Skepticgate?
That’s the tweet from Andy Revkin, as he links to this USA today story.
Funny, but I’m not seeing any mention of the story over at WUWT or Climate Depot, or Planet Gore. At least Tom Nelson has seen seen fit to link to it.
Oh, well, I’m sure Anthony, Marc, and the gang at National Review will be all over this in due time. I mean, they love those stories with a gate attached to it.
JeffID has it, he’s headlined it Copygate.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/copygate/
Many of us have been following this for quite awhile now. The mainstream press is rather late to the party. Strange, though, because they seem to gleefully report any skeptic allegation, no matter how dubious or empty.
What folks need to know about the trashy Wegman Report can be found here:
http://deepclimate.org/
I wonder if Judith Curry will stand by her previous rant calling DC’s work “reprehensible” and lauding the Wegman Report. Maybe she’s done her homework now. DC and John Mashey certainly have.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-3198
I don’t think copygate has quite the same ring as skepticgate, but good for Jeff for noting it.
NewYorkJ: I’m aware that Deep Climate has been on this for some time, and I’m glad to see he’s credited in the USA Today story. But this does rise to the level of news with the announcement that the university is ” investigating the plagiarism and misconduct charges.”
The silence at WUWT et al is evident of..bias? hypocrisy?
The best one was at WUWT
michaeljgardner says:
October 8, 2010 at 1:18 pm
OT
My apologies is this is poor form.
Anthony, could we have a thread on the Wegman plagiarism thing?
Well I look forward to reading that thread when Anthony gets around to it.
“The silence at WUWT et al is evident of..bias? hypocrisy?”
Come on now. It’s only been one day. Other bloggers haven’t gotten around to it either.
Watts is still working on consulting his social network to find the right talking points. There’s lots of information to gather. He has to find out who’s doing the investigation and to determine the likelihood that they will exonerate Wegman. This will help him to decide whether to slam the investigation or support it. Then if things don’t go well, he’s got to consider some post that says something like “just because the Wegman Report is trash, doesn’t mean the hockey stick isn’t a big ol’ fraud anyway”. Guest post from Steve McIntyre perhaps. Then maybe some scrubbing of all posts that laud the Wegman Report as a fine piece of scholarship (ClimateAudit might have him beat)…things like:
“That hockey stick has since been debunked by the United States Congress by the world-renowned statistics expert Edward Wegman. See the Wegman report here.
The Wegman Report was sufficiently damning…”
I also commend Keith for writing a post covering a story critical of a skeptic without finding a way to slam Romm (yet). Kudos!
Patience, boys, patience.
kkloor:
Revkin has important topics to cover.
Did “˜Whale Wars’ Leader Sink Boat for Publicity?
Move Over, Carbon, Humans Are Jolting Nitrogen, Too
Modified Corn Aids Nearby Farmers, and Vice Versa
We all know that there’s no sort of institutional bias that leads to a distorted coverage that makes exaggeration rather than downplay seem like the bias, right?
Good on you for posting about this, BTW.
[…] been an outspoken critic of Keith Kloor, but please give him deserved respect for at least covering this, unlike so many other “climate journalists”. This entry […]
NewYorkJ Says:
Come on now. It’s only been one day. Other bloggers haven’t gotten around to it either.
Mmm.
Tom “journalist” Fuller:
Patience, boys, patience.
It’s breaking news. We need time to cover it!
Gawd, the partison nature of climate science is becoming so tiresome. ‘Tit for tat’ rolls endlessly on. Think some people need to take a Bex and have a nice lie down…
Lucia has a post about it.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/
Out of curiosity, has anyone actually read the 250 page report condemning Wegman? Just skimming it, I found a number of things I take issue with, but my main problem was trying to get at the content. It seems the first 200 pages are superfluous to the discussion of plagiarism.
I’m sure there will be plenty of discussion of the side-by-side comparisons in the last 50 pages of the report, but for now I just want to point out one thing. The story you link to claims “Mashey says his analysis shows that 35 of the 91 pages in the 2006 Wegman report are plagiarized.” However, the link given to support this says nothing of the sort. In fact, it seems to say nothing relevant to the claim.
If you check the side-by-side comparisons in the 250 page report, it is clear this number is not correct. A count of the page numbers even mentioned in the section comes up with about 25 pages. Mind you, this is 25 pages in which plagiarized text is (claimed to be) found, not 25 pages of plagiarized text.
I have no idea where they got the idea Mashey claimed this, but it is clearly a gross exaggeration.
Now top post at WUWT. I think you’re getting a little over excited here.
Maybe Anthony already has decided on his style of addressing the issue:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/08/avoiding-the-guilty-pleasures/#comment-502820
John McManus says:
October 8, 2010 at 12:51 pm
One of my guilty pleasures is reading. Today I read that Wegman is being investigated for academic misconduct.
Who will go down with him? Barton ; an unidicted co-conspiritor. Some plagerising PHD’s. McIntyre- too much invested in a false “ bad science” shriek. Cuchilleni: plagerised the plagerism. Watts.
Go Mike. Go John. Go Ray.
REPLY: Ah, more of your fine prose I see. You may wish to employ a spell checker before pressing submit. I’m not sure that you can fully understand the words indicted, conspirator, PhD, plagiarism, plagiarizing, or plagiarized if you can’t spell them properly. 😉 A review of your past comments here shows an equal spread of similarly misspelled foaming taunts. Actually, I think this issue is a good thing. The question is: was this intentional or accidental? Was it Wegman himself or an assistant? Meanwhile, the other issues of the report get more press. -Anthony
Tom Fuller writes at WUWT. I’m not entirely sure how he can “respect” the paper while admitting that it might provide grounds for disciplinary action…
BenSix, #11: “I’m not entirely sure how he can “respect” the paper while admitting that it might provide grounds for disciplinary action”
I’m not entirely sure how you can read Fuller’s post and not understand the point he made. He writes “So I’m hoping this investigation is thorough, quick and that Wegman’s work stands.” The words “hoping” and “believing” have different meanings. One can hope that something will happen without necessarily believing it will or not. Where’s the confusion?
All, I haven’t read the report, nor am I getting overexcited. I was merely pointing out what looked to me to be a lack of proper and timely excitability by some bloggers.
After all, we know that excitability would have been much more promptly expressed had a university or any other institution announced that an investigation was under way examining the work of a certain climatologist or two.
Tom Fuller: are you kidding me with that post at WUWT?
Simon –
Yeah, and it’s fine if he does. My beef was with this part…
I don’t like the weblog Deep Climate, and I very much respect the report Edward Wegman put out.
Surely if you’re willing accept that a report may be flawed, let alone grounds for disciplinary action, “respect” should be put on hold? ‘Twas but a minor snark, though.
Tom:
Just to be clear, I thought this part undermined everything else you said:
I don’t like the weblog Deep Climate, and I very much respect the report Edward Wegman put out. I understand what the report said and I agree with its conclusions. So I’m hoping this investigation is thorough, quick and that Wegman’s work stands.
Tom Fuller,
“One of the anonymous weblogs specializing in climate hysteria”
Deep Climate specializes in examining media and skeptic claims with more technical focus than most, as well as social connections and funding sources. It does not generally make hysterical claims about climate.
“This is bad news (for me).”
… why?
“Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick will not be resurrected”
… it was never buried to begin with… it’s there with or without decentered PCA, it’s replicated by many other studies with or without tree rings as well as energy balance models… it’s the figure you reproduce at the top of your post, the IPCC 1990 schematic, that is not a global temperature reconstruction, which has been buried… because it is a sketch of central England temperature estimates in smoothed 50 year averages.
More here…
“The 1990 report noted that it was not clear whether all the fluctuations indicated were truly global (p 202).”
Perhaps this is why the Wegman report hid the decline?
“Wegman has completely mangled the “now” end of the graph – his version ends up going upwards, whereas the IPCC version ends up going downwards. This isn’t “hide the incline” – this is “fake the incline”. But why? I think the reason is that Wegman wants you to think that the endpoint is representative of “now”. Obviously, if you see a graph with the T flat from ~1910 you’re going to think “oops that isn’t right” so he has faked in an increase at the end.”
… so the Wegman report presents a sketch of a sketch of estimates of central England temperatures in 50 year averages… and they didn’t have thermometers in 1300, or 1500…
BenSix, meh.. nahh. It was the snark I was calling out. I tire of snark. I disagree that you must put on hold respect in lieu of a contrary claim. I propose, though, that you must reasonably discard your respect for something only when it is demonstrated that it is misguided. If it so transpires, to the extent that there is impact in the substance of Wegman’s paper, I will certainly remain true to this.
With respect, the very tone and pitch of Mashey’s piece inspired, in me at least, precisely no confidence in any substance in its assertions. Nada. I would rather wait for the conclusions of the GMU investigation, assess and digest those, before drawing any conclusions on the standard of work in the Wegman paper. I’m also very much interested to know if Mashey’s very strong assertion of “lies” on the part of Wegman withstand cross examination, legal or otherwise. I suspect that the implications of Mashey’s piece will not be limited to Wegman, particularly if this plays out fully in litigation as it sounds like it may.
#23 Just a quick note: none of the litigation so far noted involves Mashey. It may be that the publishers of some of the books allegedly mis-used in WR are upset over their copyright being violated.
[…] For first use, see Jeff post announcing the Wegman investigation at WMU. I learned of the coinage at Collide-a-scape. […]
Brandon Shollenberger
The story you link to claims “Mashey says his analysis shows that 35 of the 91 pages in the 2006 Wegman report are plagiarized.” However, the link given to support this says nothing of the sort. In fact, it seems to say nothing relevant to the claim.
What you say isn’t quite right. I did use my search tool to try to find the snippets of discussion of plagiarism in Massey’s report.
On page 3 of Mashey’s report, I find a bullet point that reads:
So, this is pretty close to what USA Today reports. Admittedly, the Massey’s report doesn’t call them “plagiarized”, but for all we know he used that term when in a phone conversations with a reporter from USA Today. That’s what I would expect from USA Today writing “Mashey says…” The wording sounds like their source for the information is not the report but a phone conversation.
Keith, I’m a bit confused at this point. Was my post at WUWT unclear at all? I’m writing an opinion piece on a weblog and I state my opinion. I do respect Wegman’s report. I do agree with its conclusions. I do not respect Deep Climate or Mashey. I hope they are wrong.
Regardless of my opinions I think there should be a rapid and thorough investigation of the charges.
That’s pretty much what I wrote. I fail to see how anyone could be unclear on that. I’m not a beat journalist and have never claimed to be. What I write is commentary and always has been. I got tripped up into doing straight reporting again for a short time because of the Climategate leaks, but even then I made the distinction clear.
I truly don’t understand what you’re on about here.
And really, pointing out my personal perspective while giving an opinion on headlines seems like doing my readers a favor. I do not intend to present myself as an unbiased reporter of fact. Really, Keith, this is a bit weird.
“I do not intend to present myself as an unbiased reporter of fact.”
noted…
this why you misrepresented the content of DC as “specializing in climate hysteria”?
Lucia, Mashey’s rant spells Mashey “Mashey”.
Keith, gotta be frank, I’m rather with Tom on this, both in his view regarding an investigation of Wegman’s report and also in not understanding your objections to Tom’s WUWT post.
i understand that plagiarism is serious in an academic context…
but i don’t think this issue is particularly relevant for climate science… except that it is indicative of general sloppiness in the report… some of which *does* impact climate science… and except where alleged plagiarized passages may have been manipulated to alter meanings
Keith, just a couple of notes.
1. Given your behavior demonstrated here, I’ve now removed you from Lukewarmers blog link category and put you in with the rest of the crowd you consort with. Your illusion of lukewarminess has produced too much emissions.
2. Could we have a thread on the Hal Lewis resignation thing?
You could be right, Simon. I think it’s fair enough to reveal one’s biases: they tend to be intuitive enough that they’re not easily discarded.
Mr Watt’s reaction is a tad bizarre. You’re either with him or “<i>pro warmer</i>”?
Lazar: “…except that it is indicative of general sloppiness in the report”
I disagree. From what I’ve seen, Wegman didn’t simply copy and paste text without attribution. He made an attempt to cover it up by adding or swapping words, in a rather comical fashion that renders the text incoherent in some cases, and changing the meaning in other case. It’s forgivable with school children, not a professor who is dubbed “world-renowned” (albeit by political hacks). Even so, a child would receive an F on their paper and a severe scolding if caught.
joe puts keith with anthony…
anthony puts keith with joe…
and both think they know him
can any one know another
simplest thing is to ask…
keith
what’s your central estimate of climate sensitivity (surface temperature change / doubling of co2)?
if you had to bet?
what are your ‘very likely’ 95% confidence limits?
do you describe yourself as a ‘lukewarmer’?
NewYorkJ,
By ‘sloppiness’ I mean copy-and-paste because the author(s) may have been too lazy to write it in their own words and give proper citations. I’m not suggesting an accident 🙂 Where meanings are substantially changed of course there are further implications.
My, there’s nothing like online communication to arouse random hysteria in all of us!
31. This stuff would almost certainly effect Wegman’s accusations re the size of social networks in climate science. Almost all of his background material on this seems to have been a copy and paste job, which suggests that Wegman’s understanding of the area was minimal, and so his argument about the small numbers involved in climate science research are probably not well founded.
For what’s worth, there are all sorts of scientific specialties where the number of practionioners is under a hundred. Climate science is not particularly special in this regard.
[…] My search shows “Copygate” to be in greater use already. Here’s the thread on Jeff Id’s blog and over at Keith’s Collide-a-Scape. […]
Tribalism is far from being a badge of honour. I thought we all agreed!?Despite knowing this, everyone seems to be drawn irresistibly to consign everyone else to a tribe. It’s akin to 5 minutes on the naughty step or something – a token “punishment”. Everyone pretends to agree that the polarisation of the climate debate is counter-productive and unhelpful, and yet it seems no-one can resist being complicit in further polarising of the debate.
It’s the consigner, not the consignee, that demonstrates their immaturity, every single bloody time. What the hell gives??
I understand your point, Lazar. Plagiarism by itself doesn’t have much meaning from a science standpoint, and focusing only on that would detract from how bad the Wegman Report is. Use (or misuse) of the Lamb 1966 sketch is worse.
Will the university make public all of Wegman’s emails over the last decade? I suspect that would be quite revealing.
NewYorkJ says:
“I understand your point, Lazar. Plagiarism by itself doesn’t have much meaning from a science standpoint, and focusing only on that would detract from how bad the Wegman Report is. Use (or misuse) of the Lamb 1966 sketch is worse.”
From the poster ‘ZT’ just now at Bishop Hill-
”
Just to prove to myself that looking for plagiarism is a sad activity (!) I went to Bradley’s publication page:
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/bradleypub.html
(Bradly helpfully posts PDFs of all his publications – no need to deal with those pesky pay walls for his disciples) and …clicked on….the first paper posted).
http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/papers2/mann2008.pdf
I took the first sentence “Knowledge of climate during past centuries can both improve our understanding of natural climate variability and help address the question of whether modern climate change is unprecedented in a long-term context”
…and Googled…
I observe among the hits:
http://faculty.washington.edu/mkuettel/docs/Luterbacheretal_Springer_2010.pdf
(Phil Jones is a coauthor) which begins…
“The knowledge of climate and its variability during the past centuries can improve our understanding of natural climate variability and also help to address the question of whether modern climate change is unprecedented in a long-term context”
The similarities/coincidences continue – e.g.the second sentence in both papers begins “The lack of widespread instrumental climate records before the mid 19th century…” Mann et al; “The lack of widespread instrumental climate records” Luterbacher et al
So, I’m inclined to suspect that cutting and pasting is quite common in climatology, if not science. But, no doubt some cutting and pasting is more equal than other cutting and pasting.”
Yep, will probably be best to focus on the other stuff. Wouldn’t want to get everyone in trouble now, would we?
Anthony (32):
I’m heartbroken. Anyway, like I’ve been saying, you and Joe are two sides of the same coin. How on earth this post or “my behavior here” demonstrates cavorting with anyone is beyond me. Thanks for further evidence of that tribalism.
Tom Fuller:
Perhaps I’ve been misunderstanding you all along. I had been under the impression that you were trying to keep your own biases in check. I also think what bothered me most about your post was the gratuitous swipe at Deep Climate. The merits of this investigation will rest on the evidence presented, and not (one hopes) on a like or dislike of any one person.
I don’t get how this is supposedly plagiarism. Wegmann wasn’t trying to pass off the report as original research or novel ideas in book format. This was a report to a Congressional committee which would require background summary on mainstream climate science and critiquing the views the scientists involved, i.e., Mann. Bradley, et. al. I haven’t read the full Wegman report or more than the first couple of paragraphs of the USA Today comparison supplement, so maybe I have the wrong impression of the intent, circumstances, and content of the Wegman Report , but it seems a big stretch to call this plagiarism. Seems more like Bradley can’t argue with the facts, so he’s just blowing diversionary smoke. We’ll see what comes out, but count me skeptical(!) so far.
Stu,
That’s hilarious. Did it occur to you that the sentence you quoted is referenced on the same line to Mann 2008 (and others)?
“(Folland et al. 2001; Jansen et al. 2007; Hegerl et al. 2007; Mann et al. 2008 and references therein)”.
…and that the sentence didn’t distort the original meaning?
Compare and contrast some of the things Wegman did with Bradley:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/22/wegman-and-rapp-on-tree-rings-a-divergence-problem-part-1/
http://deepclimate.org/2010/01/06/wegman-and-rapp-on-proxies-a-divergence-problem-part-2/
I understand that to some, the best defense is a good offense, but this is a very inept offense.
Keith,
1) I hope you and Anthony manage to patch things up. Your continuing to class him with Joe Romm is unfortunate–I personally don’t think it’s accurate, and it seems intended to rile him up. Are you surprised it succeeded?
2) If I’m doing straight reporting, of course I try and keep my biases in check. When I’m guest posting my opinions on someone else’s blog, it seems much fairer to declare my biases. Don’t you agree?
I’m fairly sure that if I have time to investigate this, it will turn out to be as much smoke as Prall, Schneider et al and their farce of a PNAS paper, or worse, like Scholars and Rogues proving mathematically why we didn’t need to read The Hockey Stick Illusion.
But since I haven’t had time to actually investigate, I’m doing what (I think) you and others called for, which is noting the existence of the claim on WUWT–but I guess that isn’t enough for you any more.
I don’t think you’re similar to Joe Romm any more than I think Anthony is. But it does seem to me that you’re trying to prove that you’re an equal opportunity smiter of all. See, Joe? He beats up on Anthony, too!
And Anthony is not perfect, any more than I am. We’re all targets walking around the minute we publish. But I think you’re kind of missing the point about Anthony and Joe, at least.
Romm wouldn’t even debate a lukewarmer with a proffered donation to charity. Anthony publishes lukewarmer opinions that are different from his.
I don’t get it, Keith. I really don’t.
NYJ says:
“Compare and contrast some of the things Wegman did with Bradley:”
I will check it out. I’m busy getting an assignment in for school (crunch time) so I don’t have much time to look into this in detail right now.
Fully prepared to see justice served on this if in fact Wegman is in error/misleading. I will catch up on it in due time.
All hands not abandoning ship – to the pumps!
Fuller, Mosher and Montford.
Kinda sounds like McIntye’s ‘B’ team of reindeers doesn’t it?
And with as much credibility.
Mr. Kloor.
I was waiting for you to come out.
Tom (46):
All my post intended to do was point up how slow some well known skeptics were in linking/posting to the Wegman news. Weirdly, Anthony takes exception to this.
So do you not think it hypocritical that Morano, Watts stayed quiet on this? No breathless, bold-type posts on Climate Depot, no cut and paste of the USA Today story on WUWT, as he is wont to do with other stories that reinforce his narrative.
Keith, my story was in the publishing queue at WUWT for a long time, which is why I counseled patience up above. Stories get lined up in order and wait their turn.
Compare that to the blackout observed by Romm and Real Climate on any number of subjects. Watts and Morano link to a lot of establishment stories–the reverse is certainly not true.
Keith, have you read Mashey’s report? Why didn’t CaS publish a detailed analysis of the report, its strengths and weaknesses and its implications for climate policy in 2010?
Are you trying to bury the news? What’s your hidden agenda?
My closing in #51 is obviously trying to be humorous, in case chek or NYJ are still conscious.
#27 “…Was my post at WUWT unclear at all? I’m writing an opinion piece on a weblog and I state my opinion…”
#46 “…When I’m guest posting my opinions on someone else’s blog, it seems much fairer to declare my biases…”
Shouldn’t Thomas Fuller’s Guest Posts at WUWT be so-labeled, as ‘opinion’ pieces?
“…a formal complaint by Raymond Bradley, who was a co-author with Michael Mann of the work Wegman looked into.”
In an ‘opinion’ piece does it become fair game to omit the important part: that Raymond Bradley was also the author of the textbook that was plagerized?
Keith’s point is obvious. It seems odd that WUWT followers don’t get it. Morano and Watts’ general purpose is to prop of views and stories that purport to indicate global warming isn’t a problem, downplay or sling mud at stories that do, and as in this case, promote and protect the work of contrarians. Part of that means treating similar stories differently. Keith also believes Romm (and perhaps some others) are “opposite sides of the same coin” as Watts/Morano, focusing on material that indicates global warming is a problem, and criticizing contrarians (although as of now, I don’t see a post from Romm specifically on SkepticGate).
This is where Keith goes wrong in my view. He seems to want to find a “middle ground”, taking the faux balance approach to journalism. Romm’s views are hardly radical. He respects the IPCC report, which represents a mainstream and often lowest-common-denominator assessment (such as sea level rise), but believes many aspects are likely underestimated, citing peer-reviewed studies to support this. Romm supports aggressive action on reducing emissions, but will also settle for more modest incremental gains when necessary, as the U.S. climate bill represented. He acknowledges there will be both economic losses and gains with emissions reductions. Watts, in contrast, pushes material alleging the IPCC is a great fraud, investigations that don’t comply to his desired result are “whitewashes”, does not care about the quality of sources he uses to push his narrative (expert peer-review is a bad thing), and any legislation targeting emissions would be an economic disaster. Romm’s views are an order of magnitude closer to the center of the scientific community.
Perhaps Keith sees them as opposite sides of the same coin for different reason than their views on science. Maybe it’s more of a personality thing. Both might appear intolerant of other views. But in any case, personality or style doesn’t matter much to me. Although I think Romm could be less brash at times (it would help in debates, with say, a cool liar like Morano), Romm’s case is understandable. How can one be truly tolerant of people who keep declaring global warming a “hoax”, or continuously make claims that are not at all supported? Patience wears thin. While Watts on the surface appears intolerant of anyone who supports serious emissions reductions (lukewarmers tend to not so they’re mostly ok in his book), my observations are that he appears simply intolerant of a rational and scientifically robust argument. I’m not too tolerant of those types of people!
(see #44, quite coincidentally)
When you children can stop playing tit-for-tat for a minute, could you please focus your unbiased and laser-like intellects to straighten me out on how, exactly, Wegman’s report qualifies as plagiarism when he makes no claim to new knowledge or content while critiquing the work of these authors. (Bias, mis-attribution, lying, if you must, but how is it plagiarism?) Thanks.
NewYorkJ-
That’s hilarious. Did it occur to you that the sentence you quoted is referenced on the same line to Mann 2008 (and others)?
The sentence is not wrapped in quotes. The fact that there are multiple citations makes it difficult to interpret the citation to Mann as indicating that those very words were used by Mann.
So, those sentences would appear to be plagiarism using the “DeepClimate/Mashey” standard of plagiarism. As far as I can tell, the sections with supposedly strikingly similar text are contained in portions of the Wegman report with headings indicating that section is a summary of a particular paper. The full title of the papers and authors are provided in the section heading. The papers associated with the is cited, and even mentioned repeatedly in the section.
So, it seems to me it seem to me that if the claim Stu’s example is plagiarism is hilarious, then the claim Wegman’s is plagiarism is hilarous. I suspect that was Stu’s point. Thanks for helping him make it.
“As far as I can tell, the sections with supposedly strikingly similar text are contained in portions of the Wegman report with headings indicating that section is a summary of a particular paper.”
As far as I can tell, this is false. At least, the body of theWegman report as it pertains to “social networks” does NOT mention the authors that were quite, quite extensively borrowed from, and I don’t see them noted in the bibliography either.
