UPDATE: Uh oh, looks like Mann will have to sue Investors Business Daily too, because they say that: It’s been the greatest fraud of all time, and Michael Mann has been at the heart of it.
UPDATE2: Climate Depot has an interesting editorial here
The bait. Popcorn futures just exploded.
From Michael E. Mann’s Facebook page:
People have been asking for my reaction to the recent response by the National Review. Here is a statement from my lawyer John B. Williams of Cozen O’Connor:
********
The response of the National Review is telling with respect to the issues it did not address. It did not address, or even acknowledge, the fact that Dr. Mann’s research has been extensively reviewed by a number of independent parties, including the National Science Foundation, with never a suggestion of any fraud or research misconduct. It did not address, or even acknowledge, the fact that Dr. Mann’s conclusions have been replicated by no fewer than twelve independent studies. It did not deny the fact that it was aware that Dr. Mann has been repeatedly exonerated of any fraudulent conduct. It did not deny the fact that it knew its allegations of fraud were false. Rather, the National Review’s defense seems to be that it did not really mean what it said last month when it accused Dr. Mann of fraud. Beyond this, the response is little more than an invective filled personal attack on Dr. Mann. And further, this attack is coupled with the transparent threat that the National Review intends to undertake burdensome and abusive litigation tactics should Dr. Mann have the temerity to attempt to defend himself in court.
*********
We intend to file a lawsuit.
===========================================
Read it on Dr. Mann’s Facebook page.
Go for it Mike, we all look forward to the enlightenment of discovery!
Tom Nelson: Do NOT miss this: Look who’s representing Michael Mann
He successfully defended R.J. Reynolds in the commercial speech case filed by the Federal Trade Commission challenging the cartoon character, Joe Camel.
I think Steyn just went to COSTCO with the NRO credit card to get the industrial strength size can of whupass he’ll be opening:
What Davie said in the second comment. Mann is posturing and bluffing. He’ll get his … head …handed to him in court.
Remember, it was the IRS that got Capone.
*hint*hint*
M. Mann will likely win.
AT THE TIME the hockey stick chart research was conducted the data used and conclusions reached are reasonable & “true” PROVIDED no action was made to manipulate the data or outcome.
The fact that the findings are wrong (or can be becuase the data used was incomplete, because other factors (known or unknown), etc. were overlooked, neglected or whatever has no real effect on the above.
All M. Mann & his attorney have to provide is the data used and the manner of analysis & presentation; if those are legitimate, at the time the research was done, Mann will have successfully defended against the accusation of fraud.
If other, better, data and other, better, analysis inidicates, or even proves conclusively, that Mann’s hockey stick graph is wrong, Mann is still innocent of “fraud.”
In the courts, words like “fraud” have signficant & particular ranges of meaning…and [for NRO] to try to argue that since subsequent findings show that Mann’s work was incorrect/misleading that work was “fraudulent” twists common-use meanings in a way not generally accepted where it now most counts, in the courts.
NRO was careful to choose inflammatory words, rejecting words saying the results have been proven incorrect, bogus, wrong, etc. Instead, NRO chose a word having well-established meanings with implications of the researcher’s bad character & nefarious intent/motive. Its latest publication, as noted by Mann’s lawyer, avoids fundamenal legal principles and is a clear attempt to re-define a key word’s meaning.
Regardless of how you’d like to see this turn out, if you are inclined to place any wagers on the outcome in the court, bet that Mann will win. NRO played this, and has continued to play this, rather ignorantly.
Go Home interesting , there was some concern that UVa where trying to pull the trick of getting Mann back on board so it deny access to the e-mails on the grounds his ’employee ‘ and so its about academic freedom . something much harder to do while he was supposed to be at Penn State. Looks like that game has busted and their will be no happy return for him , more good news for AGW sceptics. And given Mann’s personality you can image how he took that news , badly to say the least.
[snip – over the top]
Just love the smell of cordite.
Especially when it comes from Mann shooting himself in the foot.
Ye HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
His AMO reconstruction went of rails in 2000. Prior to 2000 no sign of the hockey stick in the N. Atlantic.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMO-recon.htm
Why would that be god knows, when in all other data the hockey stick takes off long before 2000
@attheok
“If Manny says, “They called me a fraud”, the judge will look at Manny and say “Are you?”. When Manny says that he is not, the defense will say from everything they’ve seen he is and the only proof Manny is not is in Manniacal’s own files, programs and datasets.”
