With a tip of the hat to: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Image: Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow - click
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
In the past few months we have seen a number of amateurish attempts to counter skeptical arguments that gained traction in what public space there is for matters climatic and anti-climactic. Today we get introduced to John Mashey’s attempt to smear Edward Wegman and reclaim the Hockey Stick for further usage. It’s definitely anti-climactic.
Climategate had a huge impact on public opinion regarding the probity of some of the scientists involved. The leaked emails clearly showed bad and bullying behaviour that left a stench in any honest reader’s nostrils. Andrew Montford, among others, chronicled Climategate and the events leading up to it in a clear, detailed narrative called The Hockey Stick Illusion. It has been praised by reviewers, including climate scientist Judith Curry. I have read it. It is good. It is accurate. I recommend it without reservation.
So, a few months ago a website called Scholars and Rogues published an incredibly lame attempt by Brian Angliss to show why nobody needed to read The Hockey Stick Illusion, citing the low number of emails that were leaked as evidence that we didn’t have enough evidence. When Steve Mosher pointed out that a crooked accountant probably had numerous accurate transactions to his credit, but that only one was needed to prove him criminal, Mr. Angliss and Scholars and Rogues sort of went away.
The late Stephen Schneider and an IT administrator named James Prall published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claiming to prove that scientists on their side of the fence were more credible than skeptical scientists, because they had more publications. Sadly, they only searched in English, they got the names, job titles and specializations of the scientists wrong, they used incorrect analysis techniques (as explained quite brilliantly by RomanM on a post at Real Climate), and used Google Scholar, a commercial database with no published quality control measures, as opposed to any one of several available academic databases. They didn’t get Stephen Schneider’s publications accurate. But that’s okay, they have the names and pictures of those they labeled (incorrectly, in many cases) as skeptics on Prall’s website.
Now comes John Mashey, intent on the destruction of Edward Wegman’s criticism of Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley’s carefully concocted Hockey Stick Chart. Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences, was devastating, citing quite correctly the fact that random noise fed into Mann’s analysis scheme could produce a hockey stick, that they used incorrect analysis of principal components in their study, and that the community of scientists involved was so closely interlinked as to be best described as incestuous, making claims of independent verification a mockery.
Before I go any further, I should note that Mashey makes another accusation that hasn’t been picked up by the media: He accuses Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of being ‘recruited, coached and promoted’ by the George Marshall Institute.
Page 30 of John Mashey's full report
I don’t think that’s true. Mr. Mashey does not provide any documentation for this accusation and I’d like to see his evidence. I certainly hope it’s of better quality than the rest of what turns out to be drivel.
John Mashey’s first bone to pick with the Wegman report is that Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s report, (PDF – warning large download) a 250 page diatribe.
But it is entirely normal that Wegman would ask for and Barton’s staff would provide, any relevant material to speed up the investigation. I have done investigative work for several government bodies and it is in the interests of saving the public’s time and money that papers are provided. I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
Also on the first page of Mashey’s report is the ‘accusation’ that one of Wegman’s associates in the investigation was a post doctoral student with one year of experience, Yasmin Said. Perhaps Mr. Mashey should take a quick look at how much experience Michael Mann had when he created the Hockey Stick that became the iconic representation of climate change to the world…
John Mashey says that Wegman plagiarised material in his report to Congress.
This is odd. Wegman is not a climate scientist. He is a statistician. The material Mashey alleges Wegman stole comes from Raymond Bradley, who has since apparently filed an official complaint with George Mason University. Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science? Is his intent to use as intellectual property ideas generated by Bradley for his own profit?
This plagiarism claim is very strange. In Mashey’s report, he seems to go out of his way to discourage readers from actually looking at either Bradley’s text or Wegman’s. Mashey writes,
“Skeptical readers are welcome to check all 35 pages, but I suspect most will read no more than few before the repetitive style gets tiring. I had to do this to gather and summarize the data. Most people need not.”
Actually, Mr. Mashey, if you want people to believe you, most people indeed need to.
On page 19 of Mashey’s report (PDF – warning large download) is the first example of Wegman’s ‘plagiarism.’ Wegman writes on page 69,
“Overall the network includes 112 proxies, and each series has been formatted into annual mean anomalies relative to the reference period used for this data, 1902-1980.”
When compared to MBH98, page 779, it does indeed look similar:
“The long instrumental records have been formed into annual mean anomalies relative to the 1902–80 reference period, …”
Not identical, but similar. But wait a minute. What is the context for this? This is the second paragraph of a ‘Summary of Global-scale temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries’ by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (1998).
The authors are credited. The intent is to summarize what the authors wrote. The text is not identical, but to be an accurate summary would have to be similar. To say that Wegman plagiarised Bradley when he has Bradley’s name in the chapter title and is trying to summarize what Bradley said… well, I can see where this is going.
All of a sudden this 250 page, convoluted and poorly written report looks like a mountain to climb. It smells like a time-wasting replica of poorly written and un-thought out conspiracy theories.
I will be looking at this report more closely, but I will leave you with some quotes that I think show this to be the type of conspiracy theory nonsense that will have you looking for black helicopters or assorted nonsense. Here’s Mr. Mashey in full swing:
“During 2005-2006, Said was employed by Johns Hopkins University and that affiliation is the one listed on the WR. Did she do the WR work ―on her own time or was she in effect taking time from JHU teaching or research to work on the WR? If so, was this acceptable?”
(Let’s ask Gavin Schmidt, NASA employee and full time blogger at Real Climate…)
“The Federal government pays for many things. It is not obvious why {NIAA, ARL, ARO, NSWRC} seem to be paying statisticians and statistical physicists to attack climate science.”
(Maybe Mr. Mashey should take a good look again at what science is and how it works…)
“Other leadup to the WR is covered in [MAS2010], but it is worth knowing that Wegman, Said, Spencer, McIntyre, Singer, Kueter all attended a climate workshop November 14-16, 2005: www.climatescience.gov/workshop2005/participants.htm. Although I do not know if they met, it certainly seems likely.”
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
In the past few months we have seen a number of amateurish attempts to counter skeptical arguments that gained traction in what public space there is for matters climatic and anti-climactic. Today we get introduced to John Mashey’s attempt to smear Edward Wegman and reclaim the Hockey Stick for further usage. It’s definitely anti-climactic.
Climategate had a huge impact on public opinion regarding the probity of some of the scientists involved. The leaked emails clearly showed bad and bullying behaviour that left a stench in any honest reader’s nostrils. Anthony Montford, among others, chronicled Climategate and the events leading up to it in a clear, detailed narrative called The Hockey Stick Illusion. It has been praised by reviewers, including climate scientist Judith Curry. I have read it. It is good. It is accurate. I recommend it without reservation.
So, a few months ago a website called Scholars and Rogues published an incredibly lame attempt by Brian Angliss to show why nobody needed to read The Hockey Stick Illusion, citing the low number of emails that were leaked as evidence that we didn’t have enough evidence. When Steve Mosher pointed out that a crooked accountant probably had numerous accurate transactions to his credit, but that only one was needed to prove him criminal, Mr. Angliss and Scholars and Rogues sort of went away.
The late Stephen Schneider and an IT administrator named James Prall published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claiming to prove that scientists on their side of the fence were more credible than skeptical scientists, because they had more publications. Sadly, they only searched in English, they got the names, job titles and specializations of the scientists wrong, they used incorrect analysis techniques (as explained quite brilliantly by RomanM on a post at Real Climate), and used Google Scholar, a commercial database with no published quality control measures, as opposed to any one of several available academic databases. They didn’t get Stephen Schneider’s publications accurate. But that’s okay, they have the names and pictures of those they labeled (incorrectly, in many cases) as skeptics on Prall’s website.
Now comes John Mashey, intent on the destruction of Edward Wegman’s criticism of Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley’s carefully concocted Hockey Stick Chart. Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences, was devastating, citing quite correctly the fact that random noise fed into Mann’s analysis scheme could produce a hockey stick, that they used incorrect analysis of principal components in their study, and that the community of scientists involved was so closely interlinked as to be best described as incestuous, making claims of independent verification a mockery.
Before I go any further, I should note that Mashey makes another accusation that hasn’t been picked up by the media: He accuses Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of being ‘recruited, coached and promoted’ by the George Marshall Institute.
I don’t think that’s true. Mr. Mashey does not provide any documentation for this accusation and I’d like to see his evidence. I certainly hope it’s of better quality than the rest of what turns out to be drivel.
John Mashey’s first bone to pick with the Wegman report is that Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s ‘report,’ a 250 page diatribe.
But it is entirely normal that Wegman would ask for and Barton’s staff would provide, any relevant material to speed up the investigation. I have done investigative work for several government bodies and it is in the interests of saving the public’s time and money that papers are provided. I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
Also on the first page of Mashey’s report is the ‘accusation’ that one of Wegman’s associates in the investigation was a post doctoral student with one year of experience, Yasmin Said. Perhaps Mr. Mashey should take a quick look at how much experience Michael Mann had when he created the Hockey Stick that became the iconic representation of climate change to the world…
John Mashey says that Wegman plagiarised material in his report to Congress.
This is odd. Wegman is not a climate scientist. He is a statistician. The material Mashey alleges Wegman stole comes from Raymond Bradley, who has since apparently filed an official complaint with George Mason University. Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science? Is his intent to use as intellectual property ideas generated by Bradley for his own profit?
This plagiarism claim is very strange. In Mashey’s report, he seems to go out of his way to discourage readers from actually looking at either Bradley’s text or Wegman’s. Mashey writes, “Skeptical readers are welcome to check all 35 pages, but I suspect
most will read no more than few before the repetitive style gets tiring. I had to do this to gather and summarize the data. Most people need not.”
Actually, Mr. Mashey, if you want people to believe you, most people indeed need to.
On page 19 of Mashey’s report is the first example of Wegman’s ‘plagiarism.’ Wegman writes on page 69, “Overall the network includes 112 proxies, and each series has been formatted into annual mean anomalies relative to the reference period used for this data, 1902-1980.” When compared to MBH98, page 779, it does indeed look similar: “The long instrumental records have been formed into annual mean anomalies relative to the 1902–80
reference period, …”
Not identical, but similar. But wait a minute. What is the context for this? This is the second paragraph of a ‘Summary of Global-scale temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries’ by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (1998).
The authors are credited. The intent is to summarize what the authors wrote. The text is not identical, but to be an accurate summary would have to be similar. To say that Wegman plagiarised Bradley when he has Bradley’s name in the chapter title and is trying to summarize what Bradley said… well, I can see where this is going.
All of a sudden this 250 page, convoluted and poorly written report looks like a mountain to climb. It smells like a time-wasting replica of poorly written and un-thought out conspiracy theories.
I will be looking at this report more closely, but I will leave you with some quotes that I think show this to be the type of conspiracy theory nonsense that will have you looking for black helicopters or assorted nonsense. Here’s Mr. Mashey in full swing:
“During 2005-2006, Said was employed by Johns Hopkins University and that affiliation is the one listed on the WR. Did she do the WR work ―on her own time or was she in effect taking time from JHU teaching or research to work on the WR? If so, was this acceptable?”
(Let’s ask Gavin Schmidt, NASA employee and full time blogger at Real Climate…)
“The Federal government pays for many things. It is not obvious why {NIAA, ARL, ARO, NSWRC} seem to be paying statisticians and statistical physicists to attack climate science.”
(Maybe Mr. Mashey should take a good look again at what science is and how it works…)
“Other leadup to the WR is covered in [MAS2010], but it is worth knowing that Wegman, Said, Spencer, McIntyre, Singer, Kueter all attended a climate workshop November 14-16, 2005: www.climatescience.gov/workshop2005/participants.htm. Although I do not know if they met, it certainly seems likely.”
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
Never quite understood the logic of climate psientists doing statistical analysis, then complaining about statisticians examining their work.
Seems to me that most of climate psience is statistical analysis anyway.
DaveE.
Schadow
October 9, 2010 9:38 pm
Went to the link for “The Hockey Stick Illusion” which turns up an Amazon page for the Wegman book. I read the reviews then went immediately to the six “1 star” comments. The sputtering and foaming there reminded me of the recent past at CP before they went totally political.
My conclusion: All I need is another 482-page book, but I can tell it’s a must-have!
TomRude
October 9, 2010 10:11 pm
OT: sorry but ridiculae video continues with this one:
Next breathing over a lifetime kills polar bears…
Dishman
October 9, 2010 10:23 pm
It seems to me like bringing attention back to the Wegman Report is an own-goal.
Please, let’s talk about this more!
Stephan
October 9, 2010 10:25 pm
This is probably very good news (The nature article). Its going to backfire in a huge way. BTW looks like Lucia has already found that because of dates 2005) a lot of the DC accusations could not be.true…. already LOL…
Actually, Tom, that argument doesn’t hold now, it didn’t hold then.
It’s an easy argument to counter, actually, and it can be countered two different ways. First, the email itself is not proof of anything – money disappearing in an illegal fashion from one account and appearing in another account proves fraud. The email itself is nothing more than a suggestion, an indicator that fraud might have occurred. To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests. So my initial arguments about the insufficient context in the CRU emails have been borne out repeatedly.
Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed.
Argument countered.
BTW, you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
harry
October 9, 2010 10:34 pm
I don’t think any of Bradley friends (you know the ones, they are the people that conduct his “independent” peer reviews), will be thanking him for this in a few months time.
The last thing this statistically challenged discipline needs is to go pick a fight with the statistics establishment, it might just cause a bunch of them to start taking a serious look at the “science” being “discovered” by Bradley and his cohorts.
