High Performance Organisations

Everyone who likes data has been enjoying Climategate. It is to stats geeks what Tiger Woods is to golf fans: a welcome drink of scandal in a dry desert.

Nevertheless, in Climategate, as in the Tiger Woods scandal, there’s lots of people being dragged through the mud who probably don’t deserve it. Phil Jones, the author of the charting “trick” email, falls into this category. In 1999, Phil drafted an email in which he describes increasing the length of a data series to “hide the decline” in temperatures over recent years. Admittedly Phil didn’t chose his words wisely, nor did he fully examine his unease at reporting the data as he did but he is not the scoundrel certain commentators have described him to be and certainly should not lose his job because of this email.

Junk Charts sums up Phil’s failings thus:

What concerns me is Phil Jones’ describing what he did as a “trick” to “hide the decline”.  He apparently thought that he was doing something shameful. But when is it shameful to extend the plot of a time series so as to display the long-term trend, and not be misled for short-term fluctuations? This is providing statistical context to the data being examined. Lots of people are condemning this as a willful act to mislead the public but if they have some statistical literacy, they will understand that finding the appropriate time scale to look at the data is one of the most important tasks of analyzing time series data. It’s a problem when even prominent scientists do not comprehend why they should be doing this.

I’m inclined to be even more lenient in my assessment of Phil. I’m sure he knows that determining time scale is a critical part of time series analysis and that doing so isn’t ‘hiding’ data. I’m also sure that Phil significantly tightens up his email drafting from now on.