5 May 2015
Ms. Marge Dwyer, Harvard T.P. Chan School of Public Health
mhdwyer “at” hsph.harvard.edu
Dear Ms Dwyer:
Research-related fraud at Harvard institutions
A series of connected frauds surrounding research into climate change and related questions at Harvard has come to light because an environmental advocacy group had falsely accused Lord Monckton’s distinguished research colleague Dr Willie Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics of having failed to disclose a funding conflict in a paper in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr Soon, like all his co-authors, had received no funding for his research into climate sensitivity modeling. That did not stop Dr Charles Alcock, the Center’s director, from allowing it to issue a statement alleging Dr Soon had failed to disclose a conflict of interest and claiming that it proposed to “investigate” him, when in fact it had itself negotiated a contract with Dr Soon’s funder for solar research that forbade it or Dr Soon to disclose the funder’s identity. Dr Soon had played no part in those negotiations. The Center alone was responsible. Dr Alcock also falsely told a journalist that the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had no legal existence and alleged that, therefore, Dr Soon ought not to have described his affiliation as “Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics”, falsely implying that Dr Soon had improperly inflated his credentials.
Your name appears as the contact for a press release at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/clean-power-plan-health-benefits-hinge-on-policy-decisions/, entitled Clean air and health benefits of clean power plan hinge on key policy decisions. The press release constitutes a gushing encomium of a commentary entitled US power plant carbon standards and clean air and health co-benefits by Charles T. Driscoll, Jonathan J. Buonocore, Jonathan I. Levy, Kathleen F. Lambert, Dallas Burtraw, Stephen B. Reid, Habibollah Fakhraei & Joel Schwartz, published on May 4, 2015, in Nature Climate Change: doi:10.1038/nclimate2598.
Two of the co-authors of the commentary, Buonocore and Schwartz, are researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Your press release quotes Buonocore thus: “If EPA sets strong carbon standards, we can expect large public health benefits from cleaner air almost immediately after the standards are implemented.” Indeed, the commentary and the press release constitute little more than thinly-disguised partisan political advocacy for costly proposed EPA regulations supported by the “Democrat” administration but opposed by the Republicans. Harvard has apparently elected to adopt a narrowly partisan, anti-scientific stance.
The commentary concludes with the words “Competing financial interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests”. Yet its co-authors have received these grants from the EPA: Driscoll $3,654,609; Levy $9,514,391; Burtraw $1,991,346; and Schwartz (Harvard) $31,176,575. The total is not far shy of $50 million.
Would the School please explain why its press release described the commentary in Nature Climate Change by co-authors including these lavishly-funded four as “the first independent, peer-reviewed paper of its kind”?
Would the School please explain why Mr Schwartz, a participant in projects grant-funded by the EPA in excess of $31 million, failed to disclose this material financial conflict of interest in the commentary?
Would the School please explain the double standard by which Harvard institutions have joined a chorus of public condemnation of Dr Soon, a climate skeptic, for having failed to disclose a conflict of interest that he did not in fact possess, while not only indulging Mr Schwartz, a climate-extremist, when he fails to declare a direct and substantial conflict of interest but also stating that the commentary he co-authored was “independent”?
Would the School please tell His Lordship, who has standing as Dr Soon’s lead author, how to lodge a complaint of research misconduct in respect of the massive, direct and undisclosed conflict of interest on the part of its researcher Mr Schwartz, and of the School’s misrepresentation of the commentary as “independent”?
Yours truly,
James Rowlatt
Clerk to Lord Monckton
+100
Leftists consider themselves to be pure. They also consider govt money to be equally pure.
Thus being funded by govt to advance the interests of govt is an activity that cannot be questioned.
It was government money, so it was as pure as driven snow and their report was totally objective. The fact that it told the EPA exactly what it wanted to hear is just coincidental, honest.
It was everyone else’s money, so it was as pure…
Fixed it for ya. (gummint has no money)
When everybody’s money passes through the orifices of govt, something magical happens to it, giving it the properties of pureness. In fact it becomes so pure that anything it touches also becomes pure.
Within Big Government, ‘everybody’s money’ quickly becomes ‘nobody’s money’.
Correction:
Corporations and individuals do not have the right to tax your assets, to spend your grandchildren’s future income or to imprison you. Only the State does.
So yes, why much of the Left sees the State, acting in it’s own interest as nearly always virtuous and business as nearly always evil I find confounding
The EPA has a clear agenda ; they “give” Harvard $50,000,000 of taxpayer funds ; Harvard spends in in a way that pleases the EPA ; poof, the EPA and Harvard declare the findings to be objective and independent
Pure fraud.
I agree Mr. Homewood.
Words fail me.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Their response will be…..
Crickets.
