I hadn’t noticed at the time, but Daren Jonescu had an interesting essay last month on Judge Green’s denial of our anti-SLAPP motions.
63 thoughts on “Mark Steyn, Me And Galileo”
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I hadn’t noticed at the time, but Daren Jonescu had an interesting essay last month on Judge Green’s denial of our anti-SLAPP motions.
Comments are closed.
It is now, apparently, legally dangerous to question this theory
Accusing someone of fraud and scientific misconduct goes a ways beyond questioning a theory.
If the truth is that Mann’s work is fraudulent, then calling him a fraud and accusing him of scientific misconduct is correct. Just as accusing you of being an unthinking hack is also correct.
“If the truth is that Mann’s work is fraudulent,”
Well the scientific community doesn’t see it that way.
In order to show something is a fraud, you need to show more then some
minor typo or picky hair splitting on some 5th order math term,
you need to show that something is a material misrepresentation
made for gain.
Rand has accused Dr Mann of being a fraud, well, and NRO have the
opportunity to prove it.
Rand has accused Dr Mann of being a fraud
I see you continue to have trouble with reading comprehension.
well, I guess the judge or jury will be making a decision
on what you meant.
What, exactly, is the distinction between “molesting and torturing data” and committing scientific fraud?
In order to show something is a fraud, you need to show more then some minor typo or picky hair splitting on some 5th order math term, you need to show that something is a material misrepresentation made for gain.
Indeed. The motion to dismiss the lawsuit was kabuki theater. It is done to satisfy the legal insurance guys. Now the fun part begins. This is going to go to trial, and the discovery process is going to rip the whole global warming scam wide open.
The whole world is going to see this – Mark Steyn has a worldwide audience.
We already know through the climategate emails that data was intentionally mishandled to produced a predetermined result (hide the decline). We already know that dubious statistical methods were used to produce the hockey stick graph, the cornerstone of An Inconvenient Truth and IPCC – methods that will produce a hockey stick even if the input is white noise.
We already know that governments worldwide have siphoned trillions of dollars from the world economy for the global warming cause, and that people such as Mann and Phil Jones directly benefited from the grant money going through their hands.
And we already know that *none* of the climate models have predicted the last fifteen years of cooling, all while their promoters assure us that they just know what the climate will be like 100 years from now. That’s not fifth-order, that’s first order.
Given all that, and the fact that Penn State whitewashed both Sandusky and Mann, do you seriously think that Mann has a hope in Hades of winning his suit? And when he loses, what then?
well there will be a trial or a settlement..
We already know through the climategate emails that data was intentionally mishandled to produced a predetermined result (hide the decline).
You think you know this, but at least a half-dozen high-profile official investigations of those emails has reached the opposite conclusion. What makes you so sure that a judge is going to believe Rand and Steyn instead of those investigations? To prove that Mann committed scientific misconduct Rand and Steyn have to convince the judge that Mann’s fraud was missed or covered up by all those official investigations — a very tall order.
You may be very sure that there’s a vast AGW conspiracy suppressing the truth, and that’s a popular argument in some political circles, but not every judge will come into the case with such a paranoid mindset.
To prove that Mann committed scientific misconduct Rand and Steyn have to convince the judge that Mann’s fraud was missed or covered up by all those official investigations — a very tall order.
It’s actually quite simple, if the judge isn’t stupid, since it is in fact true. Most of the “official” investigations were not true investigations. That was, in fact, the point of the original blog post.
It’s actually quite simple, if the judge isn’t stupid, since it is in fact true.
And the judge who dismissed the SLAPP motion was stupid?
Even if it were true that Mann’s fraud was missed or covered up by all those investigations, it is no simple thing to overcome the presumption of competence that judges accord to establishment organs. You’re asking the judge to rule that you and Steyn, two laypeople, have a better grasp on the quality of Mann’s work than do Penn State, the EPA, NOAA, NSF, et al — that you’ve found the malfeasance that all of them managed to miss. Why would a judge want to do that?
I have no trouble believing that you’ll win because Mann wasn’t really harmed, or because your post was just humor, or because you really believed what you wrote regardless of its veracity. But if you think a judge is going to buy a truth defense, declare Mann a data molesting fraud, and label all his investigators dupes or accomplices, you are dreaming.
And the judge who dismissed the SLAPP motion was stupid?
I have no comment, and I didn’t say that.
if you think a judge is going to buy a truth defense, declare Mann a data molesting fraud, and label all his investigators dupes or accomplices, you are dreaming.
I think that’s unlikely, unless it actually goes to trial.
that you’ve found the malfeasance that all of them managed to miss
Jim, the malfeasance was found by several people, including Steve McIntyre. All the defendants in this case need to do is present it.