As the modus operandi of the Hockey Team becomes more apparent to mainstream scientists, happy to use the most specious grounds to try to destroy a scientist’s career to defend their own shoddy practices, I expect more scientists will be willing to speak out against them.
Based on Mashey’s delusional work, I expect that this plagiarism charge will be thrown out with a giant smack for all those associated with it.
spangled drongo
October 9, 2010 10:50 pm
Clangers and Mash anyone?
Eric Anderson
October 9, 2010 10:54 pm
Break out the shovel. It’s getting Deep . . .
D. King
October 9, 2010 11:07 pm
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
LOL!
No, no, it was more subtle than that.
They probably used a secret wink code.
Steven mosher
October 9, 2010 11:11 pm
Did you know that Wegmans bibliography has some books listed that they never cited!
OMG. stop the presses. the hockey stick is saved.
Err, gosh, maybe Mashy never wrote a college paper. We require that All works consulted be in a bibliography… of course the works you actually cite is shorter than the works consulted.
Jonde
October 9, 2010 11:17 pm
Could someone accuse IPCC for plagiarism? Lots of copy-paste in climate bible. Wegman did a survey and gave an expert opinion. IPCC do surveys and give expert, eh, opinions. Same? It is OK to criticize the content of this type of reports, but to try to make a weak claim of plagiarism is just lame.
Nether IPCC or Wegman did original research. They just summarize the topic and give their opinion. That’s it. There is no case for plagiarism.
Steven mosher
October 9, 2010 11:18 pm
Ok:
Steve McIntyre shows you how to handle the Mashey pile.
:Steve McIntyre (Comment#53771) October 9th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
The Oxford Companion to Global Change, David Cuff and Andrew Goudie
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information. The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, its age, the availability of stored nutrients in the tree and surrounding soil, and a host of climatic factors, including temperature, precipitation and availability of sunlight.
Bradley textbook:
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information… The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, tree age, availability of stored food within the tree and of important nutrients in the soil, and a whole complex of climatic factors (sunshine, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and their distribution throughout the year).
Wegman:
The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere.
###################
time for somebody to get Bradley textbook. Apply some software and go full bore.
Wegman is a bit player in the HS. Bradley is on the core team. Target Bradley.
Bryan A
October 9, 2010 11:34 pm
This would appear to be something akin to a political debate. If you can’t poke holes or uncover flaws in the message, disparage the messenger. This tactic is far to often utilized by the debater who is losing the argument.
This whole thing is too bizarre for my little mind. I’m off to read some Emanuel Kant, at least the logic is sound, even if the style Byzantine.
Ross
October 9, 2010 11:42 pm
Lesson no.1 : Never ever pick a fight over fact or detail with Steve McIntyre.
As many others have said , Wegmans “manuscript” was a report , a review of what he considered the facts and his expert opinion on the statistical methods used. It was not an academic paper on original reasearch . If a couple of pieces of the report omitted so called proper attribution it does not change the conclusions of the report or the value of the work.
Mashey and co are just playing a childish game of attempted diversion.
Dagfinn
October 10, 2010 12:04 am
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
BTW, you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
Of course he can. It’s the logical equivalent of “the victim was injured but not killed”.
Doug in Seattle
October 10, 2010 12:10 am
I think Dishman might be right about the own goal of Mashey & Bradley’s ploy.
Does the hockey team really want the substance of the Wegman report brought back after having spend so long putting out all those spaghetti lines to support their faux stats?
Tom,
You might like to read the part of Mashey’s report starting p 119. It details lots of apparently copied text in the section on Social Networks Analysis. This is a new topic that they have introduced, with mathy talk about triads and graphs. They’re not describing climate science background – they are trying to give the impression that they know about SNA and so should we. And a substantial chunk is copied out of Wikipedia. There’s a 400 word para verbatim – no coincidence possible. And of course no reference or acknowledgement at all. Lots of other stuff in that section apparently from other sources.
Konrad
October 10, 2010 12:26 am
I am half way through the Bishop’s excellent work. On what I have read so far, I would also conclude that the Wegman report has some deficiencies. In light of the behavior of the hockey team, the report should have been written in language requiring an parental advisory notice. Someone needs to tell John Mashey that scam is over. The Rubenesque Diva is reaching into the props box for the hat with the horns and he comes out with this dross!
Peter P.
October 10, 2010 12:26 am
Hey Anthony, slightly off topic… I think 10 October from now on should be remembered as Climate Fools Day.
A hundred years from now, children will remember and celebrate this day!
Thank you 10:10. No Pressure!
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 12:39 am
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
i once had a friend with OCD who tried to do this with James Joyce. seriously disturbed.
i also flashed on this:
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 12:44 am
‘there is no conspiracy john, it’s in your mind.
Pete
October 10, 2010 12:44 am
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
On your first point: “To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests.”
This is not entirely accurate, they did say they found no evidence, they did not say the emails show no evidence, how could they if they didn’t read them? Unless of course you can provide a copy of the evidence list of exactly what they did look at, containing all the released files in FOI.zip, which seems not to exist.
Your second point: “Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed. ”
So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
Are you really trying to insinuate Mann (might have) committed fraud under duress, and it’s therefore not as bad as doing it on purpose for financial gain? Are you saying he did what he did, whatever that may be, for the right reasons, therefore it might not be a crime at all?
Isn’t being a little bit guilty, a bit like being a little bit pregnant?
And this is your logic as to why we should ignore the HSI?
How bizarre!
stephen richards
October 10, 2010 12:49 am
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Na na na-na na.! Brian actually that is pathetic. Read your response again, please.
stephen richards
October 10, 2010 12:51 am
Eric Anderson says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Break out the shovel. It’s getting Deep . . .
It out and they digging for all they are worth. It’ll turn mechanical soon. Bradley, in his indignation and arrogance, has opened the biggest can of worms ever. None of the team will thank him for this. he he
FergalR
October 10, 2010 12:53 am
Good grief, are the other 249 pages filled with puerile drivel too? And Keith Kloor seriously expected people to react to it in a day. Right.
The hockey stick has been keeping a very low profile of late. It had to.
Is this really the best they had to deflect attention from that sceptic execution fantasy advert?
Fred
October 10, 2010 12:53 am
I really can’t see how plagiarism comes into this. Wegman wrote a report on the work of Mann and Bradley. He was not copying someone else’s original research and passing it off as his own. He was writing a report on some else’s research and coming to his own independent opinion on the quality of that research. If he was to copy and paste and amend slightly parts of works by M&B then that would be expected. This is not plagiarism, at least not in the academic sense. This smells of desperation.
David Davidovics
October 10, 2010 1:16 am
Its funny to see alarmists desperately “counter” arguments by trying to bait opponents in an effort to avoid answering questions. All the while accusing them of avoiding their own rhetorical questions. Both ways indeed….
None of this changes what happened with climategate, and what more context do you need when some one asks his colleagues to destroy evidence that is subject to a freedom of information act request (Oh right, you ignored that too, Brian). I don’t need an enquiry to know when daylight shines nor will I be told that black is white no matter how many experts you recruit and line up.
MH
October 10, 2010 1:18 am
OT, but can I be the first to wish you all a Happy 10:10:10 from Franny-land (UK). It’s blueberries on my muesli this morning.
Glenn
October 10, 2010 1:21 am
The story had to come out about now, or there would not be time enough for it to influence voters on Nov 2. The investigation has “been confirmed” since July 28 but George Mason is dragging their heels and likely will have no news in time that could sway voter opinion. As Revkin twits: “Mashey critique finding cut/paste & other problems in Wegman Report gets traction.”
Did USA Today just pick the non- story out of thin air? I say non-story because all we have from the article are the accusations of Bradley and Mashey. And Bradley has had years to publicize his complaint. So it seems that he asks for an investigation that was supposed to be over by now, but isn’t, and calls Dan at USA Today to get “some traction”.
Ian
October 10, 2010 1:41 am
Minor point — it’s p.18 not p.19 where Mashey talks discusses the “plagiarism”.
Mashey gave me the impression he believes that any documents passing through the hands of sceptics, or any information coming from sceptics, is/are inherently tainted and wrong, as if sceptics are part of some great conspiracy (he actually believes this, it seems). Any scepticism/denial of AGW is illegitimate, in his view, and it would seem that if he/they had more power they would physically prevent sceptics/deniers from having a voice. Mashey has even given people coloured markers to wear in his text, e.g. p.7, the red ones meaning that person is “a problem”. He has clearly been compiling a database of “scientists-we-don’t-like”, very likely with their home addresses. The similarities to a certain other event in history are striking, and are really not funny anymore.
I’d appreciate URL’s for the recent Nature comment re Wegman, and Steve Mosher’s ref to Steve McIntyre’s note (cannot follow your existing ref, Mosh).
Nature magazine, Mann at WaPo, and Mashey at Deep Climate, all together going for Wegman – WaPo in Mann’s usual style, without actually naming him but referencing “discredited”. Looks like a political strategy.
This could be an own-goal. Or it could simply attract politicians of both sides, on the principle that mud sticks, and if one throws more mud on old mud, even more mud might stick. The first thing that came across in early responses here at WUWT to Mashey was “plagiarism – ooh, sounds bad” – but there were no references of substance.
Plagiarism my foot! How else can Wegman lay the foundations of science needed to understand the issues of his investigation? And if Bradley words things so they are hard for non-specialists to understand, of course he has to rewrite. But cannot cite. But still provides references.
Nitpickgate. Pea-under-thimble-gate. Shoot-the-messenger-gate.
Ian
October 10, 2010 1:47 am
Minor point — it’s p.18 not p.19 where Mashey discusses the “plagiarism”.
Mashey gave me the impression he believes that any documents passing through the hands of sceptics, or any information coming from sceptics, is/are inherently tainted and wrong, as if sceptics are part of some great conspiracy (he actually believes this, it seems). Any scepticism/denial of AGW is illegitimate, in his view, and it would seem that if he/they had more power they would physically prevent sceptics/deniers from having a voice. Mashey has even given people coloured markers to wear in his text, e.g. p.7, the red ones meaning that person is “a problem”. He has clearly been compiling a database of “scientists-we-don’t-like”, very likely with their home addresses. The similarities to a certain other event in history are striking, and are really not funny anymore.
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 1:57 am
Actually, Tom, that argument doesn’t hold now, it didn’t hold then.
“It’s an easy argument to counter, actually, and it can be countered two different ways. First, the email itself is not proof of anything – money disappearing in an illegal fashion from one account and appearing in another account proves fraud. The email itself is nothing more than a suggestion, an indicator that fraud might have occurred. To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests. So my initial arguments about the insufficient context in the CRU emails have been borne out repeatedly.”
Since the entire focus of everything was the FOI violation is hardly a vindication.
As I explained to you in email the mails provided a storyline that investigators should have followed but they didnt. In fact some of them got it flat wrong.
1. Jones requested that mails be deleted. This was in connection with and FOIA request. One investigation got that wrong.
2. The question to ask Jones was why did he ask that they be deleted? never asked.
3. The mails indicate that the reason for the deletion request was to hide correspondence between Briffa and Wahl since that was the correspondence being requested and since briffa, whal, amman and mann were requested to delete.
So the mails tell us THAT a request was made. The mails indicate one reason for the deletion.
4. The deletion request has to do with Chapter 6 and the treatment of McIntyre’s paper.
In fact the whole story is connected at this one point and they failed to do a competent investigation
“Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed.”
We never claimed fraud and we were careful to about discussing motives. I have repeatedly argued that the committes should have asked jones WHY he requested that these mails be deleted? why he changed his policy toward MCintyre. To clear up the motive case.
“Argument countered.”
Argument MISSED ENTIRELY.
“BTW, you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.”
Huh. The only thing that can change science is more science. The world doesnt get cooler because somebody writes a mail. the MWP doesnt get warmer because somebody writes a mail. BUT, if somebody in charge of the temperature science writes a mail that says “if I am asked for the data I will DESTROY IT” then we do have a rational basis to suspend judgement. IT DOESNT CHANGE THE ACTUAL FACTS, it changes our certainty in them. Duh. words dont change the facts of science, only more facts do that. But, if you trusted the scientists to give you the right facts before the mails, then after the mails yuo have plenty of reason to doubt THEM.
Peter Miller
October 10, 2010 2:09 am
Sounds to me like the warmist establishment need to remember one of the great truisms of life:
If you:
a) dig a deep hole,
b) fill the hole with sharpened stakes, and next
c) fill most of the hole with poo.
Do not then jump in the hole.
In this case, the analogy means: don’t continue to attack those who expose the errors, data manipulation, intrigue and fraud of the climate ‘science’ community. This kind of strategy will only highlight the actions of the purveyors of the original bad science and backfire on you, as it has in this instance.
Publicly trying to justify the unjustifiable usually only works in totalitarian societies.
Brian Angliss:
1. the request to delete the mails was tied to the FOIA denial and to chapter 6 of AR4 and to nearly all of the issues we raised in the book. The investigations vindicated our view.
2. we didnt discuss motives. We expected the investigations to ask Jones why he requested mails be deleted and why he broke FOIA laws.
3. The mails dont change the facts of science. They do change our ability to rely on the team. when the man in charge of temperature science says he will destroy the data before he would share it, that does not change the actual temperature. it does raise rational doubt.That is the point of the claim about the mails not changing the science. They cant. they can and do change our willingness to accept the work of the men involved. Thats why we called for an independent investigation of the science. get it
Alan Bates
October 10, 2010 2:17 am
Quoted in the top of the thread (Mr Mashey in full swing):
“Other leadup to the WR is covered in [MAS2010], but it is worth knowing that Wegman, Said, Spencer, McIntyre, Singer, Kueter all attended a climate workshop November 14-16, 2005: http://www.climatescience.gov/workshop2005/participants.htm. Although I do not know if they met, it certainly seems likely.”
