Villanova University Presents 2019 Praxis Award in Professional Ethics to Climate Change Pioneer Michael E. Mann, PhD

1549991557015From Villanova University Media Room

VILLANOVA, Pa. —The Villanova University Ethics Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has named atmospheric scientist and well-known climate change advocate Michael E. Mann, PhD the recipient of the 2019 Praxis Award in Professional Ethics. This year’s award will be presented at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 11 in the Villanova Room, Connelly Center, followed by a lecture by Dr. Mann.

Since its inaugural year in 2007, the Praxis Award is given to a professional or academic who exemplifies the highest ethical ideals of their profession or who has contributed to professional ethics scholarship. Dr. Mann is considered a pioneer of climate change and has significantly contributed to the scientific understanding of temperature changes over the past thousand years. He is distinguished professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center.

Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001—which was among the IPCC’s many efforts that earned it the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences’ Frontiers of Science in 2003 and has received a number of honors and awards, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002.

“The Ethics Program of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recognizes Dr. Mann for his professional courage, his scientific work, his commitment to defend science against those who seek to politicize the findings of science, and his recognition that scientists do their work in the context of a global and independent reality,” said Mark Doorley, PhD, director of the Ethics Program. “We need science in order to navigate the challenges of that reality; and we need scientists to speak up, as Professor Mann has done—and continues to do—in the present moment.”

The Praxis Selection Committee reviews nominations annually, selecting a recipient who has accomplished one or more of the following achievements:

  • Excellence in fulfilling and embodying the ethical ideals of a profession;
  • Excellence in connecting professional work to a broader understanding of the common good;
  • Excellence in promoting and embodying ethical integrity in a professional field;
  • Excellence with respect to research in the field of professional ethics;
  • Excellence in terms of influence on the field of professional ethics through writing, teaching, consulting and/or professional leadership.  

The event is was free and open to the public.

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April 12, 2019 7:10 pm

For some perspective on Penn State awardees:

Jan. 17, 2000: The Philadelphia Sports Writers Association honors Jerry Sandusky with its Career Achievement Award.

Just sayin’. Everyone gets their due.

Craig Moore
April 12, 2019 7:13 pm

AYSM????

MikeH
April 12, 2019 7:21 pm

Another Friday Funny? That’s 3 today…

Yirgach
April 12, 2019 7:31 pm

I graduated from Villanova – BSCE in 1971.
At that time there was no Ethics Program, but then the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences wasn’t known for any cognitive skills anyway.

Bruce of Newcastle
April 12, 2019 7:33 pm

Liberals give awards to liberals, news at 6!!!

Increasingly if you hear that someone has won a Pulitzer, or some such, you can be sure it’s a perfect indicator that everything they say is garbage.

Robber
April 12, 2019 7:35 pm

Would have made more sense on April 1.

Richard
April 12, 2019 7:40 pm

Says a lot about the university’s concept of ‘ethical’, as in ‘what you can get away with’. Oh, wait! That’s our culture’s understanding of ethical behaviour both in business and politics. And all too often in personal relationships.

James Clarke
April 12, 2019 7:43 pm

“Excellence in connecting professional work to a broader understanding of the common good…”

None of the other qualifiers pertain to Mr. Mann, as they contain the word ‘ethics’. The one above, however, does fit, if you believe in a climate crisis. Mr. Mann has played a huge role in deluding the public into believing the climate crisis myth. He has been extraordinarily unethical in the process; cherry picking data, misusing statistical methods, colluding to suppress science, ruthlessly attacking anyone who challenges him, and so on. Many here have called this a joke, but it is not funny. It is a travesty.

April 12, 2019 7:52 pm

Just confirms how far the sick and demented liberal climate alarmism campaign has sunken.

Gary
April 12, 2019 7:57 pm

“The Ethics Program of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recognizes Dr. Mann for his professional courage, his scientific work, his commitment to defend science against those who seek to politicize the findings of science, and his recognition that scientists do their work in the context of a global and independent reality,” said Mark Doorley, PhD, director of the Ethics Program.

Mark Doorley, you are an idiot.

1. Mann is hardly courageous. There’s sufficient evidence to find him a bully.
2. Mann is the one politicizing science, not his critics. Go read his books.
3. What in the world is “the context of a global and independent reality”?

KcTaz
Reply to  Gary
April 13, 2019 12:52 am

Gary,
I think that has something to do with a thing called Intersectionality. I can’t help more than that. I watched an entire hour long video of Jordan Peterson trying to explain it. He’s very good but it is such an idiotic concept that, at the end of the hour, I could still only tell someone the name and not explain a single thing about it other than if something, like this, makes zero sense, it’s probably Intersectionality.

john mcguire
Reply to  Gary
April 13, 2019 12:13 pm

“Global” reality I can’t help you with. “Independent” reality means a reality which is independant of facts.

H.R.
April 12, 2019 8:14 pm

Gag me with a spoon!

