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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I mused proposing something like “Are you the anchor in this cartoon that’s going to drag the entire alarmist ship to the bottom of the ocean, and if so will Trenberth be on deck holding a thermometer yelling ‘Eureka!’?”
But the idea that something like that would ever get to Mann’s eyes…you must be kidding…
@J Martin –
No, I think “Womann-named-Sue” is sufficient.
I believe his name will on forever in Science.
Wikapedia 2050
The MANN solution.
Definition – Attempts by a scientist to manipulate any data by hiding the source code.
The MANN solution was named after Michael Mann back in 2014 after he went to court and was found guilty of manipulation of data that lead to his arrest and banishment from the scientific field. Later in life he was found wandering forest and talking to the trees, comments heard were
” tell me how much warming has there been” whilst hugging trees, many a time he had to be stopped from chainsawing ancient trees.
My question was also deleted. Paraphrasing, I asked:
“In light of Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s description of scientific integrity, do you have any comments on your 1998 “hockey stick” paper?”
See Richard Feynman 1974 Caltech
life on forever
oh lordy – live on forever!
Yeah big surprise, I asked several questions that were deleted also. Why be nice? After 2 of my questions were deleted, I just started taking shots at the moderator.
I’m pretty sure Eli Rabbett was a moderator, normally he is pretty good about allowing tough questions, but my suspicion is that heavy handed orders were given out, probably by Mann himself. It is actually quite comical,
Paul Westhaver says:February 25, 2014 at 9:13 am
I think Paul’s dead right: It was a fishing expedition to find out what people might use to oppose him (Mann). There was no intention to engage. Mann’s a poltroon!
You can pitch any fast ball you want, so long as it doesn’t go over 40 mph.
If you want to speak freely in the era of open mindedness then you have to show that you are open minded. Otherwise no one wants to hear you and your speaking rights will be taken away. Don’t waste the time of busy, enlightened open minded people.
You have to be open minded.
Same goes for science. If you want to discuss something about a theory, you have to demonstrate that you understand that theory. Questioning the basis of a body of theory obviously shows that you don’t understand that theory. It is only rational that any questions you may have that show such ignorance should be discarded outright, and that you should be socially sanctioned as an example to others.
Only in this environment can open minded scientific inquiry occur.
(do I need to put the sarc tag here?)
And another thing …
Isn’t it about time we improved science?
This stodgy reliance on ‘observation’ weighs down the beautiful thoughts and ambitions of so many enlightened people who can imagine a better reality.
Let’s do the brave, bold thing that people in the climate ‘debate’ (there is no debate) keep talking around – time to discard the burdensome thermometer reading and record keeping that takes valuable resources away from TRUE SCIENCE where models are made that show the world just how bad we really are and in how much need we are of having decisions made for us be beautiful, enlightened people with degrees that rely on essay writing and impassioned statement-making rather than dull, unimaginative fields like engineering and “hard sciences.”
Let’s free humanity and explicitly do away with “hard science” and replace it with “easy science” where everyone gets a Nobel Prize!
Like John said one morning after rolling over and looking at Yoko for the umpteenth time: Imagine!
I once posted a very politely phrased question on RealClimate about how come we were supposed to believe tree rings were good proxies for historical temperatures when we knew they did such a lousy job of tracking 1980s and 1990s temps, a fact which had made necessary “Mike’s Nature trick” in the first place. I even prefaced it with some gratuitous comment in praise of Gavin Schmidt (probably an example of my loose adherence to moral standards, but nevertheless).
My question was removed with impressive speed and efficiency for a bunch of guys that cannot manage to secure either the CRU e-mails or SkS forum from hackers.
to be fair muller did change his mind
That key word means hard questions are disqualified. This is why they cannot and will not allow any debate. They would be pulverized.
If I could be bothered jumping through the hoops to join reddit I would have asked him where all the money went that I am supposed to have received as a “climate sceptic”.
Well, it says to ask him anything.
And J. Martin, no matter what you think of his views, M. Mann has a PhD from Yale so he is entitled to the honorific title “Dr.” If there is a problem then perhaps it should be taken up with the department that awarded the PhD.
OK – I submitted a question via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/SemperBanU/status/438399949244334080
We’ll see if it gets a response.
It brings us another question – Is there a way to exhume long dead academics and study their layers of skin so as to determine thickness in prior epochs? Would that be Dermochronology?
We already know that Reddit has a policy that bans CAGW skeptics from posting:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/20/discussion-thread-reddit-bans-climate-change-skeptics/
It’s much simpler to be a denier, after all. To deny there is uncertainty, to deny debate, to deny freedom of thought, enquiry and speech, to deny the right of scientists that don’t toe the line to publish papers in the journals, to deny error or doubt even when people like Steve McIntyre have demonstrated that there are bits of your graph that are upside down, to take to the courts to deny the right of people like Mark Steyn to criticise and so on.
I did a search for certain words and variations thereof and none of the following appear in Mann’s question and answer piece.
• McIntyre
• Steve McIntyre
• statistician
• graft
• nature trick
• Medieval
• Little Ice Age
• Oxburgh
• enquiry
• climate research unit
• CRU
• Phil Jones
• Nature trick
• Darrell Kaufman
• Tiljander
I guess the gate keepers have some kind of keyword filter which banishes such questions straight into spam.
You can bet your bottom Dollar that questions with some of the keywords I have listed above were asked.
‘What Michael Mann took part in was more along the lines of a puff piece or a public relations show’
That is the only type of show he will take part in…until his ego gets the better of him and he does end up in court, what a day that will be.
From a non-climate-qualified person, keen on exposing anti-corruption aspects of life in general…..isn’t it wonderful for those of us similar types, that Blogs like this, are, in the ‘digital age’, able to expose these…….(fill in your own description)….types of people, hell bent on self promotion at what ever the cost to the truth. Long may it last!
If you were actually looking for a response, a better question for Dr Mann would be
The 1993 Graybill-Idso tree ring study that you used in MBH98 was undertaken by its authors to find evidence of CO2 fertilization. What techniques or methods did you use to separate out the temperature component from the effects of precipitation variation and increasing CO2?
Obviously, *real* science is about not asking difficult questions, and only about confirming your own biases.
So we need a new name for that thing where you use techniques and processes designed to test your ideas against reality, because that’s not “science” anymore.
And Mann has the temerity to label Judith Curry as “anti-science.” Oh, the projection. It burns.
So much for scientific transparency and “peer review”. It’s more like “peer ignore”.