As some WUWT readers theorized yesterday, something, perhaps even more egregious is the root of the suspension. The AP obtained an internal memo from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, sent via email circulated to staff.
From the Sacramento Bee:
JUNEAU, Alaska — A federal official says the suspension of Alaska wildlife biologist Charles Monnett is unrelated to a 2006 article Monnett wrote about presumably drowned Arctic polar bears.
Michael Bromwich also says it’s unrelated to Monnett’s scientific work and instead a result of new information on a separate subject recently brought to light.
Related WUWT posts:
Read the investigation transcript:
Announcement of suspension:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/al-gores-drowned-polar-bear-ait-source-under-investigation/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I read most of the transcript and it confirms what I have always assumed about environmentalists, if the shameless lack of respect for the truth by the mainstream Green organisations reflects the professional standards of this branch of “science”.
He sees four dead bears once and extrapolates a population mortality rate!
At that standard Kipling’s Just So stories, such as “How The Leopard Got His Spots” would have been a PHD thesis.
Read the transcript of the interview with Eric May and cry! It has to be explained to Eric May that 9×11=99 which is close to 100. With due respect to Mr May he did admit he has not been trained in scientific method but junior school mathematics? I find it hard to believe but it is there in plain print. Mr Eric May should be ashamed of his ignorance and if he is a fair representative of his profession then our civiliastion has no hope.
Now it is, and now it isn’t.
jason says:
July 29, 2011 at 2:23 pm
“Beargate”
Oh, did you have to do that !
From the article written by AP’s Becky Bohrer: ” Monnett and Gleason were conducting an aerial survey of bowhead whales in 2004 when they saw four dead polar bears floating in the water after a storm. They detailed their observations in an article published two years later in the journal Polar Biology.”
If they were out there getting paid to count whales and then it turns out they spent their time writing a paper on drowning bears and global warming, that could indeed have raised some questions about funding, scientific misconduct, etc……
Best,
J.
Here’s the ‘truth’ as told by those paragons of jounalistic virtue, The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/arctic-scientist-polar-bear-oil
Its a good read after a slab of beer, a couple of joints and a whack on the head, it sort of makes sense.
regards
Mike Hodder:
“Read the transcript of the interview with Eric May and cry! It has to be explained to Eric May that 9×11=99 which is close to 100. With due respect to Mr May he did admit he has not been trained in scientific method but junior school mathematics? I find it hard to believe but it is there in plain print. Mr Eric May should be ashamed of his ignorance and if he is a fair representative of his profession then our civiliastion has no hope.”
It is not relevant whether May is arithmetically challenged in not realising that 99 is near enough to 100, but that how can anyone speak as a scientist while spouting nonsense.
Times have obviously changed. When I was a graduate student fifty years ago, fatuous nonsense like this would have been gleefully ripped to shreads by one’s collegues. I saw it happen. Nowadays it is complicit silence until someone sends in the Feds. Good luck to Monnett with the support that he will get from his erstwhile friends!
Will the Warmsters circle the wagons, or throw him under a bus? I can bearly wait for the outcome to all this.
Did you ever get bit by a dead bear?
If they were out there getting paid to count whales and then it turns out they spent their time writing a paper on drowning bears and global warming, that could indeed have raised some questions about funding, scientific misconduct, etc……
Not necessarily. I work in mycology and while pursuing collections and research on the original project, I find other interesting things not directly related. And I research them a bit and write about them as well. Do you think a researcher should intentionally forget or ignore anything not related to the original project, that was observed while researching it? That would be a stupid idea.
The problem isn’t whales OR bears, the problem is the shoddy collection data method and the fact, that the paper was made a political icon.
Mike Hodder (3.44am) is shocked by the investigator’s ignorance of arithmetic. But the whole 10.8=11, divided into 100 = 9 calculation was entirely irrelevant. Eric May is trying to understand why Monnett brings it up. My impression is that Monnett is embarrassed by the simplicity of the calculation (4 divided by 3) and tries to make it seem more complex (4X9 divided by 3X9) in order to face down the investigator. And did you get how he insists on being addressed as “Doctor”? And the paper peer-reviewed by his wife? Of course, none of this is in the press reports.
Updates:
1) The suspension is related to Monnett’s oversight and management role in respect to a research project being performed by Andrew Derocher, Ph.D., University of Alberta, entitled “Populations and Sources of Recruitment in Polar Bears: Movement Ecology in the Beaufort Sea
2) A little web research show that Dr. Derocher is a signatory to WWF ads as a “concerned scientist”
Observations:
What in the heck were Monnett’s so-called lawyers (for of them on the call) doing in letting him ramble on off-topic when he is the subject of a criiminal investigation? Note, after the investigator had indicated that the interview was complete, no less? Legal incompetence.
