Steve McIntyre writes about what many of us have been thinking about Penn State’s failures at investigating its own, such as the appearance of a whitewash investigation done about Dr. Michael Mann and Climategate. He writes:
On the same day that Nature published yet another editorial repudiating public examination of the conduct of academic institutions, Penn State President Graham Spanier was fired from his $813,000/year job for failing to ensure that a proper investigation was carried out in respect to pedophilia allegations in Penn State’s hugely profitable football program. The story is receiving massive coverage in North America because the iconic Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno, was also fired today.
CA readers are aware of Spanier’s failure to ensure proper investigation of Climategate emails and his untrue puffs about the ineffective Penn State Inquiry Committee, reported at CA here and by the the Penn State Collegian as follows:
…
Spanier was fired not because of any personal role in the Sandusky football scandal, but because of negligence on his part in ensuring that the allegations were properly investigated. This was not the only case in which Spanier failed to ensure proper investigation of misconduct allegations. As noted above, Spanier had falsely reported to the Penn State trustees and the public that the Penn State Inquiry Committee had properly interviewed critics and had examined the Climategate documents and issues “from all sides”.
Full story here
So your position is that a dozen children being rubbed down by Coach Sandusky is a much worse crime than 25k British pensioners dying alone in the cold due to misguided energy policies, policies steered and informed by the deceit of Michael Mann and his Penn State enablers?
Well, that’s a brave position. And so well thought out!
There were 25 thousand pensioners in the UK who died shivering in the cold because they couldn’t afford to turn on the heat last winter. They couldn’t afford the extra added costs imposed by global warmers, informed by Michael Mann’s deceits, enabled by Penn State’s administrative cover-up.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/3531276/Thousands-of-elderly-people-die-of-cold-each-winter-in-a-national-scandal.html
So Pam Gray’s position is that a dozen children being rubbed up by Coach Sandusky is a much larger crime that the systematic deaths caused by the AGW cult.
That’s a brave position to take.
And so well thought out!
Usually I don’t like blending two issues but since these are both caused by the same attitudes and arogances by the same institution it is quite apropriate. While covering up the raping of children can’t compare with the academic crimes, it just goes to show that when you think a person’s or a group’s behavior is so nausiating and vile that it can’t get any worse they can alway find a way to prove you wrong. Always.
Don’t Tucci me there:
re Niven’s bio: “which he had neither enjoyed much nor claimed to have unduly distressed him. He said that he simply hadn’t seen much point to it.”
This is ridiculous. It was wrong, no question. Castrate the bastard. But Niven didn’t allow it to DEFINE him, and went on to a fulfilling life. Stop Trying To BE the Victim Here.
Never did I imagine that WUWT would be torn asunder by something like THIS.
You all think you’re horrified? Let me tell you something: I come to this blog for climate news — and now I find this sordid scandal of the rape of a boy here too. Yes it is horrendous news — but not climate related whatsoever. Nor even related to lying about mere numbers or temperature station locations. No, this Boy Rape affair strikes at a far greater fear among the population than whether the temps are up or down and/or why. And I have been warning my gay friends — since I am, I got lots — and we all are discussing this — “beware gentlemen, brace yourselves.” For we fine fellows are about to be pilloried as a group like no “climate denier” could ever imagine. Not a fact, nor piece of evidence in our favor will be considered, and every horrible accusation unfairly hurled against us will be revived. “Homosexuality” will be front and center.
This is not “gay” however. This ostensibly hetero Sandusky — married, with two sons — has now destroyed years of progress in our general acceptance in society. This parade of heterosexual men — Paterno, McQueary, who else, who knows … many more I’m sure … has now done more damage to me and mine than all the global warming fools could ever have done, nor or the silly drag queens seen at a gay parade. We gay men are about to get a lashing that no climate debater could ever conceive of. We are ready to incarcerate all these people for the rest of their lives — but the “heterosexuality” of none of these men will be impinged — but only the “homosexuality.” Even when married men are caught with 10 year old girls “heterosexuality” is not the culprit. We gays are always considered so much different, as a group, than you all are..
