Was John Bates a "Whistleblower" Exposing NOAA's Fraud?

There's a very strange conspiracy theory that has been floating around social media since 2017 that an ex-NOAA employee became a "whistleblower" to alert the world of fraud in NOAA's GMST dataset. It's a strange conspiracy theory because even the so-called "whistle blower" says that the conspiracy theorists are wrong. Let's set the context.

A paper was published in Science in 2015 (the "Karl study")[1] arguing, “Here, we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century.” Dr. John Bates in 2017 decided to go public with complaints about NOAA's process in 2017 (after retiring in November 2016). Bates said nothing publicly or internally about the study while the paper was being prepared for publication. If he had any issues with the study, he didn’t initiate any formal process within NOAA to correct these problems.[2] On Feb. 5, 2017, shortly after Bates' public claims, Lamar Smith and company at the Science, Space and Technology Committee decided that Bates lent credibility to his previously-held belief that the Karl study used “flawed data” in an effort to promote Obama’s effort to “push their costly climate agenda at the expense of scientific integrity.”[3] Coverage from tabloid newspapers made a sensation out of this, perhaps most notably an article by David Rose for the Daily Mail, though complaints against that article were upheld, and the Mail was forced to publish that decision as a remedy for their breach of the accuracy clause of the Editors code of practice. Later, an investigation by ScienceInsider “found no evidence of misconduct or violation of agency research policies after extensive interviews with Bates, Karl, and other former NOAA and independent scientists, as well as consideration of documents that Bates also provided to Rose and the Mail.”[2]

Let's be absolutely clear; nobody found any evidence of fraud, data tampering, or misconduct, and we shouldn't be surprised by this because Bates explicitly stated he wasn’t accusing Karl or NOAA of fraud. "'The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,' he said."[4] Instead, he said the report’s authors put a "thumb on the scale — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy."[4][5] Notice he cites documentation, scientific choice and the release of datasets. He does not say anything about fraud, falsification of evidence, fudging or tampering with data. He also accuses Karl of "pushing choices to emphasize warming," claiming that Karl made choices that "maximized warming" and "minimized documentation." He also speculated that Karl did this for political reasons.

At the same time, while Bates disagreed with Karl’s choices, he specifically states that the choices do not amount to fraud or data tampering. In fact, Bates expressed concern that people on social media would do exactly what contrarians have been doing since 2017. "Bates told ScienceInsider that he is wary of his critique becoming a talking point for those skeptical of human-caused climate change. But it was important for this conversation about data integrity to happen, he says. 'That’s where I came down after a lot of soul searching. I knew people would misuse this. But you can't control other people.'"[2]

In 2017 Zeke Hausfather essentially replicated the findings of the Karl paper, and Hausfather reiterated wasn’t accusing NOAA of fraud. "'Nothing in Bates' post provides any evidence that Karl et al. manipulated the data or specifically tried to show more warming,' Hausfather told Inside Science in an email. Hausfather wasn't involved in the Karl study, but he replicated its key findings in a study published in Science Advance."[6] You can find the study confirming the Karl study here.[7] Also, Peter Thorn, who was a member of the team that worked on the dataset used in the Karl Study, published a rebuttal to Bates' complaints. He wrote, "John Bates never participated in any of the numerous technical meetings on the land or marine data I have participated in at NOAA NCEI either in person or remotely. This shows in his reputed (I am taking the journalist at their word that these are directly attributable quotes) mis-representation of the processes that actually occurred. In some cases these mis-representations are publically (sic) verifiable."

To be honest, while Bates' accusations may be relevant to the processes by which NOAA documents their work, as far as the published data is concerned, it doesn't even really matter if Bates was right or wrong in his criticisms of the Karl study. Bates was apparently disgruntled at NOAA, and lurking in the background of this affair was some internal conflict within NCEI. Karl may be right or Bates may be right, or it may be a mixture. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Bates is 100% correct in everything he actually said. If so, Karl sought to maximize warming and minimize documentation in his choices to rush his paper to publication, but Karl's choices were later vindicated because they were replicated by both Hausfather's paper and also by literally every global major GMST dataset (NOAA, NASA, BEST, HadCRUT5, JMA, etc) available. And there's still no accusation that Karl’s choices were ever fraudulent, and there was no misconduct. Instead, those saying Bates was blowing the whistle on fraud are doing exactly what Bates was afraid people would do. Even if we believe everything Bates actually said, nothing would change about our understanding of how GMST is increasing in recent decades.



References:

[1] Karl, T. R., et al. “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus.” Science 348.6242 (2015):1469-1472.DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa5632
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1469

[2] Cornwall, Warren and Paul Voosen. “How a culture clash at NOAA led to a flap over a high-profile warming pause study.” Science Feb 8, 2017.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/how-culture-clash-noaa-led-flap-over-high-profile-warming-pause-study

[3] Press Release. “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records.” https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records

[4] Waldman, Scott. “'Whistleblower' says protocol was breached but no data fraud.” E&E News. February 7, 2017.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060049630

[5] Bates, John. “Climate Scientists vs Climate Data.” Climate Etc. February 7, 2017. https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate-scientists-versus-climate-data/

[6] Rogers, Nala. “Retired NOAA Scientist Doubles Down on Climate Data Controversy.” Inside Science February 9, 2017.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/retired-noaa-scientist-doubles-down-climate-data-controversy

[7] Kausfather, Zeke et al. “Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records.” Science Advances 3.1 (2017): e1601207. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601207
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207