Heh. Four years. It took Bradley four years to notice? It took the Team four years to notice? THIS is what has the Alarmists all a flutter? And you people hope to accomplish…what, exactly, with this tenuous charge?
Deep Climate is a bush league anonymous blogger. Why would Anthony immediately man the walls in defense of Wegman? Why would you even bring it up, Keith? I think your’e nipping at Watts and Romm’s ankles to generate some traffic.
C’mon, go talk to a lawyer who specializes in this type of case. Contact Wegman. Get some background. If you’re going to pretend to be in the middle, you’ll have to do better than this post. Give Revkin a call, he’ll be glad to give you some pointers.
Wow, the ducking, weaving, squirming and obfuscating by the “skeptics” is quite hilarious, albeit par de course for said parties. Not so nice to be placed under the microscope is it?
Now the best retort they can offer is “ooh, ooh someone else might have done something similar, so there!” or “maybe his assistant did it”. Let us keep our eye on the ball folks, this is about Wegman et al.– 35 of 91 pages which contain swaths of unattributed text (i.e., not citations period), some of unattributed text was changed to misrepresent Bradley’s original work (i.e., to mislead). Also, let us not forget for what purpose the Wegman et al. was solicited and the fact that Wegman, Barton and Whitfield misled Congress. But hey, what is a bit of perjury between friends?
Anyhow, let us see what GMU, the publishers and perhaps even the DOJ think about this….and it will be interesting to see whether or not McIntyre, McKitrick and Cuccinelli (and others?) are implicated. Well, the latter is for sure….
Oh, and enough of the ad hominem attacks on DC and Mashey already. That just goes to underscore the vacuity of your case.
MikeM @57, how long did it take the “skeptics” who assured us that they had diligently read every page of AR4 to find the Himalayan error. Anyhow, not sure what your point is other than to perhaps be trying to detract from the real issue here.
And I not recall Fuller et al. contacting the people implicate d in the stolen email scandal to get their side of the story before writing his book. Interestingly Mosher says they did, Fuller says no. Who to believe?
Anyhow, back to that very awkward WegmanGate….
Lucia: “As far as I can tell, the sections with supposedly strikingly similar text are contained in portions of the Wegman report with headings indicating that section is a summary of a particular paper.”
Feel free to quote where the sections are indicated to be a summary. Keep in mind that if it was clear, that wouldn’t help Wegman’s case, as the words had been distorted (with regards to the Bradley examples).
Mike M: “C’mon, go talk to a lawyer who specializes in this type of case. Contact Wegman. ”
Wegman won’t talk (not beyond his social network at least). That’s why he’s got a lawyer. Perhaps Barton gave him some good recommendations.
Lucia: “As far as I can tell, the sections with supposedly strikingly similar text”
You are grasping at straws, and you must be kidding when you say– “supposedly strikingly similar text”
Come on admit it, you have not read the Mashey report in its entirety have you?
I’m not sure I understand what the complaint is here. This was a report to congress, not a book or journal article, and there was no attempt to pass Bradleys material off as his own. Furthermore, this section was purely background on the debate, and entirely unrelated to the headline conclusions of the report.
This is either a total beat up, or a mountain out of a molehill. Either way, Wegman’s conclusions regarding Mann’s work remain entirely unchallenged
I’m reading Mashey’s masterpiece now. He reminds me of Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. It’s pretty pathetic. All he needs is black helicopters.
Peter @64,
So would it be fair to say, going by the comments in defense of Wegman here, that the “skeptics’ and those in denial AGW, are in the first two stages of grief when dealing with bad news about Wegaman’s offenses–denial and anger ?
“Either way, Wegman’s conclusions regarding Mann’s work remain entirely unchallenged”
Did Wegman adequately address the principle component retention issue? No. Regardless, chronologies determined using independent data (some of which do not even include dendro data) and/or determined applying independent methodologies keep producing Hockey Sticks. The latest of which, Ljungqvist (2010), agrees very well with Mann08 and Moberg05. Not only that, but recent N. Hemisphere land temperatures are warmer than they have been in the last 2000 years– go and look at JeffId’s replication of Ljungqvist if you do not believe me.
Funny that you should allude to people allegedly making mountains out of molehills when that is exactly what CA and WUWT do.
It is 2010, get with the times.
MapleLeaf Says:
October 9th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
“MikeM @57, how long did it take the “skeptics” who assured us that they had diligently read every page of AR4 to find the Himalayan error.”
Don’t know about you, but I read reports regarding this “error” at least 18 months before the MSM caught on. It sure didn’t take 4 years!
In any case, I’m not sure I understand what the complaint is here. This was a report to congress, not a book or journal article, and there was no attempt to pass Bradleys material off as his own. Furthermore, this section was purely background on the debate, and entirely unrelated to the headline conclusions of the report, which relate to Mann’s use of short centred PC analysis
Wegman claims this is wrong, and will lead to any red noise showing a hockey stick. If this was wrong, I’m sure that would be what we were arguing about, not vague insinuations about not attributing enough)
This is either a total beat up, or a mountain out of a molehill. Either way, Wegman’s conclusions regarding Mann’s work remain entirely unchallenged.
Tom @65,
So you are only reading it now? After writing your opinion piece at WUWT?
And more ad hominem attacks from Fuller…..sad that that is all you have. Ironic too, given the propensity of “skeptics” to entertain conspiracy theories about “world governance” etc.
Actually, I’m finding the excuses brought forward in defense of Wegman’s offenses pretty pathetic.
MapleLeaf @66
How typical that you try to assign some folksie psychology to we “deniers” rather than address the issue. You surely cant believe that advances the argument?
Strange that there has been no mention on this thread of the Wyner & McShane paper, which validated Wegmans criticism and then some. It is becoming painfully obvious what happens when actual statisticians examine the statistical efforts of the Team. Waffling on about attribution is just running away from the savage truth
Peter,
“This was a report to congress, not a book or journal article, and there was no attempt to pass Bradleys material off as his own.”
Exactly, they misled congress, in part because they distorted and changed the meaning of Bradley’s work, amongst other things. I’m surprised that you and Fuller et al. are OK with that and fail to see the significance of that.
You really have to get over the problems with the short-centered PC analyses. And as I said before “chronologies determined using independent data (some of which do not even include dendro data) and/or determined applying independent methodologies keep producing Hockey Sticks. “
You seem to be denying the existence of the chronologies that have been published in recent years?
MapleLeaf @70
You seem to be denying the existence of the chronologies that have been published in recent years?
If they exist, why would I deny them? But just which ones do you refer to, that are free of the taint of the Teams various upside down and downright unsuitable proxies. Certainly not Mann 08, which is transparently just more of the same. I’m sure there are others, but given that they come from people who continue to defend the original HS, why should we pay them any notice?
MapleLeaf @7
“in part because they distorted and changed the meaning of Bradley’s work, amongst other things”
Oh come on, have you read it? They accurately summarised Bradleys and Manns work, with full attribution, and then moved on to criticise the statistical methods used.
But of course we are suppose to believe that, because a few of Manns colleagues and defenders have used the same data (give or take a few dendro series) and same methods to come up with the same result, that this criticism is unfounded?
So the methods used are rubbish, but the results are still good? What snake oil are you trying to sell?
Lucia and others, it seems my point was somewhat misunderstood. My issue wasn’t so much with saying pages had been plagiarized, but that USA Today said Mashey claimed his analysis showed “35 pages” had been plagiarized.
Having looked more closely at Mashey’s report, it seems clear what happened. The first page of Mashey’s report refers to “35 pages” of the Wegman Report. Later, he explains his analysis was over 25 of those pages. The other ten pages he claims were found by DeepClimate, and they are not covered in his report.
In other words, USA Today inflated the page count by 40%. Even the simplest of fact-checking would have caught this error, so it can only be called “sloppy.”
NewYorkJ
Feel free to quote where the sections are indicated to be a summary.
I’m not going to quote all of them. But it appears most of Mashey’s case for plagiarism is to show side-by-side comparisons in his pdf’s section 11.8., which starts on page 200 of Mashey’s pdf.
Looking at the top of the page of the first one, you will see the words “”•Summary of “•Are Multiproxy Climate Reconstructions Robust? By Gerd Bürger and Ulrich Cubasch (2005)”.
I guess that’s a quote of the evidence that suggests it’s a “summary”. 🙂
Now if you hunt down Wegman, you will find the passages come from a section in Wegman with the title “Summary of Are Multiproxy Climate Reconstructions Robust? By Gerd Bürger and
Ulrich Cubasch (2005)”
Then Mashey moves on to “#23 “•Summary of Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability by Jan Esper, Edward Cook, and Fritz Schweingruber (2005 (sic))”– [pp.86, 54]”
After that “”•Summary of Michael E. Mann’s Ph.D. Dissertation,”
These various section called whose titles begin with “Summary” appear in Appendix C of Wegman which has the title of “APPENDIX C. Summaries of Important Papers Discussed In the Report”
I interpret the repeated use of the word “summary” to indicate that all of these bits are intended to be summaries of those papers and not intended as Wegman’s ‘original’ work.
Maybe congressmen who often aren’t scholars like you might be too stupid to realize that these subsections with titles beginning with the word “summary” contained in an appendix whose title is “summary, are “summaries”, but I doubt that. I think most people with reading skills above the 6th grade level would be able to tell that the sections are “summaries”.
Keep in mind that if it was clear, that wouldn’t help Wegman’s case, as the words had been distorted (with regards to the Bradley examples).
Huh? I don’t know which Wegman “case” you think any distortion might be relevant to.
My impression is that GMU is looking into plagiarism. Distortion — i.e. saying something different from the original authors– tends to undermine the claim that something was plagiarized. So, it seems to me that concerns about distortion are rather irrelevant to the Wegman case being investigated by WMU which seems to relate to plagiarism.
Lucia: Huh? I don’t know which Wegman “case” you think any distortion might be relevant to.
I’ve posted 2 links from DC regarding the Bradley work.
Lucia: My impression is that GMU is looking into plagiarism.
From the USAToday article Keith linked: “Officials at George Mason University confirmed Thursday that they are investigating plagiarism and misconduct charges made against a noted climate science critic. ”
Also read Mashey’s summary.
Peter Wilson: They accurately summarised Bradleys and Manns work, with full attribution, and then moved on to criticise the statistical methods used.
What planet do you folks live on? It’s like an alternate reality.
MapleLeaf: So you are only reading it now? After writing your opinion piece at WUWT?
Many contrarian types (“lukewarmers” if they prefer) are just getting around to it. I guess we can thank the mainstream media for that. For once, they are on top of things. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Still waiting for someone, anyone, to make a case that Wegman’s report qualifies a plagiarism.
NewYorkJ
I’ve posted 2 links from DC regarding the Bradley work.
What I say is you prefaced 2 link to extremely long articles with this rather uninformative text:
Compare and contrast some of the things Wegman did with Bradley:
I’m not sure how a reader here is supposed to have a clue what you are referring to a case for distortion if you don’t use that word but replace it by saying Deep Climate “did” something. (Sorry to break it to you , but comments are long, and not everyone popping into comments avidly reads all the links you drop, particularly if you preface with rather uninformative text.)
I clicked, and reread those. I now see what case you are referring to. I remember reading those articles and finding DC’s argument particularly unconvincing. I still find it pretty weak.
I agree that that clearing Wegman of the Mashey plagiarizing “summaries”, by…well, summarizing them won’t clear Wegman of the DC’s accusation that he somehow managed to simultaneously copy but distort Bradley. But I think the case of distorting Bradley barely passes the laugh test and I am surprised to see anyone taking that seriously.
That’s why I’ve been looking at the newer Mashey stuff I had not looked at until today.
Also read Mashey’s summary.
I’ve read Masheys’ stuff summary and all. It’s a mess! It’s also 200 pages long. I’ve been hoping people who find something coherent in that can restate the bits they think are important in their own words.
If you think he makes a strong case for something, do you think you could provide a page number for the bit where you think a person trying to slog through that might find it? Or at least mention the sub-section? ( Recall, I told you were to find the appendix summaries you seemed to be unable to find. )
What planet do you folks live on? It’s like an alternate reality.
Maybe if you would link and use words in the same post, people could figure out where you think things were not summarized properly. As far as I can see, section W11.8 of Mashey contains a huge amount of evidence that Wegman properly cited some stuff by Mann and Bradley.
Lucia,
“My impression is that GMU is looking into plagiarism. Distortion “” i.e. saying something different from the original authors”“ tends to undermine the claim that something was plagiarized”
The weaseling continues. Oh dear, Wegam did both, he plagiarized and distorted/misrepresented Bradley, amongst other things that qualify as scientific misconduct. You might want to turn a blind eye to this kind of misconduct engaged in by Wegman et al., but reputable academic institutions do not. Also, odd that suddenly perjury is not high on you list of ethical priorities.
I concur with NewYorkJ, “What planet do you folks live on? It’s like an alternate reality.”
NewYorkJ Says:
October 9th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Peter Wilson: They accurately summarised Bradleys and Manns work, with full attribution, and then moved on to criticise the statistical methods used.
What planet do you folks live on? It’s like an alternate reality.
Must be. I live in a world where science has advanced by openly debating and contesting hypotheses based on the evidence of the observation of nature. Which quite clearly is “alternate” to the world view of “climate science”
Riddle me this folks, why did the self-proclaimed “Auditors” (i.e., McIntyre and McKitrick and fans) fail to identify these serious issues with the Wegman report?
Disturbing then how the folks at CA were still lauding and promoting the Wegman report as a brilliant piece of scholarship and symbol of truth/honesty.
That reminds me, what was the role of CA, if any, in soliciting and drafting of the Wegman report? One way to find out is for the DOJ to request all correspondence between McIntyre and McKitrick and Barton and his staffers and Wegman…
Mosher is on the record saying that the Wegman report is a “mess”….who is going to be honest and follow suite? Not Lucia it seems, not JeffId, not Morano, not Montford, not Monckton, not Fuller, not McIntyre, and not Anthony Watts…. Birds of a feather really do flock together.
And please do not cite the length and thoroughness of Mashey’s research as an excuse….this scandal has been in the offing since December 2009 when DC starting looking at Wegman more closely, yet defenders of Wegman have seemingly chosen to ignore it, until now that is.
GMU is considering investigating Wegman based on a complaint by Bradley, that was filed way back when in April. They are dragging their feet.
MapleLeaf @80
Perjury? Oh come on, you have truly jumped the shark now!. First plagiarism over a perceived lack of citation in a summary, then distortions over some innocent paraphrasing, and now perjury! What next, treason?
Doesn’t matter really, Mann’s short centred PCA is still deceptive nonsense.
Peter,
“I live in a world where science has advanced by openly debating and contesting hypotheses based on the evidence of the observation of nature.”
You do not read journals much do you? Nor, it seems, have you attended seminars, conferences or talks at which scientists question and debate each other in public. Nor, it seems, have you had to reply to reviewers’ (i.e., peers) critique of your work. Could you please clarify, but it seems from your little rant that it is your understanding that the theory of AGW/ACC is not valid?
Not that I wish to get side-tracked, but McShane and Wyner has a very flat shaft (I thought McIntyre did not like that?), and clearly resembles a HS. That said, it has come under critique in two papers about to appear in press. But feel free to keep deluding yourself. And, as I keep trying to tell you, there are non-Mannian Hockey Sticks everywhere nowadays– ignoring them won’t make them go away.
“Which quite clearly is “alternate” to the world view of “climate science”
Uh, huh…that is just your opinion, not to mention that you are generalizing.
Keith,
I don’t consider myself a ‘skeptic’ per se.
I don’t think Tom Fuller’s WUWT post was all that bad.
I would be very doubtful if Anthony Watts would have ignored the Wegman allegations if he’d been given time, and I have no doubt that Steve McIntyre will also respond as soon as he’s figured out what’s going on.
‘Deep Climate’ is a disinformation site run by an anonymous troll, whose openly stated objective (http://deepclimate.org/about/) is to smear the reputations of living scientists by linking them to what is probably nonexistent fossil fuel industry funded disinformation campaign. Do you actually read this nonsense?
I’ll be downright amazed if it turns out that an analysis published at ‘Deep Climate’ turns out to be 100% honest. Even if true, ‘plagiarism’ in a report that was only chaired by Wegman is not going to prove that Wegman himself is a crook, any more than discoveries of plagiarism in the IPCC2007 report would prove that Rajendra Pachauri is a crook.
The whole thing, to me, so far, just looks like a beat up.
Best, Alex
If you want to get an idea of the level of accuracy (inaccuracy) of the deepclimate blog, just use the search function so look for” stolen emails”, and the search will review numerous inaccurate references by the blogger to “stolen” CRU emails. Those emails were in a public place on the web, and no one knows whether they were taken from that place, released by a whistleblower or stolen. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacker-police-investigation To show how little respect Michael Mann has for facts, he too, in his public statements, repeatedly refers to “stolen emails” when no one knows the source of the released emails.
JD
JD,
The vacuity of the defenses brought forward by those defending Wegman continues ot impress. Come on JD, your argument is an ad hominem and off-topic, not to mention flawed.
If the emails were obtained legally, why is there an ongoing criminal investigation by Norfolk Police? If they were obtained legally, why did someone hack into the server hosting RealClimate to try and upload the files there? If they were obtained legally, why did the person who took the files bounce their IP address to cover their tracks? Et cetera.
Peter,
“Perjury? Oh come on, you have truly jumped the shark now!.”
OK, what do you call presenting misleading evidence to a Congressional committee?
Mapleleaf @84
Not that I wish to get side-tracked, but McShane and Wyner has a veryflat shaft
Perhaps you should not be so quick to question others understanding of AGW theory, and then display such a blatant misunderstanding of a key paper. The shape of the curve in Wyner & McShane is not the point (they relied on Mann’s data, and make no claim it represents reality). The point is the huge error bars, which encompass just about any conceivable climate history, and their demonstration that Mann’s methods will mine hockey sticks from random numbers
Could you please clarify, but it seems from your little rant that it is your understanding that the theory of AGW/ACC is not valid?
Certainly, although what part of the theory do you mean. No sceptic I know of has any issue with the radiative properties of CO2, and the “greenhouse effect”, while poorly named, is a real phenomenon. And a bloody good thing too!
However, the issue is really what will be the effect of additional CO2. And like most sceptics I am also aware of the logarithmic nature of CO2’s effect, and the low apparent sensitivity of the climate to CO2 increases (we are talking about 0.7 degrees in a century here). Which doesn’t get talked about a lot on alarmist sites I’ve noticed. I also fail to see any plausible line of reasoning which leads from a slight warming of the climate to the necessity to return our civilisation to the pre industrial state, or to deny today’s poor the benefits of cheap reliable fossil fuelled energy.
Clear enough for you?
There are a couple of points that are not getting proper attention. The first is that the entire Wegman group has a huge problem with plagiarism, something Wegman has to assume responsibility for as group leader. Read some of the requirements that granting agencies have for group leaders providing proper ethics training for their groups.
The second is that by any standard the Wegman report plagiarized. Try running it through any software designed to evaluate student term papers. (you do have to watch the dates).
The third is that sections where they plagiarized were completely extraneous to their supposed expertise and unnecessary to carry out their “charge”
The fourth is that while Wegman is responsible, he may not have done the copy and paste himself, but see point one for why he is responsible.
OK, what do you call presenting misleading evidence to a Congressional committee?
Pretty normal behaviour for the likes of Gore, Hansen and Mann, I would say
I call what Wegman did NOT presenting misleading evidence. And its hard to see how he can be guilty of plagiarism and distortion at the same time. All the examples I’ve seen are utter nit picking, and the message delivered to Congress was accurate in whole and in parts. It has taken 4 years to mount a challenge to this comprehensively damning report, and all you can come up with is citations
“Mapleleaf” #87″If the emails were obtained legally, why is there an ongoing criminal investigation by Norfolk Police?”
Mapleleaf you have no understanding of legal procedures. The point of an investigation is to determine whether a crime has been committed. If the mere accusation of a crime, meant that one had been committed, there would be no need for an investigation or trial.
Also, if you had read my link, you might have discovered: “So far, the police investigation has got nowhere. It is not even clear whether the crime of computer data interception has actually occurred. What if the hacker was given a legitimate password? What if the data was accidentally open to public access?…UAE has confirmed that all of this material was simply sitting in an archive on a single backup CRU server, available to be copied.” By your logic, since the emails were in the public domain, there was no need to steal them, and thus, they were not stolen.
I know you won’t be careful in your use of the term “vacuity”, but you should. Your type of carelessness is also evident in the statements of Deepclimate and Mann.
JD
I’ve noticed a number of posters have asked for a direct reference to the key points in Mashey and DCs claims. I.e a direct quote rather than pointing at a 250page document which upon inspection would have you wondering whether Senator McCarthy was still around. Despite many requests, none have been given although much ad hominem noise has been cast in return.
The only direct quotes from the Mashey/DC documents such as the Bibliography not being cited and the Summary sections surprisingly being summaries, do nothing other than bring deserved ridicule to their authors.
Peter, it is McShane and Wyner, you keep typing it the other way around. I am not letting you detract form Wegman’s misconduct. I’ve made my case, you have tried ot make yours, how about we agree to disagree on that.
“No sceptic I know of has any issue with the radiative properties of CO2, and the “greenhouse effect””
Did you not follow Dr. Spencer’s seemingly futile attempt to convince “skeptics” that the greenhouse effect is real? G&T do not think it is real, as do many othe so-called “skeptics”.
“from a slight warming of the climate to the necessity to return our civilisation to the pre industrial state”
Now that is “alarmist” talk. Not to mention a load of unsubstantiated hog wash– we are talking about reducing GHG emisisions over the span of 50 plus years. Your statement is typical fear mongering and nonsensical talk that is typically used by “skeptics”.
“and the low apparent sensitivity of the climate to CO2 increases”
Peter what does the science (from multiple independent studies) tell us the most likely value of equilibrium climate sensitivity is for doubling CO2? A clue, Roy Spencer recently estimated the transient climate response to doubling CO2 at +1.7 C, that is equivalent to an equilibrium climate sensivity of about +2.5 C. And we are easily going to more than double CO2 come 2100 if we continue on this path.
Point taken aboutt he criminal investigation. But, JD, you present a lot of “what ifs”. Fact remains that someone went to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. And you did not addrress the issue of them hacking in the RC server to try and upload the files.
Anyhow, what has this sidewhow to do with Wegman? Nothing, just more attempts by CA and WUWT followers to distract.
“Pretty normal behaviour for the likes of Gore, Hansen and Mann, I would say”
Jeez, be careful you don;t knock something over with all that arm waving. That isreally the weight of your argument? Not good enough.
“And its hard to see how he can be guilty of plagiarism and distortion at the same time. “
Seriously, are oyu and Lucia being deliberately obtuse? He did both, not necessarily at the same time.
#93 Mapleleaf “Anyhow, what has this sidewhow to do with Wegman?”
To the extent that deepclimate is being relied upon as a source for factual information about Wegman and Mashey, the fact that deepclimate repeatedly refers to an inaccurate fact gives one pause that maybe, the underlying facts and reports should be checked. If one is fair and objective, one does not slant the facts or inaccurately describe them. Incidentally, the same principle is applicable to Mann.
JD
Lucia,
The “it’s too long for me” excuse isn’t going to fly, nor is the “nothing to see here” conclusion. The DC posts are of reasonable length for those with a moderate attention span.
Peter Wilson: “Which doesn’t get talked about a lot on alarmist sites I’ve noticed. I also fail to see any plausible line of reasoning which leads from a slight warming of the climate to the necessity to return our civilisation to the pre industrial state, or to deny today’s poor the benefits of cheap reliable fossil fuelled energy.”
Pre-industrial state? Sounds rather alarmist to me.
“from a slight warming of the climate to the necessity to return our civilisation to the pre industrial state”
Now that is “alarmist” talk. Not to mention a load of unsubstantiated hog wash”“ we are talking about reducing GHG emisisions over the span of 50 plus years. Your statement is typical fear mongering and nonsensical talk that is typically used by “skeptics”.