…which appear to be among the suggested replacements for beef, lamb and pork in our future “climate-friendly” diet. 😉
I wonder if the crickets will come in different flavors?
I will go for the chocolate coated crickets.
Oh and please make those renewable chocolate coated crickets.
I can’t stand the other kind.
Fat fu*$Ing chance.
Wonderful. Let’s hope this lawsuit brings all this to the public’s attention and the perpetrators all fully and financially admonished. And, let’s further hope that this lays an iron-clad basis for Dr. Soon to sue the above perpetrators.
When proven in a court of LAW, their fraudulent actions demand a penalty far beyond a simple admonishment
about the only way the media will publish anything on this story would be a $2,001 decillion lawsuit for damages.
Ouch.
Methinks His Lordship has removed his glove and used it to slap Harvard. T’will be interesting to see if his challenge is accepted. 😉
Aieeee, even!
Ms. Dwyer will ignore the letter and continue doing what’s she’s been doing.
On orders from “on high”…..
Okay, add payola profs to payola news outlets and all funded by total disregard for taxpayer funds
Cat meet pigeons.
Would the School please tell His Lordship … how to lodge a complaint …
I’m quite sure she’s going to get right on it.
The first one is to accept that they have always been as they are; they didn’t just wake up one morning a few months ago and decide to become a low life. The further back you go into their history, the easier it’ll be to find and dig out the skeletons. They will be there. Like all beginners, even spinners of webs of deceit, that’s where they’ll have made the most detectable blunders. If my cheque from big oil ever arrives, I’m very definitely going to spend the lot combing through the early background of a number warmists, confident of finding some interesting stuff.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/a-climate-of-deception-deceit-lies-and-outright-dishonesty/
Pointman
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
People in glass houses.. (HARVARD) should not [throw] rocks………
What a bunch of double standard lefty!!
Haardvark School of Public Health
Where Quality is an Afterthought
Where Quality is…collateral damage
Where quality is an unintended consequence.
I suppose he could enquire of the people who handed over the money if they thought it was well spent.
So, zemlik, if the people who handed over the money think that using it to propagandize and lie for the cause is money well-spent, does that make it okay? How many researchers would disclose their funding if disclosure was left up to donors to decide?
Considering the source of funding, as a taxpayer I’m one of the people to ask. And no, I do NOT consider it well spent.
Funny. From the style I could have sworn that Lord Monckton wrote that himself. I hope Clerk James is not a sock puppet.
Don’t whine.
ROTFL…………..
🙂
We’ve got a five dollar fine for whinin’
We’ll tell you before you come in
If it ain’t on your mind to have a good time
Ya’ll come back and see us again.
From the song “Five Dollar Fine” by Chris Ledoux
A good policy to follow.
Whoop!
I love that response.
Add another +100 to dedaEda’s +100!
@Nick do you have a check from the EPA? So Monckton is full of bombast and relishes a good brawl in the hall that doesn’t detract from the point the letter is making about the environmentalist conflict of interest double standard?
Well, the post doesn’t say whose double standard or what the Harvard paper actually declared. Harvard had no management authority over Dr Soon. In fact the declaration in the Harvard paper was this:
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/harvard.png
Unlike Dr Soon, they declared the funding of the actual paper. There’s no requirement that you list every grant every author has ever had. That could often be longer than the paper.
For me, I have never had EPA funding.
Aannd those last two lines Nick?
They acknowledge and thank the heavily biased and activist foundations for their financial support.
Neither independent nor are they free from ‘competing financial interests’.
Start with the ethics violations; one by one, then review and perhaps pursue legal actions.
“They acknowledge and thank…”
Exactly. They did that. Dr Soon didn’t. You may think the funding sources are biased. Readers can make up their own minds. That is why it is disclosed.
What do you think “competing financial interest’ means here?
Nick Stokes says “What do you think ‘competing financial interest’ means here?”
I think it means, in colloquial terms, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. Other colloquialisms include “quid pro quo”.
Nick Stokes
Am I getting this right? These four guys receive grants from the EPA totaling almost 50 million dollars and then write an “INDEPENDENT” paper favorable to the EPA and you claim that the money that they previously received is not relevant?
They did not bite the hand that was feeding them — but rather they licked it (or maybe it was the EPA’s ass they licked). What planet do you live on Nick Stokes?
Eugene WR Gallun
Mr Stokes says Dr Soon did not declare his financial interest. However, in the paper he co-authored with us for the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (go to scibull.com, click on “most read articles” and we are the all-time no. 1), he was writing about climate sensitivity modeling. None of his funding was for that purpose and, like all of us, he had received not a dime from anyone for that work, which he did in his own time. Nor did his funding for research into the sun-climate connection have any conceivable bearing on our paper. Indeed, the words “Sun” and “solar” occurred only once each in our paper, in connection with the uncontroversial mean flux density of incoming solar radiation. No conceivable conflict of interest could legitimately be pleaded in these circumstances.
