Reader “pottereaton” submitted this on 2013/04/01 at 2:28 pm
McIntyre/Tamino Feud brewing:
First McIntyre at DotEarth:
Steve McIntyre
Toronto, Canada
Andy,
The ideas in Tamino’s post purporting to explain the Marcott uptick,http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/the-tick/ which you praise as “illuminating”, was shamelessly plagiarized from the Climate Audit post How Marcott Upticks Arise. http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/15/how-marcottian-upticks-arise/
It’s annoying that you (and Real Climate) would link to the plagiarization and not to the original post.
Then Tamino, (at his blog) although his comment may have preceded McIntyre’s:
UPDATE
Dave Burton, purveyor of foolishness and myths, submitted the following comment:
“Grant, I find it just plain bizarre that you wrote all this and never even mentioned Steve McIntyre, who first figured out what Marcott had done wrong, and whose excellent work is the whole reason you wrote this.”
For your information, Davy boy, McIntyre’s contribution to this was limited to his every effort to discredit the entire reconstruction, to discredit Marcott and his collaborators, and of course his usual knee-jerk spasms at the sight of anything remotely resembling a hockey stick, sprinkled literally with thinly veiled sneering.
Also for your information, the original version of this post mentioned McIntyre (and linked to his posts) extensively. But prior to posting I decided to remove that, since McIntyre had already fully explored the “low road.”
=====================================================
IMHO, Foster’s response to Burton seems to be mostly venom, and it seems that his emotions got the better of his ability to do science professionally when he decided to remove the references. Seems like a clear case of spite to me. – Anthony
UPDATE: This is a comment and response from “Tamino” on that thread at “Open Mind”. IMHO Grant Foster might be suffering from social isolation issues (from what I know, he works from home with his cat) that prevent him from seeing a reality unfavorable to him, and so he is substituting his own. This is just sad. – Anthony
Steven Mosher | April 2, 2013 at 5:03 am |
It’s pretty simple Tamino. You wrote that you had acknowledgements in your post. You wrote that you removed them. What you think of Steve Mcintyre is not the issue. What you think of me is not the issue. Your opinion of what constitutes good scholarship is shown by the fact that you originally included the cites. So, what I think about scholarship is not the issue. Your behavior shows that you understood the right thing to do. Include the cites. For some reason you changed your mind. We will never know what that is. But your own behavior shows that when you first wrote it, you did as you were trained.
[Response: I have repeatedly stated the truth — that the only “acknowledgements” were of his mistaken ideas and his insulting tone. For you to claim that these were owed to him for reasons of “scholarship” is either mind-boggling stupidity (which I doubt) or nothing more than a pathetic excuse to denigrate me in a dazzling display of your ethical shortcomings.
Perhaps you and others are so keen to discredit my insights because it is now obvious that McIntyre was so clueless about the Marcott paper. Cite that.]
barry:
I recognise that all your posts on WUWT are intended to misinform onlookers, but your posts in this thread only serve to make you look silly.
There are only two posts between your egregious posts at April 2, 2013 at 8:41 am and April 2, 2013 at 9:12 am.
As you say in your latter post, Tamino’s blog gets the traffic it deserves: i.e. almost none.
This lack of traffic on Tamino’s blog is because of the history of the behaviour on that blog of the slimeball who operates it. And, in light of that history, it is surprising that anybody would doubt he has performed any professional misconduct.
Despite that, your posts attempt the silly pretence that Tamino has not plagiarised McIntyre although in this thread several people have posted both evidence and explanation of the plagiarism.
Please read the post by JunkPsychology (at April 2, 2013 at 8:54 am) which is sandwiched between your two posts. That post provides clear explanation of the matter which even somebody with your distorted views cannot misunderstand. However, your track-record suggests you will try to misrepresent it.
Richard
JunkPsychology and Richard: so far the only “evidence” that’s been produced is Tamino’s “admission” that “the original version of [Tamino’s] post mentioned McIntyre (and linked to his posts) extensively.”
