By Chris Horner, ATI
Michael Mann made his way back to the Commonwealth of Virginia yesterday to watch his U.S. lawyer reprise the dark conspiracy theories previously weaved throughout his Canadian lawsuit against Tim Ball for repeating the old joke about “belong[ing] in the State Pen, not Penn State”.
The forum was a hearing in the American Tradition Institute’s Freedom of Information Act (VA) case against the University of Virginia (UVa) for certain records sent to or from Mann accounts while he was at UVa. That period is when the chatter about deleting records to circumvent FOI laws and other wagon-circling took place among the self-appointed “Hockey Team”.
That sort of paranoia sounded even worse in the spoken word that it reads in a brief. The judge gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head when my colleague David Schnare wondered aloud, when his turn came, about responding to all of the ad hominem. Enough already, this gesture seemed to say.
The Court allowed Mann to enter as an intervenor in this dispute, from the bench and without explanation. So there’s little we can offer there except that, when all is considered, this does provide the Court with the path of fewest problems (though hardly none, if Mann’s record in pleadings and argument is any basis to judge by; possibly some allies will try and delay matters yet again when we next proceed).
Given Mann’s argument was almost entirely limited to a vast right-wing conspiracy if one involving some names I’d never even heard of and in an apparently studious avoidance of the applicable law, we can only surmise the rationale for this move was grounded in equities found elsewhere than that curious display.
ATI opposed Mann’s motion to intervene simply because he offered no principled basis to intervene. We will appeal therefore with an eye toward settling the question as to what rights, or other considerations, justify a faculty member’s intervention in a FOIA case. For now we welcome Mann to this case to defend the content of his emails in a public forum. Presumably, just more conspiracy theorizing won’t suffice anymore.
We then proceeded to UVa’s effort to reopen the Protective Order, seeking to substitute themselves for us as the party reviewing and selecting exemplar emails from the cache they now admit to possessing. That it would be reopened was pro forma after Mann was deemed to have interests at stake, if what these interests are was left unstated.
The Court noted the distrust between the parties, particularly ours of UVa after all of what they have done, and so did not allow UVA to assume that role. This was despite that in advance they and Mann had agreed to jointly stipulate to this (his lawyer’s rather odd, earlier argument notwithstanding, see below).
But, as we argued, UVa’s utterly terrible record on this matter does not inspire confidence that a fair review and representative sample is to be had from them. Their ill-fit for the newly adopted pose of independent arbiter is somewhat betrayed by their legal bills fighting the AG’s Civil Investigative Demand now heading toward a million dollars. Then there is the enormous pressure from their faculty and pressure groups — which they finally copped to, after arguing previously in pleadings that this was all in our heads. Speaking of its track record.
And, finally, UVa has essentially the same interest as Mann at stake and is no more a suitable arbiter than Mann himself (per Mann, that’s “embarrassment”). To say UVa is aggressively focused on limiting the damage of what occurred in its program, with still not a finger toward self-policing lifted to date, is also something of an understatement.
So we have until a scheduled December 20 hearing to agree to a third party reviewer, cost and methodology. If we cannot agree the court will impose a process.
Toward that end, Mann’s attorney informed the Court that, well, Mann is the only person on the planet capable of understanding the content and meaning of emails he sent and received, thereby not only raising questions about his correspondents but making his future objections as to reviewers something less than entirely relevant or credible.
Cost is to be split at worst three ways, one presumes. Mann is surely going to be raising money for this. So, we won’t be shy, either. We can’t match the cool million the University of Virginia is pouring into their effort to make the embarrassment the revelations in ClimateGate emails to and from Mann’s UVa accounts has caused them go away. But every little bit helps.
