This just in. Here’s a potential bombshell for the Mann:
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Popcorn futures* continue their unprecedented climb:
UPDATE: Sunday 10/28 Mark Steyn writes an uproariously funny but at the same time stinging evisceration of Dr. Mann on his private website titled The fraudulent Nobel Laureate
This part says it all, I’d make it “Quote of the Week”, but then I don’t want to fragment this thread:
When a man sues for damage to his reputation and grossly inflates that reputation in the very court filings, that says something about his credibility.
He also links to this thoughtful essay by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
Mann’s embellishment has placed him in a situation where his claims are being countered by the Nobel organization itself.
*There are no popcorn futures markets, the graph is based on a corn future market graph, just for fun
Read Steyn’s latest here: The fraudulent Nobel Laureate
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Mark Steyn takes note of the airbrushing going on in Mike’s Nobel Trick:
A week ago, Michael Mann accused us of damaging his reputation – and seems to have made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. A week ago, he was a “Nobel prize recipient”. Now he’s not. Great work, Mike!
Dr. Judith Curry sends some advice in her week in review:
“JC message to Michael Mann: Mark Steyn is [a] formidable opponent. I suspect that this is not going to turn out well for you.”
Read more at JudithCurry.com
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FLASH: 10/26 7:30AM The Nobel committee responds to Mann’s “certificate”, says he can’t claim he won it (the Nobel prize itself).
See below. – ALSO National Review makes phone call to Nobel committee, audio and transcript below.
NOTE: This is a top sticky post for awhile since the interest is high. New stories appear below this one. UPDATE – legal complaint added, plus a new opinion piece by Chris Horner regarding claims of exoneration has been added – see below the “continue reading” line. UPDATE2: Steyn responds, see below.
UPDATE 3: Steyn responds even further, saying:
“Over the years, I’ve been sued and threatened with suits in various countries around the world but I’ve never before seen a plaintiff make such a transparently false assertion right up front in the biographical resumé.”
Details (and a photo to back up Steyn) below.
UPDATE4: CEI officially responds to the lawsuit, and Steyn mocks Mann even more with a priceless zinger, see below.
In related news, popcorn futures explode go nuclear.
More details to follow.
From Michael Mann’s Facebook page.
Lawsuit filed against The National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute 10/22/12
Today, the case of Dr. Michael E. Mann vs. The National Review and The Competitive Enterprise Institute was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Dr. Mann, a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has instituted this lawsuit against the two organizations, along with two of their authors, based upon their false and defamatory statements accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky. Dr. Mann is being represented by John B. Williams of the law firm of Cozen O’Connor in Washington, D.C. (http://www.cozen.com/attorney_detail.asp?d=1&atid=1406).
Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”
Nevertheless, the defendants assert that global warming is a “hoax,” and have accused Dr. Mann of improperly manipulating the data to reach his conclusions.
In response to these types of accusations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and seven other organizations have conducted investigations into Dr. Mann’s work, finding any and all allegations of academic fraud to be baseless. Every investigation—and every replication of Mann’s work—has concluded that his research and conclusions were properly conducted and fairly presented.
Despite their knowledge of the results of these many investigations, the defendants have nevertheless accused Dr. Mann of academic fraud and have maliciously attacked his personal reputation with the knowingly false comparison to a child molester. The conduct of the defendants is outrageous, and Dr. Mann will be seeking judgment for both compensatory and punitive damages.
Journalists interested in further information regarding the filing of this lawsuit may contact Dr. Mann’s attorney at 202-912-4848, or jbwilliams@cozen.com.
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I’m sure Mark Steyn is thrilled with the prospect of now being able to do additional commentary on this side show. I can’t wait for depositions and discovery.
UPDATES:
Here is the legal complaint: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/michael-mann-complaint.pdf
Chris Horner has this opinion piece now which explains his opinion on why Dr. Michael Mann was never fully investigated and thus never exonerated.
Mark Steyn responds with: I’ll have more to say about this when I’ve stopped laughing.
