Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
With Dr. Michael Mann out on the hustings selling his innocence, as I discussed a few days ago, I was pleased when I came across this clear explanation of some major issues in the so-called inquiry by Penn State into the Mann’s actions. I urge everyone to read it, and follow up on the citations therein. There are numerous other problems with the inquiry, but that hit the high points.
Figure 1. The effect of Michael Mann, as seen by Chris Bok. But I digress.
Here was the mind-boggling part to me. To my astonishment, other than Michael Mann, the people running the investigation of Michael Mann reported interviewing exactly TWO PEOPLE besides Mann himself. I was, as the lovely English expression has it, “Gob-smacked”.
Remember that Dr. Mann recently said:
My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive.
I knew it was bad, but interviewing two people now constitutes a “thorough investigation” of alleged serious scientific malfeasance? The investigators didn’t even understand that the famous “Mike’s Nature trick“was a clever way of hiding adverse data, a big scientific no-no. They didn’t interview anyone who actually understood the issues.
Two interviews and close the books? That is a pathetic joke. Penn State was my father’s alma mater, Class of ’26, I’m glad he didn’t live to see how far they have fallen. Penn State should demand that its name be taken off the document.
However, because this is a story involving Dr. Mann, you know there’s gotta be more to it than that they just interviewed two people, there’s bound to be a further twist to the story.
Here’s the inside joke. The two people interviewed were Gerry North of the “North Report” and Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science Magazine.
Gerry North I can kinda understand, because he chaired an earlier (and also widely criticized) enquiry into Dr. Mann’s hijinks. So he was a friend of Manns, and he’d covered up for Mann before, keeping his committee from even looking for scientific malfeasance, much less finding any. So I can understand them interviewing North, makes perfect sense.
But why did they pick Donald Kennedy, Editor of Science Magazine, as the other person to interview? I have no idea. By a curious coincidence, however, there’s a back-story here. Donald Kennedy was the first scientific figure I ever emailed to try to get something done.
I regret that I didn’t understand the importance of saving these documents at the time. In any event, my email to Kennedy has not survived my numerous computer changes and crashes since then, or it’s there and I can’t find it. But I recall it well, it was my first appeal.
In it I pointed out that science depends on the data being archived to allow for replication. I noted the efforts by Michael Mann to conceal the data used in his infamous “HockeyStick” paper. So I appealed to Kennedy to actually use the policies and power of his journal, Science Magazine, and ask Mann to archive the data used in his studies.
See, at that time, I was kinda naive … ya think?
I got blown off totally. Not even the courtesy of a reply. Which I later found out was no surprise. Kennedy, as editor of Science Magazine, has often allowed the publication of pro-AGW articles without requiring that they archive their data.
However, you don’t have to take my word for the abuse that Kennedy has done to the scientific process. He is noted for saying on PBS:
… the journal has to trust its reviewers; it has to trust the source. It can’t go in and demand the data books.
Look, with all due respect, Kennedy may be the editor of Science Magazine, but that is absolutely untrue, and Kennedy knows it. Most journals have policies that require, not recommend but require, that data used in published papers must be archived by the time of publication. Kennedy simply has not wanted Science to uniformly enforce that policy.
The crazy part is, there’s no wriggle room. Science Magazine’s instructions for authors say:
Data and materials availability All data necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science. After publication, all reasonable requests for materials must be fulfilled. Any restrictions on the availability of data or materials, including fees and original data obtained from other sources (Materials Transfer Agreements), must be disclosed to the editors upon submission. Fossils or other rare specimens must be deposited in a public museum or repository and available for research.
That’s totally clear. Data must be archived. So when Kennedy says Science Magazine “can’t go in and demand the data books”, he’s just blowing in your ear and tickling your tummy. Not only can they do so, it is their stated policy to do so.
Kennedy is also the man who refused to publish Benny Peiser’s devastating response to Naomi Oreske’s laughable claim of a “scientific consensus” based on her simplistic analysis of climate papers. Typical for the man. Steve McIntyre has an interesting look at Kennedy here.
In any case, there you have it, folks. The “thorough investigation” into Michael Mann talked to three people including Mann. One, Gerry North, had covered up for Mann before, as cited above. The other, Kennedy, had refused to ask him for his data, despite magazine policies requiring just that. Both Steve McIntyre and I wrote to Kennedy asking him to enforce his own magazine’s policies. He refused.
And after all of that, are you ready for the icing on the cake, the final twist in the tale? As you would expect, Dr. Michael Mann was one of the three people interviewed in the “thorough investigation”. Mann agreed to the publication of the Report of the “thorough investigation”. The Report Guidelines state:
A written report shall be prepared that states what evidence was reviewed, a copy of all interview transcripts and/or summaries, and includes the conclusions of the inquiry.
But oops … there’s no transcipt of what Mann said. Not only do we not have his answers, we don’t even know what questions he was asked. That is pathetic bumbling, take the investigators out and fire them, I want my money back.
…
And Michael Mann has the ineffable effrontery to declare himself “exonerated” by that grade-school quality report? Dr. Mann, you have not been “exonerated”. You have not even been investigated, and you are pulling all of the political levers you can reach, and making all the public appeals you can squeeze in, to ensure that you are never investigated. Like I said, I understand your actions, they make sense to me. In certain other lights, I have more skeletons than available closet space myself, so I understand why you are on the campaign trail.
I just want people to understand you for what you are, and to see what you are trying to do, which is evade investigation of your actions. It has nothing to do with “anti-science” on either side of the political aisle. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s all about you avoiding responsibility for what you have done.
I call again for an independent scientific inquiry into Dr. Mann’s activities. Yes, I know that may be fantasy. And I know that many people think the legal route, a la Cuccinelli, remains the only hope. But I’m opposed to that. I’ve been thinking about why I oppose it, and here’s why I don’t like Cuccinelli’s approach.
I grew up on a cattle ranch, some miles away from a small Western US town. In our world, there were certain unwritten Rules. Oh, yeah, we had the Ten Commandments, but these were the real rules, the iron of the social order. Breaking them meant that people would cut you dead socially, not invite you, not talk to you … and in a tiny town that cut deep. The four Rules were:
You could cheat at business, people did. Folks didn’t like it, but it didn’t put you outside the pale. You could cheat on your husband or wife, folks figured man is born a sinner, people didn’t like it but understood the human urge. You could cheat in a horse deal, that was almost respected in a strange way if it was outrageous enough and the purchaser was what we called a city slicker. But a man who would cheat at cards was a social outcast ever after.
You could steal, particularly from the Government, and still get talked to. People didn’t like a thief, but a man could be a good man and not always scrupulously return what he’d borrowed, as we used to say. But if you stole one head of livestock, you were a damned low-down rustler, and you might as well just move out of town.
Cowboys punched each other sometimes, that was so common it was called a “dustup”. But you couldn’t hit a woman. Likely leftover from the 1800s when there were few women on cattle ranches. Probably some men beat their wives, but if so, it was never admitted, and it was seen as a grave moral failing to hit a woman. Paradox, but go figure.
And finally, you couldn’t call the Sheriff to settle your differences. When my dad found out someone from a neighboring ranch was bonking my mom whenever the constellations chanced to align, he and the guy met in the middle of the only street in town, in front of the combination store/bar/post office/gas station, and they definitely had a “dustup” … but nobody ever heard of a “restraining order”, and nobody ever, ever called the Sheriff. Except maybe to arrest a rustler. If he wasn’t caught in the act …
I have (mostly) held to those rules without much change for a lifetime, which is why I hate to call the Sheriff on Michael Mann. I’d prefer that the scientific community would be in charge, rather than lawyers and Attorneys General and their ilk. I wish Penn State hadn’t folded like a frat party card table holding too many kegs. I have been saying for years that I wish someone with some weight in the climate science community would take up the slack, and call out the egregious malfeasance, including the malfeasance of Penn State’s “thorough investigation”.
Naive … ya think?
Anyhow, mostly I wish Michael Mann would summon the nerve to stand up and produce the evidence. Instead, he’s all about poor me, he’s exonerated, those mean politicians are picking on him, it’s an attack on science, we misunderstand him … bad news, Dr. Mann. It’s not science that people want to investigate. It’s you.
Anyhow, here’s a protip for whoever is involved with Mann’s ongoing PR campaign — an innocent man welcomes and even invites an investigation. He knows he is innocent and has nothing to hide. Pre-emptively fighting against the investigations makes it look like you have a guilty conscience …
I reiterate the offer that Dr. Mann can publish his defense and evidence and present his ideas here on Watts Up With That.
Again Willis, you amaze me. Very nice writing. The whole thing conveys reality as it should be. I hate the legal investigation into Mann but he stinks. It isn’t right what he has done, but nobody has proof. The proof is likely in those emails, except that it was probably deleted. When Cuchi came out, I was dead set against it. His latest self exoneration though was too much. I don’t care anymore.
I had to let an employee go this week for excessive absenteeism ~ 20 percent. Firing isn’t as fun as Trump makes it look like. We gave the employee a last warning to which we got lectured about unfairness. Then I stopped caring.
I don’t care anymore, time to teach the dude a lesson.
Unless I’ve misread it, Cuccinelli is not looking at science at all. He seems to think there may have been financial malfeasance. If that is the case, then surely he is exactly the right person to do it.
DaveE.
Great post Mr. E.
I could not disagree more however, about the course of action required. I have believed for a couple of years now that the only way all of this nonsense is going to end is for a jurisdiction, such as my massively maligned Province of Alberta, to lay criminal charges of fraud against David Suzuki, Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann et-al, arrest them if they are foolish enough to set foot in our territory there-after and prosecute them for their grievous crimes against our economy and our good name.
Force them to defend themselves, their actions and their science, under penalty of law, in plain view of their accusers.
An innocent Mann might welcome any investigation,but why should he welcome a transparently political fishing expedition,Willis? Oh,and instead of demanding Mann archive his data “to allow for replication”,you could always have used the diverse source data that Mann drew together for his multi-proxy study,and done your own study with your own methods. You still can if you’re willing.
Once again Willis a well constructed article, a good read. This is a personal opinion so please don’t take offense, as you point out yourself publication editors are not enforcing their own rules, and until they start I believe to expose their shonky dishonest ways every opportunity to take legal action should be taken.
FYI. I live in OZ where we were brought up with an unwritten law of (don’t dob), if this little phrase is not known in other countries it just means don’t tell, don’t rat on anybody but when it comes to parasites like Mann et al, I say go get him.
Aren’t these things legally binding? Is it not possible for a court to force disclosure?
Remember that Dr. Mann recently said:
My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive
Sorry!, WE DID NOT!
Excellent post. It’s amazing to me that these organisations blatantly go against their own policies and procedures. It makes it appear they have something to hide…
Science Magazine is owned by the American Association for teh Advancement of Science (AAAS). But for the life of me I can’t find who sponsers them. What do we know about AAAS?
Willis, you are always a good read, entertaining and informative. Naive . . I think. Thanks for being who you are!
I agree with David Evans–it isn’t about the science with Mann; it is about misconduct with grant funds. Call the sheriff; call the police; call the feds (their money was part of the grants); get a swat team.
Throw the climate science rustler in the pokey!
The worst it has happened already to the Global Warmin/Climate Change/Climate Disruption/ etc., etc.: They are a JOKE…..and for such “sensible egos” that´s like being constantly executed.
It’s not a fishing expedition. Cuccinelli’s case began with a citizen’s legal FOIA request to UVA for Mann’s emails.
UVA refused the request by saying that the emails had been deleted, then later admitted that the emails might exist on a backup server, but still refused access to the emails because the emails could not be implicated under Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA) on a legal technicality.
You can read a newspaper account (about 3/4 down) here: http://tinyurl.com/25nbofy
You can read Cuccinelli’s 7/24/2010 petition (pp.13-15) here: http://tinyurl.com/22ubcpv
As far as I’m concerned, given the questions raised by the CRU emails, the questions about Mann’s procedures in developing the hockey stick, and this fishy business with the FOIA request, Cuccinelli has more than enough reasons to investigate Michael Mann and UVA.