Oh you lucky people, you are rightly outraged for the poor kids, the lies, the cover ups, the misprision of felony, the riots, on and on through the criminal and moral codes by heterosexuals — I am with you — but you are not about to get what I am about to get.
So just remember this, as this affair unfolds: gay men have nothing — Nothing! — to do with this. And all us gay guys can do is beg you all for recognizing this — this is a heterosexual issue. We want to get married, for heaven’s sake.
EVERYONE in the athletic department at PSU should be fired! You can’t tell me that not ALL employees had some knowledge of this. Even the current acting athletic director Mark Sherburne had knowledge of this!!! If he didn’t have knowledge of it then it shows that there is even more of a problem and cover up at PSU and if Sherburne did then it makes him a possible suspect and should be charged with conspiracy! Clean the house from top (board of directors) to bottom (all coaches & athletic department) and everyone in between who had any involvement!!!
I was shocked when Penn State whitewashed Michael Mann’s role in “Climategate” – I had no idea that it was the tip of the iceberg…
Jim Hlavac,
I think you’re viewing this through a gay/straight lens. That’s not how I see it.
The common thread in this latest episode is the university’s turning a blind eye to corruption, because they are getting rich off of corrupt individuals. Michael Mann is a rainmaker who brings in millions, so Penn State did a completely phony ‘investigation’ and ‘exonerated’ Mann. They never called a single opposing witness, and buried the accusations ASAP.
The official coruption is endemic to Penn State. Money trumps ethics. That is the problem.
I posted this on my FaceBook (over 700 friends) and linked it back to your article:
Penn State President Graham Spanier was fired “for failing to ensure that a proper investigation was carried out in respect to pedophilia allegations in Penn State’s hugely profitable football program.”
Golly! That’s the same dude who led the quashing of the investigation into Penn State’s hugely successful Climate-Gate “hockey-sticker” Mikey Mann, leading to a whitewash.
Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!
4:00 in the video of Michael Mann, he says the deniers are going after more emails, so they can go through this whole process again.
That sounds like an unwitting acknowledgement that it will be another bombshell when the emails are finally aired.
Jim Hlavac says:
November 11, 2011 at 7:41 pm
[snip]
It is about a University covering up behavior that is ILLEGAL because the person makes them MONEY.
[snip]
[Let’s all please stick to the topic and not respond further to the non-scientific aspects – see also Smokey’s response ~jove, mod]
corporate message says: November 11, 2011 at 11:31 am
Thanks for your comments, instructive.
Presumably the football teams were provided with well-evidenced health research to maintain peak pyschosocial and physical status, possibly from a university health science dept. The players could in fact have been research subjects in a sports medicine program?
I had forgotten the outcome as expressed by Mann in the video clip you also posted.
Mann speaks of
‘……a funded campaign by industry special interests that don’t want to see action taken to combat the problem…..the denialists got a lot of mileage from the propaganda they were able to spin …….’ (around1.50 onwards)
Hmmm.
In Australia, a website run by the sandstone universities (these are the unis first established in each state) offers science publicly. All universities have Ethics Committees and Code of Conduct attached to receipt of grant funding. Strategic partners for this not-for-profit include several federal government depts.
In light of the discussions in this WUWT post the article below is of interest.
The article suggests that people reject science. The author does not suggest that [some] people may reject some science or reject science conducted by some scientists. Or indeed entire hypotheses.
11th Nov 2011 Why do people reject science? Here’s why?
…..Threat is the key word here. Threats to financial interests. Threats to one’s career or to one’s ability to keep pace with rapidly-evolving revolutionary knowledge.
