Guest Commentary by Paul Driessen
“Scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena,” insists University of Virginia environmental sciences professor David Carr. “If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this.”
Carr and 809 other Virginia scientists and academics signed a petition launched by the activist Union of Concerned Scientists, protesting Commonwealth Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann. The American Association of University Professors likewise opposes Cuccinelli, who is seeking documents from UVA, to determine whether there are grounds to prosecute Mann for violating the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, by presenting false or misleading information in support of applications for state-funded research.
Carr claims Cuccinelli is attempting to “drown out” scientific debate.” Others have accused the AG of conducting a “witch hunt,” engaging in “McCarthyite” tactics, and “restricting academic freedom.”
It’s time to clear a few things up.
Mann is the former UVA professor, whose “hockey stick” temperature chart was used to promote claims that “sudden” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming “threatens” human civilization and Earth itself. The hockey stick was first broken by climatologists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, who demonstrated that a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly reflected in historic data across the globe, but redacted by Mann. Analysts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick later showed that Mann’s computer program generated hockey-stick patterns regardless of what numbers were fed into it – even random telephone numbers; that explained why the global warming and cooling of the last millennium magically disappeared in Mann’s “temperature reconstruction.”
The Climategate emails revealed another deliberate “trick” that Mann used to generate a late twentieth-century temperature jump: he replaced tree ring data with thermometer measurements at the point in his timeline when the tree data no longer fit his climate disaster thesis.
Not surprisingly, he refused to share his data, computer codes and methodologies with skeptical scientists. Perhaps worse, Climategate emails indicate that Mann and others conspired to co-opt and corrupt the very scientific process that Carr asserts will ultimately condemn or vindicate them.
This behavior certainly gives Cuccinelli “probable cause” for launching an investigation. As the AG notes, “The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere. The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process, will take place.” Some witch hunt.
There is simply no room in science, academia or public policy for manipulation, falsification or fraud. Academic freedom does not confer a right to engage in such practices, and both attorneys general and research institutions have a duty to root them out, especially in the case of climate change research.
Work by Mann and other alarmist scientists is not merely some theoretical exercise that can be permitted to “play itself out” over many years, if and when the “academic arena” gets around to it. These assertions of climate crisis are being used right now by Congress, states, courts and the Environmental Protection Agency to justify draconian restrictions on energy use and greenhouse emissions. They would shackle our freedoms and civil rights and hammer our jobs, economy, health, welfare and living standards.
If the science is wrong – or far worse, if it is manipulated, fabricated, fraudulent and covered up – then grave damage will be done to our nation, liberties and families, before the truth gets its boots on.
As to “scientific debate” over global warming, there has been virtually none in the academic arena. The science is viewed as “settled,” debate has been squelched, and those who seek to initiate debate are attacked, vilified, harassed and shipped off to academic Siberia.
Dr. Patrick Michaels, another former UVA climate researcher, was fired as Virginia State Climatologist by then-Governor Tim Kaine for raising inconvenient questions and facts on climate science. When Greenpeace demanded access to Michaels’ emails, UVA promptly acceded – before contesting AG Cuccinelli’s request for Mann’s.
The 810 protesters and their UCS and AAUP consorts were silent. Their principles and objections do not seem to apply to shrill activist groups infringing on the academic and scientific freedom of “politically incorrect” researchers, even when there is no suggestion of dishonesty. Other “skeptical” climate researchers have met with similar fates. The pungent scent of hypocrisy fills the air.
No surprise there. The massive US government climate change research gravy train alone totaled some $9 billion in grants during 2009, courtesy of hardworking taxpayers. IPCC, EU & Company climate grants – plus billions more for renewable energy research – fatten the larder still further. Now that money, prestige and power are threatened.
Climategate and other revelations about the lack of evidence for the “manmade climate disaster” thesis have sent belief in AlGorean gloom and doom plummeting. Global warming consistently comes in dead last on any list of environmental concerns. Three-fourths of Americans are unwilling to spend more than $100 a year to prevent climate change. China, India and other developing nations properly refuse to sign a carbon-cutting economic suicide pact.
The public is rightly concerned that in-house investigations by Penn State University (Mann’s current institution), East Anglia University (home of Phil Jones and the Climategate emails) and the IPCC have the patina of a Tom Sawyer whitewash. Independent investigations like Cuccinelli’s are absolutely essential, to ferret out fraud and misconduct – which may be rare but must be dealt with when it happens.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield falsified studies to create a connection between autism and trace mercury in vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella. Britain stripped him of his right to practice medicine. But meanwhile, a lingering stench remains over double standards; World Wildlife Fund press releases and rank speculation masquerading as peer-reviewed science; computer models enshrined as “proof” of looming climate disasters; and billions being squandered on research purporting to link global warming to nearly every malady and phenomenon known to man.
