Post updated below – see my own experience with plagiarism by NOAA and how it was solved easily – Anthony
I get word that USA Today reports that the caterwaulings of the anonymous Canadian named Deep Climate and his accusations of plagiarism made against Dr. Edward Wegman in the Wegman report to Congress, which later became the paper Said et al, (published in the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis) has succeeded.
The paper, which revealed some questionable behavior by climate scientists has been yanked by the journal’s legal team after it went through a private 3 person review. Here’s what USA Today says:
The journal publisher’s legal team “has decided to retract the study,” said CSDA journal editor Stanley Azen of the University of Southern California, following complaints of plagiarism. A November review by three plagiarism experts of the 2006 congressional report for USA TODAY also concluded that portions contained text from Wikipedia and textbooks. The journal study, co-authored by Wegman student Yasmin Said, detailed part of the congressional report’s analysis.
Wegman’s attorney told USA Today:
“Neither Dr. Wegman nor Dr. Said has ever engaged in plagiarism,” says their attorney, Milton Johns, by e-mail. In a March 16 e-mail to the journal, Wegman blamed a student who “had basically copied and pasted” from others’ work into the 2006 congressional report, and said the text was lifted without acknowledgment and used in the journal study. “We would never knowingly publish plagiarized material” wrote Wegman, a former CSDA journal editor.
Well, congratulations to Deep Climate for being able to attack a man in another country without having having to put your name behind it. Such courage. You must be proud.
So, no problem from my view. I expect the report will be rewritten, with citations where needed, maybe even adding extra dictionary definitions of words and their origins to satisfy the imagined slights against our lexiconic ancestors envisioned by DC and Mashey man, and they’ll resubmit it with the very same conclusions. That’s what I would do.
UPDATE: Some folks have erroneously come to the conclusion that I’m siding with the idea that plagiarism is OK . Let me be clear, that’s not true at all. My issue is how this whole affair was conducted. I had my own issue with plagiarism in the case of NOAA/NCDC which I dealt with in an easy, simple way. Here’s the issue:
More dirty pool by NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson
Menne solved the attribution issue at my request…and here’s the solution and path forward I offered, with a hint to DC, Mashey, et al to take it.
How to solve attribution conflicts in climate science
I wrote then:
So, apology made, attribution added, document updated, and the problem was solved. Simple, I’m satisfied. Of course I could have been a jerk about it and demanded all sorts actions via formal complaints, copyright claims, etc. But I didn’t. It simply didn’t rise to that level.
It would have been easy for DC and Mashey to follow that example, instead they chose the “dark side” and demanded that pound of flesh along with a national newspaper writer acting as an accessory for public flogging. It’s ugly the way it was handled. Again, the best way forward, now that they have their pound of flesh, is for Said et al to make the appropriate edits and citations were needed, and resubmit the paper. – Anthony
Steve McIntyre has a excellent, detailed piece supporting Wegman 2006 with information from Climagegate email (unavailable to Wegman).
There are two networking charts worth seeing, especially his GIF of the
“Exactly who was emailing who in climategate” http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/crunet.gif
created by “The Iconoclast” in a warwickhughes thread.
McIntyre’s 5/23/2011 page:
Climategate Documents Confirm Wegman’s Hypothesis
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/23/climategate-documents-confirm-wegmans-hypothesis/#more-13628
Stephen Rasey says:
May 23, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Steve McIntyre has a excellent, detailed piece supporting Wegman 2006 with information from Climagegate email (unavailable to Wegman).
Please, it’s a blatant apologia, fails to mention the only expertise in the network analysis was a grad student who took a short course with Carley!
As to the PC analysis supposedly done by Wegman, we’re still waiting for his promised website detailing the analysis (4+ years later), since it was probably cribbed from McIntyre that will never happen.
Phil. says:
“As to the PC analysis supposedly done by Wegman, we’re still waiting for his promised website detailing the analysis (4+ years later)…”
And we’re still waiting for Mann’s code, metadata, etc., THIRTEEN YEARS LATER!
Besides, Wegman’s work hasn’t been debunked. Mann’s has.
Smokey, you seem to be the only one left over that is not able to find Mann’s data, or seem to recognise that Mann’s work has been not just reproduced by anyone who tried, but even confirmed by at least a dozen independent scientific studies.
