Please Turn Around, Dr. Gundersen, You’re Blowing Your One Chance!
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I was ruminating about Peter Gleick, and the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity, when I came across a very apropos quote. This is from another arena of life entirely, that of professional baseball. No one was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. Voters seem to have been turned off by the steroid scandals, which involved some of the players eligible this year. The pitcher Curt Shilling was what you might term “collateral damage”—he had nothing to do with steroids, was always clean, and yet he didn’t get in to the Hall of Fame this year. Shilling has his supporters and detractors, but yesterday he made one of the most mature comments I could ever imagine. I can only hope that climate science holds players as honest and responsible about their own profession as is Curt Schilling. He said:
“If there was ever a ballot and a year to make a statement about what we didn’t do as players — which is we didn’t actively push to get the game clean — this is it.”
“Perception in our world is absolutely reality. Everybody is linked to it. You either are a suspected user or you’re somebody who didn’t actively do anything to stop it. You’re one or the other if you were a player in this generation.
“Unfortunately I fall into the category of one of the players that didn’t do anything to stop it. As a player rep and a member of the association, we had the ability to do it and we looked the other way, just like the media did, just like the ownership did, just like the fans did. And now this is part of the price that we’re paying.”
In the same way that selective blindness happened in baseball regarding steroid use, mainstream climate scientists and the AGW supporting blogosphere and the media and the journals and in the latest example, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), all of them have “looked the other way” regarding such things as the scientific malfeasance of the Climategate folks, and more recently the actions of Dr. Peter Gleick. Let me briefly review the bidding of the Gleick saga.
Dr. Peter Gleick was the Chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task Force on Ethics and Integrity in AGU Scientific Activities. As he tells the tale, he received a document from an anonymous sender purporting to come originally from the Heartland Institute. He wanted to verify the accuracy of the document. So far, so good. At that point, it seems like a man with integrity would go to Joe Bast at Heartland and say “Hey, Joe, I got this crazy letter. Is any of this true?”. If Peter was rebuffed there, he could consider other options.
Not Peter. Instead of taking the straight path, he went corkscrew. He called up some poor hapless secretary at the Heartland Institute, and impersonated a Company Director in order to obtain confidential company Board of Directors briefing papers. There’s a technical name for that kind of action. It’s called “wire fraud”.
Now, if Peter’s tale were true, about wanting to verify the accuracy of the document he’d received, you’d think he’d look at the actual papers he obtained through wire fraud. Then he’d compare the authentic Board briefing papers to the document he’d received, and then throw the document he’d received in the trash.
Why? Because it was an obvious forgery. Both the style and the content, including critical details, differ radically from the other documents he had, documents he knew were authentic for a simple reason—because he had stolen them himself.
Once he saw that the document he’d received was fraudulent, you’d think Peter would have stopped there and destroyed everything. But not our Chair of Scientific Integrity. Corkscrew wins again. Instead of taking it all straight to the shredder, he took the document, mixed it in with the authentic documents, and secretly and anonymously emailed them all to various recipients without any mention that one of them was fraudulent.
Now, I don’t know if there’s a crime in the latter part. Stealing secret business documents is one crime. Is revealing them to the public a second crime, particularly when there is one known forgery added to the bunch? Distribution of a forged document? I don’t know about crime, but I do know … that’s slime.
Fast forward a few months. After being exposed and having no other way out, Peter confessed to all except forging the initial document, and he may be right. It doesn’t matter. None of it justifies wire fraud and an attempt at scurrilously damaging Heartland’s reputation by his circulation of a very deliberately deceptive package of documents including a known forgery.
So Dr. Gleick resigned from the Task Force. He’d demonstrated he didn’t have enough integrity to be Chair of the AGU group charged with considering and encouraging Scientific Integrity. He was replaced as Chair, presumably by the person among the other Task Force members with the next highest amount of integrity. This was a woman named Dr. Linda Gundersen.
In a post I wrote almost a year ago, called “An Open Letter to Dr. Linda Gundersen“, I congratulated Dr. Gunderson on what I saw as a difficult post to fill. I pointed out the very public nature of her promotion, due to the precipitous and most theatrical pratfall of her predecessor, Dr. Peter Gleick. I also noted that she had a huge opportunity, which was to start by having the task force consider the lack of scientific integrity of her predecessor.
