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Michael E. Mann Sues For Defamation Over Comparison To Jerry Sandusky
eldavojohn writes "The global warming debate has left much to be desired in the realm of logic and rationale. One particular researcher, Michael E. Mann, has been repeatedly attacked for his now infamous (and peer reviewed/independently verified) hockey stick graph. It has come to the point where he is now suing for defamation over being compared to convicted serial child molester Jerry Sandusky. Articles hosted by defendants and written by defendant Rand Simberg and defendant Mark Steyn utilize questionable logic for implicating Michael E. Mann alongside Jerry Sandusky with the original piece, concluding, 'Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno, was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being (whitewashed) investigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?' Additionally, sentences were stylized to blend the two people together: 'He has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.' One of the defendants admits to removing 'a sentence or two' of questionable wording. Still, as a public figure, Michael E. Mann has an uphill battle to prove defamation in court."
Dr. Mann complains about two statements: 1) that as "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph," he is "the very ringmaster of the three ring circus" on climate change; and 2) that he "could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet." Neither of these statements is actionable. Moreover, if Dr. Mann decides to pursue this matter, he and his research would be subjected to a very extensive discovery of materials that he has fought so hard to protect in other proceedings. Such materials would be required for National Review to defend itself.
My work here is dung.
As someone who has been on both sides as both an author and reviewer of scientific papers, "peer reviewed" doen't not mean something is automatically correct, simply that it is worthy of publication. It's closer to saying it's plausible, and should be out there for the scientific community to discuss. Correctness is more judged by reproducability over a timescale of decades, but even that is not definative.
Science is a lot more messy that a lot of people would like to believe...
The defendants are much more creative than that. They are going to use discovery in this case to gain access to documents that Michael Mann has very strenuously fought to keep out of the public eye. There may be nothing in those documents relevant to either this case or to the AGW debate, but the fact that Michael Mann has fought so hard to keep them private suggests that there is something in them he would rather the public not know (it may be on a completely unrelated topic).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Also, discovery should be ... interesting.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
It sounds like their argument is that the Penn State administration has a tendency to cover-up embarrassing stuff and protect their own.
The Penn State Hershey Medical Center brings in over a billion dollars a year in revenue to Penn State. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal also presided over said medical center with obvious financial interests that were easily orders of magnitudes higher than the football program. When will we re-investigate all of their malpractice suits? When will we bring their alleged (just now) organ trafficking ring from China to justice? Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide treatment and medical misconduct, with so much at stake?
My work here is dung.
Simberg is best known for a fabricated "Reuters" article allegedly from 1945 which, unbelievably, was taken seriously and cited by both Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Basically, it was a lame satire about the Iraqi resistance which (falsely) claimed that similar things had happened in Germany after WWII.
"Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person's reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person." From: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Defamation+of+character
It really is a slimy piece of shit move to compare someone to Sandusky because they were at Penn under the same umbrella. This definitely harms his reputation and if you believe it then certainly you will have disagreeable opinions and feelings towards him. He's a scientist who interpreted data in a controversial way that is argued among academics, he certainly didn't rape innocent children in the showers.
One way to give your detractors more attention than they otherwise would have gotten is to attack them (this article is a case in point.) Worse is that if he loses the case (which given his public figure status, is easily possible) he'll just add to their credibility.
Disclaimer: I myself generally distrust climate alarmists. The earth has had periods of MUCH warmer climates, and life thrived in all of them. Hell, lets even look at more recent history: some archeologists have found evidence that during the medieval warm period, there were farms in areas that are now considered far too inhospitable for agriculture due to the cold climate. Further, what we're seeing now may very well be yet another temperate anomaly, only now our measurements are more accurate so it seems different.
And yes, I do believe in global warming.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Mark Steyn on the freedom of speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH70VHZ857M Mark Steyn is known for intelligent and cutting right wing satire. He is also known for being prosecuted in various courts for his writings. As such, he is one of strongest defenders of the freedom of speech today. Everyone needs to remember that freedom of speech is not for those you agree with, it is for those you don't agree with.
Defamation is a broad category that includes libel and slander. Libel is defamation that occurs in a persistent form; slander is defamation that occurs in a transitory form.
According to the complaint, Mann is suing for five counts of libel and one count of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The reason Mann has fought all of that discovery is because he's standing up for other scientists. The discovery is not after anything relevant to anything. What's relevant is his published work.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-advanced.htm
Mods, feel free to mod parent down not because you think he's wrong, but because he is wrong.