I assume by your earlier remarks you are not an economist, so your assessment of the effects of reducing CO2 output by such radical amounts is automatically suspect. I have been educated in that discipline, and can assure you that there is NO conceivable way that society can be de carbonise without the most economically devastating effects, falling (as always) most heavily on the poor. To pretend otherwise is to be an “economic reality denier”.
Gentle breezes and sunbeams will never provide remotely the energy intensity mankind requires, and while nuclear may work well, it will be a very long time before it can compete costwise with coal or gas, particularly in the developing world. So frankly I don’t give a rats a** if CO2 emissions cause a little, or even quite a bit, of warming. Poverty is a far more important issue, and will be catastrophically increased by the measures we are urged to take , all in order to prevent plants from getting enough food
I’ve just noticed a couple of posts by Steve McIntyre at Lucias Blackboard, which appear to establish pretty clearly that Bradley himself plagiarised some of the very passages Wegman is now accused of plagiarising
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/copygate-vs-skepticgate-new-words-coined/#comment-53771
Now ain’t that curious?
There was a lot of comment upthread, particularly from Keith, accusing Anthony Watts of being slow to post on this issue.
Can I assume therefore, Keith, that your post on Hal Lewis’ resignation from the APS is to follow very soon. You wouldn’t want to lay yourself open to charges of hypocrisy now would you?
One quote from his resignation letter sums it up pretty well for me:
Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this (AGW is a fraud) is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
Peter Wilson,
I understand why contrarians desperately want to create a diversion. The APS has 50,000 members. Harold Lewis is a known quantity, a top signer of the silly fringe skeptic APS petition, and to my knowledge, has no work relevant to climate science. Stop the presses! Breaking news!
It also seems clear that your knowledge of economics is no better than his knowledge of climate science. There’s no objective economic study that supports your alarmism.
Hmmm. Still nothing on Climate Progress. Could that mean that even Joe Romm thinks this is too stooopid to address or has the George Marshall Institute finally gotten to him?
Can we assume you will be crying cover up when George Mason absolves Wegman of any wrongdoing?
Hal Lewis may be a known quantity, but he’s a very important scientist with actual achievements to his name. And a proper grasp on scientific ethics, which the leadership of the APS sorely lacks. Which makes his resignation from the APS a far bigger deal than Masheys pathetic beat up.
“Plagiarism” in a section clearly labelled a summary – you just cant make your case look any weaker than that!
NewYorkJ @101
There’s no objective economic study that supports your alarmism.
By objective I assume you mean empirical. Its hard to see how there could be such a study, as no economy has been self destructive enough to attempt the kind of decarbonisation required.
There are however some excellent recent studies on the effects of “low carbon” energy sources in Spain, Denmark and Germany, all of which show the same thing – alternative energy costs jobs and growth, and allows effectively no reduction in CO2 emissions. If you actually want to reduce CO2 emissions rather than just pretend you are, the results will clearly be far more serious.
If you are unaware of these studies, I can only wonder at your impertinence in questioning my economic knowledge. Perhaps you should try coping with my arguments rather than resorting to these rather cheap ad homs.
as no economy has been self destructive enough to attempt the kind of decarbonisation required.
Of course, I should have added “except North Korea”
Yes Peter Wilson, Steve McIntyre’s theory is curious – do you think Bradley plagiarized from Cuff&Goudie 2008 in Bradley’s 1985 first edition or was this plagiarism an addition to Bradley’s 1998 second edition?
Peter Wilson: “If you are unaware of these studies, I can only wonder at your impertinence in questioning my economic knowledge.”
By “objective”, I don’t mean studies from libertarian organizations (libertarianism is somewhat of a religion) with ties to fossil fuel industries, or poorly-documented studies that invent their own economic reality. An example would be the Calzada study in Spain, popular among climate contrarian circles. This was debunked awhile ago.
“The analysis by the authors from King Juan Carlos University represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors ““ policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses ““ is not supported by their work.
This white paper discusses fundamental and technical limitations of the analysis conducted by King Juan Carlos University and notes critical shortcomings in assumptions implicit in the conclusions. The white paper also includes a review of traditional employment impact analyses that rely on accepted, peer- reviewed methodologies, and it highlights specific variables that can significantly influence the results of employment impact analysis. ”
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/46261.pdf
Some background.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/04/heritage-foundation-green-jobs-dirty-energy-exxonmobil/
Perhaps you had another “study” in mind. So far you’ve only been blowing hot air.
Here’s one for you:
“WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates “hidden” costs of energy production and use — such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health — that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize. ”
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12794
Feel free to calculate the cost per household, keeping in mind it represents a relatively small subset of the total costs of burning fossil fuels.
andrewt
So it appears Cuff&Goudie have plagiarised Bradley. I await your condemnation of these scoundrels.
The Wegman audit continues. The bunny weighs in.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/auditing-assessing-climate-change.html
Apparently, plagiarism is contagious, at least within Wegman’s social network. A personal email has been revealed by his buddy. Apparently he’s not heeding the advice of his lawyer as promised.
Peter Wilson you really should stop throwing allegations around – and apologize to Bradley and probably Cuff&Goudie who are the editors of the book not the author(s) of the relevant text – who on the face of it have copied material from Bradley.
NewYorkJ
Yes indeed, that was one of the studies I had in mind. I am quite aware of the criticism you cite, but frankly , without being technical, it is just nonsense, as are your lame efforts to discredit studies associated with “libertarian thinktanks”. Just what do you think “National Renewable Energy Laboratory” is? Just because heavily vested pressure group puts out a lame defence like this certainly doesn’t constitute a debunking.
As for the NRC paper, what a total red herring. It refers to the costs of pollution, not CO2, and is utterly irrelevant to the topic under discussion.
You really do need to give up pretending to have any clue about economics.
<i>79. Lucia Says: October 10th, 2010 at 12:08 am
“If you think he makes a strong case for something, do you think you could provide a page number for the bit where you think a person trying to slog through that might find it?”</i>
Lucia, I’ve noted one on your website. Mashey p 119 et seq is about the Social Network Analysis section. Here Wegman is introducing a new style of argument about what’s wrong with climate science. He’s not summarising M&B papers, or dendro theory. He’s advancing a theory which sounds quite mathy.
But, according to Mashey, it’s the dodgiest part. Just consider this para from Wegman p 18:
<i”The shape of the social network helps determine a network”˜s usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to individuals outside the main network. More “open” networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. </i>Yet<i> a group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling social holes).”</i>
It’s from Wiki, “Social Networks”, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_network&oldid=37605520″>version 1/2/2006</a>. They’ve added just one word, “Yet”. There’s no reference to Wiki in the report.
And Wiki didn’t get it from Wegman. The same para is there at least back in <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_network&oldid=11608895″>March 2005</a>.
andrewt Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 6:08 am
Peter Wilson you really should stop throwing allegations around ““ and apologize to Bradley and probably Cuff&Goudie who are the editors of the book not the author(s) of the relevant text ““ who on the face of it have copied material from Bradley
I’m not alleging anything if you read carefully, just pointing out that either one or the other has copied this text. I’m certainly not going to be as childish as to call any of this plagiarism, as no one, to the best of my knowledge, and certainly not Wegman, has been trying to pass off someone else’s work as his own.
This is dynamite. Maybe as big as Road to Almora. I mean, they replaced the word “inhomogeneity” with “heterogeneity” in a literature review under the title of the literature they were reviewing and they cribbed from wikipedia?
I think I might know why Romm is keeping this up his sleeve. Little wonder that the rabbit that refers to itself in the third person can get some deep meaning out of this gibberish.
Peter Wilson: “Yes indeed, that was one of the studies I had in mind. I am quite aware of the criticism you cite, but frankly , without being technical, it is just nonsense, ”
Frankly, I don’t think you have the ability to be technical, beyond copying and pasting. That was one of Wegman’s problems. He copied the work of others and attempted to disguise it.
Peter Wilson: “As for the NRC paper, what a total red herring. It refers to the costs of pollution, not CO2, and is utterly irrelevant to the topic under discussion.”
CO2 is a pollutant. That aside, the study covers costs of other pollution, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Reductions in greenhouse gases inevitably involves reduction in fossil fuel usage, which is where your economic alarmism comes into play (bringing us back to pre-industrial days). I’m pointing out that in addition to the flaws of the atrocious Calzada study, such libertarian studies always neglect the hidden costs of high-polluting energy sources, which are quite large.
Peter Wilson: You really do need to give up pretending to have any clue about economics.
My observations of your empty rhetoric indicates your grasp of economics is limited to whatever you read on a political blog, but you are free to demonstrate otherwise.
Lastly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with alarming claims. They become alarmist when one can’t provide reasonable evidence for them. This is why the climate contrarian, who casually throws around the term, needs to look in the mirror a bit more.
108 AndrewT says it good.
Anthony Watts and other commenters here have asked why I haven’t yet posted on the Hal Lewis resignation. It’s silly.
Thanks for raising this because it gives me another opportunity to reiterate the point of my post: to highlight the slow (and in some cases, nonexistent) response to the USA Today story.
My blog is nothing like Anthony’s or Morano’s or Planet Gore’s. I post once, sometimes twice a day and without an agenda. I’m not pushing a narrative. This past week, I’ve perturbed Anthony and his loyalists. Next week, it could be Romm and his faithful.
Thus, it is not as if I feel compelled to follow the bouncing ball of every story that tilts the game in any one direction, at any given time. I just happened to notice an interesting pattern of non-responsiveness on Friday to what seemed like notable news, and found it amusing to note in a short post. That’s it.
NewYorkJ (54):
You raise some good points that deserve a considered response from me. Just wanted you to know that I took note and that I’ll return to your comment by tonight. (Hey, it’s a Sunday!)
“My blog is nothing like Anthony’s or Morano’s or Planet Gore’s. I post once, sometimes twice a day…”
Special Pleading
Keith says:
“I just happened to notice an interesting pattern of non-responsiveness on Friday to what seemed like notable news, and found it amusing to note in a short post. That’s it.”
Keith, what do you make of Watts posting on this story before Joe Romm? I just checked CP then and there’s still no post on this (also nothing at RC or Open Mind for eg.).
PS, just came across an amusing headline in today’s Age newspaper.
‘Hockey’s Audit Claims Appear False’
http://www.theage.com.au/national/hockeys-audit-claims-appear-false-20101010-16e0k.html
121# Stu, Romm posted on this at least once on this before USA Today got hold of it:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/29/wegman-gate-alert-congress-and-the-media/
Stu (121):
I make nothing of it. Means nothing.
But I do find it interesting that Romm has not commented yet on the latest dispatch out of China, of which my friend Tom Yulsmand has a nice post on.
Bigcitylib-
Thanks.
Stu, #122: Ya git.. had me a WTF moment! :p
NewYorkJ Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 7:07 am
CO2 is a pollutant.
That’s the kind of remark that stops any attempt at scientific debate dead in its tracks.
Carbon dioxide is a chemical vector, essential to animal and plant life.
Do you believe that oxygen and water are pollutants?
I’m busy right now, but real quick on just one time.
An amazing number of peoplemake 100% certain statements about the nature of plagiarism … and showthey know *nothing* about it. They certainly didn’t read the obvious relevant part of SSWR:
W.11.1 Summarization practices, p.189.
It cites 6 relevant URLs, including 1 each from Rice and GMU, a quote from GMU that is is clear as can be, and the 3 relevant URLs from DHHS ORI … which are actually the deadly ones, although relatively few in the Blogosphere have yet twigged why.
(Note: Rice was kept for comparison, although it became clear that David Scott had nothing to do with the plagiarism. Also, I think someone commented on mechanics vs responsibility. it is virtually certain that Yasmin Said did the mechanics, but equally certain that Wegman is responsible, as the senior member, as lead author, and for one more reason that isn’t pubic yet.)
Of course, I also checked about a dozen other academic policies and discussed this with a handful of academic experts, a few publishers, and folks who do expert witnessing in relevant court cases, hence the use of he term “striking similarity”, the legal term. I could have cited many more, but the horse was already dead many times over.
If someone wants to cite relevant court cases or academic proceedings that help better define where the edge is (and it does vary), that would be interesting to see. Hearing “it’s not plagiarism” from people showing zero study of the topic is not very interesting .
SSWR says, precisely:
“Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized, but injected with biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results. Some might thus also be called fabrication. DC found 10 pages that plagiarize uncredited sources. Then 25 pages summarize papers, but with extensive plagiarism. Text of “•striking similarity”– to the originals totals 81% of the words, but 50% is word-for-word identical, cut-and-paste.”
Of the 35, 10 came from DC, for which colored side-by-sides are cited, rather than quoting them – this was already long.
I did reanalyze 5 pages because I was doing a 3-column comparison with the original sources, the WR, and the 3 further derivatives.
The 25 new pages are also summarized and shown, word-by-word in the 60-page Appendix W.11. in some sense, this is *far worse* than plagiarizing introductory texts or Wikipedia on social networking or PCA or noise. In any scholarly work, literature review is supposed to show you know what’s out there and *understand* it, which is why there are clear rules about summarization and plagiarism.
The numerous errors showed that not only was the plagiarizer clueless, but nobody bothered to proofread. By the way, both the unack’d plagiarism of Bradley and the ack’d summaries show the difference between simple plagiarism (as in the SNA text) and plagiarism+distortion/fabrication. People can argue about any given example, but the pattern is pervasive.
When there is block of text copied, that is plagiarism, even if it is part of a summary. Making trivial changes to foil plagiarism checkers is undergrad-grade, especially silly when summarizing, since the source is know.
When someone tweaks a few words in the middle to change meanings, that is distortion, and in some cases actual fabrication, as they claim some source said something it didn’t.
People can read the overall analysis i W.11.1-W.11.7, n , but if they want more, there is ~50 pages of side-by-side comparisons in W.11.8, with “issues” underlined. Throw out half of them. There are still too many.
there are some confused bunnies here…
plagiarism as commonly defined includes…
copying another’s work, word for word without clear attribution
closely paraphrasing (following the structure)
the thoughts expressed do not have to be ‘original’… the point is that you are appropriating the work of another as your own
copyright violation…
‘substantial’ copying of words AND/OR structure (close paraphrasing) without permission
you don’t get a ‘fair use’ exemption if…
your work is derivative not transformative (e.g. transformative is copying for the purposes of criticism or parody of the original work, derivative is copying something to make the same points as the original)
AND/OR
you don’t give proper attribution
Black helicopters. Criticising Said’s dissertations, McShane and Wyner and McIntyre and McKitrick for 200 pages, leaving 10 of your cited examples of plagiarism out of the paper and criticizing a statistician because he doesn’t agree with your hysterical sky is falling alarmist diatribes. Black helicopters.
“As noted elsewhere, this seems mostly irrelevant. Ocean oscillations change geographic distributions of temperatures, and hence generate noise, but they are not generally considered radiative forcings, Theme-Eâ¹.”
The title of MBH99 includes “•Uncertainties”– and its uncertainty ranges have certainly encompassed most points of most other professional reconstructions, W.4.4. Professionals understand uncertainty ranges and expect that different reconstructions would be plotted as “•spaghetti graphs.”– This is normal science trying to bound uncertainty, Theme-Jâ¹..
<EB> The comment “•uncertainties are magnified with each previous year”– is misleading. Uncertainties increase as proxies drop out, not just because of the calendar. This relates to the mis-use of Bradley (1999) mentioned as issue 3, W.2.1, Meme-eâ¶. The millennial cooling trend, with noise, is exactly what people expect from Milankovitch orbital cycles, as per Crowley (2002), Evans, et al (1976), others. From past cycles, without anthropogenic influence, Earth should be undergoing a slight, slow global cooling, with the usual jiggles.
“•McIntyre and McKitrick
After MBH99, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick [MM03] published their critique of the 1998 paper, citing calculation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors and incorrect calculation of principal components. They also claimed that using the MBH98 methodology and the Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the period 1400-1980 shows that temperatures in the 15th century exceeded those of the late 20th century.3 In particular, they claim that MBH98″˜s incorrect usage of PCA alone resulted in the well-known “•hockey stick”– shape.”–
MBH had a few data problems, but they made little difference, W.8.4. MM03, p.8, Figure 8 managed to produce a reconstruction showing the highest temperature between 1400-
NewYorkJ
CO2 is a pollutant.
Now let me see, CO2 is invisible, non toxic, essential t all life on earth, and is currently present at about twice the concentration required to prevent all plant growth ceasing completely. It has no documented ill effects at any achievable concentration. And huge amounts of it may lead to tiny amounts of (mostly welcome) warming.
Now explain to me again how this wonderful substance is a pollutant.
Hal Lewis Here ya go,
47,946 members of the APS have not resigned.
Lewis’s petition attracted signatures from one third of one percent of the APS membership.
Lewis has flung about many and various allegations of fraud, but presented no supporting evidence to any investigating body.
There, that’s Lewis covered. Next.
Tom Fuller,
“hysterical sky is falling alarmist diatribes”
citation please?
No, No Tom. <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hlw5lHns5Q&feature=player_embedded”>PINK Helicopters</a>, the Equilateral Commission and Auris Dei
For Peter Wilson some documented ill effects of CO2 at various concentrations
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-eli-is-reading.html
Oh yes, as chemists say, the dose makes the pollutant.
Does Tom honestly think that reasonable people are taking him seriously? With that said, his hysterical tantrums and rants here are quite entertaining, so pass the popcorn and more entertainment please Tom.
PS: Glad to hear you finally state for the record that you are not a journo.
The CO2 is life meme; clear, simple. and wrong.
Lazar said: ”
“The CO2 is life meme; clear, simple. and wrong. ”
Hey, it’s a denialist meme.
We’d expect no less!
<i>Oh, well, I’m sure Anthony, Marc, and the gang at National Review will be all over this in due time.</i>
Yes, sir. Give ’em some time, and they will show how the Team also plagiarized! Right now they are frantically googling pieces of papers, then they’ll write a quick blog post, which will be echoed left and right. And then the show can go on for them and their fans.
Tom Fuller at WUWT writes,
“when Wegman explains what Social Network Analysis is, he copies someone else’s introduction of the science and doesn’t attribute it at all. […] So it looks like Wegman and his team did something wrong. They used someone else’s description of social networking analysis and didn’t credit them.
But as near as I can tell, that’s it.”
Tom, this debate really isn’t my thing, but please at least be fair… if you read Mashey’s report pp. 119-128 there are swathes of text, entire paragraphs, copied verbatim without attribution, from Wiki, which is the minor part, and from two books by de Nooy (2005) and Wasserman (1994). The copied text totals around thirty paragraphs and over 1,700 words. It’s about as clear a case of plagiarism and copyright violations as you are likely to find.
In response to Tom Fuller’s comment way up at #46, I’d like to point out that my critique of the lack of context contained in the emails has held up quite well. The statistical argument held up, and as I’m sure you read, Tom, the final report of the Independent Climate Change Email Review used very similar arguments to my own at Scholars & Rogues to make a number of points about the lack of context.
You must not have seen my writeup of that last review given that you didn’t comment on it, so allow me to point you to it. I’d be interested in hearing what you think given that it pretty well demolished your criticisms and proved my arguments correct.
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/07/29/muir-russel-rejects-accusations/
So he copied, maybe, or kind of. Did he profit from his crime? Does it change his analysis?
Unless you are the plaigaree, why does this matter?
Here is Eduardo Zorita on Wegman’s alleged plagiarism:
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/10/law-and-order-in-paleoclimate.html
“In the second case, Edward Wegman, the author of the so called Wegman report on paleoclimate reconstructions published in 2006, would be accused of plagiarism for extended use in that report of passages taken from the book ‘Paleoclimatology’ by Raymond Bradley. I think the accusation here is exaggerated, in the same way that the relevance of the Wegman report was also exaggerated at the time of publication. Wegman is a professional statistician and was commissioned by Congressman Barton (Rep.) to review the climate reconstructions of the past millennium published by Mann and co-authors in 1998 and 1999. The report contains a general background part, which I guess was included to help the members of the House committee to better understand the following, more technical parts. It is quite possible that Wegman made heavy use of paleoclimatology text books to prepare this chapter, among which Bradley’s book is very well known. It seems that Wegman did not include the citations in place that are commonly used in scientific texts, although Bradley’s book appears cited at the end of the report in the literature list. If I had been in Wegman’s place I would have included a couple of sentence explaining that, since Wegman himself is not a climate scientist, he had freely used material from this and that book to convey the necessary introduction for the policy makers. Honestly, I do not think this a big deal, and certainly not a cause for litigation – but what is not possible in paleoclimate science these days ?
Keith:
“Perhaps I’ve been misunderstanding you [Tom Fuller] all along. I had been under the impression that you were trying to keep your own biases in check.”
My goodness.
Is that the sound of falling scales I hear?
Not to take anything away from this thead, but I found some of the exchanges at Judith Curry’s place pretty interesting.
I just weighed in over there because it appears (to me, anyway) that Judith is being overly charitable on the plagiarism issue.
Lazor, Chek,
Yep, phytoplankton create O2 from – how to put this kindly – thin air?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton.html
There are a number of issues pertaining to the alleged plagiarism that make no sense to me. 1. The vice of plagiarism is that someone claims credit for useful academic work when the plagiarizer is not entitled to the credit. . 2. Or plagiarism is wrong because it costs the original author money. Everyone has to have known that Wegman (a statistician) did not perform his own climate studies and could not have written the matters dealing with the fundamental principles of climate research on his own. So I can’t see how Wegman copying the work of others to illustrate his statistical knowledge implicates either 1 or 2. Apparently, he did give the original authors some attribution (but probably not enough). This is an extremely technical violation because anyone reading it would have to have known that it was not Wegman’s original work.
Also, I wonder why the so-called victims have waited this long to raise their claim. In light of the prominence of Wegman’s work, the original sources had to have known that he used their work.
JD
I’ve seen on many occasions how warmists like to flaunt the list of professional organizations that endorsed some sort of alarmist statement on GW. Certainly APS is by far the most prominent of them where many members have technical abilities to get to the bottom of many issues involved.
Guess what? The APS leadership didn’t properly consult with the membership, ignored the dissenting voices and prompted one of the prominent members to resign.
That’s somehow is not deemed newsworthy or even blog worthy. Wow.
KK,
Anthony has you sussed. You are a closet warmist. Your sympathies lie with the warmist side. You do not believe that the skeptics have any case to make. Your instincts tell you to plant the foot on the establishment side, more firmly.
More importantly, you do not understand the skeptics – you do not know why they are skeptical or why they are denying.
I am saying the above with no trace of judgement whatsoever. You are still a fair, openminded journalist/professor with an excellent eye.
Yup, Anthony sure got me pegged. He made just about as ironclad argument as you, Shub.
JD (146): I do find it odd that it took this long for a complaint to be lodged.
And per Judith Curry’s argument at her thread, I’m trying to get a handle on this. All I can say is, in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.
Eli Rabett Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
For Peter Wilson some documented ill effects of CO2 at various concentrationshttp://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-eli-is-reading.htmlOh yes, as chemists say, the dose makes the pollutant.
Methinks the great scientist confuses CO2 and C2H5OH
re: #146 JD from Ohio:
You are correct that this doesn’t make sense to you, as it is clear that you really don’t Yyou can keep those opinions, or you can learn something about the topic, if you wish. You might read #128, to to the page I suggested (p.189-190), and find several descriptions and examples, of which some are:
<a href=”http://riceowl.rice.edu/guidance.cfm?doc_id=11767″>Rice</a>,
<a href=”http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources-template.php?id=1″>GMU</a>, and
<a href=”http://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/plagiarism/”>ORI main page</a>.
These say nothing about money, which is more the province of copyright. No one is going to sue for copying Wikipedia, but it can certainly be career-ending plagiarism.
You are wrong about the delay. Had Bradley noticed, it would have been raised right then. He did not notice, because in fact, people reading such a report rarely spend much time reading the introductory material, bibliography and summaries, except perhaps to check to see that key papers are mentioned, and maybe that the right sorts of words are used.
In this case, the only sort-of-new material was in WR sections 4 & 5, so people looked at them. Also, remember that this was dumped on people with minimal notice before the hearings.
I think the only people who might have noticed were the 5 social network authors, because that text was so minimally changed. Even there, they did grab text from different places, although not as interleaved as McShane&Wyner did later. Of course, this was not sent to SNA people to review.
