A remarkable bit of digging by our man McIntyre finds out more about certain people who live in glass houses.
(reposted with explicit permission from the author for the plagiarism police,)
In the original Deep Climate post about Wegman, DC characterized Bradley 1999, a revision of the 1985 edition of Bradley’s textbook, as “seminal”. In respect to the dendro chapter at least, this is flatly untrue. Bradley copied both graphics and language from Fritts’ 1976 textbook, Tree Rings and Climate.
Bradley’s copying is not just incidental. Of the first 13 figures in Bradley’s dendro chapter, 12(!) are either copied exactly from Fritts 1976 or, in a few cases, with negligible “paraphrase” (e.g. Bradley Figure 10.10 combines single-columned Fritts Figure 7.10 and 7.11 into a double-columned figure).
For six of the 12 figures, Bradley cites references other than Fritts 1976 – mostly earlier Fritts articles, but also one Lamarche article. In each case, Fritts 1976 had itself re-used the earlier graphic (with citation) with a fresh caption (often lengthy). However, in each of these six cases, Bradley used the Fritts 1976 in a verbatim or near-verbatim form without citing Fritts 1976.
USE OF FRITTS 1976 CAPTIONS WITHOUT CITATION
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.2
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.2 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 1.5 and Fritts 1971 Figure 3. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.2 states:
Trees growing on sites where climate seldom limits growth processes produce rings that are uniformly wide (left). Such rings provide little or no record of variations in climate and are termed complacent. (right): Trees growing on sites where climatic factors are frequently limiting produce rings that vary in width from year to year depending on how severely limiting climate has been to growth. These are termed sensitive (from Fritts, 1971).
The caption to Figure 1.5 from unreferenced Fritts 1976 is virtually identical:
Trees growing on sites where climate seldom limits growth processes produce rings that are uniformly wide (A). Such rings provide little or no record of variations in climate and are termed complacent. Trees growing on sites where climatic factors are frequently limiting produce rings that vary in width from year to year depending on how severely limiting climate has been to growth. (B) These are termed sensitive.
The caption to Fritts 1971 Figure 3 is related but not so close:
Trees with ample moisture and favorable temperatures are not limited by climatic factors (left). Their rings are uniformly wide and there is little variation in thickness from one ring to the next. Trees on arid or extremely cold sites may often be limited by climatic factors (right). Their rings are narrow and there may be marked variation in ring thickness corresponding to variations. in climatic factors which have limited growth.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.3
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.3 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 5.8 and Fritts 1971 Figure 5. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.3 states:
A schematic diagram showing how low precipitation and high temperature during the growing season may lead to the formation of a narrow tree ring in arid-site trees. Arrows indicate the net effects and include various processes and their interactions. It is implied that the effects of high precipitation and low temperature are the opposite and may lead to an increase in ring widths (from Fritts, 1971).
This is again virtually identical to the corresponding caption in Fritts 1976 – Figure 5.8. (Bradley changed “will increase” to “may lead to an increase”.)
Model Part A. A diagram representing some of the relationships that cause climatic factors of low precipitation and high temperatures during the growing season to lead to the formation of a narrow ring in arid-site trees. The arrows indicate the net effects and include various processes and their interactions. It is implied that the effects of high precipitation and low temperature are the opposite, that is, ring width will increase.
The caption to Fritts 1971 Figure 5 is related, but the Bradley language is clearly derived from the language from the unreferenced Fritts 1976.
Physiological Model A illustrating how low precipitation and high temperature during the growing season (season of cambial activity) may cause a ring to be narrow for conifers growing on semiarid and warm sites. The climatic conditions affect physiological processes which limit the rate of cell division, the amount of cell expansion or the length of the growing season.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.4
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.4 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 5.9 and Fritts 1971 Figure 6. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.4 states:
A schematic diagram showing how low precipitation and high temperature before the growing season may lead to the formation of a narrow tree ring in arid-site trees. (from Fritts, 1971).
The language from the corresponding Figure 5.9 in unreferenced Fritts 1976 is:
Model Part B. A diagram representing some of the relationships that cause climatic factors of low precipitation and high temperatures prior to the growing season to lead to the formation of a narrow ring in arid-site trees. Compare with Fig 5.8.
