WaPo Op-Ed: Laws for the Masses, Shelter the Elites
The Washington Post has printed an editorial sniveling about a court order, prompted by a lawsuit, laying out how the University of Virginia must release certain records. These records relate to a former faculty member and pertain to the Climategate and “hockey stick graph” scandals.
The editorial expresses umbrage with my seeking out the records on behalf of the America Tradition Institute, which I suppose is more palatable for the WaPo to do than actually reporting that the school in fact agreed to hand over the records — just one day before having to go before a judge who would likely have ordered the release.
But how dare I, a “skeptic,” utilize a law the Left passed! Says the piece:
Freedom information laws are critical tools that allow Americans to see what their leaders do on their behalf. But some global warming skeptics in Virginia are showing that even the best tools can be misused.
Accordingly, WaPo’s complaint is with the law — a new complaint, what with the law long being on the books with its clear verbiage. For now, in this instance at least, the WaPo is parading as anti-Freedom of Information Act activists. One man’s transparency about where tax money is spent is a newspaper’s moral outrage.
It’s a fair guess that this editorial is part of an organized public affairs pushback, one we know is underway by UVa’s third-party pressure group colleagues: ACLU-VA, People For the American Way, and other groups. (UVa has stated that this pressure campaign is “imagined” by us, though they have leaned heavily on the campaign while pleading against Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s request for the same records, and added another exhibit to it in the very same pleadings protesting our request.) Possibly the school was involved as well — we have reasons for believing they’re concerned about the corner they have painted themselves into.
This editorial is indicative of how the academic, science, and media establishments get the vapors at the prospect of having to uniformly apply a law – note that Greenpeace has used FOIA to get the records of UVA “skeptic” Pat Michaels. That apparently didn’t warrant a WaPo staff op-ed.
Most disappointing, if not surprising, is that on Friday when WaPo contacted me I provided them with a copy of (Virginia taxpayer-supported) George Mason University’s response to another request of mine, which stated in pertinent part:
In accordance with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (§2.2-3700, et seq.) and per your request received on May 18, 2011 for the following information:
1. Any correspondence to the University’s administration commenting on or objecting to VFOIA requests for Wegman records, or to release of Wegman records under VFOIA, from:
a. American Civil Liberties Union, either the national organization or its Virginia chapter
b. American Association of University Professors
c. American Association for the Advancement of Science2. Copies of all correspondence from the University’s administration responding to any such correspondence from those same parties.
Please know that in an effort to fulfill this request, a search for these records was conducted and no documents pertaining to this request could be found.
WaPo Must be Boycotted and Divested from. Lee Bollinger and Warren “Grandpa” Buffett are on the Executive Board.
http://wwwtwosetsofbooks.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-silly-is-sally-quinn-read-farhat.html
This has been a good year for citizen-reporters. The Washington Post editorial staff may be in a snit, but it’s only because they failed to detect the story or follow it. So, they are playing catch-up, and not very well.
To re-cap, some alleged climate scientists, some of them already known for making headline-grabbing claims with doomsday scenarios based on wild extrapolations from weather data, ditched their Nuclear Winter Theory in favor of something called Anthropogenic Global Warming. Some people with an experimental science background subjected their data to the type of normally rigorous analysis that experimental scientists routinely use. What some experimental scientists had supposed would be merely exaggerated claims turned out to also be inextricably tied to falsified data.
Because the research was funded by US tax money, the results of the research, including the raw data, belong to the US of A, and are subject to disclosure.
The take-home message is clear: if you are going to cook the data, don’t do it with taxpayer’s money.
“Citizen reporters”? I thought the Competitive Enterprise Institute received funding from oil companies and the Koch Brothers. If that’s the case then at the least it’s businesses with a vested interest in overturning climate research findings who are bankrolling this which makes things a bit blurrier about who is wearing the white hats.
I don’t doubt that it’s possible that scientists fudge their findings to continue getting grants, but I do question who is pushing these claims and what their motives are.
What difference does it make who’s “pushing these claims” if all they are asking for is the actual data? I would think the motives are self-explanatory.
It’s not about “who’s pushing these claims and what their motives are”, it’s about who is right and who is wrong. Every time global hysteria is tested it comes up with cherry picked data and models who’s outcome is chosen before it is run.
This story did not start with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or Mr. Horner. It started with one person trying to cross-check the data. His name is Steve McIntyre.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
“Dr. Mann actually used about 70-80 data sets, and in each set he applied a mathematical analysis known as a principle component analysis ( PCA ) which seeks to extract principal, or significant component information from a widely varying set of raw data.”
“Along comes Steve McIntyre, a Canadian analyst, who spends two years of his own personal time reverse-engineering Dr. Mann’s PCA program. McIntyre subjects Mann’s PCA program to a “Monte Carlo” analysis – which inserts random data sets into the function – and discovered that no matter what data he fed it, the result was always the same. The arm of the “hockey stick” ( paleo-record ) always came out straight. In Dr. Mann’s case, the rising temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and the expected trough of the Little Ice Age had been completely erased.”
