Breaking: Mann and Wahl have responded. See updates below.
3/9 12:45 PM Pacific Time. This story is now updated to be consistent with Mann and Wahl’s response:
By Steven Mosher
and charles the moderator
Sources confirm that a federal inspector has questioned Eugene Wahl and Wahl has confirmed that Mann asked [forwarded] him [a request] to delete emails. Wahl has also informed the inspector that he did delete emails as the result of this request.
There are times during the course of Climategate when you feel like you are in a twilight zone episode, especially the kind where the ambiguous meaning of terms plays a critical role, like “To Serve Man”.
That episode is apt because of the central role trust plays and because of the role puzzle solvers play in uncovering that the do-gooder aliens cannot be trusted. “Serving”, of course, has now taken on new meanings, as in “you got served” or pwned. With the release of the news that Mann successfully [forwarded instructions] instructed [to] Wahl to delete emails, it’s clear that Mann got served or pwned by Wahl; but more importantly, he got served or assisted by Dr. Pell, Dr. Scaroni, Dr Brune, and Dr. Foley. Who are they? They are the Penn State team who served Dr. Mann by purporting to exonerate him in the Penn State inquiry, despite Mann’s own non-responsive response to a key question being on its face evasive, and begging followup questions. Regardless, Mann’s non-answer did not even purport to support their conclusion about his actions. In short, they covered for him.
The puzzle begins back in 2006. Keith Briffa the author of chapter 6 in the 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC (AR4) is struggling under the directive of review editor Johnathan Overpeck, who has encouraged him to come up with something “more compelling than the Hockey Stick”, that iconic symbol of Global warming created by Michael Mann in the third assessment report.
Briffa is struggling with the comments and suggestions of a particular reviewer who we now know was Steve McIntyre, the citizen scientist who has been dogging Mann for several years. In what appears to be violation of IPCC rules Briffa writes to Eugene Wahl asking for assistance in answering McIntyre’s comments. More important than this communication being apparently at odds with IPCC directives, is that Briffa is asking Wahl to comment on McIntyre’s work, a process that is clearly supposed to take place in peer reviewed literature. Wahl and McIntyre had both been critical of each other’s work and such disputes are most fairly handled by independent third parties and not by the disputants themselves.
In mid 2006 the following exchange occurs between Briffa and Eugene Wahl:
From: Keith Briffa [mailto:k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: Tue 7/18/2006 10:20 AM
To: Wahl, Eugene R
Subject: confidential
Gene
I am taking the liberty (confidentially) to send you a copy of the reviewers[McIntyre’s] comments (please keep these to yourself) of the last IPCC draft chapter. I am concerned that I am not as objective as perhaps I should be and would appreciate your take on the comments from number 6-737 onwards , that relate to your reassessment of the Mann et al work. I have to consider whether the current text is fair or whether I should change things in the light of the sceptic comments. In practise this brief version has evolved and there is little scope for additional text , but I must put on record responses to these comments – any confidential help , opinions are appreciated . I have only days now to complete this revision and response
Wahl responds
Thoughts and perspective concerning the reviewer’s comments per se. These are coded in blue and are in the “Notes” column between pages 103 and 122 inclusive. It got to the point that I could not be exhaustive, given the very lengthy set of review thoughts, so I am also attaching a review article Caspar [Ammann] and I plan to submit to Climatic Change in the next few days….Please note that this Ammann-Wahl text is sent strictly confidentially — it should not be cited or mentioned in any form, and MUST not be transmitted without permission. However, I am more than happy to send it for your use, because it succinctly summarizes what we have found on all the issues that have come up re: MBH. As you can see, we agree at some level with some of the criticisms raised by MM [McIntyre] and others, but we do not find that they invalidate MBH in any substantial way.
Briffa responds
Gene
here is where I am up to now with my responses (still a load to do) you can see that I have “borrowed (stolen)” from 2 of your responses in a significant degree – please assure me that this OK (and will not later be obvious) hopefully.You will get the whole text(confidentially again ) soon. You could also see that I hope to be fair to Mike[Mann] – but he can be a little unbalanced in his remarks sometime – and I have had to disagree with his interpretations of some issues also. Please do not pass these on to anyone at all.
Keith
Wahl responds, jumping into the “divergence” problem which has come to be known as the “hide the decline” problem.
