In a long post from September, Bishop Hill recounts the attempt of scientist Steve McIntyre to obtain the original data behind some studies showing global warming to be a man-made phenomena (AGW — anthropogenic global warming).

Some of McIntyre’s research into Polar Urals deserves a story in its own right, but it is one that will have to wait for another day. We can pick up the narrative again in 2005, when McIntyre discovered that an update to the Polar Urals series had been collected in 1999.

Through a contact he was able to obtain a copy of the revised series. Remarkably, in the update the eleventh century appeared to be much warmer than in the original – in fact it was higher even than the twentieth century. This must have been a severe blow to paleoclimatologists, a supposition that is borne out by what happened next, or rather what didn’t: the update to the Polar Urals was not published, it was not archived and it was almost never seen again.

If you have time, read it all.

Legitimate science works when researchers open their data and research methods to any and all, so that scientists can either replicate their findings or not.

Even advocates of AGW must admit that bad science is bad science.