Bishop Hill More on fudge and fraud
May 16, 2010 Climate: RP Jnr RP Jnr says I've misrepresented his views in the post before last. If so, then I apologise.
I'm still not sure that I understand Roger's views precisely. I think the confusion may be based in the semantics of the terms "fudge" and "fraud" and I want to explore the subject again here.
The original Spiegel article said this:
But what appeared at first glance to be fraud was actually merely a face-saving fudge: Tree-ring data indicates no global warming since the mid-20th century, and therefore contradicts the temperature measurements. The clearly erroneous tree data was thus corrected by the so-called "trick" with the temperature graphs.
The "trick" was of course, to truncate the divergent data, to replace it with the instrumental records for the same period and then to smooth the spliced series so that the join was no longer visible. The sentence is the Spiegel article seems to suggest that this "swap, splice and smooth" process could reasonably be described as a "mere" fudge.
This one sentence raises many objections. Is fudge actually distinct from fraud? Is fudging a trifling thing that can reasonably be tossed aside by attaching it to the word "mere"? And where does the "swap, splice and smooth" technique really fit in among these terms.
My guess is that lay commenters like me have a mental picture of scientific misconduct that encapsulates a whole bunch of transgressions that academics like Roger would treat as distinct. I think I'm right in saying that Roger sees fudging as a lesser transgression, although he is clear that he doesn't approve of this kind of thing. But he also says that in academia, hiding uncertainty is not generally considered as research misconduct. Again, I don't imply that Roger thinks this is acceptable - just the way things are. So if I have it right, in academia fraud and research misconduct are filed under "serious", and fudging and hiding uncertainty are in the "less serious" drawer. I'm just not sure this is how the general public see it. We expect full, plain and true disclosure. Hiding the extent to which you don't know something just gets put in the great big bin called "wrong". And making elaborate steps to hide the fact (swap, splice and smooth) just makes it worse. It certainly dictates against the use of the word "mere", as Spiegel did.
In the comments at Roger's thread, there seems to be much agreement that standards regarding disclosure of uncertainties are rather low in academia but much higher in the commercial world. This raises the intriguing question of how we should judge academic scientists whose work is impinging upon the real world. Should we expect them to have applied "real world" standards of transparency to their own findings? Or must we accept that what will be reported to policymakers by academics will be rife with deception.
Reader Comments (84)
I am not a native German speaking person, but I have knowledge of German language. The original German text was:
"Doch was nach Betrug klingt, erweist sich als Notlösung: Baumringdaten zeigen seit Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts keine Erwärmung mehr - und stehen damit im Widerspruch zu den Temperaturmessungen. Diese offensichtlich falschen Baumdaten wurden mit dem umgangssprachlichen "Trick" aus Temperaturkurven getilgt."
They used "Betrug", which means fraud, and fudge was originally "Notlösung", which could be translated as emergency measure. Getilgd could be translated as erased. The original German text avoids to call the trick anything more than a measure of last resort to erase the obviously wrong treering data from the temperature reconstructions. By translating Notlösung by fudge, a subtle more criminal undertone was introduced, which was clearly not present in the original German text.
One of the key misunderstandings (?) is that the tree ring data was "obviously wrong" also often referred to as "erroneous". Unless you can show why it was wrong you have no justification for this statement and we have yet another case of "the data doesn't fit the model therefore the data must be wrong"
Your Grace, since you linked to the entire post and comments I think Roger is nitpicking and quibbling. The comments both there and here are solidly 'No way Jose!'
Again, he is simply indulging in special pleading that academics are this exalted group who should not be held to the same standards as the rest of us, and whose pronouncements of received wisdom from on high should be accepted and acted on without question.
All of this while we firehose them with tax money to produce these pearls of wisdom.
The fact that people are outraged by this farcical and empty justification - 'That's how we do it' - does not seem to penetrate.
We are being given the equivalent of Pollys defence of Manuels more outrageous actions - 'No, it's all right, he's from Barcelona!'
The whole thing is absurd.
