Jo Nova writes:
Murry Salby was sacked from Macquarie University, and Macquarie struggled to explain why, among other things, it was necessary to abandon, and strand him in Paris and hold a “misconduct” meeting in his absence. Since then he has been subject to attacks related to his previous employment. I’ve asked him to respond, which he has at length in a PDF (see below). The figures listed below refer to that PDF, which encompasses 15 years of events.
I don’t have the resources (unlike the National Science Foundation, the NSF) to investigate it all, but wanted to give Murry the right of reply.
On closer inspection the NSF report used by people to attack Salby does not appear to be the balanced, impartial analysis I would have expected. Indeed the hyperbolic language based on insubstantial evidence is disturbing to say the least. Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.
Remember the NSF report was supposedly an inhouse private document. It was marked “Confidential”, subject to the Privacy Act, with disclosure outside the NSF prohibited except through FOI. Desmog vaguely suggest there “must have been an FOI”, but there are no links to support that. In the end, a confidential, low standard, internal document with legalistic sounding words, may have been “leaked” to those in search of a character attack.
My summary of his reply:
See: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/murry-salby-responds-to-the-attacks-on-his-record/
The PDF:
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If the facts support your case, argue the facts. If the facts support your opponent, argue the man. Salby is arguing the facts, Desmog is arguing the man.
I believe it was no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln that used this technique with great success. When faced with a case he could not win on the evidence he argued that the city slicker lawyer for the other side clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, because he couldn’t even figure out how to tie his collar.
(At the time collars were worn separate from the shirt, and it had become the fashion in the city to wear your collar back to front, while country folks still wore their collars front to front.)
Graham Readfearn, who “found” the NSF report, in the linked Desmog blog post, refers to Anth_ny W_tts as a “denialist”, along with a reporter. IMO the antiscientific IPCC denies reality, by asserting without evidence that humans are responsible for 90% of “climate change” over the past 50 years.
NSF investigation started with this as it’s primary reason:
From the PDF report:
“The investigation pursued numerous targets, finding little of substance. When one target proved fruitless, it adopted another. After years of searching, the best it could come up with was:
“…Acknowledged as the investigation’s most significant finding, the claim was, by its own admission, mere speculation. It was inconsistent with the physical evidence…””
Since we do not know what this ‘inconsistency’ is and I doubt they did either because after this letter the NSF used the bureaucracy in order to eliminate him. Not on the bases of the science presented.
“Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.”
A reasonable point – but the NSF report did not come to light with regard to Prof Salby’s claims about CO2 but in relation to his allegations regarding his termination of employment.
I’m willing to look at both sides and consider the possibility that perhaps Murray is a screwball.
But.
Macquarie University stranding him in Paris and holding a hearing they went out of their way to make sure he couldn’t attend speaks volumes about them. There are also many other points in support of Murray and few if any in support of Macquarie.
It looks very much like Macquarie University broke their commitments to Murray and then went out of their way to discredit their own professor when he did science they didn’t approve of.
*Murry a.k.a. Professor Salby
“Macquarie University stranding him in Paris and holding a hearing they went out of their way to make sure he couldn’t attend speaks volumes about them.”
Wait – According to both Prof Salby and the Uni they had not given approval for the trip and according to Prof Salby he had to fund the trip himself as a consequence. The university claims that Prof Salby bought the plane ticker using unapproved university funds and that claim fits with Prof Salby’s own account. So what we have is a university cancelling a plane ticket that had been improperly bought and Prof Salby abroad AGAINST THE ADVICE of the university. What should the university have done in such a circumstance? Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded. However it certainly isn’t as cut and dried as you describe it.
So, the CAGW-crowds’ hero-status goes to Jim Hansen who illegally and publically as a public employee not only received hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra pay and benefits and international travel from international agencies and gifts and “awards” DESPITE his illegal political statements and activities, but also that international acclaim and publicity came specifically BECAUSE of his political posturing.
but another man, NOT on the CAGW-crowds’ politically corrupt CAGW bandwagon, get stranded overseas wrongly and fired while stranded and without recourse because of …. what now? False claims and unsubstantiated “potential” problems while funding his own way to a conference?
