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.”
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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
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Here is the train derailment that killed 47 people in Canada last July.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/12/quebec-oil-train-crash-disaster-24-bodies
As the nation’s gas prices skyrocket, critics argue that President Obama’s recent rejection of the $7 billion, “shovel-ready” Keystone XL oil pipeline, followed by his continued vow to “double down” on green energy, is a clear sign the administration plans to do little of substance in terms of American oil exploration. The move has also stirred controversy about the president’s real intentions concerning job creation and reducing pain at the pump for everyday Americans. But could there be a more sinister reason behind denying the pipeline’s requisite permits — namely, to benefit billionaire Obama-supporter Warren Buffett?
The evidence does seem to be mounting.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/04/17/did-buffett-kill-the-keystone-pipeline-to-reap-financial-gain/
Note: there is a Buffett company I like: Mouser Electronics. I do business with them regularly. Good service. Decent prices.
The lazy and incompetent run interference or act as cover (involuntary) for the regulation lovers, people without skill or competence who know(No self doubt at all) they are the supreme authority, on some tiny irrelevant set of regulations. And they rule supreme in their bubble of authority, obey all the processes and cripple all producers who come into contact with their tiny reign.
For a time I was part of the 1553 committee ( a military bus – low speed by today’s standards). And I saw that in spades. About 1/2 the committee was incompetent. Flat out ignorant of electronics. Funny. I never went to school for electronics and I could run circles around the majority. Fortunately the better minds prevailed. I’m sure it is not always so. I did get a free trip to Disney World out of it – for me and my family. Maybe my input was worth it. But ultimately the taxpayer paid.
As regards the suggestion that there is a link between government service and a greater tendency to be dishonest, I suspect the reason for this is that those who seek the comfort and safety of government service feel less able to survive in the non-government economy and are therefore more desperate to secure their place in government service. They see it as their one and only chance for economic security.
@Tom J
Corruption etc has been subject of a very substantial research effort for a few decades now. Best visit the World Bank website to get a sense of that.
Although the USA government is not always completely honest, other governments are not always completely dishonest; India is somewhere in between.
Some years ago a friend of mine bought a house in Indonesia. When everything was settled, two civil servants knocked on his door because they had to do some final measurements on his house and garden. After doing the measurements, they told him that he had to pay them a certain amount of Rupiahs each, the amount being subject to negotiation. When the negotiations were done, and he was about to pay them, he saw about twenty men walking through his garden. These were the other civil servants of the same housing department and they entered his home as well. He had to pay all of them the negotiated amount, making the final stage of his enterprise pretty expensive.
Corruption is endemic in Indonesia because civil servant are under-paid and must earn their money by donations from the public. I do not put much value on this kind of research. Perhaps people differ a bit as to honesty but corruption is an aspect of the system. For corruption in climate science we have to look for incentives in the institutions, journals, and peer-review. There is no reason for much optimism. If corruption has become endemic, it is better to make a completely new start in stead of trying to heal the old institutions.
john robertson says: @ur momisugly January 8, 2014 at 6:49 pm
…. Of late I refuse to bid, the waste and corruption is too much, the endless paperwork, compliance requirements are not worth dealing with….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AMEN!
In our little niche of children’s entertainment we have found not only the endless paperwork but “preferred vendor” Unless you specialize in being the admins nephew you don’t stand a chance. A big campaign donation to the winner of course would help.
Well publicized issues with some officials from the EPA (or IRS, NSA, DoD and on and on) aside, I don’t see anything that indicates a higher level of corruption amongst government employees vs. public sector workers. As a long time government employee I find it more common place for strict adherence to government wide and agency specific regulation. Not always as avoidance of work/responsibility, but mostly as a function of self-preservation (“CYA”). More danger exists from well-intentioned legislation that expands government into the minutia of the lives of its citizenry. The problem from my perspective has always been one of size/scale and scope/mission creep. A feature aspect of bureaucracy is to grow itself, to that end it is necessary that it increases its reach to the extent it will be allowed to by the public that supports it. The larger the bureaucracy grows, the more it must consume. The more it consumes, the larger the bureaucracy grows. The only limit being the increasing drag the bureaucracy has on the public it serves. I speculate that at critical mass a bureaucracy will either collapse the society from which it grew or the bureaucracy will be drastically reformed (by the public it serves, if sufficient cohesive political will exists).