The high talk of academic freedom versus witch hunts reminds me of nothing so much as Nixon’s insistence during Watergate that he would not turn over the White House tapes because doing so “would cripple all future presidents.”
Sure, it would be preferable to settle this in the scientific community and on a good faith basis, but that’s not going to happen with Michael Mann anymore than it did with Richard Nixon.
I agree completely. At least the dust-ups are often fun, especially when Steve McIntyre decides it’s time for the gloves to come off.
Nick says:
October 16, 2010 at 6:14 pm [ … ]
Nick, you haven’t a clue. Michael Mann used a small subset of the available data in order to get the results he wanted [the Hokey Stick]. He hid the rest of the available proxies in an ftp file named “Censored”. If he had used the whole proxy database instead of cherry-picking, there would have been no hockey stick.
.
And kudos for another excellent article by Willis. You can almost hear the crickets chirping on realclimate and climate progress.☺
@ Rhoda – available from the annual report. ( http://www.aaas.org/publications/annual_report/2009/aaas_ann_rpt_09m_acknowledge.pdf ). Yes it’s a PDF, but the link takes you to those pages. Please note that “Corporations and Foundations” and “Other Sources” have no monetary values attached.
Ciao.
Nick says:
October 16, 2010 at 6:14 pm
When Mann is on record as being asked to illegally delete emails and to ask others to do so, and Mann answers in the affirmative, it is not a “fishing expedition”. At that point we know what we are looking for. For you to call a legitimate reason for an investigation of scientific malfeasance a “fishing expedition” means that either you have not looked at, or are ignoring, the evidence. Good luck with that.
1. The issue was whether Mann had made a mistake in creating the Hokeystick, not whether I should go out and collect data. That’s a red herring. When we finally got access to the code and the data, it was determined that he had in fact made several mistakes. The error could have (and should have) been revealed shortly after publication … but Mann refused to let people see his data and code, which delayed his exposure. Your persistence in defending his anti-scientific action of hiding his data and code is discouraging, but not unexpected.
2. It is totally incorrect to claim that someone could have “used the diverse source data that Mann drew together”, because some of the data he used was not archived. That was the point of the request for the data, because we couldn’t use the data Mann used … you sure you’re following this story?
Best expose of the Penn State white-wash I’ve seen so far.
This should be in the Washington Post and the NY Times. . . .
But of course it won’t be. At least people can read it on WUWT.
It’s not a fishing expedition. Cuccinelli’s case began with a citizen’s legal FOIA request to UVA for Mann’s emails.
UVA refused the request by saying that the emails had been deleted, then later admitted that the emails might exist on a backup server, but still refused access to the emails because the emails could not be implicated under Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA) on a legal technicality.
You can read a newspaper account (about 3/4 down) here: http://tinyurl.com/25nbofy
As far as I’m concerned, given the question raised by the CRU emails, the questions about Mann’s procedures in developing the hockey stick, and this fishy business with the FOIA request, Cuccinelli has more than enough reasons to investigate Michael Mann and UVA.
The high talk of academic freedom versus witch hunts reminds me of nothing so much as Nixon’s insistence during Watergate that he would not turn over the White House tapes because doing so “would cripple all future presidents.”
Sure, it would be preferable to settle this in-house and on a good faith basis, but that’s not going to happen with Michael Mann anymore than it did with Richard Nixon.
[ second time for this post — sorry if it becomes a duplicate ]
Methow Ken says:
October 16, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Best expose of the Penn State white-wash I’ve seen so far.
This should be in the Washington Post and the NY Times. . . .
But of course it won’t be. At least people can read it on WUWT.
That’s ok… it will probably get wider coverage here.
Nick, Willis’s point is that he doesn’t support the AG’s legal approach, either. But what is wrong with Mann agreeing to at least say he never deleted any emails and show the evidence he has that he didn’t. Tell me you are not at least a bit disappointed in the Climategate revelations. Its okay for the AGW scientists to not be perfect.
Smokey says:
October 16, 2010 at 6:59 pm …
And kudos for another excellent article by Willis. You can almost hear the crickets chirping on realclimate and climate progress.☺.
______________00000000000000——————
You have bemused me there. I mean we do have crickets in the UK and we certainly play cricket here.
But i am not quite clear as to why they would be chirping in the way you suppose. Idiom I imagine. Please explain for us ignoramuses.
Kindest Regards.
REPLY: You can hear “the sound of crickets chirping”. It is an American colloquialism, used to describe what happens when the other side of an argument is forced into a mute silence by facts or issues they do not wish to confront or draw attention to. Another way to say it it is “so quiet you could hear a pin drop”. In the USA, especially in the country, the loudest sound at night, for a couple of hours after sunset, is the sound of crickets chirping. – Anthony
I think this is all a waste of time.
What these people are doing is not “bad science” etc. It`s outright criminal fraud. And until people like WUWT, ClimateAudit, politicians, and other scientists start demading criminal investigations of these people – and jail sentances, then nothing will change.
I love the work of WUWT, Climate Audit etc, but all they are trying to do is prove that liers are lying. Mann, Hansen et.al., know they are lying, that`s why they continue to lie and decieve to cover up their previous lies. Proving this to them, only gets them to lie some more.
This will only stop when they are brought to account in a court of law – and made to pay back every cent of tax payer money they defrauded – or they should spend a long time behind bars for embezelling public funds throught deliberately fraudulent “science”
Just my oppinion.
Nick, you don’t even know what you are talking about. Jibberish. Sad . . .
Sorry to have to disagree here but for CAGW to definitively die and to minimise the chances of similar scandals happening again there is going to have to be blood on the walls.
It can’t end up as a quiet polite disagreement between gentleman scientists. The time for that was years ago before the billions wasted, the lies, the vilification of critics, the corruption of science and politics and the damaging of honest scientists careers.
The public are going to have to be clear about the scientific, and maybe other, crimes committed and anyone who might be ever tempted to follow suit is going to have to know that they risk public disgrace, a ruined career and maybe prison.
Any quiet shuffling away of CAGW is going to leave the ringleaders able to claim that they were really right all along and the re-writing of history will begin even as spending continues on insane policies which would never have come into being without CAGW.
We need the facts and honest rigorous public inquiries and if possible, court cases.
This isn’t to be gratuitously vindictive – although plenty of people have every right to feel a grim satisfaction – it’s a necessary cleansing and an example for future generations.
The monster of CAGW needs decapitating, a silver bullet, a stake through the heart and, especially, exposure to sunlight or it won’t die.
Anthony: Very clear and thankyou for that.
Kindest Regards
Willis,
I grew up on a farm outside a slightly larger town, but with similar unwritten laws. In regard to the unwritten law prohibiting a man to hit a woman, I believe the explanation is incomplete without the first corrolary, which is that should a man be hit by a woman, he had best not admit the source of his black eye let alone complain about it.
We also had a saying about the legal system that is germaine to this discussion. It was “when two farmers have a fight about a cow, two lawyers will wind up with a side of beef each”. The point was that most disagreements were best settled without a sheriff or police or judge being involved, and I am betting that your sheriff was just fine with things being settled via a dust up. But should it have come to pass that your father’s “dance partner” was recruiting half the town to show up and assist him in the dust up, I’m pretty certain that both your father and the sheriff would have recognized that matters had escalated to a point requiring intervention from official authorities.
I don’t know what knowledge is in Cuci’s head or what his real strategy actually is. If I did, I could evaluate it on its own merit. But in terms of Mann’s “science” and the agenda advanced by it, this isn’t a dust up anymore. It isn’t two farmers having an argument over a cow. Its about a half dozen known rustlers claiming all the cattle in the county are theirs, and producing poorly forged paperwork to prove it as the cattle are being loaded into trucks with the approval of the local brand inspector.
A dust up won’t settle this and the science community has had ample opportunity to police themselves. It seems that those brave enough to point out that the paperwork is forged in crayon and the brand inspector is stamping his approval on it in advance of it being forged are not only few and far between, they are frequently limited to those such as Dr Lewis who, though his condemnation should reverbrate through the halls of science, in fact has little to lose in terms of his position or career for he is largely retired. Those whose careers lie largely before them seem indiferent at best, complicit at worst, because there is nothing to be gained by exposing the rustlers and every chance that they may get shot in the back for doing so.
Hence, I see little alternative but to call the sheriff and request that he perform his duty. It may cost me a side of beef, but the alternative is to lose the whole herd.
I fear that the scientific community cannot oust poor performers.
Bill Maher quoted on his show recently that 1 in 150 doctors and 1 in 100 lawyers will be thrown out of their profession during their careers. He contrasted these figures with 1 in 2,500 teachers (illustrating another problem). I wonder what the figure for scientists is?
Perhaps this is just me but everytime I look at a photo of Dr. Mann with his arm draped over a slice of a tree trunk and see those beaty little eyes and that condescending little almost smirk I think to myself, what a crook. The presence of the celebrity scientist is to be regretted. Very few of the true powerhouses in science ever acquired celebrity status. But they made the world a better place. Michael Mann has not, will not, and cannot accomplish making the world a better place. His goal appears to have presented a scientific paradigm so as to transform the world and therefore acquire lasting status. But that transformation would certainly carry huge human costs. It’s time for it to end.
Nick said:
“Oh,and instead of demanding Mann archive his data “to allow for replication”,you could always have used the diverse source data that Mann drew together for his multi-proxy study,and done your own study with your own methods.”
As many/most of the people critical of the Hockey Stick don’t think that the proxies so far used (and quite possibly any proxies) are appropriate to usefully indicate past global temperatures, certainly within a few degrees, what on earth would be the point? They’d just be wasting their time coming up with a graph they thought was equal rubbish.
It’s not unlike claiming to have met an alien then, when asked to provide evidence, demanding that doubters go out and find their own alien.
In any case, if someone is making an assertion it’s up to them to provide the evidence for it. If they refuse to, then most people will draw the appropriate conclusion and disregard the assertion.
You find yourself within a paradox. You know that the scientific community is corrupt yet you continue to call upon it to police itself. You cannot accept the fact, plain as the nose on your face, that you must surrender some or all of the trust that you have invested in the scientific community. At this time, they have established that they are a gang of rustlers, but they won’t move out of town. In this case, you have to call the sheriff. Otherwise, their crimes will grow. You are not willing to see town folk hurt for the sake of these scum, are you?
Excellent work. Thank you, Sir.
However, aren’t you too much a gentlemen, while they are not, Willis?
If it were scientific malpractice only, you would be right.
But it’s much more, as we all know.
Climategate was a year ago, right?
These crooks are still playing their games and MSM are still not really picking up.
Think it’s time to leave it to the Cucinellis, in order to get the job done, finally.
Willis,
I attended the Lindzen-North Climate Debate held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, on 27 January 2010. During the debate, Climategate came up — North announced that he had not read any of the Climategate e-mails. Lindzen on the other hand was familiar with the CRU e-mails and discussed some of their revelations.
As I understand the scientific method:
Your results aren’t science until someone else replicates them.
That is pretty close to what the Royal Society originally set down back in the 1600s, and it is still good enough for real scientists.
So, to Mann: Put up or shut up.
When discussing Dr. Mann, it might be helpful to the readers of this forum to focus on the following.