Fair points, Nyq.
Desmogblog’s slanderous forays seem near comical in the context of James Hoggan’s public $ tough-slurping behavior. What a piece of work he is.
http://archive.citycaucus.com/2009/02/was-council-bypassed-for-60k-contract
“but another man, NOT on the CAGW-crowds’ politically corrupt CAGW bandwagon, get stranded overseas wrongly and fired while stranded and without recourse because of …. what now? False claims and unsubstantiated “potential” problems while funding his own way to a conference?”
If he had funded his own way to the conference then the university couldn’t have cancelled his plane ticket. There is basic issue of facts here. Also according to Prof Salby’s account the problems with Macquarie U started years before Prof Salby’s public comments about the behavior of CO2.
Jo Nova says it all.
Yet, I would add (being cynical) that if I wanted to take down a sceptical scientist in this manner – publically portraying him as weird- then I would make sure he had priors and would have some vulnerability.
They didn’t try it with Pat Michaels, for example.
But they did tinker with his career within academia.
Nyq Only says:
Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded. However it certainly isn’t as cut and dried as you describe it.
Agree wuth your first sentence. However, it is as ‘cut and dried’ as described by Mr Dollis. This was simply back room water-cooler politics. The feeders at the CAGW trough wanted to cause Prof Salby grief. Is there any doubt? The university’s explanations are a load of hogwash. They never even attempted to get Salby’s side of anything; they saw an opportunity to strand him at the airport and did. Then they saw an opportunity to decide his fate in their “investigation” — which they made sure he could not attend.
Maybe Salby isn’t a team player. Maybe he is even off his rocker. I don’t know. But you can be certain that if someone like Michael Mann or James Hansen was the issue, they never would have been stranded like that [in Mann’s case, he was even allowed to sit in and help formulate the questions he was going to be asked in one of his “investigations”!]
The whole thing stinks. Macquarie acted unethically, repeatedly, as did Colorado U]. If you want to defend their actions, I look forward to your rationale. Because given the facts presented by both sides, I think they done him wrong.
Nice to see the argument here is about whether Salby acted outside the financial controls of his research. What about his research itself regarding CO2, surely that’s the issue here.
One of the comments on JoNova’s site hits home:
That kind of retaliation has been happening in the U.S., as documented in Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, and elsewhere.
We are witnessing a slide into intolerance. History repeats. Those defending the university’s actions should think long and hard about what they are defending.
The link to “Salsby’s work” on Jo Nova’s site is over two years old now.
Where’s the “imminent blockbuster” paper ??! Supposedly six weeks away from being published two years ago.
I’m very interested from what I saw of Salsby’s presentation in Hamburg recently but we need to see a paper not a lecture.
It does appear that there has been some very devious petty-politicking going on here, but the key issue is his work. Let’s see what he’s got.
Don’t forget Desmegblog was Peter Glieck’s “partner” in crime, collaborating in diffusing the fake Hearthland document.
How much cred can you give that site?
Murry Salby says ice CO2 records may be off by a couple of orders of magnitude for the really old samples. That’s a huge claim that needs backing up with some substantial arguments and quantitative evidence.
That was one part of his presentation that did not ring true to me. The rest of it “sounded” good but where is the much heralded paper?
It was reported at Jo Nova’s the is had “passed peer review” in 2011 …… where is it?
Murray Salby has attempted to revive an old controversy about the accurace of ice core data for atmospheric CO2 simply because his theories now require that. But Salby is making (and needs to make for the sake of his theories) some very radical claims about a ‘reverse smoothing’ mechanism in the topmost (firn) layer of ice pre-load compaction. Salby has not cited any prior literature in support of the (his estimated) extremes of the ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on this ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on his theories per se (despite them now being quite some years in gestation). And yet he is clearly a good scientist in some other areas?! What gives?
Quite frankly, I find the previous claims by Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski regarding a much milder ice core CO2-altering effect far more scientifically sound and supported by known data than those of Salby. See for example:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
It is noted that Jaworowski’s work (and minority position) was strongly supported by the historic review of the now deceased Ernst-George Beck on the body of pre-IR, chemically derived atmospheric CO2 data. As a former analyticvl chemist and geochemist I suggest it ‘beggars the imagination’ that all the pre-IR (pre-Keeling/Mauna Loa) historic atmospheric CO2 data could have been so wrong as Callendar, Keeling etc. (and the whole AGW bandwagon) have required.