We the taxpayers are paying for this work. We the people will pay the price – in soaring energy bills, fewer jobs, lower living standards and lost freedoms – for draconian energy and emission laws enacted in the name of saving the planet.
We have a right to insist that the research be honest and aboveboard. That the work products stay in the public domain, available for scrutiny. That researchers share their data, computer codes and analytical methodologies, and engage in robust debate with skeptics and critics. That those who violate these fundamental precepts forfeit their access to future grants. And that our tax dollars no longer fund bogus acne-and-climate-change studies and alarmist propaganda. (Talk about budget cutting opportunities!)
It’s certainly understandable that scientists, academics, eco-activists and the AAUP and UVA would line up behind Mann and against Cuccinelli. There’s a lot of power, prestige and cash on the line. But it is essential that the attorney general and law-abiding citizens insist on transparency, integrity, credibility and accountability in the climate change arena.
We should support what Ken Cuccinelli is doing – and demand that Eric Holder and other state AGs take similar action.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.
Excellent article!
All science should be open to knowing how and where the conclusions were made and all the data behind it.
You would have thought that all the AGW supporters would like to see their “Hero” Mr Mann exonerated in a Court of Law wouldn’t you?
Except of course unless they are worried he might just be guilty.
There are too many things that are broken to be fixed with one solution, even ‘crazy glue’ won’t work. Let the AG go after the crooks, let the scholars clean their own house of the ‘unscholarly’, and let the people vote –in the final analysis, We Da People is responsible for all the things our idiot government representatives and employees does and fails to does.
Sorry to have to pop some bubbles among the uninitiated neo-mensch, but we brought global warming, algore, climategate, unscholarly conduct, greed, insanity, and a billion or two other mistakes upon our own heads and the heads of our children, and their children to the seventh generation. Funny how everything turns to crap when ya’ ain’t lookin’. Caveat Emptor! Buyer beware!
As I understand it MM’s hockey stick work is seriously flawed. So much so that Ross McKitrick might even agree that it can now legitimately be descibed as fraudulent since, even having had the obvious errors drawn to his attention, he has not resiled from his position. That is, however, a matter best dealt with by his peers in academia.
But if he has used his previous work, while being aware that it is incorrect, to obtain funding that is fraudulent and is a matter for the courts. If Mr. Cuccinelli has prima facie evidence of such fraud then he is right to enter on a fishing trip. In most of the more than four hundred cases in which I have been involved over the years the most conclusive evidence only became available on discovery/disclosure. If the fishing trip does not produce sufficient supporting evidence then Mr. Cuccinelli should withdraw and apologise. Even so his reputation will be tarnished. I assume that he is aware of that and, therefore, has not entered on this enterprise lightly.
Marc Blank says
‘If there has been malfeasance on MM’s part, it should be handled within his profession.’
And I say, sod the profession. It is not just the profession, nor for that matter, just U.S. citizens, that are being harmed by this malfeasance, and the profession has long since lost any claim to be the rightful single arbiter. The sooner effective legal action is taken the better for billions of us around the world.
Dealing with financial fraud. The AG is going after the school. He is wise and doing so correctly. The grants and funding were recieved by the school. It is the duty of the school to pass along the grant money and monitor its use. Reports on how the money was spent by Mann go to the school. If he does armchair research and merely googles info and has few expenses other than travel and entertainment, the school is damaged. The school apparently is fighting back. They may have no records from Mann and may have not required accurate reports.
When there is a crime, a strong defense is to get the case that you can’t win to be dropped. Since embezzlement is not new, when there is misappropriation of funds, there is almost 100% lack of clean and complete financial reports. Cheaters do not want to leave an easy to follow document trail.
Actually many lawyers specialize and have a law degree plus an engineering degree or accounting degree. One of my friends was a doc and then attended law school. The AG, if I remember is also an engineer. Technical methods can be used for investigating cases.
From my psychologist point of view, we ask “what is the presenting problem”
The AG is delving into the financial side and the “pretend scientists” are trying to make it a scientific inquiry. They express feigned outrage that a mere lowly lawyer could have the nerve to consider & question science. It is not illegal to make ignorant scientific claims. It is illegal to cheat with money.
The AG is about the money trail. The school is trying to shift the goalposts and claim academic freedom.
Any attempt by these scientists to hide behind statutes or grant sources does them no good and will only serve to solidify public opinion against granting any more money, state or otherwise, to AGW climate scientists.