Carrick, Eli thinks you are wronger than he is. The NIH policy guide says
8.2.1 Rights in Data (Publication and Copyrighting)
In general, grantees own the rights in data resulting from a grant-supported project. Special terms and conditions of the award may indicate alternative rights, e.g., under a cooperative agreement or based on specific programmatic considerations as stated in the applicable RFA. Except as otherwise provided in the terms and conditions of the award, any publications, data, or other copyrightable works developed under an NIH grant may be copyrighted without NIH approval. For this purpose, “data” means recorded information, regardless of the form or media on which it may be recorded, and includes writings, films, sound recordings, pictorial reproductions, drawings, designs, or other graphic representations, procedural manuals, forms, diagrams, work flow charts, equipment descriptions, data files, data processing or computer programs (software), statistical records, and other research data.
Rights in data also extend to students, fellows, or trainees under awards whose primary purpose is educational, with the authors free to copyright works without NIH approval. In all cases, NIH must be given a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable license for the Federal government to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the material and to authorize others to do so for Federal purposes. Data developed by a consortium participant also is subject to this policy.
————————————————————–
More to follow
On inventions, the institution owns the rights, but can lose them by not pursuing implementation
————————-
8.2.4 Inventions and Patents
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (Public Law 96-517; 35 U.S.C. 200-212) and the related EO 12591 (April 10, 1987) provide incentives for the practical application of research supported through Federal funding agreements. To be able to retain rights and title to inventions made with Federal funds, so-called “subject” inventions, the grantee must comply with a series of regulations that ensure the timely transfer of the technology to the private sector, while protecting limited rights of the Federal government. . . . .
Some of the steps required by the regulation to retain intellectual property rights to subject inventions include:
Report all subject inventions to NIH.
Make efforts to commercialize the subject invention through patent or licensing.
Formally acknowledge the Federal government’s support in all patents that arise from the subject invention.
Formally grant the Federal government a limited use license to the subject invention.
barry,
You’re right, I was saying WG-4, when Edenhoffer was co-chair of WG-3. Big deal, eh?
Of course, since that appears to be the best alarmist argument, then they’ve lost; Edenhofer’s comment that the real agenda is a redistribution of wealth [ie: theft], rather than legitimate science, is now on record. No doubt he has been chastised by his fellow UN kleptocrats for his brutal forthright honesty.
The execrable censoring propagandist Connolley hangs his hat entirely on the difference between working group numbers. That’s his best argument. He’s used to being the censor, and he’s not used to pushback. Tough. This site allows all points of view, unlike Wikipedia, and here the truth is separated from BS like wheat from chaff.
The fact of the matter is that Mann has been debunked. Thoroughly. And that is why he hides out instead of defending his failed conjecture. There are only excuses from Mann’s true believers about why his hokey stick chart is no longer published by the IPCC.
Also, I note that no alarmist has the balls to try to falsify this hypothesis, per the scientific method: that CO2 is harmless and beneficial. Show the global harm, True Believers – if you can. Make it testable and falsifiable per the scientific method. Or admit that you’re engaging in pseudo-science propaganda.
Eli, I’lll agree that you are slightly less wrong than me on this. 😉 But it’s d@mned nuanced.
Bayh-Dole was a game changer, because it opened up the channels for receivers of federal grants to gain the rights to particular products and ideas. It has lead to the blossoming of medical breakthroughs in the US and (dare I say it) some of the income gap increase we’ve experienced (guess what… if you become a millionaire you expand the gap, that rule of thumb works until the average income is $1 million or greater).
However… and this probably does depend on the particular federal institute—and I will admit I don’t have any patents involving NIH funded work—it is definitely the case when we get products and ideas patented there is a federal approval process involved. Since I have never filed that paperwork myself (we have people in our lab who do this for us tb2g), it may well be their characterizations of the process are not accurate. I remember a USDA grant where it did seem like some sort of “right of first refusal” had to be given, but that was plus-up money and may not follow the same rules.
I do remember that the government retains right of usage. And they can block the public release of the patent if it is deemed in the interest of national security (so called classified patents).
And I do know with respect to data, that the data also track with the PI, if the PI switches institutes. How much of this is legal requirement versus “if you ever want funding again from NIH you’ll do it this way” I cant say. But it does bugger up the notion that the institute, rather than the PI, owns the data outright.