Mark Steyn writes in a further update:
Actually, it’s worse than that. I’ve just read the official indictment or whatever you call it against NR, and he makes the claim that he has been “awarded the Nobel Peace Prize” in the complaint itself (page 2, paragraph 2).
Over the years, I’ve been sued and threatened with suits in various countries around the world but I’ve never before seen a plaintiff make such a transparently false assertion right up front in the biographical resumé.
And I’ve got the photo of Dr. Mann’s award (shown from his office window) to back up what Steyn says here.
Note it says “for contributing to” not awarded to.
Be careful, don’t choke on your popcorn while laughing.
UPDATE4:
CEI has released it’s official statement on the lawsuit on their website here: http://cei.org/news-releases/climate-scientist-sues-cei
The say:
One of our attorneys, Bruce D. Brown of Baker Hostetler, expertly laid out the legal arguments against Mann’s defamation claim. In short, Dr. Mann is a public figure, and under libel law he would need to meet an exceedingly high standard to prevail. Given the support that Simberg’s criticisms rest on, that standard simply can’t be met. As for Simberg’s Sandusky metaphor, it was purely that—a metaphor.
They are also inviting readers to comment on the CEI Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CompetitiveEnterpriseInstitute/posts/428205930566869
Meanwhile, Mark Steyn whips out an example of his rapier wit over Mann’s “Nobel Prize” claims (see photo above) writing:
On the one hand, Michael Mann’s own web page:
He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC authors in 2007.
On the other, the Nobel committee:
Only persons named explicitly in the citation may claim to share a Nobel Prize.
So we’re being sued for loss of reputation by a fake Nobel laureate. Hilarious.
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FLASH The Nobel committee responds to Mann’s “certificate” From Tom Richard at Climate Change Dispatch and at The Examiner
I contacted the The Norwegian Nobel Institute to find out if Mann was indeed a Nobel Laureate, winner, etc…
…snip…
Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, or The Norwegian Nobel Institute emailed me back with the following:
1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.
(NOTE: on point 3, another example here (PDF) suggests that the IPCC added that text, not Mann – Anthony)
Lundestad goes on to say that, “Unfortunately we often experience that members of organizations that have indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize issue various forms of personal diplomas to indicate that they personally have received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have not.”
Full story at Climate Change Dispatch and at The Examiner
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ALSO: From NRO’s “The Corner” a call to the Nobel committee by Charles C. W. Cooke:
TRANSCRIPT
Cooke: Hello there, do you speak English?
Nobel Committee: Yes, can I help you?
Cooke: I’m a writer. I’m wondering if I could ask you about previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize?
Nobel Committee: Oh, could you speak a little bit louder. It’s difficult for me to hear.
Cooke: Sorry. I’m trying to look for some information about previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobel Committee: Which one?
Cooke: I was wondering, has Dr. Michael Mann ever won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Nobel Committee: No, no. He has never won the Nobel prize.
Cooke: He’s never won it?
Nobel Committee: No.
Cooke: Oh, it says on his-
Nobel Committee: The organization won it. It’s not a personal prize to people belonging to an organization.
Cooke: Okay. So if I were to write that he’d won it, that would be incorrect?
Nobel Committee: That is incorrect, yes. Is it you that sent me an email today? I got an e-mail from our Stockholm office regarding Michael Mann.
Cooke: Oh. No, I didn’t send you an e-mail.
Nobel Committee: Oh. So what’s your name?
Cooke: My name is Charles Cooke.
Nobel Committee: And you work for?
Cooke: I write for National Review.
Nobel Committee: Okay, because I’ve got something from Boston and NY Mental Examiner that asked about the same thing.
Cooke: Oh, okay. Well maybe this is a big question. Okay, but he hasn’t won it. That is the answer.
Nobel Committee: No, he has not won it at all.
Cooke: Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Nobel Committee: Thank you. You’re welcome. Bye bye.
Max Hugoson says:
October 23, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Actually, Max, I think he’s suing Steyn for the quote about the “fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph.” Which is silly and may be dismissed if the right judge gets the case.
