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."
Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admin (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds like their argument is that the Penn State administration has a tendency to cover-up embarrassing stuff and protect their own. I would think they would have more a case for defamation than this guy (assuming it's not true, of course). Not that I would expect them to bring it, since at this point they're mostly just hiding in a foxhole somewhere praying that CNN goes away soon.
Mann himself should probably just accept that this is a downside to climate research (since it's become hopelessly politici
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
At the same time, Steyn has flown awfully close at times to libel, and this comes as close to crossing the line as I've seen. Whether it crosses the line or not will be up to a court to decide, unless Steyn backs downs. My opinion is that while it is an obnoxious, immoral piece of trash piece that shows Steyn and Simberg to be dishonorable disreputable shitbags, it's not truly libelous.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:4, Informative)
Defamation is a broad category that includes libel and slander. Libel is defamation that occurs in a persistent form; slander is defamation that occurs in a transitory form.
According to the complaint [typepad.com], Mann is suing for five counts of libel and one count of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:5, Insightful)
That complaint is a good summary of this dispute. For Mann to win a libel case, he has to show that they wrote things that were false and defamatory, and (since he's a public figure) that they published it with knowledge that it was false or with disregard of whether it was false. It's libelous to accuse somebody of "fraud" or "deception." It's libelous to accuse someone of practicing his profession incompetently. Libel law protects opinions, as opposed to fact, but I think they've crossed the line. I think a jury could decide that they've met that test.
This isn't William Buckley's National Review. I'm familiar with right-wing crackpots from reading the Wall Street Journal comments pages. One of their problems is that they don't particularly concern themselves with facts. They don't even seem to understand what a fact is, or what the difference is between a fact and an opinon. They think that if somebody disagrees with them, he's a "liar." You see people calling Obama a "socialist," a "Kenyan," etc. These are words without meaning. It's like football hooligans screaming insults at Manchester United. Chris Mooney has written about this in his books and articles starting with "The Republican War on Science." I've often reflected on how much of it was actually libelous, if anybody bothered to sue. Now somebody did bother to sue.
Rand Simberg, as quoted starting in paragraph 26 of the complaint, said that Mann was "behaving in a most unscientific manner", "engaging in data manipulation", is hiding "academic and scientific misconduct." In paragraph 28, he called Mann's hockey-stick curve "deceptions" "in the service of politicized science." Steyn called Mann "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph."
In paragraph 31, the complaint says that "their allegations of misconduct and data manipulation were false and were clearly made with the knowledge that they were false." If they can convince the jury of that, they've won the case.
In paragraph 32, the complaint says that Rich Lowry, the editor of NRO, said that Mann's research was "intellectually bogus."
In paragraph 35, the complaint says that the statements "are defamatory per se and tend to injure Dr. Mann in his profession because they falsely impute to Dr. Mann academic corruption, fraud, and deceit as well as the commission of a criminal offense, in a manner injurous tot he reputation and esteem of Dr. Mann professionally, locally, nationally, and globally."
The delicious irony is that in a libel suit, both sides have to disclose huge amounts of documents relating to the case in discovery. Mann's emails were already exposed. Now Simberg and Steyn's correspondence will probably be exposed. If they were taking money from the energy industry, that will be exposed. They'll get the same treatment Mann did.
Re: (Score:3)
I bet you a dollar that this gets settled out of court so those emails don't have to come to light. If necessary, the libelers' financial backers will intervene to make this so.
Re: (Score:3)
With Mann being a public figure, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him to require anything from Simberg or Styne. 1st amendment protections of freedom of speech may be enough to protect them from even bothering to disclose anything at all, particularly if all they are stating is personal opinion.
Furthermore, you are presuming that there is some kind of connection to the energy industry when you have absolutely no idea what they do and who they are. Mark Steyn is a conservative commentator who has
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.
You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-advanced.htm [skepticalscience.com]
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Informative)
Your source contradicts itself
DeadCatX2 quoted some source: ... However, tree-rings in some high-latitude locations diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960."
"Tree-ring growth has been found to match well with temperature
If the tree rings are showing falsely low temperatures after 1960 then it is questionabe at best if they were not giving falsely low temperatures back during the medieval warm period. It is a rule of science that you are not supposed to hide such evidence especially if your opponents say it is significant.
To say it was not hiding is rediculous since the alarmist Phil Jones himself described what he was doing as hiding. Burying data deep in an academic paper the public won't see is still hiding. Sure the experts were debating it, but it was hiden from the public who wouldn't look deeper than the graph.
