With a tip of the hat to: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Image: Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow - click
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
In the past few months we have seen a number of amateurish attempts to counter skeptical arguments that gained traction in what public space there is for matters climatic and anti-climactic. Today we get introduced to John Mashey’s attempt to smear Edward Wegman and reclaim the Hockey Stick for further usage. It’s definitely anti-climactic.
Climategate had a huge impact on public opinion regarding the probity of some of the scientists involved. The leaked emails clearly showed bad and bullying behaviour that left a stench in any honest reader’s nostrils. Andrew Montford, among others, chronicled Climategate and the events leading up to it in a clear, detailed narrative called The Hockey Stick Illusion. It has been praised by reviewers, including climate scientist Judith Curry. I have read it. It is good. It is accurate. I recommend it without reservation.
So, a few months ago a website called Scholars and Rogues published an incredibly lame attempt by Brian Angliss to show why nobody needed to read The Hockey Stick Illusion, citing the low number of emails that were leaked as evidence that we didn’t have enough evidence. When Steve Mosher pointed out that a crooked accountant probably had numerous accurate transactions to his credit, but that only one was needed to prove him criminal, Mr. Angliss and Scholars and Rogues sort of went away.
The late Stephen Schneider and an IT administrator named James Prall published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claiming to prove that scientists on their side of the fence were more credible than skeptical scientists, because they had more publications. Sadly, they only searched in English, they got the names, job titles and specializations of the scientists wrong, they used incorrect analysis techniques (as explained quite brilliantly by RomanM on a post at Real Climate), and used Google Scholar, a commercial database with no published quality control measures, as opposed to any one of several available academic databases. They didn’t get Stephen Schneider’s publications accurate. But that’s okay, they have the names and pictures of those they labeled (incorrectly, in many cases) as skeptics on Prall’s website.
Now comes John Mashey, intent on the destruction of Edward Wegman’s criticism of Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley’s carefully concocted Hockey Stick Chart. Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences, was devastating, citing quite correctly the fact that random noise fed into Mann’s analysis scheme could produce a hockey stick, that they used incorrect analysis of principal components in their study, and that the community of scientists involved was so closely interlinked as to be best described as incestuous, making claims of independent verification a mockery.
Before I go any further, I should note that Mashey makes another accusation that hasn’t been picked up by the media: He accuses Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of being ‘recruited, coached and promoted’ by the George Marshall Institute.
Page 30 of John Mashey's full report
I don’t think that’s true. Mr. Mashey does not provide any documentation for this accusation and I’d like to see his evidence. I certainly hope it’s of better quality than the rest of what turns out to be drivel.
John Mashey’s first bone to pick with the Wegman report is that Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s report, (PDF – warning large download) a 250 page diatribe.
But it is entirely normal that Wegman would ask for and Barton’s staff would provide, any relevant material to speed up the investigation. I have done investigative work for several government bodies and it is in the interests of saving the public’s time and money that papers are provided. I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
Also on the first page of Mashey’s report is the ‘accusation’ that one of Wegman’s associates in the investigation was a post doctoral student with one year of experience, Yasmin Said. Perhaps Mr. Mashey should take a quick look at how much experience Michael Mann had when he created the Hockey Stick that became the iconic representation of climate change to the world…
John Mashey says that Wegman plagiarised material in his report to Congress.
This is odd. Wegman is not a climate scientist. He is a statistician. The material Mashey alleges Wegman stole comes from Raymond Bradley, who has since apparently filed an official complaint with George Mason University. Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science? Is his intent to use as intellectual property ideas generated by Bradley for his own profit?
This plagiarism claim is very strange. In Mashey’s report, he seems to go out of his way to discourage readers from actually looking at either Bradley’s text or Wegman’s. Mashey writes,
“Skeptical readers are welcome to check all 35 pages, but I suspect most will read no more than few before the repetitive style gets tiring. I had to do this to gather and summarize the data. Most people need not.”
Actually, Mr. Mashey, if you want people to believe you, most people indeed need to.
On page 19 of Mashey’s report (PDF – warning large download) is the first example of Wegman’s ‘plagiarism.’ Wegman writes on page 69,
“Overall the network includes 112 proxies, and each series has been formatted into annual mean anomalies relative to the reference period used for this data, 1902-1980.”