Since I am not close to the background, I followed the link that was so kindly given. This was a US Government workshop (the dot gov gave a bit of a hint) with scores, possibly hundreds, of people there. I counted 32 attenders whose surmanes began with “A”. This was not a backroom meeting with people watching the doors to make sure no spies overheard the scurrilous machinations of a cabal of anti-science terrorists. It was held in Arlington Virginia at the Crystal Gateway Marriott. And the whole purpose was to get as many of the experts there as possible:
The first papagraph of the Background to the workshop reads:
The Climate Change Science Program—sponsored by 13 participating departments and agencies of the U.S. Government— coordinates and integrates scientific research on changes in climate and related systems.
It is hardly surprising that, amongst scores (hundreds?) of participants, the listed people should be there!
What kind of stupid is this guy? Why should I read his 250 pages when I can keep to the 35 of the Wegman Report?
From Jeff Id, here’s a comparison of texts – Wegman and Bradley
and here’s Science Fair interviewing Bradley:
“Clearly, text was just lifted verbatim from my book and placed in the (Wegman) report,” says Bradley, who is also one of the authors of the 1999 Nature study. In response to earlier concerns raised by the Deep Climate website, Bradley says he wrote a letter in April to GMU, noting the possibility of plagiarism and demanding an investigation of both the 2006 report and a subsequent, federally-funded study published by some of Wegman’s students. “Talk about irony. It just seems surreal (that) these authors could criticize my work when they are lifting my words.”
“It just seems surreal”… that Bradley could fail to distinguish between Wegman needing to explain Bradley’s definitions, and Wegman criticising Bradley’s conclusions.
Shoot-the-messenger-gate.
Jordan
October 10, 2010 2:35 am
I agree with Dishman. Another opportunity to discuss the Hockey Stick will keep open a festering wound, and will do nothing to help the catastrophe theory.
It’s like the indefatigable Black Night in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”. Convinced of his own invincibility, he refuses to give up the fight, even after losing all four limbs. Left quirming on the ground, the Black Night still taunts King Arthur for running away.
Tom seems to come up with his own, not very clearly explained, definition of palgiarism.
Something to do with having the same professional background as the person whose work you’ve copied, or not, or something.
I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
—————–
Simple really. By providing the seed information for a report into a politically sensitive issue it becomes likely that the outcome will be biassed.
Since it seems that Congressman Barton is being accused of having an agenda and that Wegman was chosen to produce a report that gave effect to that agenda the issue of whether the report is biassed or not assumes some importance.
Hope that’s clear now.
LazyTeenager
October 10, 2010 3:08 am
Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science?
———————-
No. It is being implied that Wegman or whoever actually wrote the report took short-cuts in producing the text for the report. This leads to significant concern that the analysis itself in the report was based on taking short-cuts and therefore the conclusions in the report may be flawed.
Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.
Hope that’s clear now.
Downloaded, tried to read it. The first 200 pages are just — weird! No way I’m wasting time ploughing through that. Then we come to the devastating comparison. I looked at about six pages of that before I junked the whole thing. Example after example of two-column printout, Wegman on the left and other authors on the right (for example):
(left column) Wegman: Mann says that ~X.
(right column) Mann: X.
(Where ~X is a statement resembling statement X.) Sorry, that’s not plagiarism, and anyone who thinks it is hasn’t a clue about academic work whatever.
As usual, another utterly absurd beatup. Oh, and if there’s something valid I missed in the part after about page 205 where I gave up, then they should have skipped pages 1-205 and started with p206, obviously. There’s a limit to how much bilge people have to read before they rightly conclude you’re a dishonest incompetent.
S Basinger
October 10, 2010 3:28 am
The emails contain prima facie evidence of illegal activity in terms of conspiracy to destroy FOIA-able documents. If it weren’t for an overly short statute of limitations, some individuals would likely be in serious legal trouble.
Pretty sad, actually. It does say something about the honesty of the individuals involved. When confronted with the evidence of their own words, the only honest reponse would be to man-up, admit the error, apolgize sincerely and take this as a learning experience to better oneself.
I’m still hearing of pretty much the same rounding of the wagons, rhetoric and excuses that led to this mess in the first place. I’m thinking that not a lot has been learned and it’s pretty much back to business as usual for the hockey team.
This ridiculous attempt to silence a critic without addressing his points is yet another example. Keep digging.
LazyTeenager
October 10, 2010 3:30 am
Harry says
—————
The last thing this statistically challenged discipline needs is to go pick a fight with the statistics establishment
—————
Pure wishful thinking.
If memory serves:
1. Wegman is not the statistics establishment, he is just one practitioner and the attitude of other statisticians is unknown
2. Statisticians have already checked this research and say it’s ok, mostly
3. There are lots of people still doing paleoclimate and still producing hockey sticks from various proxies and statistical methods up to the present day
WAM
October 10, 2010 3:51 am
@LazyTeenager
You could just check in WIKI (but maybe you are LAZY, i do not presume other agenda)
“….. Edward Wegman is a statistician, a statistics professor at George Mason University, and past chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE. ….”
He specializes in statistics. You may or may not count him into an “establishment”. However, I would rather put some weight on his statistical analysis, not on analysis (was there any? in statistical journals?) practicioners of statistics from The Team.
LazyTeenager
October 10, 2010 3:56 am
Steve Mosher says
————-
time for somebody to get Bradley textbook. Apply some software and go full bore.
Wegman is a bit player in the HS. Bradley is on the core team. Target Bradley.
————-
talking of home goals
Are you actually saying that Bradley ripped off Cuff and Goudie and then Wegman ripped off Bradley or Cuff and Goudie.
This is getting weird because you are acknowledging that Wegman ripped off someone.
Robinson
October 10, 2010 4:05 am
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:34 pm
This whole thing is too bizarre for my little mind. I’m off to read some Emanuel Kant, at least the logic is sound, even if the style Byzantine.
You sadist!
JSmith
October 10, 2010 4:10 am
Thomas Fuller wrote : “Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences,…”
Can you give more details about that “fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences” bit – where can one find that ‘full support’ in black and white ? Thanks.
LazyTeenager@
“Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.”
Then you’d find it really strange that very few members of the US congress ever read the text of the bills that they vote on and the never actually draft the bills that get voted on. Aides summarize for congressmen, and even when a lawmaker is the originator of the bill, he just puts out the big picture “plain english” description of what he wants then it goes to rooms of lawyers to convolute it into unreadable legalese.
FergalR
October 10, 2010 4:32 am
Here’s a guest post by Mashy at Tim “exploding children are funny” Lambert’s site: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
He answers his own question:
——————-
a) Do you attend lectures by real climate scientists?
Typically several times a month at Stanford, sometimes elsewhere, at Bay Area government meetings, local town meetings, etc.
——————-
I guess that’s the same Stanford that ExxonMobil are giving $100million to for climate research. http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html
And he gets lectured by them every week.
Vince Causey
October 10, 2010 4:34 am
Good article Tom.
It is becoming increasingly clear now, the level of desperation among die-hard warmists, now that their science has collapsed.. They are turning themselves into a parody of the very thing they are attacking. I didn’t think they could slide any lower than Schneider’s paper ‘proving’ that warming scientists were better than sceptical scientists. Now we have, a report that sounds like it was written by a foaming-at-the-mouth, swivel eyed conspiracy theorist. I can’t wait to see the warmist blogs trotting this out as proof that Wegman has been ‘debunked’ and M&M are sleepers planted by an evil genius.
You couldn’t make it up.
Elise
October 10, 2010 4:36 am
@LazyTeenager
I hope you’re not really a lazy teenager, they tend to become uneducated adults.
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
Slabadang
October 10, 2010 4:54 am
Thanks Mr Agliss for bringing up the subject again!
I almost forgot about Mr Jones askning his compadres to delete emails.
That Mr Salinger frauded the NZ temp record.
That treering proxies in the hands of Mr Mann can turn out to show anything or nothing.
That Osbourne demanded the creation of the new “Medieaval Vanishing period”
That Realclimate also took us in to the new “stonewalling age” by the “obvious flaws denier movement”.
The history of how peer review in climate science became an “ask your friends to sign on in blanco” with the starting point at the creation of IPCC?
Well, Mr Angliss, when it comes to the important issue of how to earn keep and deserve trust you really showed us all how not to.
But please keep on doing what you’re doing! And why not bring the Himalayas back to the table again? 🙂
Pete
October 10, 2010 4:58 am
Could someone knowledgeable about paleoclimate techniques comment?
I’ve just come back from walking the dogs in a field with 1200 trees, they were all planted 9 years ago over the same week, they were all cuttings from the same gene pool. The biggest are 12″ dia at the base, some are only 5-6″ dia at the base.
OK these are softwood willows for cricket bats, and the differences might be exaggerated compared to old hardwoods in colder climes, but still, how can growth rates compare to historical temp in any robust manor? How can a marked difference in growth rate be accounted for, without compromising the resultant historical temp product? TIA.
Mosher, the Bradley book is either ten or fifteen years previous to the David Cuff and Andrew Goudie production, so if there is a problem it isn’t Bradley’s. Since that took exactly two seconds for me to discover through Google, I expect McI knows it too.
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum disorders.
kim
October 10, 2010 5:46 am
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
JPeden
October 10, 2010 6:21 am
Clearly, according to Climate Science’s exacting standards, Mashey’s report is a credible destruction of Wegman’s analysis of Mann’s HS only if he included the allegation that ~”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
Dagfinn – if you read the link I provided, you’ll notice that I specifically quoted Tom as making two mutually exclusive claims. Now, maybe Tom meant to say that he erred in using exclusive language in either one or both of the cases as you suggest (we all make this error from time to time), but if so, he never admitted to that. If he had, he would have had to go back and run a correction on one or both of his claims as any good journalist is required to. There’s other ways out of the logical trap as well, such as claiming that there was disagreement between him and Mosher on this issue, or saying that he thought one thing at one point but later changed his mind about it, but he has not done either of those things to date that I’m aware of.
Pete said: So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
“Under duress” in the motive example I gave is things like being the victim of blackmail or extortion. Let’s not equate your red herring with actual duress.
The point of Mashey’s and DC’s work is that the most widely trumpeted hockey stick investigation is riddled with errors, contains large sections of probable plagiarism, may contain copyright violations, and was done for political purposes rather than scientific ones.
GMU is doing the right thing here – investigating whether or not Wegman plagiarized and committed academic misconduct – even if they’re doing a poor job of it.
It’s valuable to note the differences between the PSU and GMU investigations, however. PSU immediately opened an inquiry into Mann’s conduct even though they never received a single formal complaint, while GMU took months to open their inquiry after receiving a formal complaint from Bradley. PSU stuck to the required timetables in their inquiry procedure and produced the results of the inquiry when they were required to do so, while GMU failed to respond to Bradley in the required time, failed to form the inquiry on time, failed to complete the inquiry when their response letter said they would, and have yet to publish their findings.
GMU may yet come out of this with their academic reputation intact, but they’ve already allowed to become tarnished.
rw
October 10, 2010 7:28 am
And all the while it’s getting colder …
As Vince Causey said, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
kramer
October 10, 2010 7:32 am
Good job Mr. Fuller. You made some very good points IMO.
Douglas DC
October 10, 2010 7:45 am
This has the air of a paper written two days before it’s due.
This reads like that experience of after oh say, two joints and a couple of beers, going down into the basement of the subconscious, finding the great universal library ! The
mind, writing with great insight and awareness, gives you the ultimate insight.
Then upon staggering into the Classroom, you look at the paper with a now sober mind, and see it is all incoherent drivel.
“Douglas, this is the most incoherent, ill referenced, poorly footnoted pile of
horse manure I have ever read.”
This actually happened. managed to pull a “C” out of that class….
There are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, something Wegman has to assume responsibility for as group leader. Read some of the requirements that granting agencies have for group leaders providing proper ethics training for their groups. John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes it perfectly clear that this is a problem of the Wegman group, not just of Edward Wegman.
The second is that by any standard the Wegman report plagiarized. Try running it through any software designed to evaluate student term papers. (you do have to watch the dates). Again, John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes this perfectly clear
The third is that sections where they plagiarized were completely extraneous to their supposed expertise and unnecessary to carry out their “charge”, or at least the public version thereof. This has been ignored but is a smoking gun pointing to the real motives of the Wegman Report and it’s authors. It is the point that John Mashey was working on with his description of connections between various actors.
The fourth is that while Wegman is responsible, he may not have done the copy and paste himself, but see point one for why he is responsible.
Finally, some, including Judith Curry have tried to put up a smoke screen that reports are not subject to strict standards for plagiarism. She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
TomRude
October 10, 2010 8:07 am
The ID of deepclimate is known is certain circles who read this blog: time to tell who is the potatoe in “Masheyd patoatoe”…
D. King
October 10, 2010 8:26 am
Steven mosher says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:39 am
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
“The secret lies with Charlotte.” That’s all I can say……for now!
Olen
October 10, 2010 8:35 am
Geol is going to read some Kant, he says the theory is good. I’m a little slow, I read a book on Kant twice and still didn’t get it all.
Here is a quicky quote, from a Google search, by Kant
Experience without theory is blind but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
I think I got that one.
Vince Causey
October 10, 2010 8:52 am
JPeden,
“”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
You had me going for a minute – until I remembered that the US use the word ‘aliens’ to describe foreigners.
TomRude
October 10, 2010 9:02 am
bigcitylib, how come Bradley did not sue them then?
