It seems the process to get supporting evidence from University of Virginia has overcome a roadblock. From the Virginia Court System: h/t to WUWT reader Laws of Nature
Appeals Granted
Case
KENNETH T. CUCCINELLI, II, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA v. RECTOR AND VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
(Record Number 102359)
From
The Circuit Court of Albemarle County; P.M. Peatross, Jr., Judge.
Counsel
Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Wesley G. Russell, Jr., E. Duncan Getchell, Jr., Charles E. James, Jr., and Stephen R. McCullough (Office of the Attorney General) for appellant.
Chuck Rosenberg, Jessica Ellsworth, N Thomas Connally, Jon M. Talotta, Stephanie J. Gold, and Catherine E. Stetson (Hogan Lovells US LLP) for appellee.
Assignment of Error
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the Attorney General lacked a “reason to believe” that UVa. may be in possession, custody, or control of any documentary material or information relevant to a FATA investigation because it is contrary to the statute and without support in the record.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the Attorney General’s “reason to believe” had to be stated on the face of the CIDs because it is contrary to the statute.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that the CIDs failed to sufficiently state the “nature of the conduct” being investigated because that is contrary to the face of the CIDs.
- The circuit court erred in setting aside the CIDs based on the ground that FATA does not cover requests for payments made on the Commonwealth when the Commonwealth has been a recipient of a federal grant because that is an incorrect construction of FATA and ignores that money is fungible.
- The circuit court erred by limiting the remaining right of inquiry based upon the errors assigned above.
Assignment of Cross-Error
- Whether the circuit court erred in holding the University is a “person” subject to FATA’s CID provision, where the General Assembly specifically defined the term “person” in FATA not to include Commonwealth entities.
Date Granted
3-4-2011
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JEM says:
March 10, 2011 at 12:40 pm
There was a time where I might have agreed that this sort of investigation was not desirable.
That was before the Penn State whitewash and the even more egregious bouts of intentional ignorance on the part of the Brits.
If the institutions will not police themselves then we need someone who will.
seconded.
@ur momisugly Amino Acids in Meteorites – thanks! ‘Hide the Decline’ always results in a broad grin.
@ur momisuglyCaleb – I feel your pain because I share it!
There have been so many terrible consequences of this delusional ‘science’. Massive amounts of science funding has been diverted to the search for the elusive evidence for global warming. Food and heating prices are rising, and the poor and elderly have suffered and died and will continue to do so as a result of shoddy energy and economic policies based on this chimaera. As a mother I worry about the kinds of lives my own children will have as a result of all this.
My greatest pain aside from these is seeing the work of historians and archaeologists abruptly placed beyond the pale by this rubbish and political correctness. I teach this stuff – and it was incredible to see the scholarly history of the Medieval Warm Period literally disappearing on Internet sources even as I was trying to write lectures about Viking exploration. I was sceptical before, but the ‘hockey stick’s’ politicizing and erasing of history for ideological purposes really sealed my scepticism.
Mann deserves the discomfort he suffers from revelations of his past devious behaviour, both in his ‘scientific’ work and in his dealings with his peer group. I doubt he will ever face any penalties commensurate with the damage he has caused.
“If the institutions will not police themselves then we need someone who will.”
Institutions policing themselves is irrelevent.
Even if an taxpayer funded institutions, organization or profession says they are policeing themselves the tax payers still need someone to go in from time to time and actually make sure.
They need to know we can check anything, anytime without notice or warning. If they are clean they are clean, if not then they are busted.
It should be No Different from a road-side drunk driving check stop; we must be allowed to check anytime, anywhere, and we should not need anything other than a standing writ to investigate anyone using public funds or publicly paid for facilities.
The only reason that we should need is “We want to check to be sure”
vigilantfish;
If you (or anyone else in the same situation or state of mind) wants a link into a source of optimism about how this whole shambalooza is going to come out, email me at brianfh01-at-yahoo.ca . There’s a ‘dark horse’ development that may render the entire CO2-Warmista push moot and irrelevant.
Just so I can quickly pull the email from the flood in my Inbox, pls. include the word “Moot” in the subject line! 😉
If you believe Mann,you are blind.This man does whatever he wants to prove his point,not science politics
The sum of the parties of the first part through the parties of the nth part constitutes a giant ball of legal wax in which a pregnant elephant could safely hide. Good luck getting to the truth in such an environment! The Truth of Information Act, which seemed so simple and straightforward when written, has been tortured by our legal system to the point where you’re likely to see the entire train derailed by such arguments as, “It depends on what the definition of “is” is.”
