(Reader Reed Coray submits this letter)
I have to admire Penn State’s chutzpah. Smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest ethical scandals in recent collegiate history, Penn State schedules an “ethics seminar” entitled “An Ethical Critique of the Climate Science Disinformation Campaign” (Tuesday, 29 November 2011, Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law, Director, Collaborative Program on Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change, Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University).
The seminar title is ambiguous in that it doesn’t define “disinformation.” Disinformation could mean either/both (a) the information put out by Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) proponents (who collectively are referred to as the “team”) or (b) the information put out by AGW skeptics (who collectively are referred to as “deniers”).
If the seminar addressed the former, then I applaud Penn State. If, however, as I believe to be the case, the seminar addressed the latter, then the phrase “You’ve got to be kidding” best characterizes my initial reaction.
Has anyone in Penn State’s “Ethics Department” read any of the Climategate 1 E‑mails (made public in late 2009) much less read any of the recently released Climategate 2 E‑mails? Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State’s faculty is one of the principal Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 E-mail correspondents. Any, and I mean any, reasonable reading of some of Dr. Mann’s Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 E-mails would cause the reader to question Dr. Mann’s ethics. Even Penn State’s administration held that opinion as shown by the fact that when the Climategate 1 E‑mails became public, Penn State held an internal investigation to determine if Dr. Mann’s behavior violated Penn State’s ethical canons. As I recall, the results of that investigation were that although Dr. Mann’s behavior might not have been above reproach, his behavior was consistent with Penn State’s high ethical standards.
When I read Penn State’s ruling, I concluded that Penn State’s definition of high ethical standards doesn’t agree with my definition. You can believe Dr. Mann’s behavior as represented by the Climategate 1 E‑mails and Penn State’s subsequent investigation into Dr. Mann’s behavior are both in accordance with the highest ethical standards; I’ll believe what I want to believe.
Fast forward to November 2011–(a) allegations of sexual misconduct during his tenure at Penn State are made against Jerry Sandusky, (b) a portion of Penn State’s response to those allegations becomes public, and (c) additional “team” E-mails (the Climategate 2 E‑mails) are made public. Items (a) and (b) have no direct bearing on the contents of Dr. Brown’s “ethics seminar”, but they do have relevance to the timing of Dr. Brown’s seminar and to Penn State’s definition and practice of “high ethical standards.” Item (c) has direct relevance to the seminar topic.
Independent of the science of global warming, in my opinion the behaviors of Dr. Mann and many other “team” members as revealed in the Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 E‑mails reeks of at best pettiness and at worst a coordinated effort to suppress in the “peer-reviewed” literature opposing scientific points of view. Refutation of opposing scientific viewpoints is a normal part of the scientific process; suppression of those viewpoints is not. Penn State may consider attempts to suppress opposing scientific viewpoints as being “highly ethical,” I and many others don’t.
As evidenced by your television ads where a chorus proudly proclaims “We are Penn State,” you are obviously proud of your university. If you want the general public to believe such pride is deserved, try holding fewer “global warming ethics seminars” and start behaving in a highly ethical manner. You may believe Dr. Mann’s Climategate 1 E-mails and Penn State’s assessment of those E‑mails are both consistent with “highly ethical principles,” but if so I believe you are in the minority.
I would characterize Penn State’s assessment of Dr. Mann’s actions as being more consistent with the principle of “keep global warming study funds flowing into Penn State” than being consistent with “highly ethical principles of science.” Bottom line, you want respect, earn it, don’t proclaim it.
Thank you for your time,
Reed Coray
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And others think similarly. For example, this letter appeared in the newspaper The Centre Daily Times today. For those who don’t know, that is the State College, PA newspaper, and Michael Mann and his peers are sure to read it.
Remove the Climategate clouds
12:01am on Nov 30, 2011
I am deeply saddened by the recent events in State College. A culture of cover-up appears to have become embedded at Penn State, and a thorough house cleaning needs to occur now.
