Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Behind the scenes at the Oxburgh inquiry - Oxburgh was led by the nose

Slowly, but surely, the curtain is being lifted on Lord Oxburgh's inquiry into the science of CRU. Today I received a response to my FoI request for the emails of Sir Brian Hoskins and Professor David Hand (both of Imperial College, London) related to the Oxburgh inquiry. They are going to make a bit of a splash I think.

The emails can be downloaded here. There's a file for each man's correspondence and another for the attachments to Hand's emails. There's a lot of administrative stuff, but there is much of interest and some that made me laugh out loud.

I particularly liked the bit Oliver Morton of the Economist asks Oxburgh who chose the papers for the inquiry. Oxburgh replies:
Thanks for your message - the answer is that I don't know! What I received was a list from the university which I understand was chosen by the Royal Society The contact with the RS was I believe through [redacted - probably Martin Rees] but I don't know who he consulted. [Name redacted], when I asked him, agreed that the original sample was fair.
 A summary of the Hand emails is here. The Hoskins emails are here. Just the attachments to do.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

No comments: