In a better world, that would be true.
In this world, it's not.
Most of the climate science data that Phil Jones and others have worked with, and most of their models are secret.
It is THIS that makes me keep at least one ear open for the "anti-" side in the climate debate. Real science SHOULD be conducted out in the open.
Still, in the larger context validating someone's data is basically worthless activity. It's far more important to go out and collect new data, build a new model, run a new simulation, and report those results than it is to try and shortcut the process. The data deluge is making it way to easy for people to validate bad science using the same bad data / model as someone else. Fundamental assumptions in statistics break down when you use the same 10 coin flips to substitute for the 10 million coin flips that cost more than your willing to pay for.
PS: The failure to collect significant quantity's of new data is a hallmark of fringe / bad science. If you really think global warming is a joke or you can be more healthy by eating coco puffs then go collect that data and do your analysis and see if someone can poke holes in your process.
The larger model is based around how that the extra heat maintained gets distributed around the world and everyone knows this is far less accurate. The people building this are well aware it's highly limited but by trying to balance the errors in both direction they hope to create a good estimate. The problem is when you start tweaking the heat distribution equations it's easy to find errors in every direction because they are greatly simplified so it's easy for someone to introduce systematic errors by only correcting issues in one direction.
Which is why you provide a high level description but when you release your source code you open yourself up to a lot of fruitless debate. Sort of like someone saying based on your methodology the rocks are really 1/1,000,000th a year older which means your science is a joke and less valid than my consistent theory that god created the world 8 weeks ago. But, if you actually build a model from scratch under similar assumptions it's going to have similar outputs and error bars or look really biased.
I don't think they're "secret" i think they assume anyone they haven't heard of who is asking for the info is a troll.
For example, the three models developed by NASA: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelE/ar4/
Direct links to each model + code + datasets:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ - with nightly code snapshots here: http://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/snapshots/
http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/ - with direct access to code here: http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/code.html and here: http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/code4x3.html
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelii/ - seemingly work on this has now been merged with the ModelE simulation.
Lots of other code and data is available if you take the time to find it ... and then considerably more time to understand it.
Business-sponsored science is very often secret, but please don't attempt to paint, as the parent commenter disingenuously attempts to do, that scientists are the root of data secrecy.
There have been now six separate inquiries into the misguided, corporation driven, politically-motivated and frankly dumb charges that climate science data is faulty or is associated with some kind of scientific misconduct. All six separate inquiries indicated it was not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_co...
Moreover, scientific organizations are overwhelmingly making changes that makes their data even more accessible:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Data+without+the+doubts%3A+the...
If you can't make an argument without resorting to name calling in the first line, please excuse me while I disregard anything at all you have to say. kthxbye.
First of all, "climate science" != "science as a whole".
Second, if any scientific field ends up in the crosshairs of a well-funded politically motivated movement working against it at any cost, then it will become hostile towards skeptics and eventually start stonewalling them. This happened in biology re: critics of evolution (in the anti-evolution camps there are tons of complaints about censorship, refusal to address criticisms, provide data, share models and code, etc.), and whereas it's always possible to address criticisms, the other side is always willing to spend more money to poke new "holes" in the theory, and you'll just never win.
"Skeptics" like to portray the ultimate goal of science as if it's to continually try to poke holes in existing theories, because progress is made when theories are disproven. But that's not science. Science is when you mix a desire to poke holes in theories with a reasonable threshold of acceptance, a willingness to step back and say "Okay, we've spent a lot of energy coming up with arguments as to why this is wrong, and they've been addressed satisfactorily, so this is probably right, let's see if this takes us anywhere new rather than getting stuck arguing the point".
Climate skeptics lack the willingness, even in theory, to accept that enough is enough - I don't believe for one moment that there is, even in principle, any piece of evidence that would lessen the amount of criticism against AGW. I don't believe they would give in because we've already seen that no amount of evidence reduced the amount of anti-evolution noise, and it's by and large the same sources of funding and political motivation that's behind both movements.
Now, it very well may be the case that climate scientists also lack the willingness to admit that they're wrong (actually, I think this is pretty likely), in which case they're not doing science, either, and that's bad. I'm totally in agreement there.
But they're taking exactly the approach to the skeptics that they would (and arguably, should) be taking if they were doing proper science. So the way they deal with skeptics is not a point of evidence either for or against the honesty of their scientific investigations, it's merely an inevitable result of the politicization of their field.
This has happened in other fields.