The first link is to a blinking gif that compares Dr. Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” with and without the thermometer record added onto the proxy record (Dr. Mann actually published the version with the thermometer record added). http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/mbh99_mikestrick.gif
This gif was posted in the following comment:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/03/the-mann-report/#comment-219592
Then, fast forward to the following comment (http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/03/the-mann-report/#comment-219874), in which it is recalled that Dr. Mann stated at the blog RealClimate:
Why would the heavyweights in Climate Science investigate Mann and the others. The heavy weights in climate science are the conmen. Someone totally outside the club must carry out the investigation for it to be valuable. This has nothing to do with science. this is deliberate fakery with a world wide cover up. pg
Willis,
Excellent post as always and with some jawdropping information. Like many others, here, however, I have to disagree with your distaste for a legal or governmental inquiry. When I think about how university administrators function, from bitter experience, I get a sinking sensation in my stomach. Administrators have only the remotest interest in helping professors teach (You would not believe the computer programs at my university – course titles restricted to 32 characters and spaces, no system for imposing prerequisites, and numerous other follies; but the programs serve administration fine, so there is no response to professorial complaints.) and even throw up roadblocks to their conducting research. On top of this, political correctness is the default mode governing university speech and conduct, and political correctness recognizes no truth, only utility. Therefore there is no philosophical foundation – let alone recognition of urgency – for conducting a real in-depth inquiry into the malfeasance of a high-performing, well-recognized researcher who is still telling the body politic what it wants to hear. I am not sure that Cuccinelli’s approach will work, either, as it is not clear that he has developed a solid case for a deeper investigation, but the is to be welcomed. Waiting for a proper academic inquiry will be like waiting for Godot.
Smokey,
I’m afraid you’re confused here. Mann didn’t hide proxies there. He hid a run he’d done without the NA tree rings (i.e. without Bristlecone Pines)which showed the resulting multiproxy reconstruction was not statistically significant.
Alas, but someone did call the Sheriff. In fact, they called several sheriffs (Penn State and the other Climategate Inquiries).
But what do you do when the Sheriffs are in cahoots with the cattle rustlers? You call on the Marshall (Cuccinelli) to get to the bottom of the mess.
Some things are worth cheating, such as taxes, but others hold no benefit. Ironically it is when there is no benefit that the bells start ringing. “If you cheat at golf, then you will cheat at anything.”
My Japanese wife has a saying “steal once, forever a thief”.
I cannot find the reference, but was there not an incident recorded in the CRU papers where Mann is fiddling the number of papers he is credited with publishing to look good?
And then there is the Tiljander data that has been inverted, and even after he was found out he continued to use inverted data.
These sorts of incidents are enough for me. I have a gut reaction to them; walk away.
I would like to see both the UVA and Penn State investigated as part of a larger investigation into the worldwide corruption in climate science. In a couple weeks, if all goes well, Congress may be able to do this investigation and show all the bad actors from Mann to Hansen to Phil Jones and their sycophants. I’m behind Cuccinelli’s investigation. The scientific community did not do its job and now someone official should handle it.
Yes, in MBH99 the thermometer record from 1902 is overlaid at the end of the reconstruction period. It is distinguished as ‘raw data AD1902-1998’. It is not being identified as reconstructed data,and as such,it is not ‘grafted’ onto the reconstruction in the sense that it is being passed off as something it isn’t. Is Mann’s RC comment that ambiguous?
Being initially casual about archiving and unco-operative about engagement with critics is hardly as ‘un-scientific’ as obsessively pursuing only one of the three authors, banging on about it for years and barely noting the breadth of the field or its oft repeated caveats.
Well, I still live near a small western town and just came in from feeding the horses – really!
So, being a bit late to this discussion I’ll just point you to this:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-codewest.html
Methow Ken says:
October 16, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Best expose of the Penn State white-wash I’ve seen so far.
This should be in the Washington Post and the NY Times. . . .
LOL. Yeah right. Do you really expect these liberal supporting rags to “out” anyone in the Gorebal warming community???
Good luck with that..
I have to disagree with you on this one… Lets give the fraudulent snake oil salesman a fair trial and throw him into a nice prison. Hopefully with a cellmate that is three hundred pounds of tough love!
[careful now – a fair trial does not pre-suppose a guilty outcome 😉 ~jove, mod]
artwest says:
October 16, 2010 at 7:48 pm
In response, I take a different approach. I think if you start the “bloodying the walls” you let the true criminals get away as they slink away and the superstars like Mann take the fall all by themselves. The point being that if its done scientifically (the investigation) it will fall all the terrible scientists in one sweeping blow, but I think a lot of us that want this approach are seeing how futile it is to hope that true justice will come out of it, or even anything closely approaching it.
A lot of the scientists who are just as guilty as Mann et al are going to end up free and spending their lives still on taxpayer roles as researchers despite spending their entire lives on this. I have no doubts that our system has created the system where this can take place…it might sound circular, but its all of our faults for letting it get this out of control. Too many people are corrupted by the groupthink… and too few people are standing up against it. And too many want to see blood on the wall even if its just token Mann blood.
Sure, I would like to get rid of that smile too, but I doubt that would be justice considering all the other scientists who went off his work and did their own business there too. They should be held accountable, but mark my words, they will get off by saying “I thought the science was sound…”. “I was only working off of what was done before me, I can not be held accountable.” Unfortunatly, they will probably get away with it.
Willis, yer forgettin’ one thing. This varmit yer talkin’ about didn’t just cheat at cards, he didn’t just steal a cow, an’ he didn’t just hit a woman. He poisoned a water hole.
Nick says:
October 16, 2010 at 10:06 pm
I can never tell if you are pretending not to get it, or if you actually don’t get it. Read the dang citations, that’s why I include them. “Mann’s Nature trick” involved grafting proxies on to instrumental temperature data, and then disguising the splice to hide the decline of the proxies when the temperatures were rising.
This is absolutely grafted on and is passed off as something it is not. Nick, your blindness on this question is quite convenient, and not at all convincing. I suppose if you want to defend a con man, that’s your privilege. It’s just that you’d more clueful (and convincing) if you did your homework first.
Excellent post Mr. Eisenbach.
I commend you on your subdued attitude, and indeed, more men should adhere to it.
May I offer a different opinion.
Judge Matthew Begbie, one of the first judges in BC, Canada, where I’m from, once said this.
” My idea is this, if a man insists on behaving like a brute, after fair warning, and won’t quit the Colony, treat him like a brute and flog him.”
Mann and his cohorts have been given more then enough chance to respond, and defend themselves from the acusations that haunt them, but theyre response has been to attack and deny, not explain.
It’s time they were flogged.
Julian in Wales: October 16, 2010 at 9:56 pm
“I cannot find the reference, but was there not an incident recorded in the CRU papers where Mann is fiddling the number of papers he is credited with publishing to look good?”
I think it was the number of Jones’s papers that were being exaggerated by Mann.
1213201481.txt
From: Michael Mann
To: P.Jones
Subject: Re: request for some additional info.
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008
HI Phil,
OK–thanks, I’ll just go w/ the H=62. That is an impressive number and
almost certainly higher than the vast majority of AGU Fellows.
…
talk to you later,
mike
————————
Mike,
…
Problem is my surname. I get a number of 62 if I just use the
software, but I have too many papers. I then waded through
and deleted those in journals I’d never heard of and got
52. I think this got rid of some biologist from the 1970s/1980s,
so go with 52.
…
Cheers
Phil
I can tell you what Michael Mann was asked:
Are you Michael Mann? A nod.
The 2 inquirers then each told a story.
It’s all standard no harm inquirey. You don’t ask questions, and there’s nothing to find adverse.
The document is not available because there’s nothing on it except meeting times and signatures.
There, all exonerated.
Gosh, isn’t Penn State great?
[snip – OTT ~mod]
Although not a US citizen, I venture to agree with those supporting the Cuccinelli approach.
The ‘HockeyStick’, which arguably has been the bedrock of the worldwide CAGW hysteria and although thoroughly discredited, unfortunately the image lingers.
Maybe the only way to kill it dead for good and with it the whole circus, is a successful legal prosecution.
Willis, once again you have brought remarkable (and very readable!) clarity and focus in shining a light on the dark underbelly of “climate science”. But …
… I (very respecfully) disagree with your depiction of this as “pathetic bumbling”. When I see “bumbling” what comes to my mind is comedic Inspector Clouseau (aka the late great Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther!). Ergo, “pathetic bumbling” is far too benign a description for the negligent (and malignant?!) but obviously deliberate choice on the part of the “investigators”.
To my mind, the “investigators” (or invested interest-ators) at Penn State would have been far more deserving of a small measure of respect had they said “hey, folks … we’re sorry … but we didn’t invite him to our patch until 2005, so we couldn’t possibly comment.”
On the to Cucc or not to Cucc matter … apart from agreeing with David M. Hoffer, I plead the north of the 49th 😉
Nick says:
October 16, 2010 at 10:06 pm
You just don’t want to get it, do you nick. No-one is a thick as you make out.
If Mann was an honest individual he would have condemned the investigative process himself, since it was obviously woefully unfit for purpose. I can’t speak on the evidence his “scientific” claims are based on, but the logic of his claim of “exoneration” in such circumstances gives an extremely revealing insight into his character.
The real climate feedback loop:
Data archived.
Sources cited.
Debate invited.
Willis, I’m surprised you ever wasted the ink in writing to Kennedy, He has form, as I detaile din my 2007 book, Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science. He was certainly no independent arbiter suitable to bringing an open mind to considering Mann’s ‘science’.
Kennedy is a one-time Carter Administration public servant, active in the campaign against the Bush administration for being ‘anti-science.’ When asked what had led to this view among so many American scientists, Kennedy pointed to two issues: climate change and stem cells. This political campaigning might have played a role in his journal accepting an infamous paper by Hwang Woo Suk (Hwang et al, 2005), later found to have faked his results, because the paper had considerable political significance. The Bush administration had in 2001 decided to limit federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and the House of Representatives voted on 23 May 2005 to override this executive decision. This was helped by the timely publication in the on-line Sciencexpress a few days earlier of a landmark paper by Hwang et al reporting a very promising breakthrough in the efficiency of production of lines of human stem cells, suggesting that stem cell research held great promise. What is more, the paper was by a Korean team, which suggested that the US was being passed by for leadership in this area as a result of the executive decision. Science featured the paper (which was not published in the hard-copy journal until after the House vote) in a news story (Vogel, 2005), and the story featured prominently in the newspapers on 19-20 May—just before the vote. . . . As one correspondent to Science noted (Martin, 2006), ‘If the Science editorial staff had paid more attention to the science and less to the sensation . . . the impact of this sorry affair might have been much less.’ A review of the paper and the journal’s failure to screen it out reached a similar conclusion.
Donald Kennedy wrote an editorial in Science in February 2006 lamenting the ‘gagging’ of James Hansen at NASA. He relied upon a report in the New York Times for the facts of the case, and lamented this (and the ‘gagging’ of NOAA scientists from speaking out in favour of a link between climate change and hurricane intensity) as ‘part of a troublesome pattern to which the Bush administration has become addicted: Ignore evidence if it doesn’t favour the preferred policy outcome.’ But Hansen, who must possess a remarkable ability to speak while gagged, had made a press release claiming 2005 tied with 1998 as the warmest year on record, which was represented as a statement by NASA, when NASA had not authorised such a statement, and the circumstances suggest a case of a scientist on the public payroll who not only did not wish to be bound by the rules applying to public servants, but wished to make statements on behalf of his government agency.
Kennedy also wrote in an editorial in Science on 6 January 2006 (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina): ‘The consequences of the past century’s temperature increase are becoming dramatically apparent in the increased frequency of extreme weather events. . . .’
Kennedy’s involvement in heavily politicized climate science goes back a long way – to the nuclear winter nonsense, when he published with his Stanford colleague, Paul Ehrlich (Ehrlich, P. R., C. Sagan, D. Kennedy, and W. O. Roberts (1984) The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc). He is so close to Ehrlich that Ehrlich even introduced Kennedy to readers of Science upon his appointment as editor (Ehrlich, P. R. (2000a) ‘Donald Kennedy — The next Editor-in-Chief of Science.’ Science 288: 1349) after his term as president of Stanford.
Academic freedom does not permit lying or fraud.
In grade 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6 the math teachers insisted that I must show my work.
In grade 12 I proved to my maths teacher that I could do quadratic equations in my head multiple times, in front of the class, but he still insisted that I show my work.
If it is good enough for a school boy, it is good enough for Mann.
Can’t do them anymore, though.
Aynsley Kellow says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:12 am …
Oh, man, Aynsley, say it ain’t so. Kennedy co-authoring and being friends with Ehrlich? I didn’t know that, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Ehrlich has an astonishing record — as near as I can tell, despite the large number of predictions he has made, not a single one of them has come to pass. Not one. Only a university professor could keep their job behind such an unbroken succession of failures.
