This statement was released by Penn State here. Oddly, while mentioning the NAS report, there is no mention of the Congressional commissioned Wegman report, which you can see here full report (PDF). Or for a quick read the fact-sheet (PDF).
University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information
Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals.
In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann’s seminal 1999 reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann’s results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.
In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.
h/t Joe D’Aleo
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PSU is a school famous for its “White-Outs”. Maybe JoePa can offer some suggestions to the Admins.
From the Penn State press release:
Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals.
So was Dr Woo Suk Hwang. He was published in the most prestigious of scientific journals and was courted by nearly every genetics lab in the Western World for his expertise.
And he was still a scientific fraud.
Hoping for anything from Penn State is simply wishful thinking. What would be more interesting is whether the Climategate political fallout will reach Dr. Mann. A useful thing in this regard would be a subpoena that requests what e-mails he sent following his response to Phil Jones’ request that he delete e-mails related to AR4. The two e-mails follow:
————————-
Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
————————-
Michael Mann replied:
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true.
I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike
————————-
So did Dr. Mann follow-up on his commitment to contact “Gene”?
An interesting question that I hope will be answered. I don’t expect that Dr. Mann or Penn State will come forward. That said, the individual and the institution may want to consider the implications of not doing so and the consequences of same being made public via subpoena. Congress can do that and underestimating Senator Inhoff may be… Choosing Poorly 🙂
OA
I suspect some donors may put some heat on the school. Until then, the school will justify itself and Meltdown Mann.
Back2Bat (17:46:23) :
Actually, both left and right are on the same side of the tyranny spectrum. They merely disagree on WHAT should be forced on us via government.
You are certainly correct in excluding both Classical Liberals and True Conservatives from residing on the tyrannical side.
“The University is looking into this matter further… No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.”
I don’t know of this has been mentioned in comments above, but I see no reason to cheer the news of an investigation. The quote, when read in conjunction with the unreserved praise of the good professor earlier in the statement, comes across like an attempt to provide relief to Mann from an expected assault for interviews from mainstream media. Micheal Mann can at any time refuse to comment saying that the matter is under investigation by the University. This is a pre-emptive strike at MSM to back off.
Pamela Gray (11:04:59) :
“If you boil this down between left and right, you miss the point and are destined to repeat the mistake.”
Yes Pamela is right, and one of the mistakes is this Good/Evil binary on both sides of US politics. To non-Americans, the level of aggression can be frightening to witness. And we ask: To what end?
If you want to win this debate as a vehicle for an entire political agenda, then perhaps this is not the place. But even if it is, then it might be counter-productive. Do you want to win green leftie types like Pamela and myself, or do you only want to crush the enemy? If the latter, then the enemy has succeeded in turning you into their mirror image. I say, if we care for science we would not behave in this way.
So, if you want to win over us deluded greenies – yes, indeed, deluded we were/are – then perhaps you could make some room in the house for us right now, because as you might imagine, we are experiencing daily the hostility of the traitor.
Try to imagine a bunch of good folks out there who like their national parks, who like clean air, who like watching whales, and who, perhaps, think that all nations might be able to get together one day to solve our shared problems of poverty, war, over-population etc….and who are even members, as I am, of environmental organisations. Would these folks in their hearts all support tyranny to these ends? Now imagine that many of these folks have not yet had the time or motivation to question the wild claims of melting ice caps, polar bears etc. But they trust what they are told.
Is there good grounds for their trust in science? I believe so.
Crichton might have been right that there are precedents to such self-supporting delusions (nuclear winter, passive smoking) but, in magnitude, this Climate alarmism that we are witnessing right now, as far as I can see, IT HAS NO PRECIDENT in modern science.
The trust in science that we nature-lovers, we third-world bleeding-hearts, the trust we have in science and scientific institutions (like the RoySoc, and now the IPCC) has on the whole been well earned over the last 400 years – I dont mean blemish-free, I mean, since Galileo, pretty trust worthy, compare with astrology, and apocalyptic visions, which saw a demise in this time.
We have gotta show these nature-lovers, deluded-in-trust, that this climate science does not deserve their trust, for it is not what they think it is. We now have a truly marvellous opportunity to do this by just sticking to the science while pointing to the very unscientific behaviour of these apocalyptic zealots who now command the authority of this domain of science.
And then in doing so we may indeed show these well-meaning folk more than this. We may show them that the new leaders of the movement riding this alarmist wave (eg Gore, Flannery) are not their friend, they do not deserve their supports…and that, yes indeed, many of those riding this wave are doing so for the very opportunistic reasons that you folks on the right has quite rightly been proclaiming all along.
