A new paper published the National Bureau of Economic Research has given an insight that may explain some of the personal decisions that led to the recent EPA corruption fiasco Massive fraud at the EPA from agency’s top paid climate official (where a top climate specialist defrauded the taxpayers out of millions of dollars and made wild claims about being on CIA missions) and to Climategate, since I see some significant parallels between the two and this study. Links to a story about the paper and the paper itself follow.
As readers know, in a nutshell, Climategate was about the stonewalling of FOIA requests so that independent researchers (such as McIntyre) could not replicate the scientific work. That access for data to allow scientific replication was unreasonably blocked, and someone who was in a position to see what was going on behind the scenes decided that they would do something about it. Virtually every person involved in Climategate emails had some connection to government, either being directly employed by a government agency, or a government funded university.
On 17 November 2009 a large number of emails, together with other documents and pieces of code, from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were posted on a Russian web server, and announced anonymously at the Air Vent blog, Climate Audit, Real Climate, The Blackboard, and WUWT with the comment:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.
Of note, was the immediate deletion of the comment at Real Climate, and then a campaign by Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS to convince Lucia at the Blackboard that the release wasn’t to be trusted.
In that release from the “FOIA” leaker, we saw revelations like “Mike’s Nature Trick“. Here is a list of some of the emails and their content.From this Google document page: http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/climategate
===========================================================
Massaging the presentation of data:
- 942777075.txt the infamous “trick” to “hide the decline” in tree-ring data
- 939154709.txt “They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually stop the series in 1960” (also referring to tree-ring data)
- 1225026120.txt “I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down” (referring to recent temperature data).
- 1254108338.txt “So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean” … “It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip”. This relates to the rapid warming before 1940 followed by cooling after 1940, which the ‘scientists’ would like to remove because it does not fit with their theory.
Attempting to get papers with a sceptical view on global warming rejected from journals, and not referred to in the IPCC reports:
- 1089318616.txt “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !”
- 1054756929.txt Ed Cook discusses with Keith Briffa how to get a paper rejected even though the mathematics is correct
- 1054748574.txt where Briffa says “I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review – Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting”
- 1080742144.txt where Jones “went to town” rejecting two papers that had criticised his work.
Refusing to provide data and supporting information when requested, and deleting emails (all quotes from Phil Jones):
- 1107454306.txt “The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone”.
- 1109021312.txt “I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act !”
- 1182255717.txt “Think I’ve managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.”
- 1211924186.txt Tim Osborn informs Caspar Amman that an FOI request has been received from David Holland about papers included in the IPCC report (May 27 2008) ….
- 1212009215.txt Jones suggests what “Keith could say” and “Keith should say” (May 28 2008) …
- 1212073451.txt “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? … We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” (May 29 2008). [Under paragraph 77 of the FOI Act it is an offence to delete information subject to an FOI request].
- 1228330629.txt “When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise” … “About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all.”
=============================================================
This LA Times story from November 2013 suggests that there may be a connection between dishonesty and government employment.
Cheating students more likely to want government jobs, study finds
November 18, 2013|By Emily Alpert Reyes
College students who cheated on a simple task were more likely to want government jobs, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania found in a study of hundreds of students in Bangalore, India.
Their results, recently released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggest that one of the contributing forces behind government corruption could be who gets into government work in the first place.
…
Researchers ran a series of experiments with more than 600 students finishing up college in India. In one task, students had to privately roll a die and report what number they got. The higher the number, the more they would get paid. Each student rolled the die 42 times.
Although researchers do not know for sure if any one student lied, they could tell whether the numbers each person reported were wildly different than what would turn up randomly — in other words, whether there were a suspiciously high number of 5s and 6s in their results.
Cheating seemed to be rampant: More than a third of students had scores that fell in the top 1% of the predicted distribution, researchers found. Students who apparently cheated were 6.3% more likely to say they wanted to work in government, the researchers found.
“Overall, we find that dishonest individuals — as measured by the dice task — prefer to enter government service,” wrote Hanna and coauthor Shing-yi Wang, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Full story here: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/18/science/la-sci-sn-cheating-students-government-jobs-corruption-20131118
And here is the paper abstract:
Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service
Rema Hanna, Shing-Yi Wang
NBER Working Paper No. 19649
Issued in November 2013
NBER Program(s): DEV
In this paper, we demonstrate that university students who cheat on a simple task in a laboratory setting are more likely to state a preference for entering public service. Importantly, we also show that cheating on this task is predictive of corrupt behavior by real government workers, implying that this measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Students who demonstrate lower levels of prosocial preferences in the laboratory games are also more likely to prefer to enter the government, while outcomes on explicit, two-player games to measure cheating and attitudinal measures of corruption do not systematically predict job preferences. We find that a screening process that chooses the highest ability applicants would not alter the average propensity for corruption among the applicant pool. Our findings imply that differential selection into government may contribute, in part, to corruption. They also emphasize that screening characteristics other than ability may be useful in reducing corruption, but caution that more explicit measures may offer little predictive power.
Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19649
….
CONCLUSIONS:
In this paper, we offer evidence that the college students who cheat on a simple task are more likely to prefer to enter government service after graduation. This relationship does not appear to vary by ability, suggesting that screening on ability does not change the level of honesty of those chosen for government service among the pool of applicants.
Importantly, we show that cheating on this task is also predictive of fraudulent behaviors by real government officials, which implies that the measure captures a meaningful propensity towards corruption. Given that the existing methods of measuring corruption only apply for those who are already entrenched in the bureaucracy, our validation of a measure of cheating against real-world corruption outcomes offers an important tool for future research on selection and corruption.
These findings are important because they demonstrate that the variation in the levels of observed corruption may, in part, be driven by who selects into government service. In addition, they offer two key policy insights. First, the recruitment and screening process for bureaucrats may be improved by increasing the emphasis on characteristics other than ability. It is important to note that individuals may not want to reveal their characteristics, especially their propensity for dishonesty, so the method of measurement matters. The simple, experimental measure we employed predicted the corrupt behaviors of the government employees, but the game in which corruption was explicitly framed and the fairly standard attitudinal questions had little predictive value. Second, while recent empirical papers have shown that reducing the returns to corrupt behavior decreases the probability that bureaucrats engage in corruption, our work suggests that these interventions may have had even broader effects by changing the composition of who might apply.
The full paper: http://assets.wharton.upenn.edu/~was/corruption_selection_paper.pdf
Just another observation of the corollary to Lord Acton’s admonition that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which is “power tends to attract the corruptible”.
One need only look at the work of Harry Anslinger to see how corrupt the foundations of government are. It got so bad Harry had to tell one of his underlings to tone it down. On the basis of Harry’s initial work millions have been jailed and medical research has been set back decades.
Thanks Anthony. Very good article.
The paper “Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service” by Rema Hanna, Shing-Yi Wang is very interesting, but I’m not sure the conclusions are universal. They sure look like they apply to all the countries I have worked in, all of them “democratic”, all corrupt to some extent.
Richard Tol (@RichardTol) says:
January 8, 2014 at 11:05 am
I suspect the Hanna-Wang study is competently done. However, the data are for Bangalore. Attitudes to what we call cheating and corruption are different there, both in general and in government. We cannot extrapolate these results to the UK or the USA.
###
Spoken like a true Marxist.
Thanks John Whitman for reminding of von Mises and the Classical Liberals of old.
An Introduction to the Major Writings of Ludwig von Mises is at http://oll.libertyfund.org/readinglists/view/274-an_introduction_to_the_major_writings_of_ludwig_von_mises
Richard Tol @ur momisugly 11.05 am
Agree. Can’t extrapolate Bangalore results to UK or USA.
They may mainly reflect the local students’ expectations of opportunities for corrupt behaviour in a government post rather than actual levels they might encounter if they got one. I doubt that they would be matched if the survey were run on students here.
And I’m sorry, Anthony, but I can’t see any valid read-across between the Bangalore study and the behaviour exposed in Climategate. The EPA fraud case may be a closer match.
It’s amazing that most warmist still won’t admit to the bad science behind the hockey stick. RealClimate still won’t admit that short centering is wrong in its Dummies Guide to the Hocky Stick:
42 Die rolls ?
I heard Al Gore got 41 sixes and two sevens
– – – – – – – –
Andres Valencia,
¡Por nada! {you’re welcome} : )
John
Peter Champness says:
“What has happened to the climategate part 2 emails?”
They were posted. Did you mean CIII?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Roberto: the missing ingredient in government is competition. Competition makes the Universe work, whether you’re talking about the valence of atoms, or business. But you can’t go to another government and get a better deal. There is only competition between governments, never within a government for the benefit of its citizens.
So we end up asking the government to cut taxes — when it is the government itself that pockets the taxes.
The government is the enemy of its citizens. The Founding Fathers understood that all government is evil. Some government is a necessary evil. But they are never our friend. They represent their own interest, which is diametrically opposed to the citizens’ interest. Sometimes the interests are in alignment, like in wartime. But never for very long.
Since the end of WWII, the gov’t and the Left have conspired to rob the citizens. They have both learned to game the system, and for now it works for them [witness the gov’t climate grant recipients profiting from the Chicken Little “carbon” scare]. But it will not always work.
At some point the left will find out that they are no longer necessary to the government. Then they will be liquidated like everyone else who objects or protests. But for now, it is an unholy alliance of two evils working in collusion to fleece and dominate the citizenry.
Anyone who reads a lot of history sees where it’s going. And where it will end up.
Government never gets smaller. Taxes never go down. Citizens never remain free for long.