@Steamboat Jon 6:46.
I agree, history seems to favour the former,collapse over effective reform.
The cost of compliance has moved from a minor irritant to a major expense, nothing not permitted is the attitude. The drain on public treasure is measured in Billions and Trillions borrowed against the work of our grandchildren, it is in their economic interest to collapse this system.
Whilst bureaus are necessary for the function of necessary government,to maintain the illusion of civilization, they are a cancer and as soon as govt takes on unnecessary functions, that cancer blooms.
Like Tol, I think the study is competent, just useless. The p-value for the 6% figure is 0.1 (not even the usually proven worthless 0.05). Even at that, 6% is nothing….without some other dealing with confounding data, particularly since we are dealing with a culture very much different than ours. Post-empire India is not not not to be confused with the USA or Europe or the UK.
Attitudes about working for the government are very different there than here with nuances that vary by class and caste, if I recall my university studies on Indian culture correctly.
All of these kinds of studies done with paid college students are suspect unless a great deal of care is taken to deal with the skewing of results expected and elements added to the study to discover how the students will skew the study because they are student and poor.
Those of us who were in university in the 1960’s can attest to the truth of this — remember back to reporting to the Psych building or Sociology building–sometimes even the Biology building–to take part in some test for which one could receive the magnificent sum of $25 for a single hour’s subjection to test or examination! One sometimes fortified one’s self for the experience with various substances guaranteed to enhance the experience and simultaneously “stick it to the man”.
In some cultures, such as the Dominican Republic, where I have recently spent many years, a student would most likely see maximizing the monetary return from the student testing as a moral obligation not a dishonesty, an obligation to bring a little more money back to his family, or to relieve his family of a little financial burden. In the DR, a real government job (not a political appointment, but a civil service job) is as close as one gets to a guaranteed lifetime job, this study would be quite different.
So, to answer the title question, to wit : “Could this study on honesty and government service explain the EPA climateer fraud and ‘Climategate’ ?” ==> No, to even ask is nonsensical ans a smear on all the deicaded giovernment workers that keep a nearly impossible system limping along somehow.
Some bits of some governments (like the NY State and Florida DMVs — Go DMVs! ) are actually getting better!
BC Bill says:
The primary difference between the two sectors is that the private sector overtly states that they are out to get money by whatever means society allows them to, so nobody is surprised by rampant lying in the private sector with regards to such things as cosmetics that don’t work as they promised,…
No, the primary difference is that businesses that run themselves that way tend to not stay in business, unless they have the helping hand of government to keep them around. In Government, there are no consequences for dishonesty.
If Obama had participated in the experiment, he would have reported 42 7s. 🙂
Gore’s Global Warming Secret
You’ll never guess what initially inspired Al Gore’s “temperature” mania – the one that’s raised our tempers.
Well, Gore is from Tennessee where you can hear Bible belt preachers warning about “Hell fire” in the next life.
And Gore, concerned about this life, is surrounded by those who also know about the prediction in Revelation (chapter 16) of the coming time when a change in the sun will result in humans being “scorched with great heat”!
It wouldn’t be convenient if folks were to discover that Gore, a liberal, was influenced by the handbook closely associated with Christian fundamentalists!
If Tennessee fundy preachers could look at the same predictions-packed apocalyptic book and stretch forward in time some future events, Gore could surely do the same thing and stretch forward the “great heat” and turn it into cold cash.
All of us are well aware of the incredible influence that the Gore-orrhea plague has had on the whole world including the White House!
But Gore’s overlooked another Bible verse which says that “there is nothing hid that shall not be revealed.”
The real “inconvenient truth” is that the SS Al Gore is now stuck in ice – and what we need is a Gorebreaker!
Our children get 12-16 years or more of indoctrination that the only successful people in this country made their way by cheating everyone else. Is it no wonder we see academic cheating and academic fraud on the rise? And for a government job, it has great benefits,with no accountability.