By DemocracyRules
h/t Climate Audit
If I threw some cooking ingredients together and came up with the best chocolate chip cookie, ever, then of course I would need the recipe so I could make them again. If I lost the recipe, then no, I could not publish a cook book featuring those cookies. That would be stupid.
A key IPCC official has "lost, misplaced, or never had in the first place", key information about the factual basis on which an important IPCC report was written. A fellow scientist writes to this guy's employer:
"Please advise me of the approximate date when Dr Mitchell claims to have deleted his emails and destroyed all his paper records. I would remind you that it was less than a year after the release of the IPCC WGI report when I first contacted Dr Mitchell and I find it surprising that as a busy senior professional, potentially with an ongoing professional relationship with the IPCC and its many participants, he would so soon seek to destroy his working papers. I am also puzzled as to why, as was disclosed in the email documents you sent me, Dr Mitchell felt it necessary to discuss by email how to deal with my request with several other long serving IPCC participants, if at the time he did not have any information to disclose in any case."
Meanwhile, the Blythe-o-sphere of global warming fear- mongers continue on, unperturbed, hoping their funding sources won't be cut off.
In genuine and valid science, one must keep all one's data and notes, and keep them in archives for at least five years. This quotation shows why. Fellow scientists should not have to chase you around to get the information, and it is unethical to hide the info or claim you don't have it.
If you lost the info, then your only ethical choice as a scientist is to retract the research publication.
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