Gosh, it can’t be the money, can it? There must be something else going on. The juxtaposition is priceless. From Tom Nelson:
UVA spends $500,000 on lawyers when it would cost only $8,000 to deliver public documents?
Commonwealth Foundation – Mann: From Transparency Champion to ‘Bully’ Victim
UVA has been resisting (spending about $500,000 on outside lawyers for the effort) a similar, previous request by Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who is investigating Mann under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.
That the e-mails are public documents seems clear. Mann, while a professor at the school, used an e-mail account at least partially paid for by taxpayers. Just as an elected official’s or state worker’s official correspondence is open to the public, so is a professor’s at a state school.
…
The school estimated it would cost up to $8,000 to deliver the e-mails. That sounds high, but then we do not know how much of a mess their backup servers are. Whatever the accurate cost, if Marshall and friends will pay it, they do not deserve any more hassle from UVa than any other citizen seeking public records.
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The school estimated it would cost up to $8,000 to deliver the e-mails. That sounds high, but then we do not know how much of a mess their backup servers are. Whatever the accurate cost, if Marshall and friends will pay it, they do not deserve any more hassle from UVa than any other citizen seeking public records.
—————
Well if they saw it as “any other citizen seeking public records” there would not be a problem. As they likely see it as a form of harassment of a member of staff by someone with a political agenda they will be taking the principalled route of protecting academic freedom.
You have to use your imagination and step outside the frame constructed by a spin merchant. Gives you a whole new perspective on the bogus moral outrage.
Paddy says:
January 13, 2011 at 10:49 am
Bob Ramar:
As I understand it, most NIH and NSF grants are applied for and issued to individual scientists, who have proprietary control over their grants. Universities usually lack supervisory or administrative control over the grants or research
——–
Seriously? I would have thought that it is the direct opposite of everything you said.
You have to wonder why the University of Virginia coughed up Patrick Michael’s files with such great alacrity but fights tooth and nail to protect Michael Mann’s files.
It’s not the $8,000 they’re trying to save. And it’s not their Fundamental Principles. It’s more like their Principals’ Fundaments.
🙂
Are they doing this because the lawyers told the university administration they couldn’t plead the Fifth?
Joel Shore says:
January 13, 2011 at 3:02 pm
No doubt Joel you’ll make public access available here to all your emails then?
Academic Freedom means that academics can do their research without outside agencies/governments telling them what to research and what not to research. It means no outside interference into my research project. It means I can do my research even e.g. against Lysenko without fear of being thrown into the GULAG.
Academic Freedom does not mean I can sit on my research results and tell other scientist or those who have founded my research to b*gger off.
Why are some academics not able to understand the difference?
Businesses in Ireland are protesting over the Government’s latest Climate Change Bill, saying the legislation will stifle the economy by almost €4bn. http://www.insideireland.ie/index.cfm/section/news/ext/climatechange004/category/9
“Anthony:
(1) Public funding has never meant that academics surrender all rights of privacy and intellectual property. For example, NSF has clearly stated that the computer code developed under their grants remains the intellectual property of the researcher.
(2) While you might feel that you are under no obligation to release such things, don’t you think it would be a good gesture to show how you are willing to do so just to set a good example?
(3) Would you be taking the same position if it was a Democratic attorney general on a witchhunt demanding all the e-mails from Roy Spencer and John Christy so he could investigate the circumstances under which their initial satellite record analysis got a trend that was so far off the mark until others pointed out errors that they had to correct?”
Joel
Get Real. That ship sailed long ago.
1. Those academics with brains have private e-mail accounts for private communications. I know some who are quite insistent that private messages are not sent to their government funded account. The public funded communication is subject to FIOA requests.
2. The University has already yielded on the academic freedom argument when they released the e-mail of a septic. Your argument for fairness is insane in that light. There is no justification for skeptic’s to be treated as second class citizens not entitled to the same protection as Professor Mann’s work. As the skeptic’s work was released to Greenpeace how can you possibly argue that other skeptics work be released first? What is unreasonable about expecting those with a legal obligation to comply with the law?