The language in cited Fritts 1971 Figure 6 is again related but not as close as the unreferenced Fritts 1976:
Physiological Model B illustrating how low precipitation and high temperature prior to the growing season (season of cambial activity) may cause the ring to be narrow for conifers growing on semiarid and warm sites. The climatic conditions may affect physiological processes which precondition the plant, reduce the potential for rapid growth and reduce the rate of cell division (shown in Model A) so that a narrow ring is formed.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.7
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.7 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 1.9 and Fritts 1971 Figure 2. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.7 states:
Standardization of ring-width measurements is necessary to remove the decrease in size associated with increasing age of the tree. If the ring widths for the three specimens shown in the upper figure are simply averaged by year, without removing the effect of the tree’s age, the mean ring-width chronology shown below them exhibits intervals of high and low growth, associated with the varying age of the samples. This age variability is generally removed by fitting a curve to each ring-width series, and dividing each ring width by the corresponding value of the curve. The resulting values, shown in the lower half of the figure, are referred to as indices, and may be averaged among specimens differing in age to produce a mean chronology for a site (lowermost record) ( from Fritts, 1971).
The language from Figure 1.8 in the unreferenced Fritts 1976 version is virtually identical:
Standardization of ring-width measurements is necessary to remove the decrease in size associated with increasing age of the tree. If the ring widths for the three specimens shown in the upper figure are averaged by year, without removing the effect of the tree’s age, the mean ring-width chronology shown immediately below them exhibits intervals of high and low growth associated with the varying age of the samples. This age variability can be removed by fitting a curve to each ring-width series, and dividing each ring width by the corresponding value of the curve. The resulting values shown in the lower half of the figure are referred to as indices and may be averaged among specimens differing in age to produce a mean chronology for a site.
The language in Figure 2 from the citation, Fritts 1971, is again related, but not as close as the unreferenced Fritts 1976:
Standardization is necessary because the first-formed rings are generally wider than those found in the older portions of stems and because some trees grow more rapidly than others. If ring-width measurements, plotted as a function of year of formation (upper plots) are averaged, the mean chronology will show long-term variations arising from differences in ring age and mean growth rate of different sampled specimens (fourth plot). When an exponential curve is fitted as shown in the upper plots and the value of each cure during each year is divided into the ring width for that year, new values are obtained which are referred to as indices (lower plot). These indices do not vary as a function of tree age and mean growth and have an expectation value of 1.0. Such indices may be safely averaged (lowest plot) to obtain a ring-width chronology that is likely to correspond to short-term fluctuations in climate that have limited the growth of the trees.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.9
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.9 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 6.6 and a figure from Fritts et al 1965 that I haven’t examined yet. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.9 states:
Five year running means of ring width indices from Pseudotsuga menziesii at Mesa Verde, Colorado, corrected for autocorrelation and plotted on every even year from AD442 through 1962 (after Fritts et al 1965)
The caption to unreferenced Fritts 1976 Figure 6.6 is identical:
Five year running means of ring width indices from Pseudotsuga menziesii at Mesa Verde, Colorado, corrected for autocorrelation and plotted on every even year from AD442 through 1962 (Modified from Fritts et al 1965c)
[insert Fritts 1965 when examined]
Bradley Figure 10.13
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.13 is identical to Fritts 1976 Figure 8.9 and Lamarche 1974 Figure 6. The caption to Bradley 1985 Figure 10.13 states:
Growth of pinus longaeva on lower forest border (…) and upper treeline (—) sites of the White Mountains, California, and the precipitation and temperature anomalies inferred from the departures in ring width. Data expressed as 20 year averages of standardized normal values. Arrows show dates of glacial moraines in nearby mountains (after Lamarche 1974)
The caption to Fritts Figure 8.9 is virtually identical:
The 20-year average growth , expressed in standardized normal values, in Pinus longaeva on lower forest border (…) and upper treeline (—) sites of the White Mountains, California, and the precipitation and temperature anomalies inferred from the departures in ring width. Arrows show dates of glacial moraines in nearby mountains (From Lamarche, V.C. 1974 Science 183 (4129) 1043-1048, copyright 1974 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)
The caption to Lamarche 1974 Fig 6 is related, but not nearly as close as the unreferenced Fritts 1976:
Departures from mean growth(normalized 20-year means) trees on ecologically contrasting sites in the White Mountains and inferred climatic anomalies. Arrows show dates of glacial moraines in the nearby Sierra Nevada (19); all except the youngest were formed during periods judged to be relatively cool from the tree-ring evidence. Glacial advances of the early 1300s and early 1600s also coincide with unusually wet periods.