Even without the "divergence problem" - that is, even if those trees (since it's always a few selected trees) had rings that correlated well with all the known temperature record, say from 1850 to 2000 or thereabouts - it would be still questionable, at best, to extrapolate a calibration of 150 years several centuries, or a thousand years, into the past.
With the "divergence problem" the whole exercise ceases to be just questionable and becomes more like wishful thinking - "oh yes it doesn't work all the time, and we don't know why, and it is always for just a few trees out of many, but we still think we can use it to determine global average temperatures of a thousand years in the past within tenths of degrees".
The reality is that the "divergence problem" - at least as long as it remains totally unresolved - invalidates the whole field of dendrochronology, at least for that kind of exercise. To try to hide that from the general public, and policymakers, so that they won't realize how shaky the thing is - which is precisely the point of "hide the decline" - is intellectually dishonest, not in an innocent way, but with the clear intent of deception. To say that the divergence problem is discussed in the literature is hypocritical, it's the equivalent of introducing clauses in small print in a contract that you know most people won't read so closely.
My problem with Pielke Jr's argument is not even with the distinction between "fraud" and "fudge", which may be legalistic - it's with the emphasis on "face-saving". No, it's not "face-saving", it's dishonest.They're claiming far, far more reliability on tree-ring data than is warranted by the evidence.
I think we're getting an insight into how the various enquiries into climatgate are looking like whitewashes to the sceptic community. Even in the Der Spiegel article the author seems to be sympathetic to the fact that because the proxies didn't match the measured temperatures for the 20th century, it was quite legal for the scientists to replace the proxies with the instrumental temperatures. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that the failed proxies in the 20th century, while unexplained, cast serious doubts on the proxies before the 20th century. In other words all the journalists and inquiries see are minor peccadilloes. Dr. P's expressing what the scientific community see too, minor peccadilloes, slight transgressions.
Harry - that's very helpful in understanding the German original.
Could you tell me what you think about the translation of "offensichtlich falschen Baumdaten" as "clearly erroneous tree-ring data"?
Does "falschen" mean "false" and if so in what sense? In English "false data" could mean fabricated, mis-measured, or subject to known error processes, but not "failing to agree with my preconceptions". I'd be very interested to know what the connotations would be in German.
DR,
I agree, I forgot to commend Harry for the clarification he made.
I think the nuances are difficult, since in 'Notlosung' I would stress 'Not' as being 'urgent', 'corrective' etc not just 'emergency'; 'losung' - 'measure' or 'solution'.
I'm seeing a sens of 'unplanned' or 'unforseen' in there rather than just 'necessary now'.
The 'offensichtlich falschen' is also difficult, 'offentsichtlich' means 'clearly' or 'plainly' or 'obviously', which is quite a strong qualifier.
'Falschen' can have a range of nuance, and could be as mild as 'incorrect', or 'erroneous' but with the strong qualifier, would tend to be quite close to 'fake' or 'fraudulent'.
DR,
The German falsch is mostly translated as wrong, erroneous (a bit too weak to my opinon), the opposite of true. In the German original the statement is much stronger about the nature of the tree-ringdata: offensichtlich falschen Baumdaten would be translated by me like: The obviously wrong tree-ringdata. And it is my perception that the authors of the German Spiegel article describe the justification as felt by the Hockeyteam, not how the outside world would look at the data. It is my feeling that the authors would have meant to say something like this (my interpretation of the original German phrasing): they felt justified to replace obviously wrong tree-ringdata with correct thermometer data. But this was to my opinion lost in translation.
I don't know if it's how Roger is using the words, but I've seen a distinction made between fudges as getting the right answer (and known to be the right answer) by the wrong methods, versus fraud which is knowingly getting the wrong answer.
It's commonly used for approximations, neglecting terms known to be small, or that cancel out. For example, replacing line-by-line radiative transfer by the more approximate band models or even by the handwaving common in the public climate debate is a fudge of the complexities. If you know the approximation isn't quite good enough, one will sometimes insert a "fudge factor" to bring it back to the accurate value while still avoiding the complexity.