When compared to MBH98, page 779, it does indeed look similar:
“The long instrumental records have been formed into annual mean anomalies relative to the 1902–80 reference period, …”
Not identical, but similar. But wait a minute. What is the context for this? This is the second paragraph of a ‘Summary of Global-scale temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries’ by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (1998).
The authors are credited. The intent is to summarize what the authors wrote. The text is not identical, but to be an accurate summary would have to be similar. To say that Wegman plagiarised Bradley when he has Bradley’s name in the chapter title and is trying to summarize what Bradley said… well, I can see where this is going.
All of a sudden this 250 page, convoluted and poorly written report looks like a mountain to climb. It smells like a time-wasting replica of poorly written and un-thought out conspiracy theories.
I will be looking at this report more closely, but I will leave you with some quotes that I think show this to be the type of conspiracy theory nonsense that will have you looking for black helicopters or assorted nonsense. Here’s Mr. Mashey in full swing:
“During 2005-2006, Said was employed by Johns Hopkins University and that affiliation is the one listed on the WR. Did she do the WR work ―on her own time or was she in effect taking time from JHU teaching or research to work on the WR? If so, was this acceptable?”
(Let’s ask Gavin Schmidt, NASA employee and full time blogger at Real Climate…)
“The Federal government pays for many things. It is not obvious why {NIAA, ARL, ARO, NSWRC} seem to be paying statisticians and statistical physicists to attack climate science.”
(Maybe Mr. Mashey should take a good look again at what science is and how it works…)
“Other leadup to the WR is covered in [MAS2010], but it is worth knowing that Wegman, Said, Spencer, McIntyre, Singer, Kueter all attended a climate workshop November 14-16, 2005: www.climatescience.gov/workshop2005/participants.htm. Although I do not know if they met, it certainly seems likely.”
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
In the past few months we have seen a number of amateurish attempts to counter skeptical arguments that gained traction in what public space there is for matters climatic and anti-climactic. Today we get introduced to John Mashey’s attempt to smear Edward Wegman and reclaim the Hockey Stick for further usage. It’s definitely anti-climactic.
Climategate had a huge impact on public opinion regarding the probity of some of the scientists involved. The leaked emails clearly showed bad and bullying behaviour that left a stench in any honest reader’s nostrils. Anthony Montford, among others, chronicled Climategate and the events leading up to it in a clear, detailed narrative called The Hockey Stick Illusion. It has been praised by reviewers, including climate scientist Judith Curry. I have read it. It is good. It is accurate. I recommend it without reservation.
So, a few months ago a website called Scholars and Rogues published an incredibly lame attempt by Brian Angliss to show why nobody needed to read The Hockey Stick Illusion, citing the low number of emails that were leaked as evidence that we didn’t have enough evidence. When Steve Mosher pointed out that a crooked accountant probably had numerous accurate transactions to his credit, but that only one was needed to prove him criminal, Mr. Angliss and Scholars and Rogues sort of went away.
The late Stephen Schneider and an IT administrator named James Prall published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claiming to prove that scientists on their side of the fence were more credible than skeptical scientists, because they had more publications. Sadly, they only searched in English, they got the names, job titles and specializations of the scientists wrong, they used incorrect analysis techniques (as explained quite brilliantly by RomanM on a post at Real Climate), and used Google Scholar, a commercial database with no published quality control measures, as opposed to any one of several available academic databases. They didn’t get Stephen Schneider’s publications accurate. But that’s okay, they have the names and pictures of those they labeled (incorrectly, in many cases) as skeptics on Prall’s website.
Now comes John Mashey, intent on the destruction of Edward Wegman’s criticism of Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley’s carefully concocted Hockey Stick Chart. Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences, was devastating, citing quite correctly the fact that random noise fed into Mann’s analysis scheme could produce a hockey stick, that they used incorrect analysis of principal components in their study, and that the community of scientists involved was so closely interlinked as to be best described as incestuous, making claims of independent verification a mockery.
Before I go any further, I should note that Mashey makes another accusation that hasn’t been picked up by the media: He accuses Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of being ‘recruited, coached and promoted’ by the George Marshall Institute.
I don’t think that’s true. Mr. Mashey does not provide any documentation for this accusation and I’d like to see his evidence. I certainly hope it’s of better quality than the rest of what turns out to be drivel.
John Mashey’s first bone to pick with the Wegman report is that Congressman Barton’s staff provided source material to Wegman. It is the first item in Mashey’s ‘report,’ a 250 page diatribe.
