Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has told a judge that his request for documents related to the work of former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann should be granted because neither academic freedom nor the First Amendment “immunizes” a person from a fraud investigation.
The university has petitioned a judge to set aside Cuccinelli’s “civil investigative demand,” essentially a subpoena, in which he sought seeking emails sent to and from Mann before he left the university in 2005, as well as information about five public grants Mann received while at the school.Cuccinelli made a lengthy response to the university’s petition in an Albemarle Circuit Court on Tuesday. In his answer, a top staff attorney for Cuccinelli rejects several arguments that had been made by the university’s lawyers–hired specially to handle the case, which has received national attention.
Cuccinelli notes some documents he has sought are public records that could ordinarily be released through a Freedom of Information request. He also uses Mann’s own resume to indicate the grants he has asked about were awarded through the university, even though some involved federal money.
But the core of Cuccinelli’s initial response is a rejection of the university’s position that turning over Mann’s documents would violate his academic freedom. The university had been under significant pressure from academics who believed Cuccinelli’s attempt to get the documents was part of a politcally-motivated crusade scientists who have researched global warming. “Academic freedom is neither implicated nor threatened by the CIDs” Cuccinelli’s lawyer wrote, arguing that academics have no shield against allegations that they have committed fraud.
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Academic freedom….we are at a crossroads here.
That backroom deals and conspiratorial machinations resulted in the subversion (distortion?) of the peer-review process is one thing. If the release of the climate-gate e-mails had only raised more ire within academia, the miscreants would have been brought to heel.
Sadly, all we have seen to date are whitewashes and misdirection. This too will pass and saner heads will eventually prevail. This does not excuse the methods that were employed to (almost) achieve the means.
Mann appears to be the poster-child for “professors gone bad” so making an example of him will be a cautionary tale to ensure better behavior from grant-seeking scientists. Using “re-jigged” results to gain more grants may constitute fraud and as such, deserves to receive the full punishment that the law provides.
Looks 100% like a fishing expetition and harrassment. The DA can’t even say what he is looking for. Not sure how much time it would take for the university to comply or for the DA’s office to go through the information. Since Mann is not longer at UV, I assume that the costs will only accrue to the unversity and the DA’s office. In general, the sucess of grants is judged by publications and weak performance (few or weak publications) reduces one’s chance with further grant proposals. Does the DA expect to undercover fraud in the administration of the grant by some accountant clerk in the grants research department at the University of Virginia?
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This will be a good test to see if scrutiny can be brought to bear on people taking taxpayer money while purporting to do climate science…. and the institutions that facilitate them.
So far it appears they are not willing to entertain a spirit of cooperation and transparency…… So, what is it that they are afraid will be discovered?
Wriggle wriggle.
Still, at least Piltdown Mann won’t be troubling us with spurious tree ring trends while he’s soaking up $1,800,000 studying the flightpaths of mosquitos.
I’m glad Ken Cuccinelli is still on the case. The more Michael Mann and those involved with him resist the more they look guilty. So all I can say is I hope they step up their efforts to resist even more.
It’s immensely funny to read what happens in comments at the WaPo when BruceFairfax starts quoting text. It is geschribben and rippen to shredden.
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Bravo!!! Cuccinelli… If fraud has been alleged, they must be forthcoming…. Even IF no fraud was alleged, all documents created with public funds should be available for public inspection… It’s time to get tough with our money… I just hope it’s not too late…
Also noteworthy is the incoherent rage and raving of the alarmist faction, using invective and rhetoric peculiar to the tribe. That comment section is going to be worth following for awhile.
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BillD says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:44 am
Looks 100% like a fishing expetition and harrassment.
100% Bill? It depends what kind of glasses you’re looking through.
The reporting on this story has not been good. Read the comments and you can see how confused people are about what is going on.
Of course the government can investigate Mann. This is essentially an audit. If Mann has committed fraud, then he and the university have to return money to Virginia. Even if Mann has committed fraud, he will not be sent to prison. This is only about the money. And Cuccinelli is not judging the science. The people who think it is are way, way off base. The reporter should do a better job of explaining what Cuccinelli is looking at.
Mann and the university should stop complaining and turn over the documents. Thye are acting like they are guilty! If I was Cuccinelli, I would keep pressing.
On the comments page of the Washington Post RonInIrvine put it best:
Through experience Cuccinelli knows that the more an organisation resists the more likely there is a smoking gun.
As my ma always used to say “If you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear.” :o(
Good. Both barrels, Mr. Attorney General.
The arrogance of academia is rather disgusting, frankly.
BillD says:
“Looks 100% like a fishing expetition and harrassment. The DA can’t even say what he is looking for.”