– – – – – – –
Brian H,
OK, you peaked my curiousity.
But can’t you just put it over in Tips & Notes, then let us know on this thread that you put it there?
John
Horrible earthquake in Japan. A family I know and love just returned home there. Pray for all those people.
Bitterly I hope Mann has shut off the news, due to bad press he is getting, and is walking on a lonely beach in Hawaii, full of self-pity. Then he hears a rushing noise, and looks out to sea…
I’ve yet to see evidence of financial wrong-doing by Mann. Plenty of sloppy science, stonewalling, “not deleting emails”, etc. But no financial wrongdoing, which AFAIK, means spending the grant money on something other than what you said you would do in the grant. As a Virginian (and financial supporter of Cuccinelli among others), I have to face the fact that Mann spent my tax dollars on shoddy science and not something else entirely.
Buzz Belleville says: March 10, 2011 at 10:30 am
“Messrs Russell and Bronson — First off, if you believe any of the proxy information for Mann’s reconstructions are not available, you’re mistaken. How do you think M&M were able to attack the conclusions drawn from those proxies? If a reconstruction appears in a peer-reviewed journal, to my knowledge you can always access the underlying proxy info. Let me (or the owners of this blog) know if you can’t find any such information, and I’m sure you’ll get some help.”
Buzz, you should take careful note of the following two responses to your post. You may learn something regarding politics in climate research:
Smokey says: March 10, 2011 at 11:56 am and Jeremy says: March 10, 2011 at 1:21 pm.
“Respectfully, I think you need to expand the bases of your knowledge beyond merely another WUWT article.”
Please enlighten us with examples of your own sources for knowledge. Are they from websites aligned with “The Team” that delete comments from heretics? At least this site allows reasonable discussion, which is why it’s 2011’s Best Science Blog.
If I’m not mistaken, the one of the corner stones of scientific research is for others to replicate and therefore verify the results of such studies using the original data. Otherwise, any scientist could make any claim and never have to prove it.
I find it odd that Dr. Jones no longer has the original data used to produce the modified data sets he says supports his claim. If the original data has been deleted, how can you replicate the experiment?
Just as odd is the reverse in New Zealand. In that situation, the warmists have the original data but can’t find the modified data sets they used to “prove” their claim of AGW. Just as oddly, they can’t locate the equations they used to convert the data. Not too surprisingly, an examination of the original data shows no warming trends. So where did the warming trend come from in the New Zealand study?
It has been somewhat easier to demostrate how NASA interpolated temperatures where no temperature data existed. But it didn’t explain why NASA decided not to include all reporting stations and instead interpolate temperature data where reporting stations already exists. So far, NASA has refused to repond to FOIA requests for documents that explain those decisions.
But I digress.
If Mann is so certain he is right and his data is dead on accurate, then it becomes a mystery why he doesn’t want other scientists to replicate his results using the same data. Wouldn’t such openness and air-tight verification drive a stake through the heart of the skeptics once and for all? Wouldn’t this be especially true since skeptics have convincingly reversed engineered Dr. Mann’s work to a degree that there is credible evidence challenging its validity?
So, Dr. Mann, why are you so reluctant to have your statistics and methodology independently verified?
BMF says:
March 11, 2011 at 7:00 am
This strikes me as one of the better posts in recent memory. The topic is the science and Mann’s character as scientist. A genuine scientist is quite eager to help others replicate his work. The fact that getting such help from Mann is like pulling teeth should tell everyone all that they need to know about Mann and his work.
The fact that the scientific community has not excommunicated Mann for this behavior should raise a huge red flag among government funding agencies. The fact that no such red flag has been recognized by funding agencies should tell our elected representatives all they need to know about the climate science industry and government funding for climate science.
Buzz Belleville says:
March 10, 2011 at 9:22 am
“Spencer, Lindzen, et al better be ready to have their hard drives searched as well.”
If some valid investigative committee asks for Lindzen’s hard drive, he will be happy to copy it and send it to them. They will find that there are no personal emails on that hard drive at all. Lindzen is all work and professionalism. His character is beyond reproach. The same holds for Spencer.
BMF says:
If Mann is so certain he is right and his data is dead on accurate, then it becomes a mystery why he doesn’t want other scientists to replicate his results using the same data. Wouldn’t such openness and air-tight verification drive a stake through the heart of the skeptics once and for all? Wouldn’t this be especially true since skeptics have convincingly reversed engineered Dr. Mann’s work to a degree that there is credible evidence challenging its validity?