Policyguy
October 10, 2010 9:10 am
The Wegman pdf link is very instructive. The Wegman Report is a very interesting statistically based analysis of the creation of the hockey stick and the tight inter-personal relationships between the creators of the hockey stick and the “peer” reviewers.
It looks like the plagiarism claim attaches to a couple of paragraphs in the introductory background portion of the report that tells what tree rings are as well as coral. What better source for these descriptions than the work of those who use these proxies. It takes a host of potential arguments over the proper way to describe these proxies off the table so that they don’t distract from the meat of the report that is substantively unrelated to the text in question.
It also looks like Raymond Bradley is the person making the charge here and Mashey is a distraction. I would hope that George Mason University performs its investigation and ultimately discredits the charge.
Foxgoose
October 10, 2010 9:17 am
John A says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:19 am
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum orders.
Yeah – I used to edit a magazine years ago and we would occasionally get these rambling diatribes in coloured ink, which continued from the enclosed page onto the envelope in mutiply-oriented diagrammatic scrawl.
We used to call ’em “green inkers”.
D. King
October 10, 2010 9:35 am
kim says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:46 am
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
The Iceman cometh. http://tinyurl.com/2frc5xk
“Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science.”
This shouldn’t be a problem, he’s just going
to ask Mann to “show your work”.
Climategate part 2
Get the popcorn ready Kim.
Gary Pearse
October 10, 2010 9:41 am
“Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s report, (PDF – warning large download) a 250 page diatribe.”
Well, well, I guess we should re-open up the three whitewash investigations that came out of climategate since the subjects of the investigations also provided source material to the investigators who were not climate scientists (although Oxbrugh was principal of a carbon/green corporation or some such).
Secondly, if I am engaged to investigate the work of a scientist, surely I am going to have wording in my preamble, and examples, etc. that seems similar to the authors of the work under investigation. Also, didn’t Wegman state that he was using the very same assumptions and data to test the authors’ work and that he came out with a very different result!!! Does Mr. Mashey find space in his 250 page PDF to refute or deal with the substance of the report (please, someone else check!)
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
October 10, 2010 10:09 am
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. said on October 9, 2010 at 11:34 pm
This whole thing is too bizarre for my little mind. I’m off to read some Emanuel Kant, at least the logic is sound, even if the style Byzantine.
Many have tried to understand old Immanuel. Many still Kant.
kuhnkat
October 10, 2010 10:42 am
Brian Angliss,
they could have hundreds of investigations exonerating the Climategate Criminals, but, if they did not reasonably consider all the evidence they would be as pointless as the ones you reference!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
John McManus
October 10, 2010 10:44 am
The complaint of copyright violation pushes this far past the level of a schoolchild cribbing an essay from a book theey think the teacher has not read. Now we have someone who copied the copier threatening to sue. Red noses and big shoes for everyone.
Nice surprise from Congress. An interested physics prof found problems with Wegman’s math. Wanting to figure it out, he asked Wegman for his methods and data. Wegman did not answer him. It now looks like he will have to answer.
Wegman could make this whole thing go away. An declaration of who put him up to this and the marching orders he obeyed would surely satisfy Bradley. Institues and their funding could be revealed in our own truth and reconciliation exercise.
kuhnkat
October 10, 2010 10:53 am
Nick Stokes,
you state that Wegman is trying to pass himself off as a scientist familiar with social networks also. You mean like he tried to pass himself off as an expert on climate reconstructions??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You warmers have been screaming at us to only use the Peer Reviewed Litchurchur for years. Here Wegman and team does just that, AND CITES IT, and you accuse him of plagiarism and pretending to be expert in fields not his primary area of expertise!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Your arguments keep getting weaker as time goes by. Going to give up or become a continuing source of derision?
kuhnkat
October 10, 2010 11:02 am
Oh, and Nick, have you researched to find the ORIGINAL source of that 400 word paragraph that matches Wikipedia? What makes you think that Wikipedia is the ORIGINAL of this paragraph? That whomever posted it to Wikipedia didn’t draw from another source that is common background in the area and available for use?? They really should be more careful about their possibly libelous accusations until the source has been found!!
Of course, you really need to start by admitting that this is NOT a scholarly work NOR a work done for compensation or advancement and therefor does NOT need to meet the strict standards in the first place!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That being said, can you tell me exactly how these accusations, even if completely true (knowingly plagiarising others work), change the statistics, math, or science showing your beloved Hockey Stick is a pile of crap and Michael Mann is a crook or an incompetent?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wow, another own goal from the CAGW climate science cabal. Mann and Bradley should have let sleeping dogs lie, rather than remind the public about the falsified ‘Hockey Stick Graph’, especially at this particular time when political sensitivity is high.
The context of the Climategate emails shows how desperate the team felt about stopping others seeing the low quality data and their sloppy scientific work. They can’t understand that whole scam is over and they will soon need to be looking for alternative types of work. Good riddance to the lot of them!
Many have tried to understand old Immanuel. Many still Kant.
To bad that this will get lost in translation, the Dutch word for “Lace” is Kant. And the guy in the black shirt has everything in kant (read “Lace”), its exciting he claims. He even has it with him now! Let me see the other one asks.
DirkH
October 10, 2010 12:06 pm
Eli Rabett says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
“There are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, […] She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.”
So, you’re trading “catastrophic climate tipping points and the end of the world as we know it” for “We might have a problem in the future explaining to our kids why they shouldn’t copy & paste”?
OK, i’ll go along with that.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
DirkH
October 10, 2010 12:10 pm
(The last two lines in my comment were an unwanted echo of my copying and pasting of Eli Rabbett’s comment; which i didn’t attribute considerately. I don’t claim any copyright.)
“REPLY: Yep that’s the one. Also the same guys that gave coverage to bigfoot on his blog and even did a radio show about it. But we’re the crazy ones. – Anthony”
Nope. The incomparable Ricky and Bubba just linked to me over my expose re the Jacobson Monster (ie photos of a baby bigfoot). I never appeared their show, nor did a show of my own. Get it right or I sue.
Nevertheless, it looks like I know how to use Google better than McI. REPLY: Wow, touchy. You misunderstood. I said the same “guys” with an “s” implying the radio team, not you. Nor did I say nor imply you had a radio show of your own. But, I’ve clarified it, and added two links to your blog. I’m returning the favor since you once removed an unfair statement about me. Just curious though, how do you know they didn’t mention it on air? I work in radio, and I’ve never known radio people to put up a story on the website that they didn’t cover on air. There’s no commercial motive. Usually the idea is “learn more at the website, be exposed to advertisers there”. – Anthony
juanslayton
October 10, 2010 12:42 pm
Konrad: The Rubenesque Diva is reaching into the props box for the hat with the horns and he comes out with this dross!
My vote for quote of the week….
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 12:44 pm
Rattus Norvegicus says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:18 am
On McIntyre’s association with the GMI: http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=98
#######################
1. he is not listed under staff or fellows or speakers.
2. I could list YOU as an expert on my blog and it would mean????
When somebody presents clear evidence that Steve takes any benefit from this place the presence of his name on their blog has no more meaning than the link to realClimate from this blog.
What i would take as evidence:
A. being on the paid staff
B. receiving benefits as a speaker
C. recieving funding for his blog
I’m sure Osama bin laden endorses Mann’s work. conclusion? mann is a muslim terrorist
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 12:56 pm
PolicyGuy.
Looking at the entire Wegman Document. I’ve have to agree that the plagarism charge seems restricted to the prefatory material. The material related to Bradley is cited and its not presented as original material of the authors own. Since it’s background material Wegman or his students probably should have made more liberal use of direct quotation, since the high level discussion of generic issues is hard to paraphrase without generating large similarities. The SNA material is more problematic. Personally, I think the SNA stuff is merely putting numbers to a known weakness in new sciences. In every new field there are going to be small numbers of authors, many connections. The point is what do editors do to mitigate the reinforcment of errors that can be generated from a small community. Recall, That Mann writes pissy letters to Briffa and others when they disagree with him. The mails show the danger of the close association far better than wegmans checkerboard.
The real discussion, of course, should concern itself with the latter part of the report:
1. the findings and recommendations
2. the specific statistical issues that Wegman raised.
3. Does new science need more rigorous peer review or do we trust self correcting?
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 12:58 pm
Eli Rabett says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
Eli: will you submit Bradley and Annann to the same standard?
if not #Si
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 1:00 pm
bigcitylib says:
October 10, 2010 at 4:50 am
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
###########
Well, I’m sure you will be after Goudie now. ( it’s there just look)
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 1:21 pm
lazy teenager:
“talking of home goals
Are you actually saying that Bradley ripped off Cuff and Goudie and then Wegman ripped off Bradley or Cuff and Goudie.
This is getting weird because you are acknowledging that Wegman ripped off someone.”
lets be clear about a few things: Looking at the Wegman et al text I see two different cases for plagarism. The first relates to Bradley’s material. The case is weak to say the least. The material used is attributed to Bradley 1999. Since I spent years tracking down and making plagarism cases at the university, I would say the following:
1. the material used should probably have been quoted in full.
2. the writer did not intend this to be taken as original material and is not “passing off” someone else work as his own.
In cases like this were the student has cited the work but not shown in the text the EXTENT of the borrowing, the issue is not at the core of plagarism. They would be instructed on the proper use of quoting and get some lessons in paraphrasing without using vast swaths of the orginal authors words. The bradley material is a non issue.
The SNA material ( from my brief read) doesnt appear to be cited properly and the direct lifting of text is more apparent. here too, since the author is not passing off the material as original research or their own thoughts, the instruction to them would be roughly the same: In this kind of material where you are giving background you still need to cite and quote properly. basically, if I had a case like this before me the matter would be resolved at my level with the student. I would ding them a full grade and ask that they rewrite with proper attribution, citation and paraphrasing/quoting.
WRT Bradley’s “borrowing” I’m suggesting this: Go on the offensive. Get bradley’s book and go after him. Or go after other people who also borrowed from him. Go after Eli. go after every single one of them. Having spent some time doing this in my past I can assure you that somewhere some climate scientist failed to follow strict rules of citation and attribution. bring on the bloodbath. Lets face it: there are a dozen or so ‘skeptics’ that serve as targets. there are hundreds on the other side. target rich environment.
To do this you have to be crazy like Nash.
curly
October 10, 2010 1:34 pm
This sounds like the same John Mashey I knew when he worked for MIPS computer systems and later worked with at SGI. As I recall, at the time, his function was “competitive analysis”, particularly for CPU technologies. Again, as I recall, this was in part a marketing role, helping position MIPS/SGI’s CPU technology in the best light. His brief note about his background on the cover page of this paper, and identifying himself as a computer scientist, seems to support that this is the same guy. Looks like he also has Penn State U connection/affiliation, as does Mann.
Of course, correlation, if there is one, does not infer, imply or indicate causation.
Can’t help but see the parallel between one of SGI’s core businesses (used to be) building hardware for creating imaginary virtual worlds (e.g. — Jurassic Park, the movie) and the imaginary virtual world of climate modeling software.
Steven mosher
October 10, 2010 1:39 pm
So, if somebody wants to start,
1. find a friend with a student enrolled in Brown University
2. Have that student retrieve Josh Halpern’s dissertation from Brown’s Database.
( 1972)
3. Then, we can submit Eli ( Josh Halpern) to the same treatment that Wegman got.
Fun huh?
GaryM
October 10, 2010 1:54 pm
Maybe someone “in the industry” could use the program designed by these guys. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41458/title/Study_finds_plenty_of_apparent_plagiarism
“Garner’s team developed data-mining software about eight years ago that allows a resarcher (sic) to input lots of text — the entire abstract of a paper, for instance — and ask the program to compare it to everything posted on a database. ”
…
“To date, 83 of the 212 pairs of largely identical papers identified so far by the data-mining software that Garner’s team has developed have triggered formal investigations by the journals involved. In 46 instances, editors of the second papers have issued retractions. ”
Different area of science…same can of worms. Or would a Pandora’s Box reference be better?
Here’s Monty Python on Kant – and other philosphers…
(Isn’t it funny how, when talking about ‘climate science’, we always get around to Monty Python?)
John McManus
October 10, 2010 2:22 pm
re: Steve Mosher;
Obviously from a man with no papers to search.
Rattus Norvegicus
October 10, 2010 2:24 pm
Steven Mosher,
The link references two white papers produced by MM for the GMI and slides for a talk which appears to have been given at the behest on the GMI. I would say that is enough.
Eli Rabett
October 10, 2010 2:49 pm
You can get almost any thesis from University Microfilms for about $75. If you live in Washington, you can look at the microfilm at the Library of Congress. Enjoy
Anthony, they mentioned me on air. But it isn’t like they contacted or interviewed me. I was just a pawn in their Bigfoot extravaganza.
More generally, as you know I write alot about the pathologies of the Conservative mindset. At some very deep level, these almost always involve Bigfoot, and Roswell. Hence I write about Bigfoot and Roswell. Bigfoot is the guy flying the black helicopter that ferries fat Al Gore to his meetings with the Homosexual Agenda at Roswell. Ask Jeff Id.
Cheers,
DCC
October 10, 2010 4:32 pm
Brian Angliss said:
BTW [Tom], you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
I am flabbergasted by how poorly the AGW proponents here reason. First it’s an absurd 250 pages of drivel charging plagiarism where plagiarism is irrelevant and now somebody apparently cannot understand plain English – or write a short, coherent posting. There is absolutely no inconsistency in those two statements. The Climategate emails did not in and of themselves change anything in the so-called science. But they certainly cast doubt about the quality of the self-styled climate scientists and therefore cast doubt on the quality of their product, the science itself, just as the nonsensical arguments in this thread are doing. Is there no one with common sense among the supporters of AGW? Well, maybe Judith Curry and a handful of others. Too bad they aren’t the vocal ones.