No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.
h/t Joe D’Aleo
Funny.
In an earlier post I said I was interested to know if the Susan Mann at Penn State was Micael Mann’s wife-she is listed in the IPCC TAR4 as one of the 2500 contributors (translated by the media as scientists).
Susan is a proof reader so would be well qualified to read someones work and logically it would be from another person else at Penn State University. The question is, was she proof reading her husband’s work or is she entirely unrelated (but still not a scientist)
Thought readers would enjoy this snippet from the Home page of Michael Mann- I can’t repeat the few words here as it would lose the impact but who said satire is dead
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/job/job.html
Incidentally it is Michael’s birthday in December-he is 44 -should we at WUWT send him a birthday card?
Tonyb
BernieL above chaneled almost all of my thoughts. Thank you, Bernie.
There is no denying that the political roots of the AGW alarmism lies in the environmentalist movement. But if you want to counter the AGW alarmism it would be wrong to frame the issue as a left/right political issue. The best way to deal with it is by showing the shaky scientific basis of the AGW theory. Note that the Green movement has championed many other causes too, and the reason that the AGW has surpassed the other causes is because of the persuasive aspect of the AGW science.
I have been an Australian Greens voter for more than a decade. I turned a deaf ear to the AGW debate and sat on the fence on this particular issue for more the same duration because my politics conflicted with what I learned in my history and philosophy of science classes at the UNSW.
It is nonsense to call the new science of climatology and its AGW theory ‘settled’. The geocentric model of the universe was ‘settled’ for more than two thousand years. Few dared to challenge ‘the consensus’ even though there was speculation as old as geocentrism that it was the Earth that revolved around the Sun, not other way round. There was a reason why Copernicus did not publish his heliocentric universe during his lifetime.
Much that I am still a Green in my politics, I have decided not to vote for the Greens anymore. As long as the AGW dominates the Green agenda I am going to vote informal, with a message to the Greens as well as to the Labor party written on my voting paper. I am sick and tired of the AGW alarmism trumping other environmentalist causes. Whatever happened to the world poverty, water pollution, GM foods, overfishing, labour rights, etc, etc? Now we are going to see the nuclear power making a come back because the AGW ‘threat’, based on questionable science, was blown out of all proportions.
I recommend to my fellow Australian leftists to do the same: vote informal with a written message to your voting papers. This is the most effective way to get the message across since every single vote is scrutinised by all the party apparatchiks.
Ahh, I guess it goes without saying that Aussies should never vote for the Liberals or the Nationals. Vote informal or independent if you must, but not the Liberals or the Nationals.
The key in these sorts of investigations is to find out who at Penn State is willing to lead the charge against him. When Bellisiles was caught committing fraud, it took having some faculty sympathetic to the gun-rights cause to make a significant case and get him stripped of tenure and fired.
Beyond Penn State, every organization that has given Mann awards for his fraudulent work needs to be contacted to pursue having his awards rescinded, as was also the case with Bellisiles.
I agree they’ll probably just issue some tut-tuts about most of the political shenanigans Mann has been involved in, as revealed by the e-mails.
However, the investigation will sure not do any good to his scientific reputation. His scientific papers are full of statistical blunders, including inverted series, botched PCA methodology, geographical misallocations of climate records and so on. The leaked e-mails show that practically all the competent people in the IPCC team knew that Mann’s work was poor:
Briffa: “I think it is crap. I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over>the last few years , and … (better say no more)” (e-mail thread 1024334440, June 17, 2002)
Cook: “Of course, I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike’s recon, particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff.” (idem.)
Mitchell: “Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH [Mann, Bradley and Hughes, the Hockey Stick paper] the answer in each is no.” http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/john-mitchells-review-comments/#more-32
Osborn: “I do wish Mike had not rushed around sending out preliminary and incorrect early responses – the waters are really muddied now. He would have done better to have taken things slowly and worked out a final response before publicising this stuff. Excel files, other files being created early or now deleted is really confusing things!” (1068652882, November 12, 2003)
Even Mann’s co-author Bradley had had enough of Mann’s pompous self-congratulations as early as 1999 when he forwarded a particularly oily Mann missive to Briffa with the heading “vomit” and a terse cover note: “Excuse me while I puke.” (926681134, May 14, 1999)
But you don’t get sacked for incompetence, temper, or vanity. You get sacked for dishonesty. I suspect Mann will still get off, but he does have a few problems here too. He appears to have said he was going to propose Phil Jones for an AGU post (which Jones got) based on an H-score which Jones himself had told him was exaggerated (1213201481, c.June 2008). This is the sort of gamesmanship that may appear minor compared to all Mann’s scientific goofups, but which is considered very naughty in academic circles. There may well be other examples, as the whole atmosphere was that the end justified the means.
