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)
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Penn State didn’t have the … ahh … equipment to pull off a whitewash. It’ll end up being a beigewash, then business as usual.
Academic courtmartials can be quite bloody. They will have the ability to examine all his emails, backed up on tape, question his post-doc’s and Ph.D students, examine his data files, raw and ‘value added’.
Think of it this way. If they clear him, and at some point in the future something nasty crawls out of the woodwork, Penn looks very bad, reputation damaged and these five people are on the hook for giving a clean bill of health.
Five people, over three months, can look at a lot of work. Again, they will be able to see his work product; all his Penn State addressed emails.
“Dr. Mann’s research conduct and that of his colleagues as a PROXY”
A bad choice of words or someone with a sense of humour at Penn State?
Fred!!! Stage left!!!
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Reminds me of parents who think their thieven shoplifting foulmouthed offspring can do no wrong. “Let me ask little Suzy if she took the lipstick from your store,”…pause…[muffled cry from said teenager who is oh so innocent]…”She says no and how dare you accuse my sweet little Suzy Cue!”
Go read the report. First of all, whoever posted, conveniently left out the first three decisions that COMPLETELY cleared Mann. The committee found NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE THAT MANN
1. engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data
2. engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones
3. engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information in his capacity as an academic scholar?
Somehow that went down the memory hole here. Alack On the fourth issue the committee said that a) they could find NO EVIDENCE that Prof. Mann had deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities, but that they thought the issue should be decided b
REPLY: Oh puhleeeze Josh. I’m sick of your telling other people to read when you can’t read yourself. Note this line:
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.
Key phrase there is: “… they considered 4 allegations. They say only one had merit.” The full report was posted for anyone to read, as you are so very fond of saying to others in your demeaning way: RTFR!
Back to your rabett hole, troll – A
By conducting an in-house review, and apparently uncritically taking Mann at his word without checking with external parties, starting with Steve McIntyre, who can explain in objective detail what was done, Penn State has guaranteed the inquiry will be labelled a whitewash. Even if they find evidence of wrongdoing by Mann, it will be reasonable to presume they have minimised the misdeed.
In the past, this might have worked, but its too big now. This is an international issue, and a whitewash will be short-term gain for more longer term pain. The blogosphere can holler all it likes, and the university could bluff through it, if it weren’t for the fact this is also a political issue.
Notice how Fox and the conservative media are now regularly covering these issues? Even the MSM are starting to. Three months ago this was almost unheard of in the press. That gives it a growing degree of public awareness, and the whole global warming debate is switching from being a political disaster for conservatives to being a political winner.
Does Penn State think the Republicans are really going to allow this to die away quietly, and Senators and Congressmen do have a degree of real power.
Eli Rabett (20:06:07):
“No evidence” that Mann ‘engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones…’
So the vermin who throw their pal Phil Jones under the bus to save their own hides are A-OK. Tell us about Phil Jones, bunnyboi.
It looks like it will be not Penn State who will stick back the hokey thing to the manns ribs. But honestly, who would expect it. After all that tea-bagging will there be a hokeysticking?
Here is Steve McIntyre’s comment on the Penn State findings:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/03/the-mann-report/
Has anybody contacted the National Domestic Extremism Team about this report? It seems the PSU Professional Ethics committee has information – perhaps from Dr. Mann – regarding the theft of Climategate emails from the CRU at East Anglia. Why else would they use the word “purloined?”
I would extend this case with an inquiry against of Gerry North, who again caused institutional and system failure.
He is the one who really has to explain himself, while Michael Mann doesn’t have to, everything is already known and documented.
Each and every of these guys are going to walk away free and clear.
I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar.
There is no way in H-E-double-hockeysticks (pun intended) any committee of any kind, in any country, is going to flip an entire industry (climate science et al) onto its head.
It just isn’t going to happen.
Surely reading the Wegmman report should have been enough to close down Mann’s career. That was now several years ago.
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
I just ran the following Google search: Penn+state+michael+mann+whitewash and scored 3,280,000 hits – this within 24hours of the announcement of the result of the inquiry. Admittedly some of the hits were written before the result came out, but that just shows what a prescient lot we sceptics are.
From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Tim Osborn
Subject: Re: reconstruction errors
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003
Tim,
Attached are the calibration residual series for experiments. In any case, the incremental changes are modest after 1600–its pretty clear that key
predictors drop out before AD 1600, hence the redness of the residuals, and the notably
larger uncertainties farther back…
p.s. I know I probably don’t need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on
this, I’m providing these for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So
please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of
“dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try
to distort things…
This comes back from the laundramat. It is now on the spin cycle.
No one can expect Penn State to turn on one of its own, especially one so good at shaking the federal dollar tree.