Let’s apply this to any other situation.
The NRO publishes an article suggesting someone is a murderer. That person then sues for libel.
Is the judge going to say “Well, are you a murderer?” and then permit the NRO to conduct a search of that person’s house and property in case there’s a dead body in there somewhere? Can they trawl through that person’s bank accounts and credit card statements looking for the purchase of a murder weapon?
No of course not. That would be outright silly.
You cannot use a libel suit as a basis to go on a fishing expedition looking for evidence your accusation is true.
In the example above the only question would be “Has this person been convicted of the crime of murder?”. If the answer is “No” then a defence of substantial truth fails and the defence will need to rely on something else.
In the Mann case the NRO are going to need to show Mann’s work is considered fraudulent by his peers and/or some recognised authority – not just wrong or flawed but deliberate fraud. This is going to be very difficult since it’s simply not the case – even if McIntyre is called to testify he can only claim the original paper had a statistical flaw which was not replicated in subsequent papers.
A judge is not going to entertain conspiracy theories about how everyone working in the field of climate and dendrochronology is also a fraud and that the various investigations into climate science and Mann’s work are all incorrect or corrupt.
These fantasies of getting to rifle through Mann’s emails are simply that and none of you would entertain the idea in any other context.
It would be better to present the “peer review” process as that of a *censorship process* in this case, where the peers* are all singing from the same hymn sheet
Smokey says:
August 23, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Entropic says:
“This is political lobbying, not scientific debate. Shame on you, Mr Watts.”
Aside from wearing out your welcome here,…
——————–
Smokey, you cannot have it both ways. in England we have an old saying, “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.
If it is a legitimate political tactic in the US to accuse Mr. Mann of fraud on flimsy evidence, then I can legitimately accuse Mr.Steyn ,and perhaps Mr. Watts, of a conspiracy, on equally flimsy evidence, to suck Mr. Mann into a lawsuit.
If these are not legitimate tactics I will refrain from using them, and would expect Mr. Steyn and Mr Watts to also restrain themselves.
Commentors on Manns facebook page are clamoring for him to go for it, and offering money to help. He can pick up donations from all those determined to fight their envisioned “conspiracy of big oil”. Mann (sic) this is great!
I had ignored this issue, mostly from having not visited climate change websites much lately. I have lost interest somewhat in the subject lately, simply because CAGW is so plainly indefensible, it’s almost inconceivable to me that people still pretend we’re all going to die from catastrophic warming and that no disagreement on this topic is possible. So I went back and started reading the various links about this topic. I was somewhat surprised at one particular thing, from Bad Astronomer’s page on July 15th:
The “data and methods are solid”…. Phil Plait, an astronomer who likely has taken and taught classes in math, logic, physics, etc… said that “the data and methods are solid”…. the mind just boggles. I will be screen-capping that page, bookmarking it on the wayback machine/internet archive, and throwing it back in poor Phil Plaits face when discovery comes through. In fact, why bother? I should just send him a gift copy of “The Hockey Stick Illusion” now. The idea that any rational being could read that book and conclude the “data and methods are solid” begs for a suspension of disbelief.
More interestingly I’ve watched, almost in real-time, Phil Plait slowly abandon questioning, abandon reasoned skepticism, abandon every basic scientific tool of inquiry he probably prides himself on using in any other topic. But on Climate Change, he took a position long ago, and has refused to budge. It is a lesson. It is a warning. All humans are susceptible to self-deception and double standards. They creep in anywhere they can take root, and when challenged on them *we will* abandon all other principles to be “correct”. This tends to go doubly true for people who both consider themselves smart, and promote a public image of authority and expertise.
Phil Plait has succumbed to ego destroying his reason, and his blog is a case-study filled with data for the average social scientist.
You are exactly right:“All humans are susceptible to self-deception and double standards.”
From Entropic man on August 24, 2012 at 7:29 am:
Oh come on now, make up your mind! You said before you were in Ireland, now it’s “in England we…”
Are you English or Irish? Is it that hard for you to plausibly maintain your anonymous online persona? Or are you one of those Northern Ireland blighters who want to claim both?
Except for those pesky R2 values. Here’s what Montfort has to say on the matter in “The Hockey Stick Illusion”:
Mann’s testimony to the NAS Panel was under oath.