“AFTER” FRITTS 1976
For the six figures actually referenced to Fritts 1976, the Bradley 1985 captions all conclude with “after Fritts 1976″ (“after” is dropped in Bradley 1999). I leave it to readers to comment on whether the term “after” Fritts 1976 fully captures the fact that the figures are in fact identical and the lengthy captions are, in most cases, either verbatim or near verbatim.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.1
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.1: Drawing of cell structure along a cross section of a young stem of a conifer. The earlywood is made up of large and relatively thin-walled cells (tracheids); latewood is made up of small, thick-walled tncheids. Variations in tracheid thickness may produce false rings in either earlywood or latewood (after Fritts, 1976).
Fritts 1976 Figure 2.3: Drawing of cell structure along a cross section of a young stem of a conifer. The earlywood is made up of large and relatively thin-walled cells (tracheids); latewood is made up of small, thick-walled tracheids. Variations in tracheid thickness may produce false rings in either earlywood or latewood.
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.5
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.5: Annual growth increments or rings are formed because the wood cells produced early in the growing season (earlywood, EW) are large, thin-walled, and less dense, while the cells formed at the end of the season (latewood, LW) are smaller, thick-walled, and more dense. An abrupt change in cell size between the last-formed cells of one ring (LW) and the first-formed cells of the next (EW) marks the boundary between annual rings. Sometimes growing conditions temporarily become severe before the end of the growing season and may lead to the production of thick-walled cells within an annual growth layer (arrows).This may make it difficult to distinguish where the actual growth increment ends, which could lead to errors in dating. Usually these intra-annual bands or false rings can be identified, but where they cannot the problem must be resolved by cross-dating (after Fritts, 1976).
Fritts 1976 Figure 1.5: Annual growth layers or rings are formed because the wood cells produced early in the growing season (EW) are large, thin-walled, and less dense, while the cells formed at the end of the season (LW) are smaller, thick-walled, and more dense. An abrupt change in cell size between the last-formed cells of one ring (LW) and the first-formed cells of the next (EW) marks the boundary between annual rings. Sometimes growing conditions temporarily become severe before the end of the growing season and cause subsequently formed cells to be smaller with thicker walls (arrows). When more favorable conditions return, the subsequently formed cells are larger and have thinner walls. The resulting dark bands within the growth layer are called intra-annual growth bands or flase rings and are usually identified by the gradual transition in cell-size on both margins of the band. Occasionally these intra-annual bands are indistinguishable from the true annual ring and the problem must be resolved by crossdating. In A, the false ring is within the latewood formed near the end of the growing season. In B, it is within the earlywood formed near the beginning of the growing season. Growth is in the upward direction. (Adapted from Kuo and McGinnes Jr, 1973).
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.6
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.6: Cross dating of tree rings. Comparison of tree-ring widths makes it possible to identify false rings or where rings are locally absent. For example in (A), strict counting shows a clear lack of synchrony in the patterns. In the lower specimen of (a), rings 9 and 16 can be seen as very narrow and they do not appear at all in the upper specimen. Also, rings 21 (lower) and 20 (upper) show intra-annual growth bands. In (b) the positions of inferred absence are designated by dots (upper specimen(, the intra-annual band in ring 20 is recognized and the patterns in all ring widths are synchronously matched (after Fritts 1976).
Fritts 1976 Figure 1.8: Cross dating makes it possible to recognize areas where rings are locally absent or where intra-annual growth band appears like a true annual ring. The patterns of wide and narrow rings are compared among specimens. Every fifth ring is numbered in the diagram and in A the patterns of wide and narrow rings match until ring number 9, after which a lack of synchrony in pattern occurs. In the lower specimen of A, rings 9 and 16 can be seen as very narrow and they do not appear at all in the upper specimen; while rings 21 (in the lower) and 20 (in the upper) show intra-annual growth bands. In the upper specimen of B, the positions of inferred absence are designated by two dots, the intra-annual band in ring 20 is recognized and the patterns in all ring widths are synchronously matched (Drawing by M. Huggins).
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.10
Bradley 1985 Figure 10.10: Magnitudes of the elements of the first and second eigenvectors of climate at Mesa Verde, southwestern Colorado, and their corresponding amplitude sets. In eigenvector 1, (which reduces 13% of the climatic variance) the eigenvector elements for temperature are all the same sign; the corresponding signs for ten elements for precipitation have the opposite sign. This arises because temperatures throughout the 14 month period are somewhat positively correlated with each other, but they are negatively correlated with precipitation for ten out of 14 months. In eigenvector 2 which reduces 11% of the climatic variance) the eigenvector expresses a mode of climate in which the departures of temperature for July to November are opposite in sign to those of December to July. All elements for precipitation have signs opposite those of temperature, indicating a generally inverse relationship. The eigenvectors are multiplied with normalized climatic data to obtain the amplitude sets. Asterisks mark those elements with the largest positive and negative values, indicating a climatic regime for the year which most resembles the eigenvector in question (either positively or negatively (after Fritts 1976).
Fritts 1976 Figure 7.10: Plot of the magnitudes of the elements of the first and most important eigenvector of Mesa Verde climate, which reduces 13% of the climatic variance, and the corresponding amplitude set. The eigenvector expresses a mode of climate in which the departures of temperature for July to November are opposite in sign to those of December-July. All elements for precipitation have signs opposite those of temperature, indicating a generally inverse relationship. The eigenvector is multiplied with normalized climatic data to obtain the amplitude set. Asterisks mark those elements with the largest positive and negative values, indicating the most resemblance of the climatic regime for the year to that particular eigenvector. (See Fig 7.9).
Fritts 1976 Figure 7.11: The magnitudes of the elements of the second eigenvector of Mesa Verde climate, which reduces 11% of the climatic variance, and the corresponding amplitude set. The eigenvector elements for temperature are all the same sign; and the corresponding signs for ten elements for precipitation have the opposite sign. This arises because temperatures throughout the 14 month period are somewhat positively correlated with each other, but they are negatively correlated with precipitation for ten out of 14 months. The eigenvector is multiplied with normalized climatic data to obtain the amplitude set. Asterisks mark those elements with the largest positive and negative values, indicating the most resemblance of the climatic regime for the year to that particular eigenvector. (See Fig 7.12).
Bradley Figure 10.11
Bradley Figure 10.11: Response functions obtained from a stepwise regression analysis using amplitudes of eigenvectors to estimate a ring-width chronology representing six Pinus ponderosa sites along the lower slopes of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado. Steps with 1, 3 and 12 predictor variables are shown. Percentage variance reduced can be calculated by multiplying the R2 value by 100. The regression coefficients for amplitudes are converted to response functions though when response functions are complex as in this example, a linear combination of many eigenvectors is needed to obtain the best fitting relationship (after Fritts 1976).
Fritts Figure 10.11: Response functions obtained from a stepwise regression analysis using amplitudes of eigenvectors and prior growth to estimate a ring-width chronology representing six Pinus ponderosa sites along the lower slopes of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado. Steps with 1, 3, 7, 12 and 20 predictor variables are shown. The regression coefficients for amplitudes are converted to response functions (Equation 7.22) . When response functions are complex as in this example, a linear combination of many eigenvectors is needed to obtain the best fitting relationship. Prior growth was entered into regression after the step with 12 variables. The percent variance can be calculated by multiplying the R2 by 100.
RUNNING TEXT
Bradley 1985 included the acknowledgment to Fritts shown below. However, this acknowledgment was removed in Bradley 1999 – which may partially explain DC’s inflated estimation of the seminality of Bradley 1999:
…the greatest strides in dendroclimatology hae been made in the last 10-15 years, largely as a result of the work of H.C. Fritts and associates at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research in the University of Arizona; much of this work has been documented at length in the excellent book by Fritts (1976).
As Bradley’s running text is mostly a commentary on Fritts 1976 graphics, unsurprisingly there are many parallels in language (even though Fritts 1976 is seldom mentioned in the running text and then not always relevantly). Here is one example of virtually identical language in the running text (noticed in a fairly quick pass)
Bradley, 346: Once the regression coefficients have been calculated, the eigenvectors incorporated in the regression equation are mathematically transformed into a new set of n coefficients corresponding to the original (intercorrelated) set of n variables. These new coefficients are termed weights or elements of the response function and are analogous to the stepwise regression coefficients discussed earlier…
Fritts 353: Once the regression coefficients for the selected set of orthogonal variables have been calculated, they may be mathematically transformed into a new set of coefficients which correspond to the original correlated set of variables. These new coefficients (sometimes referred to as weights or elements of the response function) are analogous to the stepwise regression coefficients described in the previous section…
Needless to say, there are many other examples.