As for 11 earlier papers in which Dr Soon’s funding was not disclosed, Dr Soon was bound by a confidentiality clause in the funder’s contract with the Smithsonian Observatory. The Observatory, and not Dr Soon, was solely responsible for that clause, but Dr Soon was bound by it. It would have been unlawful for him to breach the contract between his employers and the Smithsonian by disclosing his funding. Significantly, it is only in those 11 papers that his funding is not disclosed. Mr Stokes should in future not rush to judgment until he has bothered to research the facts.
The fraud by misrepresentation of which the Harvard School of Public Health is guilty is an entirely different matter – and one one which Mr Stokes, a petulant partisan, is characteristically and culpably silent. The School issued a statement fraudulently asserting that the commentary of which two of its researchers were co-authors was “independent”, when in fact, one of those two co-authors, and three others, had received between them the best part of $50 million from the EPA – the very body whose proposed regulations the commentary enthusiastically supported. Harvard benefits to the tune of tens if not hundreds of millions from climate-related activities every year. The police will be asked to investigate. In the United Kingdom, still imn one or two respects a free country, if (as is all too likely) the police refused to investigate, we’d have the right to prosecute privately. In the U.S., you have no such right, and Harvard may well get away with its gross criminality. However, as this thread reveals, Harvard alumni are furious. The failure of Mr Schwartz to declare his conflict of interest is in manifest breach of the disclosure policies both of Harvard University and of the School, and he cannot plead that the EPA had a contractual obligation of confidentiality with Harvard or with the School or with him personally because it was from the EPA’s own published list of grant awards that the total sum it paid to Mr Schwartz and his various research groups was ascertained.
If Mr Stokes is genuinely unable to understand the double standard operated by Harvard institutions here, then there is nothing I or anyone can do for him, except to pay no attention to any more of his characteristically snide, unconstructive, prejudiced, malicious trolling.
“Dr Soon was bound by a confidentiality clause in the funder’s contract with the Smithsonian Observatory.”
“because it was from the EPA’s own published list of grant awards that the total sum it paid to Mr Schwartz and his various research groups was ascertained.”
Beats me how you can make a virtue of the fact that the medico’s funding was public while Soon agreed to keep it quiet.
As to Harvard’s alleged crimes, here is what the Journal specifies as “competing financial interests”. It is oriented toward personal financial dealings. It would be an extreme stretch to claim that the EPA “may gain or lose financially through this publication”.
No need to swear. Didn’t even need Mosher to nail that one. “encomium”?!! Great style, better than media boilerplate. Don’t know how it plays in Oz, but the content should carry it across.
Nick,
As a brother colonist from a different colony, I’d share your distaste for the lordy,lordy bits (if you expressed it) but I’d be intrigued to learn which stylistic elements led you to your conclusion that Monckton is his own clerk.
I’ll make my own rash assumption and conclude that it all hinges on whether “gushing encomium” is a tautology or not and whether, in your mind, two separate people could similarly equate prolixity and perspicuity.
In addition, I’m curious to know in what way it’s of any consequence either way.
It’s interesting that you don’t consider (not far shy of) 50 million bucks from the EPA a competing financial interest in a paper that’s all about the EPA.
Actually, I retract “interesting”. I’ll go with “unsurprising” and “absurd”.
Mebbe says “In addition, I’m curious to know in what way it’s of any consequence either way.”
It is a “squirrel”, a distractor in the same mode as making a big deal of Willie Soon’s funding. Anything but considering the research itself.
The term “gushing encomium” is neither tautology nor redundancy nor pleonasm. Linked below you will find an encomium to writing penned by Abraham Lincoln, which, considering its sparing use of superlatives and attention to demonstration can not be disparaged as “gushing”. Remember that this encomium was intended for speech, not text; therefore, do not be repelled by Lincoln’s alerting use of the phrase “great, very great” near the beginning. Patience. Let this be a model for aspiring encomiasts: Flow. Do not gush.
http://grammar.about.com/b/2011/02/18/presidents-day-special-the-great-invention-of-writing.htm
“If EPA sets strong carbon standards, we can expect large public health benefits from cleaner air almost immediately after the standards are implemented.”
Grants from the EPA: Driscoll $3,654,609; Levy $9,514,391; Burtraw $1,991,346; and Schwartz (Harvard) $31,176,575. The total is not far shy of $50 million.
==========
the finest science money can buy. the only question is: who gets the benefits?
Public Health Benefits – something paid for by the public to benefit people in high places.
“…we can expect large public health benefits…”
Well I’d say that at least a small group of the public (Driscoll, Levy, Burtraw, Schwartz) got really healthy from that grant money; so just writing about strong carbon standards seems to have healthy benefits for some.
