People send me stuff. Readers will surely recall ‘I’m Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, Ask Me Almost Anything!’. A reader who does not wish to be named writes about the questions he posed. Readers probably won’t be surprised at the outcome. – Anthony
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I gave it quite a lot of thought, and asked three questions of Michael Mann during his Ask Me Anything on Reddit:
- Given the Oxburgh Panel’s criticism on your use of statistical methods and McShane and Wyner 2010 finding significant statistical lapses in Mann et al 2008, do you foresee consulting with statisticians before publishing future papers?
- Do you regret the splicing of instrumental data with proxy data in your Nature study, something that Phil Jones referred to as “Mike’s Nature trick?”
- Darrell Kaufman issued a correction after he discovered that your orientation of the Tiljander data set was upside down in Mann et al 2008. Do you regret reversing this orientation, and why have you not issued a similar correction?
Unfortunately, Michael Mann saw none of these questions.
And it’s not that that the questions showed up but were down-voted into oblivion by the users (seems to be a safe zone for alarmists). I half-expected that! What transpired instead was that the moderator blocked my comments from appearing entirely. Which was weird, because the only reason they should not have shown up is if I was posting spam.
The questions: (click to enlarge)
I contacted the moderator to inquire and his response was that my questions were “inappropriate” for Michael Mann.
The moderator action: (click to enlarge)
So when the moderator specified that “hard questions are allowed” for Dr. Mann, I guess what he really meant was that “hard questions are definitely not allowed”. And as to “inappropriate”, I can hardly imagine more appropriate questions!
What Michael Mann took part in was more along the lines of a puff piece or a public relations show than anything like an “Ask Me Anything.” I’m disappointed, but not surprised. And if Dr. Mann ever reads this, I imagine there are a lot of us who would love the answers to those 3 questions. And about a hundred others after that.
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No surprise here.
Ask me ‘Almost anything’ clearly limits the questions to the immaterial.
I suggest you send these questions to the new President at Penn State and demand answers or the resignation of Dr Mann. If you won’t, I will.
Bill Yarber
PSU – AeroSp Engr
BS – ’69
MS – ’71
Some other questions that I know were deleted:
You have said that some unknown phenomenon kept the Medieval Warm Period from being global in scope. Do you think there are any similar or other negative feedbacks unaccounted for or not accounted for properly by climate models?
What is the status of your lawsuit against Tim Ball? Has he paid up yet?
If you wanted to get thru to Mann you should have asked:
1. Are you the smartest man ever to win the Nobel Prize or just one of the smartest?
2. Among oil company stooges like Anthony Watts, Judith Curry and Steve McIntyre, which one do you think is most likely a child molester?
3. Is that Wegman guy crazy or what?
I think that the Reddit effort was a probe. Bang the system and see how it rattles so to speak.
He was digging. He never intended to answer anything of substance, he just wanted to know the scope and depth of the questions so he could see what people actually know in advance of his legal pursuits.
The moderation here is light years ahead of blogs like Reddit. WUWT posts comments that conform to this site’s Policy, even when they are derogatory. That makes for heavy site traffic, because readers like to see a back-and-forth discussion with all sides presented.
Reddit needs to rein in it’s moderators. The questions Anthony asked were straightforward and pertinent. Readers would very much like to see Mann’s response. Running interference for Michael Mann only makes Reddit an enabler, like buying another drink for an alcoholic.
You misunderstood the moderator by focusing on the wrong part. He didn’t say the questions are ‘inappropriate’, but that they are inappropriate for Michael Mann. He is too thin-skinned to see such questions. To question his intellect is tantamount to an accusation of fraud.
Hard is merely another word for difficult or tricky, and does not include attacking questions here.
By hard questions are allowed, they meant something like
“Can you give us a complete list of all your awards and commendations?”
“What is the full form of (x-a)(x-b)(x-c)…(x-z)?”
@ur momisugly “reader who does not wish to be named”
Good move. Good questions. And transparency here at WUWT.
There is a full blown rout occurring.
“So when the moderator specified that “hard questions are allowed” for Dr. Mann…”
The questions would not be hard for Dr Mann. An academic of his calibre would be able to answer them easily.
It is interesting that the mods blocked his polite, thoughtful questions entirely, but just let the users down-vote my question, which wasn’t as thoughtful, and wasn’t as tactful, into oblivion. This was my question:
I wouldn’t mind if some folks here would up-vote my question, so that it reappears. It’s currently at -6. I think it has to be -4 or higher to be visible. (Note: I went through the comments, ctrl-F searching for “comment score below threshold” and up-voting most of those comments.)
To: the Distinguished Nobel Laureate, Dr. Mann,
Is it Ok to use the phrase: “State Pen, not Penn State” in any context?
Happened to me, too. I signed up specifically to ask a question. However, my first comment was an on-topic, point-by-point rebuttal of some nonsense someone had said. My stuff was factual and impossible to refute – it wasn’t even particularly controversial. My comment appeared briefly and then disappeared for good. The moderators are scared of tough questions which just shows how confident they are in the strength of their argument re global warming. Climate Nazis indeed.
Mann orchestrated a sing-a-long complete with a bouncing ball and backup singers. Nothing more, nothing less.
Of course a caveat like “almost anything can mean…… almost anything.
Clearly he had no intention of answering any real questions, just puffing himself up a bit by choosing some topics he felt confident about answering.
A really hard question like “how many Nobel prizes have you won?” is obviously not going to get answered because it would require working out the difference between one and zero.
The fact that he has trouble with that sort of thing may tell us how much use he is going to be at working out whether we have AGW or not AGW.
To be fair, he did say ‘ask me anything’ not that he would answer any question.
The problem isn’t protecting Mann from the questions – the problem is making sure Reddit users only see what’s allowed.
Imagine what hell the life of a alarmist propagandist, constantly on the lookout for the information that can’t be dared to appear, and feeling surrounded by the Dark Dastardly Forces of Denial .
To be a climate change alarmist is its own punishment.
The email address for President-elect Dr. Eric Barron is “president@psu.edu”. Address it to President-elect Barron, so that it gets to him and not outgoing President Ericson.
As the father of a current PSU freshman and an incoming freshman, I’m formulating my letter now.
There is a forum for AMA called appropriately enough reddit.com/r/IAmA
Mann’s AMA was NOT in that subreddit. The reasons are quite apparent.
The /r/science folder on reddit was altered some 2 months ago to allow the moderators to squash any and all comments against the alarmist rhetoric. This was done because the /r/science group has formally aligned itself with the journal Nature.
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1s6410/subreddit_announcement_nature_partnership_with/
If Mann had held his AMA in /r/IAmA, your comments and questions would probably not have been banned.
First rate questions. They were polite, pertinent, and of probative value. No wonder they went unanswered.
I think the dodgy doctor is great.
He has set the bar for ethics in ‘climate science’ so low that his very existence serves to continually undermine the alarmist cause.
Your questions weren’t too hard, they were disrespectful. You should know that you should preface your questions with a eulogy to his esteemed body of work, and then toss in a softball question about being burdened by noxious skeptics.
Does Mann deserve the implicit respect that use of the title “Dr” implies. perhaps he should be referred to simply by his surname.
see www,theeuroprobe.org 2014 -015
The Green Party wants to sack all MPs and civil servants who disagree with them
Mick G
Well – what else would one expect from the Womann-named-Sue? Now, now, we musn’t disturb her equilibrium – she is so delicate.
Put these guys on a late night talk show!
Kurt in Switzerland