The report is out, and further investigation is forthcoming.
Excerpts from the report are below, where they considered 4 allegations. They say only one had merit. That will be the subject of the upcoming investigation.
Excerpts:
“It is clear to those who have followed the media and blogs over the last two months that there are two distinct and deeply polarized points of view that have emerged on this matter. One side views the emails as evidence of a clear cut violation of the public trust and seeks severe penalties for Dr. Mann and his colleagues. The other side sees these as nothing more than the private discussions of scientists engaged in a hotly debated topic of enormous social impact.
We are aware that some may seek to use the debate over Dr. Mann’s research conduct and that of his colleagues as a proxy for the larger and more substantive debate over the science of anthropogenic global warming and its societal (political and economic) ramifications. We have kept the two debates separate by only considering Dr. Mann’s conduct.”
…
“Decision 4. Given that information emerged in the form of the emails purloined from CRU in November 2009, which have raised questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research activity, given that this may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist, and given that it may be undermining public trust in science in general and climate science specifically, the inquiry committee believes an investigatory committee of faculty peers from diverse fields should be constituted under RA-10 to further consider this allegation.
In sum, the overriding sentiment of this committee, which is composed of University administrators, is that allegation #4 revolves around the question of accepted faculty conduct surrounding scientific discourse and thus merits a review by a committee of faculty scientists. Only with such a review will the academic community and other interested parties likely feel that Penn State has discharged it responsibility on this matter.”
An investigatory committee of faculty members with impeccable credentials will consider this matter and present its findings and recommendations to Dr. Henry C. Foley within 120 days of being charged. The committee will consist of the following five faculty members:
1. Dr. Mary Jane Irwin, Evan Pugh Professor, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering;
2. Dr. Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor, Department of Anthropology and Department of Biology;
3. Dr. A. Welford Castleman, Evan Pugh Professor, Department of Chemistry and Department of Physic;
4. Dr. Nina G. Jablonski, Head, Department of Anthropology; and
5. Dr. Sarah M. Assmann, Waller Professor, Department of Biology.
Ms. Candice Yekel, as Director of the Office for Research Protections and as the University’s Research Integrity Officer, will provide administrative support and assistance to the committee.
The investigatory committee’s charge will be to consider what are the bounds of accepted practice in this instance and whether or not Dr. Mann did indeed engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities.
Read the report here (PDF)
Stacey makes some good points and the question is whether the University, which has to be the responsible agency should invite “visiting professors” with more appropriate qualifications to “assist”.
One name I’d be very upset to see would be Professor John Prescott (from whichever Chinese university it is that gave him his title in Climate Studies)
The way I read it… They just want to double-clear him of #4. They aren’t investigating wrong-doing on Mann’s part; they’re trying to insure that this “investigation” rehabilitates his reputation…
On the other hand, the committee has already convicted someone of stealing the CRU emails. Their contempt for the hacker (or mole) is palpable.
Reply: Ack!. “Ensure”. ~ ctm
While the consensus here seems to be that this doesn’t amount to much, Mann might be slightly shaken that he has actually got to go through another round, that his buddies didn’t completely let him off….
If it quacks like a white wash
walks like a white wash
sound like a white wash
reads like a white wash
then it must be: A WHITE WASH!!
this is the pdf document…
http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf
Initial observations from the Green Hell Blog at JunkScience.com:
http://greenhellblog.com/2010/02/03/penn-state-primes-for-the-climategate-whitewash/
“Whitewash” is the key term here. Nothing unexpected in this “investigation”, I’m afraid. :-/
It does not matter if you falsify or not the data, or that your research is pure crap, if they managed to control the peer-review process (as they actually did), there lies the evidence of immoral scientific activity.
How hard is this: “Used the… Nature trick to hide the decline.” Meaning the substitution of one type of record for the inconvenient decline of the dendro temp record. How hard is it to see the science fraud in this single act?
