From Steve McIntyre on Climate Audit:
Trenberth and Lifting Text Verbatim
In case readers think that Trenberth’s outburst discussed yesterday represents an isolated and unfortunate climate scientist incident, this is not the case. In fact, some of Trenberth’s most objectionable language was lifted verbatim from an article in Nature Geoscience earlier this year. Trenberth here; Hasselmann here.
Trenberth summarized the UK whitewashes as follows:
Three investigations of the alleged scientific misconduct of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — one by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, a second by the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Royal Society, chaired by Lord Oxburgh, and the latest by the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, chaired by Sir Muir Russell — have confirmed what climate scientists have never seriously doubted: established scientists depend on their credibility and have no motivation in purposely misleading the public and their colleagues. Moreover, they are unlikely to make false claims that other colleagues can readily show to be incorrect. They are also understandably (but inadvisably) reluctant to share complex data sets with non-experts that they perceive as charlatans (Hasselman 2010)
Trenberth’s entire paragraph is actually word-for-word identical to the corresponding paragraph in Hasselman’s Nature article. (While Hasselmann was cited in this paragraph, the fact that the text was lifted verbatim was not shown – something that John Mashey will no doubt weigh in on.)
Three recent investigations of the alleged scientific misconduct of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — one by the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee[1,2], a second by the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Royal Society, chaired by Lord Oxburgh[3], and the latest by the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, chaired by Sir Muir Russell[4] — have confirmed what climate scientists have never seriously doubted: established scientists, dependent on their credibility for their livelihood, have no motivation in purposely misleading the public and their colleagues. Moreover, they are unlikely to make false claims that other colleagues, working independently on similar data sets, can readily show to be incorrect. They are also understandably (but inadvisably) reluctant to share complex data sets with non-experts that they perceive as charlatans.
Trenberth continued:
Scientists make mistakes and often make assumptions that limit the validity of their results. They regularly argue with colleagues who arrive at different conclusions. These debates follow the normal procedure of scientific inquiry.
Hasselmann’s corresponding text was virtually identical:
Scientists can, of course, err. They regularly argue with colleagues who arrive at different conclusions. These debates follow the normal procedure of scientific inquiry.
Steve has much more here.
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I just know those two defenders of plagiarism in climate science, John Mashey and the shadowy figure known as “DeepClimate”, will rush to lodge a complaint with NOAA/NCAR as they’d done with Wegman.
Raymond Bradley’s academic misconduct complaint against Wegman at George Mason University was based on this same sort of (partially) unattributed copying behavior for presentation delivered in a public forum, so I’m sure Dr. Bradley will move to file a similar complaint against Dr. Trenberth to maintain the standards and integrity of climate science.
/sarc
Of course, I’ve shown these fellows a way out here. If only they could pile themselves into the clown car and drive themselves there.
WUWT’s discussion of Trenberth’s address to AMS continues here, now approaching 300 comments.
The question is, would he verbally cite that the words he just read in the speech to AMS were written by Hasselman? He will probably do so now.
John Mashey again?
I’m pretty sure that it was the Climate of Hate that made him plagiarize. In These Tough Economic Times I know it does me.
I’m sure Dr. Bradley will move to file a similar complaint against Dr. Trenberth to maintain the standards and integrity of climate science.
oh man…it kinda burns when you blow Dr. Pepper out your nose laughing.
thanks. now i gotta go change shirts.
[Great. Now we have Big Oil and Big Pepper competing to fund the skeptical deniers. When you cash your advertising check from DP for the ad placement? 8<) Robt]
Eh, right, so he’s, what, going on a bender every other week or so?
Lucky bastard. If only I where so lucky to sizzle away all them tax funded grants.
Whas officer? Alschohol, nooo. ’tis the carbon O2 fizzley bubbles made me do it, jus’ like (frontal) lobal warming.
The first paragraphs are not word for word identical as claimed. So few words were changed however that it’s clear someone knew they were copying someone else and changed a few words probably hoping it would escape notice that way.
Now we know how Trenberth managed to get a graduate degree…
Quit being such a denier 🙂
You know full well they only have one brain between the lot of them! Hence it isn’t plagiarism at all.
Plagiarism. Isn’t that one of the conditions to take back a PhD title?
John Mashey gone mushy?
Ummm… please disregard my previous. Trenberth cited Hasselman thus I don’t see any nefarious actions afoot. So what if he copied it? It was properly cited.