Hi Keith:
Here is the text with my comments. I will go over the “stolen” parts (highlighted in blue outline) for a final time tomorrow morning, but I wanted to get this to you ASAP. The main new point I have to make is added in bold/blue font on pp. 101-103. I question the way the response to the comment there is currently worded, as it seems to imply that the divergence issue really does invalidate any dendro-based reconstructions before about 1850–which I imagine is not what you would like to say. I give a series of arguments against this as a general conclusion. Maybe I got over-bold in doing so, as in my point (1) I’m examining issues that are at the very core of your expertise! Excuse me that one, but I decided to jump in anyway. Let me know if I got it wrong in any way!
Briffa responds
First Gene – let me say that I never intended that you should spend so much time on this – though I really appreciate your take on these points. The one you highlight here – correctly warns me that in succumbing to the temptation to be lazy in the sense of the brief answer that I have provided – I do give an implied endorsement of the sense of the whole comment. This is not, of course what I intended. I simply meant to agree that some reference to the “divergence” issue was necessitated . I will revise the reply to say briefly that I do not agree with the interpretation of the reviewer. I am attaching what I have done (see blue highlighting) to the section in response to comments (including the addition of the needed extra section on the “tree-ring issues” called for by several people). I have had no feedback yet on this as it has not been generally circulated , but thought you might like to see it. PLEASE REMEMBER that this is “for your eyes only ” . Please do NOT feel that I am asking /expecting you to go through this in any detail – but given the trouble you have taken,I thought it reasonable to give you a private look. Cheers
Keith
So, Briffa writes confidentially to Wahl for help and Wahl assists him by passing a copy of a paper that has yet to be published. The aim is to answer concerns that McIntyre as reviewer has raised. Wahl and Amman’s words are incorporated in the response to McIntyre with the hope that no one will ever notice.
Two years later, someone does notice. It’s May 24th 2008, Steve McIntyre, climate science puzzle solver, is reading the reviewer comments to chapter 6 of AR4 written in 2006. In the course of reviewing Briffa’s replies to him, McIntyre notes something peculiar. Briffa’s replies, written in 2006, seemed to plagiarize an unpublished paper by Casper Amman and Eugene Wahl published in 2007. That is, in 2006 Briffa was repeating the argument of a paper that was not published until 2007. How could Briffa plagiarize an article that hadn’t been published? Why would he repeat the arguments almost word for word? Who was feeding Briffa his arguments? How was Briffa doing this if all communication with the authors had to be part of the official record?
At the time, in May of 2008, McIntyre assumed that Briffa was getting information from Casper Ammann since Ammann was listed as a contributing author to chapter 6. It did not occur to McIntyre that Wahl was the source of the text. Thanks to the individual who liberated the Climategate emails, we now know that Wahl was the source of that text. The Climategate emails, quoted above, show Briffa and Wahl exchanging emails about the way McIntyre’s arguments should be handled. Confidentially, outside the process of the IPCC which is designed to capture reviewer objections and authors’ responses to those objections. Wahl is brought in by Briffa to defend his own work. And defend it with literature that has not been published yet.
At the same time in 2008, across the ocean, David Holland had been reading McIntyre’s work and he had issued an FOIA request to the Climatic Research Unit–CRU. That FOIA request covered all correspondence coming in and out of CRU relative to chapter 6 of AR4. The hunt for the source that was feeding Briffa was on, with Holland leading the charge. At CRU, FOIA officer Palmer instructs the team that they must do everything “by the book” because Holland will most certainly appeal a rejection letter.
In that context, Jones writes the famous email to Mann. Jones requests that Mann delete his emails and he requests that Mann contact Wahl and have Wahl delete his emails. Is Jones covering his bases in case of an appeal? Is he covering his bases against an FOIA request that might be served on Mann and Wahl in the US? In any case, he appears to be conspiring with others to deny Holland his FOIA rights.
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper
Mann responds that he will contact Wahl ASAP, which he does.
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true. I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
talk to you later,
mike
As Wahl told the investigators in 2011, Mann contacted [forwarded the email from Jones requesting deletion to] him and Wahl deleted his mails.
In 2010, in an effort to clear Mann of any wrong doing, a committee of inquiry was set up at Penn State. We now know that committee failed miserably. They failed for many reasons, but the Wahl admission is the starkest example.