Obviously, mentioning McIntyre, and linking to his posts, is not the same thing as using McIntyre’s ideas, arguments, analyses or words without attribution. Moreover, Tamino clarified that “The references to McIntyre in my original version were to his insulting tone regarding this work.” In other words, it sounds like the original version of Tamino’s post might have insulted and criticized McIntyre. That’s hardly plagiarism. But perhaps you think that Tamino is lying, and that his original post did in fact use McIntyre’s ideas, expressions, analyses, etc., without attribution.
Fair enough. Please identify the *specific* elements (the “ideas or evidence or points,” as JunkPsychology puts it) that Tamino learned/used from McIntyre but did not give proper credit for. If Tamino plagiarized, you should have no problem doing this. It should be apparent which precise intellectual property of McIntyre’s were impermissibly used by Tamino. Please provide this evidence.
McIntyre’s analysis showed that Marcott’s “modern uptick” was an artifact produced by proxy loss in the modern period rather than a “real” event. Tamino presented that insight as if it was his own.
Okay, Barry, at 9:12 am, let me correct that because on second thought, that is probably unlikely number given the normal very light traffic at Open Mind. Let’s just say it’s likely that far more comments have been deleted than have been posted. I had one deleted and I’m sure many others did also. 18 published comments, all defending Tamino and many bashing McIntyre doesn’t indicate comment-cleansing to you?
bmcburney says:
“McIntyre’s analysis showed that Marcott’s “modern uptick” was an artifact produced by proxy loss in the modern period rather than a “real” event. Tamino presented that insight as if it was his own.”
Actually, the authors stated this clearly in their paper:
“Without filling data gaps, our Standard5x5 reconstruction (Fig. 1A) exhibits 0.6 C greater warming over the past ~60 yr B.P. (1890 to 1950 CE) than our equivalent infilled 5×5 area-weighted mean stack (Fig. 1, C and D). *However, considering the temporal resolution
of our data set and the small number of records that cover this interval (Fig. 1G), this difference is probably not robust.*”
(emphasis added)
The effect of “dropout” (e.g. station dropout, or in this case proxy dropout) is a well-known topic – one that Tamino has blogged about many times over many years. So, that general phenomenon is hardly unique to McIntyre, and is something one could reasonably expect multiple critics independently to consider.
What about the specific application of that phenomenon to the case of Marcott? Well, their (i.e. Tamino’s and McIntyre’s) analyses of the effects of dropout in this particular case are very dissimilar, giving no indication of Tamino “stealing” the ideas(s) from McIntyre. So far, the case for plagiarism looks (to put it very charitably) pretty thin.
Friends:
Is the letter B a code for plagiarism excusers?
We now have Barry and Brian trying to pretend Tamino is innocent of the plagiarism he has confessed.
Will there now be a Bert, a Benjamin, a Bulstrode & etc. joining this list of anonymous trolls trying to pretend the indefensible can be defended?
Richard
Streetcred says:
April 1, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Mark T says: April 1, 2013 at 6:08 pm
“[ … ] From what I can gather, he is educated as a civil engineer [ … ]”
———————————-
That’s an oxymoron … using “civil” and “engineer” together. 😉
———————————
NO – WRONG
It’s a tautology
Hang on…if you are going to do the business on someone and attemp to destroy their work you don’t leave that persons name out of your article. You will include their name in your article/paper/op ed etc exactly so people can see who you are talking about.
Foster has already admitted he cited McIntyre extensively but then decided to cut his name out because McIntyre was being a big bad meany to poor little old Marcott (in other words McIntyre was trying to work out whether Marcott was right or not and it turned out to be a whole lot more NOT than right).
Spare me the crocodile tears people.
Mailman
Tamino wants us to be open minded and agree with him.