Given all we know about how this administration behaves in matter related to AGW, can anyone really imagine they would have allowed anyone to go after this guy over concerns about the veracity of his drowning polar bear claims?
there was a really Bad report on polar bears swimming and losing babies on the trip due to no ice..they admitted the females were tagged, but they had no way to tag the young, and so no g/tee the young were even alive or swimming. that greensection of a pommy paper, about two? weeks ago.. remember going off about the crummy assumptions at the time.
Here is my thought about the investigation: If the funding was about whales but significant time on that dime was spent on polar bears, that is misuse of designated funds. If the person under investigation wanted to study polar bear mortality in severe weather, it should have been under its own funding, not “borrowed” funding. Each research proposal must include a beginning budget and then a financial statement on how that money was spent. Since this money was for whales, I wonder how they recorded the time and money spent chasing bears on the whale’s dime?
“So the data recorder allowed you to log polar bears …on land, polar bears swimming, but not dead polar bears?”
“…normally, if the bear was alive, we would record it… up to that point, we had never seen a… dead bear to record. Um, we did have swimming … as one of the behavioral choices, because whales swim.”
Sometimes, whales die. And this program for the study of whales didn’t allow recording dead whales, but did allow recording all living bears? Did it allow for the recording of whales on ice? On land?
How does bear tagging affect their survival chances? Any studies on that?
Michael Bromwich, named in the PEER complaint of July 28, was appointed director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (previously MMS) by Obama in June, 2010. He’s a litigation attorney with an interesting background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Bromwich] [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-bromwich-fix-oil-industry-oversIght].
Drave Robber says:
July 29, 2011 at 5:09 pm
“I reckon there were three polar bears and one Cartesian bear, which is nothing but a polar bear under a different coordinate system. :)”
Nah, it was a Schrödinger bear.
ZT wrote: “@Abysmal Spectator
You seem very well informed.
Where would you rate the science of “I saw three dead polar bears on one day a couple of years ago” in relation to the science of crop circles, cattle mutilation, or ufology?”
Before I start, a bit of a disclaimer – I have nothing to do with polar research or climate research, and I am an AGW skeptic, just in case anyone thinks by defending Monnett that I am some CAGW shill. I’m also assuming the transcript is indicative of what this case is all about, and that relevant game changing stuff isn’t being hidden by PEER.
What seems to be happening here is that a note on an unusual observation is being given a weight that the authors probably never intended it to have, both by the people commenting on this topic and by the CAGW crowd. This makes boths sides look slightly deranged.
Skeptics get it in the neck enough without providing ammunition to the other side by showing an ignorance of what is reasonable practice, misrepresenting what is in the interview transcript (as well as being reviewed by his wife and colleagues, it was also reviewed by three anonymous reviewers for the journal and this was clearly stated in the transcript), and suggesting that he has been remiss in his duties of counting bowhead whales because he published a note on incidental observations that arose during his work. Burn the witch! Yeah! I get annoyed when I see other skeptics acting like “axe grinding cranks, ” as it makes the message easy to dismiss.
So here is my perspective based on my experience:
In certain parts of science, especially in some areas of biological sciences, because of the way in which experimentally unrepeatable observational information arises, these sorts of notes are quite common and acceptable. (They wouldn’t be acceptable in solid state physics, or biochemistry where unusual observations are amenable to experiments – context is everything.) You’ll get notes reporting sightings of species in strange places, or unusual behaviour for example. Unusual observations should be recorded. They are viewed as anecdote by other scientists. Not all published science is equal and that is recognised by every practitioner I have ever met. Politicians and campaigners, on the other hand, don’t seem to make these distinctions, and that is where the strife starts…
As a reviewer, you’d take the nature of the paper into account when recommending it for publication or not. The article is very brief, reports an observation and its context. If this was my area of expertise and I had received the article for review I would probably have said “yes, publish it.” On the other hand, if Monnett and Gleason had submitted something twice as long and tried to make some grand claims with attendant statistical analyses based on 3 or 4 dead polar bears, I would have torn the thing to shreds.
If I had been subjected to the interview that Monnett had been, I would have been lawyered up and reacted more or less the same way he did – nervous, defensive, confused and wary about the strange line of questioning, and when finally realising that all it was about was some high school math in a throwaway note (that had admittedly become emarrassingly politically prominent) would have been thinking “WHAT THE F$#&?!”, been pissed off I had been grilled and was being judged by someone who had difficulty with fractions and understanding context, and had a good ol’ rant like he did at the end of the interview. And then, when it had all sunk in, I’d have been pretty disturbed about just how much the piper wanted to call the tune.