Here is one allegation the committee investigated:
Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
Finding 2. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones’ request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.
The committee found this because they apparently failed to understand Mann’s reply. As they reported:
He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; …
What can we make of this? Mann was apparently asked the question: “Did you engage in or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete emails.”
And it seems clear he only answered half of the question, leaving the unanswered second part dangling: did you contact anyone or otherwise ‘indirectly’ participate in deleting records? This either did not strike, or did not interest, the Penn State ‘investigators’. This despite that Mann, it appears, answered “carefully” and incompletely. He only answered that he hadn’t deleted emails. He never directly denies partaking, indirectly, in the deletion of Wahl’s emails. He apparently withheld the information that he had asked [forwarded the request to] Wahl to delete emails.
Is this a lie? Not directly. It’s more what Wikipedia would describe as “Careful Speaking”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
Careful speaking is distinct from the above in that the speaker wishes to avoid imparting certain information or admitting certain facts and, additionally, does not want to ‘lie’ when doing so. Careful speaking involves using carefully-phrased statements to give a ‘half-answer’: one that does not actually ‘answer’ the question, but still provides an appropriate (and accurate) answer based on that question. As with ‘misleading’, below, ‘careful speaking’ is not outright lying.
So why did the inquiry, stocked with Mann’s fellow professors, fail to ask good follow up questions? We really do not know because we don’t have access to the transcript of their interview with Mann. Did he intend to deceive? Or did he just speak “carefully?” It would seem that the actual transcript of the questions and answers should be published. Perhaps Congress should serve the members of the inquiry with a subpoena. That would allow people to decide if Mann lied or if he just spoke carefully.
And there are a few more questions we need to ask. Mann claims that he never deleted the emails. But he asked [forwarded Jones’s request to] Wahl to delete the emails. This makes no sense. It makes no sense that Mann would participate in a cover up by passing along a message to another participant of that cover-up downstream and not delete emails himself. It defies any logical reconstruction of events. Why would Mann ask [forward a request to] Wahl to do something that he himself would not do? We also know from the inquiry that Mann delivered emails to the inquiry. From that evidence and his testimony they concluded that he deleted no emails. This does not compute. [S.M: See update below for a possible explanation ]
Jones requested of Mann: Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
The inquiry stated: The archive contained e-mails related to AR4. (Hmm…more “Careful Speaking”?)
Did the inquiry find any emails of Mann communicating with Briffa re AR4 or just some emails related to AR4?
Did Mann turn over all the emails he wrote/received or only those he didn’t delete?
Was the email from Phil Jones requesting deletion among the emails Mann delivered to the inquiry?
Did the IT staff serve Mann, by letting him know that what he initially attempted to delete were in fact retained on the University mail server?
Did Mann turn over emails to the inquiry that he had previously deleted, deleted and then recovered with the help of some sympathetic University IT staff?
These questions need to be asked.
Perhaps Congress should serve Mann a subpoena.
Perhaps, the IG, the NSF, or some other suitable independent third party can investigate this with people who know how to watch for the pea under the thimble, and not be mislead by “Careful Speaking”.
=================================================================
UPDATES:
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has the goods in this: Wahl Transcript Excerpt
Chris Horner at DailyCaller also has a review: Penn State whitewashed ClimateGate
In fact, Chris Horner and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were instrumental in efforts over a year to get this and other forthcoming FOIA info into the public domain. – Anthony
UPDATE 3/9 12PM Mann and Wahl have responded see here.
Excerpt:
Mann, reached on vacation in Hawaii, said the stories yesterday were “libelous” and false. “They’re spreading a lie about me,” he said of the Web sites. “This has been known for a year and a half that all I did was forward Phil’s e-mail to Eugene.” Asked why he sent the e-mail to his colleague, Mann said, “I felt Eugene Wahl had to be aware of this e-mail … it could be used against him. I didn’t delete any e-mails and nor did I tell Wahl to delete any e-mails.” Why didn’t Mann call Wahl to discuss the odd request? “I was so busy. It’s much easier to e-mail somebody. No where did I approve of the instruction to destroy e-mails.”
Also at the above link, Wahl has now publicly stated that he did in fact delete emails in response to the request forwarded to him by Mann, rendering moot our need to wait for our original sources to confirm this story.
