Posted on 08/03/2015 4:39:13 AM PDT by Zhang Fei
A California academic whose criticisms of science behind the nation’s most expensive diesel emissions rules has won a legal victory and effectively erased his termination.
James Enstrom, an epidemiologist and researcher at UCLA for 35 years, learned last week he had won $140,000 and retains his ability to keep an office and use laboratory facilities on campus. He’ll also have the ability to gain an appointment to perform additional research.
“It’s gratifying to get any kind of decision against the university,” Enstrom told Land Line Magazine by telephone Monday. “It’s really a brutal process. They go out of their way to crush anyone that contests their agenda.”
In 2009, Enstrom was notified that his appointment as a researcher was under review. By 2010, Enstrom was told he had been let go because his research “is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department,” court documents say.
Enstrom, who sued UCLA over the firing in 2012, has been a thorn in the side of state air regulators for years.
In 2002, he began a study examining the relationship between particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) and mortality in California. Published in 2005, his findings saw no relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality in the state – “representing the largest and most detailed study of the relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality in California that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal,” his lawsuit stated.
Enstrom’s position on particulate matter put him at odds with most colleagues at UCLA. In December 2008, only months after then UCLA law professor Mary Nichols was appointed to serve as CARB Chairman, Enstrom issued a series of public criticisms of the science used by CARB to justify diesel regulations.
Enstrom also alleged serious unethical conduct by Nichols and then UCLA faculty member John Froines – chairman of the state Scientific Review Panel. Enstrom pointed out that multiple members of the review panel had served too many terms and said they had damaged a fundamental tenet of the peer review process. Froines and other members were removed around 2010.
Many truckers likely remember CARB’s Hien Tran scandal.
Tran, who was lead author of CARB’s report on PM2.5 and premature death – research used to justify the Truck and Bus Regulation – was suspended after Enstrom pointed out Tran hadn’t earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis as Tran had claimed. Tran later admitted to paying $1,000 for the Ph.D. from an Internet diploma mill in New York.
Enstrom said the university powers seemed to be interested most in squelching disagreement that would rock the boat.
“There is really an effort here in California to crush dissent,” he said. “I managed to beat it back to some extent, but it basically still continues. They just don’t stop. They didn’t volunteer anything, and they fought every single thing my lawyers asked for. It’s really dangerous, in my view, the way the EPA and CARB are functioning.”
Enstrom’s lawsuit had been slated for trial beginning in November 2014. A few weeks before the trial date, however, the two sides reached an informal agreement that took an additional four months to make official.
As for his lawyers, Enstrom praised the efforts of the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington D.C.-based law firm that took on his case pro bono.
“It was a miracle that I was able to fight with any kind of lawsuit at all,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been a lawsuit if they hadn’t taken it on. I’m really grateful.”
In a column posted both at the ACLJ site and National Review magazine, an ACLJ attorney hailed the victory over the Enstrom’s ideology driven firing.
“Dr. Enstrom’s victory comes at a critical time, reminding the public that the scientific establishment is hardly infallible,” wrote ACLJ attorney David French. “It shouldn’t take an act of job-risking courage to bring transparency and honesty to science. … Here’s hoping that with more victories like Dr. Enstrom’s, universities will learn that censorship is expensive. Protecting academic freedom may lead to less scientific consensus, but it will certainly lead to greater integrity.”
Maintaining an office on UCLA’s campus was important to Enstrom. As attorneys hammered out the legal agreement between last fall and March, the epidemiologist wanted to ensure he could continue to collaborate with other scientists using the state university system’s vast resources.
Further battles are to be fought.
“I’m just going to use this as a further stepping stone for getting some of the scientific issues straightened out – some of the bad science,” said Enstrom, adding he would follow closely proposed legislation (HR1030) to require EPA and other agencies to make science behind regulations transparent and reproducible.
CARB and other environmental power brokers have grown their influence in California even during the years Enstrom’s case plugged through the legal system. While he waits for his check from the university, Enstrom is glad truth won out.
“That’s one of the reasons I did this,” Enstrom said. “I wanted to at least see if it is possible to go up against these powerful organizations and come away with some kind of victory.
“This is encouraging.”
California Air Resources Board
The Church of Green.
L. Ron Hubbard was very smart to combine pseudo-science with religion by naming his cult Scientology.
Yeah. Half of the people on CARB do not even have college degrees. And this Mary Nichols is really a piece of work.