But it is entirely normal that Wegman would ask for and Barton’s staff would provide, any relevant material to speed up the investigation. I have done investigative work for several government bodies and it is in the interests of saving the public’s time and money that papers are provided. I literally cannot understand why Mashey would make this his first point.
Also on the first page of Mashey’s report is the ‘accusation’ that one of Wegman’s associates in the investigation was a post doctoral student with one year of experience, Yasmin Said. Perhaps Mr. Mashey should take a quick look at how much experience Michael Mann had when he created the Hockey Stick that became the iconic representation of climate change to the world…
John Mashey says that Wegman plagiarised material in his report to Congress.
This is odd. Wegman is not a climate scientist. He is a statistician. The material Mashey alleges Wegman stole comes from Raymond Bradley, who has since apparently filed an official complaint with George Mason University. Is Mashey accusing Wegman of falsely representing himself as an expert in climate science? Is his intent to use as intellectual property ideas generated by Bradley for his own profit?
This plagiarism claim is very strange. In Mashey’s report, he seems to go out of his way to discourage readers from actually looking at either Bradley’s text or Wegman’s. Mashey writes, “Skeptical readers are welcome to check all 35 pages, but I suspect
most will read no more than few before the repetitive style gets tiring. I had to do this to gather and summarize the data. Most people need not.”
Actually, Mr. Mashey, if you want people to believe you, most people indeed need to.
On page 19 of Mashey’s report is the first example of Wegman’s ‘plagiarism.’ Wegman writes on page 69, “Overall the network includes 112 proxies, and each series has been formatted into annual mean anomalies relative to the reference period used for this data, 1902-1980.” When compared to MBH98, page 779, it does indeed look similar: “The long instrumental records have been formed into annual mean anomalies relative to the 1902–80
reference period, …”
Not identical, but similar. But wait a minute. What is the context for this? This is the second paragraph of a ‘Summary of Global-scale temperature Patterns and Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries’ by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (1998).
The authors are credited. The intent is to summarize what the authors wrote. The text is not identical, but to be an accurate summary would have to be similar. To say that Wegman plagiarised Bradley when he has Bradley’s name in the chapter title and is trying to summarize what Bradley said… well, I can see where this is going.
All of a sudden this 250 page, convoluted and poorly written report looks like a mountain to climb. It smells like a time-wasting replica of poorly written and un-thought out conspiracy theories.
I will be looking at this report more closely, but I will leave you with some quotes that I think show this to be the type of conspiracy theory nonsense that will have you looking for black helicopters or assorted nonsense. Here’s Mr. Mashey in full swing:
“During 2005-2006, Said was employed by Johns Hopkins University and that affiliation is the one listed on the WR. Did she do the WR work ―on her own time or was she in effect taking time from JHU teaching or research to work on the WR? If so, was this acceptable?”
(Let’s ask Gavin Schmidt, NASA employee and full time blogger at Real Climate…)
“The Federal government pays for many things. It is not obvious why {NIAA, ARL, ARO, NSWRC} seem to be paying statisticians and statistical physicists to attack climate science.”
(Maybe Mr. Mashey should take a good look again at what science is and how it works…)
“Other leadup to the WR is covered in [MAS2010], but it is worth knowing that Wegman, Said, Spencer, McIntyre, Singer, Kueter all attended a climate workshop November 14-16, 2005: www.climatescience.gov/workshop2005/participants.htm. Although I do not know if they met, it certainly seems likely.”
(And what did they have affixed in their lapel buttons?)
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. says:
October 9, 2010 at 11:34 pm
This whole thing is too bizarre for my little mind. I’m off to read some Emanuel Kant, at least the logic is sound, even if the style Byzantine.
You sadist!
JSmith
October 10, 2010 4:10 am
Thomas Fuller wrote : “Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences,…”
Can you give more details about that “fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences” bit – where can one find that ‘full support’ in black and white ? Thanks.
LazyTeenager@ur momisugly
“Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.”
Then you’d find it really strange that very few members of the US congress ever read the text of the bills that they vote on and the never actually draft the bills that get voted on. Aides summarize for congressmen, and even when a lawmaker is the originator of the bill, he just puts out the big picture “plain english” description of what he wants then it goes to rooms of lawyers to convolute it into unreadable legalese.