A good place to start is for Penn State to reopen the Michael Mann Climategate scandal investigation. This phony whitewash of an investigation was conducted under recently fired Penn State President Graham Spanier’s watch. An all-Penn State group of professors exonerated one of their own while keeping their methods and deliberations secret.
The most contentious charges were prematurely dismissed in the inquiry stage of the investigation causing MIT professor Richard Lindzen to express “amazement” and to “wonder what is going on.”
Mann’s hide-the-decline emails that came to light in the Climategate scandal clearly reveal a pattern of deceit apparent to anyone outside of academia.
I ask all Penn State alumni to contact Penn State President Rod Erickson and demand an open and independent investigation of Mann.
Ramsay Barrett Marshall, Va.
The writer is a Penn State alumnus.
Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/2011/11/30/3003629/yourletters.html#ixzz1fGLO1OL3
Penn State culture of coverup:
a) Michael Mann’s hide the decline
b) the Penn State Climategate Whitewash Committee
c) the Administration’s “look the other way” treatment of Sandusky
Penn State may have become the most infamous and unethical college in the USA.
They will only take the proper action with regards to these letters when it starts to hit them in the pocket. Only when the supply of funds is squeezed will they be enlightened as to the real value of ethical behaviour.
To paraphrase a TV ad. running in the UK:-
‘Not just ethics but our ethics’.
Penn State … where ethics are taught, not practiced.
Penn State’s “Ethics” are pretty easy to define:
Definitions, according to current Penn State standards:
“Ethical” – any action, policy, or belief, which serves to maximize our current financial posture and our future profit potential.
“Unethical” – any action, policy, or belief which threatens our financial interests, either current or future.
There’s really nothing more to it than that.
If they would hide and protect a child abuser, why should they be honest about what their climate department is spewing?
SMU got the “death penalty.” So should Penn State, both in football and climate science…
Some questions for current Penn State students:
(1) How much are your tuition and fees these days?
(2) Are they continuing to go up?
(3) Do think you are getting your money’s worth, given that Penn State hires people of the caliber of Don Brown to teach “ethics”.
(4) Should you consider a different school?
The committee that explored Dr. Michael Mann’s action is akin to a bunch of wolves investigating the fox after the fox at all the chickens in the hen house. It was nothing more than the blind leading the blind. All of my contributions to Penn State have ceased, except those to THON, and will not start again until Mann is fired due to his lies and distortions. It is all about, :Hide the Decline”.
Pennsylvania is an interesting and “different” state in many ways (just ask anyone from out of state who tries to buy beer or wine in a grocery store). For example, it is the only state that does not allow local police to use radar for speed detection.
That leads to a scenario where the state Dept. of Transportation is tasked with evaluating speed detection technology without necessarily having the technical expertise to do so, which in turn leads to approval of flawed devices without even performing field testing.
Couple that with an out-dated FOI law (recently improved but still with significant loopholes) and Pennsylvanians are stuck with substandard technology.
Such an atmosphere does not paint a picture of a state government that values scientific accuracy over politics. It will be interesting to see if/when/how the state government ever steps into the controversy regarding climate science at Penn State.
It sure looks like the Board of Trustees want to save face. Whitewashing Mann in the past was an attempt to save face.
Mann wants to sue any party that threatend his reputation. He didn’t consider he is the biggest threat to his own reputation. For the good of the planet, out children, peace and compassion, the right thing to do is resign.
An open letter from EPA or DOE or NSF, accompanied by a cancellation of all grants, would make a difference. Open letters from mere humans do not exist.
Mike Mann has books to promote you know. The fact he is raking it in and has been caught threatening to dish dirt on McKintyre is obviously not unethical.
In a post-normal science like climate science, misinformation is information that is detrimental to The Cause. (just guessing.)