I’m convinced that the rent seeking warmist/EPA crowd are crooks. They are highly educated in their field (supposedly) but they lie, cheat and avoid the truth at all cost, What is truth, science math/equations that proves a theory, that is readily verifiable by all comers, that in turn becomes a fact. Lord Monckton and Willy Soon are truth seekers as apposed the the low life Warmist rent seekers.
Hmmm….“If EPA sets strong carbon standards, we can expect large public health benefits from cleaner air almost immediately after the standards are implemented.”
Has the director of HSPH stepped outside of her building and/or residence in the last 40+ years since the passage of the Clean Air Act or consulted with her colleagues in said school and not noticed the vast reductions in respiratory ailments related to having clean air to breathe? Harvard should hang it’s head in shame for issuing such an outrageous statement.
They know that reducing CO2 does not “clean” the air, but they want to leave that impression in the minds of the gullible. The only way strong carbon standards will clean the air is by forcing coal-fired plants to shut down. New EPA standards on mercury and other pollutants may also clean the air a bit, but that’s not because of less CO2.
There are areas where naturally occurring mercury levels are higher than the proposed safe level. Are the gods at the EPA going to fix that with the next sweep of their magic wand?
It’s a common bureaucratic idea that anything can be fixed by throwing ever larger amounts of other peoples money at it.
James Bull
In the same way the EPA has demonised mercury (the element itself, not the various forms of it both toxic and non-toxic) they wish to demonise Carbon in all forms. It keeps the argument simple: Mercury = bad, there should therefore be no mercury in anything or emitted by anything. As soon as you hear ‘mercury’, run! Such statements are always absent of numbers because putting real numbers on things creates exposure to a proper debunking.
Carbon is of course found in many forms, humans being one, so demonising carbon is riskier. Carbon is considered to be ‘dirty’ only because it makes clothes dirty so it is naturally referred to as carbon instead of CO2 which is not dirty at all.
The anti-carbon meme thrives only on ignorance. Carbon is everywhere. Mercury is everywhere. Sunlight is everywhere. UV is everywhere. Lead is everywhere. Without trace elements and carbon and sunlight and UV we would die. Without CO2 all plants would die save a few in the deep ocean vents that rely on sulphur compounds for food.
The unreasonableness of fanatical exclusion has already reached its limit: the demands for ‘less’ to be emitted have reached a point lower than the background levels. The same is true for radiation. The EPA was going to issue a PM2.5 limit for farming! Can you imagine shutting down farming in order to prevent ‘anthropogenic dust’ reaching the atmosphere? It has been shelved but the fact that it was ever part of someone’s paid activity shows the isolation some departments have from reality.
The much cleaner air achieved by the good efforts of the EPA (which are admirable) have not led to a reduction in asthma which is increasing rapidly in developed, cleaner countries. PM limitations are made more stringent specifically to deal with the ‘asthma problem’ (in the supporting documents) but it has not worked at all. Why? Did humans evolve in a dust-free environment? There is an underlying goal which is to ban all solid fuel combustion, even utterly renewable wood. It is the Beverly Hills approach to development: “Stop working so hard. Let’s have everyone eat cake. Cake, like milk, comes from stores, right?”
A few years back, it was demonstrated that when driving in or near Los Angeles, the air coming out a car’s tailpipe had fewer pollutants in it, then the air entering the air filter did.
Well, if they can produce false or poorly documented ‘science’, I’m sure these kind of places and people can also produce false or poorly documented accounts?
Unfortunately when you deal with the LEFT, there is no shame, no standards and no way to obtain “justice”. Alas, I’m reminded of a quote from a VERY famous “leftist”, “Power comes…at the tip of a gun…” (Mao Tse Tung). Yet at the same time, I have to remind myself of a society organized about a system of LIES, spead from “the top”, which essentially “fell apart” in a year when the fact that most of the people IN that society, realized they’d been fed LIES all their lives, and the NOMANCLATUREA (people of name) suddenly lost all their power. ALAS, the NOMANCLATUREA has come back, and the evidence is: “Power comes at the tip of a gun…” (Left to the reader to figure out which society I refer too…)
Whoah! This one is going to take buckets of whitewash.
Words are easy to ignore by those who don’t want to hear them.
But when enough other people have heard those same words…………
Keep spreading the words.
Thanks, Christopher, Lord Monckton, James Rowlatt.
Well said. Not that I think this is a mortal blow for the Harvard corrupt bureaucracy, but every little bit helps.
It could be mortal to one or two careers. Academia in general takes a dim view of gross misbehaviour (believe it or not) if it can be proven. Yes, there is a lot of team playing, but if forced, they will throw their own under the bus quite happily and claim they never actually met the guy.
“If EPA sets strong carbon standards, we can expect large public health benefits from cleaner air almost immediately after the standards are implemented.”