Finally, in a report to Congress, repeatedly billed as “expert” work by a “team of eminent statisticians”, claimed to be like NRC reports, almost no one is going to say “I wonder if there is plagiarism.” Only by somewhat weird accident did DC really happen to find the first piece[ the Wegman=>Rapp case], and then dig out the Bradley=>Wegman case.
it is the same issue with Bibliography.
Anthony is wrong about you. You are wrong about Anthony.
What is plagiarism in one context is not in another. Wegman’s report was commissioned by Congress and its purpose was to inform a subcommittee of elected officials on a specific topic.
Wegman was not writing for academia. There was no reason for him to rigidly adhere to academic protocols. I actually believe his report is protected because it was for Congress.
Wegman did not seek to profit from anybody’s words or ideas. He referenced heavily”“but not completely. Minor bad.
Sorry, last should have been:
You are correct that this doesn’t make sense to you, as it is clear that you really don’t really understand the topic, but ahve strong opinions.
Keith
All I can say is, in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.
Of course your line of work is not preparing reports for congressional committees. I write reports to various bodies for a living, and there is absolutely no requirement for originality, or even attribution. Accuracy is what is required, no more, no less. I frequently cut and paste the work of others without attribution, but then assume full responsibility for the contents.
Of course the evidence presented does not even rise to that level. Wegman never claimed to be an expert at anything other than statistics, and that is the section of the report which remains unchallenged.
At least following this beat up, the MSM is finally taking some notice of the Wegman report, which it had successfully buried it until now. I suspect it will gain a little more attention now, which I view as a positive development. It can stand on its own merits. After all, Richard North could find no criticism of its conclusions at the time, and no convincing criticisms have emerged since. That this is the best you can do speaks many volumes..
Some things dont change though. Short centered PCA is still bollocks, and the MWP remains an historical fact
#150 KK “All I can say is, in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.”
1. If Wegman copied it, he didn’t make it up. You seem to be confusing fraudulent work with copying here. (and not in a very reasoned manner.) 2. The vice of financial theft is that you take something of value from someone else and financially benefit yourself. (For instance, stealing gold or money.) Using principles established by someone else (climate science) to validate or illustrate another separate area of expertise (statisitcs) is not theft. Wilson hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that Wegman’s work was not academic, but was to present expertise to a congressional committee; there is no reason for such work to be original. In fact committees would be more interested in most cases in basic, solid facts upon which legislation would be based rather than cutting edge theories that may or may not prove to be true.
JD
153 Tom Fuller Says: October 10th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
“Wegman’s report was commissioned by Congress and its purpose was to inform a subcommittee of elected officials on a specific topic.”
I find this line very odd – “O it was just a report to congress, plagiarism doesn’t matter”
In fact, it was supposed to be seen as a slap-down of a climate scientist by an eminent statistician. And it used some exotic notions about social networks etc.
When it turns out that it wasn’t the eminent statistician writing some of this, but an intern pasting from Wikipedia, people are entitled to feel cheated.
#150 KK & 156 (addendum to post) you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.”
Additionally, I want to make clear that one of my points was that it was obvious that the climate work was not Wegman’s because that his area of expertise. If the Congressional Committee understood that the climate science work was not Wegman’s, then there is no issue of passing off another’s work as one’s own.
JD
JD
#128 Mashey “The numerous errors showed that not only was the plagiarizer clueless, but nobody bothered to proofread. By the way, both the unack’d plagiarism of Bradley and the ack’d summaries show the difference between simple plagiarism (as in the SNA text) and plagiarism+distortion/fabrication. People can argue about any given example, but the pattern is pervasive.
John: Please demonstrate the 3 worst examples of fabrication that you can identify. Please explain the practical significance of each. In my early posts, I explained the reasons why I don’t consider copying (when it has to be understood by all concerned as occurring) as anything more than a very technical issue. You have made a very serious claim of fabrication (I would consider that to be a serious breach). Please back it up with 3 examples.
JD
re: #150 KK
Did my comment at end of #152 explain the delay adequately, or would you like more?
Experts focused on science errors and (lack of) real statistics and didn’t go rummaging around in the standard-looking literature review parts. Given a report in which the first and second authors were distinguished statisticians and Fellows of the ASA, I cannot imagine people thinking “and we should check that for plagiarism.”
Of course, nobody then knew that Scott had only written Appendix A, straight math, unlike anything else, and that at least half the report was certainly put together by Yasmin Said and maybe help from grad student(s), with minimal checking, even proofreading from anyone else. Certainly no one had noticed the plagiarism in her dissertation, and its usage is so odd that one would have expected her Committee to have asked hard questions.
Likewise, most people did not know how generally shoddy the review process was until a few months ago. Wegman named some credible people, but mis-used at least some, as described in A.1. Even some of those mis-used had apparently never compared notes before.
Here is Eduardo Zorita on the scientific relevance of Wegman’s report:
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/10/law-and-order-in-paleoclimate.html
> [F]rom today’s perspective, the Wegman report appears to me as quite insubstantial, focused on unimportant aspects of the Mann-Bradley-Hughes reconstruction method, and – most worryingly, having been written by a statistician – not mentioning the real problems affecting this and other reconstruction methods, and that have been (re)-discovered later, not by statisticians, but by humble climate scientist. In some sense the Wegman report reminds me of the recent manuscript by McShane and Wyner, more focused on politically sensitive issues that on real scientific ones.
John (160),
I get that.
How about addressing something Judith Curry wrote over at her site (my emphasis):
“Wegman made serious criticisms of the statistical methods used by Mann et al., criticisms that remain robust. Exactly how does cutting and pasting from Wikipedia detract from the arguments? It certainly detracts from the overall credibility of the report, but not the substance of his criticism of the statistical methods.”
How does any alleged plagiarism by Wegman undercut the “substance of his criticism..”?
Nick Stokes 157
In fact, it was supposed to be seen as a slap-down of a climate scientist by an eminent statistician. And it used some exotic notions about social networks etc.
When it turns out that it wasn’t the eminent statistician writing some of this, but an intern pasting from Wikipedia, people are entitled to feel cheated.
It was a pretty good slap down, wasn’t it?
One thing you have to admit about Wegman, regardless of where he got his commentary on social networking, it was absolutely spot on, as later evidenced by the CRU emails. Pretty smart intern! Does being right count for nothing any more?
# 150 KK: “All I can say is, in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.”
The USA Today article gives a wrong page count while offering an irrelevant link to supposedly support it. While you can say printing “35” instead of “30” (I had forgotten to count the reanalyzed papers due to them being buried in the opening 200 pages) isn’t a big deal, it suggests the paper didn’t put much effort into verifying its facts. This, combined with it posting a bogus link as evidence shows an unacceptably lax attitude.
Implying a link says something when it doesn’t seems like making things up to me. It seems hard to believe the standards you hold are practically applicable in journalism, especially seeing as nobody seems bothered by this. If small mistakes don’t matter, what mistakes do?
Mr. Mashey, at 160 are you essentially saying scientists focused on what was important and it wasn’t until 4 years later that you pointed out irrelevant trivia?
#114 Nick Stokes
This is a minor nit, but I’ve seen several people repeat the same thing you pointed out here. The paragraph you mention is undoubtedly plagiarized, but it is also three sentences longer than you showed. There are three sentences prior to the section you quoted, and they were not copied verbatim. Indeed, one is unique to the Wegman Report.
It is important criticisms, no matter how damning, not be exaggerated.
#164 Brandon
On p.3, I wrote, precisely and accurately:
“Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized, but injected with biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results. Some might thus also be called fabrication. DC found 10 pages that plagiarize uncredited sources. Then 25 pages summarize papers, but with extensive plagiarism.”
The reference [DEE2010j], cited 15 times, points at the 4 side-by-sides that cover the 10 pages. There seemed no compelling reason to duplicate all that into my report, although I did actually do 5 of the 10 because I did a 3-column version to show the 5-way comparison of the SNA web.
Both “35 of 91” and “plagiarized” link to the same DC page that shows the Bradley tree-rings section. The first link is clearly redundant, but of course the correct source is in the just-previous link. Thanks for mentioning it, I’ve passed it along.
So, all 35 pages have side-by-side comparisons, of which 30 happen to be shown in mine, and 10 in DC’s, with an overlap of 5. This was already long enough without adding copies of files.
re: #162 KK
Many people talk about how statisticians are right behind Wegman on this, but apparently they don’t talk to:
a) serious statisticians
b) who actually know about this.
Alternatively, they’ve never been exposed to good/great ones.
So, see Appendix A.1.5, and W.4, where this is addressed.
See in particular, Grace Wahba, Noel Cressie, and Amy Braverman, all well-qualified statisticians with relevant experience. (Some of the others are well-qualified statisticians, but with no obvious relevant experience.)
On p.58, under Cressie, I show the tale of his advice, including a link to the file he sent me, and a 1-line paraphrase:
“I concur with the MBH decentering issue, so compute it the “•right”– way”
What he meant was, in effect, do the same as Wahl&Amman did,. How do I know what he meant? Because I asked him.
Anybody who knows anything about this sort of statistics knows perfectly well that there may be an error in a procedure, but whether or not it makes any appreciable difference depends on the data and parameters.
Let me offer the simplest stat analogy I can: suppose you have an Excel spreadsheet with 100 numbers and want to compute the mean. Any decent statistician would say: “that’s wrong”, and then they would say: “recompute it right and see if it makes a difference.” In that particular case, only if the missing number were a big outlier would it make a big difference.
In the real world where people actually use statistics for real work, not blog-fantasy-land, people deal with noisy data as best they can, and argue over different methods. I allude to those on p.154, under Normality_test. Do people think there is one way to determine if data comes from a normal distribution, and therefore anything else is *wrong*? Statisticians don’t – there are multiple methods that are better or worse under different conditions. Any decent statistician knows that many results are approximations of various quality, not some perfect right answer.
The statistics issues are addressed elsewhere, but basically, they didn’t *do* any relevant statistics and they explicitly avoided doing the one obvious thing people told them to do, while spending much time on irrelevant junk. See pp.134-135, read about Ritson, etc. The WR *talked* about statistics, it just didn’t *do* any useful analysis.
John Tukey would have been appalled, and statisticians doing this junk at Bell Labs would have found it to be career-limiting, and people who don’t recognize that name … might want to stay away from statistics arguments.
#167 John Mashey, nothing you said in this comment matters in the slightest. You seem to be taking my comments about USA Today’s failings as a criticism of your report, but they say nothing about your work. What you “wrote, precisely and accurately,” has nothing to do with what I said.
USA Today printed, “Mashey says his analysis shows that 35 of the 91 pages in the 2006 Wegman report are plagiarized.” Your report, and your comment here, clearly shows you did not analyze 35 pages in your report. The only way USA Today’s article could be correct is if you were to have said you analyzed 35 pages in your report, which would have been untrue.
Incidentally, your comment has caused me to realize something worse. You seem to suggest the second link mentioned is acceptable, but the article was talking about your report, and that link was to something not found in your report. Worse yet, the parenthetical content following this link is also not mentioned in your report.
As it stands, that sentence is ridiculous. Either USA Today has greatly misrepresented you and your work, or at some point you have done so.
I want to be as clear as I can about this. USA Today gave credit to John Mashey for doing analysis in his report which his report did not do. It cited evidence not in his report to support this. I pointed this out, in one manner or another, three times in this topic. Mashey responded without repudiating USA Today’s claims.
This all started because of charges of plagiarism, yet apparently nobody can be bothered to care that credit for work is being falsely attributed. My head hurts.
John Mashey 168
In the real world where people actually use statistics for real work, not blog-fantasy-land, people deal with noisy data as best they can, and argue over different methods.
In the real world of actual science, as opposed to climate science, people learn how to use their tools before they start arguing with the people who made the tools as to how to use them. Noisy data is not unique to climate science, but dealing with the problem in a manner which draws scorn from real statisticians (who “made the tools”) probably (or should I say hopefully) is.
This appears to be boiling down mostly to citing Wiki without attribution. The CAGWers clearly support an investigation and “prosecution to the fullest” for this, and any other transgressions, in the Wegman paper. They appear to be after Wegman’s head.
I support the investigation into Wegman’s conduct, even though it is in the main frivolous and quite clearly a witch hunt. This particularly since Wegman’s statistical analysis of Mann’s techniques is not being challenged, and instead the complaint focuses on errors and/or failures in attribution in superfluous aspects of the report.
However, in supporting the Wegman investigation, my argument against Cuccinelli’s investigation of Mann for fraud is no longer sustainable. If Wegman should be investigated, as Bradley and others vehemently maintain, there is no longer any question that an investigation into Mann’s alleged misappropriation of grant money is entirely proper.
I therefore concede, reluctantly but adamantly, that both investigations are correct and are necessary.
“I therefore concede, reluctantly but adamantly, that both investigations are correct and are necessary.”
But Mann has already been investigated by PSU. So are you saying Wegman should be investigated by the DoJ? I agree!
Neven, nobody who’s read the investigation by PSU can seriously say that Mann has been investigated. But if you wish to argue that he was, and that the PSU investigated to the standard expected of universities generally, then Wegman should have nothing to worry about.
Simon Hopkinson,
“This appears to be boiling down mostly to citing Wiki without attribution”
No.
“Wegman should have nothing to worry about.”
There is some very serious evidence of scientific misconduct by Wegman (aside from the issue of misleading Congress, instigated by Congressmen who receive large amounts of money from the oil and coal industry).
Drawing a false analogy with the PSU investigation of Mann cannot change that, sorry. But nice try.
Lazar, okay.. not that it’s that important but I claim coverage with “and any other transgressions”[1]. I’m really trying to avoid having to subject myself to Mashey’s ranting again. Since 9/11 I’ve become progressively more resistant to that style of convolution and innuendo to the extent that I’ll do almost anything to not have to subject myself to it. It’s awful.
Fuller huffing and puffing.
Lazar, Neven is a case in point. Discussing this subject with conspiracy theorists is.. unappealing. I will wait and see what transpires from GMU and so on, and go from there (as I said before), and until such time I will leave the subject to Neven, Mashey and any/all other conspiracy theorists.
J Mashey
Your answer at #168 to KK’s #160,….is a non-answer.
In #168, it appears you are trying to drop names and make frightening noises.
You do not take noisy data, combine it with flawed methods, to make tall claims. You can, of course, take noisy “real-world” data, use what you deem as the ‘best of methods’ and make some kind of a claim – usually such claims are weak ones.
You claim that Wegman did not do any calculations, appears to be wrong.
Neven 176
instigated by Congressmen who receive large amounts of money from the oil and coal industry
The notable thing about the link provided here is the paltry sums of money these politicians and companies are accused of dealing in. Compare these sums with the billions available to the warmist propaganda machine, and then tell me again how the oil industry is misleading the public.
Given the incredible results “Big oil” has obtained from such little expenditure, their PR guys must be the hottest property in the world right now:)
Simon, you mean like the conspiracy theory that Mann fabricated the Hockey Stick so the greenies can take over the world and make trillions of dollars?
Nice try again.
Given the incredible results “Big oil” has obtained from such little expenditure, their PR guys must be the hottest property in the world right now
They couldn’t have done it without you, the people who really want to believe every misleading, distorting thing they say. That’s a common interesting human trait, resisting change to ingrained habits, the psychological phase of denial and all that. Those PR guys are having a walk in the park, even when their tactics are shown for what they are for everyone to see (for instance, uhmm, let me think… the Wegman Report).
Tom Fuller,
“What is plagiarism in one context is not in another. Wegman’s report was commissioned by Congress and its purpose was to inform a subcommittee of elected officials on a specific topic.
Wegman was not writing for academia.”
No. Plagiarism is universally defined as independent of the audience…
“Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as “the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”
Whether plagiarism has consequences in academic employment depends on whether the work ‘is’ viewed as academic…
I believe that most people would define a report as an academic work that is written on an academic subject (statistics) and that contains original statistical and social network analysis.
“Wegman made serious criticisms of the statistical methods used by Mann et al., criticisms that remain robust. Exactly how does cutting and pasting from Wikipedia detract from the arguments? It certainly detracts from the overall credibility of the report, but not the substance of his criticism of the statistical methods.”
Amazing double standards. The basic validity of the paleo reconstructions is to be disregarded, because the substance of the criticism that did not alter the intial findings is not to be disregarded.
“from such little expenditure”
… supply and demand
… marginal utility
… denialbots are cheap and plentiful
… as Neven points out, some people like being lied to
Shub,
“J Mashey […] You claim that Wegman did not do any calculations, appears to be wrong.”
Of course he didn’t make any such claim…
“didn’t *do* any useful analysis”
John Mashey #168,
You cite a private conversation with someone (I think you’re referring to Wegman), and you ask us to take your word for it. (“What he meant was, in effect, do the same as Wahl & Amman did. How do I know what he meant? Because I asked him.”)
I make a habit of asking this following question to people, and I’m yet to hear anyone answer it without an ad hominem attack given as an excuse.
Are you willing to publicly debate the matter with Steve McIntyre or Ross McKitrick? Or if not you, do you know of an expert statistician who is willing to publicly debate them? So the matter could be settled, for once and for all?
You’ve obviously spent a lot of time digging for dirt on Wegman. And you’ve exposed what might be some sloppy scholarship by someone in Wegman’s team.
But can you actually win the argument?
Regards, Alex
Alex, stand up debates work in favour of liars and fairground hucksters like Monckton.
That’s why they’re not used to further science – they’re an entertainment, nothing more.
#188 Alex Harvey, it is worse than you say. You can download Noel Cressie’s e-mail to Edward Wegman from a link on page 58 (or 134). It does not support John Mashey’s claims at all. The paraphrase he gives on page 58, “I concur with the MBH decentering issue, so compute it the “•right way,” is complete rubbish.
First, Cressie specifically state he “concurs” with the technical contents of the Wegman Report. Second, when we look at Cressie’s second point (page 134 tells us the number), we see he actually agrees with Wegman. Wegman criticized decentered PCA, even saying technically it isn’t even PCA. He then said what the proper way of doing PCA is. Cressie, in his e-mail, recommended Wegman show the results of proper PCA alongside the results of the decentered PCA. He suggested Wegman make a figure to show the difference in results, that’s all.
Somehow, Mashey has managed to take Cressie’s e-mail to say the exact opposite of what it actually says. Cressie did not support MBH’s approach to PCA, nor did it even discuss W&A’s. However, he did “concur” with the technical details of Wegman’s report, which condemned both the MBH and W&A approaches.
But apparently we are supposed to trust Mashey’s fake claims because he asked Cressie what he meant.
Peter Wilson (151) does not follow Eli’s rule of following the link from Bunny world to the original article. Many folk have died from being overcome by CO2 above brewing vats and falling in. It’s the CO2 not the C2H5OH, which is why the sign says DANGER CO2
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-eli-is-reading.html
Given that there are now three posts at WUWT about this issue, exposing the nonsense of Mashey’s ridiculous claims in his long-winded incoherent rant, perhaps it is time to acknowledge this in the top post?
It is good to see some sense from JD Ohio and Simon Hopkinson on this blog.
Tom Fuller could write 30 posts at WUWT but it still won’t make plagiarism acceptable.
Brandon, Mashey did not say that Cressie supported MBH PCA. Try reading what he wrote again.
now aboutthe statitsics in the report
Right or Wrong…
not trying to distract from that are they… no … surely not 😉
#193 Tim Lambert, could you be more clear about what you think I got wrong? I never claimed Mashey said Cressie supported MBH’s methodology. I pointed out Cressie didn’t comment on W&A’s methodology, so it was wrong for Mashey to say, “What he meant was, in effect, do the same as Wahl&Amman did,. How do I know what he meant? Because I asked him.”
I apologize if I gave the wrong impression, but I really don’t see how I did. I explained what Cressie said to show it wasn’t what Mashey claimed. Doing so required discussing Manns’ approach to PCA for the context of Cressie’s misrepresented remarks.
I guess I did say, “Cressie did not support MBH’s approach to PCA,” but that was only so I could set up the parallel with the following, in which I point out Cressie condemned both.
Eli Rabett Says:
October 11th, 2010 at 9:39 am …….. Many folk have died from being overcome by CO2 above brewing vats and falling in. It’s the CO2 not the C2H5OH, which is why the sign says DANGER CO2
Are you sure you’re a scientist?
They died from suffocation (lack of O2) NOT from CO2
Here’s a clever way to put things:
“It seems that Climategate has met its karmic match: Skepticgate.”
I see, Lazar, …Wegman had to perform some “useful analysis” for Mashey to criticize, instead of distracting him with all the ‘plagiarism’ which caught his eye. Heh. Read Mashey’s comment again, please. He is contrasting “talking” about analysis versus “doing it” – you got to answer to that.
It doesn’t seem to bother you that neither Mashey nor Mann have any credible answer for Wegman. Mashey of course, cannot have answers – but we wont hold that against him.
Keith, (We just cross-posted)
What is climategate to you? Unless you clarify that, your comparisions remain impenetrable as well.
Regards
Foxgoose claimed:”Are you sure you’re a scientist?
They died from suffocation (lack of O2) NOT from CO2.”
Eli knows what he is talking about. 10% levels of CO2 can make the workers pass out, they fall in and then drown/suffocate. Breathing a mix of 10% co2, even if the remainder was pure O2, would kill you eventually even if you are not exposed to suffocating conditions.
For example, CellarSafe is a carbon dioxide and oxygen detector – if the hazard was merely lack of O2, all you would need is an O2 monitor.
Peter Wilson and Foxgoose,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/carbon-dioxide-everyones-favorite-pollutant.html
Brandon, Mashey didn’t say that Cressie explicitly commented on W&A’s methodology. Cressie said that Wegman should show the difference the MBH PCA method makes to the final reconstruction, which is what W&A did. Instead, Wegman wrote “Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science”. Doesn’t Wegman’s own rule mean we should throw out his entire report as “Bad Science” because of his indisputable plagiarism?
Keith, #197: “Here’s a clever way to put things: “It seems that Climategate has met its karmic match: Skepticgate.””
It doesn’t look very clever to me. A flailing attempt at smug, at best. I think this is a repeat of your “two sides of the same coin”, Keith, and again I think the flaw of the mantra is one of proportions.
Wegman’s report is not a cornerstone of the sceptics’ position. His statistical analysis serves as a useful affirmation of the work of others, but that work stands independently. Sceptics’ credibility does not ride on Wegman’s integrity and I don’t think that anyone with a grasp of the concerns of sceptics would argue seriously that the credibility of sceptics will be at all impacted by any ramifications resulting from the enquiry into Wegman’s behaviour.
When you contrast this with the significant impact on the credibility of climate science that has resulted from Climategate, there is simply no comparison. Two sides of the same coin? I don’t think so. Perhaps two coins, one £2 coin and one yen.
the significant impact on the credibility of climate science that has resulted from Climategate
The work of the CRU is not a cornerstone of climate science. Their data sets and analyses as a useful affirmation of the work of others, but that work stands independently. Scientific credibility does not ride on the CRU’s integrity and I don’t think that anyone with a grasp of the state of scientific understanding would argue seriously that the credibility of climate science should be at all impacted by any ramifications resulting from the theft of emails from the University of East Anglia.
Really? As if the deniers have many academic (looking) documents where they can stand on…
Why did Cuccinelli quote heavily the Wegman Report? Why does Monckton quote the Wegman Report?
Why is WTFWT crying a river defending Wegman?
The deniers had the opportunity to bury the Wegman Report and move on. However, they did not do so. So, their future is tied to this report. They should hope for a white-wash, anything less would be game over.
Vintage 2006, Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, had many criticisms of the Wegman report. An interesting bit:
> In my view the debate over the Mann et al paper is a tempest in a teapot. It is legitimate material for scientific discussion but the implications with respect to the operations of the IPCC are unproven and seemingly based, in my opinion, much more on repetition of innuendo than on any real facts. Although there is always a need for enhanced interaction with the statistics community, the lack of communication is seriously misrepresented in the Wegman Reprot. I believe that this report should not be used as either a legitimate assessment of the science or as a guide to policy modification. Finally, I believe it is time to stop using Michael Mann as a whipping post and to start directing attention to the more important matters of whether anything should be done about global warming, and if so, what?
Source: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
A **whipping post**: I like this expression!
PDA, with respect, I didn’t think that anyone was actually still claiming that the credibility of climate sciences were NOT impacted by Climategate (granted it didn’t all happen at the point Climategate happened last year, but has continued into the enquiries and straight out the other end).
