Michael E. Mann Sues For Defamation Over Comparison To Jerry Sandusky 371
eldavojohn writes "The global warming debate has left much to be desired in the realm of logic and rationale. One particular researcher, Michael E. Mann, has been repeatedly attacked for his now infamous (and peer reviewed/independently verified) hockey stick graph. It has come to the point where he is now suing for defamation over being compared to convicted serial child molester Jerry Sandusky. Articles hosted by defendants and written by defendant Rand Simberg and defendant Mark Steyn utilize questionable logic for implicating Michael E. Mann alongside Jerry Sandusky with the original piece, concluding, 'Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno, was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being (whitewashed) investigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?' Additionally, sentences were stylized to blend the two people together: 'He has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.' One of the defendants admits to removing 'a sentence or two' of questionable wording. Still, as a public figure, Michael E. Mann has an uphill battle to prove defamation in court."
Probably not a good move. (Score:5, Interesting)
One way to give your detractors more attention than they otherwise would have gotten is to attack them (this article is a case in point.) Worse is that if he loses the case (which given his public figure status, is easily possible) he'll just add to their credibility.
Disclaimer: I myself generally distrust climate alarmists. The earth has had periods of MUCH warmer climates, and life thrived in all of them. Hell, lets even look at more recent history: some archeologists have found evidence that during the medieval warm period, there were farms in areas that are now considered far too inhospitable for agriculture due to the cold climate. Further, what we're seeing now may very well be yet another temperate anomaly, only now our measurements are more accurate so it seems different.
And yes, I do believe in global warming.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:2, Interesting)
Second sentence is also a lie. The "hockey stick graph" was not "independently verified" unless you mean proven to be false. Wiped out were the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. If one feeds white noise into the program used to generate the graph, one still gets a hockey stick. This was all done by weighting the data samples he liked (showing AGW) higher than the data samples he did not like (those not showing AGW).
Re:Probably not a good move. (Score:2, Interesting)
Life may have thrived, but the life in question is several billion human beings who are heavily reliant on key agricultural zones like the North American grain belt, which, if they shift or disappear, will have severe consequences for billions of people.
Civilizations have failed before due to climactic changes. Is there some reason you think history has ended and we are now immune to major alterations in agricultural productivity? Do you think the food on the shelves of your nearest grocery store appear there due to Star Trek-like fabricators?
Cherry-picking == Fail. (Score:2, Interesting)
+ That tree ring data is for summer temperatures only -- not all year around.
+ Scandinavia (what you call norway) is a poor proxy for the entire world.
This is obviously cherry-picking. See the full story here. [realclimate.org]
Also, click on the parents link, and note that it fails to offer an explanation.
Reality vs Models (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone post Mann's Hockey Stick (which ends around 2004 going straight up) and the actual temperature charts? Or just go look at them yourself. I'll give you a hint, one looks like a hockey stick and the other looks like a stick.
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't mean there is *no* correlation with temperature, it means you have to carefully filter out data that is obviously bogus.
The issue here is how you define "bogus". Data that you know is wrong for some determined reason can honestly be called "bogus". E.g., if your weather station got painted black by accident and then got painted white again a month later, it is reasonable to discard all temperature data for that month as bogus. You know why it was wrong. If you are weighing experimental mice to determine the effects of some drug and when you check the calibration of the scale at the end of the weighing it doesn't read correctly, you discard the readings you just took as bogus and do them again.
Simply discarding data that doesn't fit your hypothesis and is thus "bogus" is beyond imagination for any true scientist. Data that doesn't fit the hypothesis is important, because it may mean your hypothesis is wrong. Since there is no ground truth available for tree rings in ancient times, there is no way to know why they don't agree with your theory.