Smokey says:
October 10, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Is this Howard University’s “Eli Rabett“?
Nice one Smokey! You just gotta love the internet!
Well then Bugs. Any comment?
Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001)
October 10, 2010 6:13 pm
DCC said:
“I am flabbergasted by how poorly the AGW proponents here reason.”
I believe it’s better known as “post-normal” reasoning 😉
Richard Sharpe
October 10, 2010 6:28 pm
Smokey says on October 10, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Howard U. was rated by Newsweak as the country’s second worst college.
Is this Howard University’s “Eli Rabett“?
Smokey, Josh Halpern might be the worlds biggest wanker for all I know, but it is a poor carpenter who blames his tools and a poor student who blames his teacher.
Eli Rabett
October 10, 2010 8:07 pm
Well usually Eli ignores Smokey, but for the record, Howard rates 104 on US New’s list of ~300 national universities, somewhat above George Mason@ 143. Howard is tied with Florida State, Samford (not Stanford, dear lord), the University of Kansas, Nebraska Lincoln, University of New Hampshire and the University of Tennessee. Our football team sucks FWIW.
The Rabett has no idea what strange list Smokey is quoting from, but that’s the way it is.
Bernard J.
October 10, 2010 8:09 pm
Mr Tom Fuller.
I think you will find that it’s Dr Mashey.
Bernard J, glad to see you got a guest pass out of Deltoid–enjoy the outside world. It works a little differently out here, so make sure you find an adult to escort you around.
As for Mr. Mashey, doctor is as doctor does.
Lazar
October 11, 2010 4:15 am
“was devastating, citing quite correctly the fact that random noise fed into Mann’s analysis scheme could produce a hockey stick”
No, Tom, that’s not “devastating”. Go and read Huybers’ comment on McIntyre & McKitrick 2005. See John Mashey’s comment…
“On p.58, under Cressie, I show the tale of his advice, including a link to the file he sent me, and a 1-line paraphrase:
“I concur with the MBH decentering issue, so compute it the _right_ way”
What he meant was, in effect, do the same as Wahl&Amman did,. How do I know what he meant? Because I asked him.
Anybody who knows anything about this sort of statistics knows perfectly well that there may be an error in a procedure, but whether or not it makes any appreciable difference depends on the data and parameters.”
Lazar, that is lame:
“Anybody who knows anything about this sort of statistics knows perfectly well that there may be an error in a procedure…”
Lay out the code, and show us that specific “error in procedure.”
And regarding your link, the comments following Mashey’s debunk him.
Lazar
October 11, 2010 5:07 am
“show us”
no
Bernard J.
October 11, 2010 5:09 am
It works a little differently out here,
Which is why I usually stick to discussions that are based upon at least a minimum standard of science. Nevertheless, I occasionally venture into swamps against my better judgement, in the hope that I might make a simple point or two. It’s up to the porcines to recognise the nacre.
…so make sure you find an adult to escort you around.
Gee, I’ll have to go back to Deltoid then and locate one who might assist.
But seriously, for just a moment Fuller, it serves no-one any good to use a gutter press approach to colouring a piece to which one attributes one’s own name. What’s the reason for your reluctance to acknowledge Mashey’s considerable competence and education in analysical process?
Tabloid is as tabloid does, I guess.
[Archived for posterity]
Lazar, let’s give the mic to Brandon Shollenberger at CaS:
#188 Alex Harvey, it is worse than you say. You can download Noel Cressie’s e-mail to Edward Wegman from a link on page 58 (or 134). It does not support John Mashey’s claims at all. The paraphrase he gives on page 58, “I concur with the MBH decentering issue, so compute it the ―right way,” is complete rubbish.
First, Cressie specifically state he “concurs” with the technical contents of the Wegman Report. Second, when we look at Cressie’s second point (page 134 tells us the number), we see he actually agrees with Wegman. Wegman criticized decentered PCA, even saying technically it isn’t even PCA. He then said what the proper way of doing PCA is. Cressie, in his e-mail, recommended Wegman show the results of proper PCA alongside the results of the decentered PCA. He suggested Wegman make a figure to show the difference in results, that’s all.
Somehow, Mashey has managed to take Cressie’s e-mail to say the exact opposite of what it actually says. Cressie did not support MBH’s approach to PCA, nor did it even discuss W&A’s. However, he did “concur” with the technical details of Wegman’s report, which condemned both the MBH and W&A approaches.
But apparently we are supposed to trust Mashey’s fake claims because he asked Cressie what he meant.
And Bernard, should I post here various comments from you showing why rather than receiving lessons in courtesy from you I, like everybody else with common sense, ignore you as much as possible?
juanita
October 11, 2010 7:39 am
I’m just glad I’m not the only person who thinks of Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr every time I look at a plate of mashed potatoes.
Thanks for the python, it was like a vitamin shot!
I tried to make this point to Tom over at Kloor’s site, but apparently Keith felt it failed to meet his moderation standard for some reason. So it goes
Tom and Steven, the ICCER final report bore out my arguments regarding insufficient context in the emails. Not only did they use nearly the same statistical argument you reject, they answered Steven’s complaints about Kieth Briffa’s emails when Briffa produced an email that hadn’t been in the CRU archive that totally changed the context of the emails that WERE in the archive.
I’m sure that you’ve both read the report, but I analyzed it in depth and pointed out where their analysis coincided with mine here.
Lazar
October 11, 2010 8:54 am
Tom Fuller,
“Lazar, let’s give the mic to Brandon Shollenberger”
… which reiterates the trivial truth of ‘decentered PCA inflates the variance of ‘hockey-stick’ shapes’… it doesn’t address impacts of this flawed methodology on the results of MBH98… linking to it is unresponsive to my comment… it doesn’t support your claim of the Wegman report is “devastating” to MBH98
like I said… read Huybers
Brian Angliss, just look at how much you x’d out of your own webpost. You were wrong. You don’t need a statistically significant number of emails to verify that emails concerned with wrongdoing exist and are damning.
Lazar, well, Wegman was devastating to MBH98 and it still is. What is flawed about the methodology of Wegman?
Lazar
October 11, 2010 1:52 pm
Tom, “Wegman was devastating to MBH98 and it still is.”
You can repeat it however many times… doesn’t make it true. “What is flawed about the methodology of Wegman?”
The flaw under discussion is in MBH98, the tendency of decentered PCA to inflate the variance of hockey stick shapes. You’re claiming that fact is of itself “devastating” to MBH98. I’m claiming that’s flawed logic, as Mashey wrote… “there may be an error in a procedure, but whether or not it makes any appreciable difference depends on the data and parameters”… in other words the seriousness of the flaw depends on how it effects the results. A flaw may or may not have a big effect on results, but the mere presence of a flaw is not “devastating”.
Read Huybers,
Actually, Tom, the post you linked to is not the source of my statistical argument, this post is. You linked to a post where I attempted to document flaws in logic by McIntyre, yourself, Mosher, and many others. And it was only some of the criticisms of McIntyre that I struck out. I didn’t have to do that with the arguments I made relating to you, Mosher, or even all of my criticisms of McIntyre. I admit that I made some errors – that’s why I struck those out. But my statistical argument was not one of the things that required correction. Not by a long shot.
As I said then, it’s not that you need a statistical sample so much as it is that you need a sample that hasn’t been self-selected by some unknown party according to some unknown (and likely automated) criteria. We all knowingly laugh at web polls at sites like CNN because they are so easily freeped that they can never be considered representative of anything other than the people who decided to vote.
We should similarly laugh at the idea that the emails represented anything resembling the full context of the emails. And the ICCER final report provided at least a half-dozen examples of how the full context was not available. Allow me to refer you to Section 8.5 of the ICCER report for the best example thereof, where Briffa produced a set of emails that proved he did nothing wrong while he was working as editor of Holocene.
JFA in Montreal
October 11, 2010 4:23 pm
LOL ! “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” 🙂
Another Ian
October 12, 2010 6:55 pm
Re
curly says:
October 10, 2010 at 1:34 pm
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Technologies
“Some notable people who worked in MIPS:David Hitz, Joseph DiNucci, James Billmaier, Steve Blank, Dan Levin, Bob Miller, Skip Stritter, John L. Hennessy, John Mashey, John P. McCaskey, Stratton Sclavos. Board members included: Bill Davidow.”
Never quite understood the logic of climate psientists doing statistical analysis, then complaining about statisticians examining their work.
Seems to me that most of climate psience is statistical analysis anyway.
DaveE.
Went to the link for “The Hockey Stick Illusion” which turns up an Amazon page for the Wegman book. I read the reviews then went immediately to the six “1 star” comments. The sputtering and foaming there reminded me of the recent past at CP before they went totally political.
My conclusion: All I need is another 482-page book, but I can tell it’s a must-have!
OT: sorry but ridiculae video continues with this one:
Next breathing over a lifetime kills polar bears…
It seems to me like bringing attention back to the Wegman Report is an own-goal.
Please, let’s talk about this more!
This is probably very good news (The nature article). Its going to backfire in a huge way. BTW looks like Lucia has already found that because of dates 2005) a lot of the DC accusations could not be.true…. already LOL…
Actually, Tom, that argument doesn’t hold now, it didn’t hold then.
It’s an easy argument to counter, actually, and it can be countered two different ways. First, the email itself is not proof of anything – money disappearing in an illegal fashion from one account and appearing in another account proves fraud. The email itself is nothing more than a suggestion, an indicator that fraud might have occurred. To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests. So my initial arguments about the insufficient context in the CRU emails have been borne out repeatedly.
Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed.
Argument countered.
BTW, you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
I don’t think any of Bradley friends (you know the ones, they are the people that conduct his “independent” peer reviews), will be thanking him for this in a few months time.
The last thing this statistically challenged discipline needs is to go pick a fight with the statistics establishment, it might just cause a bunch of them to start taking a serious look at the “science” being “discovered” by Bradley and his cohorts.
As the modus operandi of the Hockey Team becomes more apparent to mainstream scientists, happy to use the most specious grounds to try to destroy a scientist’s career to defend their own shoddy practices, I expect more scientists will be willing to speak out against them.
Based on Mashey’s delusional work, I expect that this plagiarism charge will be thrown out with a giant smack for all those associated with it.
Clangers and Mash anyone?
Break out the shovel. It’s getting Deep . . .
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
LOL!
No, no, it was more subtle than that.
They probably used a secret wink code.
Did you know that Wegmans bibliography has some books listed that they never cited!
OMG. stop the presses. the hockey stick is saved.
Err, gosh, maybe Mashy never wrote a college paper. We require that All works consulted be in a bibliography… of course the works you actually cite is shorter than the works consulted.
Could someone accuse IPCC for plagiarism? Lots of copy-paste in climate bible. Wegman did a survey and gave an expert opinion. IPCC do surveys and give expert, eh, opinions. Same? It is OK to criticize the content of this type of reports, but to try to make a weak claim of plagiarism is just lame.
Nether IPCC or Wegman did original research. They just summarize the topic and give their opinion. That’s it. There is no case for plagiarism.
Ok:
Steve McIntyre shows you how to handle the Mashey pile.
:Steve McIntyre (Comment#53771) October 9th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
The Oxford Companion to Global Change, David Cuff and Andrew Goudie
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information. The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, its age, the availability of stored nutrients in the tree and surrounding soil, and a host of climatic factors, including temperature, precipitation and availability of sunlight.
Bradley textbook:
Variations in tree-ring widths from one year to the next have long been recognized as an important source of chronological and climatic information… The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, tree age, availability of stored food within the tree and of important nutrients in the soil, and a whole complex of climatic factors (sunshine, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and their distribution throughout the year).
Wegman:
The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors including sunlight, precipitation, temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even carbon dioxide availability in the atmosphere.
###################
time for somebody to get Bradley textbook. Apply some software and go full bore.
Wegman is a bit player in the HS. Bradley is on the core team. Target Bradley.
This would appear to be something akin to a political debate. If you can’t poke holes or uncover flaws in the message, disparage the messenger. This tactic is far to often utilized by the debater who is losing the argument.
This whole thing is too bizarre for my little mind. I’m off to read some Emanuel Kant, at least the logic is sound, even if the style Byzantine.
Lesson no.1 : Never ever pick a fight over fact or detail with Steve McIntyre.
As many others have said , Wegmans “manuscript” was a report , a review of what he considered the facts and his expert opinion on the statistical methods used. It was not an academic paper on original reasearch . If a couple of pieces of the report omitted so called proper attribution it does not change the conclusions of the report or the value of the work.
Mashey and co are just playing a childish game of attempted diversion.
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Of course he can. It’s the logical equivalent of “the victim was injured but not killed”.
I think Dishman might be right about the own goal of Mashey & Bradley’s ploy.
Does the hockey team really want the substance of the Wegman report brought back after having spend so long putting out all those spaghetti lines to support their faux stats?
Tom,
You might like to read the part of Mashey’s report starting p 119. It details lots of apparently copied text in the section on Social Networks Analysis. This is a new topic that they have introduced, with mathy talk about triads and graphs. They’re not describing climate science background – they are trying to give the impression that they know about SNA and so should we. And a substantial chunk is copied out of Wikipedia. There’s a 400 word para verbatim – no coincidence possible. And of course no reference or acknowledgement at all. Lots of other stuff in that section apparently from other sources.
