Climategate: Penn State Moves to Protect Its Own
7. The money conclusion, except for any that inform your assessment of the credibility of the inquiry, is this:
Finding 4. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee could not make a definitive finding whether there exists any evidence to substantiate that Dr. Mann did engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” (Pp. 6-7)
Reading the panel’s quantification of this finding over the next two pages, they sure look like a band edging closer toward the outcome. When the music (inquiries) stops, they’re left standing pretty squarely on the spot staked out in the initial wagon-circling, dismissive response of the relevant and cloistered scientific community detailed by Wegman et al. Maybe they behaved less purely than is the driven snow, but that’s more a matter of perception derived from “private” correspondence never intended for outside assessment; who has not been indiscreet? However that is not the same as violating laws, etc.
The wagon-circlers in ClimateGate’s early days involved climate scientists waving away the actions of fellow climate scientists with whom they shared parallel interests of not seeing their gravy train derailed. Indeed, the panel summarizes that response of others as “nothing more than the private discussions of scientists engaged in a hotly debated topic of enormous social impact.”
Penn State risks the appearance of waving away the actions of a fellow Penn Stater with whom they share the interests in this not being a drawn-out tawdry affair for the University. We will see how they distinguish their own, surely more verbose ultimate conclusions from the wagon-circlers’ pithy dismissal.
8. Also troubling is the panel’s selective notation that “some may seek to use the debate over Dr. Mann’s research conduct and that of his colleagues as a proxy for the larger and more substantive debate over the science of anthropogenic global warming and its societal (political and economic) ramifications”. (P. 8.)
Yes. And some may seek to diminish the scrutiny of Mann’s research and conduct and that of his colleagues to protect the larger and more substantive industry that they represent. Why only one of these interests is worth mentioning is of a part with the panel being taken by just how forthright their subject was, despite not acquiring context to make that judgment but which assertion was material for inclusion in a ten-page assessment of more than two months’ work.
Sadly, the panel’s express focus, the only one among the relevant issues which troubles them for further inquiry, “questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research activity, given that this may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist, and given that it may be undermining public trust in science in general and climate science specifically.” (P. 9) This is likely to be viewed in hindsight as having revealed a driving desire of dispelling questions and rehabilitating Mann, “science” and/or the University, not into fairly exploring the substance.
In conclusion, these points all remind us of the frequent need for and widespread use of independent inquiry when seeking to truly discern the meaning and importance of credibly alleged misfeasance. Penn State is heading toward concluding that this is all a big misperception, a matter of appearances more than substance. Something similar can be said about their initial assessment. Appearances matter, and this doesn’t appear good.
Of course PSU is going to clear Mann. After all, he’s on the progressive side of the issue. That’s what really matters after all. It doesn’t matter if his methodology is false, or his if conclusions are based on incorrect data, he’s right on the issue and his reports support the far left’s agenda to take over and derail modern civilization. That’s all that truly matters.
For a decade prior to climategate, it was widely known that mann refused to submit his data for public review, and even then, some folks were finding significant statistical errors.
Its unrealistic to expect a university that, in the service of socialism has been harboring mann’s un-scientific religious commune, will suddenly admit that they have been at best ignorant enablers of academic fraud, and at worst co-conspirators.
The sheeple have no mechanism for evaluating scientific methodologies, and until the thought leaders tell them its over, they will have faith in mann.
I wonder how many universities even have professors and administrators that are not ‘warmers’ and have any inclination whatsoever to place academic excellence above ideological service.
Just to be clear, when I learned about science in the 1960s, it was axiomatic that refusal to submit one’s raw data for peer review invalidated one’s claims in the eyes of the scientific community.
The fact that this is no longer true is why I say we live in an age of superstition rather than science.
Predictable…duck and cover, duck and cover…liberals certainly are predictable. Actually amusing to watch…
PSU should be publicly chastised and shamed loudly and often. It will cover up fraud of this degree is it covering up anything else? Can it be trusted?
