¶3 A look behind the curtain of John Bates’ facade - The John Bates Affair

This is the third installment (paragraph 3) of this citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal media sensation the John Bates Affair.  For some background and introduction link here.  I’ve borrowed Bates’ subtitle since I’m exploring his wordsmithing in order to ponder his motivations and it seemed to fit well enough.

Climate scientists versus climate data

by John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 | ClimateEtc - J. Curry

“A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.”

source: arstechnica.com
(Can you see the difference?)

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Bates writes in ¶3:   In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. 

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This sounds like Mr. Bates the prosecuting attorney setting up a jury to convict.  Critical information like what?  

Technical infractions of documenting protocols?  Procedures that take years to satisfy and were the source of many contentious meetings between departments and Bates trying to iron out his fastidious (perhaps even obstructionist) red tape with real world needs.  Bates does not share that side of this story.

What’s galling with that sentence is that having read through all this a number of times I already know Bates provides nothing of the sort.  Not a hint of any slight or infraction against Chairman Smith by Dr. Karl.  The NOAA claim perhaps woven between the lines.  The Science Magazine claim amounts to nothing more than another creative and hostile insinuation.  I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t Judith’s ghostwriting.

Bates ¶14   ... Did Karl et al. disclose to Science Magazine that they would not be following the NOAA archive policy, would not archive the data, and would only provide access to a non-machine readable version only on an FTP server?

Has Dr. Bates stopped beating his wife?  That sort of framing is gratuitous and only good for contriving prejudices.

¶2 A look behind the curtain of John Bates’ facade - The John Bates Affair

This is the second installment (paragraph 2) of this citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal.  For some background link here.  I’ve borrowed Bates’ subtitle since I’m exploring his wordsmithing in order to ponder his motivations.

Climate scientists versus climate data

by John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 | ClimateEtc - J. Curry

“A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.”

For perspective, all this hubbub is over the difference between these two lines

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Bates writes in ¶2:   ‘The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015’ 

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If this is Bates’ “most serious example” - what’s the big deal?  If it was a big deal, why wasn’t Dr. Bates duty bound to formally raise concerns while in his position of responsibility at NOAA?

“Bates does not directly challenge the conclusions of Karl's study, and he never formally raised his concerns through internal NOAA mechanisms.” (W. Cornwall, P. Voosen) 

Instead Bates retired and only then does he drag his personal dirty laundry over to Judith Curry for her make-over skills.  Then he releases his complaint to a public that has no technical understanding of the issues.

That’s not how serious scientists or competent administrators operate.  Smells more like vendetta ensnarled by political dirty tricks.

This begs the question, why doesn’t Bates take his own advice?

(Bates) cautioned scientists against advocating policy.

"You really have to provide the most objective view and let the policymakers decide from their role," Bates said. "I'm getting much more wary of scientists growing into too much advocacy. I think there is certainly a role there, and yet people have to really examine themselves for their own bias and be careful about that."(W. Cornwall, P. Voosen)