I have a bit of time free and a connection available so I just had to get this story up that I’ve been reading on my cellphone. I have to hand it to Donna Laframboise of nofrakkingconsensus, she’s a tireless detail ferret. She’s already found a boatload of errors in the various IPCC reports, now she finds word for word copying from a book to write the health effects section of the IPPC WG2 report.
Donna writes in “The Book the IPCC Plagiarized”:
It appears unlikely that a good faith, bona fide review of the scientific literature took place prior to the writing of significant sections of the IPCC’s first health chapter. Instead, the climate bible surreptitiously incorporated numerous opinions expressed a few years earlier by the activist-oriented person in charge of writing this chapter.
Then the media told the world that the IPCC’s proclamations regarding global warming and diseases such as malaria were the considered, consensus view of thousands of experts.
Of course we’ve been saying for some time that the “malaria link” to global warming is unsupported, one might even call it hyped, seeing how bad the correlations (or lack thereof) are. Now we find the IPPC didn’t really bother to check research. They just copied it from a doomsday book by an activist. See below.
Donna points out this word for word similarity between the book and the 1995 WG2 report:
McMichael’s 1993 book, page 154:
In eastern Africa, a relatively small increase in winter temperature would enable the malarial zone to extend ‘upwards’ to engulf the large urban highland populations that are currently off-limits to the mosquito because of the cooler temperatures at higher altitudes – e.g. Nairobi (Kenya) and Harare (Zimbabwe). Indeed, such populations around the world, currently just outside the margins of endemic malaria, would provide early evidence of climate-related shifts in the distribution of this disease.
Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 574:
Hence, it is a reasonable prediction that, in eastern Africa, a relatively small increase in winter temperature could extend the mosquito habitat and thus enable faciparum malaria to reach beyond the usual altitude limit of around 2,500 m to the large, malaria-free, urban highland populations, e.g. Nairobi in Kenya and Harare in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the monitoring of such populations around the world, currently just beyond the boundaries of stable endemic malaria, could provide early evidence of climate-related shifts in malaria distribution.
another example:
McMichael’s 1993 book, page 150:
Sandstorms in Kansas (USA) and in the Sudan have been accompanied by increased illness and death from bronchitis and asthma.
Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 578:
Sandstorms in Kansas (USA) and the Sudan have been accompanied by increases in bronchitis and asthma.
Sheesh.
Read the whole IPCC train wreck here. It’s not just a couple of sentences, there’s plenty more where this sample came from.
Its starting to be clear, the IPPC WG 2 report should have the over tittle “Planetary Overload” and be sold with “Science fiction books”
I’m not convinced this is plagiarism either. Let’s see what’s happening. We know that there has been a concern, rightly or wrongly, that warming will lead to an increase in malaria distribution. Assume for arguments sake that two areas of study have been around Nairobi and Kenya. It therefore seems reasonable that this would be cited in the report. The material states that 1) an increase in winter temperature would extend the mosquito habitat, 2) they would extend their altitude range to where high populations exist and 3) monitoring these populations would provide a yardstick for general malarial progressions.
It may be that one of the authors of the report is familiar with the book. If so, this would have brought to mind this particular scenario. It would have been quite possible for an author who is competent in this field to regurgitate from memory something very similar to the book so long as he wished to convey the sequence of thoughts that I’ve listed above.
Do we really want to go down the road, as legitimate sceptics, where we are seen to be blowing smoke over non issues? While I applaud Donna for the great work done so far, I think this should be placed in the category of ‘interesting, but not particularly important.’
@Dave F
I guess that McMichael (he) wrote the first draft, which was a identical to the passage in his book, and that his co-authors (they) edited for language.
This happens all the time. The IPCC is a literature review. If one of the IPCC authors just published a peer-review, it will be recycled for the IPCC. And vice versa, IPCC authors recycle material from IPCC reports for their own papers.