If that is the case here, then Roger's point would be that their intention for this graph was to reconstruct temperature, not to demonstrate the validity of tree ring reconstruction methods. As such, the divergence isn't showing temperature, and so should be taken out, but for the past they genuinely believe tree rings are the best we've got, and so they use those. What they believe to be the right answer by what they would probably acknowledge in private to be a wrong method. In writing an executive summary for policymakers, tremendous simplification (fudging) is inevitably required.
The problem is, they're making assumptions without which the approximation is unjustified, turning the fudge into a falsity.
So what I believe Roger is saying is that given their intentions and assumptions that they genuinely intended it to be a fudge. That their assumptions are unjustified or wrong is then a matter of straightforward scientific error.
So the question is, did they know when they drew it that the divergence could be taken as strong evidence that the validity of treemometers was in doubt? If so, had they explained this caveat regarding the graph? Did they have a duty to expose the controversy?
Chuckles - I don't agree, I think "obviously wrong" conveys the meaning well. The orginal German is neutral in as far as intent to deceit is concerned, in that phrase at least.
Harry - I agree with your interpretation, as per you last post above.
Peter B,
Yes, agreed. I was attempting to debate/query rather than prescribe.
I think my major concern is that data such as this cannot be 'wrong', only the interpretation of the data, which is where the non academic world tends to start muttering about possible fraudulent outcomes being evident.
Nullis in V, nice analysis, but I would be very concerned about scientists doing things for the best of intentions. I don't like where that goes.
Fraud is an attempt to deceive for some gain to the deceiver at the expense of the deceived.
How the deception is achieved is immaterial.
There was a clear attempt to deceive those observing the graph, particularly those without the necessary scientific background, that the tree ring record supported the claimed temperature increases, to hide the fact that the tree ring series was not supported by the recent instrument record and therefore was unreliable as a proxy for historic temperatures prior to instrument data.
This coupled with the apparent conspiracy to silence or deny publicity to those with the necessary background to spot "the trick" and its implications, is a clear example of an attempt to deceive.
Gain may be anything from monetary reward, power and position, or to save face/reputation.
Whether it was a fudge or any other word in the lexicon, its aim was to deceive and thus was fraudulent.
Perhaps Pielke is being sarcastic?
Bishop,
You've hit the nail with "disclosure of uncertainties are rather low in academia but much higher in the commercial world."
It seems those involved with or with a long history of the commercial world are first to pick up on "wait a minute here" when we read about climate change and all that's said or not said.
Suppose the wiggly line had been drawn freehand? In the specific example subject of these discussions is it captioned? Does the caption misrepresent its components? If so, is the caption, then, the misrepresentation? The conjoined wiggles are what they are, they weren't doing any harm, were they? It's the caption.
COD:
n.
1 a soft toffee-like sweet made with milk, sugar, butter, etc.
2 nonsense.
3 a piece of dishonesty or faking.
4 a piece of late news inserted in a newspaper page.
v.
1 tr. put together in a makeshift or dishonest way; fake.
2 tr. deal with incompetently.
3 intr. practise such methods.
Is there an intent to deceive if the makers of the graph truely believe that the "trick" expresses the "truth". i.e. if the tricksters have deceived themselves does that absolve them of the crime of intentionally deceiving others?
Tim,
Do you suppose this is Roger's point? If so, it is very narrow.
Tim, You mean like this?
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/05/15/
I seriously doubt that most academic scientists in... say... physics or chemistry would agree with Dr Pielke. It's probably only pseudo-sciences like climate where this kind of behavior is tolerated. At least that's my hope. As for Dr Pielke's fudge/fraud distinction, the only difference between the two is one of intent. Unless Dr Pielke knows Phil Jones' intent and would like to enlighten the rest of us, hiding the decline from politicians who make funding and policy decisions was fraud. Pielke jr is probably right. This kind of thing probably does happen all the time as scientists and gov't agencies maneuver for limited funds. That may deserve a wink, but it is hardly a justification for defining down fraud.
