Real Science to be used for rules
During the Obama administration, the EPA was allowed to make rules based on published studies in which the data and methods were kept secret by the authors or disclosed only to supporters.
Anyone who has worked in the sciences will tell you that if a thing cannot be repeated, it did not happen. But the EPA accepted result from authors who refused to release their data and algorithms so others could check their work, and allowed he use of “corrected data” without requiring the authors to disclose the rational for those corrections.
The result has been a mess, with papers coming to radically different results supposedly relying on the same data.
Expect to hear a great deal of anguished wailing, followed by retracted papers and a great deal of egg on the faces of journal publishers.
The EPA will finally follow the scientific method so if you are invested in wind or solar, make other plans.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
@Tabor
Maybe if you read with a little more understanding and a little less partisan zeal you would have realized that what is being discussed in this report is not climate science, but statistical studies of the health impacts of chemical pollution. Even this extremely biased site was honest enough to include this sentence . . .
“Researchers often use anonymous data from private citizens to conduct research on topics like chemical exposure.”
So this “secretive data” that has you so giddy is mainly about protecting the privacy of people whose health has been studied. And, with that understanding maybe you will see how far over the top your prediction of retracted studies and eggs on faces actually is?
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If it cannot be replicated, it did not happen. Note that the screams of protest are not coming from health care researchers, they are coming from climate activists who are terrified of having to produce their data.
Thermometers do not have privacy rights.
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@Tabor
Cannot admit you jumped to an unwarranted conclusion about the subject of this story? Or did you dishonestly spin it as a story about climate science? Either way . . . Milk out the nose funny.
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No unwarranted conclusion at all.
If you google the issue you will see that the climate alarmists are the one’s raising hell about the EPA going to real, verifiable science.
They are using the chemical exposure example because it has a privacy issue attached, but that is only one very small part of the science covered by the rule.
Climate alarmists have been concealing, and even destroying data, for decades to prevent independent verification(or lack thereof.) That’s what Climategate email scandal was about.
They are going to lose that means of defrauding the public, and they are in a panic, they have been accustomed to being able to commit scientific fraud with impunity, with the assistance of the EPA, NOAA and NASA, and that is coming to an end.
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@Tabor
“Climate alarmists have been concealing, and even destroying data, for decades to prevent independent verification(or lack thereof.) That’s what Climategate email scandal was about.”
Utter bullshit.
You are either a liar or stupidly repeating lies.
https://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/
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The bullshit is all yours, and factcheck’s.
For some contemporary writing on the topic, see
http://tinyurl.com/yjb9mof
http://tinyurl.com/beating-trees
Especially follow the Bishop Hill and Small Dead Animals links.
But the gist of it is that Climategate reveals a conspiracy to conceal scientific fraud, primarily from investigation by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. Factcheck only continues the coverup.,
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@Tabor
A link to some of your older bullshit? Really?
If factcheck.org is part of a coverup, they are not alone. Your conspiracy of necessity includes the nefarious participation of . . .
and dozens of other journals and scientific organizations.
All of whom looked into the work and/or the allegations of wrongdoing called “Climategate” and dismissed those allegations.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/climategate-bogus-sceptics-lies
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Where am I in error?
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You really should read those links, which were written contemporianiously.
Among other things, the importance of Mike’s Nature Trick, so poorly explained by the Guardian piece, is explained.
But typically, you are absolutely certain about things you do not in the least understand.
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RE: “So this ‘secretive data’ that has you so giddy is mainly about protecting the privacy of people whose health has been studied.”
Nope. There are three broad categories of secretive data the rule seeks to address:
These could arise in any context, not just chemical exposure. The objective is to prevent EPA policy-making on the basis of science that cannot be subjected to independent versification. This is desirable in part due to the “replication crisis” in science:
h
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Oops. Verification, not versification.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
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@Roberts
Yeah, Okay. Thanks for the clarification.
But these are all legitimate areas of privacy concern about PEOPLE – not about climate – and do not support the implication of bogus data polluting climate science or EPA rule-making.
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RE: “do not support the implication of bogus data polluting climate science or EPA rule-making.”
Bogus data polluting climate science and EPA decision-making is exactly the rationale for the proposed rule change. The idea is to base regulations only on verifiable science.
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@Roberts
No, the idea is to make it harder to control pollution.