Hmmm…
wonder what would happen if the EPA set strong CO2 standards?
I suspect that “almost immediately” we would notice absolutely no public health benefit after the CO2 standard was implemented.
I wish them luck. Willie Soon is an innocent and definitely deserves a defense. The attacks on Willie are character assassination pure, simple, and evil.
On the other hand Mr. Rowlatt’s prose suffers from a bad case of run-on-sentence-itis. His letter would be more effective if it were more pithy. One idea per sentence, Mr. Rowlatt. It makes for easier reading, stronger presentation, and greater impact.
Mr Rowlatt, like Thucydides, is semper sibi instans. Thus, he packs more into one page than most can into a lifetime. Don’t knock him.
Mr. Rowlett (and others) should resist the temptation to write
@opluso
A matter of opinion. On reflection his usage is more correct than the usual “Democratic” adjectival form. Consider; it is the Labour government, or the Tory government, not the “Laboritic” or “Toryitic” government. It is an accident of history that the GOP’s “Republican” label serves as both noun and adjective.
D.J. Hawkins:
It is a matter of being correct (Democratic Party) or incorrect (Democrat Party). The proper noun “Democratic” is the proper form. The incorrect spelling is the creation of Republican consultants (like Frank Luntz) who learned that the word “democratic” left a favorable impression with voters. Their talking points memo was distributed years ago. Perhaps you missed it.
opluso: It’s the Democrat Party
MarkW:
I suggest you Google it.
Given that Mr. Rowlett was writing on behalf of a gentleman who suffers frequent, unwarranted challenges to his title, I would expect greater sensitivity to proper form. Leave schoolyard taunts to the schoolyard.
opluso … Nice try. No cigar. It had always been the Democrat party until a couple decades ago. Then the ‘Democrat Party’ decided that the ‘Democratic Party’ had a better ring to it and changed it’s name. Now, as they are wont to do, they have conveniently ‘forgotten’ and are trying to alter history by saying ‘it has always been thus.’ Many of us have better memories and refuse to play along.
And why is it, every time you all try to change language AND history, you always drag Frank Luntz into it??? Y’all need to upgrade your scapegoats … Luntz is getting a bit frazzled.
Teapartygeezer:
Wrong. The roots of today’s Democratic Party go back to Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. The formal name “Democratic Party” was adopted in 1844. The only thing that changed “a couple decades ago” was that Newt Gingrich hired Frank Luntz. Luntz did not invent the idea of controlling the political vocabulary (the technique goes back far beyond Orwell) but he did a remarkable job of refining the process. Gingrich, taking his cues from the history of radical-Left activism, organized House Republicans around a series of issues and heavily relied upon Luntz to produce the talking points and help conduct the training. Even though Luntz is no longer the favorite of the Republican Party’s leadership, his focus on the exclusive use of specific words and phrases remains part of the training of all Republican candidates.
In my opinion, those who criticize the inaccuracies and false statements that are so common in the climate debate should avoid becoming targets for silly, distracting criticisms themselves. Unless, of course, you have no desire to win the public debate and simply wish to antagonize your opponents.
One of the most persuasive writers for me is Sir Thomas More’. I find it amazingly clear and unambiguous once you get used to the style.
Effective is what gets the job done. It doesn’t need your approval or mine. It does have many “dog whistles” which are attention-getters, a subtle warning of things to come if ignored.
Good letter, but if the object is to embarrass Harvard in the court of public opinion, I doubt if this will see the light of day outside of blogs like WUWT. Are there any grounds for a lawsuit? That would get Harvard’s attention, and maybe that of the press, too. Obviously Lord Monckton has no standing, but Dr. Soon might—for what? Defamation of character? Maybe, if it could be argued that Harvard’s actions resulted in Dr. Soon’s diminished opportunity to win more grants, thus inability to practice his profession, and loss of income.
/Mr Lynn
You miss the alumni impact, their major endowment source. See a comment below.
The alumni won’t see this post, unless somehow it ends up in the New York Times (or perhaps Harvard Magazine). Unless of course major donors happen to be Climate Realists and subscribe to the ‘skeptical’ point of view. Apparently you qualify, judging from the attention you got: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/05/fighting-back-against-the-double-standard-on-climate-funding-at-harvard/#comment-1926653 Are there more here?
/Mr Lynn
Mr Lynn
We have not only seen it, we are spreading the word.
Best
If the EPA sets strong standards for the gas necessary for photosynthetic respiration? Talk about regulatory overreach! Where are the peer reviewed studies? The only ones I know about are for optimal levels of CO2 for plant growth which endorse concentrations by far beyond than any thing dreamed of by the AGW bunch
I see the Climate Liars have used their standard practice of conflating real pollution with the fake pollution, CO2.
So,
This letter belongs in a full-page ad in the Harvard Crimson.