The idea that climate science’s popular credibility is not in crisis does seem to run contrary to the evidence.
PDA, the dendro work of CRU and Mann’s reconstructions (inextricably linked to the CRU) certainly are a cornerstone to the imperative that results from the claim that recent global warming is “unprecedented” in both extent and rate.
#200 t_p_hamilton Says:
“Breathing a mix of 10% co2, even if the remainder was pure O2, would kill you eventually even if you are not exposed to suffocating conditions.”
Not true. Perhaps you are confusing carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide(CO2). CO2 is not a toxin. In sufficient concentration, it is an asphyxiant (see Wikipedia definition). CO2 can even be used as a completely reversible anesthetic as long as sufficient oxygen is present in the anesthetic gas mixture. CO2 is one of the most potent respiratory stimulants known, and is actually necessary in them blood to stimulate breathing. It is even used for that purpose during anesthesia with modern anesthetics, i.e., if the patient’s respiratory rate is becoming too low, a short blast of CO2 will often normalize it. With extended exposure to high concentrations of CO2, blood pH would be lowered, but this is readily reversible without cell or organ damage. Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, is a true poison because it irreversibly (nearly) binds with hemoglobin and blocks the ability of the blood to carry oxygen.
Looks like Simon Hopkinson is throwing the Wegman Report under the bus. Recall a WUWT post about a year ago:
WUWT: “That hockey stick has since been debunked by the United States Congress by the world-renowned statistics expert Edward Wegman. See the Wegman report here.
The Wegman Report was sufficiently damning that, until now, the United Nations has distanced itself from Mann’s graph, which did not appear in the Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007″
Steve McIntyre: “‘I’ve read the Wegman Report and it’s obviously very gratifying. “
NationalPost: “The person commissioned to ascertain the truth was Edward Wegman, one of America’s finest scientists and, ironically, the past chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, the very body that Mann cites as supporting his work.
Wegman assembled a panel of blue-chip statisticians, all of whom worked pro bono for the Barton committee, and for good measure the panel subjected its work to top level reviewers, such as the Board of the American Statistical Association. The Wegman panel’s findings? Mann’s critics were entirely in the right, Mann lacked the statistical knowledge to do the work he had taken on, and Mann’s work had not been subjected to a credible peer-review process. “
Note the last line. How ironic. It seems that most contrarians are not throwing Wegman under the bus, but are choosing to defend him fairly aggressively. This is no surprise. They have a long line of comments that indicate glowing support for the Wegman Report and it’s difficult to back out now.
With regards to Simon’s comment:
“I think this is a repeat of your “two sides of the same coin”, Keith, and again I think the flaw of the mantra is one of proportions.”
I suppose that’s true. “ClimateGate” was a faux manufactured controversy. It involved a huge wealth of potential evidence in more than 10 years of stolen private emails between many scientists, none of which revealed any academic misconduct. The only crime was the theft of the emails.
SkepticGate, in contrast, is revealing extensive plagiarism and academic misconduct by at least one prominent climate science critic. There aren’t even any private emails involved, but I suspect that wouldn’t help Wegman’s case to release them.
Brian Angliss posted a comment last night that got caught in my spam filter. It’s comment 141.
Keith, that’s a good thing to do, noting about Angliss’ comment and I hope it becomes standard practice immediately.
As for Angliss’ comment, I’m afraid I don’t feel demolished. I don’t care what you or ICERR think, really, there is no statistical whitewash for ‘Will you please delete all emails regarding AR4’ etc.
#198 KK “It seems that Climategate has met its karmic match: Skepticgate.”
I believe it is just the opposite. Until Mashey identifies the fabrications I requested in #160 and responds to your #163 (#163 ” How does any alleged plagiarism by Wegman undercut the “substance of his criticism.”) the best nomenclature for this episode so far would be “Trivigate,” “Pettygate,” or “Masheygate.” So far the criticisms of Wegman have been juvenile and devoid of practical substance.
JD
NewYork
You are really clutching at straws.
Could you please tell me why Jones and Mann discussed avoiding FOI requests, since the “theft” of the emails is the real crime and all that?
Tom, not sure what you mean. I noted the Angliss comment because I only just saw it in the spam filter and it’s way upthread. I’ve done that in the past.
#203 Tim Lambert, unfortunately your follow up did not help clarify things. Wahl and Amman didn’t do anything like what Cressie suggested. Cressie’s recommendation was, “I suggest you show PC_1 *on the same scale* as PC_1 from the improperly centered data matrix.” W&A did not compare PC1s between the “decentered” and “centered” PCA.
Wahl and Amman contrasted the final reconstruction gotten using decentered PCA and retaining 2 PCs with the final reconstruction gotten using centered PCA and retaining 5 PCs. It has nothing to do with what Cressie said. You just managed to both get Cressie’s e-mail wrong, and make a bogus claim about Wegman’s Report at the same time. Please consider rereading the material being discussed before making your next post.
As for “Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science,” I think most people understand “method” as a process by which one approaches a situation. Given this, Wegman’s approach to the statistical issues is not “bad science.” On the other hand, his report as a whole could be “bad science.” Put simply, mistakes matter only insofar as they affect things.
David 44 says: “CO2 is not a toxin.”
It is toxic precisely because it induces acidosis. Most people are not killed by this mechanism, but in a brewery it can cause unconsciousness, and a subsequent fall into an asphyxiating atmosphere.
From http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/wy/information/NEPA/cfodocs/howell.Par.2800.File.dat/25apxC.pdf
“A value of 40,000 ppm is considered immediately dangerous
to life and health based on the fact that a 30-minute exposure to 50,000 ppm produces
intoxication, and concentrations greater than that (7-10%) produce unconsciousness (NIOSH
1996; Tox. Review 2005). Additionally, acute toxicity data show the lethal concentration low
(LCLo) for CO2 is 90,000 ppm (9%) over 5 minutes (NIOSH 1996).”
<blockquote>Tom:
Just to be clear, I thought this part undermined everything else you said:
I don’t like the weblog Deep Climate, and I very much respect the report Edward Wegman put out. I understand what the report said and I agree with its conclusions. So I’m hoping this investigation is thorough, quick and that Wegman’s work stands.</blockquote>
Until I read this comment, I respected this blog. I do not respect it now.
218
We are currently at 380 ppm… (not 40,000)
define toxic..
Anything is toxic, it just depends on the dose…..
There is a reason climate scientists do NOT quote atmospheric % of CO2….
Let alone % contribution of man made CO2 to the atmosphere…
ie it is very low, people (the public might laugh/question the alarmism)
Neven 184
They couldn’t have done it without you
Thank you Neven, thats the nicest thing anyone’s said to me for ages. Of course the warmists have to persuade all their doubting followers against their will, right?
Hi Keith,
For the first part of my comment, I was just congratulating you for doing what few bloggers do–call attention to late posts upstream.
The second part was a reply to Angliss.
> Put simply, mistakes matter only insofar as they affect things.
Here is an excerpt of Dr. Hans von Storch’s testimony to the 2006 109th Congress House Hearings, when he has been “recognized” for five minutes:
> We have in our working group examined how serious the error of biased centering would be on the overall results given a temperature history reminiscent of the IPCC 1990 version. The paper has been published and the effect is very minor. It does not mean that it is not a glitch but it really doesn’t matter here, at least to the extent we could test it.
Just before that, Dr. von Storch claimed that
> [T]he major problems are not of a statistical nature but are related to the social practice of climate change studies.
Perhaps this claim explains why Dr. Wegman felt justified to present the network-analysis of his students, which Dr. von Storch welcomed.
Thank you, Keith – I had figured that my post had inadvertently crossed some moderation line rather than been marked as spam. As the technical person for Scholars & Rogues, I know all too well about how comments can be marked spam for no apparent reason.
Tom, the ICCER agreed with you and Steven Mosher on the FOI issue, and if you recall from our previous disagreements, I agreed with you both on that issue as well. However, FOI and the WMO graph by Jones were, in fact, the only two issues where your arguments (by proxy from McIntyre, Montford, and many others) were accepted by the ICCER.
The ICCER was remarkably thorough and, as I pointed out, pulled together a great deal of missing context that had been missed previously. Context that I had argued would likely totally turn around your conclusions and that you had argued could not change things. You may not feel like your arguments were demolished by the ICCER, but then again, you appear to think it’s self-evident that Wegman didn’t plagiarize (based on your two guest posts at WUWT). Yet an update to the USAToday article yesterday pointed out that a GMU spokesman said that the inquiry had found enough evidence to warrant a full investigation.
Chek #190, writes,
“Alex, stand up debates work in favour of liars and fairground hucksters like Monckton. That’s why they’re not used to further science ““ they’re an entertainment, nothing more.”
I didn’t say a ‘stand up’ debate; I said a public debate. Online, written debate.
It is a very strange position.
Since the time of Plato, it’s been thought that discussion — dialectics — is a way of getting at the truth. The assumption is good enough for the whole world’s legal system. It is still the basis of the scientific method, too. Yet somehow, in climate science, it favours liars and frauds.
It doesn’t favour liars and frauds.
If Steve McIntyre was to lie, hundreds of informed climate change advocates would jump on him and pull up the discussion. If John Mashey spotted a lie, he would refuse to continue until the matter of the lie was resolved.
It appears to me that the problem you guys are having is that you know full well that discussion still favours those who are telling the truth, and those who are technically right.
That is why John Mashey publishes his insinuations at a place like ‘Deep Climate’, but keeps a mile away from McIntyre or McKitrick or others with actual technical understanding of the issues, so that focus can be kept well away from the actual argument, and instead now on an irrelevant discovery of cut’n’pasting in an irrelevant part of the Wegman report.
Isn’t that right?
Regards, Alex
Mashey and DeepClimate’s work illustrate beyond any doubt that the Wegman report authors were hopelessly ignorant of both the data set at issue and the social network analysis that was at the core of their report. We know this because the slipshod edits to the source text, be they Bradley or Wikipedia, very often led to the copied text being obviously inaccurate (and, as has been noted, misleadingly supportive of their case).
That makes what they did dishonest on two levels. And- when you consider that they relied heavily on this amateur hour social network analysis nonsense to impugn the academic reputations of several scientists, indeed, an entire discipline- you could say dishonest on a third.
And all this is exceptionally trivial to you ‘skeptics’, or whatever you’re calling yourselves now, while hiding the decline… in the proxy record… as had been discussed and disclosed in the scientific literature… Yea.
The irony here is so thick you could pave your driveway with it. Great admirers of the infinitely myopic self-anointed climate auditor complaining about the relevance of damning revelations about one of their team’s most celebrated works. Protestations that the skeptics don’t pin their star to the Wegman report, even as they herald McShane and Whatever as a devastating blow to what the industry pr folks have now decided to call CAGW, known here on the mainland as mainstream science. Indeed, the latter rests for its very being on the width of the error bars on the handle of the same hockey stick shape that every minimally competent scientist (and a few statisticians) who’ve ever tried to create a high-resolution north american mean temperature reconstruction has produced.
It’s amazing what the cause of ignorance can do to the otherwise intelligent.
The assumption is good enough for the whole world’s legal system. It is still the basis of the scientific method, too
Somehow I missed that. Do you have any example of a scientific question that was resolved by a debate?
McIntyre’s interlocutors have engaged him on his blog and countless pages of web have been devoted to disputing his assertions. You are free to your opinion that there is some form of “online, written debate” that in some way substantially differs from this, or that it will have any effect on those who have already made up their minds.
Here is how the US federal policy defines plagiarism:
> Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
This definition has been quoted by Steve not so long ago:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/05/the-steig-corrigendum/
Comparing the readership’s reaction for this case and this very one is left to the reader.
NYJ, #211: “Looks like Simon Hopkinson is throwing the Wegman Report under the bus.”
I’ve consistently said that I believe that misconduct, where it occurs, should be addressed appropriately. However, as Mashey’s allegations come under more and more close scrutiny (which is inevitably a slow process, given the erratic and diversionary nature of his conspiracy piece), it is clear that much of his argument appears to be collapsing on itself, with many of the accusations being poorly founded on Mashey’s own misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of Wegman’s report. So, again, I am waiting to see what – if any – mud actually sticks. Certainly it was immediately apparent to me, on reading Mashey’s meandering screed, that no such determinations could be made if one is relying solely on Mashey’s or DC’s anonymous word.
If it transpires that Wegman has breached codes of conduct within the remit of his report – which certainly is far from being established at this point – then I support whatever disciplinary action is deemed appropriate against Wegman. In the meantime I’m simply entertained by people who are able, in themselves, to support investigation of Wegman while refusing to endorse investigation of advocacy scientists like Mann. Unlike those people, I am unable to entertain two diametrically opposed viewpoints simultaneously. I simply don’t suffer that level of irrationality.
Brian Angliss, #224: “The ICCER was remarkably thorough”
Well, if you mean that the extent of the ICCER’s thoroughness is worthy of remark, I certainly agree with you. I suspect our reasons may differ.
Brian Angliss, regarding what I’ve written on Wegman, I thought I was pretty clear that the stuff on social network analysis was copied verbatim and should be an issue.
The question is what kind of issue? In a report to Congress, this is not an academic issue. For the same reason, it is not a legal issue. As it does not touch his analysis of either Mann’s methods or his network, it does not appear to be a scientific issue.
So what kind of issue is it?
Tom Fuller — “Wegman was not writing for academia.”
Really? Wasn’t it to have been published in an academic journal? I’ll also add that Whitfield made a claim that the report was peer reviewed at the hearing, which Wegman supported later on.
“…and I can tell you right now that his document has
been peer reviewed also, and we will get into that later.”
[…]
“MR. STUPAK. Did anyone outside your social network peer
review your report?
DR. WEGMAN. Yes.
MR. STUPAK. Who was that?
DR. WEGMAN. Well, Enders Robinson.
MR. STUPAK. Is that the e-mail we were talking about
earlier?
DR. WEGMAN. Pardon?
MR. STUPAK. Is that the e-mail that was–
DR. WEGMAN. Yes. So–
MR. STUPAK. When you do peer review–
DR. WEGMAN. Let me answer the question. Enders Robinson,
Grace Waba, who is a member of the National Academy, Noel
Cressy, who is at the Ohio State University, Bill Wasorik,
who is at Buffalo State SUNY, David Banks, who is at Duke
University, Rich Schareen is the immediate past president
of the American Statistical–
MR. STUPAK. Let me ask you this question. If you had a
peer review, when are peer reviews usually done? Before
a report is finalized or after?
DR. WEGMAN. We had submitted this and had feedback from-
–
MR. STUPAK. No, no, I am talking about general peer
review. If you are going to have a peer review, don’t
you usually do it before you finalize your report?
DR. WEGMAN. Yes.
MR. STUPAK. Well, your peer review was after you
finalized it?
DR. WEGMAN. No, it was before. We submitted this long
before.”
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
That all smacks of academic intent to me.
(previous post got lost on submit)
Whitfield emphasised that the Wegman report was peer reviewed. Wegman went on to say that he sent it for peer review, and outside of his “social network”. Why would the report be sent for “peer review” if it wasn’t meant to be of academic value?
JBowers, that’s a silly question. No, really. That’s just a dumb question.
@ #225 Alex,
“Isn’t that right?”
Nope. Let me get this straight, John Mashey releases his criticisms into the public domain and this is somehow a way of avoiding those who may have an “actual argument” or those who may speak of “technical issues“? Right. Gotcha. Aren’t McIntyre and McKitrick perfectly capable of making those criticisms now because the document is in the public domain? Is it somehow Mashey’s duty to post this on CA? Are M&M perhaps incapable of finding the document on the internet themselves?
And scientific debate is conducted through the medium of the peer reviewed literature because this provides a filter to remove the worst of the junk. Unlike public debate where any no-shame charlatan can stand up say any old nonsense, yes, Monckton is a perfect example. Or in the field of evolution we have Kent Hovind. Peer review performs a valuable service of removing the kind of junk created by these individuals from the debate. So, I have to agree with chek, stand-up debate with likes of Monckton probably serves little to improve the state of knowledge in the audience.
#228 Willard From Climate Audit “Here is how the US federal policy defines plagiarism:
> Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.”
“Comparing the readership’s reaction for this case and this very one is left to the reader.”
Your comment presents a perfect opportunity to distinguish the Wegman case from the Steig case discussed by McIntyre. Pielke Jr. summarized Steig as “The short story is that a professor from Ohio State found an error in a paper on Antarctic temperature trends in Nature. He published his analysis of the error on the blog Climate Audit and sent a gracious note to the authors letting them know of his discovery.
What did the authors do? They turned around and submitted the correction to Nature as their own work, and then had it published under their own names without so much as an acknowledgment to the Ohio State professor who actually did the work and made the discovery of the error. ”
McIntyre was commenting on Steig failing to acknowledge an important improvement on a fundamental aspect of his work and saying that was plagiarism, which it was. In Wegman’s case, no one could seriously believe that he produced the climate science, and there is no major issue with him taking credit for another’s work. (I’ll agree there is a minor issue.) Everyone had to know that he didn’t independently do climate research.
To make the point clearer. Suppose, I am talking to physicists, and I say the E=MC2d. They know and I know that I am talking about Einstein’s theory. Do I have to mention that I am using Einstein’s theory, even though everyone knows that I didn’t develop it and am repeating what Einstein found. The major moral problem caused by plagiarism is the unattributed taking credit for another’s work. Everyone should have known that Wegman didn’t do the work. It would have been better if Wegman had been more specific, but from what I have seen, there is no significant problem of unattributed appropriation. Wegman is a statistician not a climate scientist.
JD
J Bowers: “Whitfield emphasised that the Wegman report was peer reviewed. Wegman went on to say that he sent it for peer review, and outside of his “social network”. Why would the report be sent for “peer review” if it wasn’t meant to be of academic value?”
Wegman defines “social network” as those he’s published research with. It doesn’t include friends, or people who he knows would give a lax or favorable review. This is what he said before Congress:
MR. STUPAK. In doing peer reviews, do scientists who
do the report, do they usually submit to people they
want to do the peer review? Isn’t that sort of an
independent review?
DR. WEGMAN. This is basically the same mechanism that
was used at the National Academy. The national–you
know, this is not a–
MR. STUPAK. Did you ask these people to do your peer review?
DR. WEGMAN. Yes.
MR. STUPAK. So would they be part of your social
network?
DR. WEGMAN. No. When I talk about social network, I am
talking about people with whom I have actively
collaborated in writing research papers.
MR. STUPAK. It sounds–
DR. WEGMAN. None of these people have actively
collaborated with me in writing research papers.
MR. STUPAK. Isn’t the same kind of social network you
criticized Dr. Mann on because the people that reviewed
his were paleoclimatologists?
DR. WEGMAN. Were the people that had actually worked with
and published papers with.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
The Wegman scandal shows the value of formal independent peer review. It’s not a perfect mechanism, and some reviewers inevitably might have some bias, but it’s vastly superior to how the Wegman Report was reviewed. He chose the reviews and decided which review comments he wanted to incorporate in the final product. It makes all the mud he and his supporters slung at Mann appear all the more ridiculous.
JD,
Your discussion presents the perfect opportunity to link to the follow-up of the affair:
> Since Steig professes ignorance of my post and claims that he had not read it, I can only take him at his word. Accordingly, I wrote White today thanking him for his prompt attention to the matter and withdrawing my complaint.
Here is an interesting comment from Steve:
> However, while ignorance may be an iron-clad defense against plagiarism, it is a rather dicey position academically speaking. Surely Steig and co-authors would at least read the vigorous and serious discussion of their paper on Climate Audit, the Air Vent, and other blogs, even if they do not deign to participate.
Source: http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/14/steig-professes-ignorance/
Again, the 132 comments are worth the read.
#218 t_p_hamilton
It appears we are arguing over a semantic definition of “toxin”.
If you define it as anything of a chemical nature that can kill you under certain circumstances, then you would be correct. Under that definition, water would be toxic because if you drink enough rapidly enough, it can cause electrolyte imbalance severe enough to sicken or kill. Most people would not consider water toxic, however.
Toxicologists would generally call CO2 an asphixiant, not a poison, because it is displacement of air (and there for oxygen) which causes death. It is not commonly considered a toxic gas (see: http://www.ehs.washington.edu/fsohazmat/toxicgaslst.pdf). Yes, it has physiologic effects such as acidosis and CNS depression in higher concentrations, but these are completely reversible. The CNS effects are indistinguishable from those of any modern anesthetic. That NIOSH would label it a toxin in regulating workplace exposure is not surprising or necessarily wrong, but harm occurs because of a lack of oxygen (or losing consciousness – anesthetic effect – and falling into a beer vat and drowning), not toxicity. Under normal circumstances, CO2 is not toxic, but higher concentrations are certainly dangerous and potentially lethal under certain circumstances.
Willard #235 “However, while ignorance may be an iron-clad defense against plagiarism, it is a rather dicey position academically speaking.”
This is non-responsive to my post. Steig claimed not to have read a number of well-known blogs and not to have been aware of a proposed correction to his paper. McIntyre mockingly took him at his word and said that ignorance of what goes on in the blogs did not add to one’s qualifications in academia. Thus, literally taking Steig at his word, McIntyre agreed that there could be no plagiarism. Also, Wegman’s report was made to Congress, which takes it out of the arena to which McIntyre’s comments were directed. I think McIntyre has a lot to add to climate science. Glad that you can agree. Maybe next time you can quote him in a relevant context.
JD
KK:
“I just weighed in over there because it appears (to me, anyway) that Judith is being overly charitable on the plagiarism issue.”
Were you surprised? Dr. Curry has been giving the benefit of doubt lavishly to the skeptical side of the narrative, and meagerly to the mainstream side, for many months now. Her curiosity is forever being aroused by ‘skeptical’ links and articles her new fans drop on her doorstep like so many dead mice. (If I had a dime for every “Thanks, I hadn’t seen that, I’m sure going to look into it more!” she posted in response to some tired skeptic meme, I’d wouldn’t be rich, but it would buy me an egg cream at Eisenberg’s)
This won’t be ‘Skepticgate’ on par with ‘Climategate’ because the pro-science side simply doesn’t have the Fox news/Murdoch tabloid/conservative website/Republican thinktank echo apparatus that the pushers of ‘Climategate’ have. A scientifically illiterate public, currently being roused into pre-midterm election slavering mode, doesn’t help either.
Eli writes:
“Oh yes, as chemists say, the dose makes the pollutant.”
Eli’s point is so obvious that only the morbidly obtuse could fail to agree.
Pop quiz for the morbidly obtuse: how many of the trace elements your body needs would be classed as pollutants if they were dumped every day by the truckload into your local water supply?
JD,
Both situations are about allegations of plagiarism. You argue that they’re different. This does not undermine my claim that the ways the two stories get commented are interesting. So the exercise to compare and contrast is still left to the reader.
Your special pleading was non-responsive to this exercise. But I note that, according to you, McIntyre was mocking Steig. This might explain why his formal complaint. Complaining and mocking seem to add a lot to climate science.
Here’s a hint to those who wish to tackle the exercise: Steve talks about a defense that can be “rather dicey position academically speaking”. This adds a natural twist to the situation at hand. Whatever comes out of Wegman’s defense, we should ask ourselves if it looks dicey, “academically speaking”.
This might explain why his formal complaint **was withdrawn by Steve**, of course.
Willard, who is Steve?
Simon Hopkinson, could you elaborate and explain how peer review in this instance is not intended for academic purpose, not meant to be rigorous or stringent?
In #204 Simon Hopkinson made me laugh. I agree with him that there’s no symmetry here, but in #204 he certainly provides a good caricature of symmetry.
What a delight to see the shoe on the other foot for a change!
But as to which foot the shoe fits, Simon and I will have to disagree, and we can retain confidence in Keith and his crowd to refrain from making an opinion known. It can never be known whether it is a left shoe or a right shoe, according to the press. At least, in this absurd turn of events, the question is finally raised as to whose shoe it is.
I don’t think this episode gets us out of our grand quandary by any means. Still, it’s been enormously entertaining to see the random splutterings of the unexpectedly accused being emitted in from the supporters of the “-gate” in perfect harmony and syncopation.
Shub, good question.