UPDATE: 3/9 6PM Chris Horner, whose story at the Daily Caller prompted a fair amount of outrage from AGW proponents, has responded to Wahl and Mann here
==========================================================
h/t SF Grand Master, Damon Knight, who was the author of the original short story this Twilight Zone episode was based upon.
Jones specifically asked Mann to delete emails with Briffa with regard to AR4. Mann claims that he deleted no mails. This is entirely possible, especially if there were no mails fitting the description. Canvasing the Climategate mails, we can only find a few mails between Briffa and Mann related to Ar4. If there were few or no mails to delete, then it does make sense that Mann could have passed the instruct to delete onto Wahl, without deleting mails himself. S. Mosher.
Amused doesn’t seem very amused. Interesting that you see the “genuine scientists” who manipulate data and peer review as well as seek to keep opposing views from being published as “genuine scientists.” I’m only a lay person (amateur scientist with no science degree), but I though true scientists understand that the more who challenge and test their theories, the better the science is.
Guess it only works one way. I think they call that a “double standard”.
Men and women of integrity….right. This isn’t science, it’s become a religion and a political cause. The science keeps falling apart every day under the light of the truth.
Not sure if this was mentioned in any other comments, but in the ‘Real World’, where work is based upon profit and loss, most companies archive all them emails. Therefore deleting them from a specific computer doesn’t actually delete them. I believe companies are now required to do this, but most larger ones have been doing this on their own accord for years. ( case in point, Enron and Henry Bloggett from Merrill Lynch) Companies have to do it because of lawsuits.
In the ‘Real World’ if you screw up, you pay for it. But if you are caught covering something up, you pay BIG time, think Ford Pinto.
The cover up is usually always worse, right Dick, H.R., John, Chuck, G Gordon?
“What did the IPCC know, and when did they know it?
Steve M and Anthony, the modern day Howard Baker and Fred Thompson…how ironic, Al Gore took Bakers seat, and Thompson took over for Gore…
…cue Rod Sterling….
I honestly don’t know which planet people like ‘Amused’ (March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
) come from.
Ken Harvey says:
March 8, 2011 at 10:45 am
“Or did he just speak “carefully?” He equivocated. And as my old High School English master taught me, to equivocate is to lie.”
Churchill had a way with words, he preferred “Terminological Inexactitude”.
Amused. says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Yes, it must really be frustrating for a person that has been sucked in by Mann etc to then see them ripped apart by the truth! It seems that your “religion” is blinding you.
As for “Better Men”…..I can only hope you are not referring to Mann!
Haven’t read all of the comments fully, so I don’t know if anyone else has picked up on this yet or not, but… here’s one thought on Mann’s response which was so “carefully worded” above… [one really should read all of the comments before weighing in . After all that is common courtesy and it will certainly improve the quality of one’s contribution. It would also help to ensure that one’s contribution adds to the debate. ]
…”He [Mann] explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”
Two things in there leap out at me:…
1) …”at the behest of any other scientist”… If Prof. Mann had already deleted those emails on his own initiative, knowing that he needed to do so as part of a coverup, then he could rationalize his reply by saying to himself; “Well, I replied honestly that I didn’t delete those emails AT ANYONE ELSES behest… Right?” Nope, he may have done it on his own initiative.
2) … “he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”… Well, “with the intention of obstructing science” is an interesting qualifier, as he MAY have done so with the intention of obstructing an FOI request.
The double-speak contained in Prof. Mann’s reply seems obviously contrived in such a way as to deceive… ie: to “lie” without really “lying”, so to speak. Shameful!
charles the moderator says:
March 8, 2011 at 5:01 pm
EFS_Junior,
I unable to find the words to express the degree to which I am concerned about what you are most interested in, but the prefixes pico and femto come to mind.
_____________________________________________________________
So, just to be clear, you have no interest in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Notice the above is not in the form of a question, as it is a statement of fact.
forwarding an email != deleting emails
James Sexton; Robert of Ottawa;
As far as I understand it, no e-mail is private, as it is sent under UDP through a publically accessable network; it’s route from sender to recepient is also undefined.>>>
Privacy is a matter of both technology and legality.
