Budiansky on Cuccinelli

One of my favourite science writers, Stephen Budiansky, has recently joined the blogosphere and is today discussing the Cuccinelli investigation and its similarity to the attacks on Bjorn Lomborg in the wake of the publication of the Skeptical Environmentalist.

Comments

[Garry]

Considering the perfidious milieu demonstrated in the UEA emails, are you surprised that the Virginia Attorney General wants to make sure that the Commonwealth's money was not misspent?

[Bishop Hill]

There is a line somewhere, but I'm not sure how to define it.

[pluck]

Speaking from the scene of the crime, Virginia, there seem to be more obvious cases for my tax money to be spent investigating. While there is much in Dr. Mann's statements that suggest reprehensible conduct and misrepresentation of facts, I have seen nothing that looked like fraud against the Virginia Tax Payers. I could be wrong, but that's how it strikes me.

[hunter]

pluck,
And Richard Madoff looked great until someone bothered to look.

[BBD]

BH: 'There is a line somewhere, but I'm not sure how to define it.'

The mirror's surface?

Budiansky: 'It was a small rebuff to a truly appalling act of scientific McCarthyism. But Cuccinelli's attempt to turn a scientific dispute into a crime is unfortunately the logical outcome of the whole wretched politicization of the global warming issue over the last couple of decades.'

[stan]

The post was so full of over-the-top snark that I couldn't wade thru 2 paragraphs before the stench overwhelmed me.

[Mailman]

Seems a lot of people have issues with accountability, especially when public money is being used.

Perhaps if Mann had been open, honest and transparent with everything he has done with public money then he wouldn't be in the position of being investigated now.

Mailman

[pluck]

Hunter and Mailman,

Your comments are appreciated. But I don't expect Dr. Mann to begin being transparent soon. Perhaps he has something to hide; perhaps he is just untrusting. It is also possible that he is misguided and believes that this is the best form of damage control.

I have developed a suspicion that he enjoys being confrontational and defiant. Dr. Mann could have resolved recent controversies by engaging in dialog and clearing matters up. Instead, he has provoked those making inquiries, and he appears to have done it with relish. It's juvenile on his part and it is better on our part not to rise to his bait. Just my opinion.

[John Shade]

Mr Budiansky wrote:

'This of course is the routine buffoonery of a Republican politician with aspirations to national office. Much less amusing was Cuccinelli's foray into the world of the Thought Police, in the form of a fraud investigation he opened in April of a former University of Virginia scientist — who had committed the crime of concluding that the climate is getting warmer.'

This seems to me to be revealing. The 'routine buffoonery' phrase speaks to me of prejudice. The 'crime of concluding that the climate is getting warmer' speaks to me of straw men. This is straight out of some political playbook.

The awful impact that the climate alarmists have had on energy security, economies, poor people (especially those unable to cope with the surge in basic food prices associated with biofuels), and on the mental wellbeing of children and other vulnerable people (the recently deceased Mr Lee comes to mind) with their scaremongering is such that 'we the people' are entitled to a vigorous and especially thorough investigation of what led to it. The specious hockey-stick chart was a major emblem of the alarmists for quite a while, before the shoddy 'science' behind it made it an embarrassment. Mr Cuccinelli, it seems to me, is doing his job and acting very responsibly here in seeking to find out more via the device of a perfectly legitimate legal action. Just in case this is not merely shoddy 'science'.

[harold]

It still remains unclear to me what Cuccinelli is after. The grant world is very competitive, there even are specialists who can craft the proposals for you. Exaggerations in proposals are not an exception and I remember a study which compared medical grants with published papers based on these grants ... there were large differences. Anyway ... here are two snippets from an interview:

We are not investigating his academic work, that subpoena is directed at the expenditure of dollars

..there is at least some information out there that has been brought to us that indicates there may be problems in terms of whether or not the money was spent on what it was requested for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO9U8gJQiE8

[Pops]

DO'OH