What bothers me about Roger's comments is that he does not take in account the incredible cost to all of us in terms of tax money collected and spent to "save the world" from a "fudge".
When I walk into an empty theater and shout "Fire" that is a joke. When I walk into a crowded theater and shout "Fire" that is criminal.
The fudging of data by the AGW crowd is criminal. It is costing billions of dollars and euros. There is nothing cute about it at all.
I would very much like to hear his reply to the issue of COST TO US ALL.
Andrew, thanks for the question, I've posted up some further thoughts here:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/picking-cherries-and-hot-fudge.html
In my view, Roger Pielke Jr's view is correct.
In any type of modern science - it is extremely rare that data is 100% pointing in one direction. It is not unusual that anomalous data is excluded - especially if a good reason exists.
The real issue with the 'trick' is not that some massaging of data occurred, it is that the inability to access source data means a potentially false certainty is presented without any real way for another scientist or concerned person to review/refute it.
Thus the specific issue of the trick used is not the point. The point is that without an open and objective review process, such tricks can continue to influence scientific direction when in fact they should not be.
Thus the problem isn't fraud - in the sense that Mann was trying to sell us a used car with a bad CV joint. I absolutely agree that this may have been the result - but the 'trick' itself is hardly a smoking gun given that Mann had many other reasons for using this technique:
1) A young academic discipline without significant precedents (paleo-dendrology)
2) Personal achievement in academics
3) Attempting to tease useful data out of a noisy record
Unfortunately in real life, there is equally a lack of criminal statute against scientific malfeasance - in this case obstruction of the working of science via denial of access to data, thus preventing review or repetition.
Thus the real crime is actually not a crime in the judicial sense, though it is in the scientific sense. The coupling of this scientific crime with a political agenda - now we're getting into really gray areas.
To be clear - whatever Mann has or has not done isn't the real problem though it is scientifically reprehensible.
The real problem is the political agenda - and crucifying Mann isn't going to fix that issue.
To me this 'fudge' is an outright 'fraud'. The entire premise of the tree ring proxy is it accurately reflects temperature with DIRECT correlation. If temp goes one way, tree rings will follow. This is the basis of all theories trying to neutralize the other scientific data which points to very warm periods in humanity's history prior to the industrial revolution.
The fact that DECADES of data show unambiguously that there is no direct correlation between tree rings and temperature means the entire theory that historic climate change is happening only now (and by assumption is caused by human generated CO2) is wrong. Not slight wrong but completely wrong.
The 'fudged' data was a stake in the heart of AGW theory. It was not a one off year or decade, but a multi-decade set of hard tree ring data temporally correlated with hard temperature data. There was no other conclusion from this modern data but that tree ring error bars were so large as to be useless in determining historic temperature trends. And I mean completely useless.
So, this was not replacing one data set with a more accurate data set (a 'fudge'). This was covering up a data set that would completely destroy the AGW theory completely. These 'scientists' replaced the damning tree ring data with the temp-only data which gave them a hockey stick, but was also the proof tree rings are not able to measure temperature.
The fact nearly all tree ring data sets demonstrated this new fact (minus a magical larch or two in Yamal) further demonstrates tree rings universally are completely incapable of measuring climate over periods of decades or centuries.
QED: the hiding of this real world measurement disproving the basis of AGW was 'fraud'.
I agree with AJStrata. This was clearly fraud. It was an attempt to hide the fact that trees are not temperature proxies and thus was hiding the fact that the whole of dendroclimatology is wrong and thus the "wamest for a thousand years" claim was wrong. Career saving, face saving or AGW saving? Who knows why people embark on the path of deception?
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive (Sir Walter Scott)
AJS,
Or, of course that the global temperature data is wrong. Or a bit of both really, there is no way to tell.
I'm beginning to sense that many people really do not seem able to grasp just how little credibility climate science has left. They continue to act as though all is settled and linear and happy in their little academic bubble, and they, like Roger, seem surprised when people vehemently tell them otherwise.
