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Inspector General Investigated For Muzzling Inconvenient Science
Layzej writes "Federal biologist Charles Monnett was placed on administrative leave July 18 pending final results of an inspector general's investigation into integrity issues. The investigation originally focused on a 2006 note published in Polar Biology based on a unique observation of four dead polar bears. The investigators acknowledged that they had no formal training in science, but later demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of science, the peer review process, and at times basic math with questions like 'seven of what number is 11 percent?' They also expressed concern over the fact that the note was reviewed by Monnett's wife prior to submitting the paper for peer review. When nothing turned up, the investigation turned towards Monnett's role in administering research contracts. But documents released by PEER, a watchdog and whistle-blower protection group, suggest even that investigation is off base. Monnett has since been reinstated, albeit in a different position. Now the IG handling of this case is itself under investigation following a PEER complaint that the IG is violating new Interior Department scientific integrity rules."
They're a lobbying group for public servants who work in environmental fields, with a very obvious stake in the outcome of this case. It'd be like the American Petroleum Institute complaining about the BP investigation.
"The investigation originally focused on a 2006 note published in Polar Biology based on a unique observation of four dead polar bears. The investigators acknowledged that they had no formal training in science"
So the headline would be "Dead Polar Bears had no formal science training"
We must ensure better education for the bears so they can understand the climate changes and so adapt to the conditions.
This proves it! It's all a lie. Fox news is right! ;)
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. Well, thats a nothing. Um,
23 yeah, 10.8. And then we said, um, four dead – four swimming
24 polar bears were encountered on these transects, in addition
25 to three.
26 ERIC MAY: Three dead polar bears?
1 CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, three dead.
2 ERIC MAY: Right.
3 CHARLES MONNETT: But the four swimming were a week earlier.
4 ERIC MAY: Okay.
5 CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, then we said if they accurately
6 reflect 11 percent of the bears present so, in other words,
7 theyre just distributed randomly, so we looked at 11 percent
8 of the area.
9 ERIC MAY: In that transect?
10 CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
11 ERIC MAY: Right.
12 CHARLES MONNETT: In, in our, in our area there, um –
13 ERIC MAY: Right.
14 CHARLES MONNETT: – and, therefore, we should have seen
15 11 percent of the bears. Then you just invert that, and you
16 come up with, um, nine times as many. So thats where you get
17 the 27, nine times three.
18 ERIC MAY: Where does the nine come from?
19 CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, well 11 percent is one-ninth of
20 100 percent. Nine times 11 is 99 percent. Is that, is that
21 clear?
22 ERIC MAY: Well, now, seven of 11 – seven of what number is
23 11 percent? Shouldnt that be – thats 63, correct?
24 CHARLES MONNETT: What?
25 ERIC MAY: So you said this is –
26 CHARLES MONNETT: Seven/11ths this is –
1 ERIC MAY: No, no, no, no, no. This, this is, this is 11 –
2 seven is what number of 11 percent?
3 CHARLES MONNETT: Seven?
4 ERIC MAY: Yeah.
5 CHARLES MONNETT: Is what number of 11 percent?
6 ERIC MAY: Eleven percent, right.
7 CHARLES MONNETT: Well, I dont know. I dont even know
8 what youre talking about. It makes no sense.
9 LYNN GIBSON: I think what hes saying is since theres four
10 swimming and three dead, that makes –
11 ERIC MAY: And three dead.
12 CHARLES MONNETT: Well, you dont count them all together.
13 That doesnt have anything to do. You cant – that doesnt
14 even –
15 LYNN GIBSON: So youre not saying that the seven represent
16 11 percent of the population.
17 CHARLES MONNETT: Theyre different events.
The confusion here seems to be about what metrics are being used. It looks like the IG people didn't look at things in much detail before the interview which is clearly bad. But if I'm reading this correctly the actual context of the 11 percent line seems to be a unit confusion of an easy form to occur if one isn't that used to handling percentages and isn't actually writing things down. The section does make the IG look pretty bad and like they haven't done their research. But it doesn't look as incredibly bad as the summary suggests.