FergalR
October 10, 2010 4:32 am
Here’s a guest post by Mashy at Tim “exploding children are funny” Lambert’s site: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
He answers his own question:
——————-
a) Do you attend lectures by real climate scientists?
Typically several times a month at Stanford, sometimes elsewhere, at Bay Area government meetings, local town meetings, etc.
——————-
I guess that’s the same Stanford that ExxonMobil are giving $100million to for climate research. http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html
And he gets lectured by them every week.
Vince Causey
October 10, 2010 4:34 am
Good article Tom.
It is becoming increasingly clear now, the level of desperation among die-hard warmists, now that their science has collapsed.. They are turning themselves into a parody of the very thing they are attacking. I didn’t think they could slide any lower than Schneider’s paper ‘proving’ that warming scientists were better than sceptical scientists. Now we have, a report that sounds like it was written by a foaming-at-the-mouth, swivel eyed conspiracy theorist. I can’t wait to see the warmist blogs trotting this out as proof that Wegman has been ‘debunked’ and M&M are sleepers planted by an evil genius.
You couldn’t make it up.
Elise
October 10, 2010 4:36 am
@LazyTeenager
I hope you’re not really a lazy teenager, they tend to become uneducated adults.
bigcitylib
October 10, 2010 4:50 am
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
Slabadang
October 10, 2010 4:54 am
Thanks Mr Agliss for bringing up the subject again!
I almost forgot about Mr Jones askning his compadres to delete emails.
That Mr Salinger frauded the NZ temp record.
That treering proxies in the hands of Mr Mann can turn out to show anything or nothing.
That Osbourne demanded the creation of the new “Medieaval Vanishing period”
That Realclimate also took us in to the new “stonewalling age” by the “obvious flaws denier movement”.
The history of how peer review in climate science became an “ask your friends to sign on in blanco” with the starting point at the creation of IPCC?
Well, Mr Angliss, when it comes to the important issue of how to earn keep and deserve trust you really showed us all how not to.
But please keep on doing what you’re doing! And why not bring the Himalayas back to the table again? 🙂
Pete
October 10, 2010 4:58 am
Could someone knowledgeable about paleoclimate techniques comment?
I’ve just come back from walking the dogs in a field with 1200 trees, they were all planted 9 years ago over the same week, they were all cuttings from the same gene pool. The biggest are 12″ dia at the base, some are only 5-6″ dia at the base.
OK these are softwood willows for cricket bats, and the differences might be exaggerated compared to old hardwoods in colder climes, but still, how can growth rates compare to historical temp in any robust manor? How can a marked difference in growth rate be accounted for, without compromising the resultant historical temp product? TIA.
bigcitylib
October 10, 2010 4:59 am
Mosher, the Bradley book is either ten or fifteen years previous to the David Cuff and Andrew Goudie production, so if there is a problem it isn’t Bradley’s. Since that took exactly two seconds for me to discover through Google, I expect McI knows it too.
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum disorders.
kim
October 10, 2010 5:46 am
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
JPeden
October 10, 2010 6:21 am
Clearly, according to Climate Science’s exacting standards, Mashey’s report is a credible destruction of Wegman’s analysis of Mann’s HS only if he included the allegation that ~”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
Dagfinn – if you read the link I provided, you’ll notice that I specifically quoted Tom as making two mutually exclusive claims. Now, maybe Tom meant to say that he erred in using exclusive language in either one or both of the cases as you suggest (we all make this error from time to time), but if so, he never admitted to that. If he had, he would have had to go back and run a correction on one or both of his claims as any good journalist is required to. There’s other ways out of the logical trap as well, such as claiming that there was disagreement between him and Mosher on this issue, or saying that he thought one thing at one point but later changed his mind about it, but he has not done either of those things to date that I’m aware of.
Pete said: So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
“Under duress” in the motive example I gave is things like being the victim of blackmail or extortion. Let’s not equate your red herring with actual duress.
The point of Mashey’s and DC’s work is that the most widely trumpeted hockey stick investigation is riddled with errors, contains large sections of probable plagiarism, may contain copyright violations, and was done for political purposes rather than scientific ones.
GMU is doing the right thing here – investigating whether or not Wegman plagiarized and committed academic misconduct – even if they’re doing a poor job of it.