Latimer Alder: September 3, 2010 at 11:00 pm
I’m no fan of the IPCC at all as my previous posts will testify, but is it at all possible to plagiarise oneself?
If you are made responsible for writing a chapter about a particular topic and discover that you have already done this work, and are pretty pleased with the way you have expressed it, I don’t see that it can be plagiarism to repeat it elsewhere..it is after all, your own intellectual property. So plagiarism = no.
If I quibble hard enough, I could make the case that it is.
Broadly speaking, whenever you are stating a fact or advocating a conclusion in a professional publication, and that fact does not fit the definition of “common knowledge,” you must cite your source if it is not original thought. If you do it by directly citing or closely paraphrasing a previously-published work, and do not use either quotation marks or a footnote crediting the source, it fits the definition of plagiarism.
Here’s where the quibbling comes in.
In this instance, regardless of authorship, the Working Group Report based a purportedly *scientific* (i.e., unbiased) presumption (Working Group Report, page 574) on a statement from a previously-published, for-profit publication (McMichael’s, page 154) with a decidedly Malthusian bias, and did it without attribution. Therefore, the Working Group statement does not fit either the definition of common knowledge (because it is a false assumption) or original thought, because it was previously-published.
I’d really only be seriously worried if they were plagiarizing from a work intended to be fictional, not just incidentally so.
BTW: If the Overlord book’s copyright is owned by the publisher and not the author, then McMichael could get into serious legal trouble committing copyright theft against his own work.
Rattus “Epic Fail” Norvegicus and Richard “pathetic slur” Telford seem not to have read Donna carefully. In fact I didn’t get the gist of Donna’s issue myself until I read her directly.
Donna’s writing about the second IPCC report (1995), where she says epidemiologist McMichael was chosen as Lead Author for the 2001 health chapter, and her concern was not plagiarism directly, but the strong likelihood that IPCC was “stacking the deck”: the reasonable inference that McMichael was chosen because of his 1993 book “Planetary Overload” whose chapter on global warming relies on IPCC 1990 projections and GHG assessments we now know are faulty, and on Greenpeace material we know is not peer-reviewed.
And as many here will know, the real malaria expert Paul Reiter condemned IPCC on the strength of its mishandling of the issue of malaria. Which it now appears (no time to check exhaustively), goes back to McMichael.
In the light of all this, it certainly looks like unacceptable practice not to reference “Planetary Overload” as source material. Was this done to avoid the impression of an insiders’ clique?
sorry, for 2001 read 1995
“The whole point of the “plagiarism” is that it clearly demonstrates a before and after, evidence of a strong, pre-existing bias leading one to seriously question why McMichael was chosen as an editor and whether of not there was a good-faith review of all available evidence before writing the IPCC report.”
If all he did was quote himself, with or without attribution, then it would be safe to assume that there wasn’t a genuine review.
“How many more sections are simply the expression of the lead writer’s opinion rather than a synthesis of the best science at the time ?”
It seems that the most rigorous part of the whole exercise was choosing the “proper” lead editors.
All these comments that it is not plagiarism. If you are the author of the original work miss the major point (possibly deliberately).
If large sections of major impact in the AR4 report are extracts from a lead author’s book printed some years before the IPCC report, but are not marked as such, then the impression is that these are the carefully crafted sentences based on the inputs of a large group of scientists. However, if the text is correctly marked as a quote and referenced to a source, it then is being honest that much of the text is from previous work by a member of the working group whose views/biases are known. By NOT marking it as quotes ‘from work he was proud of’ the fact that much of the report is extracts from his work is hidden – yet he is proud of it? Surely if the author is proud of his research and his turn of phrase that should be acknowledged.
To correctly attribute quotes in the report would perhaps show that the report was a patchwork quilt drawn from pre-existing activist documents. This would have reduced the ‘authority’ of the AR4 report and that is why the quotes were not marked and attributed as they should have been.