From a technology perspective, it is important to understand two things. From the internet perspective, route from sender to recipient is in fact undefined. The major servers on the internet are traffic hubs that (for lack of a better explanation) have a vague idea as to what direction to send any given message. So when an email is sent between two servers, it may be passed from one server to the next many times before it arrives at final destination. Those main traffic hubs are under very tight security for a variety of reasons, one of which is that should a hacker get control, they could literaly intercept mail in transit and read it. In fact, in the early days of the first viruses and anti virus programs, there was an internet server compromised (hacked) and the hackers intercepted anti-virus updates, inserted actual viruses in them, and sent them on their merry way. The same applies in a different way to local networks of which wireless is an excellent example. When you log into a public wireless network, your security software should pop up a warning that your internet traffic can potentially be seen by others. This is true. With some free tools, any computer can be set up to watch and record the traffic between all the other computers and the wireless network. Credit card transaction software has some nifty ways of defeating this, but simple things like email, porn, can easily be “watched” and recorded. Networks with a physical connection (ethernet cable) have tremendous variability in terms of implementation, and depending on the specific configuration, may suffer from the same security issue.
Turning to the legal aspect…
I’m not 100% current on this stuff, the last time I had a look in any detail was almost 2 years ago. In the United States, all data stored by all organizations can be freely accessed by various three letter government agencies without (I believe) a warrant for the purpose of fighting terrorism (Patriot Act perhaps?). This even applies for example to Canadian companies who have American operations. If they store their data in the United States (at a disaster recovery site for example) their data is no2w wide open to government inspection. Beyond that, all data is “discoverable” by court order. In a legal proceeding, if one side can show sufficient evidence to make a credible claim that corroborating evidence exists on the other sides computers, the court may order it to be made available. This is why retention policies are increasingly important. If you delete data randomly, you’ll be accused of doing so to hide evidence. If you don’t have a retention policy, then your policy by default is to keep everything…which may or may not be a good decision down the road. If you are going to delete data such as old email, then if it is done according to the official retention policy, it can’t be used against you, and you can’t be accused of hiding evidence via selective deletion.
Beyond that however, there is the matter of what information your ISP can be compelled to caugh up, and that’s the part I’m fuzziest on in terms of current state of the law. Music sharing sites sparked a huge battle, one chapter of which was an attempt by the record labels to force the ISP’s to provide the names of who had downloaded what and when so they could be billed. I’m pretty certain that one died, but what didn’t was getting sufficient info from the ISP’s to calculate the revenue lost to sharing sites and then going after the sharing sites. ISP’s will in general cooperate with law enforcement, though the extent varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Bottom line is that there is a ton of information about you at your ISP and most people don’t realize it.
David Holland says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Time to check the climategate files and see if Mann and Briffa exchanged mail about Ar4. thats a start.
Try this
And have a look at this for a idea of how hard some people try to please – and why.
Reply: Good one David, I would add the question, Did the files delivered to the inquiry by Mann include 1148577381.txt? ~ ctm
——————————————————-
And it goes further:
It is now confirmed at climateaudit that Mann sent the email to Wahl. As this deletion request was as well related to AR4, it should have been on Mann’s list, but obviously wasn’t.
My personal opinion is that all internet surfings and e-mail sendings are public, equivelant to speaking out in the Roman Forum or Greek Agora.>>>
Nyet.
As per my comments above, these may be technicaly accesable but that is different from being legaly accessible. Your ISP if approached by law enforcement to turn over all their customers who have downloaded from a known child porn site, is likely to cooperate in a heartbeat. If not, they quickly will be forced to by a subpoena, and same goes for any criminal evidence that may exist in email. On the other hand, there is nothing compelling you to make it easy for someone sitting next to you in the airport to intercept your information. You are reasonably safe using a credit card for example because the credit card company builds an encrypted tunnel between your browser and their server. someone monitoring your traffic just sees jibberish. But then you send and email in plain old text telling someone else your credit card number, and presto! you just gave it to anyone who was wathing the traffic. Encryption keys for email are a bit of a pain, but you can make it pretty miserable for anyone who does intercept your email to get anything usefull out of it. Bottom line, don’t put anything into an email in clear text that you wouldn’t leave in your mailbox on the front of the house where miscreants can have a look just by lifting the lid.
“…and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science”
Interesting choice of words. It doesn’t actually say that he never withheld data, only that he never withheld data for the specific purpose of “obstructing science”. Is it “careful speaking” or just careless sentence construction?
Amused.