Seven of ~1.571428... percent is 11 percent. What shittily-worded question.
Your text doesn't make sense.
7 of 63.6... is 11 percent. If it shall be an integer, 7 of 64 is the best approximation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Is it just my contrariness, or does "Inspector General" sound remarkably similar to "Holy Inquisition"?
No, it doesn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_General#United_States
In the United States, an Inspector General (IG) leads an organization charged with examining the actions of a government agency, military organization, or military contractor as a general auditor of their operations to ensure they are operating in compliance with generally established policies of the government, to audit the effectiveness of security procedures, or to discover the possibility of misconduct, waste, fraud, theft, or certain types of criminal activity by individuals or groups related to the agency's operation, usually involving some misuse of the organization's funds or credit. In the United States, there are numerous Offices of Inspector General (OIGs) at the federal, state, and local levels.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It is a weird question, though. It doesn't say "Seven is 11 percent of what number?" It says "Seven of what number is 11%?" The AC may have been correct. Seven of 1.571428 is close to 11. It's not a percent though, other than a percent of one hundred. Maybe the answer is 0.01571428, seven of which would yield a result close to 0.11, which is 11 percent, right?
"What are you doing here, Elijah?"
'seven of what number is 11 percent?'
Is that way of asking the question confusing to anyone else? Guaranteed if someone asked me that out loud I would wallow in confusion. It's taken me several times reading it to figure it out even here, I believe they are asking .11 * x = 7, which I would have phrased in words as '7 is 11% of what number?' Maybe in other parts of the country people talk like that, but it sounds very awkward to me.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What's odd in this case is there there's so little respect for science and the scientists that do it. and the idea that the government should hire its own scientists is just absurd - scientists need to report to an academic institution. the interview demonstrates that the agency involved (and this Eric May character) has a giant axe to grind - a political agenda.
agenda is corrosive to science.
but why do so many people feel that they're being misled by scientists? is it just that they don't want to believe what science says?
it's also kind of appalling that they still do these transects with some guys in a bush plane: no continual video record, no constant gps track, etc.
If you click through the links in the Summit County Voice articles that have been covering this story, you get to
"Feds may be muzzling scientist over Arctic research":
It's obvious what's going on here. The Interior Department, which under Bush/Cheney took cocaine and hookers from drilling, other oil and other energy corps who are supposed to pay (minimal) royalties to the Department, is totally corrupt. That is the agency that pretended to regulate BP and other drillers, allowing the Mocambo blowout to poison the Gulf last year (and generally, in less reported ongoing operations). Obama hasn't worked hard enough to replace the crooks running that department. But it's much harder when the Senate's Republican minority abuses the filibuster to block any useful replacement of the crooks, installed by Bush/Cheney when Republicans had the monopoly over all 3 branches. Specifically here Republican senator James Inhofe, paramount climate change denier, is wrangling the scientist witchhunt to protect the oil corps. Not to mention the lockstep loyalty Republicans practice in opposition to anything Obama does. Especially when it might interfere with oil corps' vast, subsidized profits protected from the consequences of their epic destruction.
I don't know why we even have to ask "who's responsible?" Of course it's the oil corps and their wholly owned assets in the government. The government should run real investigations, try and convict the people making and executing these plans. Then anyone asking the question will have to be an obvious employee of the oil corps, making their living by trying to make it somehow questionable who's doing this to us.
--
make install -not war
"The people want their cars. Cars are more than a means of transport - they are a symbol of freedom."
Indeed. I was on a mailing list back in the 90s that had a member who would go wonderfully and entertainingly ballistic when someone would mention the benefits and convenience of public transit, particularly in cities.
This person was, of course, your bog standard libertarian schmuckwad. Rather a racist, too, as his comments about buses and subways being "dirty and smelly, due to the dirty and smelly people that used them".
Mentioning the money saved from no need for insurance, gas, oil, maintenance, parking, et al, would send him into a frenzy about freedom to go where he wanted, when he wanted, while us socialists were content to wait for a bus or subway was proof positive that we were, in fact socialists.
