More on the Mashey-Wegman issue. Part 1 is here
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
John Mashey has written one of those conspiracy theory plots full of colored dots and ink, accusing Edward Wegman of plagiarizing the work of Raymond Bradley and others in his key report to Congress showing the deep flaws in the paper Bradley wrote with Michael Mann and Malcolm Hughes regarding the Hockey Stick Chart.
Bishop Hill has so far said what needed to be said most succinctly:
there are two possibilities in play:
Wegman et al are guilty of plagiarism; short-centred principal components analysis is biased and can produce hockey sticks from red noise
Wegman et al are not guilty of plagiarism; short-centred principal components analysis is biased and can produce hockey sticks from red noise.
There is a bit of meat with John’s Mashed potatoes, sadly, and I’ll get to it in a minute. But let’s get rid of the twisted conspiracy theory garbage first.
In yesterday’s article I noted that it was extremely strange that Mashey would make as his first point the fact that the Congressional sub committee that commissioned Wegman turned over the results of the work they had done prior to Wegman starting his analysis. This is absolutely normal and uncontroversial, but Mashey writes as if it’s evidence of conspiracy, something he seems to find everywhere he looks.
It is also bizarre that Mashey thinks it wrong that works mentioned in the bibliography to Wegman’s report are not cited. This is clearly evidence that Mashey doesn’t understand very much at all about how anything really works. As anybody familiar with publishing knows, the reason a bibliography exists is to show the reader what the author read, precisely because the works may not be cited in the text. But again, this becomes black helicopter conspiracy for Mashey.
But there is a little meat with Mahsey’s potatoes. Please continue.
About half the plagiarization accusations in Mashey’s paper don’t even concern the Wegman report, targeting the recent McShane Wyner paper and dissertations and other collegiate work done by some of Wegman’s associates. Given that the title of Mashey’s report is Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report, I don’t really see what criticism of other work is doing there. I guess it’s all there to prove a grand conspiracy.
But there is a little meat with Mahsey’s potatoes. Please continue.
In case you think I’m making this conspiracy stuff up, just read pages like 103 of Mashey’s report. It isn’t about Wegman at all. It’s about McShane Wyner,
In a report accusing Edward Wegman of plagiarism, Mashey writes this about an unrelated paper published 4 years later:
“MW, p.2, Paragraph 3
―On the other hand, the effort of world governments to pass legislation to cut carbon to pre-industrial levels cannot proceed without the consent of the governed and historical reconstructions from paleoclimatological models have indeed proven persuasive and effective at winning the hearts and minds of the populace. Consider Figure 1 which was featured prominently in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC, 2001) in the summary for policy makers1. The sharp upward slope of the graph in the late 20th century is visually striking, easy to comprehend, and likely to alarm. The IPCC report goes even further:
‖<B> ―world governments … consent of the governed‖
When one Googles the 6 words above,50 many hits espouse strong conservative/Libertarian political views. Those are fine in the political arena, but not in statistics papers people expect to be credible. From past experience, 51 strong political/ideological beliefs can cause a few physics PhDs to ignore basic laws of physics.”
But there is meat to go with Mashey’s potatoes.
Wegman’s report examined the relationships between the very small community of scientists working in and around the field of paleoclimatology. This is because after Mann’s Hockey Stick chart began receiving criticism, a flurry of papers were suddenly published supporting his results–and they all received prominent attention and temporarily saved Mann’s reputation. But, as Steve McIntyre pointed out, these scientists were all closely connected to Michael Mann, being co-authors, co-bloggers, mentors and advisers of his. Worse, they used the same suspect data and the same discredited analysis techniques.
Wegman formalized an examination of Mann’s compatriots using a relatively new discipline called Social Network Analysis. And in his report to Congress, when Wegman explains what Social Network Analysis is, he copies someone else’s introduction of the science and doesn’t attribute it at all. (It looks like Wikipedia is copied, which means that someone else probably got copied to get it into Wikipedia. There is even the slight chance that Wikipedia copied Wegman, considering dates and such, but that would be just too delicious, so it probably didn’t happen that way.)