Oh, yes. Those “evil” Koch brothers. A couple ueber-rich LIBERTARIANS who had heretofore not been particularly politically active. Could it be that they decided to take a hand, because they had become alarmed at the direction we were heading in this country? So, they speak up, and they get demonized as some “evil” Conservatives with some “evil” agenda. Anything they touch, therefore, is instantly suspect… more than suspect.
Lefty, this is why you are a Lefty. You buy into this nonsense of attacking the messenger, not the message.
The issue here is not who is requesting the info. The issue is why they have to go to court to get the info. What are these “climate scientists” HIDING? Just release the info. It will either withstand scrutiny, or it won’t. It is supposed to be science. It either is so, or it isn’t so. It defends itself, or it doesn’t.
The problem is, it doesn’t, and these guys know it. If they were not hiding something, the Koch brothers, and others, wouldn’t have to get involved. The investigators are not the problem. They are the reaction to the problem. The “climate scientists” are the problem. They are not scientists at all.
I don’t doubt that it’s possible that scientists fudge their findings to continue getting grants….
Kinda looks that way in Mann’s case, eh – and a fudged CO2=CAGW hockeystick, of all things! So what, again, is the WaPo’s objection?
And, btw, you’ve also admitted that whoever is controlling the funding wants those particular kinds of fudged findings – those “supporting” CO2=CAGW.
@valerie
Oh My God!! A breath of fresh air! Thank-you for being the one-in-millions who takes the time to learn and speaks up sensibly. You have brought tears of joy to my eyes. Here I focus on a narrow issue (PCA):
PCA, or Factor Analysis (or several other variants), teases out the influence that certain factors may have in a large data set. It distinguishes
—by Multiple Regression techniques that are complex to explain, but are ultimately very simple─
factors which have a 5% or 1% likelihood of being part of the general mass of data. The procedure even informs us as to how much that influence is …a large influence can be statistically significant, but UNimportant.
‘Wisdom’, i.e. careful reasoning by essentials, makes that decision.
Scientists *should* know this and operate on it, but logic and the principles of statistical *interpretation* are NOT given the importance required, even in the education of PhDs.
In fact, only a fraction of a percent of PhD’s, and therefore established ‘Scientists’, have any idea what the principles of logic might be. A similar tiny fraction understand the nature of statistical analysis.
Worse, very few professors teaching Statistical Analysis have any idea as to the application of reason to statistical results… If it is significant (0.05%) then it MUST be important. The fact of the matter is that 95% of the time, that 0.05% is NOT important. This is where wisdom comes into play. WHY is 0.05% meaningful? Perhaps, when examining all the facts, it is not.
Statistics and Logic have very real roles. Their misuse does not indicate that they are of no use, any more than lies (“Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”) presented by a speaker of the English language is a reason to abandon English!
Valerie, you mentioned Global Warming, as a fraud. I have a personal file of points pertaining to the “Falsehoods of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)” that you may find interesting. It is an un-editable Google Doc that can only be accessed by those possessing the URL, this is the URL safely reduced by bit.ly: http://bit.ly/kj8ucv
I must, for the first time in 15 years, become open to general contact in the hope that you will contact me. Please use Facebook to Message Richard Bramwell, and indicate what sort of German “vector”, beginning with ‘E’ is essential to PCA.
What difference does it make who is pushing the claim ? Laws apply to all equally and the left has perfected the art of harassment through legal intervention. The application of the law applies equally as well.
To find that there is some organization interested in who is funding a left wing hoax shouldn’t be that surprising.
WR, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Loved the reference to Animal Farm. The Greens are everywhere and apparently infiltrated by the Left, long an objective of various sects. Not surprisingly, Charles Darwin has been treated to their tender mercies. I wrote about a recent film and biography here: http://clarespark.com/2011/04/14/darwin-and-the-climate-change-debate-the-greens-have-it/.
Speaking of taking umbrage, it’s always fun to watch this video.
Michael Mann threatened legal action, claiming the song illegally used his image and defamed him.
Poor baby, maybe if there hadn’t been all that ugly cover up & data fudging stuff swirling around Climategate…
Hide The Decline
Thanks for that link. I had not come across before. LoL
I would have thought that after the e-mails from the University of East Anglia CRU were made public things would have changed but obviously the WaPo’s “rings” are set in stone.
How can the elite lie cheat and oppress if they have to do this in public? The Washington Post as the Party Paper of the tyrants has to fight freedom of information.
It’s beginning to sound just like the days before the move into the big bunker…
The Wapo is just throwing gators into Obama’s moat.
This was in my latest issue of the Communication of the ACM, the monthly journal of the main academic computing professional organization.