Now that would be something to see. However, the Crimson would tell you it was “hate speech” and as such, not run the letter. Remember, this is Haaavaaad. Their the bastion of the left, anti-free speech and all.
I wonder if the Lampoon would run it?
Helicopter leaflet campaign?
+1,000,000
What a perfect letter! I look forward to the response and some decent action from Harvard. I won’t hold my breath on the latter, but I’ll enjoy watching them squirm. We need a lot more of this. Excellent, excellent stuff.
Every time they get busted, a new study comes out the next day. The truth doesn’t phase these climate liars!
As the lies grow mold and the gene code of the liars is passed on “down”, still yet too Lt. for life John F. Kerry still struts on his lie built stage the hero of the lot of these new temperature frauds who lie down his well healed path.
So much judgement needed, so many who sin with lies, and the liar media hunched over with the load on and on it goes as we who were lied to and about yearn for just one of the guilty in the docket call by any passing judge with a smidgen of honor.
We wait,
When will the demon of History judge these low liars, he sees them, he knows them, he has the long hot anger, still he sits, on his huge red eyed horse, the steel hooves send up hot sparks of anger, back in the tree line, just there in the shadows, they should fear him, they will fear him, he will come for them.
Clop, Clop, Clop, CLOP, CLOP, CLOP,,,,,,
You know that Ms. Dwyer will somehow get Harvard off the hook on this. The left has always known how to sweep their disasters under the rug.
Just ask Hilary…..
Scott, Cannot answer for Hillary, but sure as H am working on that other H. I promise.
co-authors have received these grants from the EPA: Driscoll $3,654,609; Levy $9,514,391; Burtraw $1,991,346; and Schwartz (Harvard) $31,176,575.
Mine Gott in himmell! Surely this is federal, criminal, fraud?
Harvard certainly won’t like this exposure. This is the sort of information they don’t want out, but out it is now. It might seem that it will only be viewed on these blogs, but these blogs reach a far wider audience than is realized and the news – and truth – will spread. Harvard will have to respond, even if only to try and contain the damage.
That letter packs a punch! 🙂
It might also be useful to send a copy of the note to Revkin and other influential reporters in a very public way.
They will undoubtedly see it here, but they could plausibly deny having done so. If they decide not to publish it, it must be made clear that it was a willful decision on their part.
Good thinking!
Time to send in the Lawyers.
You have written evidence of fraud.
This post is personally painful. But, as a triple grad, at least I have had the privilege of already telling Pres. Drew Faust Gilpin in writing that so long as Naomi Oreskes remains a (new) Harvard faculty member, they won’t get a further dime from me. Three of Harvard’s alumni solicitors have flown down to visit, incredulous. Each was treated to a very nice lunch on me, and each firmly received the same message. Decisions have consequences. The climate tide is starting to ebb.
Ristvan, good on you.
It would be interesting to know whether other alumni are taking your principled stand. I suspect that you are making a significant impact.
Follow the money – or lack of same!
Yes, we are.
Jim, what are you doing? I never donate, but I can write. Maybe an alumni petition?
/Mr Lynn
Mr. lynn
write me at bubbapbuh at gmail.com and we’ll talk.
are you also an alum?
Well thanks to you, the Harvard endowment is down to 32 billion.
Now tweet it. 😉 You, too, Monckton.
Sorry, Rud.
Oreskes is the perfect employee for those who really pull the strings at Harvard. She is a tool, used to accomplish a task. Do you think that the reputation of Harvard matters a whit to those people? Harvard is their toolkit.
About 5 months ago, I read an article that the CO2 Extremists realized the Polar Bear schtick wasn’t working; thus they decided to use health concerns to baffle the low-information public. The idea also included aspirations to use ‘children’ to trigger an emotional appeal (to the dimwits). As we know, fer and emotion are the major trigger points affecting opinion.
Since then, I have come across a number of articles on health issues, caused by GloBull Warming (of course).
I too would love to see this letter published across the universe.
I believe we will all find that the tide is now turning.
People are susceptible to emotional appeals, it is true.
But once they have an inkling that they are being manipulated, the tactic backfires on the manipulators.
Telling people that they are roasting to death, while instead they are freezing their tushies off, is bound to alert all but the most brain-dead sycophants that something is amiss.
Don’t count on it. Just look at the wealth of information out there which refutes every claim of the climate fear mongers. Have you heard POTUS, or the head of EPA, or any other bureaucrat recant any official climate pronouncements, in even the slightest degree?
None of us call the shots. There are very few people that call the shots and they are not elected and they do not have your best interests in mind, They are the ones who employ Harvard graduates, primarily in upper management positions throughout the bureaucracy, where elections do not matter. Only the agenda from on high matters. We have no say, despite appearances.The rules may be subtly adjusted to stave off the heads- in- baskets sentiment from time to time, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
There will be no notice by the MSM.