You have the opportunity to actually take a principled stand here, Dr. Gundersen, and I cannot overemphasize the importance of you doing so. Dr. Gleick’s kind of unethical skullduggery in the name of science has ruined the reputation of the entire field of climate science. The rot of “noble cause corruption” is well advanced in the field, and it will not stop until people just like you quit looking the other way and pretending it doesn’t exist. I had hoped that some kind of repercussions for scientific malfeasance would be one of the outcomes of Climategate, but people just ignored that part. This one you can’t ignore.
Well, I suppose you can ignore it, humans are amazing, anyone can ignore even an elephant in the room … but if you do ignore it, in the future please don’t ever expect your opinions on scientific integrity to be given even the slightest weight. The world is already watching your actions, not your words, and you can be assured that those actions will be carefully examined. If you let this chance for meaningful action slip away, no one out here in the real world will ever again believe a word you say on the subject of integrity.
I cannot urge you in strong enough terms. Do not miss the boat on this one. The credibility of your panel is already irrevocably damaged by the witless choice of your first chair. The move is yours to make or not, the opportunity is there to take the scientific high ground. You will be judged on whether you and the Task Force have the scientific integrity to take action regarding Dr. Gleick, or whether you just take the UN route and issue a string of “strongly worded resolutions” bemoaning the general situation.
Now, lest you think that my claim that “the world is already watching” in the quote above is mere hyperbole, I suggest you google ‘Dr. Linda Gundersen’, no need for quotes. Note that the most highly ranked link, first on the Google list, is my post “An Open Letter to Dr. Linda Gundersen” here on WUWT.
I closed that post by saying:
I am hoping for action on this, but sadly, I have been in this game long enough to not expect scientific integrity, even from scientists who sit on scientific integrity task forces … and I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
In any case, my warmest and best wishes to you, Dr. Gundersen. I do not envy you, as you have a very difficult task ahead. I wish you every success in your work.
w.
In short, I did what I could to let her know that I wished her success, that her actions in this regard wouldn’t go unnoticed, and to encourage her to take the path of scientific integrity and at a minimum to perform and make public a non-adversarial inquiry into, and the lessons learned from, the downfall of her predecessor.
I thought that it was critical to deal with Glieck’s actions because they perfectly exemplify a huge problem in climate science, called “noble cause corruption. This occurs when someone is so convinced of the correctness and the importance and the nobility of their cause that they start shading the numbers, just a little at first, not much, just highlighting … and in the later stages of noble cause corruption they may well find themselves manufacturing the numbers wholesale, without any idea how they got to that point. It’s not your usual kind of corruption, the kind for money or fame. Instead, it’s corruption in the service of a “noble cause”, as they tell themselves. The problem, of course, is that noble cause corruption is still … well … corruption. Lethal and antithetical to science.
Climategate revealed that beyond fudging the numbers, some climate scientists were so convinced that they were saving the earth that they were willing to secretly commit a variety of highly unethical and even illegal acts in the furtherance of their noble cause. That’s the end result of noble cause corruption that starts with shading a few numbers, or as I sometimes call it as regards climate science, “Nobel cause corruption”.
Now, a year later, I find that my pessimism regarding Dr. Gundersen was wholly justified. Steve McIntyre went to the latest AGU meeting. He discusses some of what went on in a post worth reading, entitled “AGU Honors Gleick“. Dr. Gundersen, it seems, has done absolutely nothing regarding l’affaire Gleick. Well, not quite nothing. Sounds like she did a very credible impersonation of Pontius Pilate, wherein she washed her hands of the whole business, says it’s nothing to do with AGU in the slightest. No reprimand, no UN-style “strongly worded letter”, no commentary. No discussion of the issues exposed by the affair, no interview with the currently un-indicted Dr. Gleick to try to clear the waters, not what Steve McIntyre calls the scientific equivalent of a “one-game-suspension”, not even some vague, plain vanilla statement deploring the kind of actions without mentioning any names. Nothing.
Now that would be bad enough. But it gets worse. The AGU leadership honored Gleick by inviting him to make a presentation! That’s double-plus ungood, as the man said.
It’s bad enough that the AGU leadership did not censure him, or even discuss his actions in the abstract to see what lessons might be learned.
It is a whole other message, however, to invite him to speak. That is an honor. That sends that message that the AGU understands poor Dr. Peter. It says he took one for the team, and that wire fraud in the defense of a noble cause is no big thing … So much for the scientific integrity of the AGU, in this case at least they just showed they have none at all.
