On the Climate Audit thread, The Vergano FOI Request the irascible Nick Stokes provokes another commenter “mpaul”, to lay out all the history in a simple summary that even Nick might understand. I thought it was worth repeating here for readers who have not followed the twists and turns in detail, and also in the hope that Dr. Michael Mann might read it and get a clue. Obstruction doesn’t pay.
From this Climate Audit comment:
mpaul
But I don’t think snooping through people’s private emails is a dignified activity.
Nick, I’ll turn the sarcasm off for a moment. I agree with you on this point. I have been an advocate for Cuccinelli CID process. Say what you will about Cuccinelli’s motives, but the American justice system provides protections for the accused and standards of procedure that do not exist in the court of public opinion.
We have arrived at this point in history along the following path:
(1) Steve wanted to replicate MBH98 and asked for data. Mann initially complied, but then began to obstruct.
(2) Steve successfully obtained the needed data and demonstrated serious flaws in Mann’s approach.
(3) Mann defended his work by saying that other Hockey Stick reconstructions validated his method and his conclusions.
(4) Attention turned to replicating the other reconstructions. By now, the Team had become extremely defensive and a sort of bunker mentality took over. Years of obstruction followed.
(5) Those seeking the data and methods used in the HS reconstructions became more and more aggressive, eventually turning to FOIA as a tool to pry loose the information.
(6) Then “a miracle happened’. A file containing materials and emails requested under FOIA turned up on the internet. Most everyone would agree that the contents of the emails warranted an investigation. The only investigation that specifically looked into Mann’s conduct was undertaken by Penn State. Penn State cleared Mann noting that Mann stated:
(a) he had never falsified any data, nor had he had ever manipulated data to serve a given predetermined outcome;
(b) he never used inappropriate influence in reviewing papers by other scientists who disagreed with the conclusions of his science;
(c) 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; and
(d) he never engaged in activities or behaviors that were inconsistent with accepted academic practices.
(7) Critics have charged that the Penn State investigation was inadequate. Michael Mann has subsequently stated that he did, in fact, participate in an orchestrated effort to delete emails covered under FOIA, raising questions about the veracity of statements he made to the Penn State investigators. Penn State seems untroubled by this.
A real, independent investigation, subject to rules of evidence and judicial procedures, is needed. Such an investigation is the only way to put and end to Climategate and is the only way to restore the tattered reputation of climate science. I think both Virginia and Pennsylvania should conduct an investigation. However, if UVa continues to obstruct the CID, then FOIA is the only option and Mann will be afforded no protection of his privacy.
Mann and UVa are playing a losing game. Its sheer folly to attempt to frustrate a State AG in a law enforcement investigation. Cuccinelli has nuclear weapons at his disposal and UVa has water pistols. If Cuccinelli loses the CID battle, he will simply file a lawsuit and obtain the materials through discovery. Or, if UVa really pisses him off, he will convene a Grand Jury. For Mann personally, this would be catastrophic. Mann and UVa should cooperate with the CID process.
It’s sad that we have arrived at this place. But at every juncture in this journey, Mann has chosen the wrong path.
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Phil Clarke says:
June 2, 2011 at 11:30 pm
“100 × 0.882 = 77.4”
Really? Well, maybe in the world of climate science. In many places 100 x 0.882 = 88.2. Probably what you (or “they” if this is actually a quote) meant is 100 x 0.882^2 = 77.4?
No smoke without fire. Climategate demonstrated this truism. The fact that UV is fighting tooth and nail indicates that there is something to hide. However, if I am wrong then they are wasting money on lawyers and should have spent the money on education.
Let me offer a summary here. I defend Mann because I think he is a fine scientist who wrote a pioneering paper, which included an error of small consequence. This set others on the same path, and they have amply verified his results. I think his science is very good.
He is not without faults. He can be more stubborn than I would wish. I’ve never communicated with him, but it is possible that he is impolite to some.
But there is also the issue of proportionateness of response. He has had a Republican House Committee holding hearings. He has had the Va Ag exercising oppressive powers. His enails have been stolen and published. He was subjected to a PSU enquiry. And of course these recent FOI cases.
And why? The case is set out in this head post. It is that he wouldn’t provide data and code (5)? Oh, he did(2)? But he didn’t make it convenient. Or he wouldn’t provide stage outputs, forcing us to compute that ourselves. Or he failed to provide the R2 statistic.
Oh, and then there is the email issue. Mann is not committing any offense legally (the UK requirement is for UEA to produce docs that UEA holds, which only binds UEA statff) even if he did delete emails. But breaching the spirit?
How did we get so precious about FOI? I’ve mentioned the story about the Bush admin. Massive use of backdoor accounts, under the AG’s nose, in breach of PRA. 22 million emails deep-sixed. And the Va AG is supposed to use his nuclear weapons over Mann’s forwarding an email?
That’s the proportionality issue. I think there are things I would have preferred him to do otherwise. I think the PCA issue was a simple programming error, with small consequence and unlikely to be repeated, and should have been acknowledged as such. But how this gets to a “nuclear” response is beyond me.