Roger is just digging the hole he is in even deeper with the second Thread, the responses to the first one should have told him how at odds he is with his readers.
Hasn't he heard the old saying, when you are in a hole STOP DIGGING.
I think one of the reasons why RP is trying to make the distinction between fraud and fudge is because he doesn’t think Mann’s Hockey Stick is that important in the AGW scheme of things.
He forgets how little climate science has actually been exposed to public view and how much less has been examined with any precision.
I do know that they used the idea that current temperatures where abnormally high compared to history to sell the scare story. Why did they use it and why do they continue to use it if it doesn’t matter? I believe that climate models are supposed to be in broad agreement with proxy reconstructions. If those reconstructions are wrong, what does it say about the models?
Who knows how much ‘fudge’ there is in the rest of climate science? I doubt very much if even climate scientists know.
It seems the public are using things like Climategate and the Hockey Stick as proxies for climate science as a whole. Hmm. It’s worse than we thought. Or am I guilty of fudging the result?
It's when you combine the hockey stick fudge with the unreliability of surface weather station measurements (Watts Up With That) and the IPCC's cavalier attitude towards uncertainty and finally the corruption of the peer review process ... it all stinks.
Bishop,
In the e-mails and in various defenses which academics have proffered for a variety of problems (refusing to share data, dismissing McIntyre saying he should do his own work, fudging, etc.) we can see numerous instances where scientists say (essentially) "that's just the way science is done". The problem is that they don't seem capable of understanding that the standards that satisfy them in their ivory towers do not meet the needs of society when billions of people and trillions of dollars of resources are at stake.
I think it was AJ Strata who had a wonderful post a little while back in which he describes how scientists are never allowed to write software on a project if people can get hurt. At NASA for example, engineers take over for the scientists when it comes time to make something work in the real world. I'll see if I can dig it up, but you would enjoy it.
So whether we are talking "fudge" vs. "fraud", or standards for uncertainty, or the need for replication, or the quality of backup documentation required, the scientists don't 'get it'. They are screwing around with our lives and it is time they came to grips with the level of quality control that is required for the task.
I forgot to mention the never-ending list of articles linking global warming to absolutely everything from subsidence in Taiwan to disappearing snow on Kilimanjaro, disappearing water in Lake Chad and disappearing lizards - and the total lack of evidence of causation linking CO2 to gloal warming. We could go on and on ... what makes me sick is that supposedly fair-minded scientists continue to defend all of this.
Here's the post from AJ Strata: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11509
I commend it to you. Scientists simply do not practice the kind of quality control that the real world requires.
Because of the Enron scandal, the United States Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and tightened the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Corporations, another congressional act. Today, if you are a CEO of a publicly traded company then you must sign all the financial documents that are approved by the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. If the financial documents contain an error, then you can be found guilty of fraud. At this time, it does not seem likely that the behavior of Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and other Climategaters will motivate the United States Congress to attach Draconian measures to federal grants. However, scientists must understand that the days of the ivory tower have passed and that they must come with a reasonable account of the difference between fudge and fraud. If they do not, they will find that the government will do it for them. That would be a disaster for all of us.
Theo Goodwin,
'That would be a disaster for all of us'
On the contrary, i think I could, with some effort, hide my disappointment. We might in time, grind to a full recovery.
Suppose for a moment that the 1960-2000 tree-ring data had diverged in the opposite direction, i.e. showing a temperature rise much stronger than instrumental data show. Would they have fudged that too? My guess is they would have nor "hide the increase". They would have included the intensified temperature rise of the tree rings, and would suggest that thermoters are probably understating the true extent of AGW. "Trees don't lie" would have been their moto in that hypothetical case.
Dr Pielke jnr has clarified his statements and makes his view clearer.However, I am not sure I can agree with him. Although his view is quite reasonable, it is somewhat narrow. I believe some of his message is that this aspect is not really that important to the overall debate and an overreaction is counterproductive. He argues that we all reduce information prior to its presentation and decisions about this have to be made by the presenters. But here is the rub - "cherry-picking" where you only take the information which supports your thesis is not science.
