The Hockey Stick Illusion

by A.W. Montford

Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion is one of the best science books in years. It exposes in delicious detail, datum by datum, how a great scientific mistake of immense political weight was perpetrated, defended and camouflaged by a scientific establishment that should now be red with shame. It is a book about principal components, data mining and confidence intervals--subjects that have never before been made thrilling. It is the biography of a graph...Montford's book is written with grace and flair. Like all the best science writers, he knows that the secret is not to leave out the details (because this just results in platitudes and leaps of faith), but rather to make the details delicious, even to the most unmathematical reader. I never thought I would find myself unable to put a book down because--sad, but true--I wanted to know what happened next in an r-squared calculation. This book deserves to win prizes.
Matt Ridley, Prospect

Andrew Montford tells this detective story in exhilarating style.
Joe Brannan, Geoscientist

For anybody who wants to understand the scientific and psychological background to Climategate, there is no better read than Andrew Montford's new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science.

Peter Foster, National Post

Originally published in 2010, this is a new edition under the author's own imprint.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Climate Change, Politics, Environment, History

411 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2010

About the author

Andrew William Montford is an English writer and editor who is the owner of the Bishop Hill blog for climate-change sceptics.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The politicization of the "Climate Change" has made healthy debate of the issue very difficult. Regardless of which side you are on this book provides a fascinating incite to the challenges of being a critic of the "Climate Experts." The publications of the "Hockey Stick" graph in National Geographic started my own doubts about the "consensus" due to it's total lack of known Climate events like the Little Ice age. As someone who was aware of the Greenhouse effect since reading Cosmos in the 80's and is more aware of historical climate variation due to my love of history I shared with the authors the extreme skepticism that this famous graph brings. This is a blow by blow account on how a few people strong on math and determination brought this travesty down. Does this prove "Climate Change" wrong, no. Does it raise questions, yes.

[Mansoor · Rating 4 out of 5]

When later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of the twenty-first century as an embarrassing chapter in the history of science. They will wonder about our time and use it as a warning of how the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten, as the actual research topic of climate change turned into a political and social playground.
—Atte Korhola, Professor of Environmental Change, University of Helsinki

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
—Carl Sagan


History of science in the shape of a compelling thriller.


Still from Beloved Sisters (Dominik Graf, 2014)

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A careful and thickly documented account concerning the Mann "Hockey Stick" model and statistical criticism of the same. Attention is given to a number of departures from scientific conventions and publisher protocols, and to the shocking flaws in the selection and coding of proxy data. The final chapter, which reproduces UEA emails, is sobering reading.

[Oliver]

Such a strange book. Helpful, in its way, as a complete account of Steve McIntyre's work on the hockey stick and various other things -- but so one sided as to read almost like some weird work of fiction in which only the narrator and mcintyre actually exist.

[Renato Passos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shocking!

Shocking! The book tells a comprehensive story of the scientific paper used as propaganda for boosting the prospects of alarmists to loot tax payer money for their "researches". Filed with examples of scientific misconduct, written in a compelling, electrified manner.

[Daniel Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite riveting through the first third of the book. After that it seemed like endless details that didn't much impact the impression given in the first third.

[Ben Peyton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an exhausting read. The level of detail that this book goes into on all the different types of statistical issues in these scientific papers is dizzying. So much of the detail probably could have just been summarized but maybe for someone out there, this minutia is just their ticket.

I was vaguely familiar with the scandal from 2010 involving the leaked emails of the climate scientists. This book was written almost entirely prior to that event but does cover some in the last chapter.

What did I learn? It sounds like the peer review process for these science journals was all screwed up, coupled with a tight-knit clique of climate scientists, and this leads to some clearly questionable decisions around what was published in these journals. I also learned a lot about tree rings, how they probably aren't great proxies for temperature change and a lot about the bristlecone pine.

The best chapter, by far, is the chapter that the author uses to tie this issue with the hockey stick papers to the larger issues surrounding science review and science policy. The author's voice is strong and he's a clear writer when he is summarizing these topics and drawing connections. I wish the book was more like that.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very surprising tale that will leave you flabbergasted, particularly with reported claims of paleoclimatologists that cherry-picking of data, though not appropriate in another field of science, is essential to theirs! This book is not the rantings of a climate change "denier" but rather a very clear and thorough report of the statistical detective story of climate "auditors" seeking only overcome a wall of obfuscation in order to replicate the temperature reconstruction of the famous and highly influential 1998 "hockey stick" paper that I just saw reported on Earth Day last week in my local newspaper along with a current photo of its author, Penn State professor and self-admitted non-statistician Michael Mann. Near the end of the book the author reports that even the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/) agreed "that paleoclimate reconstructions were not particularly important to the scientific case for manmade global warming" and then asks the reader "so why then have you read a whole book about this particular scientific paper?". The answer is that it's not really a book about the case for or against global warming but rather as the subtitle suggests: the corruption of science and the limits of academic peer review. Certainly will make an interesting anecdote when I teach principal component analysis again next spring!