“Tamino” called me a liar for claiming to have a degree in physics from a well regarded college that required the same first few semesters from those planning on majors in pure math as those who want to be engineers (easily provable, and there are more than one with similar curriculums, even in little Los Angeles County) and he followed that with a “libel per se” so blatant on the face of it that WordPress locked down his blog until he cleared all possible defamations against me. He complied by deleting the whole thread, blaming me for wanting the deletion (all I wanted was for my defenses be undeleted) and then allowed his peanut gallery to repeat his defamations for him on the following thread.
A fresh mining of the web brought me to a dead end in 1991, when an “E. Grant Foster” was cited as the last of three authors of a paper whose primary author, the late Dr. Janet A. Mattei, an astronomer and director of the American Ass’n of Variable Star Observers, was thanked by Grant Foster for her guidance in a later paper of his on Fourier series applied to an astronomy issue. Mattei’s job at AAVSO is described in her wiki entry:
“As head of the AAVSO for over 30 years, she collected observations of variable stars by amateur astronomers from around the world. She coordinated many important observing programs between amateur observers and professional astronomers. She was also keenly interested in education and student science projects.”
I find it plausible that “tamino”, an amateur star watcher without an academic background, got involved in data collection and reduction under Mattei’s wing, and that’s how he became involved in what passes for climate science as he had a talent for getting numeric results. I can only hope that Mattei would give him a good academic spanking were she still around. Perhaps someday this very public person will actually have a biography that will clear the air.
richardscourtney says:
“Is the letter B a code for plagiarism excusers?
We now have Barry and Brian trying to pretend Tamino is innocent of the plagiarism he has confessed.”
My name starts with B too, but … richardscourtney is mistaken. Tamino has not confessed to plagiarism. Just the opposite.
Tamino’s analysis of the record drop-out problem (which he has analyzed before in different data) takes a different approach, is more detailed than McIntyre’s, and also is constructive, showing a better way to deal with this problem.
As for “discovering” the drop-out problem, as noted above that was clearly stated in the Marcott paper itself.
BA:
Thankyou for your post at April 2, 2013 at 2:12 pm which answers my question.
Clearly the letter B is a code for anonymous trolls who excuse plagiarism.
I have another question:
does the use of the letter B indicate the trolls are ‘acting under orders’?
Richard
Moderator:
I have made a post which has gone in the ‘bin’. Please retrieve it.
Richard
Moderator:
That post has re-appeared.
Richard
Richard, a better use of everyone’s time is to not worry about your numerous posts that go into the SPAM filter. It is regularly checked every hour. Telling us to check it won’t speed that up.
Richard – I’ll repeat my request (again) for your specific evidence of plagiarism, including the specific elements from McIntyre’s work that Tamino used without attribution.
Or should we all take your fixation with the letter ‘B’ as a tacit admission that you cannot produce such evidence?
Anthony:
Thankyou for your kindness in providing that advice.
Some time ago there was a note from a Moderator which suggested such ‘flagging’ and I have been providing it. Your advice means I no longer need to bother.
Thankyou.
Richard
barry, brian
( I tried to post a comment at the OPEN MIND, it just moderated away. )
What Tamino “plagiarized” is the whole idea of the post. Mr. McIntyre’s post is titled “How Marcottian Upticks Arise” and in a big table half way down the page shows a table with three rows of proxy data, the last row missing data (NA) for most of the proxies. A quick skim shows the first few paragraphs explain that other problems with the data set (truncations, re-dating) are not the major cause of the up-tick and then the proxy dropout mechanism is explained.
For Tamino to have even glanced at Climate Audit’s main page would have exposed him to the root cause of the up-tick. Since he claims that Mr McIntyre “took the low road” one must assume he read at least a few of the smaller words in the post, so it is unlikely he managed to miss the big table. As his own post about the up-tick was up a full week later, he had plenty of time to internalize what he should have gleaned from even the most cursory scan of the article.