But the fact remains that there is no sound evidence whatsoever that Salby’s radical levels ofpost-depositional reverse smoothing of past peak CO2 levels have any credence.
Personally I find Salby’s stuff so extremely tendentious that it reaches even greater heights of imagination than the (latent and sensible heat transfer-free) fantasies of Ferenc Miskolczi. People in the sceptical camp who take up the baton on Salby’s behalf are ignoring the very same dictates of good science and sound logic that the thousands who ran amok with Misckolczi’s bizarre theory did. They do a great disservice to the sceptical community IMHO.
Here there is a long account now of how the NSF mistreated Salby. In fact the original investigation was actually by the Office of Inspector General (p 34). When Salby left UC, he sued the University, and the Governor of Colorado, for infringing on his civil rights; then he mounted a state suit against UC. But he didn’t legally challenge the OiG or NSF investigations leading to him being debarred from grant funding, which seem to be his primary problem.
Steve Short,
“…nor has he presented any published literature of his own on this ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on his theories per se (despite them now being quite some years in gestation). And yet he is clearly a good scientist in some other areas?! What gives?”
The history of science teaches us that when potentially new-ideas are put forward that question the status-quo [whether they are subsequently shown to be correct or not], they meet fierce resistance from the established scientific community. In an ideal world this is a good thing, since science requires a high level of proof before it abandons and established theory.
Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world, and so it is often the case that petty human spite and vindictiveness are used as the guiding principles in deciding whether or not these new ideas will appear in the peer-reviewed literature. Scientific history is replete with these pathetic attempts at gate-keeping.
If you are correct about Prof. Salby’s work then he will eventually put his ideas into the literature and they will be either fully/partially confirmed or rebuffed by the evidence.
The fact that the self-appointed gate-keepers of science are squealing like stuck-pigs about Prof. Salby’s work makes me feel that bulk of resistance he is experiencing is based upon the failings of human nature rather than genuine scientific concern.
Steve Short says:
August 11, 2013 at 5:03 pm
“…I suggest it ‘beggars the imagination’ that all the pre-IR (pre-Keeling/Mauna Loa) historic atmospheric CO2 data could have been so wrong as Callendar, Keeling etc. (and the whole AGW bandwagon) have required.”
Riggghhhtt. Because, as we all know, the history of Science is one smooth, unbroken progression of incremental modification of the consensus view.
In case it doesn’t come through, that statement is dripping with sarcasm. That is the whole problem with the appeals to the “consensus”. Even if it were true, it would only have weight if the consensus were usually correct. But, in fact, the “consensus” is usually hard over in the wrong direction prior to a paradigm shift.
BTW, Salby’s theory is almost trivially confirmed by readily available evidence. The rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration is proportional to temperature anomaly with respect to a particular baseline. No its, ands, or buts about it. Human inputs have little effect. It’s right there, right before our eyes. The only way to miss it is to have a heavy bias against recognizing what is placed right under one’s nose.
dbstealey says: August 11, 2013 at 1:26 pm
“This was simply back room water-cooler politics. The feeders at the CAGW trough wanted to cause Prof Salby grief. Is there any doubt?”
Is there any evidence? Prof Salby was suspended without pay in February, pending a misconduct hearing. That would entail cancelling his Uni credit card. Someone in the Finance dept would have had the job of dealing with any outstanding matters on the card. The ticket got cancelled.
“They never even attempted to get Salby’s side of anything;”
Prof Salby took off for Europe after he had been suspended, with misconduct hearing pending. That is a structured process with the union represented and ample opportunity for the subject to be heard and quiz people. He preferred to be in Europe. The committee is required to meet within fifteen days, so it’s hardly the case that being in Paris weeks later kept him away.
Nyq Only says:
August 11, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded.
What is even more obvious in regards to motivations is that the ticket was non-refundable and therefore Macquarie got nothing back, financially, for cancelling the ticket.