Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/23/2010 8:29:48 PM PDT by neverdem
PHILADELPHIA - When news of the so-called climategate scandal involving a researcher at Pennsylvania State University broke, the orderly world of the ivory tower was suddenly invaded by a shouting match worthy of talk radio.
Confronted by a torrent of complaints and concerns from the public and from state officials, the university started a familiar procedure - a misconduct inquiry, which escalated into an investigation last month, focused on the activities of climatologist Michael Mann.
It's an inquiry that's normally prompted by a specific complaint launched by a fellow researcher who suspects that data in a piece of published work were made up, manipulated or copied.
This case is different.
There are no scientists pointing out instances of cheating on the part of Mann, who is director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center. Instead, the complaints are coming from people angry over statements about Mann's work made in a series of e-mails stolen from a server in England in November. Critics interpreted those e-mails as admissions by scientists that important data fundamental to the climate change debate were falsified.
The scientists involved deny this, and most of their colleagues stand by them. So experts in misconduct question whether a formal investigation makes sense without a more specific charge.
"Fraud is something that occurs in published works - not in unpublished e-mails,'' said David Goodstein, a former provost of Caltech and author of "On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales From the Front Lines of Science.''
University spokesman Bill Mahon says this case is indeed unprecedented. "We've never had a case in all my 26 years at Penn State where there's been such an incredible amount of politics outside the university interjected into it.''
Still, it's not the first time politics has become entangled with fraud charges. "Misconduct allegations can be used as a tool to undermine scientists by those who don't like their results,'' said Nicholas Steneck, a University of Michigan historian.
Some scientists point to a parallel with Pittsburgh researcher Herb Needleman, whose results forced industry to get lead out of gasoline and paints.
The allegations against Mann stem from two high-profile papers in 1998 and 1999, containing what were later dubbed the "hockey stick'' graphs because they showed temperatures shooting upward during the 20th century.
Last November, unidentified hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mail messages exchanged between climate researchers. One message, written in 1999, referred to a "trick'' Mann used and an effort to "hide the decline.''
The researcher who wrote that e-mail quickly explained that "trick'' meant simply a technique for graphing data, and the "decline'' referred to a well-publicized issue involving tree rings. Both papers were thoroughly reviewed by a National Academy of Sciences panel several years ago.
Though the academy review found no evidence of fraud, the complaints following the e-mail release prompted Penn State to launch an inquiry headed by Henry Foley, dean of the graduate school and vice president for research.
In February Foley's panel cleared Mann of falsifying or suppressing data, concealing e-mail, and misusing privileged or confidential information. But the panel reported it didn't have enough information to clear him of the lesser charge of "deviating from accepted practice in his field.''
The fourth charge is now under investigation by another panel of Penn State professors and expected to be concluded by June.
Nevertheless, political groups and others have accused the university of a "whitewash'' for exonerating Mann on the most serious charges.
"Any time you have a university faculty question another university faculty, it stands to reason there's a conflict of interest,'' said Joe Sterns, communications director for the Pennsylvania branch of the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative advocacy group.
Others questioned Penn State's decision to continue with a formal misconduct investigation. "The university's waffling on the fourth charge, without explaining itself, further victimizes Mann,'' said Yale historian Daniel Kevles, author of a 1998 book about a prominent fraud case against Nobel-winning biologist David Baltimore. (Baltimore was subsequently cleared.)
Since the National Science Foundation provides most of the funding for climate science, it is overseeing the Penn State investigation. Susan Carnohan, communications adviser to NSF's inspector general, said she couldn't comment on the case except to say that NSF would make it difficult for a university to whitewash such a case.
Thanks neverdem.
no mention of the fraud hockey stick either
This people are blinded by the black gold themselves. This is all about energy and power and thermodynamic obsession. It is the scrooges and perverted greedies of this world who always have energy/power/gold/sex on their minds.
Never will they have correct science and the actual cogs of gears in mind. THey are empowerment obsessed retards. They have no obsession on logic. It’s all irrational in the name of the rationalization of rape and satisfying their envies. It’s a theme that invariably degenerate into the very “humane” communist obsessions on capital, when capital is in the mind of the cognitive, not of the sinner.
Science has been thus romanticized, mystified, corrupted and ultimately rejected as a result. The politics and demagoguery revolves around this perverted “bikinicracy” and “empowermentcracy” and thuggerish tyranny in the end. The tyranny of the drug pervs every day in the streets is the same.
The economy is going to have to go black market and seceding from the Fed gov tyranny and corruption at all levels. These people are war criminals inherently.
Show the RAW DATA then. Oh wait, dog ate it.
These people are in denial. A real scientist would go and look up and investigate datas, emails etc... every thing having to do with an issue like this.
These people run away from it. They are obsessed with power, not with logic and the gears of history and science. It’s corrupted science, and, worse than an alleged church putting a barrier to it, nowaday science is held hostage for revenues and completely destroyed.
This is the French/Soviet socialist system/model of running schools and “scientific accademies”. It’s pure loot and greed.
No Mr.Biden, we all are communists now, with real science finding no legal backing, now easily enslaved and threatened by unscrupulous businesses, thugs, mafyas and what not, finding it in the black market.
But they are wrong, it is not power that makes the gears, but the gears that makes power.
The media whitewash continues to maintain the Fraud.
Pray for America
Can he really be that stupid? The fraud is in the published works; the admission of fraud is in the emails.
Hey, Mahon! You don't want politics interjected into your university? Don't interject your university into politics.
Restoration of Constitutional Rights (vanity)
Iranians train Taliban to use roadside bombs
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Thanks for the ping!
I really lament that we don’t have a Feynman around. I really thing he would be horrified by what has gone on in this area, and at the damage this has done to science and the public perception thereof.
think = think
That’s what I get for making insomnia posts.
>>”There are no scientists pointing out instances of cheating on the part of Mann, ..”
Actually, several “scientists” have done just that.
.......a series of e-mails stolen from a server.......
Has the source ever been learned? Were the documents actually stolen?
Has the source ever been learned? Were the documents actually stolen?
Last I read, it was leaked, but nobody with any authority has confirmed that.
So, the lies and media bias by disinformation continue
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