The comparison of Mann to Sandusky was Simberg’s creation. Both he and Steyn were actually more interested in attacking Penn State than Mann.
Regarding Mann’s “Facebook Page” statement:
“In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”
“He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”? Not true according to the list of prizes winners at the Noble Peace Prize web site for 2007. See here: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/#
While it is true that VP Al Gore was named as an individual and it is also true that “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” is named as an organization. Dr. Mann certainly was not named as a prize winner. Indeed I can’t find his name listed anywhere site. Even a search of his name came up empty. It is presumptuous for Mann to promote himself as a “Noble Prize Winner” on the basis of mere association with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In my personal view this tendency towards arrogant self aggrandizement, at the expense of the whole-truth, is consistent with that of a deeply troubled sociopath. Mann has ruined his own reputation and has no one to blame but himself.
Regards,
Kforestcat
Sadly, Mann has found the perfect judge for someone in his position:
http://www.therobingroom.com/dc/JudgeDetail.aspx?ID=3789
(As you review the detailed ratings charts, keep in mind that a “1” generally means “awful.”)
Ian H,
“It really is nothing more than thinly disguised combat by wallet. The litigants spend money on expensive lawyers until somebody surrenders or goes bankrupt.”
A good analogy would be a game of no limit poker, where your “pot” is all your worldly assets.
LOL – I got booted from his page for saying Joe Biden has a three letter word for him: discovery.
Lordy.
Read the comments about the assigned judge. This is truly going to be world-class entertainment.
BUT – if she keeps the case, it also means that rational discussions about how the case will likely be structured, about what the law is on any given aspect of the case, and about any empirically-informed musings on how it will turn out, will have no connection to what really happens.
It will simply be a lottery.
Sorry, forgot to add the comments to my last entry:
http://mokellyreport.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/sterling-reviews-of-judge-natalia-combs-green/
I’m sure I’ve seen it pointed out before but I love the irony of the fact that the “hockey stick” is in actual fact an “ice hockey stick”.
Showdown.
Regarding the replications of his work. These were done by other team members and either relied upon Mann’s flawed statistical analysis, his flawed proxies, or both. There was a long thread on this over a year ago either here or at CA. In recent years lots of proxy reconstructions that show no hockey stick have been published.
I would think that some of Mann’s colleagues/co-authors wouldn’t be too happy about having to defend Mann’s work under oath.
Cozen O’Connor is almost as good as Dewy Cheatham and Howe
Three thoughts:
1 – I wonder how Tim Ball is going with his “Penn state”/”state pen” case against Mann.
2 – If information obtained during discovery is confidential until raised in court. if so it might mean that a lot that’s learned but not used in court will remain out of public view.
3 – Can Mann seek to constrain the case so that it deals only with specific issues and not, for example, with Climategate matters?
Ian H wrote:
Thanks for [indirectly] answering my question.
The optimism being expressed here suggests that few posters have been involved in litigation.
lesson number 3
Never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake.
lesson number 2
your best enemy is the one who is going to help you win the war
“Every investigation—and every replication of Mann’s work—has concluded that his research and conclusions were properly conducted and fairly presented.”
This is insane. My own work showed that there are issues with tree ring reconstructions:
Loehle, C. 2009. A Mathematical Analysis of the Divergence Problem in Dendroclimatology. Climatic Change 94:233-245. Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Data. Energy & Environment 18:1049-1058. Loehle, C. and Hu McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Data. Energy & Environment 19:93-100.
Mann and friends made sure contrary work did not get published. Soon & Baliunas for example published showing the MWP existed and the editor for the journal got fired and they tried to get them fired as well. In his book, only papers confirming his work exist and he never admits any mistake that McIntyre uncovered.
And what are these “seven other” investigations?
By the way, Stein did not compare Mann to a child molester, he made the point that if Penn State was willing to cover up Sandusky why should we expect them to do a diligent investigation of Mann? And that is not at all what Mann says he said. His characterization of what Stein said is itself libelous.