This open letter would have been more effective if it contained more evidence. It’s not enough to simply assert that the inquiry was a whitewash. And quoting only Lindzen for support is insufficient. Most readers will not know who he is. Fortunately the inquiry itself, in its reasons, provided adequate evidence of the whitewash. All the writer had to do was cite the following from the findings. These paragraphs are ample evidence that no real inquiry took place and further are stark and amazing evidence of the culture of coverup that seems to pervade this college. If a colleague can “obtain funding”… well he’s GOT to be good:
_____
“This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research…”
“Had Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions, which typically involve intense scrutiny from scientists who may or may not agree with his scientific conclusions…”
“Clearly, Dr. Mann’s reporting of his research has been successful and judged to be outstanding by his peers. This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside of accepted practices in his field.”
“Climate Science Disinformation Campaign”
Campaign?
campaign [kæmˈpeɪn] n
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a series of coordinated activities, such as public speaking and demonstrating, designed to achieve a social, political, or commercial goal .
It is clear from both ‘Climategate’ releases that AGW alarmists (Mann, Jones, Trenberth et al.) are “campaigning” (see email exchanges) to delete or hide climate information and punish skeptical scientists, with the goal of suppressing dissenting views. Who is “coordinating” on the skeptical side?
Penn State, with it’s indigenous pedophiles and Michale Mann waving around his hokey stick… want to preach ethics?
I think any and all State and Federal government based funding should be pulled. PERIOD.
Let them stuff that up their ethics pipe.
I think the extensive use the term Team and the references to team sports language in the Mann emails, when combined with the recent sexual misconduct by a team sports coach, the blind eye from the athletic department and university administration toward both, suggests a deep, endemic ethical problem in P. State’s culture. This open letter is overly polite but that is okay. I suspect it will be mostly ignored as Cognitive Dissonance is far to will entrenched.
“Bloke down the pub says:
December 1, 2011 at 5:42 am
They will only take the proper action with regards to these letters when it starts to hit them in the pocket. Only when the supply of funds is squeezed will they be enlightened as to the real value of ethical behaviour.”
Agree, so thats where part of the concentration of efforts needs to go, to their funders.
Who wants to be associated with a charlatan for instance?
Once such association starts to impact on their backers and funds start to be withdrawn ( and thats what we should all be aiming for- starve them) then things will start to change.
Its clearly been demonstarted that Penn state uni is operating under a different set of less than morasl/ethics to any reasonable person so who on earth ( or is that gaia? :D) would want to be supporting that and having such qualities rub off on their corporate image?
I did some “Follow the threads” on Penn State.
Never forget that a University is also a BUSINESS and the goal is to make enough money to continue to run and pay everyone great salaries. The only difference between a Non-profit Charity, a University or a regular business is the accounting tricks. They all run on money and anyone who forgets is kidding themselves. [Brian Gallagher, CEO of United Way, currently earns $1,037,140]
Here are some interesting articles that give a major clue as to what is behind Penn State’s circling the wagons behavior.
Mar 11, 2011 Corbett’s Budget targets the wrong special interests “Montgomery County Community College faces a 10 percent cut in Corbett’s proposal paired with a 50 percent cut to the Pennsylvania System of Higher Education….” http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2011/03/11/opinion/srv0000011127457.txt
From other articles, and reading between the lines, some time in the 1980’s/90’s Penn State and other Univs started hurting for money. They had to “Get with the Program” in order to get Alumni to make up the difference. No doubt this was a major reason for hiring Mann.
An interesting player is Edward R. Hintz. He was President of the “Institutional” investment firm Hintz, Holman & Heckscher the place that handled Penn States Endowment Fund. He is now president of Hintz Capital Management, a private money-management firm. (Private firms allow you to hide just WHERE the money is invested.) Hintz is vice president of the Penn State Board of Trustees and Past Chairman of the Board. He served as chair of the Grand Destiny Campaign for Penn State. See the blockquote below. From: http://www.smeal.psu.edu/about/advisory/bov/hintz.html
Bryce Jordan was the president of the Penn State from 1983 until 1990. His field is musicology. So he was replaced by a financial type savvy to bring in the money.
The fund raising efforts managed to triple the worth of the endowment fund between 1999 and 2011.
“As of June, 2010, Penn State’s endowment fund was over $1.5 billion.”
