You’d think, being academics and all, that Penn State’s internal investigation of Dr. Michael Mann would contact the people who raised questions about the MBH98 paper and the “hockey stick”.
Yes you’d think that. I’d think that, reasonable people everywhere might think that.
But this is the halls of stuffy academia. They don’t think like that.
Steve McIntyre reports that he hasn’t been asked a single question:
They didn’t contact me. The only inquiry that has contacted me so far has been an anti-terrorism officer seconded to the Norfolk Police who interviewed me about FOI requests and my views on climate change. Nor have any CA readers notified me that they’ve been contacted by the Penn State inquiry. I wonder who they interviewed. I wonder what they meant about “looking at issues from all sides”.
But there’s plenty of “plan B’s” apparently lined up, read this report from the Penn State Collegian
One for example, was previously covered on WUWT:
“…anything short of the absolute pursuit of science cannot be accepted or tolerated.”
I hope I’m wrong, I hope the inquiry asked tough questions.
If Dr Mann did deleted incriminating emails, wouldn’t the deleted emails still be on a backup server somewhere and/or archived somewhere? Wouldn’t the metadate of their email processes show he did delete? If so wouldn’t the PSU investigator find them?
Any IT knowledgeable commenters here today?
Are all Mann’s email activities recoverable even if he deleted them on his PC?
John
Sorry for several grammer and spelling errors in my previous comment.
John
I couldn’t see an option for “Our funding depends on a greenwash”, so had to vote for the smack on the wrist, which is probably the closest.
Sad days. I feel like the AGW brigade have enough momentum to take them over the finishing line, with such quips as “cooling is warming”, “we need another 30 years and then you’ll see” and “of course it’s all about CO2” carrying them there.
One would hope that the review board knows there are more people interested
in the outcome of this review than likely all previous reviews combined.
If not, they may be in for a big surprise, no matter which way the outcome
goes.
Lucy Skywalker (16:58:22) :
“That’s a heck of a lot of ground shifting. And that’s just at the academic end. Then there’s the PressGate happening right now, with, what, Grauniad jumping ship???”
Lucy, what next? They sack Monbiot!!!! (Please, please!) Sad Old George must be raving over the article!
John, the answer to your question is probably yes, depending upon many factors. Backup policies….how their network is setup…..reliability of the backups(yes, that’s a big issue in the IT world), but the biggest problem is finding the darn thing. Recall the previous U.S. presidents missing e-mail problem.(Hopefully, the head IT person at Penn St. isn’t a political appointee.) Yes, they had the e-mails, but finding them in a coherent order was a big problem. I’m the IT guy at a small electric utility. Yes, I’ve backups. Restoring e-mails is an issue that scares me. In theory, every thing comes back just like it was. In practical application, it is never that easy.
To what extent has the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (i.e., the legislature in Harrisburg) looked into this issue? Both here in America and overseas, there is a tendency to overlook the fact that we are a federation of states, and as a land grant institution, Penn State is very much under the influence of Pennsylvania’s state government.
In the Delaware Valley, unfortunately, the principal MSM conduits are represented by The Inquirer and its stablemate on North Broad Street, The Philadelphia Daily News, and the publisher of these rags are progressive (read: “fascist”) in the extreme. Their editorial policy with regard to Climategate has consisted entirely of “sell, deny, delay.”
Any news from Penn State alumni situated elsewhere in the country or the Commonwealth on how the General Assembly and the state Senate are handling this issue?
—
Yes, Penn St has just completed their “inquiry” phase, which will be used to determine if there is need for a full “investigation”. (I chair a committee at my institution that carries these out–there are time limits, but we can grant ourselves an extension if necessary). I will assume that there will be sufficient evidence of misconduct to warrant an investigation, but that will go on for many more months. We use the criteria of whether there is sufficient evidence to suspect scientific misconduct, and whether we expect to be able to make a determination (is the evidence available, are there witnesses). It’s a low bar for us.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Dr. Mann only moved to Penn St in 2005. Anything prior to that would not be of interest to Penn State’s committee. That would likely narrow the scope of allegations to be investigated. The Mann papers in the late 90s are not going to be an issue. I would guess that the major allegation would involve non-responsiveness to FOIA requests or destruction of evidence, but that might not fall under typical scientific misconduct (data fabrication or falsification and plagiarism).