[T.M. Mullin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Transparency is the new objectivity so let me first state that I believe it is very likely that human activity is significantly affecting the global environment. I read this book with a “let’s see the other side’s best shot” attitude.

The book is clearly not from a neutral POV. Montford is a mouthpiece for Steve McIntyre and the ClimateAudit.org website and omits important facts that would support an opposite view. Still, the book is surprisingly readable considering it is 450 pages about statistical correlations of tree rings. There are no good guys in this. Mann comes across as a petty bully; McIntyre seems an arrogant whiner that makes things less clear rather than more. Most of the parties involved seem to be socially dysfunctional nerds.

It was enlightening as to how political the AGW science has become and how peer review works (or doesn’t). Mostly I thought it is a real shame these smart guys can’t work together.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Illuminating and insightful, but undoubtedly biased in its treatment of the "Hockey Stick" debate. In my mind, this isn't a book about global warming, but a book about the corruptibility of the scientific process, human fallibility, and the disconnect between scientists, politicians, the media, and the public. In both senses, Montford argues effectively, but his skeptical, alarmist rhetoric is still hard to ignore.

Montford does a good job of detailing some of the complex arguments that go into the debate. Some of the statistics got a little involved, but as a student involved in university-level research, I found it to be an enlightening and necessary part of the story. The book is well-written and engaging, even to someone with little prior knowledge of the topic.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to read this book with an open mind, but it was tough. I'm sure there are threads of this story that are true, but the author was really hammering their point a little too hard for it to be anything but off putting. I try to be fair and see both sides of the argument, but when the person writing cannot, that makes it tough.

[Daniel Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Untold climate change story

Good analysis of the whole hockey stick saga and a revealing expose into how biased the climate sciences have become in late 20th and early 21st century

[Nehemiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It does not appear that history will be kind to “science” in the first quarter of the 21st century.

[Dio Mavroyannis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely insane book. I was always curious to understand more about the publishing process around this climate literature. I am used to people saying that there is a replication crisis is psychology and other fields but this book is eye opening, there isn't even a culture of replication. So the minimal thing you can do is to actually be given code and data to replicate something but in this case the authors are extremely reluctant to do so, they don't even properly articulate which datasets are used, how they are truncated or anything of the sort. As somebody who has absorbed some econ publishing culture, it's not an exaggeration to say that econ journals are miles ahead.

Perhaps more importantly, because paleo climate is a niche area, there only like 30 authors or so, and as the book shows, they work together. In other words, there is no credible chance of independent pier review. When people who are not in the field come in, such as mathematicians, they seem to rebuke the approaches used. Mann is especially egregious, basically trying to get rid of anybody who might come to a different conclusion than his own.

Anyway, amazing science book, it mixes science with story/narrative. Hard to walk away from this book and not conclude that there is a lot of bullshit in this field. This is of course written from the perspective of one guy but no matter what the perspective of the opposition is, the fact that they refuse to share and give such a huge workload to their auditors should speak for itself.

[Andy May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding and clear

The issues surrounding the climate change debate can be extremely technical and hard to understand, this bookmakes them very clear. I'm amazed and a bit jealous of Andrew Montford's skill. His text is very readable, clear, and accurate. Highly recommended.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't take this book at face value!

A good book about how anti-climate change obfuscation is done. That isn't the goal of this book, though. It is a perpetrator of obfuscation.

I liked that the book delved a little into the technical side of the critique. It did make some valid points that were actually confirmed by Michael Mann, the originator of the Hockey Stick chart.

However, it also gave too much credit to such well-known (and documented) climate deniers and liars, James Inhofe and Joe Barton (of apology to BP fame).

I recommend the book to anyone interested in Climate Change science and politics - and the obfuscation that is occurring just like that perpetrated by the tobacco industry.

[D K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting to have read this book this 'warm' summer of 2016. Perhaps I missed something but I have the impression that the author, unable to get his full repudiation of Mann's hockey stick model published in a scientific journal, resorted to writing this book. Good explanation of statistics but overall repetitive and one dimensional.

[Lianna]

http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal...

[Kier O'Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

A too-long analysis of a single study that never proves its point.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enlightening.