3. Where is your argument that UVA should not have released e-mails to Greenpeace? Do you see any argument here, except for equal treatment that UVA should have not released the skeptic’s information?
Your points are biased and foolish in light of the facts.
Tell me, Joel, how a public employee operating a publicly-owned computer in a public building on the taxpayers’ dime and time can possibly be engaged “private” correspondence?
Nobody is requesting that Dr. Mann’s private computer in his private home be searched. Except for you, in regards to Mr. Watt’s private computer in his private home.
Talk about a chilling effect! Maybe you should chill out, dude.
A public university and all of its assets are owned by the public. How the university receives its funding is irrelevant. As soon as the money is in the university’s coffers, the money belongs to the public.
1DandyTroll says:
January 13, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Funny you should mention UVA and economics. While my sheepskin does not come from such a “prestigious” university, at least we won the Emory games in my senior year. UVA was not even in the finals.
And we are down the road from them, so not like it was across the country.
Viv Evans says:
January 14, 2011 at 3:32 am
Academic Freedom means that academics can do their research without outside agencies/governments telling them what to research and what not to research. It means no outside interference into my research project. It means I can do my research even e.g. against Lysenko without fear of being thrown into the GULAG.
I’d believe that people seem to overlook the notion that the only true “academic freedom” is self-funded. Otherwise, your results are always suspect to influence by your benefactor. At least with self-funded research, you only defend yourself…not your grantor.
From LazyTeenager on January 13, 2011 at 10:10 pm:
Wow. So for the “protection of academic freedom,” public records may be withheld simply because they don’t like the motives of those asking for the info?
As found here (bold added):
From the email numbered 1107454306.txt, copied here, comes one of the most interesting Climategate revelations from the esteemed Dr. Phil Jones:
Seems pretty obvious what was being protected wasn’t “academic freedom.”
It appears you Freudian slipped the correct word, and UVA is indeed taking the “principalled” route, of protecting the principals involved, namely themselves.
Well, it’s not exactly a “whole new” perspective of your moral outrage, as this is what I’ve come to expect of your spin.
Another Ian says:
No, because I am not the one demanding that anybody’s e-mails be made public.
Paul A Peterson says:
Well, if U Va is spending money on lawyers, they apparently have good reason to believe that the government-funding argument does not mean that a researcher gives up all rights to private communication, even about work-related issues. When I write e-mails at work, I have an expectation that in general they will be seen by me and the recipients (and who that recipient or I choose to show it to). It is ridiculous to claim any e-mail whatsoever is subject to be made public! Clearly, for example, e-mail messages between myself and a student that involve the student’s grade are subject to privacy issues.
Do you have a cite to back up this claim? I just did a google search and all I could find were a few unsubstantiated claims like yours that U Va had turned over such things. The closest to a reputable source was an op-ed piece in a right-wing newspaper that made the claim that Greenpeace “was promised, e-mails and other materials of Patrick Michaels” in response to their FOIA request. And, in fact, I found this article that said U Va had so far not in fact turned over any documents to Greenpeace: http://www2.wsls.com/news/2010/jun/03/uva_climate_skeptics_also_target_of_information_re-ar-361873/ (Here is a blog post that makes the additional point that Greenpeace’s request was apparently much more tightly focused: http://www2.wsls.com/news/2010/jun/03/uva_climate_skeptics_also_target_of_information_re-ar-361873/ )
So, until you can produce something more than an unsubstantiated claim that U Va turned over such e-mails, and details about what exactly they turned over, I have nothing of substance to comment on.
All I can say is that I think that U Va should deal with such requests in a consistent manner and one that reasonably balances the public’s right to know with the individual researchers rights to not have all their communications be made public at the will of anybody who wants to go on a political witchhunt.
Then you have misplaced expectations. The courts (all the way up to SCOTUS) have already ruled that emails at work belong to the employer, not you, and they are free to do as they please with them, including making them public.