Norway Rat says:
“I love arguing with you because you are so often blatantly wrong it is easy to destroy you.”
“Destroy”?? heh, Hey, my hypothesis is still standing tall: CO2 is harmless and beneficial. The only thing that is destroyed is your failed True Religious Belief that CO2 causes runaway global warming. Get a clue.
CO2 is harmless and beneficial at current and projected concentrations. Falsify that if you can, junior.
davidmhoffer says: November 3, 2011 at 6:24 pm
“David Ball quips that Mann should be in the State Penn in stead of Penn State and Mann sues him. That’s a sense of humor?”
He said more than that. As I noted at the time the headline on his site was:
“Evidence Points To Mann’s Criminal Misconduct”
This is fascinating. The WUWTers can’t be bothered to cite anything in a factual way, and when asked to do so (to allow actual focused argumentation), they complain that the alarmists are trying to derail the discussion and distract from what matters. Meanwhile, they spend all their effort trying to get juicy quotes from emails of people they dislike, and ignore the broader science. Irony can be so ironic! Even the lawyer Schnare has little more to offer here than his interpretations of what he thinks are a bunch of knowing looks.
I guess it’s the same with Al Gore and Charles Monnett. Focus on individuals and sling mud. As Schnare said above, that’s what you do when you don’t have the facts on your side. Someone talked about circumstantial evidence above (method, motive, means, opportunity) — but you also need a crime. Where’s the body? The world is warmer — there was no decline in *temperatures* to hide.
[REPLY: Stevie, you just made the point. No one here at WUWT interprets “hide the decline” as a decline in *temperatures*… Mann’s trick of grafting the instrumental record to his proxy record was intended to hide the fact that the treemometers can’t be relied on and are usless as proxies. Another attempt by a troll to distract. -REP]
Please do not confuse me (David Ball) with my father (Dr. Tim Ball). I do not speak for him and he does not speak for me. We are two different people with our own viewpoints. Please bear this in mind.
Gneiss:
“The alternative reconstructions have differently curvy handles but they all show that hockey stick blade, because it’s real.”
A. None of those blades can match the magnitude of the the instrument record like HadCrut3, and even less so of BEST.
B. And they can’t match it even though temperature series are cherry picked for inclusion in the reconstruction based upon how well they match the instrument record.
In any case, the red noise thing never was all that important other than as a nice headline. What is important, however, is that Mann used proxy data upside down (Tiljander) three times. Two of those after he had been told. It’s also important that the infallible peer review process never caught it. And it’s important that the editors of these highly respected journals never caught it. And it’s important that all of the scientific societies that are supposedly in unanimous agreement about AGW never caught it.
Exactly the same misses apply to Mann’s use of Graybill data. Data that cannot be reproduced but is weighted higher than any other by a huge multiplier. And Mann continued to use the Graybill data after Ababneh’s doctoral dissertation showed that it’s strong hockey stick shape was a product of the trees going split bark, not a product of warming. And all of Mann’s buddies continued to use it as well.
Then, of course, there are all the problems with Yamal tree ring data. Turns out that Mann can’t get his hockey stick unless he uses at least one of the bad tree ring data sets or, alternately, the upside down Tiljander data.
Connolley: “So how about you stop playing silly games? We all know that no-one wants all their emails to be released, nor does anyone want all their private data to be released.”
What’s the matter Connolley, getting lonely at your site? They won’t let you propagandize wiki any more? But welcome in any case. You are right, no one wants their private emails to be released. But, when you sign on the dotted line and when you use government paid for computers and government paid for internet and government paid for time, that is exactly what the public is entitled to. If you want to discuss in private, no one is stopping you. After you get off work, go to your home computer, use your home internet account, and send messages to Phil Jones’ home account. Then it’s not covered by FOI. I admit that I sometimes sent private e-mail while I was at work. But I never sent anything that I couldn’t stand for the world to see. LOL – I think that applies to what I send on my home computer as well. I guess I’m just a dull guy.
