Andrew Revkin reports today on the engagement of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund created by Professor Scott Mandia, aka “Supermandia” as he sees himself in the photo below.
I was really rather surprised that Revkin covered this nonsense, particularly since the “fund” is primarily about Mandia’s adoration of Dr. Michael Mann, and his desire that his public emails from the University of Virgina not be exposed to scrutiny by the State Attorney General of Virginia to determine if he used research funds properly or not. PEER has made a number of public pronouncements defending Mann and claims that scientific integrity would be damaged if the attorney general is allowed to view those emails written on the public dime.
This probably explains why Mandia needs to wear hip waders as part of his costume.
The University of Virginia reportedly has spent upwards of a million dollars keeping those emails on double secret probation, so it would seem the old adage of “where there’s smoke there’s fire” might truly apply here.
In Revkin’s Q&A e-mail interview with Jeff Ruch (video interview), the longtime executive director of PEER, it emerges that they have some pretty odd thinking on FOI as it applies to universities:
Q: Finally, when the issue is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there’s a murky line between what is fishing and what isn’t. Many FOIA requests of green groups over the years could be cast as such. This is one reason the Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, has walked a fine line in its statements on abuse of FOIA. Should a researcher using a state university e-mail address and working under federal grants be entitled to presume his/her correspondence is “private” (as described below)?A: The central issue is whether the subject of the inquiry is public business. Generally, scientific articles submitted in the author’s name with a disclaimer that the work does not represent the institution falls outside what is official business. Our main concern is that industry-funded groups and law firms are seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists.The grants themselves and the grant reports are public but a federal grant does not transform a university lab into an executive branch agency – which is the ambit of FOIA.
By the way, as an adjunct to our whistleblower practice, PEER makes extensive use of FOIA to force disclosure of matters other wise buried in agency cubicles. A good example of one our science-based FOIA [requesets] is this.
Bishop Hill writes of this passage:
“…seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists”? Huh?
It can’t be said often enough. If you want public money you have to accept public oversight.
I agree. It seems the issue here is simple; they want the money, but they don’t want to answer any questions about how that money is used.
This is part of the “entitlement mindset” that has pervaded public employees in recent years, and it is becoming tiresome. Sunlight on the process is the only way accountability can be maintained.
Ned, et al,
Let’s keep the record straight here, folks.
The University of Virginia did not, I repeat NOT spend
one million dollars of the University’s or tax or tuition generated
dollars to keep those emails on double secret probation.
They have been using a largess of moneys donated and services provided to
them by a group of UVa alumni and outside “interested” parties.
The University of Virginia may not even know exactly who’s been keeping
the money crock pot bubbling, or what, if any non-govenment organizations
are quietly prompting the actors from behind the curtain.
Injecting the “public employee” work rights concept (and it’s variations) into
the discussion of the public’s “right to know” under FOIA is another sleight of
hand attempt to obfuscate the core issue.
If Mike Mann’s claim of “ownership” of the UVa emails and his right to keep
them “private”, there will be no way we, the public, will ever get to see what’s
behind “The Green Door !
“Green Door, What’s that Secret You’re Keeping ?”
“…Mandia needs to wear hip waders as part of his costume.”
As someone pointed out in an earlier thread, Mandia’s hip waders were transparent when he put them on.☺
I thought this site would never stoop to flogging climate porn for more hits!!!!!!!
Have you no decency.
I…can’t…get…it …out…of…my…HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many of us work in jobs where it would be against company policy to conduct non-company business with company computers. Why does that not apply to these bozos?
JJ says:
January 25, 2012 at 7:14 am
==============
Very well put.
If the “Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)” members actually used experiments and independently verifiable evidence and analysis according to the highest standards (e.g. chemistry, physics, information science, …) of the scientific method maybe climate science would have progressed much further along rather than being stuck in the various statistical ruts that lead to belief based dead ends for those who “believe in science” rather than doing science according to the scientific method.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – Ernest Rutherford
“No theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.” – Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York.
Yes, this does appear to be the Charlie Sheen defense strategy.
slow to follow says on January 25, 2012 at 9:27 am:
STF…They weren’t brown before he started wading in the sewage that is AGW!
“Our main concern is that industry-funded groups and law firms are seeking to criminalize the peer review process.”
Standard Climate Change Cabal mildly paranoid smear (and don’tcha just love the conspiratorial vagueness of “industry-funded”? Takes me back to my college days of the early ’70s) followed by wildly paranoid utter nonsense.
And some people here wonder who wrote it? Does not the Manntra “industry-funded” have a certain familiar pungent bouquet about it? Do we not see it (or something very similar) in just about everything written by a certain celebrity pseudo-scientist?
As the antics of AGW grow more desperate and pathetic you will notice a cold silence from the political users of the fraying movement. That silence will represent the caution of continuing to harvest votes from this questionable segment while not wanting to be seen as ever being associated with it in the first place. Silence is key in political behavior of parties and administrations. That silence is also golden for measuring status of the systemic conditions.
Despite all the apologetics, viz Judith Curry and others, Revkin here reveals the true intent and bent of “Post Normal” evaluation of science and its practitioners. Bottom line: if any “science-y” activity aligns with the self-selecting-Guardian-elite-approved goals, it gets special exemptions.
R.S.Brown says:
January 25, 2012 at 9:34 am
Did you actually think that you could make this claim without showing the evidence? Well, you cannot. Until you show the evidence, you have no claim. Testimony does not count as evidence in this matter.
Are you asserting that the university’s law officers have not worked on this case? They are not payed by alumni for performing their duties.
My first question is whether these PEER guys are improperly using their government computers to work on this crap. My second question is whether they are working on this while on the job.
Don’t tell me, These are the PEERs doing the PEER review for the AGW/Global climate change/ Climate disruption papers in the PEER review process
So basically, he’s as swift as a snail.