It might be interesting for a journalist to ask Elsevier about Said, Wegman et al. 2007. Elsevier are pursuing copyright concerns because material from Bradley’s book, which they publish, reached a Springer book via Wegman et al. But Elsevier also publish Computational Statistics and Data Analysis which accepted Said, Wegman et al. 2007 paper only 6 days after submission. DC found slabs of text in this paper from Wikipedia, De Nooy et al and Wasserman&Faust, with only the last of these 3 getting any mention in the paper. Wegman is on the journal’s advisory board and Said was an Associate Editor of the journal.
MT, the difference being that in Climategate we had the benefit of real emails showing real poor behaviour. Here, to date, we have a wild-eyed connect the dots 250 page rambling about McShane and Wyner, Said’s dissertation, accepting papers from a congressional subcommittee, putting books in a bibliography without citing them, and one solid case of using someone else’s text in describing social network analysis.
It’s as pathetic as Prall and Schneider, and will last about as long.
Judith Curry is back on the attack – its not as forthright as her initial defence of Wegman (“one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen”) but she is now accusing Bradley of self plagiarism: http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/07/open-thread-week-in-review/#comment-3859
Its presumably as ill-considered as her attack on Deep Climate – it’ll be interesting to see if Bradley gets the apology that Deep Climate didn’t get.
I fished two comments out of the spam filter late tonight–J Bowers at 231 and New York J at 236.
andrewt, Curry most definitely does not accuse Bradley of self plagiarism. Carrick, above her comment, introduces the topic. Curry explains the topic. How on earth do you get away with accusing her of something she didn’t do while you link to where she didn’t do it?
andrewt (251):
People overuse the term “attack” in the blogosphere, and you appear to be doing so here, in saying that Judith is “on the attack.” I read that comment you link to and it seems obvious that she doesn’t think there’s much at all to the self plagiarism issue in this supposed case, if even there is one.
ah, Tom (253), I see we cross posted on that one.
“How on earth do you get away with accusing her of something she didn’t do while you link to where she didn’t do it?”
Tom ironically its a good practice that andrewt did cite (link) to the source. Thus readers are able to decide for themselves how accurately the original author’s comments were represented.
It’s a pity that the Wegman report too often did not give its readers that option. Wegman 2005 included instance of copying large blocks of work (without proper attribution) and occasionally adjusting some words to change the emphasis of authors meaning.
Tom, Judith is pretty clear “Bradley’s self plagiarism seems to be of the text recycling type.”
Keith, Judith has already said she believes Bradley claim to have been plagiarized by Wegman is incorrect, now she is in effect accusing Bradley of academic misconduct. She may not view self-plagiarism as significant but many institutions do, including I assume Bradley’s UMass.
She may be just repeating Carrick’s claims – and I expect Carrick is just confused – but Judith is is chair of a school@Georgia Tech not a pseudonymnous commenter. She shouldn’t be carelessly throwing around accusations of misconduct. It certainly adds to the bad taste her initial attack on Deep Climate on this blog left.
Eli is quite right, the dose does make the pollutant.
In the present case we are talking about atmospheric CO2. The present concentration is of the order 390ppm. This is both a great deal, and very little.
From the point of view of the optical absorption of IR, the current concentration is very high. If you are a 15 micrometre photon trying to escape to space, you are going to find the atmosphere is already very opaque at anything over 200ppm of CO2. Doubling the concentration from there adds only the same warming effect as the increase from 100ppm to 200ppm (which we have already done, with little ill effect), and a gargantuan effort will be required to double the ratio again to 800ppm, at which point the adding of more will become truly academic.
If you are a plant looking to the atmosphere for fuel for photosynthesis, there is barley enough to survive on. Most types of plant (all except C4 really) thrive mightily in higher co2 concentrations – I like to achieve about 1500ppm in my greenhouse if I can, but its hard, the plants suck it up quickly! 390ppm is better than less, but more would be wonderful.
The dose makes the poison fertilizer alright:)
“Doubling the concentration from there adds only the same warming effect as the increase from 100ppm to 200ppm (which we have already done, with little ill effect)”
We’ve increased CO2 40%, warmed 0.7 degC, and still not yet reached radiative equilibrium. Further more, we are still masking some forcing due to our still high levels of SO2 and other aresols.
We’ve increased CO2 40%, warmed 0.7 degC, and still not yet reached radiative equilibrium. Further more, we are still masking some forcing due to our still high levels of SO2 and other aresols.(sic)
You have no support whatever for the idea that we haven’t reached radiative equilibrium – where on earth (literally) do you think all that extra heat may be hiding. It sure isn’t hiding in the oceans – Argo is proving that fairly convincingly.
As for the stuff about masking and SO2, you’re just guessing like everyone else. Even the IPCC calls our understanding of aerosols low , but you just pull some just so “masking” theory out of your a**. to explain why we aren’t cooking in CO2 induced hellfire.
Hint – if the observations and models don’t agree, that doesn’t mean reality is a mistake:)
@231: “That all smacks of academic intent to me.”
Oh, my … a new “sin” has been discovered.
Can you imagine how many people there might be in the universe who are guilty of “academic intent”? Just about anyone who’s ever written anything – and requested one or more peers to take a look at it before publication.
Maybe someone needs to apply for a grant to conduct a study in order to determine the prevalence of “academic intent” – and the potential impact this might have on … oh …. I dunno, how about “climate change”‘.
Eli Rabett (192)
Peter Wilson (151) does not follow Eli’s rule of following the link from Bunny world to the original article. Many folk have died from being overcome by CO2 above brewing vats and falling in. It’s the CO2 not the C2H5OH, which is why the sign says DANGER CO2
Thanks Eli, see that now. So you are concerned that CO2 is going to reach 70,000ppm some time soon are you?
Judith Curry ‘attacked’ ‘DeepClimate’? Might I remind you, dear Andrewt, you forgot to add that the ‘attack’ was ‘vicious’, ‘unfounded’, ‘uncalled for’….
When Eli goes down the the brewery in the basement, yea Pete 262, he is concerned. . . . .
Pete Wilson is simply spraying foam. He is also wrong about our ability to calculate and measure radiative balance.
The fact that the atmosphere at ground level, and ~290K is opaque to radiation where CO2 absorbs and emits is not what is important. What is important is that
– pressure and temperature go down as one goes up. At lower pressures and temperatures the distance a photon travels increases until you reach a level at which thermal radiation from CO2 can escape to space.
-As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the level at which this happens rises.
-Higher levels are cooler and less dense, so the rate of radiation is lower.
– In order to restore radiative balance the entire atmosphere will warm up.
Try it somewhere else Pete
And that’s not the only difference between the two, right Tom? Unlike thousands of stolen emails shorn of context, septicgate isn’t so easily monetized by the unscrupulous and opportunistic. Now I’m just speculating here, but it could be possible that some of the disinterest you are projecting, errr… forecasting is a consequence of that.
Interesting (and mercifully short) thread on this at Klimazwiebel. You’ll see Von Storch expressing his disappointment that the Wegman report represents a “spoilt chance.”
Which perhaps leads one commenter to ask the million dollar question that many skeptics here and elsewhere seem to be dancing around with all the parsing over what constitutes plagiarism and/or copyright infringement:
“Does this mean that the conclusions of the Wegman report are now not valid anymore?”
To which the billion dollar question is Which ones? and Were they ever?
“Does this mean that the conclusions of the Wegman report are now not valid anymore?”
Has it ever been relevant since it didn’t look at the recalculation of the MBH98 and MBH99 results using the CFR methodology? Or look at any other relevant climate science work?
> Does this mean that the conclusions of the Wegman report are now not valid anymore?
It seems important to know exactly what exactly are these “conclusions”.
For instance, Joe Barton, recently stated in an op-ed that:
> The reality is that the two-day hearing made it clear that Mr. Mann’s global warming projections were rooted in fundamental errors of methodology that had been cemented in place as “consensus” by a closed network of friends. The hearing strengthened science because it was informed by various expert work, including that of the National Research Council, which corroborated our central concerns.
It appears that these central concerns did not include the social-network analysis of his students. As Dr. Gerald North stated:
> Dr. Wegman’s criticisms of the statistical methodology in the
papers by Mann et al were consistent with our findings. Our
committee did not consider any social network analyses and we
did not have access to Dr. Wegman’s report during our deliberations so we did not have an opportunity to discuss his conclusions. Personally, I was not impressed by the social network analysis in the Wegman report, nor did I agree with most of the report’s conclusions on this subject.
Source: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
I would suggest that Joe Barton is misrepresenting the “central concerns” of his commission.
Keith Kloor wrote : “Does this mean that the conclusions of the Wegman report are now not valid anymore?”
I don’t think it ever was valid, in the way that the so-called skeptics tried to make it.
The criticisms it made were either unproven/unprovable (social networks), minor (statistical shortcomings) or inconsequential (the hockey-stick shape continues to be found in subsequent studies by different authors using different proxies). This was highlighted by the report from the NRC and a later discussion held under the auspices of the ASA which involved Wegman.
However, now it is looking less like an ‘academic’ study presented to Congress (supposedly peer-reviewed, according to Wegman), and more like a bodge-job created for political purposes – it even includes a reference about magnets, bizarrely.
This ultimately makes it damaged goods even for the so-called skeptics (well, at least, those who are concerned more for the truth than holding a position no matter what), and will probably come back to haunt those who have put so much faith and effort into claiming that it was a valid criticism of Mann or AGW as a whole.
The so-called skeptics badly need some proper scientific studies, produced in a proper manner.
The so-called skeptics badly need some proper scientific studies, produced in a proper manner.
They do, surely, but we know enough evidence to dispel the dangers of climate change isn’t going to published anytime soon, so instead they will stick to the narratives of hockey-sticks, email snippets, and sage-like, grandfatherly dissenters. Unfortunately the emails provide a bulk of that narrative in easy to read form, the attack on the hockey stick fits in well, and the dissenters, once promoted to courageous, battle-worn status, become symbols of a time when science was “good” which is another way to say, “when science wasn’t used in policy changes”.
If only this narrative was exposed for what it really is (hint) and what it represents, can we actually move forward to intelligent solutions.
Short version: David44 needs to read up on hypercapnia, one of which results is death, and not by asphyxiation.
David 44 still insists against NIOSH calling CO2 a toxin, that toxin in this context is a synonym for asphyxiant only. Not when the exposure guideline is 5 minutes 10% CO2 = death. This exposure IS actually likely enough in certain situations that the toxicity becomes relevant. In most cases, since CO2 is heavier than air and does not have time to diffuse and mix, asphyxiation is more likely. David keeps saying the effects of CO2 toxicity are reversible, I wonder if this means even after the person is dead? That is a medical advance I would have thought would be more widely known.
Eli 265
There you go again, trying to teach us ‘sceptics” something we obviously know already. Do you really think this is new to (m)any of us?
– In order to restore radiative balance the entire atmosphere will warm up.
Of course it will. But according to all the observational evidence (remember that?), by a very small amount, relative to the massive amounts of CO2 required to make any further additions. So small as to be lost in the noise of natural variation.
Like you say, the dose is the poison
OK, folks, timeout for a dose of reality on “Copygate”.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/12/copygate/
entire atmosphere, warming up:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Sept_10.gif
Steve McIntyre has responded, here: http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/12/copygate/. A good read.
It looks like the score is 1 all, Wegman’s a plagiarist, and so is Bradley.
I say to you boys, look forward now to a new and fruitful phase of the climate change science debate, viz. the frantic search, on both sides, for more terrible signs of ‘plagiarism’, the lazy lifting of text from one document into another, without enough good old fashioned, proper, British rewording!
You armchair scientists, bloggers, skeptics, and alarmists, can start here by carefully reading the Harvard referencing guide: http://www.unisa.edu.au/ltu/students/study/referencing/harvard.pdf
Then download your plagiarism detection software, e.g. http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/
Scan all your documents (I’m sure the IPCC WGII reports are going to be fun!), and let the games begin!
Best, Alex
Hilary (275), Alex (277):
Steve Mac is about as disinterested a party to all this as Deep Climate and Mashey. That doesn’t mean he is wrong. It just means that he might have his own slant on this. Like Tom Fuller, Deep Climate, Mashey, etc.
I doubt if I would be disinterested either, considering what Mashey wrote about him. But I’ll bet he’s right on the data–he tends to be.
Indeed, that auditor is nothing if not reliable. Explosive revelations about a report heretofore lauded, lionized and linked to by the man, (but whose flaws mysteriously managed to escape his legendarily careful scrutiny), results first in studied silence on the matter (punctuated by the occasional <a href=”http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/14/the-boulton-hockey-stick/#comment-222185″>dismissive comment</a> as it infuriatingly wouldn’t die) and subsequently in fresh allegations against the usual suspects, errr.. hockey switch whipping boys. Meanwhile <a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/11/AR2010101105679.html”>Barton seems to have received the same memo</a>. It’s like some Poe’s having a laugh with the George C Marshall Institute’s rolladex and the script from the film ‘The Insider’.
Indeed, you’d have to be very biased not to see the parallels in the two citizens with overdeveloped senses of justice who devoted hours upon days compiling the evidence that has touched of this s storm.
Dear Keith,
Indeed, of course Steve McIntyre is not disinterested, just as Bradley apparently isn’t disinterested, and I’d suppose Wegman’s no longer disinterested either.
But where exactly are we going with this? You have come out very strongly in favour of ‘this plagiarism business is REALLY serious!’ You say, the whole report must be thrown away. Wegman’s views are now irrelevant. Everything about him is tainted by his assistant’s lazy lifting. (Does that mean that the MBH hockey stick is okay again? Is that also something you want to say?)
So Steve’s taken a few days to show that others have also lifted from poor old Bradley’s textbook.
When I was doing my own dissertation, following references from one text to another in an unrelated field (philosophy of science), I was curious to spot a number of instances where the citer had allegedly cited, but to my undergraduate horror, I discovered that the citer’s citing was in fact unacknowledged quoting! Plagiarism!
More recently, I’ve done some research as a Wikipedian and I noticed in passing some self-plagiarism by a well known, respected climate scientist. I considered it unworthy of mention, and still do.
I know of another published scientist I’m not going to name, and I am 99% certain that the majority of his published scientific works in English have been effectively ghostwritten by his unnamed editors. That’s because his English isn’t that good. So is he a crook too?
So, again, where exactly are we going with this?
Give a few more days or weeks, and I can imagine the headlines. “Climate science rife with plagiarism! Thirty two climate scientists convicted of cut’n’pasting!”
My opinion is, you’ve gone way out on a limb here, precisely BECAUSE you are a journalist, and not a scientist. And sure. As a journalist, writing is what you do. Writing is the only thing you produce. So I’d agree, as a journalist you shouldn’t cut’n’paste from another journalist’s work.
But scientists are not journalists. They are scientists. Science is what they do. They also have to write, but that is something that really just wastes a lot of their time. They often don’t even get paid for it.
Yes, let me predict that this Mashey plagiarism witchhunt will prove to be one of the silliest wastes of time in the whole sorry history of this climate change science debate spectacle. Let me also predict that it will draw a hell of a lot more blood in the long run from the AGW side than it ever will the skeptics. How do I know? Well, there are a whole lot more of them…
So! Let the games continue!
Best, Alex
> You [Keith] say, the whole report must be thrown away.
Citation needed.
First of all, I’m not going anywhere with this. I’m just following the story. Secondly, I fail to see how I’ve gone out on a limb, except to chime in at a few places about plagiarism, where I thought the seriousness of it was perhaps being downplayed.
So now, if I understand the sum of Steve Mac’s rejoinder and your assessment, is this where we are now: pretty much everybody seems to do it. Plenty of plagiarism to go around, so this is going to wind up being like a bunch of cats chasing their tails.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the charges go beyond simple cut and paste and insufficient attribution? I’m under the impression that there is an assertion that distortions and errors were introduced into the report as a result of the alleged plagiarism. Again, I’m not familiar enough with the case to know for sure, so somebody should chime in here. But if this is the case–that the allegedly plagiarized material was manipulated–well, that seems to take it to a whole other level, wouldn’t you say? Did Steve Mac’s post today address this charge?
But I’m in unfamiliar waters here. People should feel free to correct me or clarify if I’m off base.
Great comment over at Lucia’s by AMac. (I hate that there’s no permalink for her comment software.)
It’s comment #54173, (October 12, 2010 at 3:47) on this thread.
What did I tell you two days ago in comment 139?
“Yes, sir. Give “˜em some time, and they will show how the Team also plagiarized! Right now they are frantically googling pieces of papers, then they’ll write a quick blog post, which will be echoed left and right. And then the show can go on for them and their fans.”
And check out the dog whistle at the end of McIntyre’s post: “Perhaps the best way to honor Bradley’s newfound anti-plagiarism zeal would be for someone to file a plagiarism complaint against Wahl and Ammann, taking care to recognize Bradley’s anti-plagiarism commitment in the covering letter.”
Despicable.
KK 283 “I’m under the impression that there is an assertion that distortions and errors were introduced into the report as a result of the alleged plagiarism.”
You asked Mashey in #163 to identify how the “plagiarism” affected the underlying validity of Wegman’s statistical analysis. So far, I have not seen an answer. It was Curry’s opinion that it did not. In #160 I asked Mashey to identify the three most serious examples of fabrication, and he did not. So far to me, (as I have explained in numerous posts), nothing but peripheral examples of copying [that had to be assumed by those reading the report, since Wegman obviously didn’t do his own climate research.) have been identified. To me these are technical errors that are not important.
In post # 147 you dismissively referred to my arguments by stating ” in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff.” It is still my position that copying matters not central to your work is not seriously reprehensible. McIntyre explains a similar position this way:
“Plagiarism” is not an issue that arises in business situations. “Boilerplate” is regularly recycled in securities offerings. Lawyers prefer to use proven language rather than take risks with irrelevant paraphrasing. See here for a discussion of the peculiarly academic nature of “plagiarism”.
Although I believe that this “plagiarism” episode (Triviagate to me) will ultimately prove to be more embarrasing to Alarmists than to realists, I still stand by my original analysis. Assuming that McIntyre is correct, do you think Bradley was making “shit” up.
I would add that I believe there are degrees of plagiarism from the trivial to the very serious just as there are trivial and serious crimes. There are degrees of plagiarism from a completely innocent failure to cite a small matter caused by possibly a computer malfunction to very serious cases of appropriating cutting edge research. I believe that previously you lumped all plagiarism into one category, which is wrong.
Keith, #283: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the charges go beyond simple cut and paste and insufficient attribution?I’m under the impression that there is an assertion that distortions and errors were introduced into the report as a result of the alleged plagiarism.”
There seems to be a determined conjoining of issues somewhere in this mix. Someone, somewhere, seems to be asserting that when plagiarising someone else’s text there is an additional requirement to also come to the same conclusions as the originator, or it’s.. umm.. really BAD plagiarism. Or something. I’m not really sure, Keith.
Personally I am gradually forming the opinion that Wegman possibly himself referred to some of Bradley’s phrasing of relevant “boilerplate” text (Wegman was not claiming climatological expertise), but once written to communicate the broader, more balanced view of the science by taking into consideration the research of others, was satisfied that it was not sufficiently “Bradley” to be directly attributed to him and that mention of Bradley in the bibliography was sufficient.
The arguments that Bradley was plagiarised AND that, at the same time, Bradley’s text was substantially misrepresented, are somewhat dichotomous, in the context of Wegman writing a summation of current understanding in his report. The balance of logic in that particular argument is therefore to some extent compromised as a result.
Neven, #285: Please explain what is despicable about someone filing a complaint of plagiarism when there is prima facie evidence that this has happened?
Is there some reason that is not immediately apparent, why it is right that Wegman be investigated and it is wrong that Wahl & Ammann be?
Neven #285
“Despicable.”
I guess plagiarism in this context is only bad if the skeptics are doing it right? Seriously, there has to be more to this ‘uproar’ than the stuff that Steve M’s commented on so far, otherwise Mashey appears to be seriously wasting his (and everyone elses) time here.
Falling asleep-gate?
“You asked Mashey in #163 to identify how the “plagiarism” affected the underlying validity of Wegman’s statistical analysis.”
The analysis has always been valid as far as I can tell, but it was narrow and irrelevant at the time already, because paleoclimatology had moved on and different researchers using different methods showed a hockey stick too.
The problem with his whole thing is that the Wegman Report was presented to Congress an “˜independent,impartial, expert’ report by a team of “˜eminent’ statisticians. We are now shown this is not the case.
Like I said at the Blackboard:
“Of course the report wasn’t impartial or independent. The report was ordered as such by Barton et al, and in Wegman they apparently found someone (via the social think tank network) who was willing to do what was asked: parrot McIntyre and McKitrick on some irrelevancies.
.
The problem is that it was presented as independent and impartial to Congress. It wasn’t, on purpose, and thus it was highly misleading to say so.”
It is the denial machine at work for everyone to see, who is willing to use his eyes. It’s not about the irrelevant result of the Wegman Report, it’s about how it came into being and the motivation behind it. Like Mashey says:
“The Wegman Report claimed two missions: #1 evaluate statistical issues of the hockey stick temperature graph, and #2 assess potential peer review issues in climate science.
(…)
In retrospect, the real missions were: #1 claim the hockey stick broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole.
All this was a façade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC thinktanks and allies, under way for years.”
That’s wrong, just like the plagiarizing is.
“Please explain what is despicable”
If McIntyre has a problem, he should file a plagiarism complaint himself, not throw it as a a bone to the hungry dogs. That’s cowardly.
DeepClimate has already responded to McIntyre: http://deepclimate.org/2010/10/08/wegman-under-investigation-by-george-mason-university/#comment-5809
He doesn’t need two days of frantically scanning papers and Google to be able to scream: “Theys did it too-hoo.” DC knows what he’s talking about.
Neven: “If McIntyre has a problem, he should file a plagiarism complaint himself, not throw it as a a bone to the hungry dogs. That’s cowardly.”
Err.. LOL? When you say cowardly, do you mean cowardly in a different way from the anonymous, accusatory author of the DeepClimax blog?
Dear Keith,
I agree, a lot of cats chasing their tails.
You write,
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the charges go beyond simple cut and paste and insufficient attribution? I’m under the impression that there is an assertion that distortions and errors were introduced into the report as a result of the alleged plagiarism. Again, I’m not familiar enough with the case to know for sure, so somebody should chime in here. But if this is the case”“that the allegedly plagiarized material was manipulated”“well, that seems to take it to a whole other level, wouldn’t you say? Did Steve Mac’s post today address this charge?”
Well, I don’t know. It seems to me that no one can be bothered actually reading Mashey’s rambling document of allegations laid against Wegman. I’ll have to count myself amongst their number, and I think perhaps you too.
But just going on Mashey’s own blog comments, it is obvious that the bulk of it is just cheap point scoring. At least 90% of it is Wegman (i.e. Said) allegedly plagiarised from X during his exposition of Y, where Y is not statistics, but added emphasis in some parts (“distortions”) to make his wording stronger than the source he was allegedly plagiarising. If that’s as bad as it gets, then we have a whole lot of noise about nothing.
So I guess the million dollar question is, are there actually any criticisms of Wegman’s statistics or his actual arguments against Mann’s statistics in the document? Is there anything in the report that calls into question Wegman’s status as an expert statistician? What about his network analysis? Or is the whole thing devoted to showing that he’s a lazy report writer with a possible bias against climatologists? As far as I can see, the whole thing is purely character assassination, and hysterical in tone, as you’d expect from something published at ‘Deep Climate’.
Perhaps John Mashey or one of his supporters could help by providing a condensed version of bits that actually matter for the rest of us who don’t give a damn about the cut’n’pasting.
Best, Alex
You are of course right, Simon. Maybe next time when McIntyre has finished discussing his opinion on Wegman injecting “biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results” into the texts he plagiarized from Bradley, or the texts on social networks lifted verbatim from Wikipedia, he can end his blog post with:
“Perhaps the best way to honor DeepClimate’s newfound anti-plagiarism zeal is for someone, not me I haste to say, to poop on his doorstep.”
“are there actually any criticisms of Wegman’s statistics or his actual arguments against Mann’s statistics in the document?”
Criticisms have been there for many years (namely that his statistics are irrelevant). This is about something else: misleading Congress and the public. But apparently you don’t mind that and would rather have them continue in misleading you. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?
“Is there anything in the report that calls into question Wegman’s status as an expert statistician?”