Henry: “A rat, a stoat and a rabbit walk into a bar …”
And Gavin dropped in on McIntyre last night. Must be a new “Get out there and engage them” memo out. LOL. Should be fun!
So, let’s start from the beginning. Exactly what is the emergency, gentlemen?
We’ve sorted out WG4. Excellent. As to what E said: whatever he said, it was in German. You’re looking at a translation, which may or may not have been honest.
> SteveW says: If you don’t want data or emails that you have produced to be subject to FOI legislation then don’t accept public funding…
Schnare worked for the EPA. You urge him to release all of his emails too, yes?
William M. Connolley says:
November 4, 2011 at 2:46 am
Yea. Verily. As soon as you, someone, anyone, shows that, via the instruments at HIS disposal in HIS previous employment, HE is advising, pressuring, aiding and/or abetting those who have, amongst many other things, put my mother and father in a position where they must freeze (heaven forfend – to death) in winter because their combined pensions no longer allow them to eat AND heat their home because of price rises caused, directly, by policy that HE insists must be adopted to save the world from a phantom of HIS imagination.
A phantasm conjured out of thin CO2 with zero evidence, less intelligence and malice aforethought.
Let us see every scrap that was produced at the public tit to support this guesswork. For conjecture is all it is and it cannot be honoured with the epithet of hypothesis as it meets NONE of the required criteria.
What I truly think of YOU and your cohort, sir, cannot be adequately expressed in polite fora.
Sorry bill, but you are just plain wrong. Perhaps it is because I have had Internet email since 1990, but I long ago learned that what you email on company time (or the tax payer dime) is not yours. I have no problem allowing any and all to see every email I have received and sent using company/state owned email servers. While I am sure they are not as exciting as the fiction in yours or Mann’s in and out box, mine have nothing to hide.
I suspect you mean “no one who has anything to hide wants all their emails to be released”. I figure most of mine have been viewed by people who they were not intended for, and I stand by everyone.
That is actually not up to him. It is up to the EPA, as they belong to the EPA, and by extension the taxpayers. You want them? Simple. File a FOIA. You do not have to have a reason for your FOIA. I am surprised you have not done so already.
Smokie:
You keep using the word debunked ( [SNIP: Crude, not funny and juvenile. -REP] )
If you have a paper retracted by a journal I would agree that you are debunked. Has this happened to Mann? No. Has it happened to any “skeptics”. Yes. Wegman ( not climate yet but wait). Spenser has enjoyed the retraction of his latest effort.
If editors resign in disgust I would agree that you were debunked. Has this happened to Mann? No. Has it happened to any “skeptics”? Yes. Soon; Spenser.
If scientists ignor ones paper and few citations follow publication, I would agree that one is debunked. Has this happened to Mann? No. There are hundreds , maybe even thousands of citations of his papers. Obviously his work has been found to be accurate and usefull.Do “skeptics” get cited . Yes but not many of them and not many citations ( To be fair, most skeptics are not climate scientists and don’t present many papers for publication. They are not likely to get many citations under these conditions).
Keep your stick on the ice:
John McManus
Should emails discussing student assessments and grades be released to the public? Should we redact residential addresses or would that be depriving the public of their right to view every tittle of email text that ran through the computers and servers their taxes have paid for?
Are there no limits? FOI as implied by Mann’s critics seems way too heavy-handed.
So what dirty little secrets do people expect to see if and when these emails are released? I assume there’s something in mind apart from a fishing expedition to see if you get lucky. What is it we’re expecting to find?
William M Connolley;
Schnare worked for the EPA. You urge him to release all of his emails too, yes?>>>
You guys just keep on coming up with one distraction from the issue after another. If you have reason to, by all means, file an FOIA and go get them. That has zero to do with the issue of Mann’s emails and you bloody well know it. Have you no shame at all?
John McManus;
If scientists ignor ones paper and few citations follow publication, I would agree that one is debunked. Has this happened to Mann? No. There are hundreds , maybe even thousands of citations of his papers. Obviously his work has been found to be accurate and usefull.Do “skeptics” get cited . Yes but not many of them and not many citations ( To be fair, most skeptics are not climate scientists and don’t present many papers for publication. They are not likely to get many citations under these conditions).>>>
You’ve completely ignored the reality of history. A small handfull of like minded scientists peer reviewed each others work and conspired to prevent the work of others from being published. they’ve gotten editors fired and papers blocked. The ClimateGate emails refer to their intent to do so, and there is plenty of evidence to show that is exactly what they did. Spencer, to whome you refer, is the victim of just that, with the editor of Remote Sensing resigning not because there was a single thing wrong with Spencer’s science, but because he feared the wrath of Kevin Trenberth who wanted the paper suppressed. Had Trenberth even a modicum of science on his side, he could have shredded the paper in publication. But he had nothing, so he used his position at the IPCC to threaten the editor, whose own research grants and projects were beholden to Trenberth, and the editor, one Wolfgang Wagner, caved like a coward.
Trying to justify the warmist position on the number of papers and citations is a total joke, a farce, a complete comedy at best. The peer review process has been poisoned, and that is the reason that the facts are coming out in alternative information sources… like this one.
Dear REP — do you mean to tell me that if I search back through WUWT, I’m going to see a lot of effort by this website to set the record straight among skeptics that “hide the decline” is not about temperatures but about proxies? And not one of your commenters made the accusation that a decline in temperatures was hidden? Ha. I would think a moderator would read the comments!
What do you expect to find in Mann’s emails? The divergence problem wasn’t hidden, it’s not a crime to use one set of data in one part of a figure and another in a second part of the figure, and glaciers don’t lie. Go see for yourself how they’ve retreated. Mann’s data are public, and we know how he spliced the figure together. So I ask again, where’s the body? Explain to me how this isn’t a fishing expedition for the purpose of harassment.
You say thermometers can’t be relied upon. Funny — I thought our host said he’d accept the BEST results. He didn’t say, “The BEST results, since they rely on thermometers, will be meaningless.” Did he? No, I don’t think that’s what he said. And if you think thermometers and proxies are useless, just how do you expect to measure global climate change? Are you anti-data? Strange position for a ‘science’ web site. Oh wait, now I get it — you want to measure temperatures with emails. Interesting method.
Is WUWT being graced by the same William Connelley that was banned from Wikipedia? Their loss is our gain, I suppose.
It’s amazing the hullabaloo generated by a simple request for Mann to show his (taxpayer-funded) work. These people should not be associated with anything claiming to be science.
So let me get this straight. A lame joke by Ball that got him hauled into court and forced a retraction by his publisher ( not to mention embarrassed Ball) is fine because it denigrates Mann. A joke about Ball’s retraction is bacd because you like Ball.
Have I got that right?
John McManus
[REPLY: No. What Dr. Ball publishes on his site is his problem. We’ve snipped crude comments about people we’re not fond of. Your’s was crude and juvenile. -REP]
Barry:
I still can’t get at those emails. Schnarle’s stuff just locks my computer and a can’t find anything clickable at the site you suggested. They just try to sell me stuff.
Any idea what I am doing wrong?
Thanks for your help:
John McManus
This is good background information on William Connolley:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/19/wikibullies-at-work-the-national-post-exposes-broad-trust-issues-over-wikipedia-climate-information
[Link corrected per request. -mod]
Well, this is going to be very amusing. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Dr. Schnare used a non-EPA email account (like gmail) when responding to ATI. Since UVa has shown that he posted emails during normal working hours at EPA, unless he did so from his cell phone or similar, it went through the EPA network. What are the odds that it was captured? Being an EPA lawyer, one wonders how much of a billing record is kept?
Does Eli have to file an FOI request? Probably not because UVa probably has. Schnarenfreude indeed:)