Alcheson,
First of all, it seems to me one cannot conclude that he definitely did or did not delete any emails based on the correspondence presented.
So the statement that he ‘participated in an effort to delete mail’ is misleading, at best, then.
However, the evidence that Mann did indeed forward Phil’s request as confirmed by Wahl (which now makes it Mann’s request in my view) would lead me to believe that Mann probably DID delete emails and also ask at least one other (Wahl) to delete them as well.
Pure unsupported speculation on your part. I have no idea what was in Mann’s head when he hit ‘forward’ all those years ago and, assuming you lack the psychic and time travel powers necessary to retrospectively mind-read, nor do you. Given the mails are now in the public domain anyway one is forced to wonder what the noise is all about.
Dr. Mann chose not to use a standard metric that required knowledge of the values being predicted – data that he is still not prepared to release.
No scientist is required to hand-hold all those replicating his results, indeed slavishly copying the method is not the same as replication, clearly from point (2) above Dr Mann provided all he needed to. The Director of the NSF Paleoclimate Program, couldn’t have been clearer, in a letter to Steve McI….
Dr. Mann and his other US colleagues are under no obligation to provide you with any additional data beyond the extensive data sets they have already made available. He is not required to provide you with computer programs, codes, etc. His research is published in the peer-reviewed literature which has passed muster with the editors of those journals and other scientists who have reviewed his manuscripts. You are free to your analysis of climate data and he is free to his. The passing of time and evolving new knowledge about Earth’s climate will eventually tell the full story of changing climate. I would expect that you would respect the views of the US NSF on the issue of data access and intellectual property for US investigators as articulated by me to you in my last message under the advisement of the US NSF’s Office of General Counsel.
As Smokey has posted above, the great scientists are the honest ones
Would that include Nigel Persaud?
Phil Clarke June 2, 2011 at 3:07 pm “Tosh, possibly libellous. He forwarded a mail, without comment”
So, by extension, forwarding an email of instructions to destroy bomb making materials to a member of a terrorist gang is not participating only in the dazed, hockey stick wielding world of university clubbers. Then the rationale of “Hey! He needs to defend himself!”. Stay in politics.
I have read this thread with interest and I write to express my sincere thanks to all who have posted here, especially Steve McIntyre, Nick Stokes, Phil Clarke and ‘sceptical’.
The posts of Steve McIntyre are clear, concise and informative. I learned from them despite having spent much time studying these issues over many years (within the week of MBH98 being published I objected to its ‘splicing’ of dissimilar data sets).
Thankyou Steve.
But my greatest thanks go to Nick Stokes, Phil Clarke and ‘sceptical’. Did I laugh? My sides ache from it. I keep going back to read their posts again because it is hard to convince myself that anybody could have the effrontery to write such things. I want more, please MORE! Laughter is the best of medicines.
Of course, while laughing I am reminded of this quotation translated from its original statement in German:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
Richard
Have just been re-reading The Climategate Emails edited by John Costella .It still makes an impact.
Posted May 30, 2011 at 1:16 PM | Permalink
“But I don’t think snooping through people’s private emails is a dignified activity.”
That may be so but what does that have to do with subject of this discussion? Emails subject to FIOA requests are PUBLIC EMAILS not “private”. That’s why FIOA exists. It does not give access to “private emails”. If anyone wrote something they regret being seen in a public document, more fool them. That does NOT mean reading them is “snooping”.
This is just yet another disingenuous argument thrown up to protect those who have acted improperly and are desperately trying to hide their deeds by obstruction.
Richard S Courtney says: June 3, 2011 at 3:40 am
Well, Richard, in the local sceptic tradition, I suppose all will be impressed with your obviously fake quote, for which the original German has never been found.
Richard, Glad to have raised a smile. Godwin’s law looms.
Should we add the name of Dr Richard Courtney to that of Nigel Persaud as great and honest scientists?
😉
Mother Jones??????
Now that’s a reputable, unbiased party if I ever heard of one.
/sarc
Nick, a couple of straightforward questions.
1) Are the statistical procedures used in MBH98 correct for this kind of reconstruction?
2) If yes, why then does the Wegman Report (let’s not muddy the waters here with the plagiarism story) state that they are not?
3) If no, then it must follow that MBH is not an accurate reconstruction and the paper should be withdrawn. Yes or no?
That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of an error that totally invalidates the conclusions drawn, being described as “of small consequence” before.
Nick, are you perhaps using a dictionary of your own devising?
“Richard S Courtney says:
June 3, 2011 at 3:40 am”
I was trying to forulate a reply similar to yours after doing exactly as you write. You took the words out of my mouth! Well done, and perfect!
Nick Stokes and Phil continue to spread information and tell outright falsehoods about MBH98. Nick says:
Phil says:
They continue to spread untrue urban legends. The problem is not that MBH failed to report a statistic that is not a “useful indication of merit”, but that MBH said explicitly that they calculated verification r2 statistics and that their Figure 3c showed high verification r2 statistics. They discussed how they established benchmarks for the statistic. Here are excerpts:
1
2
3
Here is MBH98 Figure 3C showing verification r2 results.
