. But this isn't why, nor do I consider this evidence of my position. It is just plain scientific malfeasance of the kind that can pop up anywhere; since it's hardly the only piece of evidence in any direction, it's not really a story about this one piece of evidence. But it's critical to root this stuff out, call it out, and address it head on, for the same reasons it's important to call out the corruption of any other process. You can't tolerate this stuff, or it gets worse. I would by the first to criticize anyone who published one of the (many) scientific publications that bolster my personal beliefs if they refused to share data with "critics". This is basic science.
You have hit upon a key distinction, unfortunately the author is intentionally muddling these two issues of 1)scientific data is missing or being withheld and 2) global warming or the skepticism thereof.
"the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared"
"If there are no data, there’s no science."
There are plenty of mundane explainations for why scientists aren't providing data to people like Warwick Hughes. Perhaps Jones thought Hughes was a crank. Perhaps assembling the data was a lot of work and Jones didn't feel like going through all that work for someone he thought was just trying to raise trouble. Perhaps there were legal issues to providing the data publicly (as the article notes) that hadn't been resolved yet.
Of course Jones was wrong, all scientists should make every effort to provide data to anyone and everyone who wants it, even people they think are 'cranks'. In fact, Jones' reluctance to provide data to climate skeptics only fuels the fire of skepticism. But for the author to argue that this single act casts any serious doubt on the science of global warming is giving this incident far more importance than it deserves.
Where's the claim the data is fraudulent?
The claim is the data is missing. This is not the same. The presumption that it did exist is the reasonable conclusion, however, for it to be scientifically useful, people need to be able examine the data from the beginning. Correction techniques are routine applied to data across a wide variety of sciences, but are themselves something legitimately subject to scientific examination due to their intrinsic danger.
For all you know, the corrected data underestimates warming due to use of bad correction methods! How would you prove this, though? The data is missing.
Here's a very important point: This isn't about global warming or the skepticism thereof. This is a story about scientific malfeasance. Going to town defending people who can't produce their data, in accordance with the basic scientific principle of reproducibility, is an enormous flashing warning sign that you are deciding positions based on politics and not science. The scientific principle is clear: The data should be readily available for others to examine, full stop. That examiners may challenge it is a feature of the scientific process, not a bug!
There's really no room for debate on this, unless you are willing to admit up front that science is not a relevant consideration to your position, in which case, yeah, sure, go nuts defending the guys who won't produce their data. But you should be aware you've left science behind.
Am I personally a skeptic? Yes. But this isn't why, nor do I consider this evidence of my position. It is just plain scientific malfeasance of the kind that can pop up anywhere; since it's hardly the only piece of evidence in any direction, it's not really a story about this one piece of evidence. But it's critical to root this stuff out, call it out, and address it head on, for the same reasons it's important to call out the corruption of any other process. You can't tolerate this stuff, or it gets worse. I would by the first to criticize anyone who published one of the (many) scientific publications that bolster my personal beliefs if they refused to share data with "critics". This is basic science.