The investigation of Michael Mann’s wrongdoings should be headed by the local district attorney. If, for political reasons, the DA is disinclined to investigate, the good people of PA (or VA for that matter) can call their own grand jury to investigate.
Many people do not realize citizens can call a grand jury, but it is one of our constitutional rights. Presentments must then be made to a proper court, of course, but it is a viable action. The grand jury will need good legal counsel from an attorney familiar with the laws of the state, but I’m sure a team of them could be found.
Anthony, email me if you want to know more.
Hey now- if the anthropologists are properly trained, they may well hang him. My “Statistics of Anthropology” professor would’ve laughed Mike’s Nature Trick right out of his classroom.
BIas is discussed ad nauseum in anthropology. Much of Postmodern anth is about recognizing observer bias; it’s pretty much accepted that everyone has a viewpoint that will, to some degree, bias their results; the important thing is to identify and isolate those biases, so as to understand their impact on results. Plus, as was said upthread- anth is not without its famous scandals; everyone involved is likely to be sensitive to accusations of Piltdowning in this mess.
Of course, I may be biased in favor of anthropologists. I am one.
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.”
Reads to me like:
IF A=B AND B=C, THEN A≠B
I’m glad I was leaving grade school as the ‘new’ math came in. It hurts to try to think like that.
So, from whitewash on to greywash.
Accuweather founder gave Penn State 2 million September ’09.
This may dry up some other sources over time. How much money is Penn State wasting on legal and investigation expenses now? Pawned!!!
Joel Myers “pledged” the money. It is odd how troubles at schools sometimes find pledges do not turn into real dollars.
Ask T Boone Pickens.
He scaled back on windmills and on Oklahoma State University
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this, but Penn State is claiming they’re exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests and Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law:
http://johncostella.webs.com/penn-state-foia-loopholes.pdf
However, according to http://www.climategate.com/federal-preemption-law-forbids-penn-state-from-hiding-behind-foia-exemption , the Supremacy Clause trumps them; federal law supersedes state law in FOIA request matters.
“This means that any federal law—including Freedom of Information laws – trumps any conflicting state law.
Under U..S. constitutional law it turns out that a legal technicality known as the ‘Preemption Doctrine’ forbids any shabby attempt by institutions at state level from undermining the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws. According to the Supremacy Clause, anyone filing a federal FOIA request at the university will have the full weight of the federal government behind them in rooting for evidence in cracking the great climate con nut.
It turns out that the state of Pennsylvania is no stranger to getting its hand slapped by the feds for trying to circumvent the rights of citizens. Federal ‘occupation of the field’ stamped itself on Pennsylvanians in the case of Pennsylvania v Nelson (1956).”
Not Amused (00:25:36) :
There is no way in H-E-double-hockeysticks (pun intended) any committee of any kind, in any country, is going to flip an entire industry (climate science et al) onto its head.
Correct. No committee is going to do that. Good, honest people will.
Key phrase there is: “… they considered 4 allegations. They say only one had merit.” The full report was posted for anyone to read, as you are so very fond of saying to others in your demeaning way: RTFR!
Given the seriousness of the allegations which have been made against Mann it would seem to me to be in the interests of fairness to make clear exactly which allegations had been found to have no merit rather than dwell on just the one which is subject of further investigations. Otherwise it just gives the impression of being an ungratious loser.
Scott B (11:52:34) :
Do quotes such as these (limited to PSU e-mails) not constitute engaging in actions with the intent to suppress data?
“hi tim. personally, I don’t see why you should make any concessions for this moron. By the way, our supplementary site (now on scott’s computer) doesn’t block any ip#s. another lie.. Mike”
“The last thing you want to do is help them by feeding the fire. Best thing is to ignore them completely. They no longer have their friends in power here in the U.S., and the media has become entirely unsympathetic to the rants of the contrarians at least in the U.S.–the Wall Street Journal editorial page are about the only place they can broadcast their disinformation. So in other words, for contrarians the environment appears to have become very unfavorable for development. I would advise Wang the same way.”
“I don’t read E&E, gives me indigestion–I don’t even consider it peer-reviewed science, and in my view we should treat it that way. i.e., don’t cite, and if journalists ask us about a paper, simply explain its not peer-reviewed science, and Sonja B-C, the editor, has even admitted to an anti-Kyoto agenda!”
“Seems to me that CRU should charge him a fee for the service. He shouldn’t be under the assumption that he has the right to demand reports be scanned in for him on a whim. CRU should require reasonable monetary compensation for the labor, effort (and postage!). It this were a colleague acting in good faith, I’d say do it at no cost. But of, course, he’s not.”
“I never acknowledge emails from people I don’t know, about topics that are in any way sensitive. this is a perfect example of something that goes right to the trash bin,”
I don’t see anything there about suppressing data!