Dr. Mann was previously at University of Virginia. He was there during the hockey stick controversy. I am an alum of UVa, and was with the outgoing president of the university last week. I asked him “How did you let Michael Mann get away?” He looked puzzled. I followed with “…and aren’t you glad you did?” He said “There are some subjects that are too deep for me to get into.” (this was after all during a cocktail hour before he addressed local alumni). I mumbled something about scientific integrity and he countered with some satisfaction that that other guy (Pat Michaels) also left. And said “He didn’t even believe in global warming!”. At that, I handed the President off to the next waiting party.
James Sexton (18:33:58) :
Thanks for your info.
As, I think more about this it seems that the US Gov does have regulations on contractors for retaining info related to Gov contracts and specific regulations on how it is retained. Does Gov also have for grants to universities like PSU?
Anybody with grant experience know about US Gov regulations on universities retaining info related to implementing the grants? Would emails of grantees be considered property of US Gov?
John
Academia is so tolerant of their members that it is very rare when one is chastised. The University of New Mexico has a football coach who physical struck an assistant coach in a dispute over coaching. They conducted a “through” investigation and a letter of reprimand was placed in his file. The public was livid with anger and after another investigation he was suspended without pay for two weeks. He has four more years on his contract and the LOBOS lost all their games.
The problem is that academic administrations do not have enough courage to fight against possible lawsuits. In Mann’s case, he would be judged by a committee of faculty who would not consider his behavior unethical and besides that he has generated juicy government grants. If Mann is a tenured faculty or is on a tenure track, it would be unusual for him to be reprimanded. The world of academe believes in total academic freedom. That freedom includes freedom from responsibility. His crimes were against science not the university. Most of the non-science faculty would be able understand the nature of the crimes or care about them. From my own experience as a faculty member in a large California University, I can cite numerous examples of totally unethical behavior on the part of a faculty member that was totally ignored by the administration. However, there are some PC issued that would get you fired. Whatever they do it will pall in comparison to the potential crime against humanity that Mann conspired to committee.
The depressing fact is that Mann will likely survive (professionally, that is) to lie another day. I would only believe the puff-ball inquisition did a true investigation if they ultimately send him packing. Instead, he’ll get the obligatory wrist-slap, he’ll mutter some inanities about being more careful in the future to document his work, and his lies will continue.
But, there is hope for Mann: If he was to cross over to those with the anti-warmist allegences (those who have sought, and fought against overwhelming odds, and continue to seek the truth in the demonstrable science) and come clean… he would thus be hailed a hero. Come on, Mike. Man-up (pun intended) and tell the truth for once in your worthless existance.
Think of this. The US MSM is still in full AGW mode. The PSU wheels are not likely to be reading blogs like this, they will be reading RC and the NYT. Until some heavy hitters in the MSM start reporting the truth, PSU will think they can easily get away with a whitewash. What I would love to be able to do is to send a copy of OPEN* to all the US media and PSU bunch.
*See Marc Morano’s Climate Depot for details. The Indians are geting up to speed.
John Whitman (18:15:14) :
Sorry for several grammer and spelling errors in my previous comment
Gee. Funny. Must have been a tough day.
GeneDoc had written:
As an alumnus of the University of Virginia, GeneDoc, have you any further information on the extent to which the administrators in Charlottesville are looking to their own tochus coverage anent the probability that Dr. Mann’s grant applications during his tenure there had been substantively fraudulent?
I would think that the employing institution has a degree of responsibility with regard to the conduct of an academic staff member.