It’s valuable to note the differences between the PSU and GMU investigations, however. PSU immediately opened an inquiry into Mann’s conduct even though they never received a single formal complaint, while GMU took months to open their inquiry after receiving a formal complaint from Bradley. PSU stuck to the required timetables in their inquiry procedure and produced the results of the inquiry when they were required to do so, while GMU failed to respond to Bradley in the required time, failed to form the inquiry on time, failed to complete the inquiry when their response letter said they would, and have yet to publish their findings.
GMU may yet come out of this with their academic reputation intact, but they’ve already allowed to become tarnished.
rw
October 10, 2010 7:28 am
And all the while it’s getting colder …
As Vince Causey said, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
kramer
October 10, 2010 7:32 am
Good job Mr. Fuller. You made some very good points IMO.
Douglas DC
October 10, 2010 7:45 am
This has the air of a paper written two days before it’s due.
This reads like that experience of after oh say, two joints and a couple of beers, going down into the basement of the subconscious, finding the great universal library ! The
mind, writing with great insight and awareness, gives you the ultimate insight.
Then upon staggering into the Classroom, you look at the paper with a now sober mind, and see it is all incoherent drivel.
“Douglas, this is the most incoherent, ill referenced, poorly footnoted pile of
horse manure I have ever read.”
This actually happened. managed to pull a “C” out of that class….
There are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, something Wegman has to assume responsibility for as group leader. Read some of the requirements that granting agencies have for group leaders providing proper ethics training for their groups. John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes it perfectly clear that this is a problem of the Wegman group, not just of Edward Wegman.
The second is that by any standard the Wegman report plagiarized. Try running it through any software designed to evaluate student term papers. (you do have to watch the dates). Again, John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes this perfectly clear
The third is that sections where they plagiarized were completely extraneous to their supposed expertise and unnecessary to carry out their “charge”, or at least the public version thereof. This has been ignored but is a smoking gun pointing to the real motives of the Wegman Report and it’s authors. It is the point that John Mashey was working on with his description of connections between various actors.
The fourth is that while Wegman is responsible, he may not have done the copy and paste himself, but see point one for why he is responsible.
Finally, some, including Judith Curry have tried to put up a smoke screen that reports are not subject to strict standards for plagiarism. She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
TomRude
October 10, 2010 8:07 am
The ID of deepclimate is known is certain circles who read this blog: time to tell who is the potatoe in “Masheyd patoatoe”…
D. King
October 10, 2010 8:26 am
Steven mosher says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:39 am
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
“The secret lies with Charlotte.” That’s all I can say……for now!
Olen
October 10, 2010 8:35 am
Geol is going to read some Kant, he says the theory is good. I’m a little slow, I read a book on Kant twice and still didn’t get it all.
Here is a quicky quote, from a Google search, by Kant
Experience without theory is blind but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
I think I got that one.
Vince Causey
October 10, 2010 8:52 am
JPeden,
“”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
You had me going for a minute – until I remembered that the US use the word ‘aliens’ to describe foreigners.
TomRude
October 10, 2010 9:02 am
bigcitylib, how come Bradley did not sue them then?
Policyguy
October 10, 2010 9:10 am
The Wegman pdf link is very instructive. The Wegman Report is a very interesting statistically based analysis of the creation of the hockey stick and the tight inter-personal relationships between the creators of the hockey stick and the “peer” reviewers.
It looks like the plagiarism claim attaches to a couple of paragraphs in the introductory background portion of the report that tells what tree rings are as well as coral. What better source for these descriptions than the work of those who use these proxies. It takes a host of potential arguments over the proper way to describe these proxies off the table so that they don’t distract from the meat of the report that is substantively unrelated to the text in question.
It also looks like Raymond Bradley is the person making the charge here and Mashey is a distraction. I would hope that George Mason University performs its investigation and ultimately discredits the charge.
You sadist!
Thomas Fuller wrote : “Wegman was asked by a congressional committee to investigate their work. His report, fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences,…”
Can you give more details about that “fully supported by the National Academy of Sciences” bit – where can one find that ‘full support’ in black and white ? Thanks.
LazyTeenager@ur momisugly
“Personally I find it strange that when an expert is employed by the US Congress that they might delegate the work to someone else instead of putting in their own best effort.”
Then you’d find it really strange that very few members of the US congress ever read the text of the bills that they vote on and the never actually draft the bills that get voted on. Aides summarize for congressmen, and even when a lawmaker is the originator of the bill, he just puts out the big picture “plain english” description of what he wants then it goes to rooms of lawyers to convolute it into unreadable legalese.