“Penn State’s Endowment Fund was valued at $1.7B as of June 2011.”
(from a google search for “Penn State endowment fund” but actual links have been wiped)
3-21-97 Endowment Grows By $205 Million In Five Years
…..
Penn State has bought the United Nations “Sustainability” aka Agenda 21 It is a big money maker and backed by the large international corporations and banks their Alumni work for. This is why we see asuch a buy in among most of the Universities.
Penn State Center for Sustainability: http://www.cfs.psu.edu/
Exporting “sustainability” world wide: http://www.cfs.psu.edu/programs/reca.html
Don’t miss this one (Smeal College is part of Penn State)
LION TRADER
“…Since the launch of the Smeal College Trading Room in the fall of 2001, the Trading Room has taken enormous strides in completing its mission to bring Wall Street closer to Penn State….” J. Randall Woolridge, Director of the Smeal College Trading Room and The Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Smeal Endowed Fellow
http://www.smeal.psu.edu/traderoom/liontrader0103.pdf
There is the Goldman, Sachs & Co. connection for anyone not thinking the Bankers/financiers are not in on this whole mess. Remember Sustainability ===> the United Nation’s Agenda 21.
<blockquote …Smeal Sustainability Council
Advisory board members lend their experience and expertise to the Sustainability Council and serve as conduits to the latest corporate developments in sustainable business practices. The board assists in guiding Smeal’s sustainability agenda by helping to match the college’s strengths with the sustainability issues that the board members encounter as they lead their corporations’ sustainability efforts…. http://www.smeal.psu.edu/sustainability-council/advisory-board-members
henrychance says:
“It sure looks like the Board of Trustees want to save face. ”
Well, here they are. These are the self serving “people” who are more interested in keeping the cash rolling while turning a blind eye to outright rape and fraud that goes on in their prestigious “university.”
http://www.psu.edu/trustees/membership.html
Why would anyone suggest cut in research funding to a prominent research university based on bad science practice by a single faculty member? Shell we disband whole NASA because of Schmidt and Hansen? Dr. Mann, however badly we think of him, didn’t do anything illegal (compare for example to Jan Hendrik Schön – the biggest fraud in physics). Mann actually did what all untalented academics do – aggressively promote their opinion. Although the number of such untalented people in academia seems to be rather high, the truth always prevails at the end and cheaters are exposed. From my long time experience with federal funding agencies – most of the time they do good job in funding valid science. They do sometimes fund uncertain science; however, without that there will be no rapid and disruptive progress. Actually most of us scientists are advocating for increased funding of uncertain science in order to speed up the progress. Then, inevitably, some number of bad scientific projects and, possibly, some fraudulent projects will be funded. However, the benefit will be greater than loss. So, let’s keep some perspective and separate great science done at Penn State from Mann’s political shenanigans. And let’s continue exposing these shenanigans without becoming aggressive, militant and unreasonable as those folks are.
bladeshearerJack Maloney says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:57 am
Climate Science Disinformation Campaign
Campaign?
—
Actually, I consider myself part of the Skeptic Insurgency :^)
Speaking of ethics….. To equate the Sandusky affair (alleged child abuse) with “Climategate”, an issue which has been thoroughly investigated already, is profoundly unethical. YOur intention is probably to generate a revival of the conversation about the stolen E-mails, thereby deflecting attention from the FACT that the research conducted by Dr Mann at al, has been accepted in the legitimate scientific community and has recently been reviewed positively by the Muller group.
How many of us can honestly say our Alma Maters are really any better? We certainly hope they are, but I suspect this don’t rock the boat, keep your mouth shut and pray the public never finds out mentality is endemic in our universities.
How many academics complained about the first ClimateGate whitewash? None, that I’m aware of. How many academics have complained about the Virginia AG’s investigation of Mann at UVA? Quite a few.
I thought we had the end of Planet of the Apes after Russia collapsed. Now we have it again with climate change and global warming. Someone needs to put those apes back in their banana trees so they can watch the horizon.