You also seem to be the only one that failed to notice that the only scientific publication that came out of the Wegman report has just been retracted.
And you seem to be oblivious of the fact that Wegman’s results are not reproducible unless you duplicate exactly the graphs that McIntyre cherry-picked from his red-noise compilations.
One may wonder why you keep on clinging to a fake report created for political reasons and why you discard science that has been reconfirmed a dozen times and again.
What is your motivation to continue belief in a plagiarized political report that never produced any scientific publication that could stand the test of time ?
Rob,
Produce the total methodology, metadata, and code that Mann used to fabricate his bogus Hokey Stick, and I’ll concede that poor little Mikey is being unfairly hounded. Of course, you can’t.
The fact is that THIRTEEN YEARS after MBH98, Mann continues to stonewall. His true believer sycophants seem to think that is A-OK, according to the scientific method.
It is not.
Smokey, you don’t need “the total methodology, metadata, and code” to reproduce Mann’s findings. The paper and the data are enough to reproduce Mann’s graph. Did you even try ?
If you are even remotely familiar with science then you know that, and you know that code is fairly useless since you would need to reverse-engineer the methodology from it which was already explained in the paper any way. And besides, Mann even surrendered his code. So what is your problem ?
Rob,
Mann’s debunked Hokey Stick chart is no longer allowed to be published by the UN/IPCC.
Why not? Mann’s bogus chart was LOVED by the IPCC! They promoted it repeatedly because it was visually stunning. It scared the bejesus out of the credulous public, which was in the interests of the IPCC. The lame spaghetti graphs that replaced it are weak tea by comparison.
Once again: I challenge you to post all of Mann’s code, data and metadata. Words don’t count; the posting of facts is all that matters. And the fact is that Mann is still stonewalling after 13 years shows that he has plenty to hide.
The scientific method requires transparency. The fact that Mann continues to hide his code and methodology shows that he deviously avoids the scientific method – a trait common to all climate charlatans.
If you think Mann’s 1998 temperature reconstruction ‘scared the bejesus out of the credulous public’ then I wonder what the Arctic Sea Ice volume graphs would do :
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/2145/piomasmonthlyvolumes.png
As for Wegman (the subject of this post), the only scientific publication that originated from the Wegman report has now been retracted after Wegman through one of his unnamed students under the bus. Nobody can reproduce McIntyre’s (oops, I mean Wegman’s) red-noise graphs because Wegman did not release his data, neither after requests from the scientific community nor the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee himself. Besides, the Wegman report itself is under investigation for plagiarism and scientific misconduct by his own George Mason University.
Wegman is grasping at straws, WUWT can only produce an ad hominem on Deep Climate, and Smokey here still can’t reproduce MBH98 findings.
What’s up with that ?
Rob,
Since you would not post Mann’s code as requested, I can only assume you are a sock puppet for Mann’s climate charlatanism. And that piomas chart and similar piomas charts have been debunked here at WUWT. I leave it to you to do your own homework on that score using the WUWT search function.
The Wegman Report to Congress stands. The fact that there is simply a missing footnote does not negate the conclusion that Mann’s clique gamed the system. After 13 years, MBH98 [and MBH99] still hide thier code, methodologies and metadata. If you disagree, I challenge you to post their code, etc.
For more detailed information on Mann’s shenanigans, see here and here.
Since you are a sock puppet, I request that the mods delete any further comments from you on this issue. Have a nice day.
Smokey says:
May 24, 2011 at 6:12 am
Phil. says:
“As to the PC analysis supposedly done by Wegman, we’re still waiting for his promised website detailing the analysis (4+ years later)…”
And we’re still waiting for Mann’s code, metadata, etc., THIRTEEN YEARS LATER!
Besides, Wegman’s work hasn’t been debunked. Mann’s has.
Earth to Smokey, Wegman has been debunked, that’s why the paper has been retracted and why he is under investigation by GMU. Mann’s results have been supported by subsequent research.
Smokey: “The fact that Mann continues to hide his code and methodology shows that he deviously avoids the scientific method – a trait common to all climate charlatans.”
Can you explain why Mann’s “code” has become such a linchpin to all this scandal mongering?