Sadly my friend, you have no idea how we long for someone of your clear opinion to appear on this site with cogent arguments and factual statements to support their position. Those who do are treated cordially, and both sides come away from the discussion having learned something.
Then there are those who shout slogans and spout arguments that they are clearly just repeating and have no real understanding of. They are quickly exposed for their lack of knowledge and inability to defend their claims.
Then there are these rather pathetic sorts who just pop in, hurl some insults, and that’s it, they’re done. We used to be amused, but now it turns out that you are amused. Amused, you sound rather angry. I’ve noticed a lot of anger coming from people who’ve made up their minds, refused to be swayed by the facts, and can mount nothing more in rebuttal than a string of insults. I find that oddly amusing. But should you come up with anything more than insults, please feel free to post something usefull. I don’t think you can.
Andrew says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Not sure if this was mentioned in any other comments, but in the ‘Real World’, where work is based upon profit and loss, most companies archive all them emails. Therefore deleting them from a specific computer doesn’t actually delete them. I believe companies are now required to do this, but most larger ones have been doing this on their own accord for years.>>>
For clarity Andrew, you can take a look at my previous comments. Archive is different from backup. Archive is a repository in which emails over a certain age are placed and NOT backed up. In a standard backup environment, a given email has been copied to backup 13 times in 3 months. How many copies do we need? So by moving email over a certain age to archive, it is out of the backup cycle (which saves time and tapes for doing backup) and still accessible electronically. So if we use that as an example, and email one year old would have 13 copies in backup tapes, and one in the archive.
That said, it is legal for companies to destroy email provided that they have a clearly stated retention policy and only destroy email in compliance with the retention policy.
At 8:37 PM on 8 March, Roger Knights had added yet another comment on this “Protestant and Jesuit” thing, writing:
.
I sense that this was not posted in the sense that if we were to put one of each into a container and agitates them vigorously we’d wind up with a Christian emulsion.
But there is a difference, and one critical to those of us raised in adherence to the doctrines of Holy Mother Church.
1) A reverend father of the Society of Jesus can be excommunicated.
2) A Protestant cannot.
===
davidmhoffer says:
March 8, 2011 at 7:08 pm
lol, No, it can’t be done in one post. Yes, you and I were discussing 2 different meanings to the word protocols. I was referring to company bylaws and SOP’s.
While you are correct about compliance to HIPPA/SOX and the like, it isn’t reasonable nor in many cases feasible to be able to restore data from many years ago. David, I know if you thought about this for a few, you would understand what I’m saying. But, for the benefit of other readers, and no other purpose, I’ll attempt to explain.
There are many laws in the U.S. and other nations that mandate data retention. Often, applicable laws overlap jurisdiction and are not always mandating the same things. As a result, often the practice is simply to save everything. Although sometimes this too would run afoul of certain laws. But, as to our ability to look back in time as to what occurred, so far so good. But time and technology advance at different rates. What is a backup? A backup either full or incremental only addresses data. Nothing else. You can restore the data, but often you cannot restore the programs. Does anyone have a copy of MSWord II still out there? It will not restore using the current MSWord program, or any other that I’m aware of. So, while you’ll have the data that went on the MS Word program, it will be useless. I only used Word as an example because people are familiar with it. But what of all the other programs that have come and gone and died in obscurity. Old Word, yes, its possible, not true with many others. Further, to restore a backup, you have to have the same configuration as the backup was made. (Not to mention the media player). For instance, if you backed up data on a drive called L: or what ever, unless you have that drive or are able to convince the server a different drive is L:, it won’t restore. (Yes, I know I just personified a server, but like David, if I were to attempt to explain, I’d be several hundred more words and be just as clear as I am now.) I’ll just state, much of what you can and can’t do with a backup depends on the OS(operating system) one used and is currently using. In the ideal world a backup gets restored on an apples to apples restoration. That is to say, you’d have the same server, the same OS, the same programs, the same hardware, and the same configuration of such.
In the real world, that never happens. And certainly not with backups from 10 years ago. You can’t. Well, you can, I have. But its brutal, incomplete and uncertain. I’ve been forced to restore backups twice in my life. I never wish for such experiences again.
charles the moderator says:
March 8, 2011 at 11:09 am
“Another scenario that fits the known facts stated above is that Mann could have been working for years undercover with authorities in order to entrap the other researchers into engaging in bad behavior.
But somehow I think we can discard this explanation.”