Thus showing that the EPA is a corrupt institution. The air pollution rules are based, not on false science, but on lies. Air quality rules are a way of imposing upon the American people an agenda that is intended to inhibit energy use and human activity in general. It has a deliberate end goal of suppressing our prosperity.
Air quality rules are based in part on levels of particulate matter. Those who make the rules get to control what the definition of these hazards. It is clear now that these definitions are driven far more by ideology than by sound science. Indeed sound science is the enemy of their ideology.
This is evil.
if they come for you with a law suit, come to them with a gun
If they come at you with a sham lawsuit, come back at them with a Constitution. (Which BTW contains a 2nd ammendment)
Its the agenda over all.
See Climate Change insanity for further details.
——come back at them with a Constitution——
in theory perhaps
in practical terms, that is a losing proposition. there is effectively no constitution and thus no legal defense worthy of the name
Really?? $140k???? vs, how many MILLIONS of Fed research dollars?
This ruling won't do anything to change the status quo.
I’m happy for Mr. Enstrom but a settlement this small doesn’t change anything. The financial hit is insignificant and the settlement prior to trial will not affect the broader policies that keep these libs in charge.
The fossil fuel industry is tracking along the same route that the tobacco industry took, separated only by time.
Initially, try to fight it with opposing science and after that stops working, shift to fighting it with public relations.
From an academic point, it takes more than a single study(Enstrom's study) to develop policy.
When Enstrom's tobacco company grant money dried up, he shifted to fossil fuel. It would be several years after that before the court ruled against tobacco
One man fighting back a small tendril of a massive beast with no name. All alone. Against all odds. He won.
Where are the rest?
The mere fact that they fired a scientist who asked legitimate questions tells you everything you need to know about the AGW cult running CARB and the EPA.
Also important to note that UCLA did not want to go to trial and settled out of court...if their ‘science’ is good, why not defend it? They have virtually unlimited resources.
You’re right, and had Enstrom been forced to finance the lawsuit from his own funds, you can bet a final legal bill in the mid 6 figures (or higher) would have resulted. Maybe his attys were awarded their fees in this settlement, I don’t know. The $100K he collected thus is poor compensation for the effort and in 95+% of cases, plaintiffs in his position are absolutely forced to abandon their cases long before anything of substance is achieved.
David and (zombie) Goliath. I like it ;’)
Couldn’t it possibly be that Enstrom wasn’t interested in monetary compensation as much as he was interested in being reinstated? That’s a huge black eye for UCLA...
“Any researcher studying the health effects of burning fossil fuel, such as Enstrom, is not going to have much credibility if that researcher, Enstrom, also did research saying that inhaling burned tobacco had no negative health effects”
Your comment addresses Enstrom’s work on second-hand smoke, which (other than “global warming”) may be the most politicized area of current scientific research, and one that cries out for the sort of objective and unbiased analysis of data which I see in Enstrom’s work.
The evaluation of research on second-hand smoke is so badly politicized that even the Washington Post has had to comment on the dishonesty inherent in the field:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901158.html
And that research has been so badly politicized that the World Health Organization has tried to repress its own research when it didn’t conform to the conventional wisdom that secondhand smoke was a deadly threat:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021128202555/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/03/08/wtob08.html
In Enstrom’s own words: “I examined mortality risks associated with both active and passive smoking over a 39-year follow-up period. I published a paper with these findings in the May 17, 2003 British Medical Journal [3] (Pdf). This is the largest, most detailed, and most transparent epidemiologic paper on passive smoking and mortality ever published in a major medical journal. I found no relationship with passive smoking, but found a strong, long-term relationship with active smoking. In the years since its publication, no errors have been identified in the study, not even by the ACS, which possesses the underlying data. The BMJ editor has strongly defended my paper [4]. Although there is nothing wrong with my BMJ paper, since May 2003 I have been subjected to a massive and continuous campaign of ad hominem attack and character assassination, as typified by the “Enstrom & Tobacco” comments on the SourceWatch article about me.”
Enstrom should be applauded for the courage he’s shown in his willingness to report factual results even when they bring about the rage of powerful forces and generate unwarranted personal attacks on his character, which is what I consider your comment to be yet another example of.
I’m just a poster at free republic, so it is more important what the judge thought.
This is the real threat to democracy where we have unelected agencies who have the power to make laws.
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