Yes, that’s what’s so amusingly stupid about all this. In the blog post itself, I linked and cited all of the critiques of the “investigations,” from McIntyre, Lindzen, and others. We don’t have to make the case ourselves — all we have to do at trial is rinse and repeat.
“…methods that will produce a hockey stick even if the input is white noise.”
Well, red noise anyway. But, still noise.
Jim
August 23, 2013, 5:04 am
“…at least a half-dozen high-profile official investigations of those emails has reached the opposite conclusion.”
Whether true or not, it is immaterial. It only matters if Rand believed it to be true.
“Well the scientific community doesn’t see it that way.”
You are not “the scientific community”. You are a member of The Church. And, The Church, if you recall, did not see epicycles as “unthinking hackery” either.
Just remember that the limits you manage to impose on free speech today will be used against you tomorrow. And, technological progress will suffer for it.
I don’t believe Galileo ever referred to Pope Paul as a pedophile rapist
or in any context like that or as a religious fraud.
Since no one referred to Professor Mann as a pedophile rapist, I fail to see the point of your ignorant comment.
Well isn’t your dispute essentially the basis of your lawsuit? You state
“no one referred to Professor Mann as a pedophile rapist” while
still calling him the “Jerry Sandusky of Climate Science”.
I believe that forms the basis for the first claim in the lawsuit.
The reference was to how his behavior was whitewashed by the university, not his sexual behavior or predilections. If you’d actually read what I wrote, and were capable of comprehending basic English, you’d understand that.
Your claim that Mann molests and tortures data is not about the university’s “whitewash”, it’s a direct accusation of scientific misconduct on Mann’s part, presented in sexual language for extra oomph. “I didn’t call Mann a pedophile, I only drew a parallel to Jerry Sandusky and called Mann a data molester” isn’t a very persuasive rebuttal.
” If you’d actually read what I wrote, and were capable of comprehending basic English, you’d understand that.”
Is that the rebuttal argument you made to Judge Green?
Maybe the appellate division will be able to see that.
Is that the rebuttal argument you made to Judge Green?
No.
“…isn’t a very persuasive rebuttal.
It is to me. How do you construct an objective metric for this?
Since when is “torture” sexual language? It seems weird to me to have that frame of reference…
Since when is “torture” sexual language?
I think that Jim is giving us TMI about his own sexual predilections.
What surprised me was that if anyone was going to file a lawsuit over the analogy, why wasn’t it Jerry Sandusky? Equating him to Michael Mann slanders his ethics, integrity, and his statistical abilities, a crucial professional skill for any top level assistant coach and one that strikes at the heart of his competency on the field.
No, he just mocked Pope Urban VIII by publishing a satire in which Urban’s geocentric arguments were placed in the mouth of a buffoon called “Simplicio”. Since Urban had previously kept the Inquisition off Galileo’s back, this lese majeste directly provoked the heresy trial.
Thank you! It pays to know your history before making speculative comments like dcguy.
The exact same people who “cleared” Jerry Sandusky are the people who “cleared” Mann. It is not beyond the pale to suggest that they did an equally thorough job with both men.
well, it is likely we will see what the judge says on that question soon enough.
The exact same people who “cleared” Jerry Sandusky are the people who “cleared” Mann.
No, that is completely wrong. Mann was cleared by a committee consisting of:
Henry C. Foley, Ph.D., Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School
Alan W. Scaroni, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Research, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
Ms. Candice A. Yekel, M.S., CIM, Director, Office for Research Protections Research Integrity Officer
None of those people had anything to do with investigating (or, rather, deciding not to investigate) Jerry Sandusky.
You are basically arguing that if a university has administrators (in this case an athletic director and VP for finance) that cover up sexual abuse by a coach, then the integrity of the university’s entire academic faculty is in doubt.
But they were all people with an interest in supporting Penn State. Just as were the people who shielded Sandusky.
Yes, we should all have faith in a demonstrably corrupt institution’s investigation of itself. I can see why you like that, since it seems to be the Obama administration’s MO as well.
well you appear to have two choices in the defense of the case
1) What I said is true, Mann is a fraud and a lowlife, worse then
sandusky.
or
2) It’s a joke, opinion, just a little rough and tumble in politics
There is always the third options which is “Nobody would ever take what I say seriously, because my reputation is so bad, as to bear no weight”
It appears the motions filed to date were mostly of the “Fair debate” theory.
I guess as the case moves downstream, you will switch to the “It’s true” defense.
they were all people with an interest in supporting Penn State
That would be just as true no matter where Mann worked. If that’s your argument, there’s no reason to mention Sandusky at all, other than a sleazy attempt to smear Mann by association.
Sandusky’s actions were covered up by Tim Curley and Gary Schultz. Mann’s work was cleared by Foley, Scaroni and Yekel, along with people outside Penn State altogether (at the EPA, NSF, NOAA, etc.). Curley and Schultz’s actions — for which they were fired, and face criminal charges — tell you exactly nothing about the ethics of Foley, Scaroni and Yekel, and exactly nothing about the validity of Mann’s scientific work.