I would have replied earlier but my battery died and i lost my post. I'll have more.
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Informative)
I think you missed the "some high-latitude locations" part. Tree rings altogether are not suspect, only those ones at high latitude, and even then only *some* of the ones at a high latitude, and even then only *after* 1960. I fail to see the contradiction.
I'm also not sure how you can say "sure the experts were debating it" and yet "the evidence was hidden". What more do you want? The evidence is right out there in the open, being discussed in peer-reviewed literature publicly available for 17 years. It was in the IPCC report. What definition of "hidden" involves reports that can be read by anyone with a web browser and a PDF reader?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The high latitude argument is frivolous.
The data fails to track what they hope it tracks, so they go on a fishing expedition seeking for some sort of discriminator so they can further throw out 'inconvenient' data.
Firstly, the discriminator has little explanatory power.
Secondly, the _retained_ southern tree ring data is polluted with a species that is _sensitive_ to fertilization. They retained data that has other signal influences, instead of removing it.
Instead of eliminating the unwanted signal
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:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Insightful)
If the tree rings are showing falsely low temperatures after 1960
Well, well, well, we have another armchair scientist demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]. The decline in tree ring proxies has been extensively discussed in literature. The hockey stick doesn't rely on tree rings, and uses multiple proxies, and they all converge.
Did you know that?? All that stuff about "hide the decline" is just nonsense! Who would have thunk it!
Re: (Score:3)
The original hockey stick relies on broken PCA.
Of course other hockey sticks have subsequently been teased out of the data, therefore Mann's hockey sticks were right all along. Quant Suff.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Posting intentional trying to provoke people by posting incorrect things as facts. So -1 flamebait seems reasonable.
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:4, Insightful)
Anxiously awaiting your rebuttal, especially given the fact that the decline which you claim isn't being talked about has in fact been talked about for over a decade.
Also wondering whether you agree with the fact that I was modded down to -1 for providing evidence contrary to your post.
Re:You don't know what "Hide the Decline" means (Score:5, Insightful)
It is against the moderation rules to mod somebody down even if they REALLY ARE wrong.
Bullshit. The negative moderation options exist for a reason. Use them where appropriate. When someone makes an empirical claim that clearly and absurdly wrong, especially one which remediable with a couple minutes of research, this is a troll by definition.
Re: (Score:2)
It is against the moderation rules to mod somebody down even if they REALLY ARE wrong.
Bullshit. The negative moderation options exist for a reason. Use them where appropriate. When someone makes an empirical claim that clearly and absurdly wrong, especially one which remediable with a couple minutes of research, this is a troll by definition.
I thought a troll, by definition, did that sort of shit with the specific intent of either pissing someone off or derailing discussion?
IMO, "ignorant, lying asshole" is probably a more accurate descriptor in this instance.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but what do you do when someone who is patently, provably wrong gets modded up to score 5? If you aren't allowed to mod that post down, it sorta defeats the purpose of moderation...
FWIW I don't want the guy to be modded down to -1 or 0 because he seems like he actually believes the stuff he's saying. I just don't think he should be above a score of 1, personally.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The whitewashes explicity decided not to invetigate Mann's "hide the decline" because he did it and it couldn't be denied.
This is materially false. You are living in a fantasy world. Go read one of the many independent investigations on this, or better yet, read the original email yourself.
Talk about cherry-picking.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Reading the original mails is exactly what brought many people to conclude that the whole discipline is full of shit.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:5, Informative)
The decline is not hidden from anyone who has enough scientific background to go read the original papers. The "hidden" data is included in the paper and it is explained why they are not used. The words "hide the decline" refer explicitly to not using the data since it was shown to be wrong by other measurements. To quote the scientists over at RealClimate: [realclimate.org]
As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper [realclimate.org]) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:5, Informative)
This is shit science. You don't just chop out data post 1960 without knowing what is wrong with it. Yes, it was discussed in the literature. No, they had no definitive answer, only speculation.
Even worse, what Phil Jones did was chop out the data and replace it with thermometer data so that three separate data sets rose up in striking agreement in a hockey stick fashion.
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:5, Insightful)
No, It's a Pretty Specific Target Considering ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like their argument is that the Penn State administration has a tendency to cover-up embarrassing stuff and protect their own.