Are you actually claiming climatologists are charlatans?
Why isn’t all the data that was/is available enough?
What specifically is Mann still “hiding”?
And how exactly do your claimed omissions wipe out all the other lines of evidence?
{To say nothing of physical global observations and happenings supporting the scientific understanding of global warming}
Why don’t the real happenings upon our planet seem to be of interest to you folks?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
What about Mr. Santer’s comments:
43:35 “. . . the climate model data that we use are freely available, in fact, three and a half thousand researchers around the world use the climate model data that we have archived at Livermore, it’s an open data base… Mr. McIntyre had in his possession, or had the ability to access exactly the same data that we have used in our study. And indeed I should point out that the Douglass et al. paper used the same archive…”
54:10 “One of the really troubling things is the asymmetry in this auditing.
Mr. McIntyre purports to have significant statistical training, yet he did not audit the Douglass et al. paper which had a grievous and very obvious statistical error. If someone really where interested in dispassionately getting to the bottom of things and why two papers reach fundamentally different conclusions they would not behave in the way the Mr. McIntyre has behaved.”
~ ~ ~
What do you think about Schneider’s claim (1:38:55 – ):“… the process of science is much better served by having independent codes… ”
{time signatures from the Ben Santer talk: “The General Public: Why Such Resistance?”
Earth to Phil.:
Wegman’s conclusions have never been falsified. They merely left off a footnote. But nice try, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.☺
# # #
citizenchallenge says:
“Can you explain why Mann’s ‘code’ has become such a linchpin to all this scandal mongering?”
Sure: the climate charlatan is hiding something bad. Othewise, he would provide the full transparency that the scientific method requires.
And please, don’t pester us with the disreputable Ben Santer. Who in their right mind is going to watch over an hour and a half of his crybaby whining? Santer is almost as odious as the conniving Michael Mann. I wouldn’t waste my time on ten seconds of his sniveling BS. He’s lost the debate and he knows it.
Quite an attitude you display here Smokey. Calling Mann’s climate science “charlatanism” and calling me a “sock puppet”, asserting that Mann’s “clique” (who are that?) “gamed the system” and accusing Elsevier for retracting Wegman’s publication for a missing “footnote” (without mentioning what that footnote would say). Interesting that after all spouting all these insults (which could be considered a violation of WUWT site policy) you are requesting the WUWT mods to delete MY comments ? All this without you providing any evidence for your increasingly ignorant statements.
You mention homework. So here is something for you :
Here are all the data and methodology descriptions for MBH98 (it’s been there since 2004) :
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6995/extref/nature02478-s1.htm
With this, you can reproduce MBH98 findings, and that is your homework.
You keep on whining about missing ‘code’, but as I mentioned before, if you know a little bit about science and software you know that an algorithmic description is much more helpful than ‘code’.
If you really want to look at Mann’s code, then ask McIntyre. He still has a copy hanging around IIRC. He was not too impressed with the readability of Mann’s code (why am I not surprised), so I suggest you write your own in M or R or C++.
But you don’t want to do that, now do you Smokey ?
Instead of doing honest science and engineering work, you prefer to spend your energy blurting insults at top-notch scientists and whining and complaining about “shenanigans” and their “sock puppets” on this blog which you then request to be muted. You are one of a kind, my friend.
Now that we covered MBH98, back to Wegman : where is Wegman’s data that he promised to congressman Waxman ? Can Prof. Ritson get an answer to his questions ?
Smokey says:
May 26, 2011 at 9:55 am
“Earth to Phil.:
Wegman’s conclusions have never been falsified. They merely left off a footnote. {deleted insulting nonsense}”
Rob says:
Smokey, “back to Wegman: where is Wegman’s data that he promised to congressman Waxman ? Can Prof. Ritson get an answer to his questions ?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
citizenschallenge asks:
“Can you explain why Mann’s ‘code’ has become such a linchpin to all this scandal mongering?”
~ ~ ~
Smokey says: “Sure: the climate charlatan is hiding something bad. Otherwise, he would provide the full transparency that the scientific method requires.”
~ ~ ~
Earth to S, is that what you consider an explanation?
Aren’t explanations supposed to explain something??