This also shows that the IPCC reports were almost certainly driven by a small committed group who wanted to stamp their AGW opinions into the report effectively raising the status of their views expressed in their ‘plagiarized’ books to that of an international report supposedly based on the peer reviewed research of thousands of scientists.
@Lucy Skywalker
Thanks for setting us straight.
Prior to 1994, A J McMichael had one peer-reviewed paper on the subject: “Global environmental change and human population health: A conceptual and scientific challenge for epidemiology”, International Journal of Epidemiology 22 (1), pp. 1-8
Abstract:
A large and rapidly growing human population, resource intensive industrial practices, and land exhausting agriculture has overloaded the carrying capacity of the planet’s natural systems. Evidence of overloading include global warming, soil degradation and topsoil loss, decreasing stratospheric ozone, depletion of groundwater, reduced genetic and ecosystem diversity, and acidification of water and soils. These global environmental changes threaten human health in qualitatively different way than the way conventional environmental pollutants do. The risks arising from these changes stem from impairment of productivity (soils, forests, oceans, biodiversity) or stability (climate, sea level, ultraviolet, filtration). Epidemiologist must adopt an ecological model to identify, study, and to quantify the health effects of ecological disturbances. The health effects from these disturbances include those caused by atmospheric changes, by reduced agricultural yield, and by uncontrolled growth of urban populations. The UN recognizes that scientific disciplines and human capabilities to evaluate and provide sound guidance cannot keep pace with the fast rate of ecological change. Thus, rather than empirical evidence, interdisciplinary research, using modeling and forecasting to assess health effects, is needed to provide decision makers with the best available estimates.
The problem is not plagiarism, but the chain of sourced material breaking scientific rules to falsely claim consensus.
This IPCC Chapter may use snippets from a book of one of the contributing authors, and it may cite it claiming that the book also takes cited snippets from peer reviewed published articles. However the problem is, the book (even if it uses peer reviewed texts) is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific text. It is a book which contains the author’s own bias. Therefore we do not know if the book is an accurate and honest representation of the original peer-reviewed science, or a twisted misrepresentation, or a close attempt, but contaminated by conformation bias.
The book’s author should have solely used the original peer-reviewed scientific articles only AND to remove any suggestion of bias, should have shown any peer-reviewed articles which contradict this theory and show why these contradictory articles are wrong.
This means that this part of the IPCC chapter on health, pertaining to malaria spread is unsupported by unbiased, sound scientific study.
richard telford says:
September 4, 2010 at 12:47 am
Another pathetic slur. Apparently unable to critique the science in the IPCC, are the skeptics now relying on inventing rules?
Self-plagiarism is no sin.
Lawyers may disagree. If I pay for a new, independent report on something, I expect it to be a new, independent report. I do not expect the authors to merely regurgitate what they wrote a decade before without re-investigating the matter.
There have been several successful suits where someone has paid for original material and objected to having the author merely recycle old material.
The attack on the IPCC’s flaws is not a distraction from the science. It is necessary because the IPCC insists that its methods are perfect, represent the near totality of scientific opinion and give a reliable result. If these claims are not challenged, then they will be believed. To show the science of the IPCC is wrong, it is necessary to show the flaws in their process.
BTW, I think many people actively “critique the science” of the IPCC. I imagine you disagree with them, but it is ridiculous to assert that the sceptics only line of argument is the increasing number of flaws in the IPCC’s methods.
I concur with Aric Anderson (9/3 @ur momisugly 10:51AM) and Latimer Adler (9/3@ur momisugly11:00AM) that the problem here is not plagiarism per se, since you can’t plagiarize yourself.
It does, however, well illustrate how IPCC authors often lift congenial viewpoints from the gray literature (in this case McMichael’s own viewpoint), rather than sticking to the peer reviewed literature for facts, as they are supposed to.
