diff --git a/_index.db b/_index.db index d719ad43c..fa2dbaecc 100644 Binary files a/_index.db and b/_index.db differ diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0bbdccd66 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: "Citicorp Center engineering crisis" +chunk: 1/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:37.754740+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +In July 1978, a possible structural flaw was discovered in Citicorp Center (now Citigroup Center), a skyscraper that had recently been completed in New York City. After investigations from a number of third parties, the building was found to be in danger of possible collapse due to its design; workers surreptitiously made repairs over the next few months, avoiding disaster. The building's structural engineer, William LeMessurier, incorporated numerous unconventional features into the design. Among these are a raised base supported by four offset stilts, diagonal bracing to absorb wind loads from upper stories, and a tuned mass damper on the roof. It was the first building that used active mechanical elements (the tuned mass damper) for stabilization. +Concerned about "quartering winds" directed diagonally toward the corners of the building, Princeton University undergraduate student Diane Hartley investigated the structural integrity of the building and found it wanting. Nearly simultaneously, an architecture student at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) named Lee DeCarolis chose the building as the topic for a report assignment in his freshman class on the basic concepts of structural engineering. John Zoldos of NJIT expressed reservations to DeCarolis about the building's structure, and DeCarolis contacted LeMessurier, relaying what his professor had said. LeMessurier had also become aware that during the construction of the building, changes had been made to his design without his approval, and he reviewed the calculations of the building's stress parameters and the results of wind tunnel experiments. He concluded there was a problem. Worried that a high wind could cause the building to collapse, LeMessurier directed that the building be reinforced. +The reinforcements were done at night while the offices in the building were open for regular operation during the day. The concern was for the integrity of the building structure in high wind conditions. Estimates at the time suggested that if the mass damper was disabled by a power failure, the building could be toppled by a 70-mile-per-hour (110 km/h) quartering wind, with possibly many people killed as a result. The reinforcement effort was kept secret until 1995. The tuned mass damper has a major effect on the stability of the structure, so an emergency backup generator was installed and extra staff was assigned to ensure that it would keep working reliably during the structural reinforcement. +The city had plans to evacuate the Citicorp Center and other surrounding buildings if high winds did occur. Hurricane Ella did threaten New York during the retrofitting, but it changed course before arriving. Ultimately, the retrofitting may not have been necessary. A NIST reassessment using modern technology later determined that the quartering wind loads were not the threat that LeMessurier and Hartley had thought. They recommended a reevaluation of the original building design to determine if the retrofitting had really been warranted. + +== Background == + +The Citigroup Center, originally known as Citicorp Center, is a 59-story skyscraper at 601 Lexington Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins as the headquarters for First National City Bank (later Citibank), along with associate architect Emery Roth & Sons. LeMessurier Associates and James Ruderman were the structural engineers, and Bethlehem Steel was the steel subcontractor. The building was dedicated on October 12, 1977. +As part of Citicorp Center's construction, a new building for the site's previous occupant, St. Peter's Lutheran Church, was erected at the site's northwest corner; by agreement, it was supposed to be separate from the main tower. To avoid the church, the tower is supported by four stilts positioned underneath the centers of each of the tower's edges. (Early plans called for the supports to be placed under the tower's corners, but the agreement with the church prevented that.) To allow this design to work, Bill LeMessurier specified that load-bearing braces in the form of inverted chevrons be stacked above the stilts inside each face of the building. These braces are designed to distribute tension loads created by the wind from the upper stories down to the stilts. +The long, multi-story diagonal braces had to be fabricated in sections and assembled on-site, requiring five joints in each brace. LeMessurier's original design for the chevron load braces used welded joints. To save money, Bethlehem Steel proposed changing the construction plans to use bolted joints, a design modification accepted by LeMessurier's office but unknown to the engineer himself until later. +For his original design, LeMessurier focused primarily on the wind load on the building when the wind blew perpendicularly against the side of the building. Although he had initially studied winds from various directions, he had concluded that quartering winds were not the critical case, and came to rely primarily on the calculations for perpendicular winds. Perpendicular winds were the only calculations required by New York City building code. Such winds are normally the worst case, and typically a structural system capable of handling them can easily cope with wind from any other angle. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7b0e764ef --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +--- +title: "Citicorp Center engineering crisis" +chunk: 2/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:37.754740+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Discovery == +In May 1978, after the building structure was completed, LeMessurier was designing a similar building with wind braces in Pittsburgh, and a potential contractor questioned the expense of using welded rather than bolted joints. LeMessurier asked his office how the welds went at the Citicorp construction and was then told that bolts had been substituted for the welded joints he had prescribed. +In June 1978, Princeton University engineering student Diane Hartley was writing her senior thesis about Citicorp Center's design at the suggestion of her professor, David Billington. As part of that work she analyzed the structural design and calculated stresses from quartering winds, finding them higher than the maximum expected stress values provided to her by LeMessurier's firm. Hartley asked her contact at the building design company, Joel S. Weinstein, a junior member of its staff, about the issue, and he provided her with a copy of the firm's calculations for perpendicular winds (but not for quartering winds). Only Weinstein was indicated as signing off on the copies of the calculations he provided to her, although she expected to see them initialed by a second person to confirm them, as was the usual practice in the industry. According to Hartley, she asked for calculations about quartering winds, and Weinstein said he would provide them but then didn't. Calculations for quartering winds were not required by the building code at the time, and were not common practice in the industry (although the design of the building was obviously unusual and would have justified special analysis). Weinstein assured her that the building could handle the necessary forces, and she did not further pursue the issue beyond writing about it in her thesis, which recorded her concerns and the response she received. In his feedback on Hartley's thesis, Billington questioned why her calculations weren't checked against figures from the firm. +In June 1978, LeMessurier was answering questions via phone with a young architectural student, self-identified more than 40 years later as Lee DeCarolis. On July 24, 1978, LeMessurier went to his office and conducted calculations on Citicorp Center's design. He had thought that perpendicular winds were the critical case for the building rather than quartering winds. He found that, for four of the eight tiers of chevrons, quartering winds would create a 40 percent increase in wind loads and a 160 percent increase in the load at the bolted joints. Citicorp Center's use of bolted joints and the loads from quartering winds would not have caused concern if these issues had been isolated. However, the combination of the two findings prompted LeMessurier to run tests on structural safety. He concluded that the original welded-joint design could withstand the load from both straight-on and quartering winds, but the modified bolted-joint design could be vulnerable to a 70-mile-per-hour (110 km/h) near-hurricane-force quartering wind. LeMessurier also discovered that his firm had used New York City's truss safety factor of 1:1 instead of the column safety factor of 1:2. +On July 26, LeMessurier visited wind-tunnel expert Alan Garnett Davenport at the University of Western Ontario. Davenport's team conducted calculations on the building and concluded not only that LeMessurier's modeling was correct but also that, in a real-world situation, member stresses could increase by more than the 40 percent LeMessurier had calculated. LeMessurier then went to his Maine summer home on July 28 to analyze the issue. With the tuned mass damper active, LeMessurier estimated that a wind capable of toppling the building had a one in fifty-five chance of happening any year. But if the tuned mass damper could not function due to a power outage, a wind strong enough to cause the building's collapse had one in sixteen chance of happening any year. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a0518f09c --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Citicorp Center engineering crisis" +chunk: 3/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:37.754740+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Repairs == +LeMessurier agonized over how to deal with the problem. If the issues were made known to the public, he risked ruining his professional reputation and causing panic in the immediate area surrounding the building and the occupants. LeMessurier considered never bringing the issue up, and he also briefly contemplated committing suicide before anyone else found out about the defect. LeMessurier ultimately contacted Stubbins's lawyer and insurance carrier. LeMessurier then contacted Citicorp's lawyers, the latter of which hired Leslie E. Robertson as an expert adviser. Citicorp accepted LeMessurier's proposal to weld steel plates over the bolted joints, and Karl Koch Erecting was hired for the welding process. Very few people were made aware of the issue, besides Citicorp leadership, mayor Ed Koch, acting buildings commissioner Irving E. Minkin, and the head of the welder's union. +Construction crews started installing the welded panels at night in August 1978. Officials made no public mention of any possible structural issues, and the city's three major newspapers had gone on strike. Officials barely acknowledged the issue, instead describing the work as a routine procedure. Henry DeFord III of Citicorp claimed the Citicorp Center could withstand a 100-year wind and that there were no "noticeable problems in the building at all". As precautions, emergency generators were installed for the mass damper, strain gauges were placed on critical beams and weather forecasters were engaged. Citicorp and local officials created emergency evacuation plans for the immediate neighborhood. However, these evacuation plans were not publicized at the time, although thousands of people could have been killed in a potential collapse. Six weeks into the work, a major storm (Hurricane Ella) was off Cape Hatteras and heading for New York. The reinforcement was only half-finished, with New York City hours away from emergency evacuation, but at that point the backup generators were in place and the mass damper was being continually monitored by special staff, and enough of the bracing had been completed that the tower was estimated to be able to survive a 200-year storm. Ella eventually turned eastward and veered out to sea. The weather watch ended on September 13. +Repairs were completed in October 1978, and most of the newspapers remained out of production for weeks after it was completed. LeMessurier claimed a wind strong enough to topple the repaired building would occur only once every 700 years. Stubbins and LeMessurier's insurance carrier covered all of the repair costs, estimated to be several million dollars. + +== Publication == +Since no structural failure occurred, the work was not publicized until 1995, when a lengthy article appeared in The New Yorker. The 1995 story in The New Yorker described the student as a "young man, whose name has been lost in the swirl of subsequent events" who called LeMessurier saying "that his professor had assigned him to write a paper on the Citicorp tower". However, it was clear that Diane Hartley had never contacted LeMessurier directly – she had spoken only to Joel S. Weinstein. According to one second-hand report, when one of LeMessurier's colleagues asked whether the student was female, "LeMessurier responded that he didn't know because he had not actually spoken with the student." However, in a lecture on the subject, LeMessurier himself said he had spoken directly and repeatedly with the student and referred to the student as male. LeMessurier died in 2007 without describing any communication about the interaction between Hartley and Weinstein. +Hartley identified herself as the probable engineering student in 2011, more than 15 years after the New Yorker article was published. However, another student at a different institution, Lee DeCarolis, identified himself in 2022 as the young man in question. He said he learned in 2011 how he played a part in the Citicorp Building history from reading Einstein's Refrigerator, a 2001 book by the high school teacher and podcaster Steve Silverman. By the time DeCarolis read the book, LeMessurier had died. While DeCarolis had mentioned his role to acquaintances and even written a play about it, he revealed himself to the public at large only after a reassessment by NIST determined that the effect of the wind loads had not been as severe as Hartley and LeMessurier estimated. +The crisis was further detailed in a 2025 book, The Great Miscalculation, by the historian Michael M. Greenburg. In the book, Greenburg wrote that the work had been split up among many individuals, which may have contributed to confusion surrounding the decision to use bolts instead of a welded frame. + +== Ethical questions == +According to a case study by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Trust, "many have viewed the actions of LeMessurier as nearly heroic, and many engineering schools and ethics educators now use LeMessurier's story as an example of how to act ethically." However, others have criticized LeMessurier for his lack of oversight that led to the issues and his lack of honesty toward neighborhood residents, architects, engineers, and other members of the public when the problems were discovered. Architect Eugene Kremer discussed the ethical questions raised in this case in 2002. Kremer listed six key points that he perceived as ethically objectionable: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f9ee10505 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: "Citicorp Center engineering crisis" +chunk: 4/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:37.754740+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Analysis of wind loads: Although quartering wind loads were considered early in the design process, LeMessurier initially reached the conclusion that they were not the critical case for the building's structural analysis, and came to rely primarily on the calculations for perpendicular winds, as required by building codes, rather than checking all calculations and scenarios thoroughly. +Design changes: The steel framework subcontractor (Bethlehem Steel) proposed to use bolted joints instead of full-penetration welding, and the proposal was approved by LeMessurier's firm without LeMessurier personally reviewing the details. Kremer reported that Robert McNamara, "the managing principal for Citicorp in LeMessurier Associates' Cambridge office", stated that after he reviewed the proposal, he "presented the suggested change to Bill LeMessurier", who "discussed [with him] the technical implications and did calculations as to what effect the bolt extension in the connection would have on the movement of the tower ...", and that LeMessurier's firm then approved the details of the change without LeMessurier personally reviewing those details. This somewhat contradicts LeMessurier, who said he wasn't aware of the substitution until after the work had been completed. +Professional responsibility: Before LeMessurier decided to make Citicorp aware of the design defects, he briefly considered concealing the issues instead, or even suicide. Kremer said he should not have entertained such thoughts, even briefly. In contrast, the AIA study reports that it is clear LeMessurier never really considered the other options seriously. +Public statements: In press interviews and releases of information at the time, officials either omitted or lied about details of the defects. Kremer cites the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics, which says engineers shall "Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner." +Public safety: When Hurricane Ella threatened the city in August and September 1978, evacuation plans for the surrounding area were made in secret. Kremer cites the NSPE Board of Ethical Review (BER), which, although it was not commenting about the Citicorp Center specifically, said "withholding critical information from thousands of individuals whose safety is compromised over a significant period of time" is improper (although it could be argued that the Citicorp Center situation did not rise to meet that standard, when considering that no storms with high winds actually occurred in New York City during the period in question, and other steps had been taken to reduce the risk, and evacuation plans were ready if a high-wind storm were to occur). +Advancing professional knowledge: Kremer argues that concealing the crisis for almost 20 years prevented some of the ethical and engineering analysis and learning that could have taken place if information had been released about the Citicorp Center case. + +== References == + +== Sources == +Morgenstern, Joseph (May 25, 1995). "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis". The New Yorker. pp. 45–53. (accessible only once without a subscription) +Postal, Matthew A. (December 6, 2016). "Citicorp Center" (PDF). New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. +Stern, Robert A. M.; Mellins, Thomas; Fishman, David (1995). New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial (1960 ed.). New York: Monacelli Press. ISBN 1-885254-02-4. + +== External links == +Veritasium: How a Student's Question Saved This NYC Skyscraper \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..69dc318a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 1/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other computer files were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through several blogs of global warming deniers, who alleged that the documents indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations. +The incident occurred shortly before the opening December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit. It has prompted general discussion about increasing the openness of scientific data (though the majority of climate data have always been freely available). Scientists, scientific organisations, and government officials have stated that the incident does not affect the overall scientific case for climate change. Andrew Revkin reported in The New York Times that "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument." + +== Content of the documents == +The material comprised more than 1,000 e-mails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code, pertaining to climate change research covering a period from 1996 until 2009. Some of the e-mails which have been widely publicised included discussions of how to combat the arguments of climate change sceptics, unflattering comments about sceptics, queries from journalists, and drafts of scientific papers. There have been assertions that these discussions indicated efforts to shut out dissenters and their points of view, and included discussions about destroying files in order to prevent them from being revealed under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000. +A review by the Associated Press of all the e-mails found that they did not support claims of faking of science, but did show disdain for critics. Scientists had discussed avoiding sharing information with critics, but the documents showed no evidence that any data was destroyed. Researchers also discussed in e-mails how information they had released on request was used by critics to make personal attacks on researchers. In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Jones said "Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them. We've not deleted any emails or data here at CRU." He confirmed that the e-mails that had sparked the most controversy appeared to be genuine. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6d6b016ed --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 2/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== E-mails === +Most of the e-mails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences. The controversy has focused on a small number of e-mails, particularly those sent to or from climatologists Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, and Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University (PSU), one of the originators of the graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graph". +Climate change deniers gained wide publicity for allegations that the hacked e-mails showed climate scientists colluded in manipulating data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published in peer reviewed journals. Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations. Independent reports said that the e-mails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and e-mails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct, but there were disturbing suggestions that scientists had avoided sharing scientific data with sceptical critics. +The Information Commissioner's Office stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." The Science and Technology Select Committee criticised the ICO for making "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but also blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and called for a full investigation to resolve the questions raised. +The Associated Press conducted a review of the e-mails and concluded that they showed scientists fending off critics, but did not support claims that global warming science had been faked. They stated that "One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming", and mentioned ethical problems with this action due to the fact that "free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method". They cited a science policy expert as stating that it was "normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds". The AP sent the emails to three climate scientists they selected as moderates, who did not change their view that man-made global warming is a real threat. The three scientists are on the record elsewhere supporting an outside, independent review of the allegations of misconduct at both the CRU and Pennsylvania State University. +Summarising its own analysis, FactCheck stated that claims by climate sceptics that the emails demonstrated scientific misconduct amounting to fabrication of global warming were unfounded, and emails were being misrepresented to support these claims. While the emails showed a few scientists being rude or dismissive, this did not negate evidence that human activities were largely responsible for global warming, or the conclusions of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which used the CRU as just one of many sources of data. +An editorial in the scientific journal Nature stated that the e-mails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human caused global warming, or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers. Scientific openness requires public availability of data used to reach conclusions, but researchers had been hampered in this by contractual restrictions on some data, and in certain countries national meteorological services were too slow to provide data sets on request. The e-mail theft highlighted "the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden." While scientists are human and "unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance", they "should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition." +The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, described the CRU's scientists "as highly reputed professionals, whose contributions over the years to scientific knowledge are unquestionable" and described their datasets as "totally consistent with those from other institutions, on the basis of which far-reaching and meaningful conclusions were reached in the [2007 IPCC report]." +On 24 November the University of East Anglia issued a statement on the contents of the e-mails: "There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest quality of scientific investigation and interpretation." +In its report to the Science and Technology Select Committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Institute of Physics stated that the emails reveal evidence of "determined and coordinated refusals" to comply with scientific traditions through "manipulation of the publication and peer-review system" and "intolerance to challenge". This report was used by climate sceptics to bolster claims that the problem of global warming is exaggerated. This forced the Institute of Physics to confirm that its position was that "the basic science is well enough understood to be sure that our climate is changing, and that we need to take action now to mitigate that change." Many experts considered that the correction was still inadequate, with climatologist Andy Russell describing the allegation of data suppression as "incorrect and irresponsible". The institute said that the statement had been prepared by their energy subcommittee, but would not reveal who had produced it. It did say that the subcommittee included an IOP official named Peter Gill, whose company provides services to the energy industry and who has written that for many people, the subject of anthropogenic global warming "has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant". The institute said that Gill was not the main source of information and that other members of the sub-committee were also critical of CRU. Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat member of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said "Members of the Institute of Physics ... may be concerned that the IOP is not as transparent as those it wishes to criticise." However the institute told the Guardian that the submission was "approved by three members of its science board" and supplied comments from an anonymous board member stating "The institute should feel relaxed about the process by which it generated what is, anyway, a statement of the obvious ... the points [the submission] makes are ones which we continue to support, that science should be practiced openly and in an unbiased way." + +==== Climate reconstruction graph ==== + +The most quoted phrase took words from an e-mail of 16 November 1999 written by Phil Jones which referred to a graph he was preparing as a diagram for the cover of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) statement on the status of global climate in 1999. Jones wrote: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2e8d4ecd8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 3/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. The "trick" was a technique to combine instrumental temperature record data with long term reconstructions based on proxy data, and "the decline" was a well known issue with Keith Briffa's reconstruction using certain tree ring proxies which appeared to decline after 1950, when measured temperatures were rising. The email was widely misquoted as a "trick" to "hide the decline" as though it referred to a decline in measured global temperatures, but this was obviously untrue as when the email was written temperatures were far from declining: 1998 had been the warmest year recorded. On 9 December 2009, Sarah Palin said the truncated phrase showed a "highly politicised scientific circle" had "manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures", and at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, senator Senator Jim Inhofe quoted Jones, and said "Of course he means hide the decline in temperatures". The graph showed three series of paleoclimate reconstructions, based on records of tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc., along with historical and instrumental records. "Mike's Nature trick" referred to Michael E. Mann's paper on temperature trends published by Michael Mann in Nature in 1998, which combined various proxy records and related them to actual temperature records: it included a figure later dubbed the hockey stick graph, which clearly distinguished between the proxy and instrumental data. Mann described the "trick" as simply a concise way of showing the two kinds of data together while still clearly indicating which was which. He said that there was nothing "hidden or inappropriate" about it, and that his method of combining proxy data had been corroborated by numerous statistical tests and matched thermometer readings taken over the past 150 years. A press release by the University of East Anglia said that the "trick" was using instrumental data to meet a requirement of showing temperatures more recent than those covered by the proxy based temperature reconstructions, and that the use of the word "trick" was not intended to imply any deception. An editorial in Nature said that 'trick' was slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique. The phrase "hide the decline" referred specifically to the divergence problem in which some post 1960 tree ring proxy data indicates a decline while measured temperatures rise. The reconstruction by Briffa et al. was based solely on tree ring data, which shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century to the mid 20th century. They had published a statement on the divergence problem in 1998, and had recommended that the post 1960 part of their reconstruction should not be used. Jones stated that the email was "written in haste" and that, far from seeking to hide the decline, CRU had published a number of articles on the problem. The implications of the decline are discussed in Chapter 2 of the IPCC Third Assessment Report, and in Chapter 6 of the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) which describes discussion of various possible reasons for the divergence which does not affect all the trees, and says that there is no consensus about the cause. It notes that Briffa et al. specifically excluded the post 1960 data, which is therefore not shown in the graph of their tree ring reconstruction in the AR4 report. John Tierney wrote in The New York Times that "the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn't have realized that the scariest part of that graph – the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium – was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom." Tierney quotes Michael E. Mann replying to a denier who raised this very issue about tree-ring data at the RealClimate blog, "No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, 'grafted the thermometer record onto' any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum." Tierney continued, "Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don't see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it." +In December 2009, most scientists interviewed by The Philadelphia Inquirer considered there was ample other evidence supporting the original graph and they had not changed their views on the issues. In an exception, Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology alleged that the emails "explicitly refer to falsification and rigging of data" in covering up the divergence problem of tree ring proxies for the 1960s, which he said called earlier periods into question, and said "The trick here is replacing the kind of data you're using with something to make it look different." Other climatologists disputed Lindzen's accusations. Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center said he had seen nothing in the emails that called the fundamental science into question, and Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution agreed that there was no trickery, saying he would use the word trick to describe some methodological step, but expressed the view that the basis of reconstructions had been unclear. Several scientific sources state that the decline being referred to is a decline in tree ring climate proxy metrics, not temperature. Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the UEA, said that the scientists had drawn "the line to follow the tree-ring reconstruction up to 1960 and the measured temperature after that." +Before the incident, Mann and others had presented reconstructions based on more proxies, and found similar results with or without the tree ring records. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had issued an "endangerment finding" in 2009 in preparation for climate regulations on excessive greenhouse gases. Petitions to reconsider this citing the email were raised by the state of Texas and conservative activists and business groups the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the coal company Peabody Energy. They said the email "evidences CRU staff's effort to deliberately manipulate data to yield desired results", and highlighted the word "trick". The Southeastern Legal Foundation said it showed "an attempt to cook the books to conceal the fact that the famous 'hockey stick' is a manipulated, misleading barrel of scientific nonsense." The EPA rejected these allegations as both irrelevant and inaccurate, noting that the WMO cover illustration by Jones bore no relationship to the IPCC assessment reports, and used different methods. The issues with tree rings had not been hidden, but were extensively discussed in scientific literature and in IPCC reports. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..453500de1 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 4/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The EPA agreed with the UK Science & Technology Committee conclusion that "We are content that the phrases such as 'trick' or 'hiding the decline' were colloquial terms used in private e-mails, and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..63c8909ec --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 5/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +==== Peer review issue ==== + +In response to an e-mail mentioning a recent paper in the scientific journal Climate Research that questioned assertions that the 20th century was abnormally warm, Mann wrote in an e-mail of 11 March 2003: + +I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. +Mann told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that he did not feel there was anything wrong in saying "we shouldn't be publishing in a journal that's activist." +Mann was not alone in expressing concern about the peer review process of the journal. Half of the journal's editorial board, including editor-in-chief Hans von Storch, resigned in the wake of controversy surrounding the article's publication. The publisher later admitted that the paper's major findings could not "be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. [Climate Research] should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." +In an 18 December 2009 column in the WSJ, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. In a response also published in the WSJ, von Storch said that he left the post as chief editor of Climate Research "with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a skeptic's paper, at that." Michaels said the incident demonstrated how peer-reviewed literature had been biased to prevent himself and others of like mind from publishing. In a response published by the WSJ, Mann said the only bias was for "well-reasoned writing that is buttressed by facts" and climate change deniers such as Richard Lindzen and John Christy had no problems with publishing their work in mainstream journals. He pointed to presidential science adviser John Holdren's 2003 statement that Michaels had "published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science." +The independent review commissioned by the University of East Anglia found that the strong reaction of the scientists to the Soon and Baliunas paper "was understandable, and did not amount to undue pressure on Climate Research." +The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was petitioned about this issue by the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the Ohio Coal Association, Peabody Energy, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and the State of Texas The EPA concluded that the emails expressed displeasure but did not show that any action was in fact taken, and it is "expected and appropriate that researchers choose in which journals to publish, as well as recommend to their peers journals in which to publish or not publish. In this case, the bottom line is that the underlying science at issue has been shown to be flawed. The scientists' actions were focused on this lack of scientific merit and the process that lead to it, and not an attempt to distort the science or the scientific literature." The EPA considered that "If anything, their actions aimed to police the peer review process and rectify a problem that threatened its scientific integrity." + +==== Alleged exclusion of papers from IPCC report ==== +In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by "MM", thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" At that time, Jones and Kevin E. Trenberth were lead authors on a chapter in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Trenberth told the investigating journalist "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature ... Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC." He also made a statement agreed with Jones, that "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Jones could have been expected to be aware of the rules as he had been a contributing author for more than ten years, but this was his first time as a lead author with a responsibility for content of the complete chapter. +The IPCC has stated that its procedures mean there is "no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed." Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, stated that the papers that had been criticised "were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the AR4 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report). Furthermore, articles from the journal Climate Research, which was also decried in the emails, have been cited 47 times in the Working Group I report." +A Nature editorial stated that the UEA scientists had been sharply critical of the quality of the two papers, but "neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers." Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry at Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said that "If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view." Rajendra Pachauri responded that the IPCC has "a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which ensures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening." + +==== Freedom of information ==== \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..03152d8d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 6/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Several e-mails relating to freedom of information issues were the focus of controversy. In a 2 February 2005 e-mail, Phil Jones advised Michael Mann: + +And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our does! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a Data Protection Act, which I will hide behind. +In another e-mail sent in May 2008, Jones asked Mann: + +Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. ... Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. +Before the emails were published, Jones had already announced in Nature News (on 12 August 2009) that he was working to release the raw data in a systematic way, and was writing to all the national meteorological organisations requesting their agreement to waive confidentiality. On 24 November 2009, four days after the start of the email controversy, the university stated that over 95% of the CRU climate data set had already been available for several years, and the remainder would be released when permissions were given. +Critics asserted that the e-mails showed that scientists were conspiring to delete e-mails and documents to prevent them from being released. George Monbiot, a supporter of the scientific consensus, wrote that Jones' resignation was warranted on the basis of his statement in this email alone, a statement Monbiot later retracted. +Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of East Anglia, Trevor Davies, said that no data were deleted or "otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure". In response to allegations that CRU avoided obligations under the UK Freedom of Information Act, independent investigator Muir Russell plans to review CRU's "policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act". +The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) oversees the application of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The Deputy Information Commissioner, Graham Smith, issued a statement which was published on 27 January 2010 and said that the e-mails showed that an FOI request made by David Holland, a climate sceptic from Northampton, had "not [been] dealt with as they should have been under the legislation." Section 77 of the FOI Act prohibited public authorities from intentionally preventing the disclosure of restricted information, but it was too late to impose sanctions as there was a six-month statutory time limit. He was advising the university of East Anglia on its legal obligations, and the ICO would be considering whether to take regulatory action once reports of the independent and police investigations were available. The university said it had not been made aware of the statement by Smith. +In its submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee, the university denied allegations that it had refused to release raw data in breach of the FOIA. It subsequently released an exchange of correspondence with the Information Commissioner's Office to clarify that, in their opinion, the university had not been found in breach of any part of the FOI Act. UEA stated that the ICO had not completed its investigations and had not established any breach of the law, and that it had not sought any further evidence on the matter. It said that the ICO statement only referred to prima facie evidence, and that Mr. Holland's request at issue concerned private e-mails. The letter from the ICO had stated that "the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ... The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter." Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, told The Times that it would be unwise for the university to attempt to portray the ICO's letter in a positive light, as the correspondence would be examined by the committee. The UEA told the newspaper that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The university said that the point being made in their submission was that "there has been no investigation so no decision, as was widely reported. The ICO read e-mails and came to assumptions but has not investigated or demonstrated any evidence that what may have been said in emails was actually carried out." The Science and Technology Select Committee report blamed the university for mishandling Freedom of Information requests and said it had "found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics". The committee also criticised the ICO, and said that it made "a statement to the press that went beyond that which it could substantiate", but accepted that the six-month statute of limitations restriction was insufficient, and said that this should be reviewed. It called for a full investigation by the Muir Russell inquiry or by the Information Commissioner, to resolve the question of whether there had been a breach of Section 77 of the FOIA. +In an e-mail of 12 November 2009, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory commented on an FOI request for data and correspondence from climate sceptic blogger Stephen McIntyre: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-6.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-6.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..8c47efa8f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-6.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 7/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests. ... McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. ... We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an "audit" by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. +In an Associated Press interview, McIntyre disagreed with his portrayal in emails, and said "Everything that I've done in this, I've done in good faith." +FactCheck stated that the great majority of CRU's data is already freely available, and the scientists were reluctant to supply their own correspondence, code and data to people whose motives seemed questionable to them. It is not clear that any deliberate obstruction happened, and emails show the scientists discussing with university officials and lawyers their obligations under the new legislation, informing critics that data is already freely available, or that the information has been sent to them. This question is to form part of the East Anglia investigation. +The University of East Anglia stated that the great majority of CRU climate data was already freely available, but the remainder was mainly owned by national meteorological services around the globe and subject to non-publication agreements. The Met Office was requesting new agreements to allow it to republish the raw data. CRU has a web page describing the progress that had previously been made in releasing this data, and giving details of non-publication agreements including the restrictions placed by the Met office on use of its data for bona fide research programmes. In a later BBC interview, Phil Jones said that the land station records developed at CRU show close agreement with the independent NCDC and GISS official records, which are based on raw data freely available from the Global Historical Climatology Network. +In response to the Met Office requests, some national meteorological services gave full or conditional agreement, others failed to respond, and the request was explicitly refused by Trinidad and Tobago and Poland. In discussions with the ICO about FOIA requests which had been made before the email controversy had begun, the university argued that the data was publicly available from the Met organisations, and the lack of agreement exempted the remaining data. In its decision released on 23 June 2011, the ICO stated that the data was not easily available and there was insufficient evidence that disclosure would have an adverse effect on international relations. The ICO required the university to release the data covered by the FOIA request within 35 calendar days. On 27 July 2011 CRU announced release of the raw instrumental data not already in the public domain, with the exception of Poland which was outside the area covered by the FOIA request. The data are available for download from Met Office website and from CRU. The university remained concerned "that the forced release of material from a source which has explicitly refused to give permission for release could have some damaging consequences for the UK in international research collaborations." + +==== Gaps in understanding temperature variations ==== +Critics also highlighted a passage in an e-mail sent by Kevin Trenberth on 12 October 2009 that discussed gaps in scientific understanding of recent temperature variations, in which Trenberth wrote: + +The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't, +Trenberth told the Associated Press that the email referred to an article he authored calling for improvement in measuring global warming to describe unusual data, such as rising sea surface temperatures. The word travesty refers to what Trenberth sees as an inadequate observing system that, were it more adequate, would be able to track the warming he believes is there. +In a statement on his NCAR webpage Trenberth states that, + +It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-7.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-7.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7fb26da33 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents-7.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit documents" +chunk: 8/8 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_documents" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:39.055334+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Code and documentation === +The CRU files also included programs written in Fortran, programmer comments and a readme file, which attracted considerable attention from programmers. The log covered more than four years work by a programmer, who had been frustrated by problems in relating climate data from numerous international sources. In a BBC Newsnight report, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said the code was "below the standard you'd expect in any commercial software" because it lacked clear documentation or an audit history. Graham-Cumming also reported finding a bug in the code's error handling which, if it occurred, would ignore data without warning. +Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU. When he challenged Newsnight on this, they responded that "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code" and declined to retract the story. He commented that on the same basis "the quality of the code I use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that 'it is all physics code'." +The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation established that the programming notes recorded the process of updating the CRU TS2.1 dataset product to TS3.0. This product includes multiple climate variables, including temperatures, rainfall and cloud cover, and has nothing to do with the HadCRUT temperature record which uses the separate CRUTEM land temperature dataset. The CRU programmer had the difficult task of merging datasets at the same time as migrating code to a new computer system, finding ways of dealing with inconsistencies in data from disparate organisations, improving quality control and debugging. + +== References == + +"Hackers target leading climate research unit". BBC News. 20 November 2009. The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers. +"The CRU hack". RealClimate. 20 November 2009. Retrieved 24 November 2009. +"Hans von Storch". Coast.gkss.de. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2009. +US EPA (29 July 2010). Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. US Environmental Protection Agency. Archived from the original on 21 September 2015. Retrieved 17 September 2015. + +== External links == +Unwinding "Hide the Decline" Unwinding "Hide the Decline", detailed video coverage on Climategate, 28 April 2011. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..81d70e894 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 1/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files (the Climatic Research Unit documents) to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. +The story was first broken by climate change denialists, who argued that the emails showed that global warming was a scientific conspiracy and that scientists manipulated climate data and attempted to suppress critics. The CRU rejected this, saying that the emails had been taken out of context. FactCheck.org reported that climate change deniers misrepresented the contents of the emails. Columnist James Delingpole popularised the term "Climategate" to describe the controversy. +The mainstream media picked up the story, as negotiations over climate change mitigation began in Copenhagen on 7 December 2009. Because of the timing, scientists, policy makers and public relations experts said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine the climate conference. In response to the controversy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released statements supporting the scientific consensus that the Earth's mean surface temperature had been rising for decades, with the AAAS concluding: "based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway... it is a growing threat to society". +Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged throughout the investigations. + +== Timeline of the initial incident == +The incident began when a server used by the Climatic Research Unit was breached in "a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack", and 160 MB of data were obtained including more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents. The University of East Anglia stated that the server from which the data were taken was not one that could be accessed easily, and that the data could not have been released inadvertently. Norfolk Police later added that the offenders used methods that are common in unlawful internet activity, designed to obstruct later enquiries. The breach was first discovered on 17 November 2009 after the server of the RealClimate website was also hacked and a copy of the stolen data was uploaded there. RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt said that he had information that the files had been obtained through "a hack into [CRU's] backup mail server". At about the same time, a short comment appeared on climate sceptic Stephen McIntyre's Climate Audit website saying that "A miracle has happened." +On 19 November, an archive file containing the data was copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous post from a Saudi Arabian IP address to the climate-sceptic blog The Air Vent described the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents", adding that climate science is "too important to be kept under wraps". That same day, McIntyre was forwarded an internal email sent to UEA staff warning that "climate change sceptics" had obtained a "large volume of files and emails". Charles Rotter, moderator of the climate-sceptic blog Watts Up With That, which had been the first to get a link and download the files, gave a copy to his flatmate Steve Mosher. Mosher received a posting from the hacker complaining that nothing was happening and replied: "A lot is happening behind the scenes. It is not being ignored. Much is being coordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to follow." Shortly afterwards, the emails began to be widely publicised on climate-sceptics blogs. On 20 November, the story emerged in mainstream media. +Norfolk police subsequently confirmed that they were "investigating criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia" with the assistance of the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime unit, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET). Commenting on the involvement of the NDET, a spokesman said: "At present we have two police officers assisting Norfolk with their investigation, and we have also provided computer forensic expertise. While this is not strictly a domestic extremism matter, as a national police unit we had the expertise and resource to assist with this investigation, as well as good background knowledge of climate change issues in relation to criminal investigations." However, the police cautioned that "major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion". On 18 July 2012, the Norfolk police finally decided to close its investigation because they did not have a "realistic prospect of identifying the offender or offenders and launching criminal proceedings within the time constraints imposed by law". They also said that the attack had been carried out "remotely via the internet", and that there was "no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime". + +== Content of the documents == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..bde8d0219 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 2/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The material comprised more than 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, as well as commented source code pertaining to climate-change research, covering the period from 1996 to 2009. According to an analysis in The Guardian, the vast majority of the emails were from or to four climatologists: Phil Jones, the head of the CRU; Keith Briffa, a CRU climatologist specialising in tree ring analysis; Tim Osborn, a climate modeller at CRU; and Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The four were either recipients or originators of all but 66 of the 1,073 emails, with most of the remainder of the emails being sent from mailing lists. A few other emails were sent by, or to, other staff at the CRU. Jones, Briffa, Osborn and Hulme had written high-profile scientific papers on climate change that had been cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. +Most of the emails concerned technical and mundane aspects of climate research, such as data analysis and details of scientific conferences. The Guardian's analysis of the emails suggests that the hacker had filtered them. Four scientists were targeted and a concordance plot shows that the words "data", "climate", "paper", "research", "temperature" and "model" were predominant. The controversy has focused on a small number of emails with climate change denier websites picking out particular phrases, such as one in which Kevin Trenberth said, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't". This was actually part of a discussion on the need for better monitoring of the energy flows involved in short-term climate variability, but was grossly mischaracterised by critics. + +The most quoted email was one in which Phil Jones said that he had used "Mike's Nature trick" when preparing a graph as a 1999 cover illustration for the World Meteorological Organization "to hide the decline" in reconstructions based on tree-ring proxy data post-1960, when measured temperatures were actually rising. The "trick" was a technique to combine instrumental temperature record data with long term reconstructions, and "the decline" referred to the tree-ring divergence problem, which had already been openly discussed in scientific papers, but these two phrases were taken out of context by commentators promoting climate change denial, including US Senator Jim Inhofe and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, as though the phrases referred to some decline in measured global temperatures, even though they came from an email written at a time when temperatures were at a record high. +John Tierney, writing in The New York Times in November 2009, said that the claims by sceptics of "hoax" or "fraud" were incorrect, but that the graph on the cover of a report for policy makers and journalists did not show these non-experts where proxy measurements changed to measured temperatures. The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context "trick" was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion. The EPA notes that in fact, the evidence shows that the research community was fully aware of these issues and that no one was hiding or concealing them. +An Associated Press review of the emails concluded that they showed scientists fending off critics, stating that "One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming", and mentioned ethical problems with this action due to the fact that "free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method". They cited a science policy expert as stating that it was "normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-10.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-10.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2486884b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-10.