I am half way through the Bishop’s excellent work. On what I have read so far, I would also conclude that the Wegman report has some deficiencies. In light of the behavior of the hockey team, the report should have been written in language requiring an parental advisory notice. Someone needs to tell John Mashey that scam is over. The Rubenesque Diva is reaching into the props box for the hat with the horns and he comes out with this dross!
Hey Anthony, slightly off topic… I think 10 October from now on should be remembered as Climate Fools Day.
A hundred years from now, children will remember and celebrate this day!
Thank you 10:10. No Pressure!
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
i once had a friend with OCD who tried to do this with James Joyce. seriously disturbed.
i also flashed on this:
‘there is no conspiracy john, it’s in your mind.
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
On your first point: “To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests.”
This is not entirely accurate, they did say they found no evidence, they did not say the emails show no evidence, how could they if they didn’t read them? Unless of course you can provide a copy of the evidence list of exactly what they did look at, containing all the released files in FOI.zip, which seems not to exist.
Your second point: “Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed. ”
So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
Are you really trying to insinuate Mann (might have) committed fraud under duress, and it’s therefore not as bad as doing it on purpose for financial gain? Are you saying he did what he did, whatever that may be, for the right reasons, therefore it might not be a crime at all?
Isn’t being a little bit guilty, a bit like being a little bit pregnant?
And this is your logic as to why we should ignore the HSI?
How bizarre!
Brian Angliss says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Na na na-na na.! Brian actually that is pathetic. Read your response again, please.
Eric Anderson says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Break out the shovel. It’s getting Deep . . .
It out and they digging for all they are worth. It’ll turn mechanical soon. Bradley, in his indignation and arrogance, has opened the biggest can of worms ever. None of the team will thank him for this. he he
Good grief, are the other 249 pages filled with puerile drivel too? And Keith Kloor seriously expected people to react to it in a day. Right.
The hockey stick has been keeping a very low profile of late. It had to.
Is this really the best they had to deflect attention from that sceptic execution fantasy advert?
I really can’t see how plagiarism comes into this. Wegman wrote a report on the work of Mann and Bradley. He was not copying someone else’s original research and passing it off as his own. He was writing a report on some else’s research and coming to his own independent opinion on the quality of that research. If he was to copy and paste and amend slightly parts of works by M&B then that would be expected. This is not plagiarism, at least not in the academic sense. This smells of desperation.
Its funny to see alarmists desperately “counter” arguments by trying to bait opponents in an effort to avoid answering questions. All the while accusing them of avoiding their own rhetorical questions. Both ways indeed….
None of this changes what happened with climategate, and what more context do you need when some one asks his colleagues to destroy evidence that is subject to a freedom of information act request (Oh right, you ignored that too, Brian). I don’t need an enquiry to know when daylight shines nor will I be told that black is white no matter how many experts you recruit and line up.
OT, but can I be the first to wish you all a Happy 10:10:10 from Franny-land (UK). It’s blueberries on my muesli this morning.
The story had to come out about now, or there would not be time enough for it to influence voters on Nov 2. The investigation has “been confirmed” since July 28 but George Mason is dragging their heels and likely will have no news in time that could sway voter opinion. As Revkin twits: “Mashey critique finding cut/paste & other problems in Wegman Report gets traction.”
Did USA Today just pick the non- story out of thin air? I say non-story because all we have from the article are the accusations of Bradley and Mashey. And Bradley has had years to publicize his complaint. So it seems that he asks for an investigation that was supposed to be over by now, but isn’t, and calls Dan at USA Today to get “some traction”.
Minor point — it’s p.18 not p.19 where Mashey talks discusses the “plagiarism”.
Mashey gave me the impression he believes that any documents passing through the hands of sceptics, or any information coming from sceptics, is/are inherently tainted and wrong, as if sceptics are part of some great conspiracy (he actually believes this, it seems). Any scepticism/denial of AGW is illegitimate, in his view, and it would seem that if he/they had more power they would physically prevent sceptics/deniers from having a voice. Mashey has even given people coloured markers to wear in his text, e.g. p.7, the red ones meaning that person is “a problem”. He has clearly been compiling a database of “scientists-we-don’t-like”, very likely with their home addresses. The similarities to a certain other event in history are striking, and are really not funny anymore.
I’d appreciate URL’s for the recent Nature comment re Wegman, and Steve Mosher’s ref to Steve McIntyre’s note (cannot follow your existing ref, Mosh).
Nature magazine, Mann at WaPo, and Mashey at Deep Climate, all together going for Wegman – WaPo in Mann’s usual style, without actually naming him but referencing “discredited”. Looks like a political strategy.
This could be an own-goal. Or it could simply attract politicians of both sides, on the principle that mud sticks, and if one throws more mud on old mud, even more mud might stick. The first thing that came across in early responses here at WUWT to Mashey was “plagiarism – ooh, sounds bad” – but there were no references of substance.
Plagiarism my foot! How else can Wegman lay the foundations of science needed to understand the issues of his investigation? And if Bradley words things so they are hard for non-specialists to understand, of course he has to rewrite. But cannot cite. But still provides references.
Nitpickgate. Pea-under-thimble-gate. Shoot-the-messenger-gate.
Minor point — it’s p.18 not p.19 where Mashey discusses the “plagiarism”.
Mashey gave me the impression he believes that any documents passing through the hands of sceptics, or any information coming from sceptics, is/are inherently tainted and wrong, as if sceptics are part of some great conspiracy (he actually believes this, it seems). Any scepticism/denial of AGW is illegitimate, in his view, and it would seem that if he/they had more power they would physically prevent sceptics/deniers from having a voice. Mashey has even given people coloured markers to wear in his text, e.g. p.7, the red ones meaning that person is “a problem”. He has clearly been compiling a database of “scientists-we-don’t-like”, very likely with their home addresses. The similarities to a certain other event in history are striking, and are really not funny anymore.
Actually, Tom, that argument doesn’t hold now, it didn’t hold then.
“It’s an easy argument to counter, actually, and it can be countered two different ways. First, the email itself is not proof of anything – money disappearing in an illegal fashion from one account and appearing in another account proves fraud. The email itself is nothing more than a suggestion, an indicator that fraud might have occurred. To date five separate investigations have found that the CRU emails show no evidence of misconduct with the exception of responding to FOI requests. So my initial arguments about the insufficient context in the CRU emails have been borne out repeatedly.”
Since the entire focus of everything was the FOI violation is hardly a vindication.
As I explained to you in email the mails provided a storyline that investigators should have followed but they didnt. In fact some of them got it flat wrong.
1. Jones requested that mails be deleted. This was in connection with and FOIA request. One investigation got that wrong.
2. The question to ask Jones was why did he ask that they be deleted? never asked.
3. The mails indicate that the reason for the deletion request was to hide correspondence between Briffa and Wahl since that was the correspondence being requested and since briffa, whal, amman and mann were requested to delete.
So the mails tell us THAT a request was made. The mails indicate one reason for the deletion.
4. The deletion request has to do with Chapter 6 and the treatment of McIntyre’s paper.
In fact the whole story is connected at this one point and they failed to do a competent investigation
“Second, an email doesn’t necessarily have anything to say about motive. If the accountant committed fraud under duress, then that might not qualify as a crime at all or might be punished very lightly compared to fraud committed for greed.”
We never claimed fraud and we were careful to about discussing motives. I have repeatedly argued that the committes should have asked jones WHY he requested that these mails be deleted? why he changed his policy toward MCintyre. To clear up the motive case.
“Argument countered.”
Argument MISSED ENTIRELY.
“BTW, you never addressed your fundamental inconsistency regarding the CRU emails, namely claiming in one place that the emails didn’t change the science, yet claiming that some of the emails cast the science in doubt. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.”
Huh. The only thing that can change science is more science. The world doesnt get cooler because somebody writes a mail. the MWP doesnt get warmer because somebody writes a mail. BUT, if somebody in charge of the temperature science writes a mail that says “if I am asked for the data I will DESTROY IT” then we do have a rational basis to suspend judgement. IT DOESNT CHANGE THE ACTUAL FACTS, it changes our certainty in them. Duh. words dont change the facts of science, only more facts do that. But, if you trusted the scientists to give you the right facts before the mails, then after the mails yuo have plenty of reason to doubt THEM.
Sounds to me like the warmist establishment need to remember one of the great truisms of life:
If you:
a) dig a deep hole,
b) fill the hole with sharpened stakes, and next
c) fill most of the hole with poo.
Do not then jump in the hole.
In this case, the analogy means: don’t continue to attack those who expose the errors, data manipulation, intrigue and fraud of the climate ‘science’ community. This kind of strategy will only highlight the actions of the purveyors of the original bad science and backfire on you, as it has in this instance.
Publicly trying to justify the unjustifiable usually only works in totalitarian societies.
Brian Angliss:
1. the request to delete the mails was tied to the FOIA denial and to chapter 6 of AR4 and to nearly all of the issues we raised in the book. The investigations vindicated our view.
2. we didnt discuss motives. We expected the investigations to ask Jones why he requested mails be deleted and why he broke FOIA laws.
3. The mails dont change the facts of science. They do change our ability to rely on the team. when the man in charge of temperature science says he will destroy the data before he would share it, that does not change the actual temperature. it does raise rational doubt.That is the point of the claim about the mails not changing the science. They cant. they can and do change our willingness to accept the work of the men involved. Thats why we called for an independent investigation of the science. get it
Quoted in the top of the thread (Mr Mashey in full swing):
Since I am not close to the background, I followed the link that was so kindly given. This was a US Government workshop (the dot gov gave a bit of a hint) with scores, possibly hundreds, of people there. I counted 32 attenders whose surmanes began with “A”. This was not a backroom meeting with people watching the doors to make sure no spies overheard the scurrilous machinations of a cabal of anti-science terrorists. It was held in Arlington Virginia at the Crystal Gateway Marriott. And the whole purpose was to get as many of the experts there as possible:
The first papagraph of the Background to the workshop reads:
It is hardly surprising that, amongst scores (hundreds?) of participants, the listed people should be there!
What kind of stupid is this guy? Why should I read his 250 pages when I can keep to the 35 of the Wegman Report?
From Jeff Id, here’s a comparison of texts – Wegman and Bradley
and here’s Science Fair interviewing Bradley:
“It just seems surreal”… that Bradley could fail to distinguish between Wegman needing to explain Bradley’s definitions, and Wegman criticising Bradley’s conclusions.
Shoot-the-messenger-gate.
I agree with Dishman. Another opportunity to discuss the Hockey Stick will keep open a festering wound, and will do nothing to help the catastrophe theory.
It’s like the indefatigable Black Night in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”. Convinced of his own invincibility, he refuses to give up the fight, even after losing all four limbs. Left quirming on the ground, the Black Night still taunts King Arthur for running away.
If you missed it, here is the Wegman report:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
Tom seems to come up with his own, not very clearly explained, definition of palgiarism.
Something to do with having the same professional background as the person whose work you’ve copied, or not, or something.
Tom, another very helpful and incisive post.
It inspired this
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/plagiarism_scr.jpg
I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
—————–
Simple really. By providing the seed information for a report into a politically sensitive issue it becomes likely that the outcome will be biassed.
Since it seems that Congressman Barton is being accused of having an agenda and that Wegman was chosen to produce a report that gave effect to that agenda the issue of whether the report is biassed or not assumes some importance.
Hope that’s clear now.
Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science?
———————-
No. It is being implied that Wegman or whoever actually wrote the report took short-cuts in producing the text for the report. This leads to significant concern that the analysis itself in the report was based on taking short-cuts and therefore the conclusions in the report may be flawed.
Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.
Hope that’s clear now.
Downloaded, tried to read it. The first 200 pages are just — weird! No way I’m wasting time ploughing through that. Then we come to the devastating comparison. I looked at about six pages of that before I junked the whole thing. Example after example of two-column printout, Wegman on the left and other authors on the right (for example):
(left column) Wegman: Mann says that ~X.
(right column) Mann: X.
(Where ~X is a statement resembling statement X.) Sorry, that’s not plagiarism, and anyone who thinks it is hasn’t a clue about academic work whatever.
As usual, another utterly absurd beatup. Oh, and if there’s something valid I missed in the part after about page 205 where I gave up, then they should have skipped pages 1-205 and started with p206, obviously. There’s a limit to how much bilge people have to read before they rightly conclude you’re a dishonest incompetent.
The emails contain prima facie evidence of illegal activity in terms of conspiracy to destroy FOIA-able documents. If it weren’t for an overly short statute of limitations, some individuals would likely be in serious legal trouble.
Pretty sad, actually. It does say something about the honesty of the individuals involved. When confronted with the evidence of their own words, the only honest reponse would be to man-up, admit the error, apolgize sincerely and take this as a learning experience to better oneself.
I’m still hearing of pretty much the same rounding of the wagons, rhetoric and excuses that led to this mess in the first place. I’m thinking that not a lot has been learned and it’s pretty much back to business as usual for the hockey team.
This ridiculous attempt to silence a critic without addressing his points is yet another example. Keep digging.
Harry says
—————
The last thing this statistically challenged discipline needs is to go pick a fight with the statistics establishment
—————
Pure wishful thinking.
If memory serves:
1. Wegman is not the statistics establishment, he is just one practitioner and the attitude of other statisticians is unknown
2. Statisticians have already checked this research and say it’s ok, mostly
3. There are lots of people still doing paleoclimate and still producing hockey sticks from various proxies and statistical methods up to the present day
@LazyTeenager
You could just check in WIKI (but maybe you are LAZY, i do not presume other agenda)
“….. Edward Wegman is a statistician, a statistics professor at George Mason University, and past chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE. ….”
He specializes in statistics. You may or may not count him into an “establishment”. However, I would rather put some weight on his statistical analysis, not on analysis (was there any? in statistical journals?) practicioners of statistics from The Team.