As a real scientist I have to justify all of the information that I present. If I have omitted or altered data I must explain why to my customer's (and their expert's) satisfaction. Cherry-picking which dominates both sides of the climate debate, is simply not allowed. Therefore, I would accept that this incident on its own is not that important, but the fact it is systematic of a discipline gone wrong IS important.
It's still hard to tell exactly what distinction he is making. Cherrypicking can be done both semi-legitimately (omitting the irrelevant, ambiguous, or the long list of things that could go wrong but probably haven't - poor science but not fraud) and illegitimately (constructing the wrong result by knowingly leaving out evidence demonstrating that your methods are invalid or your conclusion wrong).
I think he's trying to argue for some sort of a legitimate usage, but makes no distinction, nor offers any explanation as to why it is legitimate in this case. I think the problem is that he doesn't understand the significance of the divergence problem for dendroclimatology in general. He gives the impression of thinking it's just a little wiggle at the end of a graph, of no particular importance.
It's not critical to the scientific case for AGW generally, true, but it is to the question of whether the observed modern warming is outside the range of natural variation.
Roger,
Still waiting on your comments about the cost of this "fudging" is having on all of us through "Carbon Tax", "Cap and trade" and all the wasted grant money.
Or is that all "collateral" damage. Since you posted right after my last post, clearly you saw my question.
There seems to be a lot of dancing going on in an attempt to distract from a clear chain of deception:
Phil Jones writes of using "Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (sic)
The resultant purée gives a very different impression from the source fruit salad.
But responding to this comment on RealClimate, Mike Mann states: "[Response: No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, "grafted the thermometer record onto" any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum. ..."
That's deletion of inconvenient but apparently valid data, deception by fabrication of a trend of opposite sign and a blatant lie denying such procedures by the very person credited by his colleagues with originating the deception in question.
Most academics I know are appalled by the suggestion this is acceptable, much less standard operating procedure.
Well said Barry. There is clear and incontrovertible evidence that Mann lied on this issue, and knowingly too. Acceptable? Not to this observer.
There is a disturbing development among leading critics of Mann, Jones et al. First we have McIntyre and an apparently sizeable retinue of posters deploring the Virginia AG’s investigation into Mann’s tenure and offering pre-emptively to fund his defence to charges they anticipate him facing, and now Pielke Jr waging a Swiftian campaign with his posters over whether the Tree Ring Circus’ deceptive behaviour was “fraud”, as they insist, or “fudge”, as he passionately prefers.
Mann et al engaged in behaviour they knew to be deceptive, to secure advantages of funding, renown and career advancement that are plain for all to see. Pielke’s spat is going nowhere useful, and shouldn’t be continued here. Hiding the Decline was BOTH a fudge AND a fraud, for goodness’ sake – they are not mutually exclusive.
But what is going on here? Are SM and RP really so ultramundane that they believe the warmistas will be brought to book anywhere BUT a court of law? Or so monkishly ascetic that they recoil at the prospect of the sense of schadenfreude that might assail them if Mann ends up in the Bar View Hotel, where he belongs? Have they not seen the impotence of the “extra-curial” response to Climategate?
It is time gently to point out to these guys, to whom we owe so much, that hounding the Circus members to an early grave, gratifying though it will be, has a serious purpose beyond mere delight in the misfortunes of those who richly deserve it, and that that purpose will not be served by collegiate squeamishness.
By way of a start, consider the global cooling scare of the 70s and 80s.Kindled by the egregious Ehrlich, and stoked by a young Gore on the make, it’s proponents were allowed, once it had had its (admittedly short) day, to morph seamlessly into warmists, without a serious “now hang on a minute...” from the public. Had the coolists received the drubbing they deserved in a timely fashion, this would have been considerably more difficult, and we might have saved some of the countless billions already squandered on AGW. How was this allowed to happen? In the case of “Global Cooling”, it happened to share public attention with the rather more plausible “nuclear winter” theory. With the end of the Cold War “Nuclear Winter” became a moot point. By choosing to “leave the building” at the same time, “Global Cooling” was able to use the same door, and thus escaped being forced to account for itself. Unless the current crop of geomancers is taken properly to task – and clearly this will not happen outside a court of law – Global Warming will go the same way, with expensive consequences for the world it leaves behind it.