So there’s a big problem here, but not a plagiarism problem. More like sock puppets, multiple webnames for a single person in order to create the false impression of consensus.
plagiarism, self-plagiarism, so what? The point here is McMichaels is plain wrong, and referencing or not referencing your earlier wrong work doesn’t make your wrong analysis right. It was this issue that caused A grade malaria expert Paul Reiter to resign from the IPCC, and cause a fuss demanding his name be removed. His point was malaria’s incidence or spread was not significantly temperature related, pointing to 19th century Russia, 20th century Italy, and to simply arguemore warmth = more malaria was in his truly expert view a simplification tothe point of falsification of a complex process
Perhaps having a definition at the top of the page according to which plagiarism involves the use of “another’s” work or ideas was unwise, given that the charge being made is that the author of a chapter borrowed from his own earlier work. As far as whether the fact that he borrows is intended to show that no open review of the literature was performed, that depends on whether he did such a review in his original book. Trying to suggest that he didn’t by calling him an “activist” is feeble; that tactic could probably be used by both sides in the debate.
I don’t know why rattus uses the teenager expression of ‘epic fail’ whenever he thinks there is a opportunity.
If you are an IPCC author, cant you write some new text up, for the holy task that supposedly is? Instead you have regurgitate your old copy-paste nonsense o’er again?
It was specifically with the malaria claims about Nairobi that Paul Richter had issues with.
If the same type of digging up about plagiarism and such, were to have been carried out by the hoarse-whispering Deepclimate, rattus will be there cheerleading for sure. ;). ‘Warmist’ or skeptic bloggers may examine each others’ claims and attack each other, that is fine and healthy, but warmist bloggers standing up for every item of junk that spills out down from the mouth of the IPCC – that is beyond understandable. In the last 6 months, there are warmists to defend each and every error and mistake made by the IPCC, which have all been exposed by skeptics alone.
Surely, ‘IPCC science’ can require defense, but IPCC ‘scholarship’? Why does that need defense?
Only the copy-pasting from WWF, and novels and magazines, needs defense, because the belief in the bad state of the world and its climate, depends on the alarmist claims that climbed into the IPCC due to its bad scholarship.
What a funny position to be in. 🙂
It seems to me that at least someone(s) involved in the IPCC side of the equation knew what they were doing and were concerned enough about it to change the wording here and there.
If they weren’t worried about either a) plagarism, or b) copyright issues, then why bother changing anything? Why try and hide it?
And above and beyond all that, there’s that pesky, little “peer-reviewed” issue again…
THAT is the “Epic. Fail.” (Hope I got all those quotation marks right!)
JimB
Lucy Skywalker
So you are blaming Watts rather than the serially inept Laframboise for this groundless plagiarism allegation?
McMichael was presumably chosen because he had relevant expertise. Only in the topsy-turvy world of climate skeptics would you want someone with no expertise to write a review of the literature.
Even if here were an expert – proven amply by his reliance on New Scientist and Greenpeace reports – can’t he write new stuff?
Richard:
“Only in the topsy-turvy world of climate skeptics would you want someone with no expertise to write a review of the literature.”
And only in the completely upsidedown world of climate alarmism would the fact that someone wrote a book automatically make him expert in anything, or signify any level of “expertise”…and there lies the rub with IPCC reports in general.
JimB
JimB
u.k.(us) says:
September 3, 2010 at 10:02 pm
“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Sir Isaac Newton
Well Newton seems to have lifted that from Bernard of Chartres (11th Century) – and where did he get it from?
Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
September 3, 2010 at 9:38 pm
“Something you might expect from a 5th grader, but from the top scientists at the IPCC, the ones that know the science is settled? Sounds like someone forgot to do their homework, fooled around, and then did it quickly at the last minute?”
Awww, c’mon! Cut ’em some slack. With all that jetting around to conferences in exaotic locales it doesn’t leave a lot of time to work on the ARs. I mean, really; don’t you know how hard it is to work when you’re suffering jet lag and a hangover? ;o)
And we’re surprised this comes from a political body with virtually no oversight and with a political agenda to reach a predetermined conclusion because…?