Well, maybe that particular explanation. But they may well come up with something surreal to try to get out of this.
This is not correct. You can configure a POP3 client to leave copies on the server. I do it all the time.
I don’t consider “careful speaking” to be lying. What I’ve been told by lawyers when I have to give testimony in court is to answer questions I’m asked by the opposing side as succinctly and specifically as possible. This of necessity involves “careful speaking” because I have two opposing duties; first to tell the truth and secondly to my injured patient who is the reason I’m in court. The prevailing view is that it is up to the opposing lawyer to phrase the questions in such a manner so that the truth they are seeking will come out. I’ve been in situations where the opposing lawyer has noted the careful phrasing and zeroed in on the subject that I hadn’t explicitly mentioned. When he asks a direct question about that subject I have to answer it truthfully.
A good example of how “careful speaking” is effective was a colleague of mine who had two insurance company lawyers come to his office to discuss injuries sustained by one of his patients in an MVA. They were allowed to peruse the patients chart only from the date of the accident forward as well as question the doctor on all medical topics relating to the patient. One of the injuries claimed by the patient was that he was unable to perform sexually after the accident. My colleague was mystified why so much time was spent on exploration of this topic after the accident and that neither of the lawyers asked the obvious question: was sexual function normal prior to the accident? My colleague informed me that it wasn’t and failure to ask that question resulted in a good settlement for the patient.
What is needed to find out what happened with Mann and the emails is to get an independent investigator who will ask the hard questions and Mann will either have to answer truthfully or perjure himself. It wouldn’t surprised me if the Penn State review was setup in such a way so that the questions could be answered narrowly thus not requiring Mann to lie and give the illusion that a satisfactory review of his work had taken place. An aggressive intelligent lawyer with familiarity of the climategate emails would make short work of Mann.
Latitude says:
March 8, 2011 at 4:01 pm
but if we just reach across the isle,
CALIBAN
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156
So now can we see the emails Mann has NOT deleted ?
Amused. says:
March 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
“Why don’t you take your disgusting shtick to the Tabloids. That is where you and all your contributors belong. It would be better than continually slandering better men than can be found on this site. Genuine scientists. Men and women of integrity.”
_____________________
[snip . . ad hom]
Do you think these e-mails are fraudulent? Or, innocent?
I hope nobody’s counting on you to save the world.
During the course of an enjoyable 40 year stint in the construction industry, I soon learned that “if you know the truth then, given sufficient time, you can fabricate very good lies”
David Holland says:
March 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm (Edit)
Time to check the climategate files and see if Mann and Briffa exchanged mail about Ar4. thats a start.
Try this
And have a look at this for a idea of how hard some people try to please – and why.
##############
the are also some in the dec 13 time frame 2005.
If mann followed the rules ( unlike Wahl) then he would have very few mails to Briffa WRT AR4. he made his comments through the process or thru overpeck and solomon.
“A good example of how “careful speaking” is effective was a colleague of mine who had two insurance company lawyers come to his office to discuss injuries sustained by one of his patients in an MVA. They were allowed to peruse the patients chart only from the date of the accident forward as well as question the doctor on all medical topics relating to the patient. One of the injuries claimed by the patient was that he was unable to perform sexually after the accident. My colleague was mystified why so much time was spent on exploration of this topic after the accident and that neither of the lawyers asked the obvious question: was sexual function normal prior to the accident? My colleague informed me that it wasn’t and failure to ask that question resulted in a good settlement for the patient.”
Nope that is lying by omission, an attempt to conceal the real truth.
It would be like saying “after the accident he had no use of his legs and that remains the same today” – when in fact the patient never had use of his legs. As a doctor you should be expert enough to make no mention of this, since it was not in any way related to the accident. To make such a statement or allow it to stand uncorrected is a conspiracy to hide the truth from the courts. Sure the opposing lawyer is a jackass but as a doctor a medically false statement is being made about your patient and you are collaborating to defraud the insurance company.
[snip – too far off color]
Steve, Charles – excellent work, gentlemen. I think we knew anyhow that, if your reputation depends on a government (or academic) inquiry, then you have no reputation; you & CA provide the proof. A *lot* of us will now be watching eagerly for those eventual disclosures and attributions – pity they’re unlikely to appear in the MM where everyone can see them.
As more of this stuff floats to the surface, the worse it stinks.