Steve Mosher says
————-
time for somebody to get Bradley textbook. Apply some software and go full bore.
Wegman is a bit player in the HS. Bradley is on the core team. Target Bradley.
————-
talking of home goals
Are you actually saying that Bradley ripped off Cuff and Goudie and then Wegman ripped off Bradley or Cuff and Goudie.
This is getting weird because you are acknowledging that Wegman ripped off someone.
You sadist!
Thomas Fuller wrote : “Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences,…”
Can you give more details about that “fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences” bit – where can one find that ‘full support’ in black and white ? Thanks.
LazyTeenager@
“Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.”
Then you’d find it really strange that very few members of the US congress ever read the text of the bills that they vote on and the never actually draft the bills that get voted on. Aides summarize for congressmen, and even when a lawmaker is the originator of the bill, he just puts out the big picture “plain english” description of what he wants then it goes to rooms of lawyers to convolute it into unreadable legalese.
Here’s a guest post by Mashy at Tim “exploding children are funny” Lambert’s site:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
He answers his own question:
——————-
a) Do you attend lectures by real climate scientists?
Typically several times a month at Stanford, sometimes elsewhere, at Bay Area government meetings, local town meetings, etc.
——————-
I guess that’s the same Stanford that ExxonMobil are giving $100million to for climate research. http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html
And he gets lectured by them every week.
Good article Tom.
It is becoming increasingly clear now, the level of desperation among die-hard warmists, now that their science has collapsed.. They are turning themselves into a parody of the very thing they are attacking. I didn’t think they could slide any lower than Schneider’s paper ‘proving’ that warming scientists were better than sceptical scientists. Now we have, a report that sounds like it was written by a foaming-at-the-mouth, swivel eyed conspiracy theorist. I can’t wait to see the warmist blogs trotting this out as proof that Wegman has been ‘debunked’ and M&M are sleepers planted by an evil genius.
You couldn’t make it up.
@LazyTeenager
I hope you’re not really a lazy teenager, they tend to become uneducated adults.
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
Thanks Mr Agliss for bringing up the subject again!
I almost forgot about Mr Jones askning his compadres to delete emails.
That Mr Salinger frauded the NZ temp record.
That treering proxies in the hands of Mr Mann can turn out to show anything or nothing.
That Osbourne demanded the creation of the new “Medieaval Vanishing period”
That Realclimate also took us in to the new “stonewalling age” by the “obvious flaws denier movement”.
The history of how peer review in climate science became an “ask your friends to sign on in blanco” with the starting point at the creation of IPCC?
Well, Mr Angliss, when it comes to the important issue of how to earn keep and deserve trust you really showed us all how not to.
But please keep on doing what you’re doing! And why not bring the Himalayas back to the table again? 🙂
Could someone knowledgeable about paleoclimate techniques comment?
I’ve just come back from walking the dogs in a field with 1200 trees, they were all planted 9 years ago over the same week, they were all cuttings from the same gene pool. The biggest are 12″ dia at the base, some are only 5-6″ dia at the base.
OK these are softwood willows for cricket bats, and the differences might be exaggerated compared to old hardwoods in colder climes, but still, how can growth rates compare to historical temp in any robust manor? How can a marked difference in growth rate be accounted for, without compromising the resultant historical temp product? TIA.
Mosher, the Bradley book is either ten or fifteen years previous to the David Cuff and Andrew Goudie production, so if there is a problem it isn’t Bradley’s. Since that took exactly two seconds for me to discover through Google, I expect McI knows it too.
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum disorders.
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
Clearly, according to Climate Science’s exacting standards, Mashey’s report is a credible destruction of Wegman’s analysis of Mann’s HS only if he included the allegation that ~”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
Dagfinn – if you read the link I provided, you’ll notice that I specifically quoted Tom as making two mutually exclusive claims. Now, maybe Tom meant to say that he erred in using exclusive language in either one or both of the cases as you suggest (we all make this error from time to time), but if so, he never admitted to that. If he had, he would have had to go back and run a correction on one or both of his claims as any good journalist is required to. There’s other ways out of the logical trap as well, such as claiming that there was disagreement between him and Mosher on this issue, or saying that he thought one thing at one point but later changed his mind about it, but he has not done either of those things to date that I’m aware of.
Pete said: So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
“Under duress” in the motive example I gave is things like being the victim of blackmail or extortion. Let’s not equate your red herring with actual duress.
The point of Mashey’s and DC’s work is that the most widely trumpeted hockey stick investigation is riddled with errors, contains large sections of probable plagiarism, may contain copyright violations, and was done for political purposes rather than scientific ones.
GMU is doing the right thing here – investigating whether or not Wegman plagiarized and committed academic misconduct – even if they’re doing a poor job of it.
It’s valuable to note the differences between the PSU and GMU investigations, however. PSU immediately opened an inquiry into Mann’s conduct even though they never received a single formal complaint, while GMU took months to open their inquiry after receiving a formal complaint from Bradley. PSU stuck to the required timetables in their inquiry procedure and produced the results of the inquiry when they were required to do so, while GMU failed to respond to Bradley in the required time, failed to form the inquiry on time, failed to complete the inquiry when their response letter said they would, and have yet to publish their findings.
GMU may yet come out of this with their academic reputation intact, but they’ve already allowed to become tarnished.
And all the while it’s getting colder …
As Vince Causey said, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Good job Mr. Fuller. You made some very good points IMO.
This has the air of a paper written two days before it’s due.
This reads like that experience of after oh say, two joints and a couple of beers, going down into the basement of the subconscious, finding the great universal library ! The
mind, writing with great insight and awareness, gives you the ultimate insight.
Then upon staggering into the Classroom, you look at the paper with a now sober mind, and see it is all incoherent drivel.
“Douglas, this is the most incoherent, ill referenced, poorly footnoted pile of
horse manure I have ever read.”
This actually happened. managed to pull a “C” out of that class….
Is that the same BigCityLib that attempted to sign up to the Oregon Petition under false pretenses?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/19/the-32000-who-say-no-convincing-evidence/
You are now lecturing on McI’s modus operandi?
REPLY: Yep that’s the one. Also note the same two radio guys that gave coverage to bigfoot on his blog
and even did a radio show about it. But we’re the crazy ones. – AnthonyThere are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, something Wegman has to assume responsibility for as group leader. Read some of the requirements that granting agencies have for group leaders providing proper ethics training for their groups. John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes it perfectly clear that this is a problem of the Wegman group, not just of Edward Wegman.
The second is that by any standard the Wegman report plagiarized. Try running it through any software designed to evaluate student term papers. (you do have to watch the dates). Again, John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes this perfectly clear
The third is that sections where they plagiarized were completely extraneous to their supposed expertise and unnecessary to carry out their “charge”, or at least the public version thereof. This has been ignored but is a smoking gun pointing to the real motives of the Wegman Report and it’s authors. It is the point that John Mashey was working on with his description of connections between various actors.
The fourth is that while Wegman is responsible, he may not have done the copy and paste himself, but see point one for why he is responsible.
Finally, some, including Judith Curry have tried to put up a smoke screen that reports are not subject to strict standards for plagiarism. She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
The ID of deepclimate is known is certain circles who read this blog: time to tell who is the potatoe in “Masheyd patoatoe”…
Steven mosher says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:39 am
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
“The secret lies with Charlotte.” That’s all I can say……for now!
Geol is going to read some Kant, he says the theory is good. I’m a little slow, I read a book on Kant twice and still didn’t get it all.
Here is a quicky quote, from a Google search, by Kant
Experience without theory is blind but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
I think I got that one.
JPeden,
“”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
You had me going for a minute – until I remembered that the US use the word ‘aliens’ to describe foreigners.
bigcitylib, how come Bradley did not sue them then?
The Wegman pdf link is very instructive. The Wegman Report is a very interesting statistically based analysis of the creation of the hockey stick and the tight inter-personal relationships between the creators of the hockey stick and the “peer” reviewers.
It looks like the plagiarism claim attaches to a couple of paragraphs in the introductory background portion of the report that tells what tree rings are as well as coral. What better source for these descriptions than the work of those who use these proxies. It takes a host of potential arguments over the proper way to describe these proxies off the table so that they don’t distract from the meat of the report that is substantively unrelated to the text in question.
It also looks like Raymond Bradley is the person making the charge here and Mashey is a distraction. I would hope that George Mason University performs its investigation and ultimately discredits the charge.
John A says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:19 am
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum orders.
Yeah – I used to edit a magazine years ago and we would occasionally get these rambling diatribes in coloured ink, which continued from the enclosed page onto the envelope in mutiply-oriented diagrammatic scrawl.
We used to call ’em “green inkers”.
kim says:
October 10, 2010 at 5:46 am
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
The Iceman cometh.
http://tinyurl.com/2frc5xk
“Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science.”
This shouldn’t be a problem, he’s just going
to ask Mann to “show your work”.
Climategate part 2
Get the popcorn ready Kim.
“Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s report, (PDF – warning large download) a 250 page diatribe.”
Well, well, I guess we should re-open up the three whitewash investigations that came out of climategate since the subjects of the investigations also provided source material to the investigators who were not climate scientists (although Oxbrugh was principal of a carbon/green corporation or some such).
Secondly, if I am engaged to investigate the work of a scientist, surely I am going to have wording in my preamble, and examples, etc. that seems similar to the authors of the work under investigation. Also, didn’t Wegman state that he was using the very same assumptions and data to test the authors’ work and that he came out with a very different result!!! Does Mr. Mashey find space in his 250 page PDF to refute or deal with the substance of the report (please, someone else check!)
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. said on October 9, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Many have tried to understand old Immanuel. Many still Kant.
Brian Angliss,
they could have hundreds of investigations exonerating the Climategate Criminals, but, if they did not reasonably consider all the evidence they would be as pointless as the ones you reference!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The complaint of copyright violation pushes this far past the level of a schoolchild cribbing an essay from a book theey think the teacher has not read. Now we have someone who copied the copier threatening to sue. Red noses and big shoes for everyone.
Nice surprise from Congress. An interested physics prof found problems with Wegman’s math. Wanting to figure it out, he asked Wegman for his methods and data. Wegman did not answer him. It now looks like he will have to answer.
Wegman could make this whole thing go away. An declaration of who put him up to this and the marching orders he obeyed would surely satisfy Bradley. Institues and their funding could be revealed in our own truth and reconciliation exercise.
Nick Stokes,
you state that Wegman is trying to pass himself off as a scientist familiar with social networks also. You mean like he tried to pass himself off as an expert on climate reconstructions??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You warmers have been screaming at us to only use the Peer Reviewed Litchurchur for years. Here Wegman and team does just that, AND CITES IT, and you accuse him of plagiarism and pretending to be expert in fields not his primary area of expertise!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Your arguments keep getting weaker as time goes by. Going to give up or become a continuing source of derision?
Oh, and Nick, have you researched to find the ORIGINAL source of that 400 word paragraph that matches Wikipedia? What makes you think that Wikipedia is the ORIGINAL of this paragraph? That whomever posted it to Wikipedia didn’t draw from another source that is common background in the area and available for use?? They really should be more careful about their possibly libelous accusations until the source has been found!!
Of course, you really need to start by admitting that this is NOT a scholarly work NOR a work done for compensation or advancement and therefor does NOT need to meet the strict standards in the first place!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That being said, can you tell me exactly how these accusations, even if completely true (knowingly plagiarising others work), change the statistics, math, or science showing your beloved Hockey Stick is a pile of crap and Michael Mann is a crook or an incompetent?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
On McIntyre’s association with the GMI:
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=98
Wow, another own goal from the CAGW climate science cabal. Mann and Bradley should have let sleeping dogs lie, rather than remind the public about the falsified ‘Hockey Stick Graph’, especially at this particular time when political sensitivity is high.
The context of the Climategate emails shows how desperate the team felt about stopping others seeing the low quality data and their sloppy scientific work. They can’t understand that whole scam is over and they will soon need to be looking for alternative types of work. Good riddance to the lot of them!
Many have tried to understand old Immanuel. Many still Kant.
To bad that this will get lost in translation, the Dutch word for “Lace” is Kant. And the guy in the black shirt has everything in kant (read “Lace”), its exciting he claims. He even has it with him now! Let me see the other one asks.
Eli Rabett says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
“There are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, […] She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.”
So, you’re trading “catastrophic climate tipping points and the end of the world as we know it” for “We might have a problem in the future explaining to our kids why they shouldn’t copy & paste”?
OK, i’ll go along with that.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
(The last two lines in my comment were an unwanted echo of my copying and pasting of Eli Rabbett’s comment; which i didn’t attribute considerately. I don’t claim any copyright.)
“REPLY: Yep that’s the one. Also the same guys that gave coverage to bigfoot on his blog and even did a radio show about it. But we’re the crazy ones. – Anthony”
Nope. The incomparable Ricky and Bubba just linked to me over my expose re the Jacobson Monster (ie photos of a baby bigfoot). I never appeared their show, nor did a show of my own. Get it right or I sue.
Nevertheless, it looks like I know how to use Google better than McI.
REPLY: Wow, touchy. You misunderstood. I said the same “guys” with an “s” implying the radio team, not you. Nor did I say nor imply you had a radio show of your own. But, I’ve clarified it, and added two links to your blog. I’m returning the favor since you once removed an unfair statement about me. Just curious though, how do you know they didn’t mention it on air? I work in radio, and I’ve never known radio people to put up a story on the website that they didn’t cover on air. There’s no commercial motive. Usually the idea is “learn more at the website, be exposed to advertisers there”. – Anthony
Konrad: The Rubenesque Diva is reaching into the props box for the hat with the horns and he comes out with this dross!
