Slashdot Mirror
VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email
RoccamOccam sends news that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that Michael Mann, a climate scientist notable for his work on the "hockey stick" graph, does not have to turn over the entirety of his papers and emails under Freedom of Information laws. Roughly 1,000 documents were turned over in response to the request, but another 12,000 remain, which lawyers for the University of Virginia say are "of a proprietary nature," and thus entitled to an exemption. The VA Supreme Court ruled (PDF), "the higher education research exemption's desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters," and said the application of "proprietary" was correct in this case. Mann said he hopes the ruling "can serve as a precedent in other states confronting this same assault on public universities and their faculty."
You also don't have to rely on papers based on data that cannot be verified. This isn't a surprise to me (university/govt funded or not).
If the "science" is so proved and plain, why hide the research?
Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learning ... in the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issues ... where such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.
Another attempt to fish for talking points without having to go through the trouble of doing the research themselves.
If your point is so proved and plain, why hide as AC?
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
"Why do these people always have something to hide" may not be the very stupidest question to ask in this situation, but it's certainly high on the list. Scientific transparency does not require laying your entire online life open to muckrakers.
...but I agree with the interpretation of the law.
IANAL, but if there is indeed an exemption section to the VA FOIA that states: ...then pretty clearly this data is very specifically exactly that, exempt from the FOIA.
"Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningâ¦in the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issuesâ¦where such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented."
*PERSONALLY* if the research was funded by public funds, I find such an exemption execrable, but it's the law and its authors that are at fault, nor Mann at all.
PS and tangential to the point of the OP: Slashdot, it's fucking 2014. Perhaps we could invest in modern posting tech that lets us paste things like biased quotes without getting crap codes like âoe ?
Or maybe convert all postings to monotype courier, so we're reminded that slashdot's still only a handsbreath above a BBS?
-Styopa
Why hide the decline?
If the public pays for it, the public should receive it in its entirety.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
It's not clear to me how the FOIA would apply to the AC's posts. And scientific transparency is a desirable aim, but not the basis of the legal case here. The FOIA is about getting access to stuff the public paid for. Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
This is the problem at the heart of climate science. The key details for models are not published, and (despite being largely paid for by our money), not even available apparently under FOIA to "avoid competitive harm".
That sounds very much like commercial software development and very little like reproducible science, or even open source! WTF, guys? You wonder why so much of the public has a hard time taking climate science seriously? This shit is why.
Good science defeats skeptics through openness. "Look, here's the experiment, do it yourself if you don't trust me." Heck, even experiments on vastly expensive particle accelerators eventually become reproducible through cleverness or technological advance at other universities.
Openness, and beyond openness: the willingness to explain clearly, in detail, and in layman's terms led to the talk.origins FAQ, which takes seriously and answers seriously every common popular question and dispute about evolution, and likely led to the shift from old-school creationism to ID (which at least is progress). This is severely lacking in climate science.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
whoa! the public pays tuition in Virginia! Im so there...
will work for dragon quest localization
I am almost certain their reasons were clearly fucking stated in the summary, your deceitful piece of shit.
If he works at a state university, he is a public employee. Public employees working for hire on public research paid for by the public should have no "proprietary" exemption to FOIA for papers related to the public work for hire. Asking for their work under FOIA is not an "assault on public universities and their faculty"; it is accountability for public officials.
Another question is about the scientific integrity here. If the data is true and supportive of his assertions, he should WANT to publish it. There is no legitimate reason to want to hide scientific data.
Show the papers and the data, unless of course you have something to hide.
Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
I work in the public sector, not a publicly funded university, but absolutely I assume that all of my company email is potentially subject to FOI requests and govern myself accordingly.
If it was my personal email I would feel differently, but you should not use your companies account for personal business either. That is dumb.
Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
I'm sorry, is the research somehow being hidden from the public? The public funding argument applies to papers, software, and not hiding them behind a paywall. It does not mean the public gets to see EVERY freaking email ever sent by someone who happens to get grant money through a government organization. You're just being ridiculous now. Should every private company who received ARRA funds have to lay down all their private emails for the entire public?