Mann is going to be squirming for quite some time.
I found it fun to go to the Penn State Online page, devoted to luring unsuspecting undergrads, and ask the following question: if I attend Penn State in the fall of 2010, will Dr Mann still be there?
The answers are automated, so of course there are none remotely related to the question. So I asked the question several times, hoping to lure a human out of the woodwork. No luck. They’re probably all down at the rink.
It would be funny to watch Gavin playing dumb as he tries to deflect and obfuscate, if all this did not involve trillions of dollars of ecomonic activity.
I have to agree with others. The university is helping Mann. He can now duck interviews and questions by claiming an investigation is in progress. As that drags on, people will lose interest (they hope) and they will figure out how to whitewash whatever they find. When criticized for the the cover up, the true believers will say it is time to move on and they hope, others will be tired of the controversy as well.
Speaking as someone who has been described as being “slightly to the right of Attila the Hun”, I’m delighted that there are people of all shades of political opinion who contribute to this site. It shows that there are a lot of people out there that can think for themselves and who object to being lied to. And that’s a relief.
I get a twitch every time the phrase “well respected, peer-reviewed journals” is trotted out. It was the very ClimateGate synod that was the arbitre of “well respected” and they were clear that well-respected referred only to those journals that toed the “heading-in-to-hell’s-fires” line. The outcome of this review has also been telegraphed by the term “seminal” in reference to Mann’s reconstruction – lauding the scientific work is not a good start into an objective review of the issues. I predict they will whitewash Mann’s work and then perhaps give him a sideways promotion.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=771
“I would not reference Wegman report as if it is a publication, i.e. a legitimate
piece of scientific literature. Its a piece of something else! It should be cited in
such a way as to indicate it is not a formal publication, wasn’t peer-reviewed, i.e.
could be references as a “criticism commissoned by Joe Barton (R, Exxon).”
Cooking the investigation? Nah, you wouldn’t expect a University run by ….
I will be sure to contact both of Pa. ‘s senators to look into this-it’s bad enough that university’s get financial funding from all taxpayer’s, but this AGW garbage has gone on long enough.
Mann and the rest of the Hockey Team were caught red-handed cooking the books. If Penn State keeps him on the faculty, it will cease to be a respectable institution.
This investigation is considerably more dangerous for PSU than the previous one.
The previous investigation about the hockey stick was about whether he had waterboarded his data, which he clearly had.
This investigation involves felonious violations of FOIA, and conspiracy to do the same. He didn’t waterboard data, he was involved in deleting it. No doubt the PSU legal staff will be involved, and no doubt they will remind the investigators and the school of this.
In addition, while it true to say it is all about the money, it’s all about next year’s money and the year after, not this year’s money or the year before.
The question PSU faces is can this guy keep getting grantw, are powerful alumni upset (powerful meaning big contributors) and remember, PSU is owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which means this is most certainly not a private matter.
And that’s leaving aside the question of his potential criminal liability, and, the lawyers will not doubt observe, he engaged in this behavior while on the job using school equipment.
Add to that a severe budget crisis at both PSU and the State and my betting is that Dr. Mann is on his way out. The big decision for the school is how to do so with the least damage to the careers of the insiders who remain. My guess is they will soon be praying for a federal/state criminal investigation as a means to leave the decision as to what to do with this guy in someone else’s hands.
Make all of Mann’s data public and have it checked by others “publicly”. This garbage “science” has to STOP now. Penn State and other Universities are complicit with E Anglia and NASA with [snip]
Enough already!
Pamela et al… the mistake you are making is assuming that this was ever about science. It was not.
This has been, from the beginning, a plan to force a totalitarial political agenda onto the world by well meaning putzes.
When communism went tits to the sky in the 80’s, AGW came along and the same players saw an opportunity to do by other means what they had been trying to do via politics, take control of society for “its own good” and what better justification for that goal than to “save the world”.
James Cagney once made the statement that he could play such convincing gangsters because he understood that they did not see themselves as bad people. Evil people NEVER believe they are evil and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
…and the cake is a lie!