This blather about “verifiable science” is just that – blather. Keeping these classes of information privileged does not make the findings unverifiable. Any study of health impacts where the names and medical histories of individuals are not published can be verified by studying other people exposed to the same chemical.
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RE: “This blather about ‘verifiable science’ is just that – blather.”
You are misinformed and you are running your mouth about things you don’t understand. Try reading the actual supplemental notice (link in the source). You will see that “verifiable science” is exactly the reason for the proposed rule change.
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…”“verifiable science””… In this administration, that means absolutely nothing. Everything decided is based on “a hunch”.
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RE: “Everything decided is based on ‘a hunch’.”
Are you not in favor of a rule change that would reduce guesswork, assumptions and hunches?
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Sure. Let me know when Trump is.
Cherry picker.
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I did not know that following the scientific method, which includes reproducibility, would be so partisan.
This should be good news to everyone.
Unless, of course, your political agenda requires the continued belief in falsehoods.
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Just because you and a small cadre of skeptics say they are “falsehoods” does not make it so. The proof and truth will come out.
(Reminds me of a small group study I did with friends comparing religions. When talking about the differences between Christianity and Judaism, Alan Hamilton said that when he and the rabbi he interviewed both die and they get to heaven, one of them is going to turn to the other sand say you were right and I was wrong).
In the meantime, it seems like the planet is in trouble and we are quibbling over it. And simply because engineers, the majority of the skeptics, don’t like the science behind the findings, they attack them on a regular basis causing more confusion than actual answers. -IMHO
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A theory is not right because of who believes it or how many. It is right or it is wrong,
As Feynman reminds us, if it does not agree with experiment it is wrong. But if the methods and data are concealed from other scientists, how do you know?
If a finding cannot be replicated by other scientists, it never happened.
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@Roberts
You apparently do no understand that verifiable science does not require the violation of those privacy rights listed. If a paper says that people living downwind from a coal plant suffer higher rates of lung disease than those living upwind, you do not need to know the names of the people to verify the finding. Pick your own locale and data set and see for yourself if the finding is verified or refuted.
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It would be possible to segregate the data from the identities in such cases, but if the original study is to be validated or falsified, it must be on the original dataset.
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@Tabor
Reproducibility? So truthy! But it has little to do with observational as opposed to experimental science. Epidemiology is not an experimental science. Neither is climate science. This is all a phony issue raised for no purpose other than to make it easier to pollute.
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If Climate Science is not subject to validation by experiment, it is not science at all, it is religion.
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RE: “You apparently do no understand that verifiable science does not require the violation of those privacy rights listed.”
You get today’s prize for obtuse, counterfactual commentary! The privacy rights you think are so important are almost irrelevant to the EPA’s proposed rule change. Read the supplemental notice, and stop posting stupid shit.
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@Tabor
“If Climate Science is not subject to validation by experiment yadda yadda yadda”
That is a very silly observation. Many sciences are observational not experimental. In fact, the sciences we are talking about here – the basis for EPA regulation – medicine, epidemiology and climate science are almost purely observational. Findings are not confirmed or refuted by experiment but by further observation with the same or different or more refined methods.
In the case of climate science, the observations keep coming in with virtually all of them confirming the big picture of anthropogenic climate change.
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You’re preaching religion, not discussing science
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@Tabor
The one who is hung up on dogma is you.
You make silly or, dare I say ignorant, comments such as . . .
“If Climate Science is not subject to validation by experiment, it is not science at all, it is religion.”
and when called on your silliness your only response is to accuse others of the failings that you manifest.
Climate science is NOT an experimental science. Is that really so hard to understand?
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Because you say so?
Climate Policy is based on model projections of future climate, and those models are most certainly subject to experimental validation.
Past reconstructions of climate(the subject of Climategate) are also subject to validation.
No one is the Pope of climate, every theory is subject to being examined and either replicated or rejected.
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@Tabor
You accuse me of ignorance when you demonstrate that you do not even know what a scientific experiment is. Full marks for Chutzpah. New observations are NOT experiments. The impossibility of experiments does not negate a science. Or make it into a religion. Dopey.
Based on careful observations, measurements, examination of evidence and the application of known physical laws climate science has found that the earth is warming as a result of human activity. What experiment is going to refute that finding? You cannot even imagine one.
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