The Penn State Hershey Medical Center [pennstatehershey.org] brings in over a billion dollars a year in revenue to Penn State. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal also presided over said medical center with obvious financial interests that were easily orders of magnitudes higher than the football program. When will we re-investigate all of their malpractice suits? When will we bring their alleged (just now) organ trafficking ring from China to justice? Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide treatment and medical misconduct, with so much at stake?
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody who would say what you just said is worse than Hitler. (It's Slashdot, I have to mention Hitler!)
But seriously? People are inciting to have you killed and you're supposed to say, "Oh well, it's part of the job"? If we let that stand, American science doesn't have much of a future.
Re: (Score:3)
The science does not say the world is going to end. The science does not say unless we tax everyone's energy use, the world is going to end. The science does not say we have to implement changes that restrict the freedoms of people while granting the government increasing power over people's lives. The science does not say that we cannot live through any changes. The science does not say we cannot question the motives and the work of people making those claims. Global warming is in the realm of politics whe
Re: (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:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say 8 or 9 other graphs that show substantially the same thing using different proxy data [wikipedia.org] provide independent verification of the Hockey Stick Graph.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually McIntyre and McKitrick (and Wegman) cherry picked the top 100 out of 10,000 runs of the code to show that it always produces a hockey stick. There's a good discussion of it here. [deepclimate.org]
Materially false (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems like you never heard about the null hypothesis. Weather disasters rack up no matter what and none of what we have seen is in the least out of line with what has happened in history.
If you ignore history, however, you'll always think things are going to hell in a handbasket ... as people have done all the time in history.
The null hypothesis when refuted is refuted. (Score:2, Insightful)
And the null hypothesis (there is no warming trend) has been refuted.
Weather disasters are racking up at rates higher than the null hypothesis ("there is no increase in weather disasters") can accept, so that is refuted.
What we have seen IS out of line with what has happened in history. Two 150-year events in the same year worldwide is no proof of a change in the climate. over 30 is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"Global Warming" Ended Sixteen years ago. (Score:4, Informative)
It's useful to look at longer time periods:
http://skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html [skepticalscience.com]
Re:"Global Warming" Ended Sixteen years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds more like a slam against Penn State admi (Score:4, Insightful)
the null hypothesis has been refuted in this issue. IT's in all the expert scientific journals.
What we have seen is out of line with the overall history trend. That, along with mountains of other data clearly indicate AGW is really. External sources have been eliminated. The current shape of the earths orbit* doesn't account for the change. So, it' internal.
Yes, looking at one set of data, say 2 years' in and of itself doesn't mean the planet is warming, nor would it mean it's not warming. To isolate one piece of data, then use that one tiny pieces in an argument ignoring the rest of the relevant data it really fucking shitty.
*it goes between phases of round to more oval; which causes 'ages' This is a quick laymans explanation, you can find the data online.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Seems like you never heard about the null hypothesis. Weather disasters rack up no matter what and none of what we have seen is in the least out of line with what has happened in history.
oOOooOOoo the "null hypothesis". You must think that 1000s of scientists don't know something about elementary experimental design! That MUST be it! Gee, you could use statistics and evidence to draw conclusions as to the likelihood of various hypotheses. Mmm, let me see... that EXACTLY what that IPCC did!!
Sorry, it might not mean shit to you, but null hypothesis (as you put it) was rejected in a 1979 NAS report (30 years ago). Today, the evidence is just stronger.
If you ignore history, however, you'll always think things are going to hell in a handbasket ... as people have done all the time in history.
Like the history of increasing weather [skepticalscience.com]
Re: (Score:3)
If the temperatures in summer were a prime example, then please tell me why 33 out of 51 of the hottest temperatures on record in the US are from the 1930ies or earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_temperature_extremes [wikipedia.org]
This statistic also favours more recent dates. When a record temperature has not been surpassed,but merely reached, only the most recent date is mentioned. So it's already biased towards a warming trend.
Re: (Score:2)
"earned them the 2007 Nobel Prize"
Is that the same organization that gave a peace prize to a president who assassinates people, along with killing women and children, with no due process of law?
Yeah, I'm not sure how that gives them any kind of credibility.
Can't handle the truth. (Score:3)
Muller has been outed as a long-time warmist, his claims otherwise notwithstanding.