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 11/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The initial story about the hacking originated in the blogosphere, with columnist James Delingpole picking up the term "Climategate" from an anonymous blogger on Watts Up With That?, a blog created by climate sceptic Anthony Watts. The site was one of three blogs that received links to the leaked documents on 17 November 2009. Delingpole first used the word "Climategate" in the title of his 20 November article for The Telegraph: "Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?" A week later, his co-worker Christopher Booker gave Delingpole credit for coining the term. Following the release of documents in the blogosphere, unproven allegations and personal attacks against scientists increased and made their way into the traditional media. Physicist Mark Boslough of the University of New Mexico noted that many of the attacks on scientists came from "bloggers, editorial writers, Fox News pundits, and radio talk show hosts who have called them liars and vilified them as frauds". According to Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their book Unscientific America (2010), the accusations originated in right-wing media and blogs, "especially on outlets like Fox News". Journalist Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian reported that according to an analysis by Media Matters, "Fox had tried to delegitimise the work of climate scientists in its coverage of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia" and had "displayed a pattern of trying to skew coverage in favour of the fringe minority which doubts the existence of climate change". +The intense media coverage of the documents stolen from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia created public confusion about the scientific consensus on climate change, leading several publications to comment on the propagation of the controversy in the media in the wake of a series of investigations that cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing. In an editorial, The New York Times described the coverage as a "manufactured controversy" and expressed hope that the investigations clearing the scientists "will receive as much circulation as the original, diversionary controversies". Writing for Newsweek, journalist Sharon Begley called the controversy a "highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal", noting that the public was unlikely to change their mind. Regardless of the reports exonerating the scientists, Begley noted that "one of the strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of belief is that once people have been told X, especially if X is shocking, if they are later told, 'No, we were wrong about X,' most people still believe X." +Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and science historian Naomi Oreskes said that the "attacks on climate science that were made ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit were 'organised' to undermine efforts to tackle global warming and mirror the earlier tactics of the tobacco industry". Noting the media circus that occurred when the story first broke, Oreskes and Erik Conway writing about climate change denial, said that following the investigations "the vindication of the climate scientists has received very little coverage at all. Vindication is not as sexy as accusation, and many people are still suspicious. After all, some of those emails, taken out of context, sounded damning. But what they show is that climate scientists are frustrated, because for two decades they have been under attack." +Bill Royce, head of the European practice on energy, environment and climate change at the United States communications firm Burson-Marsteller, also described the incident as an organised effort to discredit climate science. He said that it was not a single scandal, but "a sustained and coordinated campaign" aimed at undermining the credibility of the science. Disproportionate reporting of the original story, "widely amplified by climate deniers", meant that the reports that cleared the scientists received far less coverage than the original allegations, he said. Journalist Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review criticised newspapers and magazines for failing to give prominent coverage to the findings of the review panels and said that "readers need to understand that while there is plenty of room to improve the research and communications process, its fundamental tenets remain as solid as ever". CNN media critic Howard Kurtz expressed similar sentiments. + +In June 2021, the BBC reported that Climategate would be the subject of a film entitled The Trick with actors Jason Watkins, George MacKay, Victoria Hamilton, Jerome Flynn and Adrian Edmondson. +In November 2021, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a five-part series, The Hack that Changed the World, about the issue; it was presented by BBC Security Correspondent Gordon Corera. + +== Public opinion and political fallout == +Jon Krosnick, professor of communication, political science and psychology at Stanford University, said that scientists were overreacting. Referring to his own poll results of the American public, he said: "It's another funny instance of scientists ignoring science." Krosnick found that "Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven't changed much in a decade. We don't see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) emails. It's too inside baseball." +The Christian Science Monitor, in an article titled "Climate scientists exonerated in 'climategate' but public trust damaged", stated: "While public opinion had steadily moved away from belief in man-made global warming before the leaked CRU emails, that trend has only accelerated." Paul Krugman, columnist for The New York Times, argued that this, along with all other incidents that called into question the scientific consensus on climate change, was "a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news media". But UK journalist Fred Pearce called the slow response of climate scientists "a case study in how not to respond to a crisis" and "a public relations disaster". +A. A. Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale University Project on Climate Change, and colleagues found in 2010 that: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-11.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-11.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4fd8b4730 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-11.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 12/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Climategate had a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists. The loss of trust in scientists, however, was primarily among individuals with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology. Nonetheless, Americans overall continue to trust scientists more than other sources of information about global warming. +In late 2011, Steven F. Hayward wrote that "Climategate did for the global warming controversy what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war 40 years ago: It changed the narrative decisively." An editorial in Nature said that many in the media "were led by the nose, by those with a clear agenda, to a sizzling scandal that steadily defused as the true facts and context were made clear". + +== Further release, 2011 == +On 22 November 2011, a second set of approximately 5,000 emails, apparently hacked from University of East Anglia servers at the same time as those in the 2009 release, was posted on a Russian server, with links distributed to the message boards on several climate-sceptic websites. A message accompanying the emails quoted selective passages from them, highlighting many of the same issues raised following the original incident. Juliette Jowit and Leo Hickman of The Guardian said that the new release was "an apparent attempt to undermine public support for international action to tackle climate change" with the start of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled in Durban, South Africa, a week later. Nature described the further release as a "poor sequel" and claimed that "it is hard for anyone except the most committed conspiracy theorist to see much of interest in the content of the released e-mails, even taken out of context". + +== Further reading == + +== See also == + +Climate change in the United Kingdom +Global warming conspiracy theory +Global warming controversy +List of -gate scandals and controversies + +== References == + +== External links == +Unwinding “Hide the Decline”, detailed video coverage on climatecrocks.com, 28 April 2011. +Climate wars: The story of the hacked emails, the full manuscript of an investigation by The Guardian into the emails. +Audio recording of a Guardian-sponsored debate on Climategate, held on 15 July 2010. The debaters were Trevor Davies, Doug Keenan, Stephen McIntyre, Fred Pearce, and Bob Watson; the debate was chaired by George Monbiot. +"The Great Climategate Debate". A video of a lecture held at the MIT School of Science on 10 December 2009. The moderator was Henry D. Jacoby (MIT). Speakers were Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Judith Layzer (MIT), Stephen Ansolabehere (MIT and Harvard), Ronald G. Prinn (MIT), and Richard Lindzen (MIT). +"The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia". Video of House of Commons Select Committee oral evidence session, held on Monday 1 March 2010 at 3 pm. Witnesses are: (1) Rt Hon Nigel Lawson, Chairman, and Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation; (2) Richard Thomas CBE; (3) Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia, and Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit; (4) Sir Muir Russell KCB, Head of the Independent Climate Change emails Review; (5) Professor John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Julia Slingo OBE, Chief Scientist, Met Office, and Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientist, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. +"Climate of Doubt". Frontline. Season 30. Episode 22. 23 October 2012. PBS. WGBH. Retrieved 26 April 2025. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..72a149506 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 3/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Responses == +In the United States, former Republican House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert called the attacks a "manufactured distraction", and Newsweek and The New York Times described the dispute as a "highly orchestrated" and manufactured controversy. Concerns about the media's role in promoting early allegations while also minimising later coverage exonerating the scientists were raised by journalists and policy experts. Historian Spencer R. Weart of the American Institute of Physics said the incident was unprecedented in the history of science, having "never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance". The United States National Academy of Sciences expressed concern and condemned what they called "political assaults on scientists and climate scientists in particular". +In the United Kingdom and United States, there were calls for official inquiries into issues raised by the documents. The British Conservative politician Nigel Lawson said: "The integrity of the scientific evidence ... has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay." Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics said that there had to be a rigorous investigation into the substance of the email messages, once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, to clear the impression of impropriety given by the selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages. United States Senator Jim Inhofe, who had previously stated that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", also planned to demand an inquiry. In a debate in the United States House of Representatives on 2 December 2009, Republicans read out extracts from eight of the emails, and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner said: "These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit". In response, the president's science adviser John Holdren said that the science was proper, and the emails only concerned a fraction of the research. Government scientist Jane Lubchenco said that the emails "do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus" that the Earth is warming due to human actions. +Climate change sceptics gained wide publicity in blogs and news media, making allegations that the hacked emails showed evidence that climate scientists manipulated data. A few other commentators such as Roger A. Pielke said that the evidence supported claims that dissenting scientific papers had been suppressed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the emails revealed apparent efforts to ensure that the IPCC included their own views and excluded others, and that the scientists withheld scientific data. +An editorial in Nature stated that "A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists' conspiracy theories." It said that emails showed harassment of researchers, with multiple Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit, but release of information had been hampered by national government restrictions on releasing the meteorological data researchers had been using. Nature considered that emails had not shown anything that undermined the scientific case on human-caused global warming or raised any substantive reasons for concern about the researchers' own papers. The Telegraph reported that academics and climate change researchers dismissed the allegations, saying that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing. Independent reviews by FactCheck and the Associated Press said that the emails did not affect evidence that man-made global warming is a real threat, and said that emails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct. The AP said that the "[e]-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled sceptics and discussed hiding data". In this context, John Tierney of The New York Times wrote: "these researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude – and ultimately undermine their own cause". +Climate scientists at the CRU and elsewhere received numerous threatening and abusive emails in the wake of the initial incidents. Norfolk Police interviewed Phil Jones about death threats made against him following the release of the emails; Jones later said that the police told him that these "didn't fulfil the criteria for death threats". Death threats against two scientists also are under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Climate scientists in Australia have reported receiving threatening emails including references to where they live and warnings to "be careful" about how some people might react to their scientific findings. In July 2012, Michael Mann said that the episode had caused him to "endure countless verbal attacks upon my professional reputation, my honesty, my integrity, even my life and liberty". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..389d707a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 4/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== University of East Anglia === +The University of East Anglia was notified of the security breach on 17 November 2009, but when the story was published in the press on 20 November, they had no statement ready. On 24 November, Trevor Davies, the University of East Anglia pro-vice-chancellor with responsibility for research, rejected calls for Jones' resignation or firing: "We see no reason for Professor Jones to resign and, indeed, we would not accept his resignation. He is a valued and important scientist." The university announced that it would conduct an independent review into issues including Freedom of Information requests to the Climatic Research Unit: it would "address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed". +The university announced on 1 December that Phil Jones was to stand aside as director of the Unit until the completion of the review. Two days later, the university announced that Sir Muir Russell would chair the inquiry, which would be known as the Independent Climate Change Email Review, and would "examine email exchanges to determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of data". The review would also scrutinise the CRU's policies and practices for "acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review, and disseminating data and research findings" and "their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice". In addition, the investigation would review CRU's compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests and also "make recommendations about the management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds". The Independent Climate Change Email Review report was published on 7 July 2010. +On 22 March 2010 the university announced the composition of an independent Science Assessment Panel to reassess key CRU papers that have already been peer-reviewed and published in journals. The panel did not seek to evaluate the science itself, but rather whether "the conclusions [reached by the CRU] represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation of the data". The university consulted with the Royal Society in establishing the panel. It was chaired by Lord Oxburgh, and its membership consisted of Huw Davies of ETH Zurich, Kerry Emanual of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lisa Graumlich of the University of Arizona, David Hand of Imperial College London, and Herbert Huppert and Michael Kelly of the University of Cambridge. It started its work in March 2010 and released its report on 14 April 2010. During its inquiry, the panel examined eleven representative CRU publications, selected with advice from the Royal Society, that spanned a period of over 20 years, as well as other CRU research materials. It also spent fifteen person-days at the UEA carrying out interviews with scientists. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..515612bf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 5/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Climatologists === +Among the scientists whose emails were disclosed, the CRU's researchers said in a statement that the emails had been taken out of context and merely reflected an honest exchange of ideas. Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, said that sceptics were "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious" and called the entire incident a careful, "high-level, orchestrated smear campaign to distract the public about the nature of the climate change problem". Kevin E. Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said that he was appalled at the release of the emails but thought that it might backfire against climate sceptics, as the messages would show "the integrity of scientists". He also said that climate change sceptics had selectively quoted words and phrases out of context and that the timing suggested an attempt to undermine talks at the December 2009 Copenhagen global climate summit. Tom Wigley, a former director of the CRU and now head of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, condemned the threats that he and other colleagues had received as "truly stomach-turning", and commented: "None of it affects the science one iota. Accusations of data distortion or faking are baseless. I can rebut and explain all of the apparently incriminating e-mails that I have looked at, but it is going to be very time consuming to do so." In relation to the harassment that he and his colleagues were experiencing, he said: "This sort of thing has been going on at a much lower level for almost 20 years and there have been other outbursts of this sort of behaviour – criticism and abusive emails and things like that in the past. So this is a worse manifestation but it's happened before so it's not that surprising." +Other prominent climate scientists, such as Richard Somerville, called the incident a smear campaign. David Reay of the University of Edinburgh said that the CRU "is just one of many climate-research institutes that provide the underlying scientific basis for climate policy at national and international levels. The conspiracy theorists may be having a field day, but if they really knew academia they would also know that every published paper and data set is continually put through the wringer by other independent research groups. The information that makes it into the IPCC reports is some of the most rigorously tested and debated in any area of science." Stephen Schneider compared the political attacks on climate scientists to the witch-hunts of McCarthyism. +James Hansen said that the controversy has "no effect on the science" and that while some of the emails reflect poor judgment, the evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming. +One of the IPCC's lead authors, Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago, expressed concern at the precedent established by this incident: "[T]his is a criminal act of vandalism and of harassment of a group of scientists that are only going about their business doing science. It represents a whole new escalation in the war on climate scientists who are only trying to get at the truth... What next? Deliberate monkeying with data on servers? Insertion of bugs into climate models?" Another IPCC lead author, David Karoly of the University of Melbourne, reported receiving hate emails in the wake of the incident and said that he believed that there was "an organised campaign to discredit individual climate scientists". Andrew Pitman of the University of New South Wales commented: "The major problem is that scientists have to be able to communicate their science without fear or favour and there seems to be a well-orchestrated campaign designed to intimidate some scientists." +In response to the incident, 1,700 British scientists signed a joint statement circulated by the UK Met Office declaring their "utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities". +Patrick J. Michaels, who was criticised in the emails and who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming, said: "This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud". He said that some emails showed an effort to block the release of data for independent review and that some messages discussed discrediting him by stating that he knew his research was wrong in his doctoral dissertation, "This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways." +Judith Curry wrote that, in her opinion, "there are two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data, and 'tribalism' in some segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review and the assessment process". She hoped that the affair would change the approach of scientists to providing their data to the public and their response to criticisms of their work. She had herself learned to be careful about what to put in emails when a "disgruntled employee" made a freedom of information request. Mann described these comments as "somewhat naive" considering that in recent years scientists had become much more open with their data. He said that sceptics "will always complain about something else, want something more. Eventually, as we see, they've found a way to get access to private communications between scientists." +Hans von Storch, who also concurs with the mainstream view on global warming, said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said. On 24 November 2009 the university had stated that 95% of the raw station data was accessible via the Global Historical Climatology Network, and had been for several years. They were already working with the Met Office to obtain permissions to release the remaining raw data. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-5.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-5.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e53983723 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-5.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 6/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Scientific organisations === +The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I issued statements that the assessment process, involving hundreds of scientists worldwide, is designed to be transparent and to prevent any individual or small group from manipulating the process. The statement said that the "internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges". +The American Meteorological Society stated that the incident did not affect the society's position on climate change. They pointed to the breadth of evidence for human influence on climate, stating: + +For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true—which is not yet clearly the case—the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited. +The American Geophysical Union issued a statement that they found "it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks and they are being exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change". They reaffirmed their 2007 position statement on climate change "based on the large body of scientific evidence that Earth's climate is warming and that human activity is a contributing factor. Nothing in the University of East Anglia hacked e-mails represents a significant challenge to that body of scientific evidence." +The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reaffirmed its position on global warming and "expressed grave concerns that the illegal release of private emails stolen from the University of East Anglia should not cause policy-makers and the public to become confused about the scientific basis of global climate change. Scientific integrity demands robust, independent peer review, however, and AAAS therefore emphasised that investigations are appropriate whenever significant questions are raised regarding the transparency and rigour of the scientific method, the peer-review process, or the responsibility of individual scientists. The responsible institutions are mounting such investigations." Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science, said: "AAAS takes issues of scientific integrity very seriously. It is fair and appropriate to pursue answers to any allegations of impropriety. It's important to remember, though, that the reality of climate change is based on a century of robust and well-validated science." + +=== UK Met Office === +On 23 November 2009, a spokesman for the Met Office, the UK's national weather service, which works with the CRU in providing global temperature information, said that there was no need for an inquiry. "The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as robust as it could possibly be." +On 5 December 2009, however, the Met Office indicated its intention to re-examine 160 years of temperature data in the light of concerns that public confidence in the science had been damaged by the controversy over the emails. The Met Office would also publish online the temperature records for over 1,000 worldwide weather stations. It remained confident that its analysis would be shown to be correct and that the data would show a temperature rise over the past 150 years. + +=== Other responses === +Rajendra Pachauri, as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the BBC in December 2009 that he considered the affair to be "a serious issue" and that they "will look into it in detail". He later clarified that the IPCC would review the incident to identify lessons to be learned and rejected suggestions that the IPCC itself should carry out an investigation. +In a series of emails sent through a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) listserv, apparently forwarded outside the group by an unknown person, scientists discussing the "Climategate" fallout considered launching advertising campaigns, widening their public presence, pushing the NAS to take a more active role in explaining climate science and creating a nonprofit to serve as a voice for the scientific community. +A paper by Reiner Grundmann used a limited account of the events to discuss norms of scientific practice in relation to two science ethics approaches, the Mertonian norms as of Robert K. Merton, and Roger Pielke Jr.'s concept of honest brokering in science policy interactions. Sources for the paper were chosen for accessibility, emphasising "critical accounts". + +== Inquiries and reports == +Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations. However, the reports urged the scientists to avoid any such allegations in the future, and to regain public confidence following this media storm, with "more efforts than ever to make available all their supporting data – right down to the computer codes they use – to allow their findings to be properly verified". Climate scientists and organisations pledged to improve scientific research and collaboration with other researchers by improving data management and opening up access to data, and to honour any freedom of information requests that relate to climate science. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-6.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-6.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0ce1e8b32 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-6.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 7/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== House of Commons Science and Technology Committee === +On 22 January 2010, the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee announced it would conduct an inquiry into the affair, examining the implications of the disclosure for the integrity of scientific research, reviewing the scope of the independent Muir Russell review announced by the UEA, and reviewing the independence of international climate data sets. The committee invited written submissions from interested parties, and published 55 submissions that it had received by 10 February. They included submissions from the University of East Anglia, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Met Office, several other professional bodies, prominent scientists, some climate change sceptics, several MEPs and other interested parties. An oral evidence session was held on 1 March 2010. +The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on 31 March 2010 that it had found that "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact". The emails and claims raised in the controversy did not challenge the scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity". The MPs had seen no evidence to support claims that Jones had tampered with data or interfered with the peer-review process. +The committee criticised a "culture of non-disclosure at CRU" and a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific papers had usually not included all the data and code used in reconstructions. It said that "even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified." The report added that "scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics." The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests. +The committee chairman Phil Willis said that the "standard practice" in climate science generally of not routinely releasing all raw data and computer codes "needs to change and it needs to change quickly". Jones had admitted sending "awful emails"; Willis commented that "[Jones] probably wishes that emails were never invented," but "apart from that we do believe that Prof. Jones has in many ways been scapegoated as a result of what really was a frustration on his part that people were asking for information purely to undermine his research." In Willis' view this did not excuse any failure to deal properly with FOI Act requests, but the committee accepted that Jones had released all the data that he could. It stated: "There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get data, but that was true of all the climate scientists". +The committee was careful to point out that its report had been written after a single day of oral testimony and would not be as in-depth as other inquiries. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-7.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-7.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e70ae148a --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-7.md @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 8/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Science Assessment Panel === +The report of the independent Science Assessment Panel was published on 14 April 2010 and concluded that the panel had seen "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit." It found that the CRU's work had been "carried out with integrity" and had used "fair and satisfactory" methods. The CRU was found to be "objective and dispassionate in their view of the data and their results, and there was no hint of tailoring results to a particular agenda." Instead, "their sole aim was to establish as robust a record of temperatures in recent centuries as possible." +The panel commented that it was "very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians." It found that although the CRU had not made inappropriate use of statistical methods, some of the methods used may not have been the best for the purpose, though it said that "it is not clear, however, that better methods would have produced significantly different results." It suggested that the CRU could have done more to document and archive its work, data and algorithms and stated that the scientists were "ill prepared" for the amount of public attention generated by their work, commenting that "as with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal." The media and other scientific organisations were criticised for having "sometimes neglected" to reflect the uncertainties, doubts and assumptions of the work done by the CRU. The UK Government's policy of charging for access to scientific data was described as "inconsistent with policies of open access to data promoted elsewhere." The panel was also stated that "Although we deplore the tone of much of the criticism that has been directed at CRU, we believe that this questioning of the methods and data used in dendroclimatology will ultimately have a beneficial effect and improve working practices." It found that some of the criticism had been "selective and uncharitable" and critics had displayed "a lack of awareness" of the difficulties of research in this area. +Speaking at a press conference to announce the report, the panel's chair, Lord Oxburgh, stated that his team had found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever" and that "whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly." He said that many of the criticisms and allegations of scientific misconduct had been made by people "who do not like the implications of some of the conclusions" reached by the CRU's scientists. He said that the repeated FOI requests made by climate change sceptic Steve McIntyre and others could have amounted to a campaign of harassment, and the issue of how FOI laws should be applied in an academic context remained unresolved. Another panel member, Professor David Hand, commended the CRU for being explicit about the inherent uncertainties in its research data, commenting that "there is no evidence of anything underhand – the opposite, if anything, they have brought out into the open the uncertainties with what they are dealing with." +At the press conference, Hand also commented on the well publicised 1998 paper produced in the United States by scientists led by Michael E. Mann, saying that the hockey stick graph it showed was a genuine effect, but he had an "uneasy feeling" about the use of "inappropriate statistical tools" and said that the 1998 study had exaggerated the effect. He commended McIntyre for pointing out this issue. Mann subsequently told The Guardian that the study had been examined and approved in the US National Academies of Science North Report, and described Hand's comment as a "rogue opinion" not meriting "much attention or credence". +The UEA's vice-chancellor, Edward Acton, welcomed the panel's findings. Describing its report as "hugely positive", he stated that "it is especially important that, despite a deluge of allegations and smears against the CRU, this independent group of utterly reputable scientists have concluded that there was no evidence of any scientific malpractice." He criticised the way that the emails had been misrepresented, saying that "UEA has already put on record its deep regret and anger that the theft of emails from the University, and the blatant misrepresentation of their contents as revealed both in this report and the previous one by the Science and Technology Select Committee, damaged the reputation of UK climate science." The UEA issued a statement in which it accepted that "things might have been done better." It said that improvements had already been undertaken by the CRU and others in the climate science community and that the University would "continue to ensure that these imperatives are maintained." +It later emerged that the Science Assessment Panel was not assessing the quality but instead the integrity of the CRU's science. Phil Willis described this a "sleight of hand" and was not what the Parliamentary Committee he had chaired had been led to believe. There were also questions about the selection of publications examined by the panel. Lord Oxburgh said that Acton had been wrong to tell the Science and Technology Select Committee in March that his inquiry would look into the science itself. "I think that was inaccurate," Oxburgh said. "This had to be done rapidly. This was their concern. They really wanted something within a month. There was no way our panel could evaluate the science." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-8.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-8.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3f9b91362 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-8.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 9/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Pennsylvania State University === +Pennsylvania State University announced in December 2009 it would review the work of Michael E. Mann, in particular looking at anything that had not already been addressed in the 2006 North Report review by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences which had investigated Mann's "hockey stick graph" studies and found some faults with his 1998 methodology but agreed with the results which had been reaffirmed by later studies using different methods. In response, Mann said he would welcome the review. The inquiry committee determined on 3 February 2010 that there was no credible evidence Mann suppressed or falsified data, destroyed emails, information and/or data related to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, or misused privileged or confidential information. The committee did not make a definitive finding on the final point of inquiry – "whether Dr Mann seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities". The committee said that the earlier NAS inquiry had found "that Dr Mann's science did fall well within the bounds of accepted practice", but in light of the newly available information this question of conduct was to be investigated by a second panel of five prominent Penn State scientists from other scientific disciplines. +The second Investigatory Committee reported on 4 June 2010 that it had "determined that Dr Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community." Regarding his sharing unpublished manuscripts with colleagues on the assumption of implied consent, it considered such sharing to be "careless and inappropriate" without following the best practice of getting express consent from the authors in advance, though expert opinion on this varied. It said that his success in proposing research and obtaining funding for it, commenting that this "clearly places Dr Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research." Mann's extensive recognitions within the research community demonstrated that "his scientific work, especially the conduct of his research, has from the beginning of his career been judged to be outstanding by a broad spectrum of scientists." It agreed unanimously that "there is no substance" to the allegations against Mann. +Mann said he regretted not objecting to a suggestion from Jones in a 29 May 2008 message that he destroy emails. "I wish in retrospect I had told him, 'Hey, you shouldn't even be thinking about this,'" Mann said in March 2010. "I didn't think it was an appropriate request." Mann's response to Jones at the time was that he would pass on the request to another scientist. "The important thing is, I didn't delete any emails. And I don't think [Jones] did either." + +=== Independent Climate Change Email Review === +First announced in December 2009, a British investigation commissioned by the UEA and chaired by Sir Muir Russell, published its final report in July 2010. The commission cleared the scientists and dismissed allegations that they manipulated their data. The "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the Climatic Research Unit were found not to be in doubt. The panel found that they did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, and that the key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher. +The panel did rebuke the CRU for their reluctance to release computer files, and found that a graph produced in 1999 was "misleading," though not deliberately so as necessary caveats had been included in the accompanying text. It found evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them, though the panel did not ask anyone at CRU whether they had actually done this. +At the conclusion of the inquiry, Jones was reinstated with the newly created post of Director of Research. + +=== United States Environmental Protection Agency report === +The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had issued an "endangerment finding" in 2009 in preparation for climate regulations on excessive greenhouse gases. Petitions to reconsider this were raised by the states of Virginia and Texas, conservative activists and business groups including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the coal company Peabody Energy, making claims that the CRU emails undermined the science. +The EPA examined every email and concluded that there was no merit to the claims in the petitions, which "routinely misunderstood the scientific issues", reached "faulty scientific conclusions", "resorted to hyperbole", and "often cherry-pick language that creates the suggestion or appearance of impropriety, without looking deeper into the issues." In a statement issued on 29 July 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said the petitions were based "on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy" and provided "no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare." +The EPA issued a detailed report on issues raised by petitioners and responses, together with a fact sheet, and a "myths versus facts" page stating that "Petitioners say that emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results." \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-9.