Weird science: East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data

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[rayra]

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/29/weird-science-east-anglia-cru-threw-out-their-raw-data/

posted at 11:00 am on November 29, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly When would scientists expecting the world to take them seriously throw out the raw data on which their conclusions are based?  Probably at the same time that they e-mail each other to launch professional vendettas against skeptics and conspire to hide contradictory data.  The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit — already in a deep scandal over the e-mails released by either a hacker or a whistleblower that shows highly unscientific behavior behind the scenes — now admits they threw out the raw data on which much of their theories on anthropogenic global warming are based (via Fausta):

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

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[nbpundit]

They treated their own raw data as trash, because that is what it is.
There's something else that's not being touched right now, if the so
called scientists defrauded their own work, who else in other hard
sciences is doing the same kind of crap?

[Mike C.]

They treated their own raw data as trash, because that is what it is.
There's something else that's not being touched right now, if the so
called scientists defrauded their own work, who else in other hard
sciences is doing the same kind of crap?

I keep seeing more and more sentiments like this and it is bothering me for two reasons.

First, the raw data isn't "trash."  It's just data.  It's those adjustments and interpretations that are in question.

Secondly, climate research has become highly politicized, with vast amounts of money being thrown at it, resulting in the mess we see before us today.  But that is not true of almost all other sciences.  I see little justification for broad brush work at this point.

BTW, the original data has probably not been destroyed.  EA's collection of data apparently has been, but they didn't generate the data in the first place.  They merely collected it from other sources, who undoubtedly still have it.