Image source here
From Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Herald Sun:
Professor John Quiggin complains of smears by sceptics:
In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace… Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.
Ethically unconstrained, Professor John Quiggin smears a sceptic:
In writing my previous post on the “Climategate” break-in to the University of East Anglia computer system, I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud. Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…
So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.
OK professor, let’s see your evidence beyond this missive.
Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. He doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to use that as “evidence” against McIntyre. It’s comical.
Here’s Professor Quiggin’s page at the University of Queensland:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898
First we had “new math”. That led to a generation of public school graduates who couldn’t balance a checkbook and legislators who thought $ billions was chump-change. Then we had “new science”. That led to temperature hockey-sticks and vanishing historic warm periods.
Now we have “new ethics”. That leads to the following trail of logic:
1) I question your conclusions and demand proof.
2) You hide the evidence.
3) Someone else finds your “hidey place”.
4) Someone else releases that evidence to the public without your permission.
5) I’m a thief.
I suppose this is what is meant by “scientists fight back”.
However, Professor John Quiggin’s statement is prima facie libelous, because he has accused McIntyre of having commited a crime, while at the same time admitting that he has no evidence.
Professor Quiggin, please note that where the subject of an accusation is a public figure, like a university professor, truth is a defense against the accusation of slander or libel.
By now Mr McIntyre is a public figure. So if you had produced some evidence to support your accusation, that would be your defence. But you have already stated that you have no evidence. Hence you have no defence at law. I would advise you to consult with legal staff of your university.
By contrast, in peer-reviewed papers published in reputable science journals, McIntyre has accused at least one researcher of malpractice while at the same time documenting in detail what the accused did and did not do that constituted the malpractice. The content of the released e-mails supports what McIntryre has argued for years and the content of the e-mails has not been disavowed by the authors. Mr McIntyre would argue that the truth of his accusations is his defence.
I once taught a graduate course in statistics and mathematical modeling, including principal components analysis, the object of Mr McIntyre’s criticism and his most valuable contribution to scientific auditing. I have also applied principal comonents analysis to satellite imagery. I can confirm from my own experience that McIntyre has identified true flaws in the Hockey Stick modeling.
What may never be proven is whether the malpractice results from incompetence on the part of the researcher or deliberate misuse of the technique.
I do not understand exactly what Professor Quiggin is objecting to. Does he think that malpractice by academics should not be exposed? Does he think that the exposure was not in the public interest?
Substantial public money is involved both in financing climate research and in implementing policies advocated by the recipients of the research. This means that the public is entitled to have the research audited.
Is this not obvious?
Unfortunately, the IPCC has shown itself to be biased by advocacy. McIntyre and McKittrick make a strong case for this too. They have urged that a “B-team” is needed to audit the work of the “A-team”. Their argument is that the IPCC member governments appoint delegates that are already compromised by their posts in national environmental agencies seeking to increase their budgets. Thus, governments cannot rely on their IPCC delegates to be unbiased.
Independent auditors are needed, as in the world of finance and business.
Member governments should be just as concerned about the direction of the ADB and World Bank and their own development cooperation agencies.
Consultants who work on projects financed by the ADB and World Bank can confirm that both organizations assume mitigation of climate change is both necessary and possible.
Their terms of reference for consultant’s go far beyond the science. These organizations are now paying for feasibility studies based on “climate science fiction”.
As an example, scientists do not claim that present models are good enough to make predicions on a regional or country basis. But the ADB and World Bank and bilateral agencies are gearing up to finance mitigation and adaptation projects based on these models.
Junk science spawns junk investment and the taxpayers of developing countries get to foot the bill. Moreover, even the poorest developing countries are being led to borrow money from international banks and to raise money by taxation to speculate on projects that have low probablilities of contributing anything at all to local economies.
The bottom line is that the quantum of money going into climate change demands better auditing of the science and better auditing of the institutions advocating policy and promoting public investments based on the science.
If it were not for McIntyre, most of us would still accept the Hockey Stick. Thanks to him we now realize that the graph is advocacy masquerading as science. Is that what Professor Quiggin objects to?
Check out http://www.uq.edu.au/rsmg/jq-journals . Look at what this guy is writing 200 papers on. Scary! Food, water, agriculture, insurance, trading …. Yeah, he’s a climate scientist, scarf. And check who gave him top honors, Thompson (ie trading & Wall Street).