I can’t prove Tamino deliberately used someone else’s idea without acknowledgement. He may very well think his later epiphany independent. I don’t know how many other folks had the same idea (JeanS apparently did) or how many others also posted it. What we do know is that Tamino had seen the Climate Audit posts, and then claimed to have independently discovered the cause when posting a week after the CA post went up. Closer perusal of both posts reveals that Tamino clearly did not understand what the full CA post stated, since several of his alleged rebuttals were aimed a points Mr McIntyre was refuting, not proposing.
It is apparent that he “protesteth overmuch” of his probity. If I was asked for a ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ verdict, I’d have to say NOT PROVEN. If the standard is ‘more likely than not’, I’d say likely, quite likely.
Brian says:
April 2, 2013 at 10:43 am
JunkPsychology and Richard: so far the only “evidence” that’s been produced is Tamino’s “admission” that “the original version of [Tamino’s] post mentioned McIntyre (and linked to his posts) extensively.”
Obviously, mentioning McIntyre, and linking to his posts, is not the same thing as using McIntyre’s ideas, arguments, analyses or words without attribution…
———
Brian. Be serious. If you’re being serious, go sober up and come back tomorrow.
Grant Foster also says,
Clearly, Foster’s initial position was to attribute to McIntyre. He explains that he decided not to because McIntyre was attempting to discredit the reconstruction. This is obviously an invalid reason to remove the original attribution.
Better men than you have tried the ‘lets play stupid disingenious with words’ game, see Jan Perlwitz comments and responses in the thread here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/09/another-billboard-about-bogus-climate-claims. It doesn’t fly here.
Brian:
I am replying to your post at April 2, 2013 at 2:34 pm which says in total
I take that as tacit admission that you guys are ‘acting under orders’.
I addressed the plagiarism in my post April 2, 2013 at 10:05 am where I cited the explanation by JunkPsychology at April 2, 2013 at 8:54 am. However, since you pedantically press for me to use my own words, I shall be blunt.
Tamino in his blog stated errors in the paper by Marcott et al. a week after those same errors had been revealed by McIntyre and placed in the public domain on his blog. Tamino admitted that he had considered mentioning the work of McIntyre but chose not to. Hence, the entire report of Tamino was ‘prior art’ of McIntyre which – on Tamino’s own admission – Tamino knew to be ‘prior art’ but chose not to attribute and/or cite to McIntyre but presented using different wording.
In other words,
ALL OF TAMINO’S POINTS CONCERNING ERRORS IN THE PAPER BY MARCOTT ET AL. WAS PLAGIARISED FROM McINTYRE AND TAMINO HAS ADMITTED THIS.
I do not know how the matter could be more clear.
Richard
Brian says:
April 2, 2013 at 10:43 am
…
Moreover, Tamino clarified that “The references to McIntyre in my original version were to his insulting tone regarding this work.” In other words, it sounds like the original version of Tamino’s post might have insulted and criticized McIntyre. That’s hardly plagiarism.
———
‘The references to McIntyre in my original version were to his insulting tone regarding this work.’
There is a logical disconnect between this statement and your rephrasing; this does not mean ‘it sounds like the original version of Tamino’s post might have insulted and criticized McIntyre.’ It means that McIntyre’s work (his) had an insulting tone, obviously.
Further, your speculation does not make the slightest bit of sense when we step back and review the entire post, you appear to be arguing that-
Foster said he McIntyre’s contribution was 1)limited to his effort to discredit the reconstruction, 2)included knee jerk spasms and sneering.
Foster said he originally attributed McIntyre, according to you insulting and criticizing McIntyre, but then Foster goes on to explain that he removed it because McIntyre was attempting to discredit the reconstruction.
The Chewbacca defense was entertaining on SouthPark. Unfortunately, watching you attempt to employ it is pathetic. Your interpretation doesn’t strain credulity, it destroys it.
richardscourtney says:
“I take that as tacit admission that you guys are ‘acting under orders’.”