You are basically arguing that if a university has administrators (in this case an athletic director and VP for finance) that cover up sexual abuse by a coach, then the integrity of the university’s entire academic faculty is in doubt.
Why shouldn’t it be in doubt?
What did the Penn State faculty ever do to put the integrity of every one of its members in doubt?
What did the Penn State faculty
Penn State faculty != university administrators. Penn State University administrators starting with the president of the university whitewashed a real crime with the committee that supposed analyzed the Sandusky case. That put that process and the integrity of everyone involved into doubt.
Mann was subject to the same lightweight, biased inspection.
whitewashed a real crime with the committee that supposed analyzed the Sandusky case
Sandusky wasn’t investigated by a Penn State committee. An assistant coach told Paterno what he saw, Paterno told Curley and Schultz, and Curley and Schultz decided to keep it quiet. There was no investigation, no committee, no report.
Mann, by contrast, was formally investigated by faculty deans, who issued a public report on the results of their investigation.
Mann was subject to the same lightweight, biased inspection.
The only thing the two situation had in common was that they happened at Penn State, a university that employs thousands.
Of course Mann was also investigated by the EPA, NSF, NOAA, a committee of the UK parliament, and the University of East Anglia. Mann’s published work has been subject to peer review, and decades of criticism and public debate. The fact that he worked at the same institution as Jerry Sandusky is utterly irrelevant to an evaluation of the quality of his work.
Of course Mann was also investigated by the EPA, NSF, NOAA, a committee of the UK parliament, and the University of East Anglia.
Note that with the possible exception of the UK parliament, all of those organizations have a vested interest in protecting Mann’s research – because “climate change” is where the research funding and status is. I’ve mentioned before your inability to understand conflicts of interest. Here’s another example. Mann gets investigation a huge number of times by many organizations that have conflicts of interest that invalidate their investigations. It would have been better to be investigated once by an organization without such conflicts of interest.
For what it’s worth, with this lawsuit it is possible that Mann will finally get investigated by someone who doesn’t have such a stake.
If that list of (supposedly) impressive credentials was supposed to convince me, it failed. If any of them had had a credential involving real life, then I would be impressed.
Your defensiveness about credentials has lead you to miss the point. The point isn’t that these are impressive people — PhDs are a dime a dozen at a research university. The point is that their credentials and job titles (which I simply copied from their report) identify them as nerdy professional academics, i.e. people who had nothing to do with overseeing the Penn State football program.
Yes, and they probably don’t blink an eye when illiterate running backs get A’s in their advanced courses.
” If any of them had had a credential involving real life, then I would be impressed.”
While Ivory Tower academics are often ill suited for really basic life skills, like coaching a pee-wee football team or organizing the block party or maintaining a marriage,etc,,, Very little real life skills
teach you how to do an t-test on a statistical sample or run the R-square correlation, or how to weight 15 different data sets so you can do a meta-analysis.
Climate science like Geology, astronomy, astro-physics suffers from sparse data sets and inconvenient locations of measurements. Yet somehow it’s considered a branch of science just like Physics or chemistry. It’s problematic not being able to do controlled studies, so, you build a model and back test it (Which suffers from confirmation bias) you forward test it, and you hunt for sources of error.
If the Mann suit goes to trial, Mann’s academic papers will be submitted, to experts, in stat analysis, climate science and Geology and maybe meteorology. They will review the datasets, the methodologies, and comment on wether that is the
accepted methods sufficient to enter into court.
You can’t have a couple of regular guys look at that data and say “Well it’s a fraud”, you are going to need either people with credentials or people who are self taught experts capable of withstanding examination by the judge and then get them in.
I suppose you could get some of the climate skeptics out there with some skillsets, but, you would need to have them then examine the data and show where the fraud is.
Not every scientist agrees with every element of the community,
I believe Einstein had real problems with Quantum Mechanics and
he added a cosmological constant to his field equations because he had real issues with an expanding universe.
I think Rand, NRO and CEI need to find not only a few experts but they will need to show that Mann is engaged in fraud and a lot more then a few typos here and there.
Who is going to testify for Rand and Mark Steyn that
Mann is an academic fraud?
I didn’t call him an academic fraud. But I could bring in a math professor from UCLA who would testify that he doesn’t understand statistics.
I didn’t call him an academic fraud
You said he molested data. That’s academic fraud. Steyn was more explicit, calling Mann’s work fraudulent.
No, it’s not. Don’t give up your day job to be a lawyer.
What I did is called hyperbolic rhetoric. It is protected by the First Amendment, particularly with respect to a public figure.
The individuals involved may be different, but both groups are acting in the capacity as representatives of the University, with the same full resources of the University behind them in their efforts.
