Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has a very interesting discussion on the giving of credit.
Update: Roger Pielke Jr. blogs on this in rather frank terms:
The short story is that a professor from Ohio State found an error in a paper on Antarctic temperature trends in Nature. He published his analysis of the error on the blog Climate Audit and sent a gracious note to the authors letting them know of his discovery.
What did the authors do? They turned around and submitted the correction to Nature as their own work, and then had it published under their own names without so much as an acknowledgment to the Ohio State professor who actually did the work and made the discovery of the error.
US. federal policy defines plagiarism as follows:
Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
Here is a discussion of the topic from Penn State, where Michael Mann of Steig et al has an appointment.
In an entirely unrelated development, Steig et al have issued a corrigendum in which they reproduce (without attribution) results previously reported at Climate Audit by Hu McCulloch (and drawn to Steig’s attention by email) – see comments below and Hu McCulloch’s post here.
They also make an incomplete report of problems with the Harry station – reporting the incorrect location in their Supplementary Information, but failing to report that the “Harry” data used in Steig et al was a bizarre splice of totally unrelated stations (see When Harry Met Gill). The identification of this problem was of course previously credited by the British Antarctic Survey to Gavin the Mystery Man.
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Those people are building on the assumption that climate realists don’t have to get credit for anything because no one in their climatological “community” would dare to complain. This is analogous to the “Aryan” scientists not giving credit to the Jews in Germany of the 1930s.
By the way, congratulations to getting scientology ads. They’re visually nice and catchy and may have other advantages, so I hope you will withstand the limited criticism that may expect you, too. 🙂
REPLY: Those ads are automatic, and I’ve tried listing them as unfavorable, but I think they are changing categories on me. Will try again – Anthony
This is completely off-topic, but here’s a paragraph from today’s ‘Special Weather Statement at weather.com regarding the forecast for Bridgeport CA (eastern side of the Sierras):
THE COLD AIR WILL LOWER SNOW LEVELS IN THE HIGH SIERRA TO NEAR 9000 FEET TODAY WHERE LIGHT ACCUMULATIONS ARE POSSIBLE OVER THE HIGHEST PEAKS BY FRIDAY MORNING. BACKCOUNTRY HIKERS AND CAMPERS IN THE SIERRA SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR NEAR OR BELOW FREEZING TEMPERATURES BOTH THURSDAY AND FRIDAY NIGHTS. HIGH SIERRA VALLEY LOCATIONS WILL ALSO LIKELY SEE OVERNIGHT LOWS NEAR FREEZING. THOSE WITH FROST SENSITIVE PLANTS SHOULD PLAN TO COVER OR MOVE THEM INSIDE.
Meanwhile, here in Sacramento we’re at 66 degrees w/a forecast high of 76–just ‘slightly’ below our normal high of 93. I know, weather isn’t climate, but our current wind & chill (though bad for the tomatoes) is sure fun for those of us originally from the upper midwest–and anecdotally, it’s seemed like a VERY mild summer thus far (dang–I’ve just doomed us to record highs in September… 😉 )
More like
CLIMATE
CREDIBILITY
CRUNCH
Keep plugging away Steve, your credit and credibility is high with us.
Off topic, but, for readers having trouble with adverts, there is always the Ad Blocker Plus application. It really does the job, especially as it stops the RAM getting gummed up with adverts on an eternal loop.
Raining here in San Jose. Very strange for early August.
@ur momisugly Kristinn (#3)
Thanks, running on a fresh install of Firefox with Adblock Plus, and had forgotten to write an exception rule for WUWT. ABP is great for protecting oneself on random websites, but for those one uses regularly and appreciates, I’d humbly suggest disabling it for the domain (very easy to do).
About to do MORE rain here in NE Oregon.Cool forcast too.My wife’s Cousin in Brookings called-No Tomato Summer there too and she’s inland…
Cold and wet in England, no summer to talk of.