Bradley’s Variations
Given the almost total derivativeness of these sections of Bradley 1985 from Fritts 1976, it’s interesting to see those places where Bradley has, in the terminology of DC and Mashey, “distorted” Fritts.
For example, Fritts (p 11) listed carbon dioxide as an important external limiting factor – a limiting factor notably left out by Bradley (but included by Wegman, a point with which DC took issue.)
Some of the most important external limiting factors are water, temperature, light, carbon dioxide, oxygen and soil minerals…
Another Bradley innovation was the following analogy of trees to a “filter or transducer” – the sort of metaphor that has been contested at Climate Audit as long as this blog has been going. Although Bradley cites Fritts 1976 as authority, I was unable to locate Fritts’ use of this metaphor (it is possible that I missed it, since I have Fritts 1976 only in a non-searchable form). However, Fritts seems mercifully free of thinking of trees as a sort of electronic transceiver nor have I thus far seen any examples of the signal-noise metaphor nor of “climate the dependent variable with ring-width data the predictor”.
From the point of view of paleoclimatology, it is perhaps useful to consider the tree as a filter or transducer which, through various physiological processes, converts a given climatic input signal into a certain ring width output that is stored and can be studied in detail, even thousands of years later (Fritts, 1976; Schweingruber, 1988, 1996).
In Bradley’s interview with USA Today, he stated:
“Clearly, text was just lifted verbatim from my book and placed in the (Wegman) report.
Something that Fritts could have said about Bradley. As to Deep Climate’s untrue assertion that Bradley 1999 was “seminal”, I presume that this statement was made without any attempt to determine whether it was true or not.
APPENDIX
Here is a summary of corresponding Bradley and Fritts figures.
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| Bradley has excerpted three of five Fritts panels (see right).
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You will notice no comment on the fact that the two documents in question are two different things…
One is a report which is supposed to be educational to Congress, and is not in itself supposed to be taken as a published paper…and this is where we are now on trying to determine of all things…copying original works. This is a very big difference.
Now if we assume they are the same thing (which makes ZERO sense) … If the work went from Frits – Bradley – Wegman, then in actuality Bradley has no room to complain about copying since the original author of the work is someone else. Just because he copied someone else does not mean his work is original in that sense, which is the litmus test even for published papers. And at the most we have a mistake in the citations. However, Bradley has no horse in this, he can’t cry foul when he got the original material from someone else. Wegman will be exonerated and I am sure the media will say nothing unlike with Mann when it was big news everytime he got white-washed out of trouble.
This stinks of something else, and I think we all will be looking at this merry-go-round of references in much more detail from now on, since apperantly its important for some reason…
So. Bradley was a bad boy for not reinventing the wheel. Steve criticises for proper methodology: building on previous work and giving proper credit.
Next he is critisised for not using previous work ( co2 ). Maybe Bradley didn’t think this part was important.
Hard to yap plagiarist when nothing was written. Sort of like meeting a man that wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh how I wish he’d go away. Because I forget who wrote that ( it wasn;t me ) I’m going to claim public domain. So sue me.
This has been one of the most remarkable threads in the speed in which the posters have sifted through the chaff and found the one nugget of indisputable fact.
The chaff, of course, is whether Bradley copied Fritts without permission or citation, or whether or not he used 1976 instead of 1971, or vice versa. Then someone noticed – hats off to Lucy Skywalker – the original work of Fritz had contained and explicit reference to CO2 that was removed in the Bradley version. Crispin in Waterloo has summarised the importance of this most succintly when he wrote:
“If Bradley did not make it clear he was doing this [removing the CO2 reference], does it not mean Bradley was trying to use Fritts’ standing as an expert dendochronologist to support his (Bradley’s) own opinion, while actually hiding the fact that Fritts’ original works do not?”
Bradley now has some explaining to do, in the metaphorical sense. In reality of course, Bradley’s hiding of the CO2 will never be discussed outside of sceptical blogs.
Some of the most important external limiting factors are water, temperature, light, carbon dioxide, oxygen and soil minerals…
There’s a reason water is at the front of this list. Trees can grow in a wide range of temperature providing sufficient water is available. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Mac The Knife strikes again. Cudos, Steve.
John McManus – quick question:
Do you think Steve M went into this much detail because Bradley was claiming plagerism by Wegman? I do. It seems that Bradley claims that Wegman used Bradley’s published and copyrighted work without giving due credit. It appears that when Steve M looked into it, he found that at least some of the work was not Bradley’s in the first place rendering the plagerism claim a bit shaky. Bradley used to say at least some of it was from Fritts. Is that correct?