Clearly Penn State is in full CYA mode. An internal investigation that, should it reveal fraud or misconduct, pretty well guarantees loss of $717M annual (fiscal 2008) research funding. Essentially guaranteeing the death of the science programs at PSU. There will be much looking the other way.
Which addresses the fundamental problem here. Universities beholden to funding sources to continue their research. Which essentially makes academia an extension of Government. Fifty years ago Eisenhower’s final address said this:
“A steadily increasing share [of research] is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government…The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
Call on PA State Senator Jeffrey E. Piccola to conduct an arm’s length independent investigation today: jpiccola@pasen.gov
Interesting… seems as though they did what would be expected: review the affair SOLELY from the perspective of what was in the climategate emails.
So, they ask if he destroyed emails/documents. He was able to provide those, so that charge went away while throwing Phil Jones under the bus).
They asked about intention to falsify or suppress data. Specifically, “While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State.”
Interesting language… “not while at Penn State”. Wasn’t he at VCU when the “CENSORED” folder was discovered?? Anyway, that’s not Penn State’s problem right now.
They asked Mann’s “peers” about the “hide the decline trick” and found out from those peers that this sort of thing is considered acceptable; “The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a
technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
No discussion about the appropriateness of the practice, just that it’s what climate scientists do.
Part 3 of the review was about appropriateness of use of privileged information as an academic scholar (serving as a reviewer for scientific journals). I don’t recall the specifics from the emails, but my recollection was that most of the inappropriate comments and activities related to duties as reviewers were from Dr. Jones.
So, finally, allegation #4:
“Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?”
This allegation was a bit more broad than the others… and the one the committee couldn’t resolve on it’s own. Should be interesting to see how other scientists on the next committee respond to this allegation.
Bruce
From: Michael Mann
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -040
I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: xxxxx@yxxxxx.com
No way, should he be able to talk himself out of that one. “Finding 2″ is obviously wrong.
If they only looked at his emails yes he could have got away with it as he actually looks like he suckered Jones, if they found the email Mann to Gene asking him to delete then that would be a smoking gun.
Sniff? Sniff? Is that the odour of white paint in the air?
I thought it somewhat humorous their handling of the word “trick” and their subtle interjection of “quantum mechanics” as if to infer the science is as complicated. I still don’t know of any science that allows for tricks of comparing apples to oranges. “The so-called “trick”1 was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.” As I recall, this trick was used to smooth the tree ring proxy graph line to the real temperature graph line in an artificial way that doesn’t have a connect with reality.
Am I wrong on the trick use or did these “scholars” actually look at the “trick” and determine it was an acceptable application to join different data sets to make it appear the same? Because they applied the “trick” the tree rings are a legitimate proxy for real temps? Otherwise the graph wouldn’t connect properly and therefore make the proxies illegitimate? Someone help me here.
Irwin has a BS in Math, MS and PhD in Computer Science. I’m sure she is up to snuff on the technical matters that will need to be addressed.
Well I don’t want to see any witch hunts either.
I’m bothered by the language describing the e-mails as “purloined”
I’ve not seen a shred of evidence that points to the files being “stolen” rather than “leaked” by an insider; and until such time as they have a culprit’s name to reveal; either way, I wish they would stop trying to demonize the process by which the information got out. Also the e-mails are only secondary to the code sections that reveal exactly how the alleged fudging of the data could be accomplished.
It seems pointless to try and review Dr Mann’s scientific papers; that requires climate peers, not academic peers; and the issue is as they say, whether he acted improperly as far as science conduct goes.
Yes they could “whitewash” this; but in the long run that only extends any malfeasance to the whole institution. Thjat’s a big risk for Penn State.
I’d rather hold judgement till the dust has settled. I already have opinions on the science of his papers.
The CRU end of the mess, is a more serious concern to me; that involves one of the leading sources of supposed observational data.
I’m already suspicious of those data sets; simply on the grounds of sampled data theory. Trying to sanitize lousy data with lousy practices, simply makes it all worse for science.
So let me get this straight:
Peer review will be used to determine whether the peer review process has corrupted.
How is this not the equivalent of just giving these guys more practice at deceit until they get it right?