4
At the NAS panel presentations, Mann told them in response to a question that he didn’t calculate verification r2 statistics, as that would be a “foolish and incorrect” thing to do. Even though his source code showed that he done so. The verification r2 issue was very much on the table since it had been raised in Cicerone’s original letter. We had shown the panel MBH98 Figure 3C the previous day, so they were aware of the evidence that Mann had in fact calculated the verification r2 statistic and that his answer to the panel was untrue. However, they didn’t grasp the nettle and sat there like bumps on a log. After Mann’s presentation, there was a short opportunity for public comment but Mann walked out before anyone from the “public” could ask him a question.
The CE statistic is not a safe haven for MBH as it fails that statistic as well – a point that we made in our 2005 articles, though this finding was not cited by the NAS panel.
Richard S Courtney says: June 3, 2011 at 3:40 am
Well, Richard, in the local sceptic style, I suppose all will be impressed with your obviously fake quote, for which the original German has never been found.
Don,
1) A mean for the wrong period was subtracted
2) Wegman noted this, as did M&M
3) No, the paper should not be withdrawn. There were some other data handling errors, and an erratum was issued noting this, and saying that the results were unaffected. A similar erratum might have been appropriate here. But it’s a bit redundant now.
?
Nick, while I would like to agree with your general sentiment, it is clear that you are indulging in a romanticized historiography of Mann. Reality does not bear out this view. Mann was, and is, as politicized as can be, and has had powerful people playing behind-the-scenes roles and pulling strings to protect him right from the beginning.
Anyone interested in doing good for science must no doubt raise their voice against any percieved vilification of individual scientists, but also against the corruption of institutional science as well.
In order to sustain your supporting voice for Mann, things have reached a stage where you are having to utter obvious falsehoods -i.e., Mann was subject to enquiry.
Mann was subject to nothing. Have you even read the emails that flew back and forth over the Soon and Baliunas issue that Mann wrote?
Even the American President had his audiotapes released. Yes, people hide things, and people destroy things, including the Bush administration. Is Phil Jones still not Director of CRU still after deleting ‘loads of emails’? Don’t say therefore that we ought to have low ethical expectations from Mann.
Nick and Phil cannot adequately defend Michael Mann’s mendacity and cover-ups, so they employ misdirection instead: what matters more, whether someone can or can’t track down a German quote – or why Michael Mann hides out from questions, and avoids the scientific method’s transparency requirement, which is necessary to replicate his work?
This article is about the serious problems with Mann’s hockey stick chart, and the FOI requests that he fights tooth and nail, and the disreputable shenanigans exposed by the Climategate emails. So of course Nick Stokes wants to sidetrack the discussion away from those issues. Let’s debate whether a Nazi quote is accurate instead, eh?
Mann is a fool for stonewalling. It didn’t work for Richard Nixon, and it’s not working for Michael Mann; folks are beginning to seriously question what it is he’s hiding. Mann acts like he’s protecting nuclear defense secrets. But it’s just climate and proxy data, and the code he used to manufacture his hockey stick. So why the bunker mentality? Cover-ups like this make people mighty curious.
Smokey says: June 3, 2011 at 5:01 am
“But it’s just climate and weather data, and the code he used to manufacture his hockey stick.”
You seem to be impervious to facts, but I’ll try again. The “climate and weather data, and the code he used” are all available (from Mann’s web site), and have been for many years. I have them myself. They were the basis of the M&M 2005 papers.
Nick Stokes says:
June 3, 2011 at 3:25 am
Nick you make some valid points but….
The Hockey Stick is iconic to IPCC. The science relies on it. The public have been swayed by it. Economies in the developed world are being trashed because of it. Economies in the developing world are not developing because of it. People are dying through lack of drinkable water because of it.
Mann’s Hockey Stick is one of the most significant pieces of science of all time. He has changed the world. I give him credit for that. Just a one teeny weeny problem. He was wrong.
Time to stop the Hockey Teamsters wrecking the world
Shub Niggurath says: June 3, 2011 at 4:49 am
“you are having to utter obvious falsehoods -i.e., Mann was subject to enquiry.”
Huh? That sounds like one. Are you saying there was no PSU inquiry?
I have a simple question on this issue:
Have any subsequent papers presented a substantial challenge to the findings of MBH98, and if so, what does that tell us about anthropogenic global warming?
MPaul. I thank you for that rarest of gifts – lucidity. Were that more of us were so blessed.
Thanks, Anthony, for drawing this to our attention.
Nick Stokes,
You have no understanding of how the scientific method works. It requires transparency and cooperation with other scientists. Mann will not cooperate, and without cooperation there is no scientific method because no follow-up questions are permitted.
Once more, since it didn’t sink in the first time, Prof Richard Feynman on the Scientific Method:
Mann does none of that, and you’re being an apologist for a pseudo-scientist.