There was a time when a Phd was understood
to have a professional calling, just like an MD;
Greater authority and responsibility in balance.
Since this is clearly no longer the case, it is
a good thing we have the Web to keep them honest.
No surprise here – PSU needs to circle the wagons to avoid legal action for fraud as well as protect its own.
I think this is what the RICO act was created for. Of course with this justice department in power this will never happen so it’s time to think long-term.
The first step is to get rid of all Democrats at all levels, as there are no moderates left in that party. Once we do this then we can pick off the RINO’s as they come up for re-election.
Then we can reverse all this nonsense this government has done. The key is to go to the polls on election day in-mass so the elections can’t be stolen. It can be done!
As a PSU Alumni, I am ashamed.
This is no surprise. Typical liberal academia bs which we have come to expect. I will predict that you will see a “double down” on Global Warming in much the same way that Obama is “doubling down” on healthcare. In spite of being proven factually wrong. In spite of massive resistence by the public, our elites will simply keeping lying to us. Hoping that if you keep lying over and over again, it will become true!! Where is our fact checking media to seek out and print the truth? The day is soon coming when the public will finally lose all confidence in academia, science, and the government. A new breed of politician will emerge and the youth of America will wake up to these lies no thanks to their parents and the other people who should have protected their future. What a disgrace!!
Michael Mann joined Penn State’s faculty in 2005. Much of his climate research occurred before then, while a professor and researcher affiliated with University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005. I don’t see why UVa shouldn’t conduct its own investigation into Mann’s work & other actions to determine the nature and extent of any violations of its standards and policies. Penn State needn’t have the last word on this matter.
The appropriate agency to conduct the investigation is the one that funded the research. I am sure the amount was not insignificant.
I saw the Penn State report as well: they basically were mostly concerned with not being targeted as well by badly confused or right wing numbnuts, which apparently include alumni and politicians, hence in so many words, the report says: “That email hack did not show anything wrong with the behavior and Mann and the others, and has no impact at all on the current scientific consensus on global warming. We already knew that, but some of our alumni and political friends have been completely suckered in by all the idiotic right wing BS and p*iss-poor media coverage so we decided to waste time and effort anyway to appease them with a calming report and a suggestion that it was all just understandable confusion.”
BC @ #13: Why do you have to use epithets to describe the people with whom you disagree? Is it that you think anyone who disagrees with you must be demented and dumb? Also, when you say that the alumni of PSU are included in the “right wind numbnuts” what are you saying that a PSU education? That it produces numbnuts? Think through what you say.
As for the “current scientific consensus,” currently we are being continually bombarded by how hollow that term is. The IPCC said the glaciers in the Himalayas were melting – they’re not, and there was never any scientific evidence that they were, so that claim has been demolished; the IPCC blamed the thinning of the Amazon rain forest on global warming, but it’s been thinned because of other reasons, and so that claim is demolished; the IPCC said that the sub-Saharan agricultural will be devastated by 2020 because of lack of rain – another falsehood just recently exposed, and so that claim is demolished; the official New Zealand and Australian weather trends which showed a steady increase in temperature for those tow countries for the last century – shown to be highly questionable if not false when non-warmists gold hold of the unprocessed data, and so I would consider that claim demolished; Mann’s hockey stick which erased the Medieval Warm Period – not peer reviewed and and shown to untrue, demolished; the usefulness of the Bifra tree ring data to determine the MWP temperatures, shown to be fudged (that’s what “hide the decline” was about)and so his data showing no MWP are invalid, and so the claim of no MWP, demolished; and then there are the cooling temperatures of the last decade, and so the claim that CO2 leads global warming, demolished the IPCC forecast of ever rising temperatures, and, in particular, the IPCC’s 2001 forecast as based on their models falsified by declining temperatures of the last decade, and , so, demolishing any claim that the models are accurate. Tell me, BC, what additional evidence would do you need to give up this hypothesis of AGW, given how devastating the evidence has been to that hypothesis?