So it looks like Wegman and his team did something wrong. They used someone else’s description of social networking analysis and didn’t credit them.
But as near as I can tell, that’s it. And to put their error into perspective, let’s look at how other independent professionals describe social networking analysis without attributing each other:
Social network analysis is concerned with understanding the linkages among social entities and the implications of these linkages. The social entities are referred to as actors that are represented by the vertices of the graph.
Wegman Report
It is concerned with understanding the linkages among social entities and the implications of these linkages. The social entities are referred to as actors that are represented by the vertices of the graph. Most social network applications consider a collection of vertices that are all of the same
WK Sharabati
A social network analysis must also consider data on ties among units” … The entities in digraphs are called nodes and the relations are ….. The density measure describes general level of linkage among the actors in the community
Kilkenny and Nalbarte
A relation is represented as a linkage or a flow between these … relationships among social entities. In Social Network Analysis we can ….. network is referred to this focal person, and every relation is reported by the ego. …. “nodes” of the graph, and the “ties” between actors in the network become “lines”
F Martino
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors.
Wikipedia
Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities. The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes.
Valdis Krebs
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Steven Mosher says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:18 am
“In the SNA case they fail to cite or indicate the KIND OF USAGE. Thats worse.
The reason the DONT CITE the source is cause they are probably embarassed they used wikipedia and didnt read primary material. ( sounds like a grad student )
Bad.
Anyway, if people want to go after the best argument they will focus on the SNA stuff and the real reason why they didnt cite the source”
That isn’t Bradley’s call, and the University might be shy about exposing themselves to some of the blame. But I’m still trying to track down the original source, and it isn’t clear to me that it was a Wiki author. I’ve tried to track down the last sentence from the identical Wegman Report / 2006 unattributed Wiki article:
“Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes).”
In 2008 Wiki changed to:
“Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling structural holes).[5]” “Scott, John. 1991. Social Network Analysis. London: Sage.”
Wegman also using “social holes” doesn’t demonstrate that they took it from Wiki.
Wiki’s new language and cite doesn’t demonstrate that it is correct in language or cite.
I’m unable to find text for Scott 1991. However, he wrote a revised edition of “Social Network Analysis” in 2000 which can be viewed in GoogleBooks, quote:
“(Burt 1992) has described this in terms of ‘structural holes’.”
That may be an indication that Scott 1991 did not include “called filling structural holes”.
I did find the sentence in another article that points to a different source, but with no “structural holes” or “social holes” :
“Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked [4]” D.J. Watts, S.H. Strogatz, Nature 393 (1998) 440.”
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~ss824/papers/scn.pdf
Smokey,
1) Plagiarism is not illegal, it is unethical. However, if you follow the comment thread at the USA Today article, you will find that Bradley’s publisher, Elsevier, is very interested in the copyright violations which appear to have occurred.
2) I was using shorthand. More precisely the Wegman Report copied huge chunks of text w/o attribution. Mashey shows that the type of copying which took place is similar to that of another listed author on the report, Said. However, Wegman, as the senior person on this report bears ultimate responsibility. It might help if you actually spent the time to read Mashey’s report.
3) I have no evidence as to what the motive might be. Motive is not necessary in plagiarism cases, merely the fact that it occurred, which is indisputable to any sane person who has looked at the evidence.
My guess as to what the motive might be is that, rather than admitting the facts of the case — that they didn’t know squat about either paleoclimatology or social network analysis — they instead choose to try the “C” (or is that “D”) student approach of copying wholesale from textbooks and online references. The fact that Wegman himself was forced to admit that he did not consult with any paleoclimatologists in his testimony before (documented in the Mashey report) lends credence to this theory (theory here used in the colloquial sense).