Here’s a guest post by Mashy at Tim “exploding children are funny” Lambert’s site:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
He answers his own question:
——————-
a) Do you attend lectures by real climate scientists?
Typically several times a month at Stanford, sometimes elsewhere, at Bay Area government meetings, local town meetings, etc.
——————-
I guess that’s the same Stanford that ExxonMobil are giving $100million to for climate research. http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html
And he gets lectured by them every week.
Good article Tom.
It is becoming increasingly clear now, the level of desperation among die-hard warmists, now that their science has collapsed.. They are turning themselves into a parody of the very thing they are attacking. I didn’t think they could slide any lower than Schneider’s paper ‘proving’ that warming scientists were better than sceptical scientists. Now we have, a report that sounds like it was written by a foaming-at-the-mouth, swivel eyed conspiracy theorist. I can’t wait to see the warmist blogs trotting this out as proof that Wegman has been ‘debunked’ and M&M are sleepers planted by an evil genius.
You couldn’t make it up.
@LazyTeenager
I hope you’re not really a lazy teenager, they tend to become uneducated adults.
Mosher, the Bradley text predates the Goudie test by at least ten or 15 years, depending on the edition. Something McI doesn’t point out. If there is a problem there, it isn’t Bradley’s, and knowing how McI operates, I suspect it isn’t Goudie’s either.
Thanks Mr Agliss for bringing up the subject again!
I almost forgot about Mr Jones askning his compadres to delete emails.
That Mr Salinger frauded the NZ temp record.
That treering proxies in the hands of Mr Mann can turn out to show anything or nothing.
That Osbourne demanded the creation of the new “Medieaval Vanishing period”
That Realclimate also took us in to the new “stonewalling age” by the “obvious flaws denier movement”.
The history of how peer review in climate science became an “ask your friends to sign on in blanco” with the starting point at the creation of IPCC?
Well, Mr Angliss, when it comes to the important issue of how to earn keep and deserve trust you really showed us all how not to.
But please keep on doing what you’re doing! And why not bring the Himalayas back to the table again? 🙂
Could someone knowledgeable about paleoclimate techniques comment?
I’ve just come back from walking the dogs in a field with 1200 trees, they were all planted 9 years ago over the same week, they were all cuttings from the same gene pool. The biggest are 12″ dia at the base, some are only 5-6″ dia at the base.
OK these are softwood willows for cricket bats, and the differences might be exaggerated compared to old hardwoods in colder climes, but still, how can growth rates compare to historical temp in any robust manor? How can a marked difference in growth rate be accounted for, without compromising the resultant historical temp product? TIA.
Mosher, the Bradley book is either ten or fifteen years previous to the David Cuff and Andrew Goudie production, so if there is a problem it isn’t Bradley’s. Since that took exactly two seconds for me to discover through Google, I expect McI knows it too.
Actually, Mashey’s document resembles nothing other than a classic example of the types of works of paranoid schizophrenics. The bizarre linkages, unjustified assertions of conspiracy between supposed “Enemies of the Truth” and colour coding for particular emphasis are archetypic behaviours of schizophrenic spectrum disorders.
Why, I think we need a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Let’s have one some fine day soon.
===========
Clearly, according to Climate Science’s exacting standards, Mashey’s report is a credible destruction of Wegman’s analysis of Mann’s HS only if he included the allegation that ~”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
Dagfinn – if you read the link I provided, you’ll notice that I specifically quoted Tom as making two mutually exclusive claims. Now, maybe Tom meant to say that he erred in using exclusive language in either one or both of the cases as you suggest (we all make this error from time to time), but if so, he never admitted to that. If he had, he would have had to go back and run a correction on one or both of his claims as any good journalist is required to. There’s other ways out of the logical trap as well, such as claiming that there was disagreement between him and Mosher on this issue, or saying that he thought one thing at one point but later changed his mind about it, but he has not done either of those things to date that I’m aware of.
Pete said: So it was OK for the accountant to commit fraud because his department needed funding? Because he needed prestige? Because he wanted to cover his past mistakes and shoddy work?
“Under duress” in the motive example I gave is things like being the victim of blackmail or extortion. Let’s not equate your red herring with actual duress.
The point of Mashey’s and DC’s work is that the most widely trumpeted hockey stick investigation is riddled with errors, contains large sections of probable plagiarism, may contain copyright violations, and was done for political purposes rather than scientific ones.