Finally, remember, this is not just some ordinary member of AGU that has done something totally lacking in integrity. It’s not even just an AGU official who stands self-condemned of a huge ethical lapse. Heck, it’s not even just a member of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity being found with his hand in the cookie jar. This is the Chair of the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity, caught red-handed and self-confessed … and Dr. Gundersen says this has nothing to do with the AGU Task Force on Scientific Integrity or the AGU?
Really?
In any case, Dr. Linda Gunderson, in a move that I truly don’t understand, has now taken one for the team as well. She has stood as the steadfast bulwark against the malevolent creeping scourge of scientific integrity, by refusing to even consider the process whereby she got the job that she holds …
Ah, well. I suppose it must have earned her, if not the respect, at least the gratitude of her colleagues. They must have been afraid for a minute that she might do something. Glad that’s straight. Her name must serve as a beacon of hope among wire fraudsters everywhere, at least the ones with integrity. I just hope that keeps her warm at midnight, when she considers the cold wind of history whistling through the shredded remains of her own reputation …
Finally, it’s not too late, she could pull out of the nose dive. Dr. Linda could still do the right thing. She could still open a discussion about noble cause corruption, and what it has done to the field of climate science. She could still talk about the increase in scientific fraud, and what that means to science itself.
Heck, every good theoretical paper needs an example. So she could even talk about how noble cause corruption and blind fanaticism blighted first the Climategate unindicted co-conspirators, then Dr. Peter’s career, then Dr. Linda’s career, and eventually has cast a shadow over the AGU itself …
Alternatively, she could write up a piece and publish it here on WUWT, I’m certain Anthony would have no objections. She could tell us all just why she has done nothing regarding Dr. Gleick’s actions. That’s what I’d do in her shoes. Well, no, actually if I were in her shoes, I’d open a non-adversarial inquiry, to see what we could all learn from Dr. Peter’s fall. But my point is, the game’s not over yet, she could pull through, and I would be very happy to see her do so.
Or not. She could do nothing. But it’s not just her. The problem is the silence of all the rest of the lambs. As Curt Schilling said,
You either are a suspected user or you’re somebody who didn’t actively do anything to stop it. You’re one or the other if you were a player in this generation.
Dear friends, science is in trouble. Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise. If the AGU is unwilling to stop honoring those who actively promote forged documents, then why should anyone place any credence any of them? People are becoming disillusioned, losing faith and trust in science because of the unethical, unscientific, immoral, and sometimes even illegal actions of people like Dr. Gleick and the Climategate crowd … and Dr. Linda Gundersen and the AGU leadership seem to have put themselves firmly in the camp that Curt Schilling called those who “didn’t actively do anything to stop it”.
I’m not made that way. Now I admit, I can’t do much, any more than many of us can … but I will not go gentle into that good night, and I encourage you not to either. This is me raging against the dying of the scientific light. We all need, in Curt’s words, to “actively push to get the game clean.”
w.
APPENDIX: The actual charge of the AGU Task Force, from here:
Task Force on Ethics and Integrity in AGU Scientific Activities
Charge
The Task force will:
• Review the current state of AGU’s scientific ethical standards in the geophysical sciences and those of other related professional/scholarly societies.
• Based on this knowledge update AGU’s protocols and procedures for addressing violations of its ethical principles
• As appropriate revise and augment AGU’s current ethical principles and code of conduct for AGU meetings, publications and for interactions between scientists with their professional colleagues and the public.
• Propose sanctions for those who violate AGU’s ethical principles.
• Consider whether AGU should adopt a statement of ethical principles as a condition of membership or for participation in certain activities of the Union. If so, develop a recommendation on how the principles would be applied to AGU members and or participants in AGU activities.
Our government is too busy chasing down 11-year old girls doing good deeds and, thus, have neither time nor interest in the behavior of those climate folks that are trying to save the whole world. See:
http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/161065/158/Woodpecker-Saving-Daughter-Costs-Mom-500
However, the Virginia State Police seem a little embarrassed – bless their little hearts.
Part of the report says:
“ Virginia State Police just released the following statement:
“We have confirmed that the US Fish and Wildlife agent requested our presence when they served their federal summons. The trooper stood on the porch and said nothing. We had nothing to do with the charge.””
Willis Eschenbach says: “Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise.”