You need only read over a few interactions of Steig, Mann and their associates at Real Climate with anyone who disagrees with them to understand why they did not properly credit Dr. McCulloch. They are hostile, condescending, and even abusive to anyone who questions the “current understanding” of climate (which is to say, THEIR understanding of climate). I think “obnoxious” is an appropriate adjective. There are more accurate words, but they would be snipped.
I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it sure looks mighty fishy and quite possibly unethical.
No matter what, were I Mann or Steig, I’d send a nice letter of both apology and thanks, explaining that I had missed the email while traveling, but found the error contemporaneously. “great minds” and all that…
Plausible deniability and the appearance of increased civility would likely make the problem go away.
Wanna bet that they can’t bring themselves to do so?
Mark Young (11:30:15) :
I would bet they never say a word about it to McCulloch or to anyone else, and that Nature will probably not reply to McCulloch either. ‘Mannian’ and ‘civil’ appear to be mutually exclusive.
If it is indeed plagarism, then shouldn’t a respected publication like Nature cease all affiliations with such scrupulous scientists?
Cool and wet in New York. 76 deg. No days over 90 yet.
Perhaps McCulloch should have had confidentiality agreements of some sort, and his work be accompanied with a statement that unauthorised disclosure could upset international relations.
I think Lubos is on the right track actually (and sadly).
When talent and skill are in short supply, then such people make up for it in towering arrogance.
Maybe it’s their new strategy. They are tiring of always submitting work that gets later discovered as completely erroneous. Now if errors are found, they can now resort to saying that they actually did do it.
80% chance of rain tomorrow in Eastern Oregon, where a broad swath of what is SUPPOSED to be dryland wheat still sits in fields waiting to be harvested. It will likely sprout and have to be dumped.
Off… but very, very off topic:
Suggested moto for Watt’s Up With That:
“Scientia Redivivus” (Tr. Reconstruction of Science).
I can not wait for these guys to be revealed for what they really are in the eyes of the general public. Most of us that follow WUWT and CA are well aware of their need to silence dissent. The cold light of reality will mockingly cast them into the dustbin of history. Good, honest, open science will win the day.
Just never mind….his hockey stick (all what he had) was broken down many years ago. (as Ian Plimer tells in his book “Heaven and Earth”)
David Ball (13:26:19) :
I concur. I am befuddled by the lack of long term perspective on the part of the Warmists. There is just so long that this charade can last and the comeuppance is going to be severe. When the mainstream media cut bait and turn on the Warmists, many careers and reputations will be left in tatters. And then there will be the legal repercussions…
@Kmye
sorry OT but …
I’m not much of a techie with respect to the abp filter rules. I use the subscription to easylist USA. How would I modify that to allow adds on this and other sites I choose? If you don’t mind explaining I’d appreciate it. I don’t want to keep Anthony from getting his due.
Thunder, Lightning and raining cats & dogs here in rural No. Ca. Same thing yesterday late afternoon.
Place is soaked.
Hey, this is a serious academic crime. Plagiarism is a big no no, and for this one the documentation is airtight. Put the screws to ’em.
============================================
Lubos Motl (09:09:25) :
Those people are building on the assumption that climate realists don’t have to get credit for anything because no one in their climatological “community” would dare to complain. This is analogous to the “Aryan” scientists not giving credit to the Jews in Germany of the 1930s.
———————————————
Godwins Law does not apply to crusades as important as ‘climate realism’.
Up here in coastal MA it’s in the 70s, which is warmer than it was a few days last week. Ive been having to use covers at night. Back in the 70s and 80s when I was going to SF Worldcons over the Labor Day weekend we normally had hot summers until I left around Aug 25 or a little earlier (I drove cross-country) and the summer heat had ended by the time I got back around the 10th/15th Sept. ) I plant tomatoes and peppers and my tomato plants are three weeks late in turning red (one just did overniight) while the pepper bush is stunted, about 1 1/2 feet tall.