The notion of threat is key to understanding the rejection of evidence; whether it’s by vested interests, by mediocre scientists fearful of becoming outdated, or by the public at large when confronted by inconvenient science.’
http://theconversation.edu.au/why-do-people-reject-science-heres-why-4050
source: http://theconversation.edu.au/who_we_are
Correcton, only 2 sandstone unis – Uni of Western Australia and Uni of Melbourne + 3 other unis.
Dave Springer says:
November 11, 2011 at 8:39 am
@Combs
You need to qualify who owns the media. It’s true it’s owned and controlled by the wealthy but it’s wealthy liberals for the most part.
________________________________
Your really need to do some research before making statements like that. But then again the “wealthy liberals” ARE the bankers and corporate CEOs. (snicker) If they were not we would not have capitalism bashing throughout our culture. The traditional five pillars of liberalism are; the press, labor, education, churches, and the Democratic Party. So take a good look at who some of Obama’s “Liberal” appointments are : http://www.goldismoney2.com/showthread.php?14576-Revolving-Door-Whose-quot-private-interests-quot-are-getting-promoted-in-quot-our-quot-government
MEDIA
Look up JP Morgan starting in the 1917 Congressional Record. That’s when he grabbed control of the news media. Then look at who was an advisor to General Electric when they acquired NBC
“…We are excited by the growth opportunities ahead for NBCUniversal … J.P. Morgan was lead financial advisor to GE….” http://blog.comcast.com/2011/01/comcast-and-ge-complete-transaction-to-form-nbcuniversal-llc.html
“JP Morgan: Our next big media player?” http://www.newsandtech.com/dougs_page/article_f3a45be0-4717-11df-aace-001cc4c03286.html
Then you can go on and look at how many directors are/were bank employees or financiers. For that you have to look at the profile of each director for each media company. And of course there is WHO owns the LOANS made to finance the purchase of the media….
OTHER REFERENCES:
http://blog.comcast.com/2011/01/comcast-and-ge-complete-transaction-to-form-nbcuniversal-llc.html
http://www.globalissues.org/article/159/media-conglomerates-mergers-concentration-of-ownership
NOTE: Without the media’s intervention in “whitewashing” the misconduct of Mann and Penn State we would not have this post.
Tucci78 says:
November 11, 2011 at 10:22 am
…… if your “knowledge” of child abuse derives from your personal individual experience as a victim of such – emotional, sexual, and/or physical – and is not supported by a broader and more dispassionate appreciation of the phenomena (such as those of us in the health care racket get, along with didactic and clinical training), then you’re speaking on the basis of information as abjectly inadequate…….
_______________________________
Child Abuse is nasty and does leave permanent marks on those subjected to it. It can redefine your whole personality and stunt emotional growth (My experience and my friends’ experience)
HOWEVER it does not have to be crippling. The human has an amazing capacity to adapt. So you acknowledge the problem, deal with it and go on. No one promised that life would be fair. It is not. (I often wonder if the lack of women in high positions is due to this assault to their self esteem.)
Depending on the source you will find about 1/3 of women in the USA have suffered from some form of sexual abuse. http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/factsheet/pdf/CSA-FS20.pdf
That makes the topic a real hot button.
Bad Penn-Mann-ship, Virginia.
At 6:33 AM on 12 November, Gail Combs had written:
I had earlier posted a fairly long comment on this subject, but a moderator had apparently censored it off the board while it was awaiting “moderation.”
I’d made reference to the fact that while the clinical and quasi-clinical literature is replete with studies of and recommendations for the evaluation of child subjects of sexual abuse with the focus effectively entirely upon the collection of forensic evidence leading to the arrest and conviction of the offender, there is damn-all in the way of clinical best practices guidance for the address of the medical and psychiatric needs of the child or adolescent victim, either acute or long-term.
Damned funny, isn’t it? All this noise about how “It’s for the children!” we’re supposed to be working, and yet the overwhelming preponderance of focus on treatment modalities is directed at the extremely lucrative pharmacological and psychiatric treatment of the offenders.
