Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Regular readers will remember that the fuss generated by Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick chart caused an investigation. A U.S. Congressional committee, led by Congressman Joe Barton, asked Edward Wegman to investigate the methods and findings of Michael Mann. (See the Wegman report titled “AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION” here)
Now Wegman’s work is being investigated in much the same manner by people alleging that Wegman’s work contains plagiarized material.
The investigating institution, George Mason University, is responding to a formal complaint by Raymond Bradley, who was a co-author with Michael Mann of the work Wegman looked into.
One of the anonymous weblogs specializing in climate hysteria, Deep Climate, has been trumpeting charges about Wegman’s work for quite some time, alleging among other heinous crimes that some of the post grads working with Wegman had plagiarized work. Given the source, I had not paid much attention to it.
But if there is a formal complaint, we need to look at it seriously. Wegman’s criticism of Mann’s work is widely cited–his famous claim that ‘right answer, wrong method equals bad science’ is certainly and obviously correct–but it will have to apply to him, too.
I should also note that this is being handled better than Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of the University of Virginia’s grants for Michael Mann–basically because it’s being handled by the institution involved, as it should be.
I don’t like the weblog Deep Climate, and I very much respect the report Edward Wegman put out. I understand what the report said and I agree with its conclusions. So I’m hoping this investigation is thorough, quick and that Wegman’s work stands.
But there’s no way we can ignore this and complain about a lack of vigor in finding out what went wrong with CRU, Climategate and the Hockey Stick. This is bad news (for me). But it is news.
Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick will not be resurrected–there is enough criticism of it from his own colleagues in the leaked emails of Climategate to insure that. But Wegman’s report may sink under the weight of plagiarized material and while that would be a pity, that’s sometimes the way things work.
Let’s watch this and see, and report on the results in a clear-eyed fashion. Just because we have policy preferences and have opinions doesn’t mean we can ignore the facts.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
maybe Cuccineli should go after Wegman, instead of wasting everybody’s time and money chasing Michael E. Mann
So I guess, like most things political, when you cannot argue the facts, you attack the messenger. Like several previous posters, after looking at the allegations I see much smoke and mirrors and not too much substance. I would hope when giving definitions of things, they might be similar to something found in a text on the subject. Not giving a citiation, an oversight yes. But then for something that wasn’t meant as a “scholarly” publication but rather a report to Congress, who cares? Not me.
I don’t see the problem.
Whatever way you cut it, plagiarising reliable accurate sources is 1,000 times better that making up your own data and then manipulating/strangling it to support your own dubious hypotheses a la Mann and other climate ‘scientists’.
The report posted on Deep Climate is an incoherent mess. Did anyone actually try to read through it?
This is a joke right? The report cites Wikipedia and sourcewatch?
Check out this statement,
“The first sentence is plagiarized from Wikipedia”
WTF? Really? If anyone knows how Wikipedia works they would realize how idiotic this statement is. The moron who wrote the report is citing current pages of Wikipedia to a report that was written in 2006!
Isn’t this just another version of an ad hominem attack? Just like it does not matter scientifically if Wegman took bad oil and coal company money (or even embezzled the pension funds of widows and orphans) to fund his research — as long as the research and data are correct — so also it doesn’t matter scientifically if portions of Wegman’s report are plagiarized as long as the research and data are correct. Hey, Wegman could be convicted of thousands of murders with felonious intent without it affecting the correctness of his research and data one iota.
Boy we have surfing trolls, must surely be the last gasp for some, guess they need something to crow about. they have been quiet lately. So lets wait and see.
Might be the season for investigations, proper ones that is. where will it end!!
My gosh!!
Well said, a jones. Your metaphor (if that’s what it is) is a good one and a good read. Reassuring in the midst of madness too. Thanks.
Any university worth its salt will deal with ‘blood on the walls’ properly. Their reputations and academic status are at stake. Those insitutions that try to hide the blood will be dismissed as no good for serious study. It’ll take time but it’ll happen thanks to sites like this. How many of us here used to believe the warmies? The tide is turning.
I just checked the Deep Climate pdf and only question that came to my mind was “Is that it?”. Few short paragraphs in introduction. Some word here and there. Not worth the hassle, unless you have too much time on your hands.
Well, one of the reasons for peer review is to catch oversights in attributions.
I do not know where reports to political bodies fall in the spectrum of publications. I would certainly not expect them to offer original scientific work .
Maybe reports should be peer reviewed.
It would be interesting to know whether the accuser’s work was listed in the references and just the specific sentences not referenced, or …
If the reference was there but the specific citation to sentences is not, it is a trivial accusation.
This just stinks of revenge … maybe technically some small error happened, but I stated before I was before getting someone on a technicallity just because we are mad about events…even if it is Michael Mann…If you take a magnifying glass to anyone’e life, you will find something illegal unless they are really good at burning evidence literally.
a jones @ur momisugly 11:50 pm
Hate to be picky, but a narrow approach by the French over a boggy quagmire massed their cavalry together and slowed them down fatally. Room to manoeuvre greatly reduced the effect of massed firepower.