Aynsley Kellow says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:12 am
I was naive … ya think? And this was before you wrote your book …
Thanks for the further details of Kennedy’s career, fascinating stuff.
‘Fraid so Willis!
Incidentally, the report of the review panel that looked at the Hwang case (even though, as I recall, it was chaired by a Stanford Prof, who was no doubt ‘sound’ in the ‘Yes, Minister’ sense) makes good reading. They warn that the peer review process should be even more searching when the political or economic stakes are high. I happen to share Kennedy’s position on stem cell research (though I do not think that scientists in any field should arrogate to themselves the right to decide what limits should be placed upon their endeavours).
An inquiry that interviews only Mann, Kennedy and (‘We Just Winged It’) North is truly risible!
Incidentally, I popped across to David Appell’s ‘Quark Soup’ to look at his take on the Hal Lewis resignation. Appell was one of the leaders of the e-lynch mob that went after Lomborg. What surprised me was how little traffic he now gets. There were all of 13 posts – many of which were differing with him. Some of his efforts drew zero responses. Seems to me the traffic has deserted him and others. Have others found something similar at other blogs?
This is a great article Willis. You have a real gift, a thoughtful way with words and your writing is eminently readable! Your attention to detail is outstanding and ranks up there with Steve McIntyre. I wish you would partner with McIntyre if and when it becomes time for his book to be written (because without your help it will be easily mistaken for a $100 textbook ;-). Of course you could also partner with Anthony on a book entitled something like: Climate Change Chronicles – Watts Up With That. That would be sooo massive (and pardon the pun, heads would explode all over the blogosphere). But you all must still wait a bit due to upcoming events: Elections, Cancun, ClimateGate Anniversary (Part-Deux ?), Satellite photos of Winter 2010, new Congress, Arctic Extent 2011 (pity the AGW Cultist, this is their year to begin drinking).
I surely envy you. That is some very nice imagery, and very much unlike my ‘hood’ growing up. It is safe to say though that both (perhaps all) worlds develop a natural form of Queensbury style guidelines, an equilibrium, a thermostat society. What cannot be ignored though is the element of self-policing that negates the need for ‘calling the cops’. When someone assaults a lady or someone’s mother or breaks in or steals a horse or car, bones are going to be broken and scars can be expected at the minimum. This, well let’s call it peer-to-peer review 😉 is largely missing in our brave new world, and is clearly missing from the climate pop-science community. Thus we are left with a broken thermostat and runaway AGW Cultism.
What I find perplexing is that so many people somehow envision the Virgina AG as a replacement for the substantial contributions by the so-called skeptic community. Folks, it is important to multitask, and to be strategic, and work in parallel and be redundant. Playing offense on multiple fronts wins games and wars. Of course, this is not a game at all, and Cuccinelli does not work for the skeptic community. His clients are the taxpayers of the great state of Virgina (the land of giants: Washington, Jefferson, Madison). So IMHO this line of argument is a true strawman, Cuccinelli is completely irrelevant to the larger AGW debate. His investigation would only matter if the AGW Cult was completely funded by defrauding Virginia taxpayers, and that is certainly not the case. Folks can still decapitate Mann’s theories on the merits or lack thereof, please continue. Make it so.
Some people just feel compelled for some reason to chime in about Cuccinelli, as if it puts them above the fray (or keeps them invited to cocktail parties? I dunno). Many of us take it very personally, like someone is telling us screw your tax dollars. It is not a big stretch to someone saying give me your watch and is far worse than someone cheating at cards.
This will continue until Congress changes hands and cuts off the flow of money to these leeches on society. Vote on November 2d.
Nice article – although the last of your “four rules” (which basically states “it’s better to resolve issues between you rather than involving them meddlin’ cops) only works if the whole house isn’t institutionally corrupt. In this case we know that the whole so-called “climate science” business is indeed institutionally corrupt (corrupted by money and Government). It doesn’t matter how many individuals on the inside scream and shout about how rotten it is; the corruption goes too deep and too high-up to be changed by any internal force.
Further more, the allegations against Mann warrant a criminal investigation. If this guy is guilty of the alleged behaviour (manipulating and cherry-picking the data, conspiring with Jones to delete emails, truncating inconvenient proxy data and substituting thermometer data (to hide the decline), running biassed models which favour HS shapes, etc etc, all to justify Government policy) then he needs to be locked up. So Cuccinelli has my support.
The reason I don’t like the the legal route is that it will never bring closure to the “science”.
No doubt, if Cuccinelli is going after Mann for financial fraud, he’ll most likely find something, like not spending the money on exactly what he said he would spend it on, or not following a certain procedure, or maybe even real fraud like spending it on a car or something. And we’ll all ooh and aah about every little twist and turn in the case.
But the Hockey Stick will still remain.
There’ll be no closure on that. The IPCC will still be able to use it, because it won’t have been shown to be falsified. Other “scientists” will still be able to get away with shoddy research and scientific fraud because there won’t be a mechanism whereby they can be called out on it.
All of Anthony’s, Steve’s and Willis’s work will have been for nought, because it will never come out in the court case. Indeed, if they pursue things further, they’ll be seen to be bullies, ganging up on him. And the alarmist websites will now have their very own “martyr”, and will be able to pursue their own particular brand of fundamentalism with renewed vigour.
I can understand people’s desire to have that smirk wiped off his face, but we need to be patient. The lies and distortions will out, and probably bring the rest of the house of cards with it in short order. This is a sideshow.
David, UK says:
October 17, 2010 at 4:06 am
Further more, the allegations against Mann warrant a criminal investigation. If this guy is guilty of the alleged behaviour (manipulating and cherry-picking the data, conspiring with Jones to delete emails, truncating inconvenient proxy data and substituting thermometer data (to hide the decline), running biassed models which favour HS shapes, etc etc, all to justify Government policy) then he needs to be locked up. So Cuccinelli has my support.
—————————————————
I agree with this. The failure of the inquiries has proven that an independant investigation is required which can be best offered by a judge.
And locking up a scientist would be a really strong signal. Even Republican haters in the US and Europe would have a hard time to communicate that this could have happened without good reason.
Cool. A new American aphorism is born: “Better to lose a side of beef, then the whole herd”. As someone who’s day job involves pursuit of fiscal malfeasance of taxpayer funds, Cuccinelli’s quest, if successful, will change the landscape of scientific research. Cuccinelli is looking at some things none of you have cottoned on to yet. Certainly, as information surfaces like what Willis has discovered here, Cuccinelli’s email addy should be on your cc list. Just sayin’…
I find your small western US town rules quite amusing and I like most of them. But wife-beating doesn’t stop – and the women have no redress – until it is subject to the rule of law, therefore that small town rule is unjust. Likewise with lies about climate: the damage these people have done and still are doing to society will only be stopped by the rule of a just law. So I support Cuccinelli. It is justice we need. Climate liars and world damagers need to be stopped and it takes more clout than right-thinking scientists and public have. It takes law-enforced justice, not amusing small town rules.
Methow Ken said:
> Best expose of the Penn State white-wash I’ve seen so far.
> This should be in the Washington Post and the NY Times. . . .
> But of course it won’t be. At least people can read it on WUWT.
I may be a bit naive (like AW many years ago) but I believe that most large newspapers have an ‘ombudsman’ to act as an intermediary between the newspaper and its audience, obstensibly for airing problems and complaints about the “news” coverage (isn’t that the “product” they’re selling?), sort of like a consumer complaint person.
For WaPo that person is Andy Alexander, whose email and blog links are:
mailto:ombudsman@washpost.com
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/
For NYTimes that person is Art Brisbane
public@nytimes.com
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html
I think it is high-time that these gents start doing their job and report back to their respective publishers that the “public” are not buying this massive scam (or their newspapers) anymore.
Perhaps they already know this and are part of the scam. But giving them the benefit of doubt, I would like to believe that they need to hear from intelligent and concerned folks like ourselves (not an angry crowd with pitchforks and torches).
And therein is the reason I dropped out of the AAAS after being a member for 30 years this past year. The Scientific American and the National Geographic are also getting the heave ho of not renewing my subscription.
@Huth – Reread the article. The man was not beating his wife, he was abusing somebody else’s wife. “When my dad found out someone from a neighboring ranch was bonking my mom” Yes, perhaps a more “hopey changey” society would have the guy brought up on charges and after a trial lasting 2 years be sentenced to 100 hours of community service, but he was damn lucky not to have the matter settle by the court of 357.
Willis, thank you for this post, you always explain things very rationally and lucidly.
I’m inclined to agree with you about Cuccinelli’s suit being not such a good idea, though not for quite the same reasons. I’m with Judd above, I would love to see that condescending smirk wiped off Mann’s face [and, as an aside: is it me, or are the asymmetric rings in the slab of wood under his elbow in that photo a perfect illustration of how dodgy it is trying to reconstruct anything with perfect certainty from coring trees?], and if he has been misusing taxpayers’ money he deserves to be held to account for it. But it appears to me that there is an insidious institutional corruption endemic in climate “science”, and all things connected to it, which has spread a very long way up, down and sideways. I’m concerned that it spreads so far that Mann and his cohorts will be able to lie, hide the data, and cheat their way out of it, thus allowing him to claim total exoneration again.
Yeah, I’m paranoid :/
To take Huth’s comment one step further, and keep the small town analogy going, not only hasn’t the wife-beating stopped and the women have no redress, but everybody in town in ok with the explanations to the doctor that they have each fallen down the stairs.
Mountains of scientific papers are being written today based on the premise that AGW is happening, and these papers merely show more of how AGW impacts the earth. No one is even questioning the underlying basis by raising alternative explanations for whatever they are studying. If it takes legal proceedings to slow or derail that freight train, then that is what will have to happen. As it is now, we have EPA and state agencies using AGW as the basis for decision making and permit denials without any rule or regulation in place.
“Dr. Mann recently said: My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive.
If using data from one tree is proof of warming then obviously two interviews would be a thorough investigation, in fact it might even be overkill.
The When and the How seem pretty evident at this point, I’m much more interested in the Why. I want to know the motive(s), that’s when things always get interesting in situations like these.
Aynslow, thanks for the background!. Here is some more:
In 2005, Science magazine had an editorial, titled “Silly Season on the Hill”, generally ridiculing members of Congress for developing sudden interest in science, here and there. That was however the backdrop against which the harassment of Mann by Rep Barton was painted.
The editorial wrote:
The author: Donald Kennedy.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/309/5739/1301
Dr. Mann — Doctor of Data?
I agree that it would be nice if the scientific community could sort itself out, but it does not appear to be able. To use your analogy: Do you blame the sheriff when he is called in, or the people who made it necessary?
Congratulations for that funny cartoon!: It´s proved beyond all doubt: All this issue of GW/CCH/CDSR and its followers, backers and funders, is one of the biggest JOKE ever. The King IS NAKED!
Willis, although I can understand your desire for this to be handled within the scientific community rather than the court system, I as a non-scientist have to disagree. The general public for the most part only hears the propaganda spewed by greenpeace, MSM and greenie politicians trying to get voted into office. Most of the general public doesn’t hear anything about the (so called) enquiries made, the only reason I know anything about them is because I stumbled onto this blog after someone complained on an MSM news report comment section about the MSM completely ignoring the leaked e-mails. For the propaganda to start being annuled there has to be a big enough media event that the MSM can’t ignore. They cannot hide/ignore a public court case as easily as they can a scientific enquiry.
Methow Ken said:
> Best expose of the Penn State white-wash I’ve seen so far.
> This should be in the Washington Post and the NY Times. . . .
> But of course it won’t be. At least people can read it on WUWT.
Perhaps I’m a bit naive (like AW years ago) but I know every large newspaper has an “ombudsman”, a detached, impartial spokesperson, who investigates questions and concerns about the newspaper’s content and coverage.