While I can’t speak for anyone else, I can say that such a verification would certainly get me rethinking my position. Funny that he seems to be so opposed to it.
Smokey, this is from an e-mail from the AG’s office:
The attorney general’s office is investigating whether or not fraud was committed against the commonwealth by Dr. Michael Mann while he was a professor at UVa. The office is investigating potential fraud, not Mann’s scientific conclusions. If Dr. Mann knowingly used research containing manipulated or deceitful data to obtain taxpayer-funded research grants in Virginia , he could be liable under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA). The attorney general is the sole official charged with enforcing FATA.
EFS_Junior says:
March 10, 2011 at 11:50 am
Transparency, Transparency,Transparency,Transparency.
It`s that simple.
That implies that what he’s looking for is an admission in Mann’s e-mails of doubts about or weaknesses in his hockey stick. Or, failing that, of his refusal to accept reasonable, solid private criticisms and modification-suggestions about it. Now I understand what’s going on.
I think it is very helpful to have the trolls post their talking points here so that they can be eloquently refuted for those who visit here occasionally and have not followed WUWT posts throughout this whole process. Posting those talking points on warmist sites will just get bounced through the echo chamber without bringing any new information to bare.
Keep up the trolling! You are making this very easy for us non-scientists to debunk this junk when the lunch crowd starts in on how global warming is “settled science”.
It just hit me that if the Utah scientists had been able to hide and manipulate their data concerning Cold Fusion in the fashion that Mann, Hansen, the IPCC, Gore, etc. have done with AGW, we would all have been stupid enough to have purchased cold fusion heaters and generators for our homes and now we would all be pissing and moaning because even though spent a fortune and we were told there was a consensus of scientists believing in Cold Fusion, our homes would be freezing and no electricity would be available for lighting. A fraud is a fraud and its time we recognized it.
What is truly amazing through this all is that those alleging have failed to produce any more evidence. The only evidence offered is “they are bad people”. Hardly evidence at all and far from proof. There is no proof to these allegations. Seems skeptics should be far more skeptical of unproven allegations. Where is the skepticism?
Anyone willing to bet that the server any of these emails might be on suffers a crash and all emails are lost. But they did back up there own stuff, but hadn’t bothered with Mann et al because they had long left UVa?
– – – – – – – –
sceptical,
As to your ” . . . those alleging have failed to produce any more evidence.”, the Cuccinelli CIDs are requests for UVa information and are based on a concern relative to public knowledge about UVa and Mann; I see no ‘allegations’. Based on the information obtained resulting from when CIDs are served on Uva, then there may be some allegations or not. To me it looks now like there is nothing blocking CIDs to be filed on Uva. Do not take it personally, it is just the legal system grinding away.
As to your “Seems skeptics should be far more skeptical of unproven allegations. Where is the skepticism?”, from the words of a famous skeptic, “It is skepticism all the way down.” In other words we are skeptical of your view of our lack of skepticism.
NOTE: I think when it looks to UVa that there actually will be CIDs filed on UVa, then UVa will privately contact Cuccinelli’s office to make a private arrangement for Cuccinelli’s office to view UVa and Mann information. That way, with a private arrangement, UVa would not need to show its stuff relating to Mann in the open legal process with the public watching. The public would see all UVa and Mann info if UVa gives it in response to CIDs. I would be willing to place a small wager on this. ;^)
John
John Whitman, nothing personal about it on my end, unlike many of the commentors. The complete faith some have in unproven allegations against the likes of Dr. Mann shows that skepticism is uninvolved. It seems to be about more government instead of skepticism.
It speaks volumes that to the question “what “underlying data” do you believe climate scientists have hidden that would change the basic premises of AGW theory?”, noone here had a good answer.
In fact it spoke more that several commenters made particularly bad answers (citing Jones lost data, Harry readme, etc), implying that their whole position is based on their lack of understanding.
While I admit that language is pretty opaque, one reading of that is the circuit court held that Cuccinelli couldn’t subpoena documents because the University is a “person”, and the Supreme Court is saying they don’t buy it.
The US Supreme Court recently rejected a similar arguement that a corporation, being considered a person, can have “personal” information that they can prevent disclosure of information concerning the corporation.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/02/business/la-fi-court-corporations-20110302
“We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities,” he wrote. “In fact, we often use the word ‘personal’ to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company’s view.”
…
“All the justices agreed in FCC v. AT&T, with the exception of Kagan, who did not participate. “We trust that AT&T will not take it personally,” Roberts said in a parting comment.