VINDICATED: Researcher punished for exposing climate fraud beats UCLA

The College Fix ^ | March 12, 2015 | Matt Lamb

[VRW Conspirator]

School says it’s purely a financial decision – trial ain’t cheap

Scientific research at universities is supposed to involve inquiry into established theories and hypotheses.

That is, unless they question environmental regulations.

One UCLA science researcher, a 34-year veteran of the school, found himself out of a job in 2011 after examining the data underlying diesel regulations proposed by a California regulator and exposing the shoddy credentials of a lead author of that regulator’s report.

James Enstrom secured victory in a two-and-a-half year legal battle against UCLA last week when the school agreed to settle the case.

The school is paying the “diesel particulate matter” expert $140,000, reinstating his title as “Retired Researcher,” and restoring his access to UCLA resources, “effectively” rescinding his termination, according to the American Center for Law & Justice, which represented Enstrom.

Enstrom had challenged the validity of a California Air Resources Board study on diesel particulate matter and mortality in the state and the regulations that followed. He denounced the research as a faulty reading of data.

UCLA retaliated against Enstrom after he “became an aggressive and lone critic at UCLA of air pollution research,” escalating in 2008 after he testified in California Senate hearings, according to a lawsuit filed by the center in 2012.

It accused the school of initiating “a series of actions designed to silence and ultimately terminate Dr. Enstrom.”

jamesenstrom.DailyBruinEnstrom exposed fraudulent behavior in the studies on which the board relied, including that of the lead author of a 2008 report. Hien Tran “admitted he purchased” a magna cum laude Ph.D. for $1,000 from a “diploma mill associated with a fugitive pedophile,” according to CalWatchdog.

It’s “the standard MO” of the regulatory board to use “unverified studies to gin up regulations” in the state, according to Lois Henry, a Bakersfield Californian columnist who covers California politics, in a column last month.

After blowing the whistle, Enstrom found his position’s funding cut, as detailed in a 2010 letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to then-Chancellor Gene Block.

“Every day that the case continues is a deeper violation of academic freedom and freedom of speech and a more thorough chilling of faculty speech at UCLA,” FIRE said. The availability of an appeals and grievance process “does not absolve you or UCLA of the moral and legal responsibility to immediately reverse the decision not to rehire Enstrom.”

An April 2011 letter from the Academic Freedom Committee of the Academic Senate also sided with Enstrom, calling the school’s failure to reappoint him “a violation of academic freedom.”

In an email to The College Fix, Enstrom pointed to the importance of the Secret Science Reform Act, currently under consideration in Congress, which would require public disclosure of “materials, data and associated protocols” as well as “computer codes and models,” so that results can be understood and research replicated.

Speaking about the settlement, UCLA told The Daily Bruin that it did not target Enstrom for his political beliefs.

It said that “Enstrom’s presence as a researcher for decades, despite his minority positions defending diesel emissions and tobacco, demonstrates” that UCLA promotes academic diversity.

A spokesman told The Fix that UCLA settled the case because it would cost “far less than the legal costs of a trial.” Enstrom’s settlement includes “some other incidental campus services, such as eligibility for parking and email, associated with his retiree status.”

College Fix reporter Matt Lamb is a student at Loyola University-Chicago.

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IMAGE: alobos Life/Flickr

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“CARB enviro-kook BOUGHT his PhD, he’s paid $100,000 yearly to peddle his unsupported bilge.”

And to think that for $1000 I could have saved 6 years of research and study.

[Raycpa]

Makes sense. They still need their conservative donors money.

[A CA Guy]

They get their money no matter what because it primarily goes to building buildings and scholarships.
People with money don’t want half if everything over 5 million to go to government so they choose things like college foundation donations to see most of what they would leave not going into government hands.
The government has contemplated banning donations like this in the future unless the government can first rip off half like a good cartel.

Meanwhile they can use the expensive tuition for other expense like lawsuit settlements.

[spokeshave]

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow,and our planet began to heal.

Welcome King Barack "Canute" Obama the Great.....

...Obama issues an Executive Order to the Sun...

....to increase it's magnetic field....

and make a good crop of sunspots before elections in 2016....