For WaPo it’s Andy Alexander (who welcomes constructive feedback):
BLOG: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/
EMAIL: ombudsman@washpost.com
For NYTimes it’s Art Brisbane (who I’m not sure about, but be polite):
BLOG: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html
EMAIL: public@nytimes.com
I think it’s time for these gents to learn that many of us intelligent and concerned scientists and laypersons (i.e. not an unruly mob with pitchforks and torches) will no longer buy this climate scam (or their newspapers’ involvement in it).
When Cuccinelli announced his effort I was ambivalent. I felt that the public disclosure of evidence would be a very good thing, but that going beyond that might be counterproductive.
With every subsequent revelation, of the Penn State nonsense investigation and Mann’s trumpeting it as exoneration, his crap op-ed, I’m feeling more and more like the guy needs to be made an example of.
I’m sorry, I know this is off topic, but it just makes me laugh so hard.
ROFLMAO…
Great post on Mike “The Stick” Mann, Willis, as far as it goes, and don’t forget all those Western women who could hold their own, too, in their own ways. Other commenters suggest the larger picture — administrators of universities running it for their own purposes with government and foundation funding, and minimizing the effectiveness of true (faculty) professors of their fields; the false scientific research is funded to support political control (by whom a very important question — one to be asked of Donald Kennedy and AAAS — which gang of rustlers are you working for?); whatever laws scientist-frauds and their universities break must be investigated by every law enforcement officer, the more the merrier.
“As far as it goes” for your post, Willis, is probably the most important distance to travel. No Constitution, no code of justice or “unwritten rules “is worth the paper it is written on if individuals do not abide by it or stand up for it. Where are those scientific giants and everyday researchers with integrity? The code of the scfientific method is not so different from the “unwritten rules”. I admire your credentials. Mine are not from ranching. I grew up in the city, but my outlook was “the West” and all that meant: father grew up on a homestead; his grandfather lost his life in the gold fields of the Yukon; maternal grandfather prospected all over the West. And they all were entrepreneurs. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Where are the dust-ups? There should be hundreds of them?
I hope they will begin in geology, the one field that has to know about human insignificance in eons of detail. I have mentioned my sadness about geologists drinking the kool-aid and just deleted a blog called highlyallochthonous because of blogger AJ’s post on 10/15. There have been other posts to which I have objected, but this was the most egregious, and included outreach to children and adolescents. It is obviously oriented to the new demon “climate disruption”. Quote and link: “Of the various water-related posts I’ve read today, the one that sticks out in my mind as an absolute must-read is this post on Columbia University’s Earth Institute blog about the crucial connections between water and energy. Lakis Polycarpou does a fantastic job of laying out these connections under the following headings: ‘The way we use water consumes energy. Conventional energy production is crucially dependent on abundant supplies of freshwater. The quest for new sources of cheap, abundant energy threatens existing water sources. Use of fossil energy is warming the climate—which disrupts the water cycle and threatens both water and energy resources.’ This effort seems to be located in the U.N.
Water seems to be one of the next great battlefields for those who would control the world and all its resources, impoverishing all human beings except their elitist selves. An overstatement? I don’t think so.
Thanks to Aynsley Kellow (2:12 a.m.) for his battle-readiness. I would have a new book to order except for the price: http://www.amazon.com/Science-Public-Policy-Corruption-Environmental/dp/1847204708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287330517&sr=8-1. Any place one get a (used) copy for a reasonable amount?
Those small town amusing rules are nothing to laugh. They are not meted out in quaint-like manner either. At the very least, you lose your livelihood. If you can get out of town uninjured, consider yourself lucky.
I’ll just chime in here to agree with many posters above. Only multiple legal inquiries, addressing multiple avenues (e.g. financial, scientific) will properly address the climate science malfeasance. An adversarial approach, with rules of evidence and criminal penalties for perjury is necessary at this point. The opportunity for self-policing (at least IMO) ended years ago. It certainly ended with the leak of the CRU emails.
Nick
You don’t appear to understand. If Mann doesn’t archive his data than it can’t be reproduced it is therefore by definition not science. It really is as simple as that.
Someone else taking some other set of data or the same data and mianipulating it in some way that may or may not be similar does nothing to support Mann which as it is unreproducible is simply garbage. It really is as simple as that and anyone with even a high school science background should be able to understand that.
Willis, I’m reminded of some other expressions. First, when it comes to climate science, it is the fox guarding the hen house. This isn’t a dust-up between two parties! When you are appeal to scientists to out bad scientists, it is like the fox guarding the hen house because the scientists who would out the bad ones are rightfully afraid of losing their job. In many ways, it is like a protection racket employed by organized crime organizations. “Sure is a nice grant you received. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it …” The climategate emails show that the foxes take definite action to silence dissent.
So when you appeal to climate scientists to step up and condemn the actions of bad scientists. That is like bringing a knife to a gun fight, a saying I heard Sean Connery mention in a movie. You cannot win asking scientists to step up. Remember: bad climate scientists are much like Al Capone and organized crime. They are (or were) both glamorized by the media, they are both rich, and they are both powerful. If you want to take down the modern day Al Capone, you have to fight back with something stronger.
The only way to fully expose these charlatans is by the courts. There is no other legal option. Sure, time will prove them to be liars and the internet will permanently preserve their words so that they can never cause malfeasance again. The repeal of prohibition would have ended Al Capone too, so time was also not on his side. Justice is not hoping the bad guys will fade away. Justice is bringing people to trial for their crimes. I want justice. The only way to get justice now is the court of law. I wish every state was doing what Virginia is doing. That is the only way left to get justice. And even in that way, the judge and jury can easily be bribed.
Mr. Eschenbach: You must stop bringing a knife to a gunfight. You will never win hoping the hens will overthrow the fox.
Nick says:
October 16, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Oh,and instead of demanding Mann archive his data “to allow for replication”,you could always have used the diverse source data that Mann drew together for his multi-proxy study,and done your own study with your own methods. You still can if you’re willing.
Nick I suggest you watch this.
The cartoon is priceless, the only thing missing is the flow of grants in support.
Heh, yep, same rules in the area I grew up in. And I still instinctively operate in that manner.
Recently, I came home to find my ’66 Mustang had huge dent in the passenger front fender. Now, I live in a farmhouse, but I don’t farm the land. The family that farms the land (3 generations) is in and out of the property constantly, we also had a team of roofers repairing some damage of recent storm, and wood cutters getting at the fallen trees. Many would react by picking up the phone and calling the police. I had the expectation that someone would come back by and tell me what happened. To my dismay, no one ever “fessed” up to the deed. Turns out the roofers had a trailer which when hitched is the exact same height as the impact mark. As happenstance would have it, about a week later, another larger dent appeared with altogether different markings. This time, however, the farmers wife called, the farmer showed up, explained, he had already called his insurance agent and assured me that it would be repaired. It was.
The point is, Willis, while I agree with the rules, it only works if the majority are playing by the same set of rules. Mann is like the roofers. Only Mann did a hit and run on all of us.
Like you, I’m much chagrin to call the sheriff, and I deplore the knee jerk reaction to such. But what is the people’s recourse? For those happily cheering, I hope your expectations aren’t too high. There is a large distinction between scientific malfeasance and provable violations of the law in which Cuccinelli is charged to enforce. For those confused, unless the state has a parallel law to the Federal government, subverting the FOI act is a federal matter beyond the purview of the state’s AG.
The precedent this is setting is outright scary. But, it wasn’t Cuccinelli or any other skeptic that “raised the ante”. It was the alarmist that did so, but why wouldn’t they, they cheat at cards, too.
Willis,
Here is a quick but amusing story based on a real experiment that explains why the climate science community cannot be counted on to put is own shop in order.
Take a large cage and place in the centre of it a large step ladder. Suspend a banana over the top of the step ladder. Lock 10 monkeys into the cage. After some period of time, one of the monkeys will proceed up the ladder to get the banana. Upon setting foot on the ladder, the entire cage is sprayed with ice cold water from fire hoses.
In short order, the monkeys learn that there is a price to be paid for trying to reach that banana. The smarter ones figure it out right away. The slower ones either catch on soon, or the rest of the monkeys beat the snot out of them for trying. After a while, none of them even consider trying to get that banana.
Take one of the ten monkeys out of the cage and put in a new monkey. The new monkey hasn’t a clue about the ice water and fire houses so sets out to get that banana. The rest of the monkeys beat the snot out of him. He quits trying. He doesn’t know why that banana is off limits, but it is. Take another of the original monkeys out of the cage and replace it with another new monkey. They soon learn too that the banana is off limits. 7 of the monkeys pitching in to teach the lesson know why, but one of them doesn’t, just that it is off limits.
Continue the process until all of the original 10 monkeys are gone from the cage. The banana is still off limits, any monkey that attempts to get it will recieve a beating, and not a single one of them know why. But that’s their reality and the beatings are real, though the reason for them is 10 times or more removed.
That is the reality for climate scientists today. They get a beating from their peers and superiors for even suggesting having a closer look at what happens when you step on that ladder, and those giving the beating don’t even know the reason anymore, but they will work hard to prevent it. Perched high atop the ladder are a handfull of researchers like Lindzen and others, calmly eating a banana, for the fire hoses have long since been turned off and Lindzen knows that they were only a temporary influence. In fact, they have been off for at least 15 years.
The scientists who note that nothing came of Lindzen climbing the ladder and eating the banana are all told the same thing.
Yes, but he’s not a “real” monkey. Er.. scientist. No, wait. Let’s go with monkey.
This is the new real media!
Here is where you get the truth.Here is where the investigatiing journalism is done thorough and open.MSM is the systematic lying puppets för the establishment.What if the internet and scientific blogs wheren`t. Only few would now the truth.
Thanks all of you guys for sharing your knowledge.
Mann is a selfish, big headed guy who will go to his grave blindly defending the rabid self-esteem he has for himself.
paulhan says:
October 17, 2010 at 4:11 am
The reason I don’t like the the legal route is that it will never bring closure to the “science”.
Again I disagree Paul. In an adversarial court trial, the credibility of the defendants would be on trial. All of their public statements that have injured the aggrieved, all the their actions (deleting e-mails) and the subsequent damage to their gravitas would smear like-wise their data. What other scientist would want to put their own neck on the line having seen the destruction levied upon Mann or Phil Jones in a proper criminal or civil action? The release of the e-mails from the CRU at EA was the beginning of the end. The jailing of Jones or Mann for destruction of evidence or simple perjury should be the natural and I daresay, expected outcome of that selfless act.
The way to deal with Mann is to cut his funding.
Given the state of the nation and the political discontent therein, I have hope that will eventually come true.
I believe there’s cause to investigate Mann’s actions. However, I don’t believe that “an innocent man welcomes and even invites an investigation.” Unwarranted investigations are used to intimidate and harass innocent people.
Investigations should be prosecuted by someone with an interest when there is sufficient cause to do so. Expecting the targets to welcome every investigation them is unrealistic and would eliminate the natural tension between adversaries that tends to reveal the most truth, most convincingly, in the long run.
In fact, I’d be very suspicious of the thoroughness of any investigation that was “welcomed” by its target.
I’m interested in the “cowboy code”, because some of it fits the behaviour of the rightly-named King Alfred the Great.
One key factor in Alfred’s success was his outrageous compassionate integrity and out-of-the-box actions. He learned cunning and dexterity from hunting animals. He offered the vanquished Viking Guthrum the choice of death or conversion to Christianity. Guthrum chose conversion, and thereafter was allowed to return to rule – you’d never guess – EAST ANGLIA. He became a bulwark against further invasion and a loyal subject to Alfred – while Alfred took Guthrum’s Viking tactics to heart and, inter alia, established the English navy. It’s a powerful story, well worth a read.
The relevant cowboy issues:
* Don’t inquire into a person’s past. Take the measure of a man for what he is today.
* Never steal another man’s horse… Never even bother another man’s horse.
* A cowboy always helps someone in need, even a stranger or an enemy.
* Never shoot an unarmed or unwarned enemy.