Or am I missing something?
George E. Smith (13:37:45) :
Penn State is not going to walk away so easily from this, and I believe they know it. It’s not the emails which are allegedly purloined, it’s the reputation of Science in general and Penn State specifically, which is troubling them.
I’d be willing to bet that there’s finger-pointing and heated exchanges going on internally. They are darned if they do, and darned if they don’t.
Bad Hair year.
This is hilarious. Their explanation of Mann’s “trick” (“…nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion…”) is nothing more than Michael Mann’s own propaganda.
Here’s Mann’s own quote (from CNN interview, Dec. 7, 2009): “so the trick was simply presenting these two data sets together so that they could be compared against each other”.
Certainly the Penn State crew could have taken the time to understand the “trick” rather than just regurgitating Mann’s explanation.
David Middleton (12:39:28) :
is correct.
An important function of these investigations is to clear the accused. My committee has had to deal with silly and spurious accusations, but we treat them seriously and carry them through in order to make sure there is no doubt.
In this case, the allegations are rather broad and in a sense all encompassing. Since they were “synthesized” by the Dean of the Graduate School, they lack adequate specificity. It’s curious that they did not treat the numerous “emails, phone calls, and letters” as formal allegations of misconduct. Certainly in our shop, any of those would be treated as a formal allegation.
I’m surprised that the inquiry committee decided that there was insufficient evidence in points 1-3 to merit an investigation. They rendered conclusions along the lines of an investigation at the inquiry stage, which is not really appropriate since it is generally much less in depth. While we certainly aren’t privy to all the evidence and explanation that Dr. Mann provided, it is clear that the inquiry was not very thorough, using only the emails as a proxy 😉 allegation. In my committee, we would most likely have determined that there was sufficient credible evidence to warrant an investigation into each of those 3 areas, in part for the reasons stated by many who’ve posted here (how do we know it was all the emails? what was communicated to “Gene”). PSU is correct in not revisiting history beyond Dr. Mann’s arrival on campus. That’s certainly not in their purview, but it seems that they have some interest in whether there is an ongoing pattern of unethical behavior. But data in papers from 1998 or 1999 might be fabricated or falsified–that certainly isn’t ruled out by the finding of this inquiry.
Again, a thorough investigation can remove doubts raised by allegations and clear the accused. Setting allegations 1-3 aside at the inquiry stage leads to precisely the responses that we see above. In my view, Ms. Yekel (and possibly Mr. Courtney) has provided inadequate advice to these Deans, leading to a poor conclusion at the inquiry stage that will ultimately be damaging to the University. It also seems likely that the University will now be peppered with additional allegations that they may need to treat “formally”. The temptation will be to direct complainants to this report, but it will raise exactly the same concerns about the thoroughness of the inquiry.
Al Gore’s Brother (10:17:48) :
I did not have relations with that hockey stick!
Nor did he inhale.
It just means the bus is on standby. Mann’s a litigous fellow. If Penn act unilateraly, they may face a lawsuit. This stalls things for 120 days. In the intervening time, there are multiple other investigations due to report. If they find something damning, Penn can use that to get the bus driver to take their foot off the brake. Might still be their bus, but they can then claim a consensus in throwing Mann under it.
I think the report is what anyone would expect. They said nothing of consequence and tossed the headache to the next committee.
A conditioned reflex from three academic survivors. Having said nothing they cannot be wrong.
Who decided what the questions should be?
“Once they have you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers” – Slothrup’s Third Proverb
They make a point of stressing that his conduct “while at Penn State” […] He arrived at Penn State in 2005.
Does the University of Virginia get a say in this? Shouldn’t PSU contact UVa and see if any allegations were brought to bear there?
Oops!
Note to self: Always type out comments in Word and proof-read them prior to posting here. I had no idea Charles checked for grammar!
:-))
Not to nitpick at anyone, but it’s Penn State, not Penn. They’re two completely different schools. Penn State is a state school. Penn is Ivy League and in Philadelphia.