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades.

The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age....and lasted 400 years.

Good luck surviving with less electricity.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news203746768.html#jCp

[ROCKLOBSTER]

UCLA told The Daily Bruin that it did not target Enstrom for his political beliefs.

That means they did...they made this statement in order to deflect further litigation and other legal ramifications.

[jonrick46]

That UCLA, a taxpayer funded school of higher learning, would restrict the free thought of a 34-year veteran of the school because of ideology is pathetic. It is not only pathetic, it is Zombie Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD. It is time to get the UCLA leadership off the yoga mat and onto the psycho therapeutic couch.

[Smokin' Joe]

This is how the 'science' becomes 'settled'.

Those who disagree are purged from the ranks.

They are denied the positions which would permit them to conduct 'peer review', and denied that review on a scientific basis.

The system is rigged.

Denied access, denied even the consideration of those who put their stamp of approval on research, they are called "deniers" when they are the ones denied.

Science is NEVER "settled", always subject to being questioned--otherwise it becomes dogma.

This is an era that will go down in history (should it even be recorded and the books survive the coming dark age) as one of mass insanity.

[spokeshave]

Yeah...if science were “settled” Einstein would have remained working as a patent clerk.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Peer review means they pee on you if they do not like what they review.

Search for truth? What’s truth? Scientific “fact” in this arena has long given up hope of being truth. It’s a Battle Of The Acceptance Of The Narratives.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Especially when you have a fundamentally unfathomable question like this. How do you evaluate a phenomenon that is far more than skin deep, with only skin deep data and theories? Yesterday they thought man was beckoning on an ice age. Now they think man is beckoning on global warming and catastrophic at that (climate dither is not worthy of being worried about).

[HiTech RedNeck]

What “deniers” deny is that the warmists/changeists have any kind of acceptable model to work with. That their concerns have any deeper basis than sheer worry.

[Smokin' Joe]

I'd go farther than that. We deny that their data collection methods are without flaws--serious ones. We deny that their conclusions are supported by the evidence which is available.

in turn, we are denied access to their databases, denied questioning their conclusions, and denied media access, research facilities and funding we all provide to point out the flaws in the 'research'. If we obtain independent funding (of the public trough), we are denied credibility because of the source of those funds, even as those who provide public funding have a possible pecuniary motive for maintaining both a lock on that funding and any discussion. Even the term "denier" is straight out of Alinsky, and hardly a term of scientific debate. It is, instead a social manipulator to isolate those of us who know bullshit when we see it.

[Scrambler Bob]

Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun? —

They tell the sun that heat is rassis, and the sun better stop it!

[sergeantdave]

“Comments?”

For sure, good buddy.

As a former UC student/USMC veteran we told these UC commies to back off or we’d kill them.

What else do you want to know?

[Gvl_M3]

I wonder if the “Engine Manufacturers Association” could now sue CARB based on this settlement. The diesel engine manufacturers are directly impacted by this fraudulent research.

[Iron Munro]

The solution?

Get government money out of education and out of college research.

Everything impacted by government money ends up tainted and perverted by government money.

[HiTech RedNeck]

We might as well be vocal about what we deny if we are called deniers. If this is treason let us make the most of it.

[Ann Archy]

THAT needs to be on EVERY THREAD!!!

[Smokin' Joe]

It isn't treason. It isn't against a country.

More like heresy in the eyes of those who decry us.

After all, it is against a religion. A religion which encourages lying to further its ends (sound familiar?). A religion which is all about power and money and not right or wrong. An enclave of sold souls who often deny a creator because, after all, placing their fate in the hands of a superior being just doesn't sit well with the cadre of self-worship and mutual back-patting culture that academics are rapidly becoming.

Not that science hasn't been dogmatic at times, it certainly has. As recently as the 50s there were fistfights over the debate about Geosynclinal Theory vs. Plate Tectonics.

Despite that, those who disagreed could be convinced because they would at least look at the evidence.

In this case, those who appear to have massaged, edited, and even possibly fabricated their 'supporting data' have placed themselves in the unsavory position of having to double down on their errors or be exposed as the charlatans they are.