As I said before, in my opinion that last bit is the important conclusion of this debacle. In my experience happens too much in “modern” science. I certainly know of people who have had their careers destroyed because they spoke out on some topic or another, either by their funders (medical science is rotten in this respect) or by powerful colleagues with a different viewpoint. That is the real poison in the system.
I apologise if this perspective is too balanced and reasonable.
This is worth a read…..
http://churchillpolarbears.org/about-polar-bears/polar-bear-life-cycle/
David says:
July 29, 2011 at 8:25 pm
I don’t believe they couldn’t have observed one dead bear in all the years prior to this.
=====
Maybe polar bears prefer not to swim when they are sick and don’t swim unless they can see a hauling out place (maybe on an ice flow) they are sure they can reach. That’d mean that you’d only see dead bears as a result of unexpected events.
The general assumption in these polar bear threads seems to be that polar bears are really dumb and will voluntarily set off on swims they can’t complete. I can’t think of one reason to believe that they are either stupid or suicidal.
Abysmal Spectator (July 30, 2011 at 1:36 pm) says:
“I apologise if this perspective is too balanced and reasonable”.
No need to apologise. And I won’t apologise for pointing out that Monnett comes over as arrogant, defensive, confused and incompetent. He has trouble explaining why he divided three by four, when the investigator clearly thought it would be more reasonable to divide three by (3+4).
But who cares? He admits it was only a note in a “crummy journal” (his words) that made headlines round the world. And if that fourth dead polar bear had been on transect instead of off (or was it?) he’d have had a survival rate of zero instead of 25%. And if he’d seen just one more cadaver, there’d be a negative number of polar bears. And if he thought people were drawing unwarranted conclusions from his three dead bears, why didn’t he correct them? Trillions of dollars are being spent on the basis of trash evidence like this. Monnett, and his supporters, and the hundreds of journalists who’ve blindly reported nonsense like this, have a lot to answer for.
There’s a much clearer and more readable transcript of this superb piece of surrealist theatre at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20110223_pe
@Abysmal Spectator
No doubt you are a very balance and reasonable person. However, you did not answer the question:-
‘Where would you rate the science of “I saw three dead polar bears on one day a couple of years ago” in relation to the science of crop circles, cattle mutilation, or ufology?’
And no doubt your reams of obfuscation are well intended. I have no complaint concerning your comments. I also have every sympathy with Monnett and his arduous professional chore of disposing of the tax payer’s $50m in the most inane fashion possible.
However, his speculations concerning the causes of unusual observations can rightly be questioned, IMHO. That after all is the scientific method – or does that not apply in this case?
Pamela Gray says:
July 30, 2011 at 9:02 am
Having read a good portion of the transcript already, I think we can take Dr. Monnett at his word that his team spent relatively little time looking for polar bears. Which is why his extrapolations and assumptions about polar bears (a “fifth-grade” calculation of proportions, which Monnett admitted is “not a statistic”), are only so much horse manure.
I drove from Uniontown, PA to Cincinnati, OH and saw six (6) dead deer along side the road. As far as I could see to either side of the highway, there were no live deer. Ergo, the survival rate of deer between Uniontown and Cincinnati is zero (0) percent. I wonder if I can get that peer reviewed by my friends and get it published? Heck, if I say it was an unusually warm day and blame it on climate change, maybe I’ll even get a government grant. My wife was traveling with me so I could probably slip her a few thousand dollars to help me with my calculations. 100% dead means 0% survival doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s 200%, or 67%? Dang, these numbers really confuse me.
He sees four dead bears in the open water for the first time in a quarter of a million kilometers of flying time over a decade, and checks aerial data for the decade previous (comparing apples with apples) and finds this is the first record of dead bears in open water. He also sees more bear swimming in the water in that year than ever before. Recorded data shows 12 bears swimming in the sea for the period 1987 – 2003. In 2004, one year alone, Monnett spots 10 bears swimming and four dead. Only three of those fall within the transect, so he omits the fourth and does a straightforward extrapolation, noting the estimate is insufficient due to lack of data.
Monnett notes that the region has been warming and the ice retreating, suggesting this may put stress on polar bears. That’s hardly controversial. He speculates what may occur if the ice continues to retreat in a warming world.
Monnett does NOT present a case for AGW in his note, but notes that if global warming continues to occur, bear populations may become further stressed.
Later on, his work referenced by other groups with an environmental agenda. This is not his fault.
That’s not science, nor does it reflect the study, I would rate it ‘poor’ scientifically, and ‘irrelevant’ WRT this discussion.
There’s plenty of grist for deconstructing Gore’s polemical film, but Monnett is a bystander.