The number of retractions right now is 100 papers per million papers published. That is, I haf to read 10,000 papers before I hit one that might be retracted. (If only business people and politicians were as honest.) Also, the majority of papers retracted are for mistakes, not some experimental malfeasance. If you are suggesting that, like athletes doping, scientists that are politically active might be cheats, then based on the number of papers retracted, it seems you are 99.99% incorrect.
Schroedinger says:
January 10, 2013 at 7:49 am
Did I miss you criticizing Rawls for an even worse transgression — leaking a document he’d signed an oath not to? Or are you just being a hypocrite?
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The public PAID for that document and the IPCC PROMISED Transparency. Apples and Oranges.
Also Gleick did his dirty with malice in mind while Rawls was protecting the general public from a bunch of scammers trying to hide the scientific data so they could spin it with the express purpose of making MORE money off the poor. In other words he was a “Whistle Blower”
Gail Combs says:
> They forget that ultimately we hold the purse strings.
With all respect Gail, they don’t forget. They know full well we can only elect someone to designate a bursar of his choice to hold the strings. That is quite different from being ultimately the ones in charge. Try to withhold your support from them — you’ll be immediately changed with tax evasion.
The only solution I see is for us all to serve our social duties on rotation, like the citizens of the ancient Greek towns did. You’re drafted to serve as a bursar for the next four years; I am drafted to supervise public works, and Anthony becomes a tax collector. Or goes to fight the Persians. The idea sounds ridiculous, but the ancient Greek democracy evolved to be that way under strong selective pressures. The towns afflicted with corruption fell to the next town over the hill or to the Persians. The lack of competence was seen as a lesser problem than a person’s innate ability to become corrupt, and they were aware that power corrupts, and even knew how quickly, so the rotation terms were adjusted accordingly. I can imagine how that was not fun, and how slowly things were moving with everybody learning on the job, only to be expelled from it in a few years, but apparently that way of running things made them more resilient to external attacks and prevented them from forming a political class in their society.
So when people mention that we have inherited our political system from the Greeks, I want to point out that we’ve only inherited some of the features but not the system itself. We have rotation, but it is not limited to a single term; we don’t have a universal mandatory participation of citizenry in the affairs of the state, and worst of all, there is no accountability.
Gail Combs says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:58 am
It didn’t come across in my posting so it looks like I missed the point that “Academia SHOULD be a noble profession”. Agree it should be. It would be nice if it was. I just think it’s just never going to happen. It is what it is. There’s a culture there that isn’t going to change by one or two high profile incidents. That culture is deep, arguably established in the monestaries of the Dark Ages where the illuminati held the knowledge, transcribed texts in Latin, and kept the people stupid and the secrets for themelves, and it continues to this day.
While we can all scratch our heads in disbelief over a person like Gleick and the people that cover it up, that’s the way they operate and I don’t think there’s a damn thing that can be done about it.
I see that ‘trafamadore’ is defending Michael Mann’s hokey stick, and the upside-down Tiljander proxy he used in Mann08. That isn’t the way to get credibility.
@Schroedinger, 7:49 am
Did I miss you criticizing Rawls for an even worse transgression [than Peter Gleick’s, by implication]
For argument’s sake, let’s assume Rawls did a wrong by leaking the IPCC draft documents. In what ways were those wrongs worse than Peter Gleick’s?
Rawls didn’t leak them anonymously.
Rawls might have broken a contract, but he did not commit wire fraud.
Rawls did not traffic in fraudulent or forged documents, much less create them.
Do you measure “worse” in units of megabytes? Poppycock!
Let us return to the issue of the contract of confidentiality and the main point of Willis’s superb essay:
The only honorable way out of such as situation is to break confidentiality. The best course of action is to commit a wrong; doing nothing to stop it is morally worse.
Finally, there is the common law principle of Contra proferentem where contract disputes are resolved against the party that creates the ambiguity or inconsistency.
Clearly, the IPCC is being inconsistent. It professes to the world public its total transparency and is “available for scrutiny at every stage”, but then demands confidentiality of Rawls and other participants at those same stages. It creates an inconsistency that should void a contract of confidentiality. Under those duplicitous circumstances, any person will be forced to choose one of three paths:
1. to participate in the duplicity,
2. to not do anything actively to stop it, or
3. to act to stop it.
Rawls chose well.
Step away from the keyboard and give it a rest. Give your opinions 20 years to grow up some more.
O Olson says: @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 7:58 am
….It would seem to me that you may have missed the point that the media don’t need to be controlled by anyone because nearly all of them ARE socialists and Democrats, and they no longer think it is their job to report the news but rather to actually create it.
