date: Thu Jan 29 09:37:26 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: MBH Submission (fwd)
to: pgleick@pipeline.com, Stephen H Schneider <shs@stanford.edu>, Editorial Board--Ann Henderson-Sellers <ahs@ansto.gov.au>, barrie.pittock@dar.csiro.au, Christian Azar <frtca@fy.chalmers.se>, Cynthia Rosenzweig <crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov>, d.camuffo@isac.cnr.it, Danny Harvey <harvey@geog.utoronto.ca>, Dave Pollard <pollard@essc.psu.edu>, "David G. VICTOR" <dgvictor@stanford.edu>, Diana Liverman <diana.liverman@eci.ox.ac.uk>, F.I.Woodward@sheffield.ac.uk, gary yohe <gyohe@wesleyan.edu>, "H.J. Schellnhuber" <h.j.schellnhuber@uea.ac.uk>, j.salinger@niwa.co.nz, Jon Foley <jfoley@facstaff.wisc.edu>, Katarina Kivel <kivel@stanford.edu>, leonid@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca, lindam@atd.ucar.edu, mccarl@tamu.edu, N.W.Arnell@soton.ac.uk, ogilvie@spot.colorado.edu, "Peter H. Gleick" <pgleick@pipeline.com>, pfister@hist.unibe.ch, pmfearn@inpa.gov.br, rik.leemans@rivm.nl, rmoss@usgcrp.gov, "Rosenberg, Norm J" <nj.rosenberg@pnl.gov>, rwk@ucar.edu, Stewart Cohen <scohen@sdri.ubc.ca>, Thomas R Karl <Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov>

    Steve, Peter et al,
        I totally agree with Peter on Yuck. The tone of the email from Reviewer A indicates
    the sorts of issues we would be in. Here are my thoughts:
       If you accede to this request the whole peer-review process goes down the tubes.
    Reviewers will be able to request the earth from authors. If we all started doing this the
    number of reviews we could do would dramatically reduce. I currently do about 20-30
    reviews a year. If I began asking for this sort of information from journals (AMS, AGU,
   RMS
    etc) I would be laughed out of court. I guess it would stop the papers to review coming.
       The whole system would grind to a halt. I've never requested data/codes to do a
    review and I don't think others should either. I do many of my reviews on travel. I have a
    feel for whether something is wrong - call it intuition. If analyses don't seem right,
   look
    right or feel right, I say so. Some of my reviews for CC could be called into question!
        I've just been told that a paper will be appearing in GRL soon (by some of the skeptic
    crowd - not McIntyre). Paper was obviously reviewed. It commented upon some aspects
    of the TAR, data on CRU's web pages and of some of Mike Mann's work. It didn't go to
    review to me, Mike Mann, Chris Folland or Tom Karl. I am currently marking 5 U/G
    theses. Most are better than this GRL paper. The students put in references to justify
    statements - this GRL paper doesn't.
       We are trying to be fair, yet they are clearly not.
       So is there a compromise.  What if Mike sent them his data/codes - the data is there on
    a web site - and they sent Mike their data and codes.  As Ben pointed out Mike's code
    will not be simple. There are at least 50, maybe more, combinations of proxies used for
    different periods in the past.
    Cheers
    Phil
   At 21:45 28/01/2004 -0800, Peter Gleick wrote:

     I find Reviewer A's email a pretty convincing
     indication of what CC and Mann will face if the code
     isn't released.
     Yuck.
     Peter
     =====
     Dr. Peter Gleick
     President
     Pacific Institute
     Oakland, California
     [1]www.pacinst.org
     [2]www.worldwater.org

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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