Not per se, but it calls into questions his professionalism and ethics as an academic scholar. Especially when you see how the undergrads who helped him plagiarizing were rewarded afterwards (by getting prizes for PhD theses full of plagiarisms). Talking about social networks.
“What about his network analysis?”
He didn’t know much about it, otherwise he would not have had to lift text verbatim from Wikipedia.
Neven #296
“Criticisms have been there for many years (namely that his statistics are irrelevant)”
Wow. A report focusing on the statistics used in MBH, and the statistics are irrelevant. I guess they really shouldn’t have bothered at all. 🙁
Neven # 292, I just read the DC response to McI.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/10/08/wegman-under-investigation-by-george-mason-university/#comment-5809
He writes, “I suppose I should address this statement from McIntyre.” So why? What’s so important about this little nit he’s picked? I then get bored before I can work out what he’s talking about, and find I’m already at the end.
It’s unclear whether DC has scored a point or not. I doubt Steve will respond, because Steve knows as we all know that DC would delete any response from Steve if he makes any point that’s too difficult to respond to.
So as usual, the thrust of what Steve actually said (and allow me a single sentence paraphrase,
“Uh, so what about all these others who are both plagiarising from Bradley, and also plagiarising from me?”)
has gone unanswered, suggesting that Steve’s points are unanswerable.
That’s why my bet is that the neither DC nor John Mashey will actually respond at CA, where Steve could debate the matter with them.
-A
“I then get bored before I can work out what he’s talking about, and find I’m already at the end.”
Sometimes you have to get to the bottom of things to understand them. If that is too much to ask, it is no wonder you are so easily misled.
“Uh, so what about all these others who are both plagiarising from Bradley, and also plagiarising from me?”
I say: first things first, in other words: Wegman and how his report that was repeatedly promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians”, has misled Congress and the public.
That’s a minor difference with the “plagiarisms” McIntyre and his Team have managed to find after two days of frantic digging.
Keith, the section of the Wegman report in dispute does not mention either MBH98-99 or the MM papers criticizing it.
Much as I might appreciate the sentiment, it seems odd to me that MBH supporters should argue that the merit of the Wegman report is diminished by incorporating Bradley’s wording.
“it seems odd to me that MBH supporters should argue that the merit of the Wegman report is diminished by incorporating Bradley’s wording.”
The credibility of the Wegman Report is diminished, and one wonders about the motivation to produce it as well. Another problem is not only was Bradley’s text plagiarized, but it was also “injected with biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results”.
Tell the whole story, please. No spinning or hiding facts.
Re Willard’s Commment 237 and 243 above. Willard incorrectly attributes to me comments that were made by Hu McCulloch. Willard also incorrectly asserted that I made a “formal complaint” about Steig. I did not. Hu McCulloch did file a complaint with the journal, but not with Steig’s university.
Steig said that neither he nor any of his coauthors received McCulloch’s email notification and that none of them were aware of McCulloch’s post at Climate Audit. Schmidt said that he learned of the error from a Mystery Man prior to McCulloch – though he didn’t identify or acknowledge the Mystery man in the Corrigendum. McCulloch did not pursue the matter at the time though the identity of Steig’s Mystery man remains a mystery.
As I noted above, Wegman’s description of tree ring proxies does not refer to either MBH98-99 or the MM articles and nothing from this section was used in the later sections.
Despite the accusations of “plagiarism”, it seems that Neven and Mashey and DC are actually more concerned about the fact that Wegman did not always adopt Bradley’s language.
For example DC objected to Wegman writing the following:
“Obviously there are many confounding factors so the problem is to extract the temperature signal and to distinguish the temperature signal from the noise caused by the many confounding factors. ”
as opposed to Bradley’s:
“The problem facing dendroclimatologists is to extract whatever climatic signal is available in the tree ring data and to distinguish this signal from the background noise.”
Wegman’s language here seems to me to be an improvement over Bradley’s and that Wegman was prudent not to avoid endorsing such Bradley statements as: “From the point of view of climatology, it is perhaps useful to consider the tree as a filter or transducer which, through various physiological processes, converts a given climatic input signal into a certain ring-width output which is stored and can be studied in detail, even thousands of years later.”
Whether you agree or disagree with Wegman differing with Bradley on these points, the existence of such disagreements speaks against these sections being plagiarized.
#283 I have a difficult time finding “biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results” in the supposedly plagiarized text, as has been claimed here repeatedly. The most serious of these charges is the inversion of results, which is made to sound as though plagiarized text has been used to contradict the authors. Naturally, this has caused some disbelief. I’ve found only one example offered so far, though perhaps someone else could point out more. Wegman’s section on tree rings includes the text:
“As pointed out earlier, many different sets of climatic conditions can and do yield similar tree ring profiles. Thus tree ring proxy data alone is not sufficient to determine past climate variables.”
DeepClimate claims this contradicts Bradley’s book, which says:
“If an equation can be developed that accurately describes instrumentally observed climatic variability in terms of tree growth over the same interval, then paleoclimatic reconstructions can be made using only the tree-ring data.”
Of course, this sentence begins with the word “if.” “If” something can be done, Wegman is wrong, and his text “inverts” Bradley’s “original results.” DeepClimate made no effort to show an equation like the one Bradley describes can be made, much less that one has been made. Given that, his example cannot possibly show Wegman “inverted” Bradley’s conclusions. In fact, there is not even any indication of error.
Perhaps there is a better example somewhere, but if so, nobody seems to be mentioning it. Given the seriousness of the claim, hopefully someone will.
<i>Whether you agree or disagree with Wegman differing with Bradley on these points, the existence of such disagreements speaks against these sections being plagiarized.</i>
Wegman could not differ with Bradley, as he lacked expertise in this field of knowledge (perhaps you or someone you know coached him, which would be interesting to know; you’re all for transparancy, right?). Otherwise he (or one of his assistants) would not have had to copy from Bradley’s book and slightly alter the meaning of sentences to introduce doubt.
“slightly alter the meaning of sentences to introduce doubt.”
Bradley’s phrase: ‘the problem facing dendroclimatologists’ is hardly suggestive that the extraction of a climatic signal from tree rings is a straight forward process. Obviously, there ARE confounding factors.
Obviously.
Seems that Wegman is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t (plagiarise). Mashey is playing stupid games.
So I checked John Mashey’s report to see if I could find an example of where something was “injected with biases, errors or changed meanings that… invert original results.” While it is not the only accusation, it is most serious accusation, so it is the one I am focusing on. Doing a search in Mashey’s report, I came up with only one example. On page 117, Mashey says:
“[DEE2010j] finds 8 major and 4 minor issues, counted only as one each in the Page tally, §2.7, for simplicity, although one of the <B> issues inverts a major conclusion of Bradley”˜s, a strong Bias.”
DEE2010j is a blog post at DeepClimate in which there is a table summarizing the extent of supposedly plagiarized text. The “<B>” in Mashey’s text refers to major errors, indicated in the table by using bold typeface. Only one of the sections has such errors listed, and it is none other than the section including the example I just discussed. Remembering Mashey’s report says:
“Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized, but injected with biases, errors or changed meanings that often weaken or invert original results. Some might thus also be called fabrication.”
There is one example of where Wegman supposedly inverts “original results,” and the charge is obviously false. Worse yet, the claimed inversion is found in the five pages of text Mashey didn’t cover in his report.
And he says Wegman fabricated things.
Keith #284
You can link to comments at Lucia’s. Here’s the html you needed:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/litigation-copyright-fair-use-us-speech-and-debate-clause/#comment-54173
Neven
Your argument in #290, supposedly a response to Keith’s #160, is wrong and contains logical flaws.
If you admit that Wegman’s “analysis has always been valid”, but yet believe that other methods produced a hockey stick, your conclusions are in line with Wegman.
Not all the other methods do not produce a hockey stick. So you are wrong there.
If you think , riding on the strength of the fact that other methods allegedly produce a hockey stick, meaningless charges of plagiarism peripheral to the main conclusions of the Wegman report can be used to question the veracity of the whole report itself – you have greatly weakened any valid points you might have.
Point #2 is: Not all the other methods do produce a hockey stick.
Brandon Shollenberger # 307,
I am afraid I can’t understand what you mean here — “Only one of the sections has such errors listed, and it is none other than the section including the example I just discussed.”
Whatever you mean, you seem to be saying you’ve read the entire Mashey report and there is not in fact a single, legitimate example of where Wegman has changed original text to invert the meaning, contrary to Mashey’s bold claim?
Best, Alex
Here is Ross McKitrick’s response at CA:
Posted Oct 12, 2010 at 6:30 PM
Nice work Steve. The reality is that when writing elementary material there are only so many ways of saying it. We run into the issue at the university. You have to cite sources and not present someone else’s work as your own, but close paraphrases with attribution to source are hard to avoid in some cases. I have had cases like this go through the process of examination for plagiarism. In one case when the source was cited but verbatim quotes were not indicated, it was deemed not a violation. In another a finding of plagiarism was made, because the student was using source wording in a context where original wording was implied, and sourcing was not adequate.
The last 50 pages of the Mashey report only serve to show that the summaries of the underlying papers made liberal use of the original wording in those papers. In each case the paper was identified and the discussion was entitled a “summary”. Using the author’s own wording is arguably the best way to ensure accuracy in the summary, and in the context nobody could have inferred that the Wegman team was claiming authorship. Although it would have been possible to enclose in quotes everything being quoted, it would have made the material very choppy and unreadable. To find exact equivalents in wording just for the sake of novelty would have been unnecessarily time consuming, and then would have opened them up to accusations of not getting the nuances correct.
Posted Oct 12, 2010 at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Reply
There is one section of the Mashey report that I think raises points that need to be answered (on which more when I post my response). The rest is obsessive conspiratorial ranting. The 3-minute summary of Mashey is right here.
P Wilson asserts:
“You have no support whatever for the idea that we haven’t reached radiative equilibrium – where on earth (literally) do you think all that extra heat may be hiding. It sure isn’t hiding in the oceans ““ Argo is proving that fairly convincingly.”
We measure it, http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-Earths-energy-imbalance.html
PW goes on:
“As for the stuff about masking and SO2, you’re just guessing like everyone else. Even the IPCC calls our understanding of aerosols low, but you just pull some just so “masking” theory out of your a**. to explain why we aren’t cooking in CO2 induced hellfire.”
I find the evidence more convincing than your extreme position, so lets consider the evidence:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-much-did-aerosols-contribute-to-mid-20th-century-cooling.html
Re Steve’s #302:
A simple verification can make one see that this comment:
> However, while ignorance may be an iron-clad defense against plagiarism, it is a rather dicey position academically speaking. Surely Steig and co-authors would at least read the vigorous and serious discussion of their paper on Climate Audit, the Air Vent, and other blogs, even if they do not deign to participate.
was authored by Hu McCulloch, not Steve:
Source: http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/14/steig-professes-ignorance/
My sincerest apologies for incorrectly attributing this comment and the complaint about Steig to Steve.
The 132 comments are still worth the read.
Whatever comes out of Wegman’s defense, we should still ask ourselves if it looks dicey, “academically speaking”.
From this month’s Atlantic
Published research is most often wrong
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269
There are many interesting aspects to this paper. Here is one selection from the article that summarizes some of the research findings. Peer review as a way to exclude opposing views. Published research is biased to favour the views that the researcher and the community desire.
The link to the controversies in cliamte sceince is clear.
[…] This is not to say that there are no methodological issues with the original hockeystick papers (MBH 98/99). But what matters is: How much do they matter? (see e.g. Mashey’s comment at CaS on that issue) […]
#311 Alex Harvey
The website John Mashey references has links to comparisons involving four sections in the Wegman report. Only one of those sections is listed as having any major errors, the type of error Mashey’s report indicates this “inversion” is. That section contains the text I discuss in #304, where DeepClimate falsely claims Wegman changed text to contradict Bradley. Hopefully that clarifies what I meant.
As for your other question, I have at least skimmed the entire Mashey report now, as well as having done searches for strings like “invert,” “contradict,” “reverse” and “opposite.” I have also read all 35 pages of side-by-side comparisons (including the DC only ones). I have found no other examples Mashey could be referring to.
I obviously can’t rule out the possibility I have missed something, but so far nobody has suggested I have. As it stands, the one example Mashey could possibly be referring to when he says Wegman’s report “invert[s] original results” is found on page 14 of the Wegman’s report. It is never covered in Mashey’s report, and it in no way contradicts the source being used (Bradley’s textbook). The accusation rests entirely upon a failure of reading comprehension on the part of Mashey and DeepClimate.
From Geoff at Climateaudit comments (8:45 a.m.) (Particular attention to Willard)
I note the comment from the Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health & Human Services:
ORI’s definition of plagiarism provides the following caveat:
“ORI generally does not pursue the limited use of identical or nearly identical phrases which describe a commonly-used methodology or
previous research because ORI does not consider such use as
substantially misleading to the reader or of great significance.”
http://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/plagiarism/
JD
Keith,
I invite you to consider this PDF which supposedly says it all, showing how Wegmen et al. not only lifted text, but deliberately distorted the intent!
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/wegman-bradley-tree-rings.pdf
This was linked in the DC thread here: http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/22/wegman-and-rapp-on-tree-rings-a-divergence-problem-part-1/
It’s actually quite clever, rhetorically, what DC & Mashey are up to here.
Remember, if there was no allegation of plagiarism, there would be no news that Wegman et al. chose to cite Graybill and Idso 1993 as well as Bradley 1999. It was, after all, part of the peer reviewed literature. The real question, then, would be, and should be, why didn’t Bradley 1999 discuss Graybill and Idso 1993? (Or perhaps he did?)
But in Mashey’s hands, this is evidence that Wegman et al. were ‘distorting’ Bradley despite the fact that they are obviously just citing a range of sources as well as Bradley, who should not be confused with ‘God’.
So, there is still nothing here other than alleged plagiarism, but through this device an illusion is created of Wegman sort of hacking into Bradley’s book and changing the bits he didn’t like.
Now, it gets worse if you move on to Wegman para 3 / Bradley 10.2.3. Carefully remind yourself of DC’s/Mashey’s font legend. Remember, we are reading this document because we are interested in plagiarism, which is indicated in a regular font. So, do you note that there’s no regular font, anywhere in the Wegman et al. para 3? What does that mean? Also, there’s regular font on the right hand side, but there’s nothing to match it with! That means, I would guess, that there is in fact no plagiarism here, and not even an allegation of plagiarism.
But, uh, if there is no plagiarism here, there is no reason to be even comparing these two pieces of text. Again, Wegmen et al. are citing another source here, that probably disagrees with Bradley.
It looks like a most dishonest analysis, to me, but make up your own mind.
Best, Alex
Speaking of Graybill and Idso 1993
“The apparent divergence of their (Graybill and Idso 1993) strip- and whole-bark chronologies from the mid-19th century to the late-20th century is the result of the standardization scheme they used (Fig. S4B). When compared in an appropriate manner, without artifacts introduced by standardization, recent growth rates of strip-bark and whole-bark trees from the same environment are very similar. In light of these results, the suggestion that strip-bark pines should be avoided during analysis of the last 150 years (27) should be reevaluated.” (p.4)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/11/13/0903029106.full.pdf+html
I have no idea why we would be discussing this, but a response to Salzer et al 2009:
“Doing the analysis using Graybill and Idso data simply squeezes the balloon, so that the divergence moves from one period to another. The authors have simply deluded themselves into thinking that they “explained” something and RC is too uncritical to notice.”
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/17/salzer-et-al-2009-a-first-look/
.303 If Wegman is copping Bradley’s text as a basis for improving upon it than his writing there is no longer a summation of common knowledge but an original contribution, and therefore your defense of Wegman on the grounds that its merely meant to be a summary fails. If Wegman is passing the report off as a summary (and we all agree he knew squat about dendro and so had no right to get creative), then it is a misrepresentation of Bradley. Upon which horn do you wish to fall?
#322 bigcitylib, are you seriously suggesting “common knowledge” is solely defined by Bradley’s text book?
#324 Are you suggesting that little ole non dendro guy Wegman gets to determine what is and is not common knowledge?
I think it is time to answer the original question of whether Watts was unfair in not immediately reacting to this story. Based on the inability of Mashey to answer the question of how any alleged plagiarism affected Wegman’s statistical analyis (#163)and his inability to point to the three worst cases of fabrication (#160), Watts made the right decision in not jumping on the news without the chance to put it in context. “Skepticgate” is in reality “Triviagate.”
JD
#324 Of course. He was dealing with a very introductory aspect of a field. Looking at a few books would be all it would take. I’m sure pretty much anyone reading this blog could figure it out too.
#326 And which of these few books contradicts Bradley?
#326 To my knowledge, none. Considering that, it is hardly surprising the Wegman Report doesn’t contradict Bradley’s text book either.
#325 (JD Ohio)
I don’t think there was any real validity in Keith making so much out of this. The first comment on the first post on this at WUWT comes in only a couple of hours after Keith’s post here- fairly timely in my opinion but not good enough for Keith I guess. We also have the fact that WUWT posted on this before quite a few of the ‘warmist’ blogs (some never did), which apparently means nothing to Keith. But Watts posting a few hours ahead of what Keith imagined to be appropriate, is evidence of… something.
To me, this was a fairly nonsensical post, a bit like the Mashey report itself. Or like the German airport luggage security guy who was checking my bag, found a small jar of jam and loudly and proudly declared ‘Ahhaahhh!!’ to everyone around him, as if he had found enough evidence to bust me for heroin trafficking or something. It’s… confusing.
Bigcitylib # 322,
I am most amused by the false dilemma you’ve set up here.
Obviously, Wegman is either guilty of plagiarising Bradley, or he’s not. If he’s guilty of plagiarising Bradley, then he’s guilty of plagiarising Bradley. If he isn’t, then it’s even worse. He’s then guilty of not plagiarising Bradley!
What right has a “little ole non dendro guy” to not plagiarise Bradley?
Step back and admire the absurdity of your position.
Regards, Alex
Can I take the exit stage left of John Mashey from this thread, and all other threads but the highly censored ‘Deep Climate’, when called on his assertion that Wegman ‘distorted’ the Bradley source for political purposes, as evidence that his position is utterly indefensible? Is it clear now that this was a cheap beat up, a cynical attempt to smear the reputation of a tenured professor of statistics for cheap political point scoring?
#331 Alex Harvey, I’m not sure I would be quite so stringent, but something like that.
Bradley has plagiarised Fritts: http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/18/bradley-copies-fritts/
Er, in #332 I meant to type “strident,” not “stringent.”
Brandon,
I think given that John Mashey’s analysis has emerged as mostly nothing more than grubby muckraking, I stand by the tone of my postings. Let’s see him either defend his position or do the honourable thing, and apologise. I don’t expect that will happen, because he’s too busy over at ‘Deep Climate’ taking bows to the hysterical applause of the hundreds of climate change advocates he has misled.
Regards, Alex
“I have told the University that I am prepared to drop this matter if Wegman makes a request to have his report withdrawn from the Congressional Record.”
-Ray Bradley
Looks like Blackmailgate to me.
(trying again, one seems to have gotten lost):
KK: I am sure that *you*:
Understand plagiarism, of which many have invented amazing ideas recently.
Understand fabrication/misrepresentation, which seem even more unfamiliar to many.
Hence, *your* opinions on such are of interest.
So, perhaps we can get a very quick opinion on plagiarism and/or fabrication for some of the simpler cases. I think most is fairly clear just from side-by-sides, although in a few cases it helps to have book(s). I will give my own opinions in a later post, to avoid a spoiler. The WR is:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf
CASE 1: WR pp.17-22, the social networking introduction, {Wikipedia & 2 textbooks are neither cited or referenced). I own both textbooks and have checked.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman-social-networks-v-2.pdf
CASE 2: WR pp.14-15, Bradley(1999) on ice and corals, no citation in that section.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/wegman-bradley-ice-cores-corals-v3.pdf
CASE 3: WR 10-12, 13-14.
p.10-12 (vaguely) summarizes some text from Bradley(1999), followed by 2 tables from Bradley, cited, although p.11 has 3 amusing errors that tripped up McShane&Wyner when they re-used it, and p.12 is fairly irrelevant, although it looks good.
WR p.13-14 are shown side-side with antecedent Bradley, noting (ambiguous) citation of Bradley at the end.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman-bradley-tree-rings-v20.pdf
Of these 3 cases, how many are plagiarism? How about fabrication/misrepresentation?
Regarding the latter, perhaps you might explain what happens if someone correctly cites a source, paraphrases it well with no cut-and-paste, but then silently changes meanings and even directly inverts conclusions? [I.e., not the scholarly X says “Y” [cite], but I disagree with Y, because”¦]
Put another way, even if it were judged not to be plagiarism, would it still be fabrication/misrepresentation? Compared to plagiarism, how would academe treat that?
#335 You are welcome to your tone, but ever since John Mashey stopped responding to me (after I pointed out his dishonesty), I haven’t really had much in the way of interaction with people supporting his analysis. The reason I wouldn’t feel comfortable using your tone is because I haven’t delved into this issue very much, not because I think it is wrong.
Fun note. USA Today has opted to keep its article the way it is, despite me having contacted them about the inaccuracies I pointed out upthread. This means one of two things. 1) Mashey did say what they claim he said, despite it being obviously false. 2) USA Today lied about Mashey.
Seeing as Mashey stood by the USA Today article, I guess it has to be option one. He mislead USA Today.
Mashey writes:
“Put another way, even if it were judged not to be plagiarism, would it still be fabrication/misrepresentation? ”
Mashey,
If you cannot even tell what your supposed findings mean even to you, why do you think anyone else would be able to help?
John Mashey,
Nick Stokes is single handedly trying in vain at Climate Audit to save face for you after your 100+ page beat up of Wegman has largely backfired. It appears to me, and nearly all other readers, that his position is utterly indefensible, so why not help him since you are the expert on all this?
Here you ask Keith Kloor, who has already ventured a strong position that ‘plagiarism’ is serious, to, what, say the same thing again? Or is it a demand that he show party loyalty and dare not comment on all the flaws that are turning up in your analysis?
I’d like a response at #319 please. Your analysis is wrong, unambiguously. To be taken seriously, you need to respond.
Regards, Alex
Oh you guys mean where Bradley used figures from Fitt’s book with Fitt’s permission and the permission of the publisher and the graphs had “from Fitts” them and the permissions page of the book listed the permissions and McIntyre’s tired eyes missed all that? Yes, it was in small print.
Remember Yamal? where Mc blew the statistics, had the data and whined for over a month that Briffa was a nasty fellow for not giving SteveO the data, for doing the calculation wrong? Like that.
http://delayedoscillator.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/yamal-v-but-they-pull-me-back-in/
GEAFB
Eli,
If Steve has made a mistake, point it out. If he’s wrong, I’d love to see someone actually show it. It’d probably make him more cautious in future. But if that doesn’t happen? Well, I say he has well earned the impression that he’s right.
I cannot begin to say how I loathe this entire discussion of ‘who really plagiarised whom’. It has got to be the stupidest climate change distraction that has come along in the four years I’ve spent vainly trying to understand this debate.
Did Bradley really plagiarise Fritts? I certainly don’t know, but based on exchanges between Nick Stokes and readers at CA, I would have to say yes. Do I care? No.
The only question that even vaguely has any relevance or importance is whether Wegman et al. deliberately distorted their sources for political purposes in the Wegman Report.
And, surprise, surprise, it’s the one question that all of you refuse to address.
So how about it. Am I wrong in #319?
Regards, Alex
Compare:
> The only question that even vaguely has any relevance or importance is whether Wegman et al. deliberately distorted their sources for political purposes in the Wegman Report.
with
> The only question that even vaguely has any relevance or importance is whether Mann et al. deliberately distorted their sources for political purposes in the MBH.
My opinions on #337:
I’m sure KK knows this, but for others, either:
(a) one quotes something correctly (and preferably without extreme cherry-picking, and definitely without the sort of creative use of ellipses that appeared in McShane&Wyner(2010) OR
(b) one paraphrases/summarizes something in ones’ own words, typically consolidating longer text, not just cut-and-pasting. In either case, one cites the source.