Actually, it pretty clear what he is looking for and neither fishing nor harassment is involved. Mann’s e-mail may very well contain discussion, as there was in the CRU e-mail, of unscientific thinking that went into creating the HockeyStick graph in which he/they (colleagues) consciously selected data and altered statistical programming to create a specific desired result.
It is one thing to make an honest error and logically follow and try to support a wrong hypothesis, but it is another to knowingly use immoral and false methods to create a result to support a politically motivated hypothesis. Now it is fraud—no academic freedom is involved—as other people’s money was used to fund the fraud and the results would be used to support the larger fraud of AGW.
Academic freedom does not mean that a tenured professor can do anything he/she jolly well pleases. There are still bounds. First, they are subject to all of our morals, ethics, and laws. They do have the freedom to study any area of knowledge they like or even change fields, as Albert Svent-Gyorgi did when he switched from biochemistry to crystallography. However, they do have to follow rational lines of thought and have to perform defendable work; otherwise, being unproductive, they can be stripped of their tenure. Yep, there are indeed limits.
And, if a paper was published, it only means that the rationale of the paper and its form was acceptable to that particular journal and its editor. It is the discussion and academic (lacking ad hominem attacks) arguments that follow that determines whether it is good science or not.
I was in lipid biochemistry and the literature from before 1980 is rank with papers that appear to make sense, but when you learn the odd chemistry that can occur in nonaqueous environments of fats, oils, and hydrocarbons and the innocent mistakes that can be made in handling these compounds, you find that over 50% of the papers are rubbish. Now that we know this, from our own and contemporary work, only the truly valid papers and their methods are cited over and over in current literature, becoming the scientific foundation of current and future work.
Time, adult discussion, and the utility of the published science determines, in a form of Darwinian selection, the fitness of the science.
“Looks 100% like a fishing expedition and harrassment.” BillD
Of course it’s a fishing expedition. Is that supposed to be some kind of condemnation? Every time the IRS audits someone they are on a fishing expedition. If a university or a researcher takes grant money they should expect to make an accounting of how the money was used. As long as governments give out grant money there will be people tempted to misuse it and there will have to be people making sure it doesn’t get misused, that’s the nature of money. You know, even Andy Revkin over at the NYTimes jokes about grant money, saying, “I got out of college in 1978. I was lucky enough to get a fellowship that allowed me to study ‘Man’s Relationship to the Sea in the South Pacific’ It was a real scam.” – this was during his keynote at a recent “Moving By Degrees” symposium. I think that people should take grant money more seriously than they do. Thinking that a vague notion such as “academic freedom” is license for educators and researchers do as they please simply because they think of themselves as academic is naive. Furthermore this all ties in to the uncertainty of climate science which is the thing that the U.S. Supreme Court directed the EPA to be on the watch for. There is a strong possibility that Cuccinelli is motivated by political considerations, but this is not that different from scientists letting their political cant interfere with their scientific judgments. Let’s not forget that Mann’s colleagues are the ones that described him as using a “trick.” That alone may be sufficient to warrant attention from authorities.
I love the bit where UVA’ lawyer is claiming that the since this is the first time a CID has been issued under the FATA, it is unprecedented.
The warmers do so love that word – and now, finally, they get to use it in legal brief. I’m so happy for them.
I am still underwhelmed by the attourney general jumping into this. I do actually consider it a publicity stunt for future political gain.
That said , the fact that the last stand for people looking for the actual truth in a scientific issue revolving around the basic principles of the scientific method, ie., propose a theory, design an experiment , evealuate the results, ADJUST YOUR THEORY TO THE OBSERVED RESULTS, retest, continue the cycle until you have a thesis that withstands all the test. Publish your results , discuss the objections with anybody who has a problem with your theory. Make sure that your results are reproduceable by anybody who is interested.
In this particular case the AGW theory has world changing implications if it stands up to the scientific test. There could be Nobel invitations for properly done research , so just out of curiosity
WHY ON EARTH ARE THE PEOPLE WHO DESIGNED THE TESTS AND DID THE RESEARCH NOT STANDING ONTOP OF THE BIGEST MOUNTAIN THEY CAN FIND YELLING AT THE WORLD . HERE IS MY DATA, HERE IS MY THEORY BRIONG ON YOUR BEST I WILL DEFEND MY THEORIES BECAUSE THEY ARE WITHOUT ANY DOUBT CORRECT.
Unfortunately we are left with a bunch of incestuous back patters who can not defend their lunch choices let alone some of what could have been earth shaking research.
Here endeth the rant
BillD:
“Not sure how much time it would take for the university to comply or for the DA’s office to go through the information. ”
Hell of a lot less than fighting it out in court. Are you suggesting that no possible frauds should ever be investigated, as the same objection always applies?