4) Vast swathes of text copied with only minor changes cannot possibly be an inadvertent omission. As others have pointed out in this thread the stuff in the SNA section amounts to 1700 words. This is several pages.
This is very different from what you claim Mann and Jones did. PSU seemed statisfied that Mann provided enough evidence from his email archives that he did not do what you claimed he did. The Climategate emails themselves provide prima facie evidence that the emails that Holland requested were not deleted since they appear in abundance in the purloined archives. Finally, if Mann had deleted the emails, it does matter, since they were not covered by an FOI request. In case you didn’t notice the FOI request of Holland was filed with UEA which happens to be in another country.
The other stuff you mention is just BS. Which colleague did they get fired for not toeing the line? If it was Saier, when his term expired he did not attempt to be reappointed. This was covered with a statement from Saier at Rodger Pielke Jr.’s blog. Saying “be careful what you say to journalist X (in this case Andy Revkin) is not a crime or even unethical. It is just a heads up to watch your wordiing.
ZT,
You make some broad and unsubstantiated claims.
1) People studying climate change get their grant money just like any other scientists: by proposing interesting and original research.
2) I see no evidence of this. The team which produced the Wegman Report are currently being held accountable (you should like that word) to the standards of the institution which employs them (in the case of Wegman himself) or which granted their doctorate (in the case of Said). GMU has previously sanctioned a law professor for misconduct related to a WSJ op/ed. I don’t see why a prominent report to congress should be held to a lower standard.
3) While the data in the original report was scant and the analysis flawed, the flaw in the analysis made no difference to the conclusion of the paper. In the ensuing 10 years more data has been developed and new and better analysis techniques have been employed, and the original results stand. Seems like pretty solid stuff to me.
Who did Mashey think he was writing for? What potential audience did he have in mind?
I count myself as an interested layman with a scientific background, but his ‘paper’ rapidly became unintelligible to me. Not because the subject was too difficult for me to understand (it wasn’t)..but because it was so badly written.
It lacks a ‘narrative’ that is crisp and sharp. And it failed to make me care too much about the subject. Whether or not Wikipedia uses similar words in some cases isn’t going to cause me to lose sleep at night.
Way back when, I used to be acquainted with a slightly disturbed individual semi-affectionately known round here as ‘Manic Dave’. He spent his time writing in a big black book with different coloured pens. As far as he was concerned, the book captured all his distilled intellectual philosophy and proved conclusively how ‘they’ had conspired to ruin his life. But on even sympathetic questioning in relaxed company he was completely unable to explain the content to others – or even the terms that he used. And he was definitely an intelligent man, but likely suffering form some low-level mental disorder.
I read the first few pages of Mashey’s report and was instantly reminded of Manic Dave Parkinson. The two would have made fine collaborators.
But as a hater of all ‘binary digital reductionists’, I doubt if MD would have approved of Mashey’s ‘large-screen, 8GB laptop with 3 extra displays’. He could write gibberish in longhand over a pint or three and would see no reason to automate that process.
What a weird piece of work!
“Rattus Norvegicus says:
October 11, 2010 at 8:02 pm
ZT,
You make some broad and unsubstantiated claims.”
Hmmm…I guess anyone can read through the comments to see that:
I stated my conclusions and described them as such.
You do not address the fact of Bradley’s evident text copy and pasting.
You portray my conclusions as ‘claims’.
Just what is it that you have against facts?
But feel free to make your own comments, claims, or excuses – whatever they are.
I grow weary of this. I had thought I had made it plain.
Wegman et al acted pro bono at the request of Congress and the work was published under the imprimatur of Congress.
As such no state or federal court of the USA has jurisdiction over any complaint for plagiarism, copyright or any other supposed infraction or wrongdoing concerning either the report or its authors in compiling that report. Nor incidentally does any other body academic or otherwise.
Kindest Regards
The more I look at this, the more I think that Mashey is worrying about some very minor details of academic etiquette. Which might make fine points for witty discourse in the Senior Common Room over the port, but are pretty much irrelevant to the main points.