Dave Springer says:
January 14, 2011 at 10:12 am (Edit)
Ummm… please disregard my previous. Trenberth cited Hasselman thus I don’t see any nefarious actions afoot. So what if he copied it? It was properly cited
—
But wasn’t that the ENTIRE “charge” against Wegman by the CAGW conspiracy community? That he (Wegman) had the audacity to not only “copy” words from the article he not actually cited, but was actually REQUIRED to investigate and review?
No, no hypocrisy in the “scientific” CAGW community. Nah, none at all.
Lol, the echo adds nothing to the debate other than noise
…it’s not like this stuff is high prose or anything! Clearly, they got lazy with “cut” and “paste.”
We all probably do some of that, but jeez, couldn’t they have mixed this stuff up a little bit at least?? I could re-write the paragraph in an hour & it would be sufficiently different. Why do these people have any credibility at all?
It may eventually be discovered that his entire “talk” was just a cut-and-paste job from existing material (perhaps even some of his own “original” material). If I were the AMS, I’d want my money back!
Despite the plagiarism, I personally hope Trenberth’s childish rant gets widely circulated so everyone can see how badly perverted (politically speaking) the CAGW climate “science” has become…
Nothing to see here, move along. He was simply recycling as we’re all encouraged to do. Thinking original thoughts generates more heat than a quick copy & paste, so plagiarism helps fight global warming. Now what about those poley bears?
The turer investigations was certainly not for scientific misconduct. They were much more narrow Tham that
Now I have to clean the coffee off the keyboard…
That is a serious instance of plagiarism. As an academic, if I lifted an entire paragraph from someone else’s text I would rightly lose my job. Simply attributing it is not considered sufficient.
If Trenberth had merely paraphrased the earlier text, expressing it in his own words, he could simply cite it. Copying the text requires a clear indication that what he is reproducing is an exact quote.
Imagine a numerical index called the “Mashey Double Standard Scale Of Accurate Climate Science Attribution”. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so go for “Mashey Double Standard” to keep it short.
Mashey Double Standard Scale Of Accurate Climate Attribution = (A/B)
This a ratio of two ratios (hence referred to as a “double” standard scale):
“B” is the total number of words in all of the objections raised against Wegman by Mashey, expressed as a proportion of all words in relevant Wegman documents.
Applying similar standards to the complaints against Wegman, “A” is a comparable ratio for any “pro-CAGW” text for which there is no complaint of plagiarism.
Such a scale might then be categorised as follows:
(A/B) = 0 would be a “non-Mashey Double Standard” climate document
(A/B)<<1 would be a "minor Mashey Double Standard" document,
(A/B)1 would be a “major Mashey Double Standard” document.
I’ve got DeepClimate spinning in circles on this. Check it out:
http://deepclimate.org/2011/01/06/wegman-on-deep-climate/
Absolutely right! Wegman copied from more talented people and did not credit their work. This is not plagiarism but good GMU scholarship.
Trenberth on the other hand quoted a real scientist and gave the gentleman credit for his work. For shame. No tea for Trenberth.
Kev says this AMS address will honor his good friend and colleague, the late Steve Schneider. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few “Schneider-isms” cropped up in Kev’s text.
Hmmmmm. “Schneider” translates from German as “cutter” or “tailor”, so perhaps Steve would posthumously grant the okey-doke.
“Climate Science” is just a branch of “Political Science” anyway
Raising this issue now, gives Trenberth an opportunity ( he has a week after all) to issue an erratum and make it all better.
Poor gotya politics .
7 Years ago, when my Brother finished his D.Sc. through a university via “remote” work, his 300 page thesis was run through a service to look for “lifted quotes”.
In his case, NOTHING was found. (His advisor noted to him that “phrases” and occassionally, sentences would pop out…but that they were more concerned with series of sentences with exact wording and punctuation, to indicate deliberate plagiarism.
Now I do not know Trenberth’s academic standing. If he has, in ANY situation, rejected a graduate student on a “plagiarism” basis, I would now recommend a “legal” remedy on the basis of “equal justice”.
This could get interesting.
Max
CLIMATE OF THE PAST TRASHES COMPUTER CLIMATE MODELS
A paper published today in the journal Climate of the Past illustrates the magnitude of confusion in climate science regarding the “settled” basic physics of the carbon dioxide “greenhouse effect.” The climate model results of this paper are compared to two other recent peer-reviewed papers and show that the three climate models differ by over 18.3ºC (32°F) in explaining the “greenhouse warming” effect of carbon dioxide during the time when the entire Earth was covered by ice (“snowball Earth”).