I love this passage:
McMichael’s 1993 book, page 166:
With respect to adverse effects on livestock, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified several infectious diseases – such as the horn fly in beef and dairy cattle and insect-borne anaplasmosis infection in sheep and cattle – which might well increase in response to climate changes.
Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 577:
For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified several infectious diseases – such as the horn fly in beef and dairy cattle and insect-borne anaplasmosis infection in sheep and cattle – that could increase in prevalence in response to climate changes.”
No mention of the 1995 WTO Agreement on Agriculture that promoted open borders with NO Disease Quarantine! (aka unjustified trade barriers) Talk about stacking the deck so that increase in disease happens. See New York Times article “The Safety Gap”
The USDA has cut back on cattle disease testing by up to 90% and has shifted what testing is done to dead animals at slaughter instead of testing live animals at the farm. This allows a disease years to be passed from one farm to another before the animal is finally sent to slaughter.
The USDA is also closing down testing labs. “USDA is moving toward supporting fewer labs nationwide, with the remaining labs serving as regional labs and supporting larger geographic areas..” http://www.tahc.state.tx.us/agency/TAHC_Strategic_Plan_2009-2013.pdf
“Cattle crossing facilities on the U.S. side of the border are operated primarily by private firms… at Santa Teresa, NM, Chihuahuan [Mexican] cattle producers operate both sides of the cattle port-of-entry” http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/Agoutlook/june2001/AO282d.pdf
“Free trade makes it easier for Mexico to sell us cattle,” Mr. Suppan said. “Mexico does not have in place the infrastructure to eradicate tuberculosis.”…Bovine tuberculosis is fast becoming an important reason that carcasses are being condemned as unsafe in American beef packing plants. The number of carcasses found infected is 15 times higher than in 1986. Dr. Billy Johnson, said about 80 percent of the condemned carcasses were traced back to animals raised in Mexico.” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D91431F935A25752C1A965958260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all
“..new disease challenges are emerging. Some are domestic diseases that are increasing in significance. Others are foreign diseases that may be imported as result of the exponential increases in international importations of animals and animal products. Our industries and our economy are threatened by diseases and pests that heretofore we only read about in disease text books…” http://www.tahc.state.tx.us/agency/TAHC_Strategic_Plan_2009-2013.pdf
Quicky Background: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12254
This is the UN and WTO connections:
From International Organization OIE (Office International des Épizooties) we have:
“It is urgent that scientists come forward with alternative methods of disease control that will not only avoid wastage of valuable animal proteins but that will also promote the international trade of animals and animal products by removing technically unjustified trade barriers caused by animal diseases” http://www.oie.int/eng/press/en_040422.htm
“Furthermore, it can help to eliminate unjustified trade barriers, since a sound traceability system provides trading partners with assurances on the safety of the products they import. Traceability techniques can provide additional guarantees as to the origin, type or organoleptic quality of food products.” http://www.oie.int/eng/edito/en_edito_apr08.htm
Note these quotes are a few years old and I have found changes were made to the originals without date changes. The USDA has been trying to prove livestock farmers are Mis-Informed and in some cases our right lie
Isn’t it interesting how controling Energy (climate) Food and Money (economic crisis) are all connected to the UN?
JimB says:
September 4, 2010 at 6:12 am
And only in the completely upsidedown world of climate alarmism would the fact that someone wrote a book automatically make him expert in anything, or signify any level of “expertise”
————-
The rest of his CV might indicate a degree of expertise though. Google scholar will give you a list of his papers (abet probably incomplete) – this man is no one-book expert.
Arguments that the IPPC author’s expertise are little more than ad hominems from those, totally unworthy of the title skeptic, who are unable to find any faults in McMichaels contributions to the IPCC.