Similar,though the origins of the Wegman piece may be of some interest to future historians of the Climate Wars, they aren’t hugely relevant to the truth or not of its content.
Mashey has studied a tiny piece of the canvas in obsessive detail but has completely failed to see the big picture. Simply weird.
a jones,
As I have pointed out, plagiarism is an ethical issue. As such it is strictly between two members of the Wegman team (Said and Wegman) and GMU. And clearly, Elsevier might beg to differ with you on the copyright issues. Read the comment thread at USA Today which expands on the “litigation is underway” comment by Wegman in the article itself.
ZT,
The example you provide involved the primary author of a paper (Viulle) using his own words and ideas in a subsequent (well, we really don’t know the order that things were written in, do we?) work. Given the lag time in scientific publishing it is entirely likely that the text in the paper was written before the CONAM/World Bank report.
Still, it is sort of hard to plagiarise yourself. Your case is still unproven.
ZT,
And since I didn’t find a copyright notice in the CONAM/World Bank report, the copyright devolves to the author or the institution (depending on institutional policies, in the commercial world with which I am familiar your rights are assigned to the institution if the work is funded by or used the resources of the institution in it’s preparation. Agreements may, and probably are, different in the academic world.). You can’t violate your own copyright.
“Rattus Norvegicus says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Still, it is sort of hard to plagiarise yourself. Your case is still unproven.
”
….some comments about copyright(?)
Rattus, I wrote:
“The absolute fact is that R.S. Bradley (and coauthors) recycled text from an earlier paper to produce a later paper.”
(I did not write about Bradley plagiarizing himself or infringing copyright).
I don’t have a case to prove – the facts are the facts. Or in this case – the PDFs with the copied text are there for all to see.
You may think it is just fine for climatologists to recycle scare story text.
And you may think it is not ok for Wegman to use literature definitions.
Consistency, like honesty, is a characteristic of science, not climatology, after all.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:18 pm
“Given the lag time in scientific publishing it is entirely likely that the text in the paper was written before the CONAM/World Bank report. Still, it is sort of hard to plagiarise yourself.”
The 2008 paper was received in May 2007, the CONAM report is dated January 2007, not that it matters which was copied from which. Self plagiarism in the form of “text recycling” or “text reuse” is a real problem, and considered fraud. At the least in the scientific literature, it needs to be nipped in the bud.
@Glenn Skankey
‘Self plagiarism in the form of “text recycling” or “text reuse” is a real problem, and considered fraud. At the least in the scientific literature, it needs to be nipped in the bud’.
So if I come up with a particularly snappy, vivid and memorable description of a physical phenomenon and publish it at place A, I am committing a crime by using the same words again at places B, C or D??
Sounds like the sort of crime that Mashey would wet his knickers over, but the real world wouldn’t bat an eyelid over.
Please explain so that even a non-academic like me can clearly see what sin has been committed – apart from being human and maybe only capable of a few great thoughts in a lifetime.
This discussion started off weird and is now making landfall on the Planet Bizarre!
@Latimer
I agree with you (as I have written above) that if climatologists want to spend their time cutting and pasting dire warnings and introductions about vanishing glaciers from one publication to another, this is their choice. It may lead to the large grant incomes, for example.
If you look at the Bradley/Vuille example above (October 11, 2010 at 11:20 am) you’ll see that the copied chunk of text is not a vivid and memorable description, but a recycling of an introduction. The kind of thing which a journalist or a student would not get away with (if caught).
Normally scientific papers are thought to offer some new insights – which tends to imply that the text has not been copied and pasted from some prior publication.
But – climatology is a rather special “science” – I hypothesize that the thought from climatologists is “the more repetition the merrier” or “the more this is repeated the more true it becomes”.
@ZT
But surely the extremely rigorous process of peer review will find any cases of auto plagiarism and stamp on them very firmly? As well as verifying all claimed results.