I must confess that I found poking the schmuckwad with a stick periodically was greatly entertaining. The fact that I lived in Boston (and still do) merely added to his outrage.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
As to your point 3. theshowmecanuck is probably right. The US is them main source of climate change denial, simply because it is well trained in scientific denial. The country is set up to make people think how you want them to think. It seems that climate change denial is even bigger in the US than evolution denial. It's funny, how the country that's doing most of the fundamental research is so willfully ignorant. The American paradox.
The paradox is I think caused because at this day and age, there are two types of people in the US. The ones just moving in, searching for freedom to do what they're good at, and the ones that are there, feeling entitled, and actually, not good for anything. The US is losing its pizzazz, probably because they are becoming just another corrupt country. Maybe a solution for the US would be the following rule: fourth generation Americans are considered to be native Americans. As tradition demands, native Americans are stripped of their possessions and put into a reservation. That defines America.
This is a terrible submission. There is a link to a 96 page transcript. I'm guessing it's a deposition, as there is allusion to consequential perjury charges if the interviewees are found to be lying. No summary of the bulk of its contents is given. It is being used as material evidence for some lame jokes at the expense of the Interior Department.
It's a classic fishing expedition. But it clearly demonstrates that Monnett's counsel willingly let them go on that fishing expedition, and I'm left wondering why. One of the lawyers present on this transcript says this on p. 83:
We've been at this for an 1 hour and 45 minutes, and I'm curious, are we going to get to the allegations of scientific misconduct or, uh, have – is that what we've been doing?
He's on Monnett's side, supposedly. The Agents clearly identified themselves as criminal investigators. That strikes me as a good deal worse than asking (rephrased) "11% of what number is 7" without a calculator on hand. 63.63 repeating doesn't exactly leap to the brain. It's like he wanted this to be a fiasco, and he let it happen.
And then guess who the source is that claims that "the IG is being investigated?" Same guy that complained at 1:45. Jeff Ruch, the Executive Director of PEER. The only source claiming an "investigation" is PEER. For all we know, the investigation ended 15 minutes after PEER made a complaint to the proper office. There is no mention if this is an ongoing investigation.
Point of fact: All that is present in TFA is an unconfirmed allegation of an investigation. The only person claiming any "muzzling" is PEER, who represents the person being "muzzled." Any journalist worth a damn would investigate that allegation further before proudly proclaiming "Inspector General Investigated For Muzzling Inconvenient Science."
Sure. By whom? Which Inspector General, the current (acting) one, Mary L. Kendall? Is the investigation current? Is it backed by any sort of suit, law, evidence, or legal authority? Near as this summary and the links show, none of those facts are present. Fox News does better hit jobs.
And to be completely fair to the IG, Monnett did actually lose his position over this. That's what "BOEM immediately issued a stop-work order for the study and put Dr. Monnett on administrative leave" means. He was reinstated, but not in his original position. So he lost his job. It's not just IG monkey business, if there is any at all, it's Monnett's own administration at BOEM "muzzling" him, and his own attorneys who let "criminal investigators" go on a fishing expedition for nearly 2 hours before demanding the charges. Effectively providing fodder for years of investigation of, and vulnerability to, perjury charges.
None of this is the IG's problem. An investigation, especially one as unfocused as the transcript implies, doesn't have to mean forcibly interrupting the study and switching the good doctor to a new position after a period mandatory leave. It just does at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The combination of sheepish counsel and cowardly administration is what brought this man down.
Point of fact 2: The links aren't as advertised. The first purports to be "documents released by PEER" but instead links to a PEER press release, a press release is not documentation of this purported investigation. The second purports to show that "the IG handling of this case is itself under investigation " but that's only a claim by Jeff Ruch, in paraphrase, in the summation paragraph of an article about the investigation of Monnett. It does not link to an article that has any facts to support the link text.
Yikes. If you take up the methods of your enemy, you become the enemy, guys. This is a sleazy, bad submission.