CASE 1 (ice/coral) and CASE 2 (SNA introduction)
CASE 1 and CASE 2 are simple plagiarism, but as far as I know, without any fabrication/misrepresentation. Many of the trivial changes look like those done merely to beat the simpler automated plagiarism checkers. Some even degrade the writing. Occasionally, errors or oddities are introduced as they depart from the copied text. For example, the very first sentence of CASE 1 is odd, and CASE 2 has the ludicrous “statues” error (which even persisted in the 2 PhD dissertations that re-used this). As noted in SWSR W.5, the SNA is not particularly competent.
CASE 3 ““ Tree rings.
CASE 3 (tree rings) ends with an ambiguous citation to Bradley.
(a) Some have claimed that it clearly applies to the whole section, somehow making it not plagiarism, i.e., that it is an extended paraphrase. (For the sake of argument, let me assume an academic committee would ignore the obvious unquoted text marked cyan.)
(b) Alternatively, the vague cite does not apply to the whole section, in which case it is surely plagiarism.
But the choice between (a) and (b) is irrelevant.
In (a), the WR would *misrepresent* Bradley words, pervasively enough to be deliberate, and in academe, that is generally worse than plagiarism.
In (b), total field novices would have silently fabricated positions somewhat or directly contrary to those of an expert, with no reason given. Again, making stuff up is worse than sloppiness.
Either label is *deadly* especially because the cyan shows exactly where the text originated, which makes it easy to see when they copied something, inverted it, weakened it or cherry-picked a sentence, then ignored the next from Bradley. Put another way, I think this is plagiarism plus (fabrication or misrepresentation, take your pick). This is not “we synthesized a discussion from multiple sources, but goofed a little.”
I think there are 11 examples from 1.5 pages of WR text. Here are the ones I labeled, marked “f” for weakening or “F” for direct inversion. I doubt that anyone thinks that Wegman+Said were supposed to be doing original research on tree-rings, but the whole thing is constructed to present the appearance of knowledge about tree-rings, while constantly raising doubts about it. Field-novices (which they were, from the various WR errors) do not get to silently rewrite experts.
The *’d ones are not so obvious from just these pages, but are clear to anyone who has the book and knows a little about the topic. The *’d items might well hint at unacknowledged help from someone more familiar with these argument., especially given Wegman’s poor knowledge of much simpler CO2 behavior (SSWR A.2). Most cases should be clear just from the side-by-side:
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman/bradley-tree-rings-v20.pdf
P.1
“Confounding factors” obscure the temperature signal that climate scientists wish to extract. Bradley’s 600-page book describes such factors in detail and explains how researchers deal with them. Paleoclimate research is about dealing with confounding factors, because it is not lab chemistry ““ they have to extract signal from the data they have. Researchers understand these far better than the WR authors. But, to the general audience, this sounds troublesome. SSWR calls this Meme-e.
f*: “carbon dioxide availability” is part of a more complex argument to cast doubt on tree-ring research.
f: “many confounding factors” #1
f: “many confounding factors” #2
f*: In Bradley, the struck-through sentence immediately follows one plagiarized with minimal change. It importantly describes how low-frequency (long-term) information is found, contradicted on p.3 here.
P.2
f: “relatively strong temperature signal” from “strong temperature” signal. This weakens the original.
P.3
f: “confounded” appears again, #3.
f*: “fossil fuels” is part of another complex argument to discredit tree-rings.
f: “confounded” appears again, #4.
F*: The WR claims tree-rings are ineffective for low-frequency information. Bradley takes several pages to explain how this is done, but is ignored and the WR inverts his expert conclusion.
P.4
F: The WR says that tree-ring data alone is insufficient. Bradley says that it can be done and spends 10 pages showing how. Hence, people with zero experience in the field again invert a major expert conclusion and in fact, attempt to claim non-existence of an entire subfield. Experts can argue, but not novices and not by silent inversion.
WHY WASN’T IT NOTICED EARLIER?
People wonder why all this wasn’t noticed earlier . Experts rarely spend a lot of time studying introductory material & summaries of papers, even when reviewing papers. This is written with a few cites to Bradley; people say “Oh, cites famous textbook” and skip to the new material (perhaps WR sections 4 and 5). I’ve had some discussions with academic psychologists about how this works. People who are *not* experts (like McShane&Wyner) read this more closely and get the clear idea that tree-rings are not well understood. I doubt that SNA experts looked at that.
Relatively few readers check bibliographies in detail. In my March report, I hadn’t even noticed the bizarre reference to Valentine(1987). Nobody seems willing to face the credibility deficit of referencing a tabloid writer’s 1987 article in a fringe magazine.
Very few people would look for a report of “eminent statisticians” to Congress to be massively plagiarized. Had they been told much was written by a new PhD with help from grad student(s), they might have looked closer.
All this was dumped on people with a few days’ notice before the first hearing ““ people were asked Friday to show up in Washington the following Wednesday AM. After 9 months work, paleoclimate was suddenly urgent, requiring a faster response than the soon-to-occur Katrina.
Since the plagiarism is so easy to see, even with zero domain knowledge, Bradley just mentioned that to GMU to keep it simple, but of course, a committee would go through DC’s introduction and at the very least see the last “F”.
SUMMARY: WR pp13-22, 67-92.
So, WR pp.13-22 have substantial plagiarism (10 pages), all found by DC and collected in:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/07/29/wegman-report-update-part-1-more-dubious-scholarship
Of those, pp.13-14 have the fabrication/misrepresentation as described above, the rest is simple plagiarism, including the recently found sources for WR Section 2.2.
WR pp. 67-92 (26 pages) have 25 pages with substantial plagiarism, mixed with varying cases of fabrication/misrepresentation, ranging from minor/arguable to serious/purposeful. In some cases it an be hard to distinguish incompetence from malice, as per Napoleon, although when errors bias strongly in one direction, it is a hint.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/09/26/strange-scholarship-wegman-report/
Appendix W.8 describes WR, including academic policies on summarization. Some people have the strange idea that if you are summarizing an identified paper, it is just fine for 50% of it to be unquoted cut-and-paste, and another 30% trivial changes and rearrangements of text.
Very few will ever read all of that Appendix, which had to be written to gather the data and back the serious claims. One might try one example: pp.213-214, MBH99, arguably the most important article, since it is the origin of the classic hockey-stick graph. It is 66% cut-and-paste, and I rated it as 100% “striking similarity”, since the rest is almost entirely trivial changes or obvious rearrangements of text.
Clearly this paper was deemed not worth spending any time understanding, likewise other Mann-led papers. The lowest plagiarism numbers were for the 3 McIntyre+McKitrick papers, where someone at least did more rewording and sometimes wrote text that looked like normal summarization.
This is not arguable or marginal plagiarism. It is NOT of the form “We did this research,” but of the form “We are knowledgeable on this topic.” Some have the odd idea that only the first counts so that statisticians are free to plagiarize paleoclimate researchers, since the former do not pretend to be the latter, usually.
But worse, when people obviously copy text and make minor edits, they are not just forgetting to cite sources. Whether they cite them or not, when they pervasively edit to change conclusions, it goes beyond plagiarism into fabrication or misrepresentation, and if anything, those are even worse.
John Mashey, that’s a 1,300+ word post you’ve made. A single example of where Wegman actually ‘fabricates’ in such a way that it makes some substantial difference to his outcome would be enough to sway me. Unfortunately, I get ‘file not found’ on your PDF bradley-tree-rings-v20.pdf. Suffice to say, without the side-by-sides, this is all gobbledygook to me.
Reminds me of Lenny Bruce reading court transcripts at his stand-up shows instead of doing comedy. People left.
John Mashey,
I figured out where your PDF is (i.e. the same one linked above http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman-bradley-tree-rings-v20.pdf).
So, it seems again, after cutting through another 1,300+ words, noting your latest key ‘F = direct inversion’, and then noting that in all of this you make but a single actual accusation of ‘F‘, the best you can do is still to complain that Wegman et al. choose to depart from Bradley by following Graybill and Idso 1993 at one point.
Wegman et al write:
“Photosynthetic processes are accelerated with the increased availability of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and, hence, it is conjectured that ring growth would also be correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide; see Graybill and Idso (1993).”
By writing, “see Graybill and Idso 1993,” the reader understands that Wegman et al. are not following Bradley here, but Graybill and Idso. This is pretty normal.
So again, we’ve still got nothing more than some lazy cutting & pasting in a work done for Congress, pro bono.
Is there another example?
Regards, Alex
Alex Harvey, I think you are making a mistake here. There are two ‘F’ accusations in John Mashey’s post. The one you discuss is on page three, but another is listed for page four. This means there are two distinct accusations.
With that said, the accusation you didn’t cover is the same one I discussed in #304. Neither John Mashey, nor anybody else has attempted to show my comments there were mistaken, so I am not inclined to treat this accusations seriously at the moment.
Incidentally John Mashey, you really should not point to pp.213-214 as an example of your work. There are so many minor issues with your highlighting on those pages it makes you look sloppy. As though that wasn’t bad enough, you also failed to copy Wegman’s text correctly. Making an issue of poor editing while making numerous editing errors is pretty silly.
Brandon, I see, there’s F and an F*. So there are two instances, and neither hold up to scrutiny?
The URL in #344 should be the same as in #337, sorry.
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/wegman-bradley-tree-rings-v20.pdf
This might help bring some perspective to the allegations of plagiarism against Wegman in a Congressional Report done pro bono:
‘Plagiarism sleuths tackle full-text biomedical articles‘
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-plagiarism-sleuths-tackle-full-text-biomedical.html
‘We found that most papers are novel, as expected in scientific reporting, but even in papers reporting novel results, certain sections, such as the introduction or methods section, frequently have large amounts of content that appear elsewhere,” said Garner. The researchers went on to explain that the re-use of text in certain sections, such as the methods section of papers, where authors provide details on how the work was done, is not a bad thing because it is important to use the accepted and most consistent techniques. “We also expect that other sections like the results section to be very unique just like the abstract. And this is the case in the overwhelming majority of papers,” said Garner.
The current study revealed that the introduction section tended to be copied the most in similar citations. Also review articles were confirmed as being particularly prone to repetition.’
John Mashey #350,
We found the PDF.
Thanks, Alex
#349 Alex Harvey, I haven’t said that. In fact, I find your argument in #347 completely unconvincing. The text you quoted is not the text John Mashey is referring to. The text he refers to comes in the next paragraph, and there is no indication it is meant to be taken from Graybill and Idso (1973). It seems you have missed his point entirely.
With that said, the document Mashey uses as reference offers absolutely no support for his claims. In the first example, he does not quote Bradley’s textbook to show Wegman inverts anything. Given I do not have the textbook, I cannot scrutinize anything. All I can say is it is a serious claim which currently has no evidence offered for it.
In the second example, the situation is still the same as it was when I described it in #304. I explained how the evidence needed to support his claim regarding the supposed inversion has never been offered, meaning as far as anyone can tell, it is just a case of he and DC misunderstanding the text.
In short, I don’t know if the two claims hold up to scrutiny because Mashey has made no effort to show they are true.
Brandon,
I don’t think I have missed the point.
In the 1,300 word Mashey post above he’s said:
F*: The WR claims tree-rings are ineffective for low-frequency information.
I think that is the conclusion of the Graybill and Idso 1993 paper; see the abstract here: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1993/92GB02533.shtml Although, unfortunately, I can’t get a copy of the paper.
Mashey continues,
Bradley takes several pages to explain how this is done, but is ignored and the WR inverts his expert conclusion.
Okay, and I am saying that Wegman are not “inverting Bradley”; they are just looking at the result of Graybill and Idso 1993 as well, and I think Wegman has made that very clear. Wegman is commenting on a dispute between McIntyre & McKitrick and Mann, Bradley and Hughes, so it is reasonable that he has looked at MM’s references, right?
See also: http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/20/graybill-idso-1993/
Is that clearer or am I still off base?
Best, Alex
Brandon,
Have a look also at Wegman’s Finding #8 (I take it there is no allegation that Finding #8 is ‘plagiarised’…):
“Although we have not addressed the Bristlecone Pines issue extensively in this report except as one element of the proxy data, there is one point worth mentioning. Graybill and Idso (1993) specifically sought to show that Bristlecone Pines were CO2 fertilized. Bondi et al. (1999) suggest [Bristlecones] “are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years as it shows an increasing trend in about 1850 that has been attributed to atmospheric CO2 fertilization.” It is not surprising therefore that this important proxy in MBH98/99 yields a temperature curve that is highly correlated with atmospheric CO2. We also note that IPCC 1996 stated that “the possible confounding effects of carbon dioxide fertilization need to be taken into account when calibrating tree ring data against climate variations.” In addition, as use of fossil fuels has risen, so does the release of oxides of nitrogen into the atmosphere, some of which are deposited as nitrates, that are fertilizer for biota. Thus tree ring growth would be correlated with the deposition of nitrates, which, in turn, would be correlated with carbon dioxide release. There are clearly confounding factors for using tree rings as temperature signals.”
Okay, I think I see my misunderstanding after all.
I thought the instance of ‘inversion’ in question was the sentence in bold italic underline in Mashey’s side by sides
It is clear that while there are temperature signals in the tree rings, the temperature signals are confounded with many other factors including fertilization effects due to use of fossil fuels.
That bit is Graybill/Idso. Mashey is referring to the next paragraph —
Because the early history of tree rings confounds climatic signal with low frequency specimen specific signal, tree rings are not usually effective for accurately determining low frequency, longer term effects.
In my lay understanding, I had concluded these two issues were related. Now I’m not so sure. I think I see your point now.
I’ll go to bed. 🙂
Brandon,
Well, now that I understand the issue I’ve given up and asked Steve McI for his opinion:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/10/12/copygate/#comment-244335
FYI, I do note that no less a figure than Tom Wigley expresses the same view as Wegman et al. in the Climategate email 0839858862.txt (12 Aug 1996) where he says:
“There are other well known proxy data issues that need careful thought […]
(e) Frequency dependence of explained variance—the classic example here is tree rings, where it is exceedingly difficult to get out a credible low frequency (50+ year time scale) message. Work in this area could reap useful rewards.”
I read that in conjunction with your #304, and it may well be that Bradley’s 1999 take on this matter may not have been the final word on the matter, and Wegman and others may have had good reason to consider Bradley’s “If” to be a very big “if”. (And given Wegman’s alternative wording of “usually not”, there may be no actual contradiction anyway.)
So my guess is that this will not turn out to be Wegman et al. ‘fabricating’ anything, although it’ll certainly be nice to see the matter cleared up.
Best, Alex
#354-357 Alex Harvey, I’m glad you figured it out on your own. It really isn’t anything complicated, but the way John Mashey (and Deepclimate?) has approached things certainly makes confusion possible.
Ultimately, the entire issue comes down to the fact accusations are being made without evidence. It appears these accusations are false, based entirely upon the accusers’ failure to comprehend fairly basic text. On the other hand, given that nobody has shown evidence to refute the accusations, it is at least possible they are true.
While in theory people are innocent until proven guilty, in practice this is rarely true. It would seem accusations, regardless of their validity, are enough for Mashey and his cohorts. They have no need to examine things closely, because they are only interested in smearing Wegman. It is basically the same tactic as people who spread rumors to make someone look bad. Even if you can conclusively disprove the claims, the damage will still have been done, and the accusers most likely won’t suffer.
All of this, combined with the fact Mashey has gotten credit for something he didn’t do in one of the largest papers in the country, is all too absurd for me. That it seems practically nobody cares is too disgusting for me.
Brandon,
I’ll tell you that I certainly find this whole thing very ugly and upsetting.
My partner recently submitted a university accounting essay that was scored by the automatic plagiarism detection system as 39% plagiarised. I was alarmed, and asked her won’t this be a problem? She didn’t think so, because she is Chinese and it is very difficult for Chinese people to see this sort of thing as unethical — because in Chinese culture it just isn’t.
I suspect we have something very similar with Yasmin Said, although I am not sure of her nationality. Perhaps I risk being accused of racism by asking this question, but I think it’s possibly worth asking about whether the same ethics with respect to plagiarism exists in her original culture.
I also think the article I posted above about the biomedical research deserves wider audience. It seems that these researchers are trying to set a baseline for what is normal in scientific publishing.
Of course, as you say, everyone seems to have lost interest in this issue now. The caravan has moved on?
Best, Alex
They’ve moved on, save that the same accusations will be repeated whenever Wegman’s report gets mentioned. “Alarmists” will dismiss the report when it is brought up as having been “debunked,” even though none of them will really understand the accusations against Wegman.
The same thing has happened with numerous other issues, such as decentered PC calculation and Prisendorf’s Rule N. Mashey and Deepclimate have given people a talking point which can be used to “refute” Wegman’s report, meaning they don’t have to worry, or even think, about it any more.
I think it would be fascinating if a supporter of global warming claims would actually sit down and discuss all the various ways in which science has been abused in order to defend alarmist claims.
I guess the caravan hasn’t moved on, perhaps because it was an oncoming train and people insisted on standing on the tracks despite warnings this was a bad idea. I am afraid there was a lot of Dunning-Kruger in this thread regarding the non-existence of plagiarism.
Experts have a different view:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climate-report-questioned_N.htm
Wegman added, “I will say that there is a lot of speculation and conspiracy theory in John Mashey’s analysis which is simply not true… These attacks are unprecendented in my 42 years as an academic and scholar. We are not the bad guys and we have never intended that our Congressional testimony was intended to take intellectual credit for any aspect of paleoclimate reconstruction science or for any original research aspect of social network analysis.”
It’s nice to see at least some space being given to Wegman’s side, even if Mashey’s ridiculous description of his work is left unquestioned.
Mashey, this is really pathetic. You are all puffed because….your friends in certain media circles took your stuff seriously,without asking you a few simple questions.
Well, considering how white-washing has been the precedent when it comes to university-launched investigations, I predict that GMU will absolve Wegman.
Either way, it will be proof of the conspiracy!
laursaurus: absolving Wegman?
Well, GMU has been trying to avoid the whole thing. But you might want to check:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/11/wegman-report-round-up/1
The last sentence about Dahlberg and the Office of Research Integrity is actually rather important. Those unfamiliar with ORI (I’d speculate: most posters in this thread) might want to learn.
ORI can debar a researcher, meaning no Federal funds for years, and not just for DHHS, but from *any* Federal source. They can recover misused funds. Although they have not yet done it, they actually have the power to debar an *institution* if it doesn’t handle misconduct well. I doubt that will happen (since it is in effect an institutional death sentence for a place might be trouble beyond Wegman&Said. No university messes with ORI; academic friends of mine shudder at the mere idea.
(I’d speculate: most posters in this thread)
?
Mashey, my suggestion would be stop further embarrassing yourself.
Shub, my suggestion would be to offer more constructive unsollicited advices.
Tell Mashey what he does that embarrases him. Tell him why it does embarass him. Tell him how it makes you feel when he says that.
Tell Mashey how he could stop embarassing himself. Ask him questions. Offer him ways to improve his research. Spot factual errors, spellcheck him, whatever.
If you’re to give non-sollicited advice, at least be constructive.
I learnt to behave like this looking at warmists, at this very blog.
Mashey, you do not know who is reading or posting on this thread, but you have thought it prudent to speculate about their intelligence and/or awareness of information relevant to your case.
Mashey is posting opinions about the audience of this thread/blog in an open forum. These opinions are irrelevant to his case; in other words, this is called trolling. I dont think it is a good idea to provide long constructive suggestions to counter acts of trolling and baiting.
Shub,
Your first sentence is a tu quoque.
Your second sentence miscontrues what Mashey said: he was assuming that most posters were unfamiliar with ORI, and these might want to learn. This has nothing to do with intelligence.
If you want to make a case about trolling, go for it.
re: #369 Willard
Yes, you are correct. Many posters in this thread have shown very strong opinions about plagiarism that strongly contradict those at ORI, whose opinions actually count in the real world, for reasons I described. As you note, this has nothing to do with intelligence, although it might relate to Dunning-Kruger-affliction on this topic. Regardless of how smart one is or isn’t, people can visit the ORI website and learn, if they wish to. Lack of knowledge is curable, if one wishes. if not, then perhaps DK can be inferred for the specific topic.
Mashey,
You cannot put together a coherent case for why the so-called plagiarism you have observed is important, but you have explicitly spelt out why those observations have been framed as plagiarism by you, i.e., to exact academic punitive measures, given as how such charges are viewed by institutions in the ‘real world’. This is quite interesting indeed.
You then aver that the very fact that an university is investigating charges of plagiarism to substantiate your original contention that the said charges of plagiarism are substantive.
This is circular argument.
I wish you the very best in your ventures playing academic hitman. I am reminded every now and then why I post using a pseudonym.
John Mashey.
Allowing for the moment that all your accusations about copying and pasting boilerplate are true, can you simply answer one question.
Exactly how does this effect, in any way, the findings of the report?
> Exactly how does this effect, in any way, the findings of the report?
This question presupposes that there must be an effect on these **findings**. The relevance of this question begs to be asked.
What are these findings exactly, btw?
Here is an example of a discussion that might have some effect on some of these **findings**:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/08/17/wegmans-trick-to-hide-the-exclusion/
Interested readers will find some relevant discussion on some of these **findings** therein:
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/wegman-report/
Following the relevant WP threads by exploring the categories is easy and fun!
There are lots of other resources available.
JohnB:
First, just to be clear, the experts say rather firm things:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climate-report-questioned_N.htm
SSWR = http://deepclimate.org/2010/09/26/strange-scholarship-wegman-report/
Second,of course the plagiarism alone does not directly affect the findings, even if it is generally a credibility-wrecker. My report grew to 250 pages because I found so many problems beyond plagiarism that I ended up studying *every* page, and basically, the Wegman report is essentially worthless. I’ll be happy to hear *informed* arguments otherwise, like if you’ve studied some section of the WR, and the corresponding section of SSWR. As I said, there are bound to be mistakes (and omissions!) and there will be at least one update, and I’ll fix errors.
If you actually *look* at SSWR, see the ToC on p.2.
Most of the plagiarism material is in W.2.3 (11 pages) and W.11 (61 pages), with some scattered references elsewhere. So maybe 70 or 250 pages is plagiarism, and the only reason for that was the 50 pages that does the side-by-sides for Summaries. In retrospect, that might have been a separate file.
The plagiarism is just the obvious tip of the iceberg, and as with the Titanic, the really bad stuff is below the surface.
The Wegman report’s findings are at best vacuous (climate scientists should work with statisticians: I am so impressed – that’s like telling 20-year software-engineering veterans that bugs are bad), often totally incompetent. Much of what they say is simply wrong, dismissive of modern physics, or repearted long-debunked memes. Some of it is almost certainly fabricated or falsified, although exactly which is sometimes ambiguous. It doesn’t matter, as FFP = falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, and any one of them is deadly.
Google: ffp falsification
In W.4 (p0.134-), I claimed that “The WR contains no actual new statistical analysis of MBH itself, just reworks of MM material.”
But it turns out I understated how bad it was: see DC’s current findings, including the amazing 1% cherry-pick.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/
Mashey,
You say it yourself. The charges of ‘plagiarism’ are non-substantive to the content of the report’s findings. But these charges are nevertheless pursued and very useful, because they can be ‘deadly’.
Your conclusion that the Wegman report is ‘worthless’ is your opinion, and your assessment. This of course, refers to the content of the report and the issue then is no more a simple one, it just relates to the spectrum of opinions held on the hockeystick debate. These have no relation to the plagiarism charges, but that non-substantive angle has now taken on a life of its own.
The Wegman report is plagiarized, politicized, worthless and vacuous. Which one shall I pick to attack this influential report? Hmmmm…let me run the plagiarism angle because that is likeliest to fetch me maximum returns, seeing as how bar for that seems to be so low.
JohnB:
Oops, I knew I forgot one thing.I couldn’t tell from your wording. If you have even the slightest doubts about the plagiarism, 3 experts (Paul Ginsparg, Skip Garner, Rob Coleman) were mentioned in
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climate-report-questioned_N.htm
Email to any or all of them, politely express your reservations, and if that changes their minds, ask them to send me an email saying so. Of course, busy people (and they are) may or may not reply directly to unsolicited emails from people they don’t know. However, as we have exchanged emails since the USA Today article, they know where to find me.
I’m accumulating updates for SSWR (as much additional information has appeared since September), and if any of them says something different and says I can publish it, I’ll include it, as the USA Today articles will certainly get added.
So the answer is “no” then?