BillD: “Since Mann is not longer at UV, I assume that the costs will only accrue to the unversity and the DA’s office. ”
Maybe you are hinting that Mann should pay the costs if guilty? Anyone have a problem with that?
Again, should no fraud inquiries ever take place?
In any case, if it leads to applicants for grants being more scrupulous than they otherwise might have been the investigation could pay for itself.
BillD: “In general, the sucess of grants is judged by publications and weak performance (few or weak publications) reduces one’s chance with further grant proposals. ”
That anyone can put this idea forward with a straight face after the proof of “the team” at least attempting to pervert peer review is astonishing.
I am confused, and perhaps someone with a better understanding of the law can help me out here. But isn’t the U-Va a publicly funded institution, and weren’t the documents in question prepared using U-Va (therefore publicly owned) machines? If those two observations are correct then wouldn’t the recent Supreme Court ruling (Ontario vs. Quon) apply? It is my understanding that the court found that an individual using a publicly owned communication device did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It seems to me that the court has made it clear that anyone who uses publicly paid for equipment and publicly paid for work time has in essence produced a publicly paid for document and that those documents should be made available. Have I misinterpreted the court ruling? Or is there some other reason why this ruling wouldn’t apply in this instance?
Not to worry America! In the short term, if Mann has done anything for which he should be punished he will receive a Pardon from the President of the ASPCC and a few more grants from the NAS. If the University of Virginia has done anything for which it should be punished it will receive numurous pledges and bequests from the AlGoreInstitute.ORG.
In the long term, Mann will live (after he dies) in infamy and be despised by real scientists (and many psyentists) forever and ever and evermore (a Benedict Arnold kind’a fella), and the University will be renamed The Mann GED Institute of Fiction and Poetry and eventually become a Community College, LLC, on the WWW, restricted to those in prison for child molesting and serving life terms.
Damnation is for Eternity! Or so I’m told.
“BillD says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:44 am
Looks 100% like a fishing expetition and harrassment. The DA can’t even say what he is looking for. Not sure how much time it would take for the university to comply or for the DA’s office to go through the information. Since Mann is not longer at UV, I assume that the costs will only accrue to the unversity and the DA’s office. In general, the sucess of grants is judged by publications and weak performance (few or weak publications) reduces one’s chance with further grant proposals. Does the DA expect to undercover fraud in the administration of the grant by some accountant clerk in the grants research department at the University of Virginia?”
When you sign on to get ‘government money’ everything you do that you charge to that money belongs to the government sponsor – you lose ALL rights to it and any privacy on the work. The intellectual property of anything done with government funding is vested TOTALLY with the government. Effectively, your work should be ‘open book’ as far as the government sponsor is concerned. In this case the government sponsor is now of the opinion that something was hidden from them – they have absolute right to ask for and see anything that was used or developed under that research grant.
These government research grants are by no means free money and the fruits of your and your students’ labors are completely owned by the government this includes not only results but also any stationery and furniture and computer hardware and software that was funded under the grant- if you don’t like that idea then don’t ask for a government grant.
Access to the information will in the end will come down to a simple contractual argument. Remember the State may also decide that if the university is recalcitrant in meeting these contractual research grant obligations, then perhaps no further State research grants will be extended to any department of the university. The fact that the university is willing to risk loss of all research funding raises some questions about what it is they feel they need to withhold: presumably disclosure of whatever it is would be of equal cost to them as loss of grant funding.
“The DA can’t even say what he is looking for. The DA can’t even say what he is looking for. ”
and that is why he is requesting the records d’oh!
not until he gets the records will he know whether or not fraud has taken place
BillD Said:
“The DA can’t even say what he is looking for.”
Actually, the DA said specifically that he was investigating the possibility of FRAUD. It doesn’t make any difference who committed the fraud.
Yes, it looks like a fishing expedition. So what? It is a time honored liberal political tradition.
We have all seen some pretty ugly fish that need to be expelled from the academic pond, and finding the Al Capone equivalent of income tax evasion is just as effective in curtailing Dr Mann’s damage on honest science and society.
And that is why I am proud to be a Virginian! Here’s an inconvenient truth. Professors at Virginia public universities are state employees. The AG has full standing for the investigation of all current and former state employees.
“Academic freedom” is as important as freedom of speech, but academic fraud deserves no nore protection than freedom of speech can protect one’s freedom to lie under oath. Mann is not being tried for scientific perjury, but why is academia trying to thwart the process if fact-finding? Is there an academic fear of uncovering the true facts?
The more they hide, the more they look bad!