Mann has filed suit against NRO (now the laughing begins)

Ted Swart says:
October 23, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Michael Mann already has several lawsuits on the go and has failed to follow through on any of them. How can we have any confidence that this new lawsuit will not also be moribund?
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He may be funded and using the stratagy of ‘Maximum Disruption’ that those in the Human Rights Industry use. They use Government or sympathetic foundations / individuals (read useful idiots) funds to harrass opponents or percieved opponents into submission. Granted using the courts for this rather than sudo courts (HRCs) to do this is risky but they don’t really see a down side since they are soooooo convinced in the infalibility of their argument and ultimately themselves.

“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.”
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The definition of Research Misconduct by the National Science Foundation:
” (a) Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in
proposing or performing research funded by NSF, reviewing research proposals submitted to NSF, or in reporting research results funded by NSF.
(1) Fabrication means making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
(2) Falsification means manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record…….etc”
http://www.nsf.gov/oig/resmisreg.pdf
What is scientific fraud?
“Science is self-correcting, in the sense that a falsehood, injected into the body of scientific knowledge will eventually be discovered and rejected, but that does not protect us against fraud, because injecting falsehoods into the body of science is never the purpose of those who perpetuate fraud.
“Fraud means serious misconduct with intent to deceive. Intent to deceive is the very antithesis of ethical behavior in science. When you read a scientific paper, you are free to agree or disagree with its conclusions, but you must always be confident that you can trust its account of the procedures that were used and the results produced by those procedures………Real fraud occurs only if the procedures needed to replicate the results of the work or the results themselves are in some way knowingly misrepresented.
“This view of scientific fraud differs from civil fraud as described in tort law in that in civil fraud there must be a plaintiff, who brings the case to court, and who must be able to prove that the misrepresentation was believed and led to actual damages. By contrast, if a scientist makes a serious misrepresentation in a scientific presentation, knowing that it’s false, or recklessly disregarding whether it is false, then virtually all scientists would agree, scientific fraud has been committed.
“It is unnecessary to prove that anyone in particular believed the statement or was damaged by believing it. In fact, it makes no difference at all whether the conclusions reached by the scientist are correct or not. In this stern view of scientific fraud, all that matters is whether procedures and results are reported honestly or not.”
Conduct and Misconduct in Science by Dr David Goodstein
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/conduct_art.html
Dr. David L. Goodstein, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Caltech, where he has been on the faculty for more than 35 years, also wrote:
“Among the incidents of scientific fraud that I have looked at, three motives, or risk factors, have been present. In all the cases, the perpetrators (1) were under career pressure, (2) knew, or thought they knew, what the result would be if they went to all the trouble of doing the work properly, and (3) were in a field in which individual experiments are not expected to be precisely reproducible. Simple monetary gain is seldom, if ever, a factor in scientific fraud.”
“I believe we scientists are guilty of promoting, or at least tolerating, a false popular image of ourselves. I like to call it the Myth of the Noble Scientist.
“Scientists are not disinterested truth seekers; they are more like players in an intense, winner-take-all competition for scientific prestige and the resources that follow from that prestige…. ”
http://www.aaup.org/aaup/pubsres/academe/2002/jf/feat/good.htm
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/

“To be successful he will need to show how he has been financially harmed as a result of the published material that is found to be false. “
There is a relaxed standard that applies to defamation claims that allege that the defendant has caused damage to your professional reputation and standing through publication of untruths involving sexual misconduct. Generally, you’re correct; a plaintiff would have to prove something like “I lost this contract because of his claims that I was comparable to a child molester, and I would have made $XX from that contract, so he has damaged me in the amount of $XX”. But where you claim the loss of professional reputation by being likened to a child molester, your proof of a loss amount can be much more relaxed.
At least in my state, (MN), there is a statutory claim for “defamation per se”, which goes like this:
“Some statements are so defamatory that they are considered defamation per se; and the plaintiff does not have to prove that the statements harmed his reputation. The classic examples of defamation per se are allegations of serious sexual misconduct; allegations of serious criminal misbehavior; or allegations that a person is afflicted with a loathsome disease. The historical examples of loathsome diseases are leprosy and venereal diseases.”
It’s all just subjective as heck, which means it’s one of those cases that can live and die by getting the right, or the wrong, judge. C-O’C took this case knowing that it’s sort of a crapshoot for a defendant – a few unfavorable rulings by the judge can result in a rather huge damages award, and so C-O’C might just be betting that NRO et al wil pony up some money to settle, just as a basic form of risk management.
If NRO et al has an insurer which might have to cover a defamation award – and they undoubtedly do – then the chances of such a settlement are fairly high. Insurers will almost always pay out some money to avoid the possibility of a verdict/award that approaches policy limits, especially since the insurer will usually also be paying NRO’s attorney’s fees for their defense. A quick payout of $100k that avoids the possibility of a $million-dollar award plus maybe $250k-$500k in defense fees looks attractive to insurance adjusters, who are risk-averse in the extreme.
And generally, if the insurer decides to settle, the insured defendants have to go along with it, or lose their coverage.

This is what Rand Simberg wrote: “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science”.
This is from MM’s lawyer’s complaint: “Dr. Mann’s personal reputation with the knowing false comparison to a child molester.”
The complaint alleges something Rand did not do, and did not know. First, Rand did not say or imply Mann was child molester. In fact Rand specifically said “instead of molesting children”. Then there is the “knowing false” non-sense by MM’s lawyer. Really? Do they have proof that Rand Simberg knew Mann’s Hockey Stick was unquestioned fact? No, instead they have evidence that Mann’s Hockey Stick was inaccurate, was hype, and was bad science.
Similar, MM and his lawyer does not have a case against NRO, because Mark Steyn only questioningly relayed Simberg’s commentary: “Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers …”.
As for MM’s lawyer’s complaint about hockey stick fraud – Somebody needs to educate MM’s lawyer as to the fact Mann’s Hockey Stick graph has been determined to be bogus, wrong, flawed (aka broken). Since Mann knows that his Hockey Stick has been shown to be broken; Mann has committed academic fraud by trying to maintain the illusion his Hockey Stick graph is accurate and factual.
Case dismissed.

Kent Clizbe says: “The beautiful thing is that we do! We have out-sourced fraud investigations.
All we need is a whistleblower.”
In the past yes, and possibly in the future, but not currently.
Google: whistle-blowers prosecuting spies
🙁

A judge recently decided in favor of the New Zealand weather organization based upon an appeal to authority, so don’t hold you breath.

“@ur momisugly D Böehm says:
October 23, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Craig Loehle,
Nobel prize stature has declined since Obama won it.”
You can win a race, or a boxing match, but the prize is awarded. . The correct term gives it some perspective, why did they award it to them ?

As the election cycle boosts his mainstream conservative traffic, Instapundit has put out a call for legal defense funding for this case:
“THE DISCOVERY PROCESS SHOULD BE INTERESTING: Climate researcher Michael Mann sues his critics.
I don’t know what Rand has planned in the way of a legal defense fund, but you could always hit his tipjar. I did. (Bumped).
Posted at 1:00 am by Glenn Reynolds”

Now that free speech has been disallowed, have the authors considered going into hiding, à la Salman Rushdie?