WUWT readers may recall “copygate” surrounding the Wegman report and all of the accusations of plagiarism from the man behind the curtain “Deep Climate”, and John Mashey. This item from Wednesday got lost in all the opening furor over Fakegate.
Bishop hill reports that:
The accusation of plagiarism against Edward Wegman, author of one of the Congressional reports into the Hockey Stick, appears to have been upheld, but I think it’s fair to say the university hasn’t treated it as a capital offence, presumably because the passages in question were background material.
In a statement to GMU faculty, provost Peter Stearns said that one investigation committee unanimously found that “no misconduct was involved” in the 2006 Congressional report. “Extensive paraphrasing of another work did occur, in a background section, but the work was repeatedly referenced and the committee found that the paraphrasing did not constitute misconduct,” he said, in the statement.
A second university committee found unanimously, “that plagiarism occurred in contextual sections of the (CSDA) article, as a result of poor judgment for which Professor Wegman, as team leader, must bear responsibility.” Wegman will receive an “official letter of reprimand”, Stearns said, as sanction for the plagiarism.
The Chronicle of Higher Education says:
George Mason U. Professor Reprimanded Over Climate Paper
February 23, 2012, 2:43 pm
George Mason University has issued a reprimand to Edward J. Wegman, a professor of data sciences and applied statistics, after more than a year of investigation into accusations that Mr. Wegman included plagiarized material in a 2006 report that congressional Republicans used to challenge scientific findings about global warming. The reprimand followed the unanimous vote of a faculty committee that plagiarism occurred and that it was the result of “poor judgment” attributable to Mr. Wegman, USA Today reported. A second faculty committee also reviewed the matter and concluded unanimously that Mr. Wegman’s report contained “extensive paraphrasing” but no misconduct, the newspaper said.
One committe says some plagiarism occurred in backup material (probably due to lack of citations) while a second committee says “poor judgement, but no misconduct”.
According to USA Today, Mike Mann’s hockey team member Bradley is upset:
“This is an absurd decision,” Bradley says, noting the university committees split on essentially similar instances of copied text. “It must give lots of encouragement to students at GMU who think that copying somebody else’s work without attribution is acceptable.”
Despite filing the complaint, “I have not been told about this decision by GMU directly — I was notified by others,” Bradley says. “Pretty shabby.”
…
In the phone interview, GMU’s Stearns [said]:
Stearns says the university is not investigating any other complaints.
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Bradley has no room to beef about this, he misattributed the figures and text he copied from Fritz in the first place. Apart from not including co2 in the list of variables that affect tree growth (fancy that!). An sin of omission Wegman corrected in his version IIRC.
Climate audit has the details:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/18/bradley-copies-fritts/
Had the carbon activists envisioned him at Gitmo?
So copying is considered worse than making shit up from scratch. Noted.
Rather funny that Gleick has ruined the warmistas moment of glory as I am sure that this would have been trumpeted up and down the boulevard as a win for the forces of Goreland. Rather a damp squib by comparison with fakegate. Some unattributed material got into a report..crisis..calamity.. end of the CO2 exhaling world as we know it. (Please add additional commas and parenthesis to taste)
Plagarism is a serious offence in academic terms, but at most universities citing a work is enough to show attribution. So far as i can work out from a brief reading of this, Dr Wegman did cite references, but failed to attribute exactly those passages he used, including them in the main body of the text, rather than within quotation marks or indented in a separate paragraph. This is shoddy undergraduate stuff, but as the work was referenced i don’t think it’s evidence of intent to plagarise, just poor and rushed editing.
I’m sure I’m missing something, but how does knowledge progress without building on previous ideas, should the fear of a lack of attribution be holding back science.
I just don’t get it.
Nor, do I want it explained to me.
Kind of ironic that a member of “The Team” (Bradley) is upset about the results of an internal investigation at a University.
Shocking!
I confess ignorance of citation practices in academic publications, but isn’t the essence of plagiarism that you pass off as your own significant work actually done by others? As I recall the details, the copied sections were background material on dendrochronology, or some similar field dealing with tree rings. Wegman is a statistician who has never claimed expert or even hobbyist first-hand knowledge of tree rings. It should be blindingly obvious that any background material on dendro-whatever in a report he authored would have been copied or summarized from another source. Given that Bradley’s work was repeatedly referenced in Wegman’s report, just how many guesses would a diligent reader have to make to figure out the original source for a dendro-whatever discussion?