We must keep the opponent hemmed in. We do this by constantly reiterating the main focus of contention — shoddy science. True, we can pick up the plums our adversaries inadvertently give us, such as splattergate, but overall we must stay on theme. The science is everything. If we slip, or appear to, as occasionally we shall, the problems must be dealt with openly and promptly. In this way we set the standard for dealing with real or perceived mistakes, thereby drawing a sharp contrast between ourselves and our adversaries. We keep the argument confined to the matter of good science, openly done. We hem them in right there.
But true, Crecy and Agincourt were damn fine battles.
Jan Pompe says:
October 8, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Thanks for the link.
Both pages read like encyclopedia entries. When one is describing the same field it is hard to avoid similar sentence structures , and there is nothing original in the pages.
Might as well call plagiarism using the same alphabet!
Makes perfect sense.
Wegman copied Bradley. Bradley is a Mann Co Author. Wegman criticized Mann. Therefore, Wegman is wrong, err Bradley is wrong. And it’s clear from this that decentered PCA is correct. makes sense. Didnt even have to review the math. Climate science! the only field where this kind of logic holds
In the end nothing turns on the Wegman affair. except the focus.
I posted the following over at BishopHill Earlier:
I took the bother to follow Eli Rabbett’s bait, at the cost of adding another hit to his website (the reason he tosses cryptic contributions from beneath the bridge over which Billy Goats Gruff are crossing – anything for a hit on his blog).
For those who don’t know him, he is apparently Joshua B. Halpern, a chemistry professor at Howard University, who does not appear to have any publications directly relevant to the science of climate change.
The ‘lawyering up’ of Wegman is his logical stretch from a comment from Wegman that there is some ‘litigation’, because Mann-coauthor has lodged a plagiarism complaint against both Wegman and several of his graduate students. The basis for this complaint appears to be a the almost obsessive work by computer scientist (again, no climate change publications) John Mashey. Many of the graduate students accused by Mashey contributed to the Wegman Report.
Curious, I looked briefly at some of Mashey’s ‘evidence’. I stress SOME. Much of the case seems weak: several claims of plagiarism amount to claims that paraphrasing does not differ sufficiently from the source, and (since the source is attributed) would not pass as plagiarism in a student essay. At best, it would draw a cautionary margin note. (In an age when we in universities are dealing with passages copied verbatim, this would not get past square one).
Much of the material referred to is simply descriptive of basic science, with variations on passages like ‘carbohydrates are fermented to produce alcohol.’ Mashet seems to get very excited that paraphrasing of that yields text like’ carbohydrates are femented to make alcohol’, and it has a lot of words in common. (Try paraphrasing a basic statement in science and NOT use a lot of words in common!)
I found no evidence produced of what would constitute serious plagiarism: wholesale lifting of results unattributed.
But let’s assume that there is plagiarism of a serious kind in what is a essentially a lit review in the Wegman Report. I am open to that possibility: after a quick cost-benefit analysis, I did not think it worth reading further. (Life is too short!) Would it change the basis of the findings of the Wegman Report? Not at all.
Much of Mashey’s critique centres on the use of social network analysis. If you want a laugh, look at Mashey’s own attempts to link Bjorn Lomborg to conservative think tanks on the basis that they like what he has written, which supposedly corrupted his writings. Cause usually precedes effect, John! Wegman’s SNA, in contrast, is an analysis of cooperation through authorship among the paleoclimate community.
Phil said
“Bradley complained because sections of his work were copied in the Wegman Report without attribution.”
So its to do with lack of attribution rather than the Wegman report being wrong? Is that how you read it?
tonyb
“….One major fabrication does stand out. It is a distortion of an sketch [sic] already obsolete by 1992, but supported strongly and used repeatedly…” (Mashey page 3 pdf) presumably refers to the H. H. Lamb 1000 year reconstruction which appears at the top of this thread.
OK, Lamb’s “sketch” is superseded by what? Presumably by Mann et al. — I think he’s headed into a circular argument.
Again pursuing a jones’ metaphor, Mashey’s ‘Strange Scholarship’ (which uses the phrase “climate anti-science” whatever that means 10 times) will be picked up and promoted as something worth considering (like here), but is a merely clumsy feint in the on-going PR battle.
It seems like a storm in a tea-cup. The DeepClimate comparison of the two documents includes a clear reference to Bradley 1999, but without making it clear that elements of Bradley’s writing might have been paraphrased in the (foregoing) section. Given that the section challenges one of Bradley’s key conclusions, and one of his assumptions, Bradley might not have appreciated being credited with the full content!
The authors basically had two choices:- (a) cite Bradley in full and then explain where and why they disagreed with him, or (b) state their own position and include a reference to Bradley’s 1999 paper. They opted for (b), but apparently made use of Bradley’s structure in presenting their own arguments, instead of drafting from a scratch position. It may represent a minor technical breach, but I can see no serious ethical question arising given that it does reference Bradley directly!