Expect more of these attacks now that funding for “climate change researchers” is starting to be cut.
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/comment/article/477381–demise-of-canadian-climate-research-would-impact-global-initiatives-scientists
“The 2010 federal budget, unveiled this month, offered no new cash to the decade-old Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, a group that has been financing research on everything from melting glaciers to drought on the Prairies to the thawing permafrost.
The disappearance of a foundation that has made contributions to global initiatives on climate change is worrying for some in the international scientific community.”
Very worrying if their research grants are affected I’m sure.
Looks like the Quiggin’s pages at the Uni. have been pulled offline. All of them. Trouble with the lawyers and Criminal Defamation laws in Australia?
One can’t get away with publically accusing others of criminal activity (e.g. conspiracy to commit theft) unless they’ve been convicted by a court of law.
Steven McIntyre, had Quiggin bothered to do his homework before making the accusation, needed only to wait for the due processes of FOI in the UK (or their EU masters) to either get the data, or for prosecutions for violation of FOI to commence.
…………….Stef (05:32:34) :
I can never remember which one is slander and which one is libel???
————————————-
I can answer this Stef. Thankyou everyone. Stef: It’s very easy in this case…….
It’s the guy in the picture for both of them!!!!!
I wonder where this story would be if they had just followed through with the FOI request?
Good Mr. Quiggin says:
So the evidence points to “McIntyre’s circle of supporters”, because the “leaker was familiar with attempts by US bloggers …”. Thus are exposed as double agents all those boffins in the AGW blogger family (realclimate, parties to the climategate emails) who were also “familiar with attempts …”.
John Quiggens blog – comment away:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/15/monday-message-board-167/#comments
How does someone this stupid and unethical get to be a professor?
What did Professor Quiggin think he was going to achieve with this?
Did he even read it before making it public?
He hasn’t a shred of evidence, makes a charge and can’t imagine the blowback?
This is the act of a pompous ass who’s arrogance overrides honesty and ethics.
And it’s yet another piece of the desperate tantrum the AGW academia is engaged in.
Along with their futile campaign to put the cat back in the bag.
Just imagine how deeply, personally offended many of them are from being challenged by non academics.
So McIntyre is guilty because he questioned authority? He created the situation which led to the (alleged) theft?
How many of you read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago? Does this accusation sound familiar to you?
What’s next, a show trial with a guaranteed conviction and a sentence to a reeducation camp or state-run mental asylum?
Room: 551A Colin Clark Building, St Lucia
Phone: +61 7 3346 9646
Fax: +61 07 3365 7299
Email: j.quiggin@uq.edu.au
Personal Website
Qualifications
BA(Hons),BEc(Hons),MEc (ANU), PhD (UNE)
Profile
John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland. Professor Quiggin is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian economic policy. He has published over 750 research articles, books and reports in fields including risk analysis, production economics, and environmental economics. He has also written on policy topics including unemployment policy, micro-economic reform, privatisation, competitive tendering, and sustainable management of the Murray–Darling system. He was awarded the Thomson ISI Australian Citation Laureate for Economics in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Australian Social Science Academy, the American Agricultural Economics Association, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
Selected Publications
TOP 10 SELECTED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
Books:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2000), Uncertainty, Production, Choice and Agency: The State-Contingent Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Quiggin, J. (1996), Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform and Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW.
Quiggin, J. and Langmore, J. (1994), Work for All: Full Employment in the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Articles:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2004), ‘Invariant risk attitudes’, Journal of Economic Theory, 117, 96–118.
Grant, S. and Quiggin, J. (2002), ‘The risk premium for equity: implications for the proposed diversification of the social security fund’, American Economic Review, 92(5), 1104–15.
Quiggin, J. (2001), ‘Environmental economics and the Murray–Darling river system’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 45(1), 67–94.
Quiggin, J. and Chambers, R. G. (1998), ‘A state-contingent production approach to principal–agent problems with an application to point-source pollution control’, Journal of Public Economics 70, 441–72.
Dowrick, S. and Quiggin, J. (1997), ‘True measures of GDP and convergence’, American Economic Review 67(1), 41–64.
Quiggin, J. (1982), ‘A theory of anticipated utility’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 3(4), 323–43.
Quiggin, J. (1981), ‘Risk perception and risk aversion among Australian farmers’, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 25(2), 160–9.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t McIntyre Canadian?