You make it sound like he is homosexual, and not a scientists who followed the data where it lead him. The fact that he reached a conclusions that you don't like is PROOF he is BIASED, right? Either that, or you can't handle the truth.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, but Mann's Hockey Stick is repeatable. A number of other studies since the original was published have shown substantially the same thing as Mann's work using different proxy datasets. Here's a number of them plotted along with the Hockey Stick Graph. [wikipedia.org] See if you can figure out which is which.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Now superimpose it, with normalized axes, on the recent Norwegian tree ring data: http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/fraud/climategate/.images/00-both2.png [vrx.net]
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.
Threatening Discovery of Materials on All Research (Score:5, Informative)
Dr. Mann complains about two statements: 1) that as "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph," he is "the very ringmaster of the three ring circus" on climate change; and 2) that he "could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet." Neither of these statements is actionable. Moreover, if Dr. Mann decides to pursue this matter, he and his research would be subjected to a very extensive discovery of materials that he has fought so hard to protect in other proceedings. Such materials would be required for National Review to defend itself.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, I don't think Mann is afraid of discovery at all. As far as I can tell his work has always been honest. The reason he's fought it is that a scientists work should be judged by the science they produce, the published results of their work, not some gotcha quote mining of working papers and communications with peers.
Re:Threatening Discovery of Materials on All Resea (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason he's fought it is that a scientists work should be judged by the science they produce, the published results of their work, not some gotcha quote mining of working papers and communications with peers.
The reason he fights it is clearer to me. It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant! Furthermore, if 90% of people in our society allowed this and it became expected or, worse yet, legal then you would have effectively forfeited your right to privacy.
Scientists are human beings that work long hours at their jobs. Demanding the publication of everything is a bit dehumanizing and Mann is correct to fight it lest other scientists find themselves under the same expectations after it has been established as the norm. I think it will be acceptable to release it during the discovery phase of a case like this but it should not be given up lightly.
This is a clear attempt to intimidate and repress scientists and researchers.
Re:Threatening Discovery of Materials on All Resea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant!
Dr. Mann and his university accept public funds from the federal government and that subjects him to FOIA requests. And frankly, I see nothing wrong with examining relevant email communications from Dr. Mann on that basis. If he doesn't like it, then he can always refuse federal funding for his research projects.
Re: (Score:2)
Emails, even those of federal agents, can only subpoenaed if there is a criminal investigation going on. They are discoverable, but they are not public.
Re:Threatening Discovery of Materials on All Resea (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant!
Dr. Mann and his university accept public funds from the federal government and that subjects him to FOIA requests. And frankly, I see nothing wrong with examining relevant email communications from Dr. Mann on that basis. If he doesn't like it, then he can always refuse federal funding for his research projects.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
- reportedly said by Cardinal Richelieu
There's good reason to want to keep your communications private, personal relationships you don't want cross examined in public, small mistakes that could be mischaracterized, or things you can't even imagine. Just consider writing an email that you know will be seen only by 1 person you trust, or writing an email that will probably be seen by a thousand people who are out to get you. Don't you think that's going to harm your work?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
CERN willfully discards 90% of it's data. But if you have High Speed Internet (and most Americans do, unless CERN has insane bandwidth requirement that I don't know about) , you can get access to the other 10 percent.
Re: (Score:2)
CERN willfully discards 90% of it's data. But if you have High Speed Internet (and most Americans do, unless CERN has insane bandwidth requirement that I don't know about) , you can get access to the other 10 percent.
Actually, CERN has insane bandwidth requirements that required significant new research into distributed computer systems to realise. For the LHC, they created the LHC Grid [wikipedia.org], with the 11 tier 1 institutions being connected to CERN via dedicated 10 GBit/s links (and they receive only part of the data each).
Re: (Score:2)
That they aren't competent to design a simple 25 GB/s storage array?
Re:Threatening Discovery of Materials on All Resea (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? You want e-mails when most projects in medicine and physics that are federally funded don't even release their raw data?! Why aren't you clamoring for the DNA and raw collider data that has been built with your taxpaying dollars? Or should they just refuse federal funding as well?
Maybe this is off-topic, but I (and many others) believe that publicly funded research should be freely available to the public.
Re: (Score:3)
Go read the papers. The problem is that you don't have the knowledge to understand them and judge if they are correct.
Then there's not much point to reading the papers, is there? "Go do X. But you can't do X."