A less modest proposal – I’ve posted this in other forums, and even written to my congress-critters. No traction yet; maybe this time will be different:
An iron-clad Federal law to the effect that “No pubic policy with an economic impact greater than X% of the GDP shall be enacted except that any and all research supporting such policy shall be reviewed & certified by not less than three (3) qualified private-sector engineering firms, working independently and in isolation from each other.”
I like this because it neatly circumvents the impossible task of de-corrupting public-sector research (government, academe, NGO’s, etc), and because who could possibly object? No private sector entity would dream of building a mine, chemical plant, etc, without a similar QC effort; surely we can do no less with a trillion-dollar set of policies affecting the entire world? (and there is the related issue that licensed professionals are required for the design & construction of all private sector and most public sector projects – you need a license to catch a fish or cut someone’s nails, for God’s sake – but for a project that dwarfs every other project in human history, we’re willing to accept the recommendations of a bunch of unlicensed academics, because they’re “really smart, really good people”? This is lunacy, pardon my rant.)
Engineering firms only – Engineering is the only profession I trust anymore. Reality is forced on them almost every moment of their professional lives.
And while this less modest proposal would be an end-run around the swamp of public sector research, I’d bet that it wouldn’t take more than a half-dozen dry-but-damning engineering reports (“We could not replicate the results.”; “The statistical procedure is unknown to us & appears to function as a data-mining program.”; “The data were half-missing, and what remained were too disorganized to be of use.”), and these soi-disant scientists would slink back to their cushy tenured professorships, government labs, NGOs, and STF-up.
Goodness, two posts in one day; that’s as many in as many months for this mostly-lurker. Missed my morning coffee & still grumpy 7 hours later.
People like Mandy there remind me exactly why the climate crackpots have absolutely no scientific credibility.
Beam you up Scotty.
The A. ….”Generally, scientific articles submitted in the author’s name with a disclaimer that the work does not represent the institution falls outside what is official business….” opens up an interesting can of worms for researchers trying to make this escape clause, or universities trying to dodge the FOIA…
In fact, most universities that receive grants from ANY source take a slice off the top. In the case of my university it’s about 44cents on the dollar. That is, for every dollar coming in as a grant, the U takes $.44/1.00 (often referred to as “Indirect Cost Recover”) to cover keeping the lights on, taking out the trash, …. operating and maintaining the SERVERS… and otherwise making sure the researcher has a comfortable chair and a telephone. This “overhead” money goes into the general fund (which also buys footballs) and represents a profit to the university.
That’s what makes the university complicit, and prevents them and the researcher from making a clean disconnect.
Whether it’s absconding with grant-funded materials that end up on the researcher’s patio, an associate coach’s predilection for little boys, or perverting some scientific endeavor, the U has every motive to store those emails,,,, for their own protection.
From PEER: “By the way, as an adjunct to our whistleblower practice, PEER makes extensive use of FOIA to force disclosure of matters other wise buried in agency cubicles.”
But this is exactly what they are fighting against; the use of FOIA to force disclosure of data, methodologies, and decision processes other wise buried in UVA cubicles.
We can’t get Congress to read bills before enacting them into law.
Wow, why again should I not consider Universities to be one of the greater bastions of dishonest money hoarding in our nation?
I mean, if a university is taking 44% out of every grant, that essentially INFLATES the grant money required to do anything with expensive equipment. This grant inflation would most likely translate into a cost passed on to the federal government (the biggest grant source), which in turn is essentially another money grab by tenure-protected employees from taxpayers.
I am appalled at that percentage. I understand the need to help offset grant administration costs, but seriously… 44%? disgusting.
Don’t people create a legal defense fund when they’ve dragged to court for doing something wrong?
So what has the crazed climate communist hippies done so utterly and evilly wrong that they think they need a legal defense fund for?
Is Mandia as nuts as he appears in the photograph of him?
Where, oh where, are the men in white coats when they are needed?
““…seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists”? Huh?””
That language is clearly written by a lawyer. Message: the deciding judge has or may in the future view the emails in camera. Message: there’s a problem with the “internal editorial comments of reviewers”, the lawyer is conceding the point the judge, but argues there should be no legal grounds for disclosing the emails anyway. Or the lawyer is just guessing.
BTW, there is an issue that Penn State (and other Pennsylvania colleges) has less duty to the public than would universities in other states. It’s come up in the Sandusky matter, about how the president and VP of the school conducted themselves. I’m not saying it is anything related to climate stuff, just pointing out that various states can have different standards.
COALITION AGAINST STATISTICAL FRAUD
About Us.
The Coalition Against Statistical Fraud believes there has not been enough research into climate change in the absence of human intervention. The view that recent climate change could be due to natural causes has been suppressed by peer pressure groups within the science community. Enough is enough; it is a ridiculous proposition that recent changes are not natural simply because there is limited data to put the present changes into a longer context. We firmly believe the orthodox view of climate science unfairly skews the balance of probabilities in the absence of critical data, leading to strong conformation bias. We seek to defend the position there is not good enough evidence to attribute recent climate changes to human induced climate change, and to ensure the general public is aware of the great uncertainties and problems regarding climate change (which may never be resolved). As defenders of statistically based science, we find that the UN’s IPCC has committed statistical fraud by unfairly treating the balance of probabilities in the absence of critical data.
Since climate change (human induced or not) is a very serious issue regarding the health and well being of all sentient beings, we demand that all perpetrators of statistical fraud who have unfairly skewed the balance of probabilities in the absence of critical data be charged with crimes against humanity. Such action is required to unsure the international community and ever growing population of planet earth, who are subject to deadly climate related weather events, receive the best possible unbiased information where great ignorance exists.