Kesten Green http://kestencgreen.com/green%26armstrong-agw-analogies.pdf
notes that expensive, restrictive legislative “responses” to popular scares tend to remain on statute books long after the scare itself has evaporated. We must not let that happen to AGW.
Dishonesty is dishonesty.
Dishonesty is an attempt to refute reality. The only ultimate consequence is that it can lead to loss of life. That is the only possible final outcome of dishonesty. The fact that there are different species of dishonesty and not all of it leads to loss of life doesn't change anything.
If you put people like Roger Pielke Jr in medical research and medical practice (which is basically applied medical research), it could be telling indeed.
People tell lies all the time - this is true in a matter-of-fact sense, not as a normative statement.
I think it is extremely unfair of Pielke Jr to be talking about 'cheap-shots' and 'apologies'. (Methinks, somewhat cynically that he is self-consciously driving a wedge here).
Tom Forrester-Paton,
Numerous alarmists have publically stated that they would like to make climate scepticism illegal and would like to see oil company execs put on trial for high crimes against humanity.
Standing up against such thuggeries requires that sceptics clearly define the boundaries of debate and defend those boundaries even if that means defending people like Mann.
Mann deserves to fade ino history as the poster boy for what goes wrong when ideology drives science. He is not a criminal and no good will come from trying to make him one.
Sorry. What the hockey stick has done so successfully has been to permit others to engineer closure of the debate (because recent temperatures are so self-evidently higher than any in 2000 years). And so we have organisations even as well-regarded as The Royal Society using closure of the debate to put pressure onto ordinary mainstream media such as the BBC not to report opposing views. This has led to the corruption of scientific debate - for this reason Mann cannot be allowed to "fade into history".
matthu,
You stated the real problem which is the culture that allowed the RS and others to justify suppressing dissent. Withou that culture Mann would not have had the influence he did. What we need to do is fix that culture. Singling out Mann for sloppy science actually reinforces that culture of suppressing dissent. It a road that we must avoid at all costs.
It's not nice to fudge Mother Nature.
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Tim, I'm afraid I disagree with the assertion Mann's science was "sloppy" -- "hiding the decline" was a deliberate act to support an incorrect assertion and part of an ongoing series. Sloppy science is "Oops! I dropped the sign in that calculation and we came up with a result that looked intuitively reasonable." When discovered you retract and recalculate but you do not fabricate pretty graphics to compound the error.
Do any of us believe Mann would have been offered tenure by Penn State had he not so spectacularly provided politically correct support for allegedly unprecedented warming? Do any of us believe Mann accidentally omitted the series in his "censored" directory while including only those which deliver his desired hockey stick shape? And that once this was pointed out he still didn't realize he had accepted career advancement with its associated increased remuneration on the basis of flawed reconstructions? All this would have to be true for Mann to be merely "sloppy" (grossly incompetent?) rather than obtaining monies by deception. Note that Cuccinelli is trying to ascertain whether Mann bilked the people of Virginia and I believe rightly so.
Surely you don't believe fraud is acceptable as long as it is perpetrated by academics?
There are very good reasons why Mann should go down hard. He would also be in good company,
Admiral John Byng, executed on the quarterdeck of his ship 250 years ago for failing to engage the French in battle with sufficient enthusiasm
.
"The execution of Byng ... taught officers that even the most powerful friends might not save an officer who failed to fight ... Byng's death revived a culture of determination which set British officers apart from their foreign contemporaries." [N A M Roger ]
.
"In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others." [Voltaire ]
Science needs to revive a "culture of determination" to not commit fraud.
Pour encourager les autres.
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