It seems from the whole content above that initially Bradley correctly cited the works of Fritts and dropped at least some of the references when producing a textbook for sale. One contributor disagrees that the references are missing. I would think that a brief investigation would clear that up pronto. Citation is highly formalised.
What is interesting of course is mis-quoting, correctly cited, with a view to ‘editing’ the science in order to support a certain, different (even contrary), viewpoint. Given the proclivities of the Team, and given evidence this clear, I suggest that we all take a moment each day to look up original citations of critical documents to see if quotes have been similarly edited. It definitely qualifies as a new trick.
It is most likely to take place with citations from older off-line publications and also with ‘crossover sciences’ where previously, mentions of a warmer past or higher CO2 were not contentious. Now that articles routinely have to include some arcane reference to AGW in order to appear in print (witness the lunacy in the New Scientist) there are ‘camps’ emerging. Who know who they are.
We are well aware that the Team has been cross-citing each other’s papers, building up a long list of ‘verified and much cited works’ and conspiring to not cite contrary papers or the publications they appeared in. What we perhaps have not been investigating is the accuracy of quotes taken from outside the group to see if this new trick is widespread.
Remember who pal-reviewed the papers (love the phrase!) and you can immediately see the risk: if your pal is reviewing the paper, will your pal wink when you carefully edit the correctly cited quote from an old paper to be more supportive of your modern argument?
Who reviewed Bradley’s papers? Was the deletion of Fritts’ inclusion of CO2 as a growth factor for tree rings noticed? Did the reviewer have a vested interest in seeing the reference(s) removed? Was Bradley asked to correct the mis-quote?
If the quote was corrected now, would it change in any way the arguments presented in the original article(s) or the textbook? If the core arguments based on the dendochronological temperature reconstructions are undermined by the limitations or fertilisations of CO2, are the core conclusions of the IPCC reports similarly undermined?
CAGW is a warm and cosy sweater designed by a close-knit group for an funding Emperor. Steve M tugged at another loose end and, stitch by stitch, it is unravelling. Carry on tugging – it is going to be a revealing exercise.
Alexander K says: October 19, 2010 at 12:49 pm
“Bradley’s devious and stealthy removal of the references to CO2”
Bradley did not remove carbon dioxide from anything. They are talking about different things. Fritts was talking about factors influencing plant growth. Bradley is talking about factors influencing treering width. Bradley was not “copying” Fritts. The context is totally different.
Heh, does carbon dioxide influence tree ring width? Your sophistry just adds to the general hilarity of the joke. Give it up. Are you the last man standing?
==================
Nick Stokes,
“Fritts was talking about factors influencing plant growth. Bradley is talking about factors influencing treering width.”
Last time I checked, trees were plants, but keep up the good work.
I have reviewed the long passages above in the article.
Nick Stokes: “Bradley did not remove carbon dioxide from anything. ”
That is contested by the facts above where the deletion is clearly marked and discussed.
NS “They are talking about different things. Fritts was talking about factors influencing plant growth. Bradley is talking about factors influencing treering width. ”
They were not only talking about exactly the same thing, Bradley was using long passages from Fritts to do his talking for him.
NS “Bradley was not “copying” Fritts. The context is totally different.”
Not only did Bradley copy Fritts exactly on several occasions, and almost exactly on others, the context is identical as they were discussing exactly the same thing.
It is not possible to put a ‘context’ wash on this. Bradley’s work was considered by DC to be ‘seminal’, yet significant portions of the relevant portions of the book are directly lifted from Fritts whose 1976 book is formally credited in Bradley 1985. It was Fritts whose work was seminal, and Bradley said so in 1985. He said that about works DC thinks were Bradley’s. DC thinks they were Bradley’s because some of the work is not credited in the textbook to its real source: Fritts. This is not complicated.
Further to the claim made by a poster above, I investigated the common practice for citing references in textbooks. The claim was that the references are given in the back of the book and therefore the works were reproduced with the permission of Fritts, asked and given. However, when I looked into a number of textbooks I found that in each and every case, figures used from other sources are individually credited in the captions. In one case, I found an entire book “Mechanics of Materials”, Hibbeler, Prentice Hall Second Ed, that had no material at all that was no original and it contains no references. Fair enough. In another, “Engineering Materials”, Budinski, Prentice Hall, I found that every single externally sourced figure or chart or photo has its source given. For example, p.437 “From Chemical Engineering, reprinted with permission”. I also checked “Convection Heat Transfer” by Bejan – who writes many of the best thermo textbooks. Again, all external sources are individually referenced.