As for Mann's hockey stick. I have long ago lost the email and am not going to spend a lot of time looking for it, but just a couple of years after I started working at a University in earth sciences there was an ecstatic email from an NCAR source bragging about how they had "fixed" the climate model they were using and the "hockey stick" turned upwards much more sharply... in the future. No support from real data to justify the change, but they got the situation to look worse so they were very pleased with their work. I remember it because it was my first real introduction to how modellers will change their models to "look better" even if there is no real justification for the changes. (Empirical constants are tweaked all the time, usually to fit existing measurements, but this was to help them "fit" a more dire set of predictions.)
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Interesting)
I was involved with a data entry project involving weather station data going back to the 19th Century, where some of the original data was being manipulated by climate scientists for questionable reasons. The largest problem that was happening is that after the data was entered and verified from the original records (dead tree paper records that were hand-written... thus it was a very labor intensive project simply to enter all of this data and a simple OCR program wouldn't work) that it was sent through a processing system where some of the data was rejects for the reasons you mention.
In this case, some of the data was rejected because people, being human, sometimes make mistakes in recording the data. For example, if it is June and most of the weather stations of the region are reporting temperatures around 70 degrees but some weather station reports the daily high temperature to be 17 degrees (it happens... simply transposing 71 degrees to be 17 degrees when it was written down) that outlier is rejected from the data set.
As you suggest, sometimes there were problems with a particular weather station that may also skew the results in various ways. One in particular is a serious problem where originally a series of weather stations were installed in the middle of an open meadow, but over time trees, brush, and other things creep near to the "fixed" weather station that bias the information being collected. Perhaps a subdivision is built near the weather station or other factors as well. Assumptions have been made with weather data that certainly is not accounted for in many of these studies. Snowfall/rain measurements are particularly suspect when several trees grow up around that weather station which wasn't there when it was established.
The largest problem though is that the data which is presented is the data which is processed. An honest researcher would make available the original raw data set with all of the outliers and problems in the data set along with observations and relevant information that could then be verified, reviewed, and monitored independently. I thought that is what happened in real science. Instead, that original raw data is being discarded and isn't even available for review to question or check the methods being done to process and "clean up" the original data. I am suggesting that for various reasons the data is being deliberately skewed including historical data, and that all of this gives a black eye to climate science as the biases aren't really being accounted for.
Due to all of this data manipulation, it seems especially suspect that data is claiming accuracy of a fraction of a degree when none of the original data even remotely has that kind of accuracy.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:4, Interesting)
I've talked to lawyers about discovery, I've read trial transcripts and I've sat in court during trials. So I know something about discovery.
In one patent case, the lawyers had subpoenaed a chemist's entire 4-drawer file cabinet, digitized it, put it in a database, indexed and reviewed the whole thing, and projected pages in the courtroom.
The First Amendment doesn't protect you from disclosure in a libel suit.
Lawyers tell me that the judge can order both parties -- and people who have nothing to do with the litigation -- to supply them with any information that's "in the interests of justice."
As the Mann complaint details, they were doing more than just stating personal opinion. This is what the libel lawyers call "personal opinion based on underlying facts." People have lost libel suits for saying things like, "In my opinion X is a Communist," even when the person was a public figure. "Communist" is libelous per se.
Steyn and Simberg crossed the line when they accused Mann of "fraud." That's libelous per se.
"Academic and scientific misconduct," if it is an opinion, is an opinion based on claims of underlying fact. "Misconduct" is libelous.
That's libelous even if Mann is a public figure.
After discovery, Mann's lawyers will look through the documents to see if they demonstrate reckless disregard for the truth.
I'd like to see Simberg on the witness stand explain how he came to the conclusion that Mann was guilty of "academic and scientific misconduct."
I know a bit about the writing business that these guys are in. Lots of people in their position take money from industries that are affected by their work. They might get paid $10,000 from the industry to fly out to Nevada to give a speech. A freelance writer might get paid travel expenses to attend a meeting. They're getting money from somewhere, and it would be interesting to know where it is.
Yeah, it's a fishing expedition. Their demand for Mann's documents was a fishing expedition.