It is, after all, the Gold Standard of all academic work and absolutely relied on by all reputable publications. Perish the thought that any work that had not been peer-reviewed should get anywhere beyond the WPB (trashhcan) of history!
@Latimer
Right! As the climategate messages revealed, peer review in climatology is simply a filter to prevent the publication of contrary evidence.
Wow. Does this negate the fact that Mann’s work was shown to be shoddy? I don’t think so.
Steve McIntyre has just thouroughly emasculated Bradley and the warmists on the Wegman “plagiargism” over at Climate Audit. He documents the multiple citations of Bradley in the very sections where Bradley claims Wegman stole his work without citations. Plus, McIntyre points out worse examples of Bradley’s fellow “climate scientists” lifting his work without attribution – will Bradley and the warmists be filing lawsuits against their ‘friends’?
Here’s a real citation: “And if Bradley is sincerely committed to the extirpation and punishment of plagiarism, then he should also file a complaint against Wahl and Ammann, who plagiarized the reply of Mann, Bradley and Hughes to our 2004 Nature submission (the reply was also summarized in various realclimate posts). I’ve previously alluded to this plagiarism incident in passing, but will discuss it in more detail on another occasion. Standing to file such a complaint is not limited to the direct victims of the plagiarism (Mann, Bradley and Hughes), but can be filed by anyone.
Perhaps the best way to honor Bradley’s newfound anti-plagiarism zeal would be for someone to file a plagiarism complaint against Wahl and Ammann, taking care to recognize Bradley’s anti-plagiarism commitment in the covering letter.
“, http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/12/copygate/
Looks like the warmists may being staring into the abyss of reaping what they have sown…
And Steve McIntyre’s solid analysis is in as well
Rattus Norvegicus says:
Forgive me I had forgotten Smokey’s wise advice ” Never feed a Troll”.
Kindest Regards
Latimer Alder says:
October 12, 2010 at 7:35 am
@Glenn Skankey
‘Self plagiarism in the form of “text recycling” or “text reuse” is a real problem, and considered fraud. At the least in the scientific literature, it needs to be nipped in the bud’.
“So if I come up with a particularly snappy, vivid and memorable description of a physical phenomenon and publish it at place A, I am committing a crime by using the same words again at places B, C or D?? ”
Most likely, yes. At least unethical.
@Glenn Skankey
Thanks for you reply to my question about self-plagiarism. You suggest that an author reproducing their own work would be unethical and possibly criminal.
Care to explain why? Because that seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.
I’d also remark that to the ‘outside world’, that supposed adults are wasting so much timearguing about such trivial points seems incredible. On the one hand there is a debate about the Future of the Earth and on the other one about whether Fred should have said something nice about Jemima or mentioned Albert in passing in his Christmas message.
In UK we have an expression ‘Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’ meaning to worry about trivia in the face of overwhelming disaster. This discussion doesn’t even get beyond considering what colour the fabric should be on the deckchairs.
FFS – why does anybody care?
Latimer Alder says:
October 12, 2010 at 11:54 pm
@Glenn Skankey
“Thanks for you reply to my question about self-plagiarism. You suggest that an author reproducing their own work would be unethical and possibly criminal.
Care to explain why? Because that seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.”
Academic fraud is not criminal, but it is unethical. One way is that it represents existing work as “new work”. Of course, as is often the case in scientific publication, copyright is also violated by such behavior. Authors should and do reference their own previous work in literature. If an article has been reproduced with no significant new work introduced, what would the reason be for publishing?
Haven’t y’all learned to be careful what you ask for?
Asking for investigations of academic misconduct poses a much higher risk for the alleged experts cited by the handful “climate change isn’t happening, or if it is it isn’t caused by human activity” alleged experts than it does for the 97% of climate scientists who have concluded that global warming is real, and most likely caused by human activity.
This could turn into an epiphany for y’all.
What did people do before Twitter? Suffer? Presumably, they suffered.