Live by the suit. Die by the suit. He will be destroyed in depositions. All the stuff he and the others were trying to hide by not complying with FOIA requests will have to come out in discovery. Get ready for the hockey stick, Michael.
According to Mann, a study is only science if it comes to the same conclusion as his own work, so by definition all subsequent work has “replicated” his results, since if it did not it does not exist. Thus multiple reconstructions that come to different conclusions were left out of IPCC reports, and in Mann’s book he claims that “NO studies” show a warmer MWP, when I have personally a whole file drawer full of papers indicating a warm MWP.
And are we to assume he will claim that the WMO cover graphic with the Mann-designed “hide the decline” trick is not likely to cause a reasonable person to cry fraud? Really?
“ABSTRACT: In the routine practice of scientific research, there are many types of misrepresentation and bias which could be considered dubious. However, only a few narrowly defined behaviours are singled out and castigated as scientific fraud. A narrow definition of scientific fraud is convenient to the groups in society — scientific elites, and powerful government and corporate interests — that have the dominant influence on priorities in science……
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/92prom.html
“Abstract: A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%)…..
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028
“The authors of the study said this could be due to the increased scrutiny placed on the research in these journals and the greater uncertainty associated with the most cutting-edge research. “Alternatively, the disproportionately high payoffs to scientists for publication in prestigious venues can be an incentive to perform work with excessive haste or to engage in unethical practices,” they wrote in PNAS.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/01/tenfold-increase-science-paper-retracted-fraud
“QUESTION 1: What are the main problems with the existing system for publishing scientific research?
“Michael Eisen: Everything.
The question should be: “What isn’t a problem with the existing system of scientific publishing?” Every major aspect of the traditional journal system scientists use to communicate with each other was developed for a world in which information was disseminated in printed journals. And every single major aspect of this system—the format of papers, the structure of peer review, the subscription-based business model, and even the very existence of journals—has been rendered obsolete by the rise of the Internet.
“Because of our continued unwillingness as a community to face up to the challenge of reforming scientific communication, we are left with a system that is slow, capricious, and intrusive; produces papers in an archaic format that limits the conveyance of data and ideas; costs an obscene amount of money; and provides access to a small fraction of the people who are interested in and could benefit from the most up-to-date scientific discoveries.”
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32378/title/Whither-Science-Publishing-/
How will they correlate Mann’s reputation to the NRO blog post? Will Mann get up on the stand with an upside-down hockey stick graph of his reputation?
Mann will likely claim that he is immune from discovery because of academic freedom.
Since I was an official reviewer for 2 IPCC reports, I also am a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and I put that on the shelf next to a prize I got in a Cracker Jack box.
Craig Loehle says:
October 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm
”By the way, Stein did not compare Mann to a child molester, he made the point that if Penn State was willing to cover up Sandusky why should we expect them to do a diligent investigation of Mann? And that is not at all what Mann says he said. His characterization of what Stein said is itself libelous.”
that was how I read it too – but I presume Americans are more sensitive to such statements!
So, there’s no connection here between Michael Mann and Jimmy Savile and no one fiddled with anyone else’s ‘principal components’, right?
But somehow I still don’t think al beeb will report on it.
richardscourtney:
A sense of humour is the one weapon we have, which they neither possess nor can handle.
Yes, Mann is a world-class prat but unfortunately, he and his ilk have managed to do damage to the industrial infrastracture of many countries, well beyond anything the Few prevented the Luftwaffe doing.
Pointman
What a sophomoric announcement from crybaby Mann. Nice start with a trite and breathless strawman-filled trope. I’m guessing the writer flunked college English. Can’t Soros afford a writer, Mike?
Mark Steyn is easily one of the best writers in the world. But he’s been hidden in plain sight by the boring, failing, bankrupt government-media complex. Imagine what would happen to CNN if they just added one traditionalist, like Steyn, to argue the other side?
We must understand this: Mann has no leg to stand on, except for that 85% of the media will be giving him free propaganda. He’s going on that… that’s why this is happening.
Mann is a fact molester and he’s been getting away with it for years. Time for some red-faced pious and self-destruction.