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The reason he's fought it is that a scientists work should be judged by the science they produce, the published results of their work, not some gotcha quote mining of working papers and communications with peers.
The reason he fights it is clearer to me. It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant! Furthermore, if 90% of people in our society allowed this and it became expected or, worse yet, legal then you would have effectively forfeited your right to privacy.
Scientists are human beings that work long hours at their jobs. Demanding the publication of everything is a bit dehumanizing and Mann is correct to fight it lest other scientists find themselves under the same expectations after it has been established as the norm. I think it will be acceptable to release it during the discovery phase of a case like this but it should not be given up lightly.
This is a clear attempt to intimidate and repress scientists and researchers.
My work here is dung.
It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant!
Dr. Mann and his university accept public funds from the federal government and that subjects him to FOIA requests. And frankly, I see nothing wrong with examining relevant email communications from Dr. Mann on that basis. If he doesn't like it, then he can always refuse federal funding for his research projects.
Anybody who would say what you just said is worse than Hitler. (It's Slashdot, I have to mention Hitler!)
But seriously? People are inciting to have you killed and you're supposed to say, "Oh well, it's part of the job"? If we let that stand, American science doesn't have much of a future.
the null hypothesis has been refuted in this issue. IT's in all the expert scientific journals.
What we have seen is out of line with the overall history trend. That, along with mountains of other data clearly indicate AGW is really. External sources have been eliminated. The current shape of the earths orbit* doesn't account for the change. So, it' internal.
Yes, looking at one set of data, say 2 years' in and of itself doesn't mean the planet is warming, nor would it mean it's not warming. To isolate one piece of data, then use that one tiny pieces in an argument ignoring the rest of the relevant data it really fucking shitty.
*it goes between phases of round to more oval; which causes 'ages' This is a quick laymans explanation, you can find the data online.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd say 8 or 9 other graphs that show substantially the same thing using different proxy data provide independent verification of the Hockey Stick Graph.
It's the same reason why, if a law enforcement officer showed up at my house and demanded to rifle through all of my blongings looking for anything that might be illegal I would tell him to go pound sand. Not because I'm guilty, not because I hate the police but because he has no right to without a warrant!
Dr. Mann and his university accept public funds from the federal government and that subjects him to FOIA requests. And frankly, I see nothing wrong with examining relevant email communications from Dr. Mann on that basis. If he doesn't like it, then he can always refuse federal funding for his research projects.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
- reportedly said by Cardinal Richelieu
There's good reason to want to keep your communications private, personal relationships you don't want cross examined in public, small mistakes that could be mischaracterized, or things you can't even imagine. Just consider writing an email that you know will be seen only by 1 person you trust, or writing an email that will probably be seen by a thousand people who are out to get you. Don't you think that's going to harm your work?
I stole this Sig
Are you serious? You want e-mails when most projects in medicine and physics that are federally funded don't even release their raw data?! Why aren't you clamoring for the DNA and raw collider data that has been built with your taxpaying dollars? Or should they just refuse federal funding as well?
Maybe this is off-topic, but I (and many others) believe that publicly funded research should be freely available to the public.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I have seen business presentation after business presentation where their great idea had a hockey stick. This hockey stick was always just a few years away. The other half of the pattern was that they spent all the investment money around the same time the graph was about to turn up. So for me hockey stick graphs are usually a huge bad smell. If you look at the past you can find all kinds of hockey sticks. But I find that most were not predictable that far in the future. So take the number of European soldiers killed in either World War and you have hockey sticks. But few predicted either war say a decade before they happened. Another hockey stick would be the number of mortgage defaults in the US. Again a few predicted it but the vast majority didn't.
So when someone calls bullshit on anyone waving a hockey stick graph and saying the sky is falling; give me money. I support anyone who calls Bullshit on them.
The decline is not hidden from anyone who has enough scientific background to go read the original papers. The "hidden" data is included in the paper and it is explained why they are not used. The words "hide the decline" refer explicitly to not using the data since it was shown to be wrong by other measurements. To quote the scientists over at RealClimate:
As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
It's useful to look at longer time periods:
http://skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
The Met Office (who released the data), sent a letter to the author of that article, stating precisely how he doesn't understand what the data means, as he's not a scientist. This is the second time this same author has tried this stunt, and people like you take it on face value without checking the cited sources. If you believe this, what other nonsense do you believe? It's clear you don't bother to check the sources, so you have no way to discern fact from fiction, apart from your own bias.