My vote for quote of the week….
Rattus Norvegicus says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:18 am
On McIntyre’s association with the GMI:
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=98
#######################
1. he is not listed under staff or fellows or speakers.
2. I could list YOU as an expert on my blog and it would mean????
When somebody presents clear evidence that Steve takes any benefit from this place the presence of his name on their blog has no more meaning than the link to realClimate from this blog.
What i would take as evidence:
A. being on the paid staff
B. receiving benefits as a speaker
C. recieving funding for his blog
I’m sure Osama bin laden endorses Mann’s work. conclusion? mann is a muslim terrorist
PolicyGuy.
Looking at the entire Wegman Document. I’ve have to agree that the plagarism charge seems restricted to the prefatory material. The material related to Bradley is cited and its not presented as original material of the authors own. Since it’s background material Wegman or his students probably should have made more liberal use of direct quotation, since the high level discussion of generic issues is hard to paraphrase without generating large similarities. The SNA material is more problematic. Personally, I think the SNA stuff is merely putting numbers to a known weakness in new sciences. In every new field there are going to be small numbers of authors, many connections. The point is what do editors do to mitigate the reinforcment of errors that can be generated from a small community. Recall, That Mann writes pissy letters to Briffa and others when they disagree with him. The mails show the danger of the close association far better than wegmans checkerboard.
The real discussion, of course, should concern itself with the latter part of the report:
1. the findings and recommendations
2. the specific statistical issues that Wegman raised.
3. Does new science need more rigorous peer review or do we trust self correcting?
Eli Rabett says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
Eli: will you submit Bradley and Annann to the same standard?
if not #Si
bigcitylib says:
October 10, 2010 at 4:50 am
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
###########
Well, I’m sure you will be after Goudie now. ( it’s there just look)
lazy teenager:
“talking of home goals
Are you actually saying that Bradley ripped off Cuff and Goudie and then Wegman ripped off Bradley or Cuff and Goudie.
This is getting weird because you are acknowledging that Wegman ripped off someone.”
lets be clear about a few things: Looking at the Wegman et al text I see two different cases for plagarism. The first relates to Bradley’s material. The case is weak to say the least. The material used is attributed to Bradley 1999. Since I spent years tracking down and making plagarism cases at the university, I would say the following:
1. the material used should probably have been quoted in full.
2. the writer did not intend this to be taken as original material and is not “passing off” someone else work as his own.
In cases like this were the student has cited the work but not shown in the text the EXTENT of the borrowing, the issue is not at the core of plagarism. They would be instructed on the proper use of quoting and get some lessons in paraphrasing without using vast swaths of the orginal authors words. The bradley material is a non issue.
The SNA material ( from my brief read) doesnt appear to be cited properly and the direct lifting of text is more apparent. here too, since the author is not passing off the material as original research or their own thoughts, the instruction to them would be roughly the same: In this kind of material where you are giving background you still need to cite and quote properly. basically, if I had a case like this before me the matter would be resolved at my level with the student. I would ding them a full grade and ask that they rewrite with proper attribution, citation and paraphrasing/quoting.
WRT Bradley’s “borrowing” I’m suggesting this: Go on the offensive. Get bradley’s book and go after him. Or go after other people who also borrowed from him. Go after Eli. go after every single one of them. Having spent some time doing this in my past I can assure you that somewhere some climate scientist failed to follow strict rules of citation and attribution. bring on the bloodbath. Lets face it: there are a dozen or so ‘skeptics’ that serve as targets. there are hundreds on the other side. target rich environment.
To do this you have to be crazy like Nash.
This sounds like the same John Mashey I knew when he worked for MIPS computer systems and later worked with at SGI. As I recall, at the time, his function was “competitive analysis”, particularly for CPU technologies. Again, as I recall, this was in part a marketing role, helping position MIPS/SGI’s CPU technology in the best light. His brief note about his background on the cover page of this paper, and identifying himself as a computer scientist, seems to support that this is the same guy. Looks like he also has Penn State U connection/affiliation, as does Mann.
Of course, correlation, if there is one, does not infer, imply or indicate causation.
Can’t help but see the parallel between one of SGI’s core businesses (used to be) building hardware for creating imaginary virtual worlds (e.g. — Jurassic Park, the movie) and the imaginary virtual world of climate modeling software.
So, if somebody wants to start,
1. find a friend with a student enrolled in Brown University
2. Have that student retrieve Josh Halpern’s dissertation from Brown’s Database.
( 1972)
3. Then, we can submit Eli ( Josh Halpern) to the same treatment that Wegman got.
Fun huh?
Maybe someone “in the industry” could use the program designed by these guys.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41458/title/Study_finds_plenty_of_apparent_plagiarism
“Garner’s team developed data-mining software about eight years ago that allows a resarcher (sic) to input lots of text — the entire abstract of a paper, for instance — and ask the program to compare it to everything posted on a database. ”
…
“To date, 83 of the 212 pairs of largely identical papers identified so far by the data-mining software that Garner’s team has developed have triggered formal investigations by the journals involved. In 46 instances, editors of the second papers have issued retractions. ”
Different area of science…same can of worms. Or would a Pandora’s Box reference be better?
Here’s Monty Python on Kant – and other philosphers…
(Isn’t it funny how, when talking about ‘climate science’, we always get around to Monty Python?)
re: Steve Mosher;
Obviously from a man with no papers to search.
Steven Mosher,
The link references two white papers produced by MM for the GMI and slides for a talk which appears to have been given at the behest on the GMI. I would say that is enough.
You can get almost any thesis from University Microfilms for about $75. If you live in Washington, you can look at the microfilm at the Library of Congress. Enjoy
Howard U. was rated by Newsweak as the country’s second worst college.
Is this Howard University’s “Eli Rabett“?
Anthony, they mentioned me on air. But it isn’t like they contacted or interviewed me. I was just a pawn in their Bigfoot extravaganza.
More generally, as you know I write alot about the pathologies of the Conservative mindset. At some very deep level, these almost always involve Bigfoot, and Roswell. Hence I write about Bigfoot and Roswell. Bigfoot is the guy flying the black helicopter that ferries fat Al Gore to his meetings with the Homosexual Agenda at Roswell. Ask Jeff Id.
Cheers,
Brian Angliss said:
I am flabbergasted by how poorly the AGW proponents here reason. First it’s an absurd 250 pages of drivel charging plagiarism where plagiarism is irrelevant and now somebody apparently cannot understand plain English – or write a short, coherent posting. There is absolutely no inconsistency in those two statements. The Climategate emails did not in and of themselves change anything in the so-called science. But they certainly cast doubt about the quality of the self-styled climate scientists and therefore cast doubt on the quality of their product, the science itself, just as the nonsensical arguments in this thread are doing. Is there no one with common sense among the supporters of AGW? Well, maybe Judith Curry and a handful of others. Too bad they aren’t the vocal ones.
Smokey says:
October 10, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Is this Howard University’s “Eli Rabett“?
Nice one Smokey! You just gotta love the internet!
Well then Bugs. Any comment?
DCC said:
I believe it’s better known as “post-normal” reasoning 😉
Smokey says on October 10, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Smokey, Josh Halpern might be the worlds biggest wanker for all I know, but it is a poor carpenter who blames his tools and a poor student who blames his teacher.
Well usually Eli ignores Smokey, but for the record, Howard rates 104 on US New’s list of ~300 national universities, somewhat above George Mason@ 143. Howard is tied with Florida State, Samford (not Stanford, dear lord), the University of Kansas, Nebraska Lincoln, University of New Hampshire and the University of Tennessee. Our football team sucks FWIW.
The Rabett has no idea what strange list Smokey is quoting from, but that’s the way it is.
Mr Tom Fuller.
I think you will find that it’s Dr Mashey.
Bernard J, glad to see you got a guest pass out of Deltoid–enjoy the outside world. It works a little differently out here, so make sure you find an adult to escort you around.
As for Mr. Mashey, doctor is as doctor does.
No, Tom, that’s not “devastating”. Go and read Huybers’ comment on McIntyre & McKitrick 2005. See John Mashey’s comment…
Lazar, that is lame:
“Anybody who knows anything about this sort of statistics knows perfectly well that there may be an error in a procedure…”
Lay out the code, and show us that specific “error in procedure.”
And regarding your link, the comments following Mashey’s debunk him.
“show us”
no
Which is why I usually stick to discussions that are based upon at least a minimum standard of science. Nevertheless, I occasionally venture into swamps against my better judgement, in the hope that I might make a simple point or two. It’s up to the porcines to recognise the nacre.
Gee, I’ll have to go back to Deltoid then and locate one who might assist.
But seriously, for just a moment Fuller, it serves no-one any good to use a gutter press approach to colouring a piece to which one attributes one’s own name. What’s the reason for your reluctance to acknowledge Mashey’s considerable competence and education in analysical process?
Tabloid is as tabloid does, I guess.
[Archived for posterity]
Lazar, let’s give the mic to Brandon Shollenberger at CaS:
#188 Alex Harvey, it is worse than you say. You can download Noel Cressie’s e-mail to Edward Wegman from a link on page 58 (or 134). It does not support John Mashey’s claims at all. The paraphrase he gives on page 58, “I concur with the MBH decentering issue, so compute it the ―right way,” is complete rubbish.
First, Cressie specifically state he “concurs” with the technical contents of the Wegman Report. Second, when we look at Cressie’s second point (page 134 tells us the number), we see he actually agrees with Wegman. Wegman criticized decentered PCA, even saying technically it isn’t even PCA. He then said what the proper way of doing PCA is. Cressie, in his e-mail, recommended Wegman show the results of proper PCA alongside the results of the decentered PCA. He suggested Wegman make a figure to show the difference in results, that’s all.
Somehow, Mashey has managed to take Cressie’s e-mail to say the exact opposite of what it actually says. Cressie did not support MBH’s approach to PCA, nor did it even discuss W&A’s. However, he did “concur” with the technical details of Wegman’s report, which condemned both the MBH and W&A approaches.
But apparently we are supposed to trust Mashey’s fake claims because he asked Cressie what he meant.
And Bernard, should I post here various comments from you showing why rather than receiving lessons in courtesy from you I, like everybody else with common sense, ignore you as much as possible?
I’m just glad I’m not the only person who thinks of Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr every time I look at a plate of mashed potatoes.
Thanks for the python, it was like a vitamin shot!
I tried to make this point to Tom over at Kloor’s site, but apparently Keith felt it failed to meet his moderation standard for some reason. So it goes
Tom and Steven, the ICCER final report bore out my arguments regarding insufficient context in the emails. Not only did they use nearly the same statistical argument you reject, they answered Steven’s complaints about Kieth Briffa’s emails when Briffa produced an email that hadn’t been in the CRU archive that totally changed the context of the emails that WERE in the archive.
I’m sure that you’ve both read the report, but I analyzed it in depth and pointed out where their analysis coincided with mine here.
Tom Fuller,
… which reiterates the trivial truth of ‘decentered PCA inflates the variance of ‘hockey-stick’ shapes’… it doesn’t address impacts of this flawed methodology on the results of MBH98… linking to it is unresponsive to my comment… it doesn’t support your claim of the Wegman report is “devastating” to MBH98
like I said… read Huybers
Brian Angliss, just look at how much you x’d out of your own webpost. You were wrong. You don’t need a statistically significant number of emails to verify that emails concerned with wrongdoing exist and are damning.
Lazar, well, Wegman was devastating to MBH98 and it still is. What is flawed about the methodology of Wegman?
Tom,
“Wegman was devastating to MBH98 and it still is.”
You can repeat it however many times… doesn’t make it true.
“What is flawed about the methodology of Wegman?”
The flaw under discussion is in MBH98, the tendency of decentered PCA to inflate the variance of hockey stick shapes. You’re claiming that fact is of itself “devastating” to MBH98. I’m claiming that’s flawed logic, as Mashey wrote… “there may be an error in a procedure, but whether or not it makes any appreciable difference depends on the data and parameters”… in other words the seriousness of the flaw depends on how it effects the results. A flaw may or may not have a big effect on results, but the mere presence of a flaw is not “devastating”.
Read Huybers,
Actually, Tom, the post you linked to is not the source of my statistical argument, this post is. You linked to a post where I attempted to document flaws in logic by McIntyre, yourself, Mosher, and many others. And it was only some of the criticisms of McIntyre that I struck out. I didn’t have to do that with the arguments I made relating to you, Mosher, or even all of my criticisms of McIntyre. I admit that I made some errors – that’s why I struck those out. But my statistical argument was not one of the things that required correction. Not by a long shot.
As I said then, it’s not that you need a statistical sample so much as it is that you need a sample that hasn’t been self-selected by some unknown party according to some unknown (and likely automated) criteria. We all knowingly laugh at web polls at sites like CNN because they are so easily freeped that they can never be considered representative of anything other than the people who decided to vote.
We should similarly laugh at the idea that the emails represented anything resembling the full context of the emails. And the ICCER final report provided at least a half-dozen examples of how the full context was not available. Allow me to refer you to Section 8.5 of the ICCER report for the best example thereof, where Briffa produced a set of emails that proved he did nothing wrong while he was working as editor of Holocene.
LOL ! “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” 🙂
Re
curly says:
October 10, 2010 at 1:34 pm
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Technologies
“Some notable people who worked in MIPS:David Hitz, Joseph DiNucci, James Billmaier, Steve Blank, Dan Levin, Bob Miller, Skip Stritter, John L. Hennessy, John Mashey, John P. McCaskey, Stratton Sclavos. Board members included: Bill Davidow.”