Of course the same applies to the private email between colaborators
That depends what the emails are about, doesn't it? My experience with the "climategate" emails (and programming code releases!) has been that the private emails have been quite enlightening with declarations of uncertainty, disagreement, bug-ridden databases, and other such things that somehow never make it to the research papers or the IPCC executive summaries. I think what is most damaging is that the climate resea
Inflammatory? You bet! Defamation? Not a chance. (Score:2, Informative)
While the imaginatively twisted likenesses are obviously meant to irritate Michael Mann, they are in no way defamation of character and I suggest a counter-suit for harassment!
Re:Inflammatory? You bet! Defamation? Not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Inflammatory? You bet! Defamation? Not a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason Mann has fought all of that discovery is because he's standing up for other scientists. The discovery is not after anything relevant to anything. What's relevant is his published work.
Re: (Score:2)
The beauty of science is that some one else can reproduce the work and evaluate how good it is. Mann's Hockey Stick has been supported by a number of other researchers [wikipedia.org] using different proxy data who come up with similar results to Mann. I'm not aware of any peer reviewed published work that contradicts Mann's work.
So even if hypothetically Mann were to be found intentionally lying it's irrelevant. The actual published work is what matters.
Re: (Score:2)
professional correspondence showed he was intentionally lying about his findings
Yet numerous independent investigations have rifled through his emails and found nothing. This is just about mud slinging, 'cause Mann's science doesn't jive with your politics.
It is about a precedent of harassment. (Score:2)
Michael Mann has fought so hard to keep them private suggests that there is something in them he would rather the public not know
Not at all. It's simply a natural reaction to a precedent of harassment. It's not just Mann who gets hassled. It is any scientist who publishes anything on paleoclimate, or gives a quote to a newspaper or such.
Same realm (Score:2)
Publishing peer reviewed science is almost the exact same thing as child molestation. How can anyone not see that?
On a different note, is anyone else having problems getting Slashdot to load in a usable way? It's like I'm being dared to take my nerd traffic elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The only problem with slashdot is that no matter how far I adjust the brightness on my monitor, the AGW denial posters just aren't getting brighter.
Re: (Score:2)
Publishing peer reviewed science is almost the exact same thing as child molestation. How can anyone not see that?
When the science is about paleoclimate, then absolutely. Those guys are part of a marxist conspiracy. Green is the new red. They'll lie and do anything to impose big government on hard-working freedom fighters.
That's really how the tea party thinks of this issue. It is irresponsible. And when climate change really does start hitting the bottom line, they'll probably blame liberal godlessness, and quietly forget this disingenuous assault on science.
Peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has been on both sides as both an author and reviewer of scientific papers, "peer reviewed" doen't not mean something is automatically correct, simply that it is worthy of publication. It's closer to saying it's plausible, and should be out there for the scientific community to discuss. Correctness is more judged by reproducability over a timescale of decades, but even that is not definative.
Science is a lot more messy that a lot of people would like to believe...
Re: (Score:2)
Ya it gets rather annoying when people say "peer reviewed" like it means "proved beyond all debate." No, it means just that: some of your peers reviewed it and say "this is ok for publication."
In addition to the fact that there could be something they missed (happens all the time) the process is also rather political, as with all human endeavors and so some things pass review that probably shouldn't, and other things get rejected should get published.
All in all it is a necessary step but it is just a basic
Re: (Score:2)
Strawman alert...reasonable people don't say "it's peer reviewed so it's proven beyond debate". Reasonable people say "look this paper isn't even peer reviewed so it is worth extra scrutiny".
Re: (Score:2)
From Slashdot "his now infamous (and peer reviewed/independently verified) hockey stick graph." They are presenting peer review as something that is a "oh you need to shut up and stop criticizing" situation.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you missed the "independently verified" part...
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see that, either. I see "there is a scientific consensus". The only people who might say remarks such as "peer review = beyond debate" or "science is settled" are people with an agenda, and I don't consider them to be reasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
So you have given a very poor argument.
The science isn't "settled" in that it is a theory of everything. It is "settled" in the sense that we have a clear understanding that climate is change because of CO2. The issue reached consensus in the late 70s. Any improvements will have to account for the data more accurately then current theories.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is a lot more messy that a lot of people would like to believe...
Sure, but peer review is better then the blogosphere. And one side of the debate has 10,000s of pages of peer reviewed literature, and the other has the blogosphere.
Re: (Score:3)
That means it's completely inappropriate to say that it was shoddy work covered up by a corrupt president similarly to how he protected a child rapist.
Even though it's true? Mann and Sandusky received the same whitewash treatment from the same people.