These revolve around “don’t take their horse” – their primary means of building any kind of future. Mann is fighting desperately -and so will all the fraudsters, unless they can be promised they can keep their horse, even if nothing else.
Translated, this means we need a well-developed amnesty action plan that has teeth, whereby all the defrauders (problem is, THERE’S SO ****** MANY OF THEM, in politics and the media as well as in Science) are guaranteed that all punitive charges will be dropped, on condition that they relearn Scientific Method and reapply it, retrospectively, to make amends where necessary. Sounds frakkin’ impossible… but we have an impossible situation on our hands – the whole official scientific establishment corrupted at the top levels. Extreme situations can inspire drastic creative solutions and even miraculous help, if we ask for help at the highest levels.
Now when we get a skeptics wiki, it will be a lot easier to name names and collect info to decide what amends is needed in each case for all the major offenders. This wouldn’t be a desmogblog-like collection of ad homs, it has to be the very opposite: the path to healing. Where’s the salaries going to come from? Well, drops all round should make transition to the new reformed science manageable with existing levels of State help, without drastic job loss; that gives time for the market to restabilize and Science to continue in a far better way.
JC — Thanks, I rummaged around on the site but couldn’t find that.
To pyromancer76:
Sorry about the price! The publisher works the academic market, so the target is institutions who will buy hardcovers. I think you can read bits of it at Google Books, and it is available as an e-book from the publisher.
Unfortunately, the book was published a couple of years prior to Climategate, although much of its argument anticipates that episiode. I focus on the way in which electronic communication has undermined the usual QA processes like peer review by putting potential reviewers in touch with each other, so that they either collaborate as authors or come together in conferences or in processes such as the OECD, often acting as gatekeepers of knowledge in a ‘good cause’. While I used the Hockeystick as a case study, I just underestimated the extent to which the Hockey Team were engaging in these practices.
You should actually read the entire interview. We know that scientists are required to submit all the SI for each submission, that is standard practice. What Kennedy is talking about is that they can only go with the information given to the magazine and cannot expect peer-reviewers to be so skeptical of data that they have to go over every piece of information used while the study was done. In other words, the magazine needs to trust that the information given to the magazine is the actually unadulterated data. That snippet is incredibly misleading.
Here is the clarification:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/july-dec05/scandal_12-27.html
Are you insinuating that Kennedy is breaking standard rules for his publication to distort the science for some reason? Do you have actual proof of that?
North just told Barton the findings of his report. Barton no longer has any excuse for his nosestretchers.
We now have Hal Lewis admitting he destroyed data: no pressure just nuclear stuff, and this post’s typist who has deleted and lost emails. Where is the Beckian false outrage?
John McManus,
Attacking the messenger, just as Saul Alinsky instructed you people to do.
It’s clear why you are making your red herring argument: because the charges
Dr Lewis makes are not defensible.
gryposaurus:
“You should actually read the entire interview.”
Another red herring argument. The central point is the fact that Science neglects to follow its own written Policy:
Get back on point, and explain why you think it’s OK for Kennedy to ignore Policy in order to protect his pal Michael Mann.
gryposaurus:
As Donald Kennedy knows only too well, there are areas of science where the labs are actually subject to audit: drug and chemical research.
Much of the data collected for regulatory approval (for efficacy and risk) are collected by the corporation that developed the drug/chemical. Much additional research is conducted under research contracts by labs at universities. How do we guard against corruption? We subject the labs themselves to audit. This is crucial for the reliability of science that must inform public policy – especially as the data must ideally be accepted internationally (so it must comply with OECD guidelines on Good Laboratory Practice and Mutual Acceptance of Data).
In addition, research protocols for drug trials require different teams to prepare doses and placebos, administer the doses and placebos, diagnose the patients, and perform the statistical analysis. The point made by the late Michael Crichton is that none of this applies with the science of global climate disruption.
IN contrast, Michael Mann selected his own data (collected by others, but he selected the series he used), subjected it to analysis, interpreted the results, then wrote the IPCC chapter that connected it with the policy process, and then engaged in the political discourse surrounding it. Not only is his lab not audited, but he refused to reveal how he reached his results when asked for data and code. Steve McIntyre has performed that audit function.
As someone said, this is not science as we know it, because science is quintessentially about replication.
Here is the fundamental question: How can we have sufficient confidence in climate science to base costly public policy upon it if its practitioners will not adhere to the basic tenets of scientific practice?
For as long as Michael Mann (and Donald Kennedy et al) seek to avoid that basic requirement they have no credibility. And for those of us who are ‘lukewarmers’, they stand in the way of developing sensible policy that responds to the (probably modest) risks of anthropogenic climate change (sorry, climate disruption), without actually driving more radical policy because (as Roger Peilke Jr has pointed out) there is not the linear relationship between science and policy they assume. The public is smart enough to comply with what ‘The Science’ tells us – they (quite rightly) recognise it as a technocratic grab for power.
Donald Kennedy wrote an editorial in Science saying “the science is settled” on climate change. Shortly after, he gave a talk to that effect to the Ecological Society of America annual meeting. After his talk, I spoke to him. I introduced myself and said I wasn’t someone famous…at which point the President of the Ecol. Soc. (the only other person present at that moment) piped in and said that in fact I had quite a reputation in Ecology (at that point it was already clear I was in the process of giving Kennedy hell). I continued that no person in such a position of power as Kennedy should try to stifle discussion and research on such an important topic. I laid it on. He seemed quite startled to have anyone disagree with him, but then claimed he didn’t mean to stifle dissent–yeah right. It was a useless gesture, but it felt good.
No, it is not a red herring. I am asking for proof of this. So far, all we have is quote that has nothing to do with author’s submitting SI to the publisher. It gets the SI from the authors. This is standard. If you have proof that they don’t ask for this from some people for nefarious reasons, please provide that proof. Kennedy, in the interview, is clearly saying that there are limits to what a peer-reviewers can do. Like, they cannot demand a scientist give up any original notebooks to make sure the data has not been doctored. They trust that the data they receive is valid, just like any other publication that doesn’t hire its own police force. This web of conspiracy is out of control and people think nothing of blindly accusing people of wrong-doing, attempting to destroy careers, without a shred of evidence. Is there an end to this? How far from Mann does it extend? Let’s see, HadCRT, NAS, Penn State (or all of academia), RealClimate, NASA GISS, the Wegman “social network” etc, etc and now, the major publications’ editors. And all this for a twelve year old paper that doesn’t even matter very much. Christ. Enough already.
Thank you for mentioning that article by Naomi Oreskes. For a long time, I’ve had a nagging urge to go back and find the Science magazine article that convinced me to end my membership in the AAAS. You saved me the trouble: that was the article. The proposition that one could settle a scientific dispute by counting votes is so outrageous that one could only conclude that Science magazine had been hijacked by zealots.
gryposaurus says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Sure, glad to, I don’t make this stuff up. See here for an example. This habit of Science Magazine is so well known as to not excite comment in the field, Kennedy is a true AGW believer who figures the ends justify the means …
Also, you say:
The issue is not peer review. The Journals have archiving policies to ensure that a study can be replicated, not to accommodate the reviewers. And it is not true that the magazine “can only go with the information given to the reviewers”. They can and do require archiving all necessary data, they don’t just go with the flow as you claim. They can ask the author to provide further information if they have not archived sufficient data to allow for replication.
Criminalizing policy differences has become a national (OK international) political pass time on the left, and that is a shame. It would be a bigger shame if conservatives were to take up the sport when (and if) they take control of the House or Senate in the US. Patience and a modicum of civility would go a long way after the next election.
I think I am as conservative as the next guy, and a skeptic, but I think the inquiry by Cuccinelli is a mistake. A state attorney general in the US in most cases is seen as a “governor wannabe in waiting.” Any findings by Cuccinelli will thus be viewed at least in part as politically motivated.
The climate wars are not over, but the CAGW side is in retreat, with signs of mass desertions looming. A primary reason for that is the climate activists’ over reaching and damage to their own credibility. Conservatives should avoid damaging their own hard won credibility by similar zealotry.
The proper target audience now is not the media, not the scientists, and not the blogging community. The only audience that matters is the one who will make the ultimate decision. The voting public. You know, the ones the activists hold in such contempt. Forget settling scores – concentrate on winning votes. All the rest will follow.
Sorry – that should read ‘The public is smart enough to NOT comply with what ‘The Science’ tells us – they (quite rightly) recognise it as a technocratic grab for power.’
And you’ve yet to prove any of this with that link. How does this from Steve McIntyre show that Kennedy isn’t getting SI from authors.
I’m asking for proof as to the accusations you are making that Kennedy is purposefully hiding data for nefarious purposes. Please provide it. Inadequate archiving is inadequate archiving, it does not equal
I thought the four rules were commandments 11-14? Naive, eh?
The strawman argument comes so naturally to the CAGW appologist.
gryposaurus says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:07 pm
… the journal has to trust its reviewers; it has to trust the source. It can’t go in and demand the data books.
“Data books?” He’s being asked to insist that the data used in support of the publication be achived, as is the journal’s policy. He should have said
“It can’t go in and demand the data be achived.” But no, he doesn’t say that because it is contrary to policy.
LOL!
This is a large part of the motivation of science’s “gatekeepers” and fanboys: They have a “Science To The Rescue” mindset that is ultimately based on a will-to-power and that makes them promote bandwagons that offer to raise their social and political standing.
Kennedy lost all credibility with me when he “resigned gracefully” from Stanford over the Federal Research Over-billing scandal that apparently went on during most of the 1980s. Among the items billed to the U.S. Government was operation and maintenance of the president’s yacht.
From Time Magazine 1991…
No he simply stepped to a better job and left someone else to clean the mess.
This thread is an enigma wrapped in a conspiracy, wrapped in nonsense. I asked for proof of Kennedy hiding data, and I get the quote from the interview in which he was clearly discussing the limits of peer-review and had nothing to do with the SI or archived data received from authors, which he correctly states that magazines editors and reviewers have to trust.
And I get a link to a blog post where Steve McI blames poor archiving for not being able to get certain proxies.
Craig Loehle publicly accuses him of using his power to stifle debate and then seems confused as to why Kennedy would “seem quite startled”.
And then the 1991 TIME article, which, if you read on states:
Is TIME in on this too?
No, as I’ve stated several times, Kennedy was talking about the limits of demanding personal data records of it’s authors for peer-review, in a study that had nothing to do with climate science. As for the archiving, Steve McI blamed it on poor archiving, not nefarious conspiratorial nonsense.
But everyone keep on with this baseless character assassination of anyone who was involved with the publication of the Mann “Hockey Stick” paper in 1998. Make sure to weave the web tightly enough and don’t leave any loose ends, God forbid anyone gets off. I’m sure there’s a secretary at the AAAS who knows where those missing proxies are.
I’ll just take other’s peoples advice and forget about this place.
[Snip. How many times do you have to be told to not call others “deniers”? ~dbs, mod]
gryposaurus says:
October 17, 2010 at 7:14 pm
If you cannot find anything wrong with Kennedy at all, despite the host of citations that you have been given, perhaps you have inadvertently wandered into the wrong thread. Or perhaps into an alternate universe.
Here’s the issue. Two people were interviewed in the Mann Penn State “thorough inquiry”. One was Kennedy, who is a doomsday merchant with a long history of problematic behaviour (that is mysteriously invisible to you), and no connection to Manns work. Why would they even ask Kennedy about Mann? Obviously, because he is Mann’s friend, why else pick a man who has no involvement with the scientific issues at hand?
But let’s set all of Kennedy’s history aside. Even if Kennedy’s reputation were spotless, he is still a very odd choice to interview in this case. I mean, if I had to make a report and could only interview two people regarding Mann, Kennedy would never cross my mind. I’d probably pick Gavin Schmidt and Stephen McIntyre, but never Kennedy.
And of course, Mann now claims (correctly) that Kennedy found nothing wrong with Mann’s actions … I’m shocked by that, I tell you, shocked.
Another great post, Willis.