It’d be interesting to see whether the RICO Act applies to universities which have supported the perpetrators of scientific fraud.
—
I hope this is not redundant but remember that the State Senate in PA is Republican and they have already stated when the enquiry was announced that they would scrutinize the results carefully. The Senate leader hinted that state funding may be in jeapardy if the leaders felt that any part of the enquiry was or appeard to be a “whitewash”. I believe I saw a U Tube link from WUWT the day the enquiry was announced.
The interesting part of this entire situation is whether the Goracle etal would be publicly humiliated or whether they would slowly lose all credability, funding and respect ,fading into oblivion.
It’s starting to look like the latter because all the small minded dummies who were duped can save face by letting the matter slowly fade away, which detracts from the very real satsfaction public humiliation and character assasisination would provide!
My pessimism has overwhelmed my choice in the survey…. I just can’t see the “peer review” chastising its own….. Nope, they’ll find it’s all fine except for a few, slap on the wrist, irregularities….
…. But we can always live in hope of real scrutiny I ‘spose. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
/cynicism on
You have certainly heard that there are banks, insurance companies, and automobile companies too big to allow to fail. I fear the AGW industry may be thought of, or even promoted in the same manner now.
/cynicism off
dr kill (17:02:59) : And for the thousandth time, Penn State is The Pennsylvania State University, in State College, PA. Penn is The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, PA.
And State Pen is not Penn State though one can be an alumni of both …
Penn State had best put finger to the wind for a quick check.
A whitewash will let the Mann dollars continue to flow.
However, the political landscape is a changing and they may be playing fast and loose with their accreditation in about 4 years time.
Tucci (19:34:15):
I would guess that if an allegation regarding data falsification was made to the appropriate authorities at UVa, they would be duty bound to look into it. There is a time limit, but I can’t remember what it is at the moment. Five years is probably close.
I’ve been curious about why Mann left Virginia, and that’s why I posed the peculiar question to the President, hoping to get him to disclose whether there had been something controversial about Dr. Mann while at UVa. I’d guess no, but the President was rather guarded. However the results of these investigations can be kept confidential within the institution. For any case involving federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services, we have to report our findings to the Office of Research Integrity. I suppose there are equivalent bodies in Department of Energy.
It really is worth spending the time, for those of us who are [semi]-retired like myself, posting on MSM comment boards when climate stuff comes up, so long as we give some chapter and verse. It’s timeconsuming, but important. If even one person with influence ‘gets it’, that’s a job well done.
I’m sure the fact that there were such a huge number of comments following the Observer article on Sunday (over 750 when I last looked last night) and that so many of them esp the more well-argued and well-informed were from the sceptic pov, might have influenced the Guardian environment editors to take a closer look at what’s going on.
There are a large number of sceptic comments too on today’s GW offering on the Independent website. Its important to keep hitting them with proven facts, not just expostulation and name-calling, which we can safely leave to the other side!
I do agree though that penetrating the MSM worldwide is not proving easy, and the mainstream TV networks are a very tough nut to crack, esp the BBC which is still respected worldwide for reasons I utterly fail to understand. We all just have to keep pointing out the truth. After all, if Goebbels dictum that if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe is is true, how much more true must that be of the truth?
Another of Hitler’s dictums:
“What good fortune for governments that people do not think”
{S Has anyone yet seen the headline which I live in hope to see:
“Al Gored by bullish sceptics”
A prompt completion of the Penn State investigation could be a good thing. This would allow a committe of the the Pennsylvania State Legislature to begin a much more thorough investigation of Dr. Mann. Right now, the most significant climategate investigation is in the UK, with the committee from the House of Commons.
These three Penn State investigators might realize that they hold the entire reputation of the university in their hands.
They might decide to do the right thing.
Maybe they didn’t think they needed to ask Steve McIntyre any questions to understand his claims. I’ve never asked Steve McIntyre any questions, and I understand his claims.