By bringing these issues out in the open, we often discover the true colors of things we once thought were above personal agendas.
From a CPA viewpoint, that breaks down into 2 issues. The presenting problem within the problems are these
1 Did Mann provide misleading information in the course of applying for grant money? (manipulate data)
2 Did Mann and the school provide honest and accurate reports to account for the funds.
In the mortgage bubble, thousands provided false information on their loan applications. see#1 above
Mortgage problems also came from cheating surrounding the actual financial transactions. Appraisers that were relatives or not independent. Kickbacks to certain parties without disclosure. #2 above
It’s a great pity that the question of whether or not Mann deserves being brought to account at law for his misdeeds is being conflated with the rather different one of whether it is a good idea for Cuccinelli to go after him in this instance. I live for the day Mann and his tribe are brought low, but it is too important a task to be botched by a misfire. I just hope Cuccinelli knows something Steve McKittrick doesn’t…
If Michael Mann is proud of his work, and he has nothing to hide, then he should be open to the investigation. After all, Mann’s work is ‘above question’ so the investigation should find nothing wrong, right?
Why do scientists like Mann think they are so special that their government funded research should not be subject to investigation by an outside party like a government agency?
Look at the situation of auditors. Auditors are subjected to quality control reviews by their professional bodies…. they also have the corporate regulatory bodies hanging over them like a damocles sword… and their ‘audit working paper files’ must be impeccably maintained so as to stand up to legal scrutiny. One stuff up by the auditor could be the end of his career… even imprisonment.
It’s time scientists were also held to account, just as auditors are constantly held to account. They get it wrong… they pay the price!
addendum
My next letter writing campaign will be related to the offering of continued funding to those scientists who hide behind some shield so that their practices avoid proper scrutiny when it involves public policy, or worse espouse disallowing opposing research from seeing the light of day. Salary, grants, building space, and other accouterments of public research come out of my pocket. These funding sources are usually buried in massive bills which pass even under the nose of penny pinching republicans as compromises. Such behavior will garner my ill feelings towards supporting then in their next election.
1personofdifference says:
May 30, 2010 at 9:21 pm
You can do whatever you like to your politians I don’t care. But getting them involved in shaping the direction of science is a mistake whether it’s Gore, Obama or Cuccinelli.
Four of the world’s foremost meteorological organizations recorded a 0.595C temperature decrease for the year 2008. This decrease virtually wiped out all the temperature increases recorded since 1780 the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Yet, if Michael Mann finds one pine cone bristle “proxy” in the Yamal Pennisula, this proves the world is about to be burned to a cinder? I don’t think so!
Then…in order to make anything against law, one could do it through a “research paper”, then publishing it in a science magazine, correctly “peer reviewed” before its publication…
So now many proned to crime people will go to school to become “conveniently” educated, for having the consensual and accepted means to offend the law . LOL!
There is nothing more stupid and unscientific than extrapolation of two points on a curve. So I was taught as both a pre-engineering student and as a physics major, and I was taught properly, back in the 1950s. These projections of trends is no more than extrapolation. No good can possibly come of doing so. This present practice of doing so by so-called “scientists” is a clear demonstration that science is has been abandoned for purposes of obtaining government money (taxpayer dollars) through unwarranted alarmism. Alarmism is profitable, as it always has been. Absurd concept.
It’s time to clear a few things up.
Mann is the former UVA professor, whose “hockey stick” temperature chart was used to promote claims that “sudden” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming “threatens” human civilization and Earth itself. The hockey stick was first broken by climatologists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas,
Sorry, no.
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas are both astrophysicists in the same group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Baliunas was awarded the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society – hardly an award for climatologists.
Dr. Willie Soon – SSP (Solar,Stellar, and Planetary Sciences) Division Staff List
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/ssp/contact.html
Dr. Sallie Baliuna – SSP Research Staff
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/ast/irs_new.html
It’s one thing to claim meteorologists are climatologists.
But astrophysicists ?
You must be joking.
But they are certainly qualified to do research on the Sun and Sun-like stars, and collaborate with real climatologists.
As the famous Nobel-prize winning economist Dr. James Hansen once said – “People shouldn’t make stuff up about me – just check your facts, ok ?”
HR says:
May 31, 2010 at 7:22 am
You can do whatever you like to your politians I don’t care. But getting them involved in shaping the direction of science is a mistake whether it’s Gore, Obama or Cuccinelli.
But, but , but, AGW is already grandly involved with politicians, like Gore, and Obama et all eying our pocketbooks, to say the least, and building pyramid schemes with cap and trade and funding the corresponding research that leads to the conclusions they want. Cucinelli is just the auditor on this money side, imo.
