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.
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Robert you hit all the nails so many of us point to individually right on the head in rapid succession. Integrity.
How can it be tenable that if someone were to plagiarize these passages that they could clearly dispute who they were actually plagiarizing from? These passages either belong to the IPCC, or they belong McMicheal.
You could have McMichael, the IPCC and a plagiarist all claiming the work as their own with these practices. I have no doubt McMicheal would prevail having verifiably published his book first, but it would paint the IPCC with the same brush as our hypothetical, and mischievous, plagiarist stuntman (who, incidentally never read McMicheal’s book because it appeared to be decades-old, refried social formula).
It would appear that McMicheal has led the IPCC to claim his previously published work as their own and original.
It’s worse than we thought?
Each new revelation of shonky, deceitful practices just illuminates how appalling this whole charade is.
Glenn says: September 4, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Glenn, go back to Climate Camp or Troll Trade School and take a refresher course. You’re not very good at this. I gave you the links to Yale, Harvard, the American Sociological Association and The American Chemical Society and their statements on academic integrity, but you do not place any value on unsupported claims. You noted that I stated that everything must be cited and then noted the exception for “common knowledge” in the links I gave… a real “gotcha” moment, no doubt.
“You have not made the slightest effort to address my questions and considerations” really?
“I seriously doubt that reproducing any string of a few words without attribution in academic writing is always considered plagiary” By all means. put it to the test.
Bill Tuttle says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Glenn: September 4, 2010 at 8:37 pm
And I seriously doubt that reproducing any string of a few words without attribution in academic writing is always considered plagiary.
“If that particular string of a few words had appeared in a previous publication in the order in which they were reproduced, and they were reproduced without attribution, and they did not fit the definition of common knowledge, then that is — by definition — plagiarism.”
Plagiary is in this respect is stealing another persons words, whether what is said is common knowledge or not.
@Bill tuttle
‘If I quibble hard enough, I could make the case that it is’.
Hi Bill
I suggest that you don’t bother. This is really a very small point and if you have to quibble so hard, it is not self-evidently obvious that you are right.
There are many powerful reasons to attack and discredit the IPCC. Let us focus on those rather than the minutiae.
Those ‘sceptical of scepticism’ would only use a concentration on a minor and obscure point as a general stick to beat the whole sceptical mindset with. Compared with Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035, whether an author chose to reuse some of his own phraseology without attrbution is trivial and needs exploring no further
@rattus norvegicus
‘To the moderator, nobody pays the scientists for their work on the IPCC. They are volunteers.’
Hmm…and of course it does their career no harm (currently) by having been associated with writing ‘The Bible’ of climate science. That presumably is why there is such a shortage of volunteers that many have to be turned away.
Rattus may live so deep in the hold of a ship that he has never come above to wake up and smell the coffee. But out here in the real world, the lack of direct folding money payments does not absolve one from exercising one’s professional judgement and discretion….volunteer or not.
Hey, the UK government managed to cobble together a justification for war, by using a high school essay posted on the internet. So why not use an unknown alarmist book for an IPCC report?
This is what the brave new 21st century has brought us – B.S and propaganda by the tonne.
.
Robert Phelan says:
“I disagree[with Anderson and McCulloch]. We usually describe plagiarism as “taking the work of another” but the failure to cite and credit previously published work is the essential element. It does not matter if the work is your own. If you quote from it or paraphrase it or use the outline of the argument, you must cite it. Anything else is plagiarism. You can plagiarise yourself.”
That is simply not true. I can write or contribute to a dozen books using my own ideas over and over. I have no obligation to cite myself, ultimately resulting in a long chain of self-references back to the original time I put the idea down on paper.
Again, I think what has been exposed here is significant: incestuous working group, lack of decent peer review, sloppy processes, (likely) lack of good scientific basis for the substantive statements underlying his book in the first place, and so on. I just don’t think plagiarism is the strongest stone to be casting here.
bluegrue says:
September 4, 2010 at 2:23 am
Oh, BTW, Donna Laframboise chose to chop off the reference from the IPCC passage: “evidence of climate-related shifts in malaria distribution (Haines et al., 1993).”
She sure did. The full citation is: Haines, A., P.R. Epstein, and A.J. McMichael, 1993: Global Health Watch: monitoring the impacts of environmental change. The Lancet, 342, 1464-1469. It can be purchased for $31.50 here: http://www.thelancet.com/advancedsearch. Simply do a search on “Haines” and “1993” and it will pop right up. I’ll bet that’s where McMichael’s reference to 2500 m comes from.
Craigo says:
September 4, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Can anyone comment on the particular altitude refered to? 2500 metres? Should it be feet? Is this just another IPCC mistake that has been missed? At around 1500m asl, Harare has a fair way to go despite recent hyperinflation to exceed 2500m asl and a quick Wiki of Nairobi suggests that it is both 1661m asl and 1795m asl!
Quoting from the IPCC’s “bible” on C(lie)mate Research quoting from his own book some ten year’s before:
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.
—…—…—
Look at the “science” that is dead wrong in McMicheal’s propaganda pushed by advocates of Mann-made CAGW via the inept and corrupt IPCC as they seek power and money:
Wrong elevation for either Harare (1490 meters, 4880 ft) AND Nairobi (1661 meters, 5450 ft),
Wrong assumption that malaria was not previously found in either city in Africa (until CAGW casts its disastrous footprint sometime in the near future),
Wrong assumption that malaria has a limit with temperature – it is found from the arctic and Siberian mountains areas down to the sub-Pacific tropics,
Wrong assumption that malaria is spreading as CAGW continues to warm up the planet – it is not, malaria has contracted throughout the 20th century. Until enviro’s deliberating began killing people.
wrong assumptions for malaria spreading as a function of temperature in any means,
Wrong “science” in directly quoting a non-peer-reviewed, non-scientific, self-serving book unknowingly (but deliberately hidden) with the author as the IPCC’s editor, already badly outdated when the latest IPCC review as a direct primary source in any account.
Bad qualifications for the IPCC’s editor.
But we are to condemn billions to an early death, suffering in the dark as they starve to death festering from disease and filth due to such “experts” and the elite “scientists” that the warmista’s favor.
Oh. Oh. I so agree with the IPCC being a perfect example of plagiarism in writing class lectures, and as a prime example of literature review faux pas. Not to mention the issue of grey papers as “factual” source material. The entire effort has been a boondoggle that can easily be smeared by any well trained 8th grader’s final project.
As far as this having any impact on the current US Administration, I doubt it. After all, who is the “Plagarizer-in-chief” of the US? The Veep himself.