“…were [Mann] to prevail in the upcoming Mann vs Steyn trial of the century at the DC Superior Court, it would be the biggest setback for the First Amendment in the half-century since New York Times vs Sullivan.”
A brief history of the case to date, from Mark Steyn.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the university, Mann, and secrecy.
[Update a while later]
“Don’t start deleting those emails just yet, Mikey“:
One thing the order does is give the green light to the University of Virginia to crank up the incinerator for the biggest destruction of research material in a critical area of public policy – not to mention what my old colleague at the Telegraph in London, Christopher Booker, called the other day “the worst scientific scandal of our generation”. Before they grab the matches and gasoline, however, please note that my lawyers have requested a lot of the same material for Mann’s defamation suit against me. I’ll have more to say about this later today.
We’ll see.
I’m more than 90% confident that more than 97% of all scientists and layman alike agree that when Mark Steyn says he’ll have more to say, the trend of the past two decades supports his scenario and the forecast has very high confidence of being correct.
Dammit, I left out “robust” !
It would surely go down in the annals of hubris if Mann lost his chance to destroy incriminating materials by his own lawfare tactics, and their release brought him to ruin.
That would be awfully funny.
Can you imagine taking the work of Newton or DaVinci to the incinerator to destroy it, so nobody could actually review what they did and use it? I can only imagine if this was great work, the thing would be to archive it until it could proudly be displayed in an academic library. I’m thinking now this isn’t great work.
Mann vs. Simberg et al is also a test of science. If it goes to trial, it should be the equivalent of the Scopes trial. And no matter the verdict, some people will think science has won.