Guys… take a step back a moment….
I think pursuing Quiggin at this time would be the wrong reaction from McIntyre. To pursue Quiggin and win would require McIntyre to prove damages. Quiggin shot his mouth off, and we have good reason to believe he’s wrong, but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree).
Since the truth is that, as noted here often, Quiggin is a wild-haired Grizzly Adams with an even wilder claim, the case would also have to take into consideration the credibility of Quiggin.
I’m firmly of the belief that, right now, even if Steve were to pursue Quiggin legally, the criteria for proving his case would cause the case to fail – specifically the inability to prove damages and lack of Quiggin credibility – and so the case would collapse. This failure to make the case stick would be taken and run with, by the crazy people, to mean that Quiggin was right and Steve was guilty.
Right now, the correct response is passive ambivalence. I think he’s looking for a sceptic tirade directed at him, and I think his intent is in some way to prove that sceptics are the wild-eyed lunatics in this exchange. He’s posted his opinion and, though he says he has evidence to support it, he hasn’t presented it.
I believe in the philosophy of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves, and my gut says that allowing Quiggin to get it all out of his system and then let QU sort him out.
ThomD: “It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair”.
Sums it up nicely. But what was the affair with? Why did if cause them to have to hide the decline?
.. sorry.. last sentence.. my gut says *it’s better to allow* Quiggin…
Indeed, Dr. Quinn looks like a man with a mission.
His picture begs a Dr. Suess caption. “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees!”
Would someone please get this guy his medicine?? I mean, if this is his PUBLIC photo portrait….!
Really, Steve was doing very well before the email disclosures, skewering the lot with their own faulty statistical treatments. I don’t think he particularly needed the information released in Climategate emails, except as validation that this bunch were not very professional.
I’m sure curious to know who the ultimate Climategate leaker was! The original statement posted with the emails seemed to imply that there was more out there, I wonder when the next shoe drops?
This is like Clinton blaming the media for the Lewinski scandal.
Also that photo looks like it could be labeled; “son of Manson”.
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied this file from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and distributed it widely among anti-science blog sites, including McIntyre’s.”
Was not one of the first “anti-science” blogs to receive this the BBC? 🙂
As for it being a collection for Steve McIntyre, the contents always gave me the impression that it was what they would want to hide from him and anyone else for that matter. It was hidden away on an obscure server that only a mole could find is another line of speculation that works for me?
For the Record, regarding timing:
Michael Mann worked at the University of Virginia from 1999–2005.
As such, the bulk of the alleged Hockey Stick-related problems tied to Mann likely happened before Mann worked at Penn State and would likely be beyond their reviews.
Mann’s “Hockey Stick” Graph data problems, his problematic involvement with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report and his refusal to submit his data for standard scientific review, would be likely outside his employment at Penn State and therefore unlikely to be part of the first review by Penn State Administrators.
In addition, Penn State’s ongoing investigation of Michael Mann, covered in their Allegation 4, is to be conducted by scientists, not administrators.
Because Mann worked at the U of Virginia from 1999-2005, the ongoing Penn State review by a committee of scientists, is not likely to cover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” related problems, the ethics of Mann’s editorial actions with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report or the breach of scientific method procedures, due to Mann’s multi-year refusal to release his data for standard scientific review.
RealClimate was reportedly created in 2005, so Mann involvement with their alledged problems may or may not be while he worked at Penn State.
A google search puts him in the School of Economics at the University.
Lets not push him over the edge. His green investments are doing poorly, carbon prices are falling, his life’s work down the crapper. Poor guy cant even afford to buy a razor.
If Steve sues him, he better do it soon.
Rich D.
The offending accusation appears to have been removed, or it was certainly not there when I looked just now.
Quiggle-word “moral”, meaning that even if McIntyre had nothing to do with the crime, Quiggin holds him morally responsible.
No slander, there. McIntyre bears “moral” responsibility in the same way that I bear “moral” responsibility for slavery, due to the fact that I am a Caucasian American. People spew pseudo-ethical garbage like this constantly, without fear of retribution, because there’s no real allegation of wrongdoing. Just guild by association.
Which is just utter, cowardly crap. Obviously.
to paraphrase Dr. Quiggin:
“SM is responsible for the CRU whistleblower incident bc he created an environment where people wanted to reproduce climate scientists findings. I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.”