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AAHHH, but WHY in the USA is the media ‘socialists and Democrats’??? Think about it…. The media made money through advertising. Displease your advertisers and you are in a world of hurt.
Here is an example. Farm Radio Broadcaster Gets the Boot After Exposing Monsanto’s ‘Goon Squads’: Derry Brownfield was a veteran of farm radio reports, until he went after Big Ag and its Mafia.
This means the Bankers and corporate CEO are in agreement with the media. Here is an example:
So explain to me why, if NBC is Owned by GE and Financed by J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch and Citi, it is run by ‘socialists and Democrats’ Oh, and while you are at it try and explain why GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, is Obama’s Jobs Czar.
Jeff Immelt has made it very plain his loyalties are not with the USA.
You really have to pull aside the curtain to see who is actually in charge.
geran said @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 7:53 am
It is a great post; up there with W’s best. It’s also a never-ending battle as any historian can tell you. There is no past golden age as some here seem to believe. Just the human condition…
Schroedinger says:
January 10, 2013 at 7:49 am
Why? Did Rawls take steroids too?
I suppose if I knew who Rawls was, or if I cared who Rawls was, that could possibly make some difference … but what do I have to do with a man I know nothing of?
I love people who want to play the “tu quoque” game, often combined as in this case with a veiled accusation of hypocrisy. It always starts out with this false dichotomy BS along the lines of “Did I miss you criticizing Idi Amin for an even worse transgression—putting a head in his freezer? Or are you just being a hypocrite?”
Actually, in life there are usually more than two possibilities …
Mr. Shroedinger, somewhere, somebody named Rawls obviously did something you think is significant. But tell me … what does that have to do with me?
Seriously. Even if Rawls locked infants in the orphanage and burned it down, why is it critical that I add my voice to the clamor of accusations? I know nothing of him. How will that help?
So I’m sorry, but if Mr. Rawls truly needs chastisement and criticism, I fear you’ll have to man up, step up to the plate, and provide the necessary ration of odium and correction yourself, ’cause I never heard of him …
w.
PS—Don’t come back to tell me I should have heard of Rawls. I haven’t heard of him. Don’t come back to tell me I should google him. I don’t care about him, at least not at the moment. I’m talking about Glieck and baseball.
“Benefit of science for a sustainable future” and there is the twist. You could have “benefit of science” and leave well-enough alone but they bend the knee and bow the head by adding “for a sustainable future” Meaningless boilerplate to most in the Miss Universe “World peace” joke kinda way. A sure sign of who’s driving the agenda to those engaged. The Pacific Institute of which Glieck is one of the Founders and after a short hiatus again the Director receives lots of funding from governmental agencies. Surely we have been served a nice slow under-hand pitch across the plate to hit. What the AGU and Pacific Institute have done in this matter an outrage and an opportunity.
MikeN says:
January 10, 2013 at 8:11 am
I can’t say you are wrong on any of that. Everyone wuz robbed … it’s just that Schilling was unusually mature and eloquent about it.
w.
temp says: @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 8:14 am
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Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress
I suggest you read A PRIMER ON MONEY COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WRIGHT PATMAN Chairman 1964
(EVERYONE should read that report.)
Temp, the key passage:
Tom G(ologist)
January 10, 2013 at 6:45 am
###
“E” is not taught in school. Only a Marxists wet dream fantasy of “E” is taught, carefully crafted to support the agenda. Marxists pervert everything they touch and that includes ALL of the sciences.
D Böehm Stealey says:”trafamadore is defending Michael Mann’s hokey stick, and the upside-down Tiljander proxy he used in Mann08. That isn’t the way to get credibility.”
Am I? Or am I defending the many papers, with various methods and combinations of records, that look so similar to the original Mann results. And the fact that the few papers challenging him also had their fair share of problems. Problems are common in edgy science, where the methods are being made up as they go. The jury in science is interested in whether findings can be replicated using different data/methods, and it seems that that Mann’s results have largely passed that test.
Even Mendel’s results with peas had problems.
trafamadore says:
“Am I?”
You are.
MBH98/99 and Mann08 have been thoroughly deconstructed. I could go into detail, but you can learn on your own at Climate Audit. Click on the right sidebar, on CA, then do a search. You could learn a lot, if you wanted.
As for the totally corrupt climate peer reviewed journal system, read the Climategate emails, and A.W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion [available on the WUWT sidebar]. Speaking from ignorance about the journal system does not enhance credibility.