As to your first assertion, peer review generally means the paper has been looked over by 2-4 people knowledgeable in the field, depending on the journal and circumstances. That's not the entire scientific community, even if you then add in Mann and his coauthors.
I hope Mann crucifies these despicable liars and science-deniers.
"Science-deniers". It's interesting how irrational and unscientific the supposedly pro-science side is in this debate.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
Rand Simberg is a clown (Score:5, Informative)
Simberg is best known for a fabricated "Reuters" article allegedly from 1945 [educate-yourself.org] which, unbelievably, was taken seriously and cited by both Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Basically, it was a lame satire about the Iraqi resistance which (falsely) claimed that similar things had happened in Germany after WWII.
Sure sounds like it (Score:5, Insightful)
It really is a slimy piece of shit move to compare someone to Sandusky because they were at Penn under the same umbrella. This definitely harms his reputation and if you believe it then certainly you will have disagreeable opinions and feelings towards him. He's a scientist who interpreted data in a controversial way that is argued among academics, he certainly didn't rape innocent children in the showers.
Re: (Score:3)
He's a public figure though. Otherwise Obama and Romney could both stop their campaigns and retire off of lawsuits.
(Cue the "But my candidate wouldn't do that, only the other guy would!" responses.)
Re: (Score:3)
Being a public figure only means that the writer has to be proven to know the allegation is written acted with actual malice.
Yes it's a higher burden. But I'd vote that way.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you a public figure if you where forced into the public by people making lies to get you there?
Not that being a public figure means people can defame you; which is what there are attempting to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Any intentional false communication
I don't see an intentional false communication here. No one is saying Mann is a rapist.
Compared *to* or compared *with*? (Score:3)
The "Writing In the Sciences [coursera.org]" online course over at Coursera [coursera.org] says to distinguish between "compare to" and "compare with".
"Compare to" is used to find similarities, as in "shall I compare thee to a summer's day?". "Compare with" is used to find differences, as in "His time was 2:11:10 compared with 2:14 for his closest competitor." (Many sources [google.com] on the net.)
So I have to ask, was he being compared to Jerry Sandusky, or compared with Jerry Sandusky?
Inquiring [Scientific writing] minds want to know :-)
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: (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 the
Re: (Score:2)
Global warming is not about extinction of life on Earth. It's about economics and disruption of existing infrastructure.
Required viewing for defenders of freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me point out (Score:3, Informative)
That even if Mann had engaged in scientific fraud, which is questionable considering that his accusers are known liars and can barely spell "science", they're stiill equating the violation of scientific integrity with the RAPING OF CHILDREN. .
Fuck these guys hard.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I read a different article. They argument was penn state administration covered up the Sandusky stuff. Thus, with something as mild as academic fraud they'd be even more likely to cover it up. Where did they equate the two?
Re: (Score:3)
They equated the two by using Sandusky as the example. They might as well have made a Hitler reference too. The goal was a psychological effect with some political consequences, planting the notion in the minds of people who don't understand climate science and who have no informed opinion either way on global warming, that Mann is somehow preserve, a danger to children and society at large, criminal. The person making this comparison is counting on the inability of readers to see two distinct situations an
A Gambit? If so, Mann got punked (Score:3)
A hypothetical scenario:
If all that Simberg, Steyn et. al. wanted to do was have a look at Mann's data, this is how they might be going about it:
W: Simberg, Steyn write inflammatory articles about Mann and his hockey stick graph, hoping Mann tries to sue their asses.
B: Mann tries to sue their asses.
W: Simberg & Steyn subpoena data out of Mann's ass.
B: Mann must choose which is more important, the anonymity of his data or realizing the slim possibility of owning S & S's asses but still being more likely to lose.
W: S & S smile.
It's called Zugzwang, baby!
Re: (Score:3)
Mann's data and methods are not hidden. You and anybody can find the information for the original hockey stick graph here. [psu.edu]
Hockeystick graphs are usually crap (Score:4, Insightful)
So when someone calls bullshit on anyone waving a hockey stick graph and saying the sky is falling; give me money. I support anyone who calls Bullshit on them.
Re: (Score:3)
And yet, for all the problems, science marches on, the most successful system for gathering data and creating testable explanations ever created.
Re: (Score:2)
"And yet, for all the problems, science marches on, the most successful system for gathering data and creating testable explanations ever created"
The scientific *process* is pure, but the publication of science is 50% good and 50% junk science.
Re: (Score:3)
Be good enough to point out the red herring.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Good thing the hockey stick has been confirmed by others, then.