In context, there is absolutely no chance an objective reader would take the dendro sections as original Wegman work. The only charge against Wegman would be if sloppy or inadequate citations made it difficult or impossible to check his references. This may be substandard scholarship, but I don’t see it as plagiarism.
If Bradley felt Wegman had summarized his material in a way which distorted the original meaning, that would be grounds to demand a correction. If he merely felt one or more sections were not clearly attributed, he should have simply requested a proper citation, or an acknowledgement in an addendum.
This all sounds incredibly petty if I’m inclined to be generous, vicious otherwise. Is this sort of behavior common in academia?
This all sounds incredibly petty if I’m inclined to be generous, vicious otherwise. Is this sort of behavior common in academia?
“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” (see Sayre’s Law)
So, regarding the most important matter, there was nothing factually wrong in the report and its conclusion: Mann’s statistics were flawed.
Dave L., exactly. Wegman’s results have withstood all attempts at falsification. And the ‘crime’ amounted to a missing footnote.
Deep Climate will take his guitar and sing the desmog blues in Horseshoe Bay… LOL
And all of this because he put an “e” on the word potato… Sheesh!
DaveL & Smokey…
Exactly, they couldn’t fault the report, so went for the diversionary tactic.
Now where have I seen that before?
DaveE.
Will Dave Clarke play a farewell melody?
Who is Deep Climate?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/who-is-deep-climate.html
Will no-one insist that the full GMU investigation be released? No-one interested in it at all? How very… incurious of you.
The fact the report was public and very high-vis for several years and no-one spotted the “offence” suggests the offence was not that offensive. Looks like Badley only was “wronged” when some-else pointed out the “wrong” could be used to prevent the work being cited.
All this dancing on the head of a pin has not affected the statistical / mathematical / scientific validity of Wegman’s work.
> All this dancing on the head of a pin has not affected the statistical / mathematical / scientific validity of Wegman’s work.
I see you don’t take plagiarism seriously. But you’re absolutely right about the quality of the work – it remains invalid.
TomRude says:
February 24, 2012 at 8:00 pm
Deep Climate will take his guitar and sing the desmog blues in Horseshoe Bay… LOL
I’ve been writing a song about ‘Deepclimate Dave’. I’ll put it up on youtube once it’s done.
“Well m’name’s Deepclimate Dave
an’ I like to rant’n’rave
’bout the sceptic bloggers clogging up the net”
“On ma site we do some snivellin’
’bout the drivel that they’re drivellin’
but we ain’t got round to beatin’ them just yet”
help me out with some more verses. 🙂
William M. Connolley says:
February 25, 2012 at 5:01 am
Mistakes happen. If it was indeed plagarism, it quite clearly was not intentional. I love the warmistas declare that any mistake, regardless of how innocent disqualifies not only the paper, but the author. Yet there side routinely committs much worse sins while declaring that even reviewing their papers is the equivalent of destroying academic freedom.
[snip]
REPLY: Mr. Connolley, you don’t get to choose who says what on this blog, so I suggest you go back to Stoat and Wikipedia where you can force your demonstrated controlling tendencies on others. Taker a 24 hour timeout – Anthony Watts
WOW i got a letter…..big deal…. just more to copy and paste…..
there are deeper issues than plagiarism.. how about the potential for fraud?.
I think the world has more to worry about than missing quotation punctuation. Does “intent” not figure into our deliberations… anymore? GK
“William M. Connolley says:
February 25, 2012 at 5:01 am
I see you don’t take plagiarism seriously. But you’re absolutely right about the quality of the work – it remains invalid.”
My statement says nothing about my view of plagiarism it merely indicates it is irrelevant to the technical validity of Wegman’s work. And I certainly don’t imply that the work is invalid. Surely that is pretty clear from the context and the words I use. You would benefit from plagiarising my words to assure logical consistency as opposed to pathetically twisting them.