GMU is doing the right thing here – investigating whether or not Wegman plagiarized and committed academic misconduct – even if they’re doing a poor job of it.
It’s valuable to note the differences between the PSU and GMU investigations, however. PSU immediately opened an inquiry into Mann’s conduct even though they never received a single formal complaint, while GMU took months to open their inquiry after receiving a formal complaint from Bradley. PSU stuck to the required timetables in their inquiry procedure and produced the results of the inquiry when they were required to do so, while GMU failed to respond to Bradley in the required time, failed to form the inquiry on time, failed to complete the inquiry when their response letter said they would, and have yet to publish their findings.
GMU may yet come out of this with their academic reputation intact, but they’ve already allowed to become tarnished.
And all the while it’s getting colder …
As Vince Causey said, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Good job Mr. Fuller. You made some very good points IMO.
This has the air of a paper written two days before it’s due.
This reads like that experience of after oh say, two joints and a couple of beers, going down into the basement of the subconscious, finding the great universal library ! The
mind, writing with great insight and awareness, gives you the ultimate insight.
Then upon staggering into the Classroom, you look at the paper with a now sober mind, and see it is all incoherent drivel.
“Douglas, this is the most incoherent, ill referenced, poorly footnoted pile of
horse manure I have ever read.”
This actually happened. managed to pull a “C” out of that class….
Is that the same BigCityLib that attempted to sign up to the Oregon Petition under false pretenses?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/05/19/the-32000-who-say-no-convincing-evidence/
You are now lecturing on McI’s modus operandi?
REPLY: Yep that’s the one. Also note the same two radio guys that gave coverage to bigfoot on his blog
and even did a radio show about it. But we’re the crazy ones. – AnthonyThere are points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, something Wegman has to assume responsibility for as group leader. Read some of the requirements that granting agencies have for group leaders providing proper ethics training for their groups. John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes it perfectly clear that this is a problem of the Wegman group, not just of Edward Wegman.
The second is that by any standard the Wegman report plagiarized. Try running it through any software designed to evaluate student term papers. (you do have to watch the dates). Again, John Mashey and Deep Climate’s reporting makes this perfectly clear
The third is that sections where they plagiarized were completely extraneous to their supposed expertise and unnecessary to carry out their “charge”, or at least the public version thereof. This has been ignored but is a smoking gun pointing to the real motives of the Wegman Report and it’s authors. It is the point that John Mashey was working on with his description of connections between various actors.
The fourth is that while Wegman is responsible, he may not have done the copy and paste himself, but see point one for why he is responsible.
Finally, some, including Judith Curry have tried to put up a smoke screen that reports are not subject to strict standards for plagiarism. She, and many here, are defining deviancy down, setting yourselves up for some very uncomfortable times when your kids or students copy and paste.
Even at this distance one can hear the student bleating, this was a review, I’m allowed to copy and paste, you said so. You’re just being mean. Good Luck.
The ID of deepclimate is known is certain circles who read this blog: time to tell who is the potatoe in “Masheyd patoatoe”…
Steven mosher says:
October 10, 2010 at 12:39 am
Started to read Masheys mash up. the color codes. the patterns. the lines criss crossing connecting everything.
“The secret lies with Charlotte.” That’s all I can say……for now!
Geol is going to read some Kant, he says the theory is good. I’m a little slow, I read a book on Kant twice and still didn’t get it all.
Here is a quicky quote, from a Google search, by Kant
Experience without theory is blind but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
I think I got that one.
JPeden,
“”Wegman possibly hired some illegal aliens sometime within the past forty years.”
You had me going for a minute – until I remembered that the US use the word ‘aliens’ to describe foreigners.
bigcitylib, how come Bradley did not sue them then?
The Wegman pdf link is very instructive. The Wegman Report is a very interesting statistically based analysis of the creation of the hockey stick and the tight inter-personal relationships between the creators of the hockey stick and the “peer” reviewers.
It looks like the plagiarism claim attaches to a couple of paragraphs in the introductory background portion of the report that tells what tree rings are as well as coral. What better source for these descriptions than the work of those who use these proxies. It takes a host of potential arguments over the proper way to describe these proxies off the table so that they don’t distract from the meat of the report that is substantively unrelated to the text in question.
It also looks like Raymond Bradley is the person making the charge here and Mashey is a distraction. I would hope that George Mason University performs its investigation and ultimately discredits the charge.