It is unfortunately the case that in all branches of academia there is exaggeration, distortion, and cherrypicking of results. From a tiny study we are told to eat bran muffins or cranberries to live forever. A study of toxicity uses an absurdly high dose and concludes all chemicals should be banned. Specious arguments are used to claim silly things about the gender equivalence of little boys and girls. Deconstructionists and post-modernists write total gibberish. Are they all to be investigated now? And where are you going to find a court and jury who can follow the “hide the decline” complexities? Sorry, bad idea.
The fact that the so call “scientists” signed a petition by the Union of Concerned Liars, means their credibity is ZERO.
The UCS is an advocacy group, which has NEVER…repeat NEVER supplied ANY credentials for any of it’s “members”.
In the ’80’s, “Opinion” magazine sent a survey to 2500 individuals listed in “Who’s Who of American Men and Women in Science”. They recieved an ASTOUNDING 1875 responses. One of the questions (it was on energy supply) that they asked was, “Have you been, are you now, or are you planning on becoming a member of the UCS?”
They got ONE affirmative response.
They said statistically they had 95% confidence that less than 300 of the 150,000 listed in the Who’s Who for Science were members of the UCS.
If David Duke had a “cover” organization, and they produced a “petition” who’s intent I agreed with, in this era of the internet…I’m sure I’d research the petition orginators, and despite my agreement in principle, I would not sign it.
I expect as much from a TRUE “intellectual”.
Max
If you know that the analysis you are performing is informing public policy you have a duty to make that analysis as accurate as possible. The damage these policies are doing is huge. If this action drags information into the public domain earlier, or makes academics taking public funding think twice before embelishing their predictions then it gets my support. Science has a role in public policy only so long as it is believed to be rigorous and non-partisan. The rules of academia must change to prevent science being bent like this is future, and it is hard to see how that can be enforced without the courts. Peer review was supposed to prevent this. If academia wishes it’s publications to take part in public policy (and to be funded to do so) then it has to take responsibility for ensuring they offer the best representation of the science available. If the academic institutions do not take the scientific method seriously then it has to be enforced by the courts. The structure of academia appears to have been corrupted. That is the price you pay for taking the public shilling to inform public policy. There is no place for overstatement of facts in science. Mann may not be the right ultimate target, but he is the appropriate starting point to get the facts – and he is still refusing to provide the data and models.
Charging scientists with fraudulent research and misuse of public funds is not unprecedented. The Korean scientist that claimed various cloning breakthroughs was likewise charged. (Remember Newsweek breathlessly crowing that Koreans, as opposed to clumsy Caucasians, were more adept a gene manipulation because of their nimble use of chopsticks?)
OT, but care to listen directly to Dr. Wakefield?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/smith-scott8.1.1.html
IMHO, instead of likening Dr. Wakefield to Dr. Mann, he should have been likened to Dr. Patrick Michaels. Both were prosecuted by the Establishment because of their expression of skeptical and controversial (according to the power) views.
Steve McIntyre makes a persuasive case against Cuccinelli’s action at
http://climateaudit.org/2010/05/02/cuccinelli-v-mann/.
Those who want to politicize the issue should by all means do so this november by working against those members of congress who voted for Cap and Trade.
Craig Loehle says:
May 31, 2010 at 8:51 am
“It is unfortunately the case that in all branches of academia there is exaggeration, distortion, and cherrypicking of results. From a tiny study we are told to eat bran muffins or cranberries to live forever. A study of toxicity uses an absurdly high dose and concludes all chemicals should be banned. Specious arguments are used to claim silly things about the gender equivalence of little boys and girls. Deconstructionists and post-modernists write total gibberish. Are they all to be investigated now? And where are you going to find a court and jury who can follow the “hide the decline” complexities? Sorry, bad idea.”
You have a point there, Craig.
In Norway we have , I think they call them Sociologists (?), with PhD’s …..they study gender-stuff. And they refuse to include ANYTHING from biology; Genetics. It was a great scandal here now with a TV series called “Brainwash” that shows this very clearly to the taxpayers. They (The “scientists”) said flat out that they dont need any data from research within genetics, because all gender stuff comes from your environment and upbringing.
What can we do? We will have to wait until the 70’thy generation of marxists simply die of old age, and are replaced by a new generation of scientists, with new ideas.
However, its rather tragicomic me thinks, that the left, who loves to make laws and regulations, pushing every individual into a strict orwellian control regime, now is a victim of their own tactics.
Not many on the left understand what the marxist idea really leads to…..when everyone disagreeing with the party-line …has to be dealt with….suddenly, one day, its yourself!