Pretty silly if that’s really how you take it, Richard. Who do you imagine is giving all us B names our orders? Why do we obey?
“Tamino in his blog stated errors in the paper by Marcott et al. a week after those same errors had been revealed by McIntyre and placed in the public domain on his blog.:
What McIntyre revealed is that he had not yet read the paper. See quote from the authors above, in which they explain that, due to “the small number of records that cover this interval” [1890 to 1950] the steep warming is “probably not robust.” Much later, McIntyre (also Pielke Jr) treated repetitions of this “not robust” statement from the Marcott paper as if they were dramatic new confessions. But they are new only to people who have not read the paper.
“Hence, the entire report of Tamino was ‘prior art’ of McIntyre which – on Tamino’s own admission – Tamino knew to be ‘prior art’ but chose not to attribute and/or cite to McIntyre but presented using different wording.”
But this is theory about what Tamino knew is no more reality-based than your theory about who controls us B’s. Here is what Tamino actually said about what he learned from McIntyre and what he decided to leave out:
“All I “learned” from McIntyre’s “analysis” is that Marcott et al. had re-calibrated proxy ages, that McIntyre blamed the uptick on the re-dating process, and that he was happy to hint at the possibility of deliberate deception on the part of the authors. The references to McIntyre in my original version were to his insulting tone regarding this work, but I finally decided it was better to ignore that and comment on the science.”
I recommend people not try to psychoanalyze Foster, because it is very difficult to do and not relevant.
He has a problem, as do many climate alarmists and some skeptics, his supporters should be helping him.
BA and Brian,
1. No one contends that the concept of “proxy dropout” was originated by Steve McIntyre. What McIntyre discovered (among other things) was that Marcott’s modern uptick was chiefly the result of dropout and re-dating of cores. Tamino’s own post presents the idea that the uptick is the result of dropout as though Tamino made this discovery. That is the plagiarism.
2. Tamino’s admission that he deleted references to McIntyre’s “low road” suggestion of invidious conduct on the part of Marcott et al. is damming because it demonstrates that Tamino read McIntyre’s post before publishing his own. It seems clear that the “low road” suggestion was Marcott’s re-dating proxies, the inexplicable deletion of certain end dates which had the effect of keeping an unfavorable proxy out of the modern period, etc. From Tamino’s own description, it appears that he began his post by attempting to defend Marcott, et al. from McIntyre’s “low road” suggestions. He evidently found, however, that no plausible defense for Marcott’s conduct suggested itself and converted the post to a general discussion of the Marcott uptick being the result of dropout without reference to McIntyre’s comments. Of course, the mere fact that an uptick was produced by dropout does not imply misconduct if the reasons for dropout are legitimate but Tamino could not very well credit McIntyre for finding the fact that dropout caused the uptick without making his evident inability to defend Marcott apparent.
3. BA’s quote from Marcott et al. does not contain any reference to the dropout problem. It merely reports that the difference between two methods of data analysis is not “robust.”
BA:
This is a brief reply to your post addressed to me at April 2, 2013 at 3:39 pm because it is midnight here and I am on my way to bed.
I note that neither you nor Brian denies you are ‘acting under orders’ but obfuscate the issue. Perhaps you would care to say if it is the SkS team, or the Climate Response Team, or etc.which has called for your ridiculous campaign to defend Tamino’s plagiarism?
The quotation from Tamino which you provide explicitly states that Tamino read McIntyre’s report but asserts Tamino had not “learned” much from it. So,
(a) Tamino admits he read McIntyre;s work,
and
(b) Tamino claims he “learned” little from McIntyre’s work,
and
(c) a week after McIntyre’s work Tamino presented ‘his’ study which only addresses issues which were covered in McIntyre’s work.
Simply, Tamino is saying he did not copy the work of McIntyre which he had read because he has such severe reading comprehension difficulties that he failed to understand what he read.
As an excuse for plagiarism that is lame.
Richard