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-9.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..82780bf4d --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy-9.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "Climatic Research Unit email controversy" +chunk: 10/12 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:41.916840+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce === +In May 2010 Senator Jim Inhofe requested the Inspector General of the United States Department of Commerce to conduct an independent review of how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had dealt with the emails, and whether the emails showed any wrongdoing. The report, issued on 18 February 2011, cleared the researchers and "did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures". It noted that NOAA reviewed its climate change data as standard procedure, not in response to the controversy. One email included a cartoon image showing Inhofe and others marooned on a melting ice floe, NOAA had taken this up as a conduct issue. In response to questions raised, NOAA stated that its scientists had followed legal advice on FOIA requests for information which belonged to the IPCC and was made available by that panel. In two instances funding had been awarded to CRU, NOAA stated that it was reviewing these cases and so far understood that the funds supported climate forecasting workshops in 2002 and 2003 assisting the governments of three countries. + +=== National Science Foundation === +The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the National Science Foundation closed an investigation on 15 August 2011 that exonerated Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University of charges of scientific misconduct. It found no evidence of research misconduct, and confirmed the results of earlier inquiries. The OIG reviewed the findings of the July 2010 Penn State panel, took further evidence from the university and Mann, and interviewed Mann. The OIP findings confirmed the university panel's conclusions which cleared Mann of any wrongdoing, and it stated "Lacking any evidence of research misconduct, as defined under the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation, we are closing the investigation with no further action." + +== ICO decisions on Freedom of Information requests == + +In two cases, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) issued decisions on appeals of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests which had been turned down by the university. +David Holland, an electrical engineer from Northampton, made a 2008 FOI request for all emails to and from Keith Briffa about the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report; the university's information policy and compliance manager refused the request. On 23 November 2009, after the start of the controversy, he wrote to the Commissioner explaining in detail the relevance of the alleged CRU emails to his case, with specific reference to a May 2008 email in which Phil Jones asked others to delete emails discussing AR4 with Briffa. In January 2010 news reports highlighted that FOI legislation made it an offence to intentionally act to prevent the disclosure of requested information, but the statute of limitations meant that any prosecution had to be raised within 6 months of the alleged offence. This was discussed by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee. The ICO decision on Holland's requests published on 7 July 2010 concluded that the emails indicated prima facie evidence of an offence, but as prosecution was time-barred the Commissioner had been unable to investigate the alleged offence. On the issue of the university failing to provide responses within the correct time, no further action was needed as Holland was content not to proceed with his complaint. +The Climatic Research Unit developed its gridded CRUTEM data set of land air temperature anomalies from instrumental temperature records held by National Meteorological Organisations around the world, often under formal or informal confidentiality agreements that restricted use of this raw data to academic purposes, and prevented it from being passed onto third parties. Over 95% of the CRU climate data set had been available to the public for several years before July 2009, when the university received numerous FOI requests for raw data or details of the confidentiality agreements from Stephen McIntyre and readers of his Climate Audit blog. Phil Jones of CRU announced that requests were being made to all the National Meteorological Organisations for their agreement to waive confidentiality, with the aim of publishing all the data jointly with the Met Office. McIntyre complained that data denied to him had been sent to Jones's colleague Peter Webster at the Georgia Institute of Technology for work on a joint publication, and FOI requests for this data were made by Jonathan A. Jones of the University of Oxford and Don Keiller of Anglia Ruskin University. Both requests were refused by the UEA by 11 September 2009. +Though some National Meteorological Organisations gave full or conditional agreement to waive confidentiality, others failed to respond, and the request was explicitly refused by Trinidad and Tobago and Poland. In discussions with the ICO, the university argued that the data was publicly available from the Met organisations, and the lack of agreement exempted the remaining data. In its decision released on 23 June 2011, the ICO stated that the data was not easily available, and required the university to release the data covered by the FOIA request. On 27 July 2011 CRU announced that the raw instrumental data not already in the public domain had been released and was available for download, with the exception of Poland which was outside the area covered by the FOIA request. The university remained concerned "that the forced release of material from a source which has explicitly refused to give permission for release could have some damaging consequences for the UK in international research collaborations." +In September 2011 the ICO issued new guidance to universities, taking into account issues raised in relation to the CRU information requests. This describes exceptions and exemptions to protect research, including allowance for internal exchange of views between academics and researchers, leaving formulation of opinions on research free from external scrutiny. It notes the benefits of actively disclosing information when it is in the public interest, and disclosure of personal email information related to public authority business. + +== Media coverage == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Bias-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Bias-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..476f3aab7 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Bias-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +--- +title: "Coded Bias" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Bias" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:43.134757+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Coded Bias is an American documentary film directed by Shalini Kantayya that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The film includes contributions from researchers Joy Buolamwini, Deborah Raji, Meredith Broussard, Cathy O’Neil, Zeynep Tufekci, Safiya Noble, Timnit Gebru, Virginia Eubanks, and Silkie Carlo, and others. + + +== Background == +Kantayya previously directed a documentary titled Catching the Sun and also directed one episode of the National Geographic television series, Breakthrough. She is also an associate of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Kantayya said an interview with 500 Global on August 17, 2021, that three years previously she did not even know what an algorithm was. She read the book Weapons of Math Destruction, which describes how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms can determine outcomes for certain people. She later came across the work of Joy Buolamwini through a Ted Talk. + + +== Summary == +The documentary is about artificial intelligence and the biases that can be embedded into this technology. MIT media researcher Joy Buolamwini's computer science studies uncovered that her face was unrecognizable in many facial recognition systems and she worked to find out why these systems failed. She later found that facial recognition programs only worked when she wore a white mask. She goes on to find out about how else artificial technology can affect minorities. +Coded Bias says that there is a lack of legal structures for artificial intelligence, and that as a result, human rights are being violated. It says that some algorithms and artificial intelligence technologies discriminate by race and gender statuses in domains such as housing, career opportunities, healthcare, credit, education, and legalities. Buolamwini and her colleagues were later asked to testify in front of the US Congress about artificial intelligence. Buolamwini subsequently created a digital advocacy group, the Algorithmic Justice League. +The movie highlights how facial recognition systems can cause problems for vulnerable groups as due to bias within the code they do not recognize everyone equally or as equals. As companies use more machine learning, the algorithms discussed have substantial influence over the information we discern, determining individuals who successfully navigate automated hiring processes, those granted access to healthcare, and those subjected to heightened scrutiny within police systems. + + +== Release == +The film first premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. It had a limited release on November 11, 2020, before a full release in virtual cinemas across North America on November 18, 2020. The limited release garnered a box office revenue of $10,236. On April 5, 2021, the documentary was made available to stream on Netflix. + + +== Reception == + + +=== Critical response === +On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 52 reviews with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Clear, concise, and comprehensive, Coded Bias offers a chilling look at largely unseen side effects of modern society's algorithmic underpinnings." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on seven critic reviews. +In a review written for the New York Times, Devika Girish states "The film moves deftly between pragmatic and larger political critiques, arguing that it’s not just that the tech is faulty; even if it were perfect, it would infringe dangerously on people’s liberties." +Praising the documentary for its "impressive pacing," Nick Allen, writing for RogerEbert.com states "One might expect a documentary about data and algorithms to run a bit dry, but “Coded Bias” defies that by having a lot on its mind and by being quick on its feet, hopping all over the country, and the world." +In the review from the website of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Renee Shelby questioned whether readers understood the power she said was abused through this data collection. She states "Where there is power, there is resistance to power; and the film touches on politics “from above” and “from below.” The film showcases women's activism and social movements (e.g., the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement) fighting to ensure that surveillance and other algorithmic tools are not abused.". +Giving the documentary a 2.5 out of 5 stars, Ashley Sosa, writing for videolibrarian.com, states "The documentary's cautionary message about the dangers of algorithmic bias is presented in an engaging and humanistic way. Technical details are kept to a minimum, which could be viewed as positive or negative depending on prior knowledge and interest." + + +=== Accolades === + + +== See also == +Algorithmic Justice League +Black in AI +Data for Black Lives +Joy Buolamwini +Timnit Gebru +Facial recognition + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Official website +Coded Bias at IMDb \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..435cc59ec --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +--- +title: "Computer ethics" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:44.362896+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Computer ethics is a part of practical philosophy concerned with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct. +Margaret Anne Pierce, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computers at Georgia Southern University has categorized the ethical decisions related to computer technology and usage into three primary influences: + +The individual's own personal [ethical] code. +Any informal code of ethical conduct that exists in the work place. +Exposure to formal codes of ethics. + +== Foundation == +Computer ethics was first coined by Walter Maner, a professor at Bowling Green State University. Maner noticed ethical concerns that were brought up during his Medical Ethics course at Old Dominion University became more complex and difficult when the use of technology and computers became involved. The conceptual foundations of computer ethics are investigated by information ethics, a branch of philosophical ethics promoted, among others, by Luciano Floridi. + +== History == +The concept of computer ethics originated in the 1940s with MIT professor Norbert Wiener, the American mathematician and philosopher. While working on anti-aircraft artillery during World War II, Wiener and his fellow engineers developed a system of communication between the part of a cannon that tracked a warplane, the part that performed calculations to estimate a trajectory, and the part responsible for firing. Wiener termed the science of such information feedback systems, "cybernetics," and he discussed this new field with its related ethical concerns in his 1948 book, Cybernetics. In 1950, Wiener's second book, The Human Use of Human Beings, delved deeper into the ethical issues surrounding information technology and laid out the basic foundations of computer ethics. +A bit later during the same year, the world's first computer crime was committed. A programmer was able to use a bit of computer code to stop his banking account from being flagged as overdrawn. However, there were no laws in place at that time to stop him, and as a result he was not charged. To make sure another person did not follow suit, an ethics code for computers was needed. +In 1973, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) adopted its first code of ethics. SRI International's Donn Parker, an author on computer crimes, led the committee that developed the code. +In 1976, medical teacher and researcher Walter Maner noticed that ethical decisions are much harder to make when computers are added. He noticed a need for a different branch of ethics for when it came to dealing with computers. The term "computer ethics" was thus invented. +In 1976 Joseph Weizenbaum made his second significant addition to the field of computer ethics. He published a book titled Computer Power and Human Reason, which talked about how artificial intelligence is good for the world; however it should never be allowed to make the most important decisions as it does not have human qualities such as wisdom. By far the most important point he makes in the book is the distinction between choosing and deciding. He argued that deciding is a computational activity while making choices is not and thus the ability to make choices is what makes us humans. +At a later time during the same year Abbe Mowshowitz, a professor of Computer Science at the City College of New York, published an article titled "On approaches to the study of social issues in computing." This article identified and analyzed technical and non-technical biases in research on social issues present in computing. +During 1978, the Right to Financial Privacy Act was adopted by the United States Congress, drastically limiting the government's ability to search bank records. +During the next year Terrell Ward Bynum, the professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University as well as Director of the Research Center on Computing and Society there, developed curriculum for a university course on computer ethics. Bynum was also editor of the journal Metaphilosophy. In 1983 the journal held an essay contest on the topic of computer ethics and published the winning essays in its best-selling 1985 special issue, “Computers and Ethics.” +In 1984, the United States Congress passed the Small Business Computer Security and Education Act, which created a Small Business Administration advisory council to focus on computer security related to small businesses. +In 1985, James H. Moor, professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, published an essay called "What is Computer Ethics?" In this essay Moor states the computer ethics includes the following: "(1) identification of computer-generated policy vacuums, (2) clarification of conceptual muddles, (3) formulation of policies for the use of computer technology, and (4) ethical justification of such policies." +During the same year, Deborah G. Johnson, professor of Applied Ethics and chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the University of Virginia, got the first major computer ethics textbook published. Johnson's textbook identified major issues for research in computer ethics for more than 10 years after publication of the first edition. +In 1988, Robert Hauptman, a librarian at St. Cloud University, came up with "information ethics", a term that was used to describe the storage, production, access and dissemination of information. Near the same time, the Computer Matching and Privacy Act was adopted and this act restricted United States government programs identifying debtors. +In the year 1992, ACM adopted a new set of ethical rules called "ACM code of Ethics and Professional Conduct" which consisted of 24 statements of personal responsibility. +Three years later, in 1995, Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska, a professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, Coordinator of the Religious Studies Program, as well as a senior research associate in the Research Center on Computing and Society, came up with the idea that computer ethics will eventually become a global ethical system and soon after, computer ethics would replace ethics altogether as it would become the standard ethics of the information age. +In 1999, Deborah Johnson revealed her view, which was quite contrary to Górniak-Kocikowska's belief, and stated that computer ethics will not evolve but rather be our old ethics with a slight twist. +Post 20th century, as a result to much debate of ethical guidelines, many organizations such as ABET offer ethical accreditation to University or College applications such as "Applied and Natural Science, Computing, Engineering and Engineering Technology at the associate, bachelor, and master levels" to try and promote quality works that follow sound ethical and moral guidelines. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..584dc4648 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +title: "Computer ethics" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:44.362896+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Concerns == +Computer crime, privacy, anonymity, freedom, and intellectual property fall under topics that will be present in the future of computer ethics. +Ethical considerations have been linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) with many physical devices being connected to the internet. +Virtual Crypto-currencies in regards to the balance of the current purchasing relationship between the buyer and seller. +Autonomous technology such as self-driving cars forced to make human decisions. There is also concern over how autonomous vehicles would behave in different countries with different culture values. +Security risks have been identified with cloud-based technology with every user interaction being sent and analyzed to central computing hubs. Artificial intelligence devices like the Amazon Alexa and Google Home are collecting personal data from users while at home and uploading it to the cloud. Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana smartphone assistants are collecting user information, analyzing the information, and then sending the information back to the user. + +=== Internet privacy === + +Computers and information technology have caused privacy concerns surrounding collection and use of personal data. For example, Google was sued in 2018 for tracking user location without permission. also In July 2019, Facebook reached a $5 billion settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for violating an agreement with the agency to protect user privacy. +An industry of privacy and ethical tools has grown over time, giving people the choice to not share their data online. These are often open source software, which allows the users to ensure that their data is not saved to be used without their consent. + +=== Artificial intelligence === + +== Ethical standards == +Various national and international professional societies and organizations have produced code of ethics documents to give basic behavioral guidelines to computing professionals and users. They include: + +Association for Computing Machinery +ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct +Australian Computer Society +ACS Code of Ethics +ACS Code of Professional Conduct +British Computer Society +BCS Code of Conduct +Code of Good Practice (retired May 2011) +German Informatics Society +Ethical Guidelines of the German Informatics Society (revised June 29, 2018) +Computer Ethics Institute +Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics +IEEE +IEEE Code of Ethics +IEEE Code of Conduct +League of Professional System Administrators +The System Administrators' Code of Ethics + +== See also == +Cyberethics +Ethics of artificial intelligence +Copyright infringement +Programming ethics +Social informatics +Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics +Who Controls the Internet? + +== References == + +== Further reading == + +== External links == + +American Philosophical Association's Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. +A short history of computer ethics +Ethics in Computing - a list of links to ethical discussions in Computer Science courtesy of North Carolina State University Undergraduates with guidance from Dr. Edward F. Gehringer +IEG, the Information Ethics research Group at Oxford University +Bynum, Terrell. "Computer Ethics: Basic Concepts and Historical Overview". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174. +Coleman, Kari Gwen. "Computing and Moral Responsibility". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..06d487d45 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" +chunk: 1/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:45.688900+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) is a report on climate change created with the help of a large number of contributors, both scientists and governmental representatives. There has been considerable political controversy over errors found in the report, and there have been calls for review of the process used to formulate the report. + +== Content issues == +Some observers have identified issues in which the peer-reviewed science suggests outcomes more severe than outlined by the report, while other observers have said that some conclusions in the report are not satisfactorily supported by the peer-reviewed science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have acknowledged that a paragraph in the WGII report on the projected date of melting of Himalayan glaciers is incorrect. Climate expert Martin Parry, who had been co-chair of the working group on impacts for IPCC AR4, stated that "What began with a single unfortunate error over Himalayan glaciers has become a clamour without substance". The IPCC had investigated other alleged mistakes, which were "generally unfounded and also marginal to the assessment", and were commonly based on the idea that the IPCC should not use grey literature, such as reports from campaign groups and governments. + +=== Arctic sea ice extent === +According to a study conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Arctic Sea ice is melting faster than predicted by climate models. The study concludes that the 18 models on which the IPCC has based its current recommendations could already be out of date, and that the retreat of the ice could already be 30 years ahead of the IPCC's worst-case scenario, possibly leading to an ice-free summer Arctic before the end of the 21st century. + +=== Glacial dynamics === +The IPCC AR4 estimates explicitly exclude the influence of the melting of ice sheets. These ice sheets include most notably the Greenland ice sheet, and both the east and west Antarctic ice sheets, as well as numerous glaciers. This may result in a major underestimate of the upper limit for sea level rise in the long term. Due to Arctic melting the Greenland ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, and a study by climatologist James E. Hansen states that "we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway." The melting of the Greenland ice sheet would result in an increase in sea level rise of over 7m. Melting of the west Antarctic ice sheet would cause a similar, if slightly smaller rise in sea levels due to being grounded below sea level, whilst the effect of the melting of the east Antarctic, although less probable would be an order of magnitude greater. +In a lecture he gave at the University of California, Santa Barbara, James E. Hansen criticised the IPCC for its description of future sea level rise. Hansen has also written on this issue: + +The IPCC [Working Group I] (2007) midrange projection for sea level rise this century is 20–43 cm (8–17 inches) and its full range is 18–59 cm (7–23 inches). The IPCC notes that they are unable to evaluate possible dynamical responses of the ice sheets, and thus do not include any possible 'rapid dynamical changes in ice flow'. Yet the provision of such specific numbers for sea level rise encourages a predictable public response that the projected sea level change is moderate, and smaller than in IPCC (2001). Indeed, there have been numerous media reports of 'reduced' sea level rise predictions, and commentators have denigrated suggestions that business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions may cause a sea level rise of the order of meters +... The IPCC is doing a commendable job, but we need something more. Given the reticence that the IPCC necessarily exhibits, there need to be supplementary mechanisms. The onus, it seems to me, falls on us scientists as a community. +In a lecture given at Princeton University, IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer admitted that the IPCC report could have better explained the contribution of melting ice sheets in predictions of sea level rise. Oppenheimer said that the IPCC Working Group II Summary for Policymakers (quoted below) managed this better than the Working Group I Summary for Policymakers: + +There is medium confidence [about 5/10 chance of being correct] that at least partial deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet, and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheet, would occur over a period of time ranging from centuries to millennia for a global average temperature increase of 1–4°C (relative to 1990–2000), causing a contribution to sea-level rise of 4–6 m or more. + +=== Projected date of melting of Himalayan glaciers === +A paragraph in the 938-page 2007 Working Group II report (WGII) included a projection that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. This projection was not included in the final summary for policymakers which highlighted the importance of the glaciers for freshwater availability, and stated that "Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century". Late in 2009, in the approach to the Copenhagen climate summit, the 2035 date was strongly questioned in India. On 19 January 2010 the IPCC acknowledged that the paragraph was incorrect, while reaffirming that the conclusion in the final summary was robust. They expressed regret for "the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance" and their vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said that the reviewing procedures would have to be tightened. +The WGII report ("Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"), chapter 10, page 493, includes this paragraph: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4ac4b7041 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: "Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" +chunk: 2/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:45.688900+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005). +There was controversy in India over this statement, and at the start of December 2009 J. Graham Cogley of Trent University, Ontario, described the paragraph as wildly inaccurate. The rates of recession of Himalayan glaciers were exceptional, but their disappearance by 2035 would require a huge acceleration in rate. The first sentence of the IPCC WGII report, including the date of 2035, came from the cited source, "(WWF, 2005)". This was a March 2005 World Wildlife Fund Nepal Program report, page 29: + +In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: "glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood [sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high". +On page 2, the WWF report cited an article in the 5 June 1999 issue of New Scientist which quoted Syed Hasnain, Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI), saying that most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region "will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming". That article was based on an email interview, and says that "Hasnain's four-year study indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline." Both the article and the WWF report referred to Hasnain's unpublished 1999 ICSI study, Report on Himalayan Glaciology, which does not estimate a date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. +The second sentence of the questionable WGII paragraph which states "Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035" could not refer to the Himalayan glaciers, which cover about 33,000 km2. Cogley said that a bibliographic search indicated that it had been copied inaccurately from a 1996 International Hydrological Programme (IHP) report by Kotlyakov, published by UNESCO, which gave a rough estimate of shrinkage of the world's total area of glaciers and ice caps by 2350. + +The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350. +Cogley suggested that the "2035" figure in the second sentence of the WGII paragraph was apparently a typographic error. He concluded, "This was a bad error. It was a really bad paragraph, and poses a legitimate question about how to improve IPCC's review process. It was not a conspiracy. The error does not compromise the IPCC Fourth Assessment, which for the most part was well reviewed and is +highly accurate." +Statements very similar to those made in both sentences of the WGII paragraph appeared as two successive paragraphs in an April 1999 article in Down to Earth , published in the India Environment Portal (IEP). This included the substitution of 2035 for 2350 as stated in the IHP study. New Scientist has drawn attention to Hasnain's claim about the timing of glaciers disappearing: \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..798b49fe2 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +title: "Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" +chunk: 3/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:45.688900+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high," says the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) in its recent study on Asian glaciers. "But if the Earth keeps getting warmer at the current rate, it might happen much sooner," says Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Hasnain is also the chairperson of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG), constituted in 1995 by the ICSI. +"The glacier will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates. Its total area will shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square km by the year 2035," says former icsi president V M Kotlyakov in the report Variations of snow and ice in the past and present on a global and regional scale (see table: Receding rivers of ice). +The question of whether it was acceptable to use material which had not been peer reviewed has been disputed. IPCC rules permit the use of non-peer-reviewed material, subject to a procedure in which authors are to critically assess any source that they wish to include, and "each chapter team should review the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report." +The official statement issued by the IPCC on 20 January 2010 noted that "a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly." It emphasised that the paragraph did not affect the conclusion in the final summary for policymakers in the 2007 report, which it described as "robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC assessment", and reaffirmed a commitment to absolute adherence to the IPCC standards. The IPCC also stated that it did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change. This was confirmed by Wilfried Haeberli, who announced the latest annual results of the World Glacier Monitoring Service. He stated that the important trend of 10 years or so showed "an unbroken acceleration in melting" and on expected trends, many glaciers will disappear by mid century. Glaciers in lower mountain ranges were the most vulnerable, and while those in the Himalayas and Alaska could grow in the short term, in a realistic mid-range warming scenario they would not last many centuries. Mojib Latif, a climate scientist who contributed to the report of Working Group 1, sees the consequences of the glacier data mistake but also the need to continue focusing on global warming. + +=== African crop yield projections === +Chapter 9 of the Working Group II report states that "In other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)." This claim was also included in the AR4 Synthesis Report, and has been mentioned in speeches by IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The source cited in the report for this claim is a non-peer reviewed policy paper published by International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team, questioned the claim, telling the Sunday Times that "I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines". Former IPCC chairman Robert Watson said "Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report." +The United States Environmental Protection Agency used the IPCC report on this point, and received criticism that because of the nature of the source, they should not have done so. The EPA rebutted this criticism, noting that "The IPCC statement cites a report by Dr. Ali Agoumi... These vulnerability studies were prepared under the U.N. Environment Programme Global Environment Fund and included in the National Communications of these three countries to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (Ministry of Territory Development and Environment, 2001, Kingdom of Morocco, 2001 and Republic of Tunisia, 2001)... Dr. Coleen Vogel, a contributing lead author of the IPCC chapter on Africa impacts... explained that Agoumi's report received rigorous scrutiny by her fellow authors and was thoroughly discussed during development of the chapter... The process described by Dr. Vogel is consistent with the IPCC's guidance on the use of gray literature". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..4236c6ada --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" +chunk: 4/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:45.688900+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Proportion of Netherlands below sea level === +The Working Group II: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability report states that "The Netherlands is an example of a country highly susceptible to both sea-level rise and river flooding because 55% of its territory is below sea level". This was based on data it had received from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (the PBL). When the Dutch government raised questions, the PBL acknowledged in a statement that it had supplied the incorrect wording to the IPCC, "This should have read that 55 per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding; 26 per cent of the country is below sea level, and 29 per cent is susceptible to river flooding." It used Normaal Amsterdams Peil as the datum for sea level. Martin Parry, climate expert and co-chair of the IPCC working group II, said that various different figures could have been used, depending on how the issue was defined. A figure of 60%, for land that lies below high water level during storms, is used by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, while a figure of 30%, referring to land below mean sea level, is used by others. +De Volkskrant reported Mary Jean Burer, a spokesperson for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) as saying that the confusion can partly be blamed on several EU articles by the Transport Ministry in which numbers like 55 and 60 percent land area are mixed up. "Sometimes it refers to floods, sometimes the sea level". PBL employee Oude Lohuis added that the IPCC cannot be blamed for the fact that the statement of 55% being below sea level was not noticed. "The ministry says in some brochures that during spring tides the Netherlands is 60 % below sea level", he said, "So for outsiders it's not a strange number" + +== Process issues == +Richard Black, an environmental reporter for the BBC, once observed that the IPCC is an unusual organisation in that the evidence is supplied by scientists, but the summaries of its reports are agreed between scientists and representatives of governments. + +=== Dismissal of concerns === +In January 2005, Chris Landsea who had been an author on the 2001 report (TAR), withdrew his participation in the Fourth Assessment Report claiming that the portion of the IPCC to which he contributed had become "politicized" and that the IPCC leadership simply dismissed his concerns. He published an open letter explaining why he was resigning and to "bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process". +Landsea alleged that lead author Kevin Trenberth had told a press conference that global warming was contributing to "recent hurricane activity", which Landsea described as a "misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC". He said that the process of producing the Fourth Assessment Report is "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and "scientifically unsound". Landsea wrote that "the IPCC leadership said that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author." + +=== Aerosol forcing uncertainty === +The 2007 IPCC Working Group I Report quantified the effect of anthropogenic aerosols on the climate in terms of their radiative forcing. Radiative forcing measures the influence a particular factor has on changing the Earth-atmosphere-system energy balance. The effect of aerosols was assessed to be the dominant uncertainty in radiative forcing. +A 2008 Report for the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) suggested that the IPCC report may have been 'overconfident' with its uncertainty estimate for the total aerosol forcing. This was based on an earlier 2006 paper that elicitated the judgment of twenty-four experts on aerosol forcing. The CCSP Report went on to say: + +... expert judgment is not a substitute for definitive scientific research. Nor is it a substitute for careful deliberative expert reviews of the literature of the sort undertaken by the IPCC. However, its use within such review processes could enable a better expression of the diversity of expert judgment and allow more formal expression of expert judgments, which are not adequately reflected, in the existing literature. It can also provide insights for policy makers and research planners while research to produce more definitive results is ongoing. It is for these reasons that Moss and Schneider have argued that such elicitations should become a standard input to the IPCC assessment process + +=== Recommended procedural change === +In 2007, economist and former IPCC author Richard Tol wrote a paper on the IPCC Working Group III Report. Tol said that the quality of the Working Group III Report had declined. He made several criticisms of the Report's content, and suggested changes in procedure that could improve the quality of future IPCC assessments: + +It would be much better to shift the IPCC from UNEP and the environment ministries to ICSU and the ministries of research and higher education. Academic quality should be guiding principle in selecting authors. As a check, the committees that nominate and select authors should publish their proceedings. The review editors should become more independent, and gain the right to reject chapters that are not properly revised. The alternative is a gradual erosion of the quality, prestige and, eventually, influence of the IPCC.In February 2010, in response to controversies regarding claims in the Fourth Assessment Report, five climate scientists – all contributing or lead IPCC report authors – wrote in the journal Nature calling for changes to the IPCC. They suggested a range of new organizational options, from tightening the selection of lead authors and contributors, to dumping it in favor of a small permanent body, or even turning the whole climate science assessment process into a moderated "living" Wikipedia-IPCC. Other recommendations included that the panel employ a full-time staff and remove government oversight from its processes to avoid political interference. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-4.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-4.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..273b855e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report-4.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: "Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report" +chunk: 5/5 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:45.688900+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Grey literature === +The report was also criticized by The Sunday Telegraph for using grey literature. Examples they gave included the use of non-peer reviewed sources from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund, and student dissertations. IPCC rules permit the use of non-peer-reviewed material, subject to critical assessment and review of the quality and validity of each source. Climate expert Martin Parry, who had been co-chair of the working group on impacts for IPCC AR4, said of "grey literature" such as reports from campaign groups and governments that "many such reports are intensively reviewed, both internally and externally. Even if not peer-reviewed, there are reports that contain valuable information." + +== Response to criticisms == +The focus by the media on errors found in the Fourth Assessment Report resulted in a number of responses from the scientific community. +In February 2010 the International Council for Science (ICSU) released a statement indicating that "in proportion to the sheer volume of the research reviewed and analyzed, these lapses of accuracy are minor and they in no way undermine the main conclusions" and "That these errors have resulted in attempts to discredit the main conclusions of the report, accusations of scientific conspiracies, and personal attacks on scientists is unacceptable". +On March 12, 2010, an open letter was released signed by Gary Yohe, Stephen Schneider and Cynthia E. Rosenzweig along with 249 other scientists, the vast majority of whom were climate change scientists working at leading U.S. universities, including both IPCC and non-IPCC authors. The opening of the letter stated: + +Many in the popular press and other media, as well as some in the halls of Congress, are seizing on a few errors that have been found in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in an attempt to discredit the entire report. None of the handful of mis-statements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermines the conclusion that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. +Two months later on May 6, 2010, another open letter from 255 members of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences including 11 Nobel laureates stated that they were "deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular". They outlined scientific methodology and the conclusions of climate science, in contrast to "recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers." Regarding the mistakes found in the report, the letter expressed: + +The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. +But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change. +In July 2010, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency put forward a publication stating that it had "found no errors that would undermine the main conclusions in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on possible future regional impacts of climate change". Among the key findings the publication mentions: + +Overall the summary conclusions are considered well founded, none have been found to contain any significant errors. The Working Group II contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report shows ample observational evidence of regional climate change impacts, which have been projected to pose substantial risks to most parts of the world, under increasing temperatures. + +== See also == + Global warming portal + +== References == + +== Further reading == +"A critique of the Stern and IPCC analyses of CO2 mitigation: Consumer-capitalist society cannot solve the problem" Ted Trainer, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, vol 4, no 4, October 2008. +"From Inside and Out, Climate Panel Is Pushed to Change" by Andrew Revkin, New York Times "Dot Earth", January 26, 2010 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Helpline-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Helpline-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..60b7df1c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Helpline-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: "Cyprus Safer Internet Helpline" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Helpline" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:47.000044+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Cyprus Safer Internet Helpline is a service provided by the Cyprus Safer Internet Center project, coordinated by the Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI). The Helpline ensures that not only children and adolescents but also adults have the opportunity to converse with experts in case they experience something negative on the Internet. Educated psychologists provide support and essential advice so that the crisis is overcome and the situation is confronted. Members of the public can reach the helpline at the number 7000 0 116. The communication is completely confidential and anonymous. +The need for an operation of a Helpline has been stressed by the European Commission, which supports the idea that the increasing use of the Internet is disproportionate relative to its correct use and moral education. Consequently, many of children come into contact with pages containing inappropriate content or individuals who want to exploit them. Such cases usually cause fear and distress, which must be addressed. +The Hotline is a member of the INSAFE European network of Awareness Centres that promote the safe and responsible use of the Internet and mobile devices to young people. The mission of the Insafe cooperation network is to empower citizens to use the Internet, the mobile phone, as well as other online technologies, positively, safely and effectively. The network calls for shared responsibility for the protection of the rights and needs of citizens, in particular children and youngsters, by government, educators, parents, media, industry and all other relevant actors. + + +== History == +The service was first established in 2009, through the Cyprus Internet Awareness Center, and is co-funded by the Safer Internet Plus Program of the European Commission, under Grant Number SIP-2008-CNH-143-802. +The Safer Internet Program of the European Commission has been instrumental in developing the Helpline network in Europe. + + +== Visibility == +The Helpine has run visibility events to promote Internet safety issues and has participated and contributed to various forums with the view to developing safer internet initiatives. It has also provided support and speakers for events run by educational organisations, industry associations and child welfare organisations. Interviews regarding the working of the Helpline are regularly given on TV, radio and the written press. The Cyprus Internet Helpline is also an active participant in the organisation of various events and activities to raise awareness in the context of the annual celebration of the International Safer Internet Day. + + +== Related projects == +In addition to the Helpline, the Cyprus Safer Internet Center also operates the Cyprus Safer Internet Hotline. + + +== Sources == +EC reference to helplines: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/projects/centres/index_en.htm#awareness_insafe +EC reference to the Cyprus Internet Helpline: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/apps/projects/factsheet/index.cfm?project_ref=SIP-2008-CNH-143802 +ISAFE reference to Cyprus Internet Helpline: http://www.saferinternet.org/web/guest/centre/-/centre/cyprus + + +== References == + + +== External links == +The Cyprus Internet Helpline, https://archive.today/20120803204314/http://www.helpline.cyberethics.info/ +INSAFE, http://www.saferinternet.org +European Union’s Safer Internet plus Programme, http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/programme/index_en.htm \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Hotline-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Hotline-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..45fe21278 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Hotline-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +--- +title: "Cyprus Safer Internet Hotline" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_Safer_Internet_Hotline" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:48.179796+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + + +== Basic Information == +The Cyprus Safer Internet Hotline is a service provided by the Cyprus Safer Internet Center project, coordinated by the Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute (CNTI). The Hotline promotes the safe use of the Internet in Cyprus. It serves the needs of all people that live on the island but also abroad and addresses issues of child pornography, child erotica, child nudity, child grooming activities, child trafficking, child sex tourism, but also racism (currently on the rise in Cyprus), gender discrimination and inappropriate use of peoples’ images. +The Hotline provides assistance to the Cyber Crime unit of the Cyprus Police by filtering reports to determine which reports concern content that is probably illegal and is also located in Cyprus or has a Cypriot dimension. This assists the Police to dedicate their specialist resources to pursuing investigations within their jurisdiction by not having to deal with the majority of reports that do not contain illegal content or relate to material held in other jurisdictions. +The Hotline is a member of the INHOPE International Association of Internet Hotlines, founded in 1999 under the EC Safer Internet Action Plan. +INHOPE facilitates and co-ordinates the work of hotlines internationally in responding to illegal use and content on the Internet. It facilitates good working relationships between hotlines and the exchange of reports by ensuring trust built on a rigorous hotline approval process. When illegal content which is not hosted in Cyprus is reported to SafenetCY the report is forwarded via INHOPE to the hotline that operates in the hosting country. If there is no INHOPE hotline in operation in the hosting country, the report is forwarded to the Cyprus Police which can decide based on the nature of the content to pursue an investigation in liaison with Interpol. + + +== History == +The service was first established in 2005 as Safeweb in a partnership between the University of Cyprus and the FORTH Institute in Greece. It was re-launched as SafenetCY in March 2007 (Grant Number SIP-2005-AN-038265), when the Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute secured an EU grant together with CYTA with the initiatives of Elia Petridou and Yiannis Laouris. In 2008 it was integrated with the CyberEthics Safer Internet Awareness Center also co-funded by the Safer Internet Plus Program of the European Commission, under Grant Number SIP-2008-CNH-143-802. +The Safer Internet Program of the European Commission (EC) has been instrumental in developing the Hotline network in Europe. + + +== Visibility == +SafenetCY has run visibility events to promote Internet safety issues and the importance of making reports to combat the prevalence of illegal content on the Internet. The Hotline has participated and contributed to various forums with the view to developing safer internet initiatives. It has also provided support and speakers for events run by educational organisations, industry associations and child welfare organisations. Interviews regarding the working of the Hotline are regularly given on TV, radio and the written press. It is vital that all relevant agencies work together to promote Internet safety and provide a safer Internet environment for all. SafenetCY is also an active participant in the organisation of various events and activities to raise awareness in the context of the annual celebration of the International Safer Internet Day. + + +== Related Projects == +In addition to the Hotline, the Cyprus Safer Internet Center also operates the Cyprus Safer Internet Helpline. + + +== Sources == +EC reference to hotlines +EC reference to the Cyprus Internet Hotline +Operational Procedures taken by the Cyprus Internet Hotline (PDF + + +== Citations == + + +== External links == +SafenetCY, Cyprus Internet Hotline +inhope.org +Cyprus Police +European Union’s Safer Internet plus Programme, \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_for_Black_Lives-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_for_Black_Lives-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..bbaf6d125 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_for_Black_Lives-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: "Data for Black Lives" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_for_Black_Lives" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:50.618814+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Data for Black Lives (D4BL) is an American non-profit organization with the mission of using data science to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of black people. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Data for Black Lives was founded by Yeshimabeit Milner and Lucas Mason-Brown. Milner attended Brown University; having encountered discrimination towards the black community, she organized a group of scientists to combat the mistreatment of black people within data algorithms. + + +== History == +D4BL began in November 2017 as statistical research project, and expanded into working with a team of people on data analysis. The formation of D4BL was initiated by Yeshimabeit Milner, who witnessed racial discrimination, watching her peers suffer from police brutality. Milner discovered through research that black children were getting suspended at a much higher rate than white children. After graduating from Brown University, Milner incorporated her passion for data science into social activism. +D4BL has regional organization chapters, including a group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Additionally there is a community of other organizations working towards the same goals, including Data and Society, Algorithmic Justice League, and the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). +Between 2019 and 2021, D4BL was awarded a grant by the MacArthur Foundation for broad operating support. + + +== See also == +Algorithmic Justice League +Black in AI + + +== References == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c535c0413 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: "Dipak K. Das" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:22:49.396174+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Dipak Kumar Das (1947 – September 19, 2013) was the director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington and is known for research fraud. His work centered on the beneficial properties of resveratrol, which is found in red wine, but over twenty of his research papers have been since retracted. +On January 11, 2012, the University of Connecticut Health Center announced that a review board has found Das guilty of 145 counts of fabrication or falsification of data; the three-year investigation examined more than seven years of activity in Das's lab, and centered on Western blot results that had been manipulated and used in published papers. In May 2012, Das was fired from both positions at the University of Connecticut Health Center. + + +== Biography == +Das graduated from Jadavpur University and received his Ph.D. from Calcutta University in India. He joined the University of Connecticut in 1984 and received tenure in 1993. +Das was a prolific publisher of research. His name appears on over 500 articles, including 117 articles on resveratrol. Das was an editor-in-chief of the journal Antioxidants and Redox Signaling. He also served as associate editor of the American Journal of Physiology. Heart and Circulatory Physiology and consulting editor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. His work on alcohol, HDL, and the heart was mentioned in The New York Times. He also gained attention in 2009 after publishing a study on the heart benefits of crushed garlic. + + +== Data falsification investigation == +Data fabrication by Das was alleged by a university investigation committee to have begun in 2005, when "there was no one in the lab with the expertise to prepare Western blots." Regarding Das' falsification of figures in his published works, in explicitly identifying 145 such cases the investigation committee reported that "many figures had more manipulations but, for expediency, the review board only noted the most obvious." The investigation report further stated that "given the large number of irregularities discovered, which were done over several years and in several different ways, the review board can only conclude that they were the result of intentional acts of data falsification and fabrication, designed to deceive." The university notified 11 scientific journals that published papers authored by Das, and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity launched an independent investigation of his work. +In January 2012, University of Connecticut officials reported that dismissal proceedings were underway against Das. The Health Center terminated all research in Das's laboratory and declined federal research grants awarded to him. Following Das' dismissal, the Hartford Courant in 2013 reported that Das intended to file a $35 million defamation lawsuit against UConn. +As of 2024, Das has had 24 of his research publications retracted. + + +== See also == +List of scientific misconduct incidents + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Dr. Dipak K. Das responds to allegations of science fraud (video) on YouTube +Dipak Das response letter to Univ of Connecticut officials \ No newline at end of file