By this logic any internal review, at any institution, is automatically a whitewash, because of course the institution will want itself to look good, and of course every member of an institution will be totally dedicated to the interests of the institution. Which makes you wonder why anyone would even bother. But out here in the real world internal reviews routinely do find fault (you may recall a recent IRS inspector general’s report).
Steyn and Rand’s argument comes down to: two Penn State administrators covered up Jerry Sandusky’s crimes at Penn State, therefore the actions of all of Penn State’s thousands of other employees are automatically suspect, because they’re all part of the same institution.
This sort of guilt by tenuous association proves entirely too much. The GOP governor of Virginia is clearly corrupt; does that mean that all Virginia Republicans are corrupt? That all Republicans are corrupt? That all Virginia state employees are corrupt? Of course not.
By this logic any internal review, at any institution, is automatically a whitewash,
I see the problem. You don’t understand logic.
It’s the “you just called him Hitler!!!” argument. Someone makes a stupidly incorrect generalization, like “he’s not a bad person because he’s German”, or “he’s not a bad person because he became a vegetarian” or “he’s not a bad person because the Penn State administration didn’t find a problem”, but it’s rhetorically dangerous to point out the obvious counterexample, because the people who were dumb enough to come up with a grossly incorrect “∀x: p(x) ⇒ q(x)” aren’t going to understand all the implications and non-implications of “(p(y) ∧ ¬q(y)) ⇒ ¬(∀x: p(x) ⇒ q(x))”, and when they try to anyway the best they can parse out of what you said is some distortion like “r(y) = r(x)”.
Ha! Nice use of symbols for a blog comment! But go ahead and spell it out — what do you think p and q are in this case?
I just want to repeat the excellent comment above by Mitch:
Jim and dcguy: How can you not see that you guys are on the side of The Church?
No, I’m not even sure Mann should win his suit. But Rand is no Galileo. Galileo was a scientist fighting for his right to argue for a scientific theory; Rand is a lay bystander fighting for his right to smear Mann by association with Sandusky and accuse Mann of imagined fraud. Maybe there should be freedom for a layperson to go around accusing scientists of “molesting and torturing data” without any proof, simply because you don’t like the political implications of their work and would rather believe that it’s fraudulent. But that’s a long, long way from Galileo.
Maybe there should be freedom for a layperson to go around accusing scientists of “molesting and torturing data” without any proof,
Without any proof? The proof of collusion to produce a predetermined result in the climategate emails wasn’t enough for you? The fact that none of the climate models based on Mann’s work have correctly predicted the last 15 years’ temperatures? That the theory of CO2-driven greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility isn’t enough for you?
Oh well, the discovery process will show all of Mann’s data, methodology, and correspondence related to such.
“That the theory of CO2-driven greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility isn’t enough for you?”
Um Arhennius and Fourier worked this out in the 19th century.
Besides not knowing the name of the person, you also don’t seem to understand science or hypothesis. If you wish to argue that you do; then keep in mind that Arrhenius also concluded that warmer climates would be better for humans and that humans could be even better if we cleansed ourselves of certain bad genes as seen in certain races.
Alas, Arrhenius was proven wrong about the cause of ice ages. And its apparent that models based on his equations are ineffectual in predicting climate changes, so I don’t think his theory on the greenhouse effect is holding up well at all.
Molecular weight of the most common molecules in Earth’s atmosphere:
H2O: 18
N2: 28
O2: 32
Ar: 40
CO2: 44
On Earth, is the CO2 going to collect in the upper atmosphere or close to the ground?
“Maybe there should be freedom for a layperson to go around accusing scientists of “molesting and torturing data” without any proof, simply because you don’t like the political implications of their work and would rather believe that it’s fraudulent.”
Without conceding Rand’s motivation or evidentiary basis, there already is freedom for that. Mann et al. want to take it away. Is that really what you want?
Some advice from a guy who’s been around the block a few times: Never, ever, ever willfully give up any of your freedoms. You may find yourself in need of them.
Rand still has his freedom of speech, but, where speech crosses
into defamation, well, sometimes you end up writing a check.
I guess rand is claiming that these articles were “Hyperbolic Rhetoric”
and as such, not subject to usual limits because it’s opinion and it’s
not really something people would really on.
So far, the judge hasn’t seen it that way.
I guess the next question is Do you want a Jury trial?
Is this a case you want to argue in front of a judge or a jury?
“…where speech crosses
into defamation, well, sometimes you end up writing a check.”
Not for public figures like Mann. Not in this country. Pack up your jackboots and take them somewhere else.
simply because you don’t like the political implications of their work
“Simply”? Jim, what you’re doing here is far from simple. You’re trying to play devils advocate with a half-grin. Alfred E. Newman you’re not.
If there is anyone here that’s operating in political mode, it is you.