What is not transparent about all the data being publicly available?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Smokey says: “And please, don’t pester us with the disreputable Ben Santer. {…}
I wouldn’t waste my time on ten seconds of his sniveling BS. He’s lost the debate and he knows it.”
~ ~ ~
Well Smokey that was an insightful reply.
How can you know what Santer made available or not, if you refuse to “waste” any of your precious time learning about it?
Funny thing about evidence, data, facts… that stuff will never exist for you so long as you willfully refuse to examine it. Intellectual integrity is a beautiful thing.
If there was an award for the most content-free opinion, citizenchallenge would be on the short list.☺
Rob says:
“you seem to be the only one left over that is not able to find Mann’s data, or seem to recognise that Mann’s work has been not just reproduced by anyone who tried, but even confirmed by at least a dozen independent scientific studies.” Wrong. And nice try re-framing my comment. But my statement was about Mann’s code. Produce that, if you can. There’s a reason Mann is still hiding it after 13 years of requests: it’s an amateurish piece of crap that uses the GIGO technique to manipulate the data into his hockey stick shape. Word up, buddy.
And as I correctly pointed out, Mann’s hokey stick chart has been debunked to the point that the UN/IPCC is no longer able to publish it. And make no mistake, the IPCC loved Mann’s scary chart. It must torture their climate propagandists that they can’t use it any more.
McIntyre and McKittrick proved that Mann improperly cherry-picked a small proxy sample to fabricate his scary hockey stick chart. By using a much larger local proxy sample, the hockey stick becomes smaller than the MWP, which debunks the claim that GHGs are the cause of the current natural warming cycle. Mann deliberately hid the correct proxy data in an ftp file labeled “censored“. He’s a conniving, self-serving little charlatan. IMHO, of course. Read A.W. Montfort’s The Hockey Stick Illusion and see if you don’t agree. You will also read about Mann’s shenanigans with the corrupted Tiljander proxy; more proof of his scientific misconduct.
Finally, since Mann’s MBH98 code is supposedly out there for anyone to see, why don’t you just post it for us?☺
Smokey says:
You can find all sorts of data and code related to that paper here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/old/mbh98.html In particular, here is the algorithm description and actual FORTRAN code: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/MANNETAL98/METHODS/ Have fun!
Now, as Rob has requested, I assume you will return the favor by providing links for Wegman’s code and data?
Joel Shore,
Saying we can ‘find all sorts’ of code isn’t the same thing as saying that all the code is publicly archived. Until Mann produces all of the information necessary to replicate his work, I stand by my opinion that he is a conniving, self-serving scientific charlatan.
And why are you asking me for Prof Wegman’s information? I don’t have it. Go ask Wegman yourself. Great example of misdirection, BTW. The issue is MBH98/99. Thirteen years of stonewalling and counting. Mann wouldn’t know the scientific method if it bit him on the butt. You either, apparently:
Contrast that with the disreputable Michael Mann and his clique, hiding out from FOIA requests and refusing to cooperate with other scientists trying to replicate his work. That’s some hero you worship.
Smokey,
What information are you missing that you need to replicate Mann’s work? Other scientists have in fact replicated Mann’s work, so I am not sure what is holding you back exactly.
By contrast, Emeritus Professor David Ritson apparently asked Wegman for information in order to replicate Wegman’s work, and over 4 years later Wegman still has not given him the requested information: http://deepclimate.org/2010/10/24/david-ritson-speaks-out/
Your concern about the release of information to allow replication seems very selective.
I assume since Wegman is, by the standards you have outlined above, “a conniving, self-serving scientific charlatan”, you will no longer make reference to his report? (Unfortunately, I have also assumed that you would stop making charges about Mann that you can’t support like those involving the “censored” directory and the Tiljander proxies, but it appears that you continue to make them even though you cannot substantiate them when shown direct evidence that they are falsehoods.)
Excuse me for piping in here, but it is a point worth repeating.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Smokey says:
June 1, 2011 at 4:11 am
Joel,
Saying we can ‘find all sorts’ of code isn’t the same thing as saying that all the code is publicly archived. Until Mann produces all of the information necessary to replicate his work, I stand by my opinion that he is a conniving, self-serving scientific charlatan.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So what is missing?