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/5/107698-the-importance-of-reviewing-the-code/fulltext
I read the full article in my paper copy of the journal and it is amusing/infuriating how these sorts of articles — including various conferences on data integrity, just happen to be popping up left and right in other areas in academia after CLimategate. Pure coincidence I’m sure. But apparently in a bit of mutual CYA they rarely deign to mention ClimateGate at all.
The WaPo runs the The Root, edited by Henry Gates, the poster child web site for black cultural self-absorption with a healthy dose of unadulterated racism whose fundamental mantra bewilderingly posits that it is black folks that are innocent bystanders in a world of racism while The Root itself shows absolutely no interest in news devoid of a racial dimension.
If such an equivalent white site ever existed air raid sirens would go off and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would rappel down ropes from NAACP helicopters with bullhorns shouting RACISM!
Funny!
The Washington Post wouldn’t be run by the elites, would it?
When has a theory one likes it and tries to nurture it It’s so tempting to fudge the data. That’s why we have CPAs and Auditors. That’s why the data should be published TO GET OUR THUMB OFF THE SCALE
Yes, but it does not even have to be an intentional thumb on the scale. True scientists recognize there is a possibility that they either screwed up in their process or, somehow, have a distorted view of their experiment’s results. Thus, true scientists welcome review and checking by others.
But the facts thus far suggest strongly that what Mann and other AGW believers did was not good science and was possibly fraud. If they were scientists they would have welcomed a stringent review and the chance to show others they were right. Instead they hid data and software. In ten years they will be case studies in scientific ethic classes.
WaPo is one of Obozo’s MSM puppets. I wouldn’t use their rag at the bottom of a birdcage.
Whether the data was accurate or not, the theory that rising greenhouse gases (that is Carbon Dioxide) would create an exponential rise in temperature has now been rejected by a former Global Warming proponent. Seems the rise in temperature triggers a rise in water vapor being absorbed into the air (who knew?) which . . . wait for it . . . cools the air. Even with accurate data, the whole theory is bogus. The Earth is self-regulating. Even if we wanted to turn the Earth into a much warmer Greenhouse, to avoid the next Ice Age, we feeble humans probably couldn’t do it. And since we are mobile beings, what’s so bad with rising temperatures, which means we can grow more food in more spots? So you can take that Hockey Stick, and Stick it.
Several ivy towers, and myths are being destroyed, along with some rice bowls. And I am amazed at the level of these erudite comments. Maybe an educated populous can save this democracy. I read the WaPo article; it was disingenuous, phony in content. It is truly a nation disgrace that a once great paper has sunk this low.
I have worked in nuclear power engineering, and if we took the position that the NRC had no right to review our private papers, I would have been frog marched to the rubber room, while listening to bellows of scornful laughter. When the survival of the nation is on the line, when trillions are on the line, it is audit time. The books are open to friend and foe.
There are only two real reasons for UVa’s position on the FoI request. They dread what will be revealed. Or they have entered a professor’s office. Many academics can not spell “records management”; this was nakedly exposed in Climategate. The original data, upon which the world’s energy policy must be changed, was thrown away to save file cabinets. This weird reasoning comes from a culture: academics do not live in a litigious world, where antagonists really challenge their truth. The intramurals of peer review, simply are not at the level of government regulation, and legal combat. Science today, works on the buddy system. Those in agreement, endorse each other’s findings. Those in opposition resign from the committee, and often form a parallel organization. This is normal, cheap, until demagogues, e.g. Al Gore, take up one side.
There are now a thousand hockey sticks, each depending on a tree ring gathered from outer Slobovia, and run through private software. We know how hockey sticks are used. Let the professors suit up, and be humiliated if their game is no good.
Christopher, if it’s any help, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the left won’t totally contradict themselves on. Try deficits, the terrible Bush ones, the “helpful” Obama ones, and the huge difference between them.
Of course FOA is great, but more so, if not only,when the left or the Post use it. After all, if you’re a newspaper do you want to get caught in a massive, years long lie. Truth is meaningless, Power is what counts to these people.
…. academics, jurisdiction-fleeing Hollywood directors and leftist journalists are different than you and I …
Different from.
So, I guess you knew what he meant. I was completely addlepated.
Holding the Professor’s accountable for what the say and teach ??? What a novel concept…. Where does this Oddity actually happen .. I want to MOVE there..
If this data is released, all these brillant scients will end up in the trash heap like Harold Camping!
There is no need to get the actual data. There is no actual data that is meaningful. Environmentalism is more of a religion than it is science. The AGW theory is just that, a theory being foisted upon the world as if it were a crisis that must be dealt with. It is a fraudulent theory, at least according to everything we know about the geology of the earth. There is no crisis. There are only occasional catastrophic events. And even these are happening far less frequently than they did in the earlier history of our planet. There is no crisis. Just asking these perpetrators to produce their evidence is giving them way too much credit. Relax everyone, there is no crisis.