That complaint is a good summary of this dispute. For Mann to win a libel case, he has to show that they wrote things that were false and defamatory, and (since he's a public figure) that they published it with knowledge that it was false or with disregard of whether it was false. It's libelous to accuse somebody of "fraud" or "deception." It's libelous to accuse someone of practicing his profession incompetently. Libel law protects opinions, as opposed to fact, but I think they've crossed the line. I think a jury could decide that they've met that test.
This isn't William Buckley's National Review. I'm familiar with right-wing crackpots from reading the Wall Street Journal comments pages. One of their problems is that they don't particularly concern themselves with facts. They don't even seem to understand what a fact is, or what the difference is between a fact and an opinon. They think that if somebody disagrees with them, he's a "liar." You see people calling Obama a "socialist," a "Kenyan," etc. These are words without meaning. It's like football hooligans screaming insults at Manchester United. Chris Mooney has written about this in his books and articles starting with "The Republican War on Science." I've often reflected on how much of it was actually libelous, if anybody bothered to sue. Now somebody did bother to sue.
Rand Simberg, as quoted starting in paragraph 26 of the complaint, said that Mann was "behaving in a most unscientific manner", "engaging in data manipulation", is hiding "academic and scientific misconduct." In paragraph 28, he called Mann's hockey-stick curve "deceptions" "in the service of politicized science." Steyn called Mann "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph."
In paragraph 31, the complaint says that "their allegations of misconduct and data manipulation were false and were clearly made with the knowledge that they were false." If they can convince the jury of that, they've won the case.
In paragraph 32, the complaint says that Rich Lowry, the editor of NRO, said that Mann's research was "intellectually bogus."
In paragraph 35, the complaint says that the statements "are defamatory per se and tend to injure Dr. Mann in his profession because they falsely impute to Dr. Mann academic corruption, fraud, and deceit as well as the commission of a criminal offense, in a manner injurous tot he reputation and esteem of Dr. Mann professionally, locally, nationally, and globally."
The delicious irony is that in a libel suit, both sides have to disclose huge amounts of documents relating to the case in discovery. Mann's emails were already exposed. Now Simberg and Steyn's correspondence will probably be exposed. If they were taking money from the energy industry, that will be exposed. They'll get the same treatment Mann did.
Reading the original mails is exactly what brought many people to conclude that the whole discipline is full of shit.
This is shit science. You don't just chop out data post 1960 without knowing what is wrong with it. Yes, it was discussed in the literature. No, they had no definitive answer, only speculation.
Even worse, what Phil Jones did was chop out the data and replace it with thermometer data so that three separate data sets rose up in striking agreement in a hockey stick fashion.
I've talked to lawyers about discovery, I've read trial transcripts and I've sat in court during trials. So I know something about discovery.
In one patent case, the lawyers had subpoenaed a chemist's entire 4-drawer file cabinet, digitized it, put it in a database, indexed and reviewed the whole thing, and projected pages in the courtroom.
The First Amendment doesn't protect you from disclosure in a libel suit.
Lawyers tell me that the judge can order both parties -- and people who have nothing to do with the litigation -- to supply them with any information that's "in the interests of justice."
As the Mann complaint details, they were doing more than just stating personal opinion. This is what the libel lawyers call "personal opinion based on underlying facts." People have lost libel suits for saying things like, "In my opinion X is a Communist," even when the person was a public figure. "Communist" is libelous per se.
Steyn and Simberg crossed the line when they accused Mann of "fraud." That's libelous per se.
"Academic and scientific misconduct," if it is an opinion, is an opinion based on claims of underlying fact. "Misconduct" is libelous.
That's libelous even if Mann is a public figure.
After discovery, Mann's lawyers will look through the documents to see if they demonstrate reckless disregard for the truth.
I'd like to see Simberg on the witness stand explain how he came to the conclusion that Mann was guilty of "academic and scientific misconduct."
I know a bit about the writing business that these guys are in. Lots of people in their position take money from industries that are affected by their work. They might get paid $10,000 from the industry to fly out to Nevada to give a speech. A freelance writer might get paid travel expenses to attend a meeting. They're getting money from somewhere, and it would be interesting to know where it is.
Yeah, it's a fishing expedition. Their demand for Mann's documents was a fishing expedition.