This is a great post! Sad, but great.
Thank you.
I have on rare occasions lamented not going to Haaa-Vaaad. I shall never lament again. This is shameful, blatant, unconscionable, and ignoring it will only make it more so.
Gets a mention at Jo Nova’s
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/05/epa-authors-media-miss-31-million-dollar-potential-conflict-of-interest/
“….As they keep us afraid fortunes are being made,
In the name of saving our earth;
From climate scientists to Al Gore, now all earning much more;
Alarmism increasing net worth…..”
Read more: http://wp.me/p3KQlH-ID
Regardless of the scientific research being conducted, grant applicants have long learned that simply adding the phrase, “…and the possible impacts of CO2 induced global warming on (fill in the blank), will greatly increase the probability of getting grant approval…
The worse “the possible impacts” projected, the more brownie points the “researcher” earns for future “research” grants; a self-licking ice cream cone.
This corrupt process will continue until CAGW is finally disconfirmed, which shouldn’t take long given almost 19 years with no global warming trend and counting, and all the other dire CAGW predictions that are now so laughably wrong.
I can’t believe this silly hypothesis is still taken seriously.
Verbose.
Simply put:
1) A lead Author wrote in a press release:
2) This endorses the US EPA position.
3) They claim independence from the US EPA with the words:
4) Yet four of the co authors have received grants from the US EPA totalling close to $50 million.
Summary:
The report is not independent and they hid they fact.
(Poor peer reviewing too).
Mr Courtney is not, perhaps, experienced in establishing a legal case. He seems to think that listing the names of the study’s authors or the doi: reference to their commentary or a summary of the mistreatment of Dr Soon is “verbose”. No: it is the minimum necessary to establish that a fraud by misrepresentation has occurred. The single-page letter makes all the necessary points and provides all the necessary information to enable a third party to verify those points at once. The police, when they get the file, will be able to read the single page and grasp the matter straight away.
As for the four questions with which the letter ends, it was necessary to ask those questions so that Harvard would have a fair chance to reply before the file was sent to the police. So far, Harvard has not replied. My experience of corrupt entities – for I used to investigate frauds for HMG – is that when they are confronted with the unanswerable they do not answer. To any experienced fraud investigator, failure to answer what is on any view a serious and well founded allegation of criminality is a red flag. It is not proof of guilt, but it is strongly suggestive of it.
Bottom line: there is very little in that one page that did not need to be there. So why not stick to the main point in future, which is that Harvard has become corrupt, instead of complaining about such secondary considerations as style?
I concede that I am not a lawyer and so may not speak legalese.
But I do question your confidence that the police, when they get the file, will be able to read the single page and grasp the matter straight away. It isn’t that clear.
And the difference between a press release statement and the paper itself is not addressed. For criminal charges to be brought (rather than a slap on the wrist for poor practise) I think it does need to be addressed.
But I am not a lawyer.
M Courtney says “I question your confidence that the police, when they get the file, will be able to read the single page and grasp the matter straight away.”
As Obi-wan-kenobi would say, “This is not the file you are looking for.” This is a warning shot. You may be right about police not grasping the matter right away but that’s rather insulting of police.
Mr Courtney deludes himself. The matter is entirely clear. A researcher from Harvard took £31 million in grants from the EPA. He co-authored a paper praising the EPA’s politically contentious shut-down-America policy. He declared that he had no conflict of interest. Harvard then described the paper he co-authored as “independent”. The misrepresentation was drawn to Harvard’s attention and it was foolish enough and corrupt enough not to withdraw or even to amend the offending press release, thereby establishing that it intended to deceive. Various Harvard officials had falsely accused Willie Soon of failing to declare a conflict of interest when he had nothing to declare and was in any event under a contractual obligation not to declare. The double standard is palpable. That’s it. Let us not argue about style. Let us stick to the substance, which everyone except Mr Courtney has had not the slightest difficulty in comprehending at once.
Sure there’s a double standard but has any particular law been broken ?
J Martin should read the head posting. Fraud by misrepresentation is the offense.
Reblogged this on Wolsten and commented:
I wouldn’t want to be in Marge Dwyer’s shoes and look forward to watching this story unfold.
Its hard being humble when you are always right, and my double standard is therefore ok because i’m always right.
I find this to be a dire and catastrophic situation for an institute like Harvard to find itself in. Inept and crass statements leave a fractured picture of the quality of academia in relation to climate science.
The reality is that when Ms Dwyer look at the balance sheet what they will see it that much if the money the EPA has paid out has not actually gone to the researchers but to Harvard itself , as is normal [practice] .
Now if you remember why Penn State said Mann was ‘innocent’ it was has much has anything to do with the fact that he brought in a lot of money to Penn State, so could not have done wrong . along with the fact he told them he did no wrong.