This huge difference dwarfs the IPCC-claimed computer-modeled 0.6°C of anthropogenic global warming during the industrial age and the IPCC-claimed 3°C global warming prediction for doubled carbon dioxide concentrations derived from the same family of computer models. As this study points out, these are large differences between climate models, resulting from “differing assumptions” of the model physics; in other words, due to whatever fudge factors one chooses to plug in for the “greenhouse effect” of carbon dioxide.
http://www.clim-past.net/7/17/2011/cp-7-17-2011.pdf
Where is “Maple Leaf” when you don’t need him? LOL
What boggles the mind is – why plagarize bad stuff?
Couple of hints
This isn’t so much plagiarism as repeating a well-rehearsed message
If The Team’s fig-leaf falls any further, they will need a Maple leaf to cover eirarses.
Dave Springer says:
January 14, 2011 at 10:12 am
Ummm… please disregard my previous. Trenberth cited Hasselman thus I don’t see any nefarious actions afoot. So what if he copied it? It was properly cited.
#####
Bradley’s complaint against Wegman was not that Wegman didnt CITE bradley, he clearly did. His complaint was that he did not indicate the MANNER of his borrowing. he cited bradley, but didnt use quote marks to indicate that bradleys words were used.
in every plagarism there are two issues at play.
1. if you borrow ideas you have to cite the source of the idea
2. if you borrow words you have to indicate that you borrowed them.
so, you have to indicate sources and the manner in which they are used.
Bradley, Wegman and Trenberth all fail to do a proper job of this. The situation is remedied by following established style guides.
Everyone knows that in difficult economic times its important to recycle as much as possible.
Kevin is away from his email at the moment!!!
(SarcOn) You’re ALL missing the point here, a tremendous part of the Green Movement (aka “Save The Planet For The Worthy”) is the reuse of carded and discarded materials for the benefit of all mankind. Plagerism is an antiquated, rich world concept that we can no longer afford in the new World Order. But it does matter who is cycling or recycling. Not everyone is entitled. You must first show that you are truly Green before you can cycle or recycle someone else’s material. Otherwise, antiquated Common Law is applicable and you must suffer the consequences and give up all claims and titles to public and private entitlements forevermore. Before anyone can put a shoe on another person’s foot, the foot must fit the shoe. (SarcOff)
As advised below I checked Motl who says the document is a prepublished draft.
If this is correct, editing is ongoing.
Is Motl wrong?
Isn’t he allow to copy him, they are on the same team?
@Steven Mosher
> he cited bradley, but didnt use quote marks to indicate that bradleys words were used.
It was more than that. The sections dealing with Bradley’s plagiarism covered not only word-for-word copying, but also copying with errors that showed a lack of expertise. This is without even going into the plagiarism of other, unattributed sources identified in their analysis.
I’ve always said, though, the plagiarism of Bradley is just the easiest to grasp problem with the WR, and of course the one focused on here because that’s where the official complaint originated, and hence is the most “public”.
The lifting of the Wikipedia article on social networks is to me the biggest “plagiarism-related” problem, because in doing so they seemed to demonstrate a shallow knowledge of the subject, especially when rewording introduced errors. That they then went on to use this shallow knowledge to reach *highly controversial* conclusions about climate science being a closed shop that suffered from groupthink is extremely poor (conclusions that SNA experts disagree with). A key finding of the WR – and a key differentiator of the WR conclusions from the NAS report – thus seems to rest on poorly researched, poorly understood and heavily plagiarised and unattributed material.
Attempting to use Trenberth’s draft speech to belittle the charges against the WR as the original posting does is IMO a pretty weak move.
Dave H, another thing you didn’t mention: DC showed that Wegman didn’t actually do any “analysis” in his report, he simply took M&M’s code, which cherry-picked a trivial 1% subset of “hockey sticks” from 10,000 pseudoproxy simulations, and ran it on his computer. Wegman didn’t demonstrate any statistical expertise in this particular instance, and it’s apparent that he didn’t even understand the details of what M&M’s code did. Unsurprisingly, he got the same insignificant results, which had no meaningful impact on the MBH’s paleoclimate reconstructions. In other words, there aren’t any valid, supportable conclusions left to defend in Wegman’s report. It’s as worthless as dust-bunnies.