When the climategate emails came out, we got evidence that the Team had calculated R2 and knew the results. Eugene Wahl from email #5240:
There’s also the matter of the “censored” directory, but I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Anyone want to take a bet? I bet it never gets to court.
Hand-picked treat for Dr Mann’s lawyer – I trust you read this, or someone will bring it to your attention:
Dr Muller, (ex-?) presidential science advisor, has some choice words on Dr Mann’s conduct in there. If an expert in the field of that calibre calls Dr Mann out the way he did, there is no way that the lay public, be it individuals or journalists, are barred from picking up the ball… do watch it, it never gets boring, no matter how many times you play it.
My guess is Mann or his friends are paying his costs. I very much doubt that the taxpayers or his employer are paying to prosecute what a personal claim.
Prof Muller said this just recently about Mann/CRU,
“What they did was, I think, shameful. And it was scientific malpractice. If they were licensed scientists, they should have to lose their licence.” Richard Muller
which from a Berkley Professor, I think is more damaging tthan anything Steyn wrote (ie an opinion piece, ‘tree ring circus’) . I wonder if Mann will sue Muller, why not?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/a-fascinating-new-interview-with-prof-richard-muller-quote-on-climategate-what-they-did-was-i-think-shameful-and-it-was-scientific-malpractice/
Mann is front and center in the climegate fiasco. There are a group of scientists who will manipulate data to push the extreme AGW paradigm. An example of manipulation of data is the non science based prognostication of extreme weather events (say James Hansen’s book Storms of my Grandchildren for example). There is no statistical evidence that extreme weather events are increasing and there is no evidence that the slight non extreme CO2 could cause extreme weather events.
The scientific evidence does not support the IPCC predicted extreme AGW. The planet’s response to a change in forcing is to resist the change (negative feedback) by increasing planetary clouds in the tropics. The IPCC predicted extreme AGW requires the planet to amplify warming (positive feedback). If the planet’s response to a change in forcing is to resist the change (negative feedback) the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is less than 1C with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes where it will result in an expansion of the biosphere.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?
… At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing…
…The result is in the bottom panel of Figure 6 (“Censored”). It shows what happens when Mann’s PC algorithm is applied to the NOAMER data after removing 20 bristlecone pine series. Without these hockey stick shapes to mine for, the Mann method generates a result just like that from a conventional PC algorithm, and shows the dominant pattern is not hockey stick-shaped at all. Without the bristlecone pines the overall MBH98 results would not have a hockey stick shape, instead it would have a pronounced peak in the 15th century.
Of crucial importance here: the data for the bottom panel of Figure 6 is from a folder called CENSORED on Mann’s FTP site. He did this very experiment himself and discovered that the PCs lose their hockey stick shape when the Graybill-Idso series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick is not a global pattern, it is driven by a flawed group of US proxies that experts do not consider valid as climate indicators. But he did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of Stephen McIntyre’s laborious efforts….
….Another extension to our analysis concerned the claims of statistical significance in Mann’s papers. We found that meaningless red noise could yield hockey stick-like proxy PCs. This allowed us to generate a “Monte Carlo” benchmark for statistical significance. The idea is that if you fit a model using random numbers you can see how well they do at “explaining” the data. Then the “real world” data, if they are actually informative about the climate, have to outperform the random numbers. We calculated significance benchmarks for the hockey stick algorithm and showed that the hockey stick did not achieve statistical significance, at least in the pre-1450 segment where all the controversy is. In other words, MBH98 and MBH99 present results that are no more informative about the millennial climate history than random numbers. …
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns….
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe….
…Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, nappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity.
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/cg.pdf
Why Climategate is so distressing to scientists
by John P. Costella | December 10, 2009
The most difficult thing for a scientist in the era of Climategate is trying to explain to family and friends why it is so distressing to scientists. Most people don’t know how science really works: there are no popular television shows, movies, or books that really depict the everyday lives of real scientists; it just isn’t exciting enough. I’m not talking here about the major discoveries of science—which are well-described in documentaries, popular science series, and magazines—but rather how the process of science (often called the “scientific method”) actually works.