You have the same case hear and indeed in much of the USA university system,where the value of staff comes at least as much has the cash they bring in has the [academic] work they do .
Star ‘academics’ do not have be ‘good academics’ but they do have to be those that ‘attract funding ‘
Given that you have snow balls chance in hell of Dwyer offering more than smoke and mirrors at best to this letter .
‘Oy you bunch of self-righteous, sanctimonious, self-serving, taxpayer-funds-engorging bunch of opinion-paper-writers for hire…….
That there slush-funded institution called Harvard, wot makes out like it does dispassionate research, like, is doing the equivalent of getting funded for skin colour issues from ex slave owners, cancer research from tobacco companies, GM crop impact evaluations from Monsanto, or writing on football courtesy of Rupert Murdoch’s spondoolies.
Now perhaps you might like to start by telling us all why you think that publishing in Nature Climate is ‘independent research’. Anyone with an IQ above 80 who has followed the editorial lines of the entire Nature stable the past 15 years knows that the Nature stable is about as independent in climate change terms as the Koch Brothers are purported to be in political terms. Papists confronting heretics in other words.
You may be doing a bit of pole dancing to your own dodgy clientele, but that doesn’t mean you’re voicing the views of the majority.
Send a similar complaint to the editors of Nature Climate Change and of Nature proper.
And submit it as an editorial to the Boston Globe and Boston Herald.
Good letter. I hope it gains the traction it deserves.
Dr Charles Alcock has done a fine job of promoting the seriousness of non disclosure. He and the authors should face the same music as the song they have sang. Harvard has a problem and Alcock and Co. seems to be it.
Don’t even know where to start there is so much dishonesty.
Let’s start with conflating CO2 with “cleaner air”, CO2 is not a pollutant and will never be. No one is going to receive any “immediate” benefit from human reduced CO2 production. In the middle lets pick ignoring or lying about about who signed the confidentiality agreement preventing Dr. Soon from disclosing sources. Lets end with $50 million apparently having no influence on the analysis of the objectives of a political organization that provided the $50 million.
Harvard Teaching Hospital to Face Trial for Research Fraud
“http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1462&Itemid=208”
That was in 2012. Has the trial occurred? What were the results? Can’t find links to articles later than 2012. /Mr Lynn
“Competing financial interests” obviously means “financial interests that compete with my ideology”. In other words, it is interpreted to mean “I didn’t get money from the Koch brothers or Big Oil.
They weren’t asked if they had taken money from colluding financial interests.
Copy and paste the letter to your congressman/woman D or R. Let them know you are aware of the fraud.
Breathlessly awaiting the New York Times to hit Harvard hard on this “conflict” as well! And I’m sure Boxer and Co are drafting another inquisitional letter.
“Dr Soon, a climate skeptic”. I’m starting to wonder if there is a better term than “skeptic” for people who don’t think CO2 levels are a disastrous problem. “Skeptic” implies to me that there is a fixed conclusion about something and people are on the outside questioning it. That “something” is kind of vague – do skeptics question whether or not the globe is warming? Whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Whether or not the Earth is round? Too bad there’s not a concise way to call oneself “a person who doesn’t think the CO2 put into the atmosphere by humans will make the planet uninhabitable and does think it would be great if there was unbiased climate science to better inform us” or something along those lines.
A climate realist
The Harvardians themselves placed the charge and Lord Monckton was kind enough to light the fuze. It is burning slowly but inextinguishable. At the end there will be a mighty bang and a lot of débris. Well done, your Lordship!
Climate Week: “Climate Change and Human Health: Impacts and Opportunities” with Joel Schwartz and Sam Myers
http://tinyurl.com/n25k3px
Joel Schwartz is a recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grants. That certifies his credentials as a leftwing moonbat.
To the people of the U. S. A. ……………………..WAKE UP !
Send this to your elected representative immediately.
If you do not do so, you will be part of the problem.
(If you cannot work your computer properly, ask a nine year old, they will do it for you in a flash).
WAKE UP and DO IT NOW ! … and yes, I am telling you what to do (which is not my style) but I should do the same thing to prevent the death of an innocent child playing with a hand-grenade.
PLEASE WAKE UP !
Warren….I was going to reply and tell you your original indented paragraph was inappropriate, but I see that it has been removed by Mod. A copy and paste to the article on the PC Address Bar would be a good way to inform others.
I am just as angry as anybody about the AGW Scam, but you have to be polite and intelligent how you discuss the subject with others. Don’t get caught in the trap of behaving like ‘Those People’ (as General Robert E. Lee would say).
Thank you: I appreciate that.
Kind Regards,
WL
Thank you: I appreciate that. Kind Regards, WL
Warren Latham Mobile: 07708-239572