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:50 am
Thanks, trafamadore.
First, clearly wherever you found those numbers, I would suspect they weren’t measured regarding climate science. I can’t recall even one climate science paper ever being retracted. Instead, what we see is that Steig gets the cover of Nature, and rather than being retracted, the correction is buried on p. 83 …
Second, a paper is only retracted when the scientist either is forced, or has the honesty and the balls to admit he’s wrong, and retracts the paper. It’s often done under some implied duress. So we’d expect the rate to be low. The question is whether the rate is rising or falling.
Third, are you truly trying to claim that the state of health of science is getting better? It seems like you are implying that. If so, you might try this, from the New York Times:
Fourth, what does this have to do with Gleick, or integrity, or any of the subjects of this thread?
Regards,
w.
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:50 am
…..If you are suggesting that, like athletes doping, scientists that are politically active might be cheats, then based on the number of papers retracted, it seems you are 99.99% incorrect.
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And as usual you are more full of horse apples than my entire barn. Even the New York Times has noticed the problem: A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform
David L.
January 10, 2013 at 9:59 am
###
Your understanding of history is atrocious, most likely the result of moonbat instructors. No, the problem is not Christian Monasticism, but the nature of Academia itself. Self important Academics, who can’t do, are bitterly jealous of those who can. But being self important, they feel that they have the Right to tell everyone else what to do
BTW, that blessed period of time during the Age of Reason, with the establishment of the University system, was a historic fluke that was enabled by the very same Christian world-view you have been taught to denigrate.
Lest anyone forget, WUWT commenter “UnfrozenCavemanMD” pointed out that “only 38 minutes elapsed between Gleick’s Epson Scan metadata timestamp and DeSmogBlog’s posting of the files”. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/21/ncse-accepts-gleicks-resignation/#comment-899458
In my February American Thinker article, I pointed out how Demsogblog is tied to the central efforts to smear skeptic climate scientists going back to late 1995: “Fakegate Opens a Door: More than meets the eye in the Heartland controversy” http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/fakegate_opens_a_door.html
Gleick’s particular choice of Desmogblog and the timing of how quickly his material appeared there is something that needs to be checked out as thoroughly as possible.
Gene Selkov says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:59 am
Gail Combs says:
> They forget that ultimately we hold the purse strings.
With all respect Gail, they don’t forget. They know full well we can only elect someone to designate a bursar of his choice to hold the strings. That is quite different from being ultimately the ones in charge. Try to withhold your support from them — you’ll be immediately changed with tax evasion….
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Actually you just have to step away. My husband and I quit our high paying jobs ( over $100,000 plus in the 90’s) and now earn enough to support ourselves. We pay local taxes and sales tax and thats about it. As a small business I can earn exactly how much I want and that is BELOW the level where I have to pay Federal tax. Also much of what I earn is offset by deductions.
@mpainter:
I disagree with this statement.
It seems to me that if you can show that even a single donation has been lost due to the illegal actions of Mr. Gleick, that should be sufficient to sue for monetary damages. Whether other donors have come forward to contribute money does not mitigate the actual harm done to Heartland. these are independent issues.
It is sort of like arguing that a bank robber is not culpable for the loss of money that he has stolen because new depositors have come forward to “replace the money” that he took.
It is worrying when a baseball player is held up as an example of the standards which a senior, influential scientist, the chairman of an ethics committee no less, should uphold. And is unlikely to uphold. Because so far she has not.
“He was replaced as Chair, presumably by the person among the other Task Force members with the next highest amount of integrity. This was a woman named Dr. Linda Gundersen.”
Very droll Willis! 🙂
I wonder how far down the chain they would need to go before finding a Chair with integrity.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
trafamadore says:
January 10, 2013 at 9:50 am
Willis Eschenbach says: “Retracted papers and inadequate peer-review and horribly slanted papers and even forged papers are all on the rise.”
The number of retractions right now is 100 papers per million papers published. That is, I haf to read 10,000 papers before I hit one that might be retracted. (If only business people and politicians were as honest.) Also, the majority of papers retracted are for mistakes, not some experimental malfeasance. If you are suggesting that, like athletes doping, scientists that are politically active might be cheats, then based on the number of papers retracted, it seems you are 99.99% incorrect.
====================================
trafamadore – Next time try reading the whole sentence first before busting a gut to put fingertip to keyboard eh?