While I admire your ability to analyse data and write with simplicity, wit and clarity, you are right on the button in thinking you are something of an innocent, but that is actually a wonderful asset that most of us who were bought up in the world of farming share. The code of ‘proper’ behaviour was ingrained in us by example and experience early in our formative years and became a part of us we cannot shed. We always look for the good in people we deal with and are willing to give them second chances, but with those such as Mann, Kennedy and those of their stripe, they are genuine outlaws who usually operate under a cloak of respectability conferred by their education, position, inherited wealth, charm or whatever, but they are outlaws just the same. Dealing with them in terms of our code is largely a waste of time as they understand the words we use but feel the underlying concepts don’t apply to them as they are ‘special’. When they persist in ignoring our code, we have no recourse left but to call in the sherrif.
grypo, dude, who is saying that Kennedy asked Mann not to give the data? If anything, what can be said is that Science magazine, under Kennedy’s watch, did not ask Mann to give the data.
It is you who has been trying to equate the two and polarize the debate by using words like “nefarious”.
You are certainly right about this – but in a practical sense of how things get done everyday,… but definitely not on how things ought to get done.
It is a bit of a Catch-22. Reviewers in most circumstances, can take authors on their word and proceed, but they can, and they certainly do ask for original data, lab notes and readouts if the conclusions are dramatic, or sometimes even otherwise. Because the reviewer will only pass on his requests via the journal, it is the responsibility of the editor to fulfill the reviewers’ requests.
The catch of course is that, in order to find flaws or check for major errors in a study, a reviewer would have use the methods and data in a paper, replicate the calculation and see if the same results are arrived at. Meaning – he or she would have to have access to the original data, something Kennedy is providing excuses against.
Playing devil’s advocate for a minute, I can kind of see (possibly) partly where gryposaurus is coming from. It’s clear that Kennedy deliberately didn’t enforce the rules of his own journal in Mann’s case, but action doesn’t prove intent.
If Mann went to Kennedy and said: “Sorry mate, I’ve lost some of the data and to be honest it’s all a bit of mess anyway, can you help me out of a hole by not insisting on getting it?”, that’s contemptible, and well against what I would expect of reasonable standards of scientific publication, but it’s not exactly nefarious, just helping a friend.
Whereas if Mann said: “Look, the data and code I used were carefully picked and fiddled to get the results I wanted, the full data doesn’t actually show anything, and there’s no way I’m letting anyone outside the Hockey Team get any sight of it. So I’m not supplying it and will you agree to help by not demanding it and suppressing any request for it?”, then it is definitely nefarious.
Without actually knowing where on that spectrum Kennedy’s reason falls, however obviously suspicious it might be, he shouldn’t be accused of nefarious intent.
Willis and Aynsley,
Donald Kennedy is a biologist and was chair of the Department of Biology at Stanford from 1964-1972. From 1980 to 1992 he served as President of Stanford University, and 1992 was the year that Stephen Schneider came to Stanford – to the Department of Biology (despite the fact that his Ph.D. was in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics). Paul Ehrlich came to the Stanford Department of Biology (after his PhD thesis on butterflies) as an Assistant Professor in 1959, becoming a full professor in 1966. Since Prof. Kennedy was chair of the department at that time no doubt he would have personally approved the progression of Dr. Ehrlich to full professor.
Donald Kennedy was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, Paul Ehrlich in 1985, and Stephen Schneider in 2002. It has been reported that Paul Ehrlich and Stephen Schneider were nominated to the NAS via the “Temporary Nominating Group for the Global Environment” which avoided the usual requirement of 85% support of the members of the relevant NAS section. (Others reportedly elected to the NAS in this way are James Hansen, John Holdren, Susan Solomon, and Ralph Cicerone).
It is safe to say that Donald Kennedy, Paul Ehrlich, and the late Stephen Schneider are closely associated.
Until the “white wash” of Dr. Mann, I was proud to tell people the PSU “WAS” my Alma Mater. No more! Like Bastardi, I have totally renounced any affiliation with PSU: no newsletters, no football games, no donations, no kind words, nothing. They are a joke which stinks worst than Dr. Mann’s ethics and “hockey stick” papers. Their current president and the people on the Mann investigation committee should be immediately suspended without pay until a thorough outside investigation can be conducted and fully veted.
An investigation should also be launched into the conduct of Dr. Richard Alley at PSU. He is a leader in ice core research and was instrumental in showing that CO2 has always lagged Earth’s temperature swings, thus it is a lagging indicator and not a forcing! Yet he told me to my face in September ’07* that they can’t think of any other reason for the warming over the past 50 years so “it must be CO2, we can’t think of anything else it could be”. That is not science, that is religion. (no offense intended to people like miself who believe in a Higher Power!) These “scientists” disgust me and they should be made to pay financially and academically (not physically as some AGW proponents want to do to skeptics) for their criminal actions with respect to misleading the public and funding institutions about the causes of Earth’s climate changes over the past 2,000+ years!
I feel sorry of the honest engineers and scientist, like myself, who have gratuated from this once great university. It may never regain its past honor and prestige.
William H Yarber II (BS & MS in Aerospace Engineering)
* Luncheon meeting at the Corner Room in State College, PA attended by Dr. Alley, my wife and myself! Those were his final words to end our 90 minute discussion because he could not refute any of my arguments.
Willis:
You’ve yet to provide any evidence for this. The one link you provided stated the exact opposite conclusion that you are coming to. Another reference to a TIME magazine article, funny enough, when read, actually defends Kennedy. You base your character assassination on innuendo that doesn’t even really tell the story you are trying to disseminate. Kennedy is a target because of his association with the 12 year old study. This is incredibly obvious. I’ll repeat again, “Where is the proof I am asking for?”
Completely erroneous. Let’s check some facts. Your attempt to discredit Penn State in this is just as pathetic as the rest of this post.
Here is the final version of the report.
On page 7, here is a list of people were interviewed. Take a look-see and notice who got one of the the final words on the matter.
April 12, 2010: Dr. William Easterling, Dean, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences,
The PelIDsylvania State University
April 14, 2010: Dr. Michael Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The
Pennsylvania State University
April 20, 2010: Dr. William Curry, Senior Scientist, Geology and Geophysics
Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
April 20, 2010: Dr. Jerry McManus, Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences, Columbia University
May 5, 2010: Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor, Department of Earth,
Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Please update your post to reflect this, which of course, would mean a complete rewrite. Or just write a new one that discredits all these people as well, whichever is fine.
And I guess we now get to your assassination of North’s credibility, and by extension the National Academy of Sciences. You say that his report was “widely criticized” and you provide a single link to show this. I don’t know how one person is characterized as ‘widely’, but let’s look anyway. How’s does McIntyre conclude?
And how does another critic of MBH 98/99 methodology, Eduardo Zorita, characterize the North report?
Once again your “proof” does not support your extreme, assailant language. Please amend it and at least have it come somewhere close to accurate.
So you have no proof against Kennedy, your characterization of the North (NAS) Report is weak, unspecific, and basically wrong; you don’t seem to know who actually PENN State interviewed for the Mann report; and yet you’ve reached such critical conclusions. Why is that? Should I even ask? Does it it have anything to do with the fact that you cannot let go of hockey stick shaped graph which has been done over
over and
over and
over and over and over and over since 1998?
Can we at least move on to different reconstruction and try and ruin those people too. There’s a list of people you can get It’s easy, as shown by this post, you don’t need any evidence whatsoever!
Willis,
Nice post. Thanks.
My thoughts on other possibilities related to the PSU’s marshmallow Mann report:
aaaaa – Maybe Kennedy was picked to be interviewed because he wasn’t listed in the index of Montford’s ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’.
bbbbb – Maybe Kennedy was the only fellow camp traveler of Mann’s who (at this point in the widely publicized exposé of Mann’s anti-science activities) agreed to be interviewed; or maybe all of Mann’s buddies consulted their lawyers who said “don’t be associated in public with Mann”. Maybe the other ex-buddies of Mann were mysteriously on sick/family leave or making sure their calendars where full elsewhere on the interview day
cccccc – Perhaps PSU actually isn’t intelligent enough to see the big picture here, other than the obviously big picture involving gov’t funded climate research grants. Perhaps it isn’t a case of PSU following the money, instead maybe the case of PSU grabbing the money.
ddddd – This is a really comical possibility, maybe PSU is actually hoping that the Sate of Pennsylvania’s equivalent to Virginia’s Cuccinelli will intervene and save PSU face wrt to their problematical darling Mann. Then PSU maybe thinking they can act like an academic freedom hero AND they get rid of Mann (phew, finally).
eeeee – other possibilities abound.
John
I thought PSU in their report rather cut the ground from under Mann by stating that he had brought millions of dollars in grants to the university.
So Mann is all about money and his scientific standing is of no consequence whatsoever.
grypo
Your claims are as tall as your fevered imaginings about Willis’ claims. Why don’t you spend time trying to parse what Willis’ is actually saying instead of climbing on your high horse, right at the beginning?
You say that Willis’ quoting of Kennedy is “incredibly misleading”.
It is not.
In fact, it is fairly well on the dot, in the context of the current discussion
Kennedy says:
In fact, it *is* the journal editor’s job is to “go into the lab” and ask for their lab notes, if the need arises. Usually, these things are done in a civil manner – by way of a letter. That these sort of checks are not done routinely is no excuse when major errors transpire, and this is precisely what Kennedy himself admits. Indeed in the interview, in trying to defend himself and his journal, Kennedy is exaggerating and misdirecting responsibility the journal or the editor has in such matters onto the reviewers.
In the Hwang fraud case, the reviewers implicitly trusted the authors, and the journal trusted the reviewers, in turn, because the conclusions were fantastic and useful. It is precisely the sort of situation when going over the raw data and notebooks would have actually helped.
The very fact that Kennedy believes that scientific enterprise, as percieved by the glamor journals, is largely dependant on ‘trust’ – is the very ‘proof’ that you are asking for.
gryposaurus
October 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
That was a great post.
I recommend that all posters who agree with Eschenbach read the original report that you linked to. It is pretty clear that people with a variety of viewpoints were interviewed for the report, the emails were analysed and no misconduct was found.
Mann’s harrassment is clearly politically motivated. This began with the Wegman report, which was a politically motivated smear job, which was written by unqualified people, some of them students, with no background in climate science, is largely plagiarized.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/10/wegman-plagiarism-investigation-/1
“GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch confirms that the university, located in Fairfax, Va., is now investigating allegations that the Wegman report was partly plagiarized and contains fabrications. Last month, a 250-page report on the Deep Climate website written by computer scientist John Mashey of Portola Valley, Calif., raised some of these concerns. Mashey says his analysis shows that 35 of the 91 pages in the 2006 Wegman report are plagiarized (with some of the text taken from a book, Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary, by Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts) and contain erroneous citations of data, as well.”
The charges of inaccessible data are clearly bogus. The NOAA web site has a compendium of online Paleo Climate data available to any researcher.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/whatsnew.html
It should be emphasized that the original hockey stick graph has basically been validated by a large number of papers, using different sets of paleo climate data, and different statistical methods since the publication of Mann’s ground breaking paper in 1999.
In fact the criticism of the non centered principal components analysis (PCA) method has been shown to be incorrect. The results from centered Principal Components Analysis (PCA), which is supposed to be the correct way to do it, look the same, except that more principal components are needed, 5 to reproduce the raw data, rather than the 2 components which are needed when the noncentered PCA.
It is clear that Mann’s critics were ignorant, and didn’t understand how to use PCA.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/
Furthermore, Eschenbach has shown that he doesn’t really understand climate data by making false claims of dishonesty against NOAA for the processing of data from Australia.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/willis_eschenbach_caught_lying.php
Shub Niggurath says:
October 18, 2010 at 8:40 am
“grypo
Your claims are as tall as your fevered imaginings about Willis’ claims. Why don’t you spend time trying to parse what Willis’ is actually saying instead of climbing on your high horse, right at the beginning?
You say that Willis’ quoting of Kennedy is “incredibly misleading”.
It is not.