Richard Tol (@RichardTol)
January 8, 2014 at 11:05 am
‘…However, the data are for Bangalore. Attitudes to what we call cheating and corruption are different there, both in general and in government. We cannot extrapolate these results to the UK or the USA.’
In regards to the second sentence in the above quote may I ask how you know that? In regards to the final sentence may I ask, “why?”
In closing, may I say that, “If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.”
To see corruption ‘at home’, it sometimes helps to read foreign newspapers. One example is the US and my state government’s war on tobacco, from which much money was made by govt. ‘Second Hand Smoke’ became the reason for city-wide bans, and no mention was ever made in the US newspapers of the truth about the study done on such. The following explains
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100251229/passive-smoking-another-of-the-nanny-states-big-lies/
To be honest you have to make a consented effort to stop calling it ” Carbon Footprint” and start calling it “Carbon Dioxide Footprint”. Along the current un-scientific terminology way of thinking, “Diamond Footprint” makes as much sense as “Carbon Footprint”. Diamonds are made of 100% carbon. The use of metaphors in the climate debate is only meant to confuse and brainwash the general public into believing Climate Change is their fault, when natural climate change has been happening for over a billion years. If you mean “Man-Made Global Warming” or “Man-Made Climate Change” in the discussion, then say the whole phrase and stop being lazy or deceitful.
I understand billions of dollars have been invested in brainwashing the general public into believing the greatest conspiracy theory of all time, CAGW, but get over it. The general public has shown they aren’t that stupid and ain’t buying it.
You know it makes sense.
This is a long running and well known issue for anyone seeking a job recently(say last 10 years) in HR. HR reps only care about the proper buzzwords being spoken and certain displays. They claim it to hire the best people and that “studies” back them. The problem is that its easy to identify the buzzwords and such they look for and many many books are written about it. Cheaters simply read the book and say the most buzzwords during the interview and thus get the job. Honesty is about the lowest thing on the HR list of things they look for. Anyone who has been is the job market will tell you that responding honestly or in your own words to HR questions will lose you the job every time.
Perhaps, as the ultimate public service is to work as a law maker, then, if the results of this study remain valid, law makers AKA politicians are the most corrupt!
““Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” Luke 16:10
Also, “Character is destiny.” -Heraclitus
As readers know, in a nutshell, Climategate was about the stonewalling of FOIA requests so that independent researchers (such as McIntyre) could not replicate the scientific work.
So that SteveMc could not attempt to replicate the work 🙂
The Democrat presidential nominee in 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, said about the ethical standards of the Reagan Administration, “There’s an old Greek saying … the fish rots from the head first. It starts at the top.” Dukakis went on to say that scandal and misconduct had become “almost an epidemic. It’s the guy at the top who has to be held accountable.”
“there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” -Mark Twain
I guess it was too politically correct to say why. A talented cheater may well appear to have ability. Certainly, a cheater who never got caught is logically going to have the trappings of ability, certainly over what he would have had, had he not cheated. This would explain the no apparent bias between talented and ordinary. Also, a corrupted PhD in something knows that his skills are not going to be under the microscope like they would be in a production environment. “Hey Fred, how come non of your designs work? You have a higher engineering degree.” In government, Fred can study the problem and recommend that a consulting firm be engaged for this important project.
I’ve known a lot of talented, hard working government employees – geologists, metallurgists, mining engineers and other technically oriented people – whose very professions are not sought out much because of the demanding and productive nature of the work and the fact that your stuff is out there in full view. I’m sure the majority of government workers are honest, many honest but without much motivation. Look for it mainly in the group who spend all their time hanging on to the ladder.
The corruptible and ambitious gravitate to government posts with influence over internal standards and enforcement, where they substitute an emphasis on protection of “accused” for protection of the public. When it is necessary to focus on the latter, as in “whistleblower” cases, they use internal networks to deflect and nullify the threat to security and power.
Occasionally, a sacrificial offering is made of some egregiously corrupt individual like Beale whose cover slips. Even then, it is minimized and distorted to keep attention away from the systemic rot.
Whatever happened to the climategate 3.0 release? wuwt and all the other blogs received the password to the final tranche of emails in March but have been conspicuously silent since then.
The case of Wagner also comes to mind. He had to choose between his publishers, protecting their right to maintain some level of editorial standards, and the power-broker Trenberth. We all know the choice he made. It may have been rational, given the state of the field.
It is good to have the ClimateGate emails at the forefront.
The form of violence and corruption may change but I doubt the nature of it changes.
Julie Novak, Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Australia posted a very worthwhile read on Catallaxy Files
Union violence in the unfolding French tragedy, then and now
In his book The Tyranny of Socialism, published in 1894, the French economist Yves Guyot describes the sheer horror and mayhem accompanying strikes and protests by French unions during the nineteenth century. One of the more shocking episodes of union violence was the Decazeville coal mine strike of 1886.
source: <a href=http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/01/08/union-violence-in-the-unfolding-french-tragedy-then-and-now/