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Note, 28 January 2012 - this was the original wording of this page:
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
ALLEGEDLY written by Dr. Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit


Notice how careful I was - I wasn't sure that Jones had violated scientific ethics so blatantly.

The point is not that he refused to share his data - it's debatable whether he was obliged to - but that he refused on the grounds that Hughes' aim was "to try to find something wrong with it". That's exactly what scientists are supposed to do. If someone is capable of finding something wrong with your theory using your data, you should, in the interests of truth, let them have it.

When Eddington came back from Principe Island in 1919 with photographs of light bending near the sun, Einstein didn't encourage him to keep them hidden from people who would "try and find something wrong" with the theory of relativity. But then, Einstein was a scientist.

Anyway, as it turns out, from the second tranche of Climategate emails, Jones did write those words to Hughes, exposing the attitudes at the heart of "climate science":   http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=1249



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