The best analogy that I have been able to come up with, in recent weeks, is the criminal justice system—which is (rightly or wrongly) abundantly depicted in the popular media. Everyone knows what happens if police obtain evidence by illegal means: the evidence is ruled inadmissible; and, if a case rests on that tainted evidence, it is thrown out of court. The justice system is not saying that the accused is necessarily innocent; rather, that determining the truth is impossible if evidence is not protected from tampering or fabrication.
Mann is going for damages and I suspect many times they are on a contigent fee basis. Shake down the adversary so they have high costs and settle out of court. Man has some tesy e-mails that give a reasonable many reason to believe he is hiding data and fudging numbers. So exposed e-mail trail will defeat him.
How will he quantify “harm”?
The more vocal and “celebrity” a climate scientist is, the more they’re likely to be the target of nut-jobs and attacks. Regrettable as that might be, it’s a flip side of the same coin. They are also going to be the target of very legitimate concern and criticism, as certainly is the case with Mann. The added notoriety in being a vocal activist gets one scads of research funding, and in Mann’s case, early tenure and a good job, and drives up sales of his own book “The Hockey Stick and Climate Wars”. The profits from which (if any), Mann will not trouble himself unduly over spending, no doubt.
The fact is, there are likely thousands of climate scientists working diligently away every day, who do so in complete peace. Why? They either don’t actively inject themselves into the spotlight, or are not successful in trying to. For every infamous “Hockey Stick” graph, there are (and were) dozens of other paleo reconstructions. Many of them were arguably far more rigorous and scientifically valid than Mann’s (Briffa’s in the same year, for ex.). The IPCC picked Mann’s creative efforts as their poster child. Why? Because they REALLY, REALLY liked it. It showed exactly what they wanted it to show. The more cynical might speculate that it was carefully constructed to look as it did. They liked it so much, they never bothered to check to see if it was actually good science or not.
But I think Mann is making a mistake. The NRO’s letter from their lawyer »www2.nationalreview.com/pdf/2012···tter.pdf seems to lay out their pretty firm legal standing. I hope poor Michael’s entire book profits don’t get thrown down a big legal hole (or is someone else picking up the tab?). He’s going to lose this case. And he will indeed look like a jackass while doing so.
And while he’s losing this case, the Steyn article, perhaps previously read by 2,500 or so chucklers before, will eventually be read by the curious millions. The NRO might see their subscriptions skyrocket. The NRO or Steyn don’t seem at all displeased with this turn of events. They aren’t stupid.
And with “cynic hat” firmly on, there’s every possibility that this is a calculated move to drive up controversy and increase sales of the soon to be released novella by Mann “Climate Wars 2 – This time it’s personal!”. Perhaps even a screenplay is in the works. Who knows?
tonyb says: “So in effect, in order to properly air this matter it would be useful if WUWT could set up a Michael Mann defence fund. What delicious irony that would be.”
Should that occur, newspaper coverage of the trial will be zero, having been pushed off the front pages by the concurrent new fad of porcine aerobatics.
Ken,
You must have very limited experience in libel cases. Mann has little to no chance of winning this case. You completely misstate the legal test and where the burden of proof is. You state: “In the Mann case the NRO are going to need to show Mann’s work is considered fraudulent by his peers and/or some recognised authority – not just wrong or flawed but deliberate fraud.”
This is quite wrong. On the contrary, it is Mann who has the burden to prove that NR made a provably false statement with actual malice. This is an extremely high burden. NR claims that fraudulent was used to connote: “intellectually bogus and wrong”. If the court accepts this as reasonable, then the case is DOA. The Wegman Report is all that is needed. Criticisms of the Wegman report are irrelevant given the actual malice standard. Even if the court believes that “fraud” means deliberate academic fraud, Mann has a steep uphill battle given the burden to show actual malice. NR will have significant grounds to show that they actually believed what they wrote irrespective of whether or not it is true. Even if Mann is completely in the right, if NR believed what it wrote at the time (and did not act with reckless disregard of the truth), it will win the case. Simply pointing to Mann’s comments about R^2 verification or his widely disputed use of upside down Tiljander (whether or not these criticisms are actually valid) will be a sufficient defense for NR. That actual malice standard is very difficult to surmount.
Mann has a major ego but he is no idiot and he knows all this, so why is he proceeding with the case? My guess is he is trying to generate publicity for his book which he hawks at every opportunity. Go to any of his posts or in-line comments at RealClimate and see how often he mentions his book.
I will believe it when depositions and discovery start taking place. Till then, I just assume it is a bluff.