Hence:-

‘Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence’
Second Edition
Federal Judicial Center 2000

http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/sciman00.pdf/$file/sciman00.pdf

Now in third edition behind paywall.

So much for those (usually neither scientists nor lawyers) who dogmatically declare that science should NEVER be tested in the Courts. If it cannot be raised to the bar which every citizen needs to face in their everyday actions, then is it really science?

But the frantic activity on Treagold’s blog, their blinkered discussion and hostility to “outsiders” really demonstrates how such Internet silos can become ideological ghettos.”

and then scrolled up to see Cedric’s comment.

AWFWY showed that the steep warming trend was purely the result of NIWA’s adjustments. Each station was presented in turn, unadjusted versus adjusted, and everybody saw the effects of the adjustments – almost always in the same direction, introducing a warming trend. No adjustments for UHI even though almost all the sites are urban – many people commented on this.

The station metadata didn’t show reasons for the adjustments, and NIWA wasn’t telling. True, here and there there were stations at different altitudes, but the adjustments were inconsistent. Kelburn is higher than Thorndon, and the adjustment makes the trend steeper – all well and good, but Mangere is lower than Albert Park, and the adjustment there went the other way, again making the trend steeper. Same for Hokitika, Aero is higher than the Town site (as it was then – NIWA discovered an error in the published data) and once again instead of following the expected altitude adjustment the actual adjustment went the other way.

So once again, our question was – why the adjustments? What was the reasoning behind each one? It was a real shock, to be honest, when they eventually had to admit that they didn’t know.

Remember, at that time we had little to work with – NIWA weren’t providing us with the information we needed (not surprising, with hindsight – they had no idea), and the published data provided no clues. Once we published AWFWY they had no choice but to respond, and at last the New Zealand public got to see what was behind the curtain, when the Review was published in 2010. Another shock came when we discovered that, even though they continually cited RS93 as their methodology, they didn’t use it in their Review, choosing instead an unpublished, untested (and frankly, primitive) method from a student’s thesis in 1981.

The original 7SS graph was displayed prominently on their website, and the caption gave the impression that these were long-running, completely stable stations we could all rely on. No mention was made of adjustments, nor that the steep warming trend was the result of these adjustments.

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