Thus I conclude that to use an external source without giving the source in the caption is non-standard practise in the publishing world. Photos in newspapers are individually credited, for example. I cannot accept the argument that using unreferenced materials in the text and having somewhere in the back a list that includes Fritts constitutes proper citation and I revert to my earlier position that Bradley used Fritts’ work without giving due credit.
Reviewing the seminal works of Fritts and the lengthy quotes used by Bradley appended with ‘after Fritts, 1976’ it struck me that a student doing that in a paper would be disciplined. It is ironic that Bradley now seeks to discipline Wegman for plagiarising material Bradley placed, unreferenced in the normal sense of the word, in a book others have been led to believe was ‘seminal’ when the works belong to Fritts.
Regarding the removal of “CO2”:
“For example, Fritts (p 11) listed carbon dioxide as an important external limiting factor – a limiting factor notably left out by Bradley (but included by Wegman, a point with which DC took issue.)”
This is extraordinary! Wegman included Fritts’ original wording in his report and DC thinks that Wegman has distorted Bradley’s work! As far as I can see, in this particular case Wegman may not have quoted Bradley at all. Why does DC think it was Bradley’s original work being mis-quoted by Wegman? Because Bradley did NOT attribute the quote correctly, or at all apparently. Clearly DC has been led by Bradley to believe that Bradley is the source of the work. That Wegman cites the original wording is important. Not only does it show that he knows where to find the original citation, it shows that he also knows Bradley change the text.
Next is a distortion of a completely different kind: attributing to Fritts things he does not say and which he apparently does not believe (hoping perhaps to capitalise on Fritts’ long-standing as an expert dendrochronologist to support his own argument).
“Another Bradley innovation was the following analogy of trees to a “filter or transducer” – the sort of metaphor that has been contested at Climate Audit as long as this blog has been going. Although Bradley cites Fritts 1976 as authority, I was unable to locate Fritts’ use of this metaphor (it is possible that I missed it, since I have Fritts 1976 only in a non-searchable form). However, Fritts seems mercifully free of thinking of trees as a sort of electronic transceiver nor have I thus far seen any examples of the signal-noise metaphor nor of “climate the dependent variable with ring-width data the predictor”.
Why does Bradley claim that Fritts supports this idea? Or rather, why would he tell us that Fritts does? It appears to be because Fritts is/was the Main Man in the world of dendochronology, the author of the seminal works. It might have helped Bradley’s case to have it noised about that the ‘filter/transducer’ idea was supported by Fritts, which so far as we know, it is not. If it was, Bradley would no doubt have referenced the source because it would have helped found his argument. As we say, citation please:
“From the point of view of paleoclimatology, it is perhaps useful to consider the tree as a filter or transducer which, through various physiological processes, converts a given climatic input signal into a certain ring width output that is stored and can be studied in detail, even thousands of years later (Fritts, 1976; Schweingruber, 1988, 1996).”
“Fritts, 1976”. That’s it. Untraceable.
Finally a word about context. In the world of academic plagiarism, context matters not a whit as far as I can see. “Fair use’ is pretty well defined. Reporting ‘common knowledge’ is reasonable. Something as mundane as, “The exponential distribution”, a chart with a logarithmic Y axis and a diagonal straight line across it (Figure 22-4, “Motion and Time Study”, Niebel, 1993, p.682 is referenced to “The Port of New York Authority”.
I cannot see how Bradley will escape the charge that he used the works of others without proper citation, that he edited at least one of them to change, materially, its obvious and intended meaning, that he attributed to an expert in the field support for some proposition he apparently did not. Further, through this combination, Bradley has produced a work which experts in the field were induced, by its content, to believe Bradley was substantially the original author, to such a point that the work is considered by such experts to be ‘seminal’. I take it that DC is an expert in dendrochronology and or climatology and that we can assume his belief in the originality of Bradley’s work is the direct result of the contents of the book in question, considering its cited sources and references. Perhaps DC, being now made aware of the real source of the charts, notes and figures, will consider Fritts to have produced the seminal works, as apparently did Bradley in 1985. This materially affects the charges DC supports against Wegman.