Another 10:10 parody:
here
Deep Climate says
That looks like the reason for the timing.
I note that the warmists get to reply fast here, and those chanting “plagiarism! shocking!” without any actual cites of evidence, while those who prefer to see what the “plagiarism” charges are, are rather slower. But come they will. I remember examining the main source of criticism of Ian Plimer in depth, and finding that all the serious-sounding charges simply vaporized on exposure to the light of day. But the attack on Plimer had been a good diversion for those who never looked more closely, to simply tweet “Plimer has been discredited” when he had not.
At the very least, a statistics report has to use the material of others; an audit doubly so; I’m instantly suspicious of claims of “plagiarism”.
Tom Fuller says
Mashey’s report, linked from the article by Deep Climate, is the thing to watch, to see if there is any substance beneath the charges, and to see to what extent it is the oldest trick of the guilty: point the finger to someone else. Heh, the second sentence of Mashey’s report says
Here is what Steven Mosher said recently (September 28, 2010 at 2:38 am) about the Wegman Report:
Source: http://judithcurry.com/2010/09/25/climate-book-shelf/#comment-2221
Was the Wegman Report rubbish all time along?
Most people seem to miss the point being made here. Mr Fuller is admitting “right answer, wrong method equals bad science”. Very true, but very few contributors on this blog think Mann got the “right answer”.
Most people believe in the chart on top left from an early IPCC report that is based on non-quantitative work, probably done in the 1970s by Professor H. Lamb.
As far as I know, all independent studies have confirmed the “hockey stick” shape, so the right answer is what Mann produced. In other words, your opinions on Mann as a scientist are irrelevant to the fact of global warming and the climate in the North Atlantic today being warmer than the MWP. Mann is not the “hockey stick” and the “hockey stick” is not Mann, though the continual harping on about it has seemed to make it so.
Steven Mosher says:
“And it’s clear from this that decentered PCA is correct. makes sense.”
No, I don’t believe anyone (even Mann) is seriously saying that decentred PCA is a good idea. It’s a suboptimal method that makes little difference to the result (as Wahl and Ammann showed). It was used once, almost certainly due to a programming error, in a paper in 1998. There are a large number of papers since that have produced similar hockeystick results; none used decentred PCA.
I don’t know if Wegman (or Said) will be condemned, but if so, I doubt that it will be because of the work of John Massey.
I have read his 20-page summary. 17 pages are simply his own opinion (where I can make a rebuttal of about the same length, but to no avail, I suppose), without any evidence. Page 18 is more interesting: two clear examples of plagiarism, according to JM.
Well if you look at the original page 69 for the first example, the Wegman report clearly indicates that it is a summary of what MBH’98 has done. One can discuss the quality of the summary, if that reflects the original work “as is”, but there is a huge difference between plagiarism (which pretends to be own work) and the description of another’s work, even when parts are literally copied.
The example of page 80 gives a lot of comment on MBH’s method and shows a copy of MM05 (clearly attributed), but some wording is made stronger, which again is not plagiarism, but may be said to be biased.
Page 19 and 20 again are his own [JM’s] opinion, for which we comment on one point, about the HS graph:
“This whole fuss is about the difference between grey and red. Of course they differ slightly, for good reason. Does this matter?”
This clearly shows his own bias. Two items:
– With normal centering, the HS shape moves from PC1 to PC5. That means that the real influence of the HS shape is much less and not robust for inclusion or not of PC5. Without PC5, NO HS.
In the original work only PC1-PC3 were retained. Now in an after the fact move they insist in including 5 PC’s (as done in the graph JM shows). The difference is clearly shown in Wegman’s report, page 32.
– As repeatedly said, the fuss is NOT only about the difference between central and decentral PCA, but about the presence of abnormal growth spurt trees in the past century. Without the bristlecone pines and a few other (tree and non-tree) series: NO hockeystick, whatever method used.
References:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/strange-scholarship-v1-02.pdf
and
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
This was sent to the New Statesman “50 people who matter 2010” as comment (now already 635 comments on Steve McI!), where some CAGW reactions try to undermine Steve via Wegman…
I heard about this some months ago and checked it out, as far as I could see Wegman put a preamble in his report explaining paleoclimatology and dendrology, he appears to have used phrases very close to phrases in Bradley’s text book on the matter. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would have assumed that Wegman was trying to put this out as his own work as clearly he isn’t a paleoclimogologist or a dendrologist.
Bradley appears to be a weak character whose been bullied by Mann in the past, so it’s not beyond the bounds of reason that he’s been bullied into making this claim, after all he can make the claim with no apparent downside, unless of course Wegman is (as is probable) found not guilty and complains to the NAS about this harassment.
*ensure
#analpedantry?Iprefertocallitcharitablecopywriting