(I’ve wait 40 years to use that one and today was the perfect day to let it loose.)

Dennis Sandberg
April 12, 2019 8:14 pm

Damn, who horrible must the other candidates be if this is the crown jewel?

Robert B
Reply to  Dennis Sandberg
April 12, 2019 10:29 pm

You get the feeling that it can’t be awarded posthumously, bumping up Mann over Idi Amin for example.

eck
April 12, 2019 8:18 pm

This is rich! One of the largest intellectually dishonest (hockey stick anyone?) people ever!
Villanova alumni, stop sending any money.

n.n
April 12, 2019 8:32 pm

The ethical or relative behavioral standard in contrast with morality.

Tim
April 12, 2019 8:37 pm

In the interests of balance:

The Hockey Stick Illusion: by Andrew Montford and published by Stacey International

A Disgrace to the Profession: by Mark Steyn (Editor) Published by Stockade Books

SM Fish
April 12, 2019 8:41 pm

Next week Villanova is giving “Chef of the Year” award to Jeffery Dahmer.

April 12, 2019 8:43 pm

These awards are oddly seem to be the kiss of death to the recipient’s career. Gleick after his unlawful misrepresenting himself to the Heartland Institute board, forgery and likely wire fraud was given an award and was appointed Ethics director of the AGU! Since, ‘crickets’ in his field of hydrology and climate.

Chris Turney, famous for his costly “Ship of Fools” debacle in Antarctica that got a ship stuck in ice and put women and children in danger and needing air rescue from a Chinese Icebreaker and a Antarctic research service vessel. His Uni had to pay several million in damages and the self styled ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Science, U of NSW, up and awards him a medal! Except for tears he shed a year later over frozen Adelie chicks he thought had just died of climate change but were 400 year old birds (no carrion eaters on the continent), ‘crickets’ again.

Population Bomb Ehrlich was silenced with an award from the Royal Society, #Me too Pachauri was demissioned to attend his sexual assault trial after he received his Nobel. Im sure many others could be listed.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Gary Pearse
April 13, 2019 4:01 am

“Gleick after his unlawful misrepresenting himself to the Heartland Institute board, forgery and likely wire fraud was given an award and was appointed Ethics director of the AGU!”

Maybe that’s why the AGU feels free to lie to the people of the world by claiming that humans are causing the Earth’s climate to do things it wouldn’t ordinarily do.

Thanks for that post, Gary. It gave me some good laughs with your recounting of some of the ridiculous history of climate science.

Joz Jonlin
April 12, 2019 8:55 pm

Next up, the Queen of England will be knighting Sir Mann as he makes his whirlwind tour around the world where The Pope will elevate him to saint status. When he lands back in the states, the Academy Awards committee will bestow an Academy Award on Sir Saint Mann for watching an Inconvenient Truth 10,000 times since it was released. It’s a new category this year. He’s also expected to take first place in the all-academic George Costanza lookalike contest. It’s a little known fact that he has a bed under his desk just like his doppelganger hero. These awards are simply a snippet of what’s to come as he no doubt will eventually get absolutely everything he deserves.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Joz Jonlin
April 13, 2019 4:08 am

Stop it! Stop it! It’s too early in the morning to laugh this hard! Good post, Joz. 🙂

tweak
April 12, 2019 9:24 pm

VILE Nuevo?

April 12, 2019 9:39 pm

In “disappearing”the Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age he committed professional infamy.
And he gets a special award.
Euchh!

Peter Morris
April 12, 2019 10:07 pm

Well that’s an interesting definition of “ethics.”

Greg Cavanagh
Reply to  Peter Morris
April 12, 2019 11:19 pm

It’s the Gleckian style of ethics. He also one an award for his contribution to ethics.

April 12, 2019 10:37 pm

They do say the victors are the ones who get to write the history and I feel history is going to be very unkind to these people.

Mark Steyn may well be turning the irony meter to 11 on this one.

Patrick MJD
April 12, 2019 11:12 pm

Surely they have make a mistake, it should be Villainova.

April 13, 2019 12:05 am

Will they print the certificate upside-down, Tiljander style?

Reply to  M Courtney
April 13, 2019 9:00 am

Indeed, he is “his own Mann”
https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/a-list-of-manns-screw-ups
A handy guide to M.M. science ethics

Rod Evans
April 13, 2019 12:17 am

Come on guys, credit where credit is due.
No one has advanced the ethics of Mann made climate change more than Michael E Mann.
He is an almost unique individual, His ethics are all his own , no one comes close to his individual achievement or scale of self promotion.
His ideas are all his own, his interpretation of tree rings is all his own. No one throughout the history of science, has been able to convert tree rings into a hockey stick, an amazing “trick”. Ethically he is unique.

RockyRoad
Reply to  Rod Evans
April 13, 2019 4:51 am

Ethically, he is bankrupt! Oh, but I err: he is so deep in the negative category he could enact Groundhog Day for a million years and still be in deficit territory!