In fact, it is fairly well on the dot, in the context of the current discussion
Kennedy says:
“What we can’t do is ask our peer reviewers to go into the laboratories of the submitting authors and demand their lab notebooks….”
In fact, it *is* the journal editor’s job is to “go into the lab” and ask for their lab notes, if the need arises. Usually, these things are done in a civil manner – by way of a letter. That these sort of checks are not done routinely is no excuse when major errors transpire, and this is precisely what Kennedy himself admits. Indeed in the interview, in trying to defend himself and his journal, Kennedy is exaggerating and misdirecting responsibility the journal or the editor has in such matters onto the reviewers.
In the Hwang fraud case, the reviewers implicitly trusted the authors, and the journal trusted the reviewers, in turn, because the conclusions were fantastic and useful. It is precisely the sort of situation when going over the raw data and notebooks would have actually helped.
The very fact that Kennedy believes that scientific enterprise, as percieved by the glamor journals, is largely dependant on ‘trust’ – is the very ‘proof’ that you are asking for.”
I think this analysis of what is proper vetting prior to publication in a scientific journal is way off the mark, and is impractical. Peer review is not perfect. Mistakes and frauds are published. Actual fraud is quite rare, and is eventually found out by the scientific community after publication. Society cannot prevent all crime.
It is impractical to require that every publication be checked by having the reviewer or editor go over the calculations made by the authors. In some cases, one would require inspecting the lab, and going over the experiments to be sure that data is not falsified.
Society doesn’t work when we are forced to assume that everyone is a criminal and investigate everyone accordingly.
What is also incorrect is the assumption that there was actually something seriously wrong with Mann et. al’s “Hockey Stick” paper. If fact it has been validated in the open literature repeatedly, using different sorts of data and different analysis techniques, and is a scientifically robust finding. This is a fact that you don’t seem willing to acknowledge.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
Willis/gryposaurus,
I’m just confused. While Willis’ source does quote the two interviews, gryposaurus’ link to the report definitley indicates more than two interviews.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think the investigation reeks of whitewash, but why can’t I reconcile the sources?
Willis,
When it comes down to it, I don’t like the “Cuccinelli approach” either. However, at this point I will take whatever I can get in terms of exposing the half-truths and politicization. I suppose the Federal Agents who couldn’t nail Capone for murder weren’t too happy to see the accountants win their battle either, but they could at least be happy that he did finally get, erm, “incarcerated”… Here’s hoping the Mann’s and Hansens get punishment that more befits the crime.
—————
gryposaurus,
Indeed, the original PSU report was avidly consumed instantaneously by many. Indeed we did all read whatever commentaries on it we judged appropriate. Therefore, not surprising, the disagreement with you. Disagreement is good. It sharpens the view and focuses on key areas. Thanks for coming here to argue. It is an argumentative place. Viva la argument!
Regarding your statement about the political motivations of those being critical of Mann ( & team), you make arguing with you too easy. If you can properly attribute all critical thought and actions against Mann as political, it makes it just as easy for others to properly attribute all of Mann’s & his supporters’ actions/thoughts as politically motivated to achieve his/their own ends.
Therefore, it becomes a political argument. You lose the point, because that establishes a point made by many independent thinkers that Mann is not a scientist in this regards, just a political advocate.
So, back to Mann’s science . . . . to where it all started. If we concentrate on that, the dismissal of his hockey stick remains . . . . it hasn’t survived . . .
But Mann could survive if he embraces openness; with data, methodologies and code for his work. If you are a friend/supporter of his then do the humane thing . . . encourage him say he was wrong to block access and have him be the new champion of openness. Then we will be the hero of the inevitable ongoing reformation/renaissance of climate science from it pitiable current state.
John
everytime someone claims Mann is a scientist I have to chuckle … to be considered a scientist one needs no degree or certification, this is not about his certifications …
no matter what your background NOT following the scientific method should earn you the label non-scientist …
much of our understanding of the world and nature was done by non credentialed men and women in the 18th, 19th and 20th century …
Nice article Willis and I can sympathise with your sentiments. However, the actions of Mann and his cohorts extend far beyond the narrow confines of the scientific community and of taxpayers in the United States. Millions of us around the world wish to see this scientific contretemps brought to its rightful conclusion. My money is on Cuccinelli – may his tribe increase.
Djozar:
> more than two interviews … but why can’t I reconcile the sources?
grypo’s reference points to a committee list. Where does it say they were all officially interviewed?
Willis got his information from McIntyre at CA, apparently only two interviews were mentioned in the report.
So, if other interviews were officially conducted, where is the official record of them?
There is no real conflict between the lists of witnesses as stated by Willis Eschenbach, and Gryposaurus. There were different witness lists for different phases of the “investigation.”
As is commonly known, the Penn State “inquiry” was done in two phases with respect to the four issues identified on page 3 of the report cited by Grypo. The initial review resulted in the inquiry committee dropping the first three, most serious, charges against Mann dealing with manipulating/suppressing data, deletion of emails and use of confidential information. The report from this first phase, dated February 3, 2010, was the report originally discussed and linked to on Climate Audit. (http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Findings_Mann_Inquiry.pdf)
According to this report, only Mann himself was actually interviewed by the inquiry committee in this first phase. The committee chair did convey to the committee the results of a “conversation” he had with Dr. Gerald North, and relayed to the other members the “sentiment and view” of Kennedy. But these appear to be off the record conversations with the chairman alone, with no transcripts or lists of questions or answers. These would hardly count as investigative interviews in any real world sense.
The second phase of the inquiry continued solely into the fourth allegation regarding deviation from accepted academic practices. It was during this phase that the witnesses identified by Grypo were “interviewed,” according to the final report, dated June 4, 2010. (http://live.psu.edu/fullimg/userpics/10026/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf)
Those witnesses (except Mann) were each primarily asked four general questions regarding research practices in their fields. The closest to a real question regarding Mann’s alleged conduct was asked of the dean of Mann’s department: “whether, in his judgment, Dr. Mann’s work was very aggressive, very conservative, or somewhere in the middle in how it potrayed global warming.” His answer: “Dr. Easterling responded by stating that Dr. Mann’s early work showed a more dramatic upturn in warming, but that his more recent work has led to the conclusion that the change has been slightly less dramatic.” A non-answer answer.
So technically there were four additional “witnesses,” but only after the substantive charges had been disposed of, and not one of them was asked a single question regarding any of the actual misconduct alleged against Mann.
The final report does note Prof. Lindzen’s amazement at the above process: “When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at
the inquiry stage of the RA-lO process, Dr. Lindzen’s response was: ‘It’s thoroughly
amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I’m wondering
what’s going on?'” He was then “interviewed” without being asked a single question about Mann.
If this committee had been investigating the Lincoln assassination, they would have interviewed John Wilkes Booth, asked Jefferson Davis his opinion of Booth, and asked Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play.
John Day and GaryM,
Thanks! Finally I can follow the trail a little easier.
gryposaurus says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
…
You should really learn how to read. While the report claimed to have interviewed those people, there is no record that they did so, and no transcript of the interviews. Perhaps you think we should just proceed as if they actually exonerated Mann, based on claimed but non-reported interviews. I don’t.
Please update your post to reflect this, which of course, would mean a complete rewrite.
gryposaurus says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
Huh? Zorita says that it was not politically possible for North to say that Mann was wrong. In other words, Zorita say North shaded the report to favor Mann for political reasons. How on earth does that mean that North was not a supporter of Mann? He grudgingly made as few negative comments about Mann as possible, and only when he could not deny the science.
In addition, North wrote up his committee rules to specifically exclude the question of whether Mann was guilty of scientific malfeasance … yeah, that’s the right guy to ask about Mann’s innocence, you can tell he’s really concerned about bad science and bad scientists …
I truly don’t understand why you are going so far out of your way to defend shoddy science and lying, cheating scientists like Mann, who claimed that to ask him for scientific data was “intimidation”. But that’s your choice, and there’s lots of things I don’t understand. I lived through and was personally involved in much of the history we are discussing, and have done the homework. You appear to have done neither. You really should read up on the subject, as your lack of knowledge is embarrassing you.
gryposaurus says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
As the Wegman Report’s close examination of your “over and over” proxy studies clearly showed, those are not independent studies, just a rehash using the same flawed proxies that Mann used. Unsurprisingly, the studies found things similar to the Hockeystick, and the authors depended on the stupidity of the populace to not notice that two or ten studies using the same flawed proxies do not support or prove anything.
And unfortunately, you are proving them 100% correct in their low estimate of the populace’s intelligence …
Do your homework. At this point you could be the poster boy for talking about subjects where, as the poet says
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”
eadler
You are right. It is impractical for every paper and their calculations to be gone over.
But when someone does want to go over them, data must be made available and it is primarily the journal’s responsibility to make it available.
In the Science cloning case with Kennedy, high-profile results – usually the kind that would make professional society journal editors and reviewers require careful attention and verification – triggered the exact opposite reaction.
His excuses to CYA in the resulting fiasco need not become any sort of a guide for how journals, editors and reviewers operate. Yes, such things happen, but that is no guide to the norm.
Why are talking about “data falsification”? Is that in any way the issue being discussed here?
This is just more conspiracy nonsense. Are you going to go so far as to say that Penn State just made up all those interviews and answers to the questions that are in that report? Have you gone so far down the road that you can’t see how ridiculous that is? Don’t you think some of those participants might actually say something? Are they in on it too? So rather than rewrite your post or address questions from readers (I am not the only one asking) , you’d rather just pile on conspiracies, even more ridiculous than your previous ones, adding on that Penn state may write fraudulent reports. And the interesting element is that neither the North interview or Kennedy interview had transcripts either, and were barely a factor as the initial investigation that was mainly focused on emails . But those guys are easy to attack, right? Wow.
I don’t think you are quite clear of what I am talking about. You have not furnished a shred of evidence to show that your web of conspiracy and character assassinations have any merit. Just because someone says something that you don’t like, or defends someone you don’t like, it does not equal the scientific cover up accusation you so easily toss around. All I am asking is that you show what real evidence you have of these people and institutions covering up fraud, by lying, misdirecting investigations, deleting evidence, purposefully losing evidence, etc. When I say “proof” I mean real evidence, not innuendo or some conspiracy. The reason I showed you the McI and Zorita quotes just to make sure you realized that even critics of MBH 98 know that North also criticized Mann’s use of PC in MBH 98. Your consistent whining and mud slinging over how much these people have put their careers on the line by lying just to “back” Mann at every turn, with nefarious intent, is just baseless. I’m having a disagreement and I am looking for real answers from you. That’s all. If you can’t provide them, just say so. With someone, like yourself, who demands the truth from everyone else with such accusatory vigor, is there a reason why the readers here should take your word at face value without asking for real proof? Don’t you have the same high expectations of providing evidence of your own work?
Well, since all but one of these studies happened after the Wegman report, I’d suspect you have no idea what you are talking about.
Let’s see what Wegman said about other proxies besides the MBH 98. This is testimony taken from the Hearing:
Just a guess really, not real “close” inspection.
Here’s the statement of task for the North Report. What’s missing exactly?
Then maybe you can detail how this involvement allows you to make baseless accusations and attack credibility and finally provide the proof I am asking for.
I didn’t realize calling someone stupid was ok for guest posters on this blog.
But those evil scientists will never get one past you, right??? cuz u so smot and i so dum.
Pssssssfffttttt!!!
Oh man, you owe me a new keyboard AND monitor. And, a new cat too, since mine is now stuck to the wall, I think I just gave him a heart attack 🙂
Excellent post GaryM!
Just shootin’ in the dark here, but you wouldn’t happen to be jakers by any chance? Just sayin’.
Lordy, grypo, all that nervous energy ….
Do you realize that you have no answers for questions you’ve been asked?
I wonder why Donald Kennedy is refusing to request the information that his journal requires? Donald Kennedy is giving Science magazine a bad name by not doing what the magazines requires. One thing I’ll keep in mind about Science magazine in the future is that even though they say they have all the data archived, they might actually not.