If having been the subject of sexual (or emotional or physical) abuse is not going to be “crippling,” there really ought to be reasonably extensive treatment guidelines for health care professionals to better ensure positive outcomes in these cases, right?
But on my search of the USDHHS AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse (which turned up 85 items), there was bupkis in that line. Nothing at all.
Closest thing I have been able to find outside of the paywalls was a review uttered online in Australia in 1998, and that contained nothing more than a few paragraphs of clinical common sense confirming my contentions that stigmatization with the “destroys lives utterly” meme is precisely the last thing anybody should ever do to a person who had been the subject of sexual abuse as a child or teenager.
Helluva comment on how much “It’s for the children!” isn’t it?
Okay, let’s see how the moderator treats this post.
In response to my mention of David Niven’s recounting of his own experience as the subject of childhood sexual abuse in his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon (1971), at 7:33PM on 11 November we’ve got neill rabidly sputtering:
Yep, another comment from below the tentorial membrane. There are so damned many people who are as incapable of reasoning about the clinical realities of childhood and adolescent abuse.
Pretty good reflection of the way los warmistas keep responding to “global warming denial,” isn’t it?
In which case, a venue like WUWT is something of the most appropriate possible place to bring up such a subject for dispassionately focused and lucid examination, neil‘s silly “Don’t Tucci me” whine notwithstanding.
At 10:41 AM on 11 November, David Falkner had posted:
I’d responded at some length much earlier to your request for “actual studies” (quoting one of the very, very few online sources of information on the clinical management of the subjects [as opposed to the offenders] involved in cases of child sexual abuse), but it got censored off the board while “awaiting moderation.” Go figure.
In truth, there has been vanishingly little attention paid in either the medical profession or any of the ancillary health care fields to management methods aimed at improving either short- or long-term outcomes among the child or adolescent victims of sexual (or physical or emotional) abuse. Much about higher incidences of psychoactive substance abuse and mood disorders (chiefly depressive) among the adult survivors of such experiences, but very little hard evidence of causation independent of other psychosocial factors or guidance for those of us involved in the acute and long-term medical care of the children themselves.
And that’s not really much of a surprise. As I’ve said (if that’s not also been censored off the board), with all the yelping about how “It’s for the children!” there really is damn-all in the way of focus upon the needs of the children themselves. All the money is to be gotten by way of treating the offenders (big market for progestogenics and LHRH agonists and a slew of other drugs as well as years and years and years of costly “counseling”), but there’s obviously no pelf to be gotten in taking care of the kids.
Just trust to their psychological “resilience” and wait until they’re old to become lucrative customers for antidepressant and neuroleptic medications while hoping they’ll develop ADD/ADHD (which gets them remuneratively on the polypharmacy bandwagon while they’re still prepubescent).
Again, go figure.
In fact, what there was to be found – accessible to you, too, Mr. Falkner, if you’d given enough of a genuine damn to look for yourself – tends to support my contention that the “destroys lives utterly” meme that you and your kneejerk co-religionists are so dedicated to promulgating has itself an extremely damaging effect on such patients’ recovery and long-term psychiatric prognoses.
Now, as I’d said in my earlier censored-off-the-board post addressed to your putzelry, Mr. Falkner, let’s see you come up with some citations which support the psychiatric equivalent of a death sentence (“Child abuse is a terrible crime that destroys lives utterly…“) for the victims of child abuse.
Inasmuch as you never will, may I suggest someplace where you really deserve to shove your “bigger carrots,” Mr. Falkner?
REPLY: And with that, I’m closing this thread, since it has gotten too far off topic and into realms I’m not comfortable discussing further. The issue was PSU’s procedure and their apparent internal CYA, now it’s gotten into psychoanalysis and name calling, mostly thanks to Tucci78. Be as upset as you wish, but I’m just not interested in moderating this junk anymore. -Anthony