(Though note that the public does fund classified work they can't ever see as well, we can ignore that for the sake of argument.)
If you read the article, it what was denied was unpublished research. The research the plaintiff's are challenging is available to them. He doesn't have to defend arguments that he hasn't made.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
This wasn't a request to release research. This was a request to release emails between colleagues.
As was seen with the hacking into the East Anglia university mails, the objective of which is to find phrases to misrepresent.
Scientists publish their completed research in scientific journals. There is no genuine reason for publishing emails that were exchanged whilst the research was still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons.
Public schools in virginia receive public funding, public grants, and staff performing research get public funding for it. And yes, the public pays the tuition for most students at most universities in the form of student loans.
Using your company email for your "private life" is profoundly stupid.
I know a lot of people do it, but it is still stupid.
Legislators publish their completed regulations in the federal register. There is no genuine reason for publishing emails that were exchanged whilst the creation of regulations was still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons.
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public?
I agree that there should be an exemption for documents of a personal nature. Documents of a proprietary nature could include documents that disagree with the published findings.
Scientific transparency does not require laying your entire online life open to muckrakers.
Agreed but it does mean giving access to all the documents and emails that are the basis of published findings. Documents of a proprietary nature would fall into that category.
This looks too much like "don't look at the documents behind the curtain. Just watch the show we are presenting".
The key details for models are not published
Citation Needed
1000 vs. 12000? So this "scientist" spends 1/13th of his time writing personal emails? Wow.
His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research".
The issue is not his private email, but email sent and received as a public employee working at a public institution. Were this about his private email, UVA would have no standing in the case and could not claim an exemption.
By providing one, I would refute myself. :p
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is a case insisted upon by a conservative group and a delegate from the state of virginia. The idea is the same as the polar researcher Charles Monett who faced formal misconduct charges for his research into climate change.
these are personal attacks of a political nature designed to destroy the career of a scientist attempting to validate or research climate change. If neoconservative corporate shills cant deny funding then they'll shit-coat your career and personal life as a reminder to shut the fuck up about climate change and focus more on Benghazi and anchor babies. If you're a scientist like me, crap like virginia just makes you want to dedicate your life to researching the subject more fervently.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Mann said he hopes the ruling "can serve as a precedent in other states confronting this same assault on public universities and their faculty."
What? Mann is the one doing the assaulting, by suing a journalist for libel. In the US, the truth is an absolute defense against libel. Mann accused the journalist of libel, and when the journalist wanted access to the documents so he could prove his case, the SC denied him. If Mann didn't want to be "assaulted" he could have simply not sued the journalist.
The thought processes behind the research can often give insight to new data that arises later. Many of Einstein's theories would not be as well understood if not for his correspondence with other notable scientists of his day.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Mann via the courts proves that Secrecy is Science.
Congratulations.
How many other 'scientists' get away with pleading the fifth?
No brain, no pain.
Hmm, wouldn't you want to see an email by a Senator saying "Bloomberg really wants this, and he's promising all of us on the Committee $3 million for our campaign warchests if we make it so"?
Or if you think Bloomberg walks on water, replace "Bloomberg with "Koch Bros" or whoever your favorite bogeyman is....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Did you not get your nap?
Asking for vacation, sending in sick leave requests etc.pp. is all business, and none of them belongs to the public.
You mean 12/13?
There is lots of administrative stuff, human resources details, meeting arrangements and much more in daily mails, which all belong to your work, and none of them belongs into the public.
And what of individual rights? If I am an inventor, my intelectual is no less important.
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research". Publicly funded researchers should be required to publish their data and research results. They should not have to give up their private lives.
Emails are only one part of it, according to TFA there are other research documents and data too. Emails are one thing, it is communication with an expectation of privacy (and the ruling of being proprietary shouldn't apply to that anyway), documentation and research data is another thing entirely. A fundamental concept of science is that documentation and research are meant to be shared.
Here is the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section at the crux of the case, one of the law’s exemptions from disclosure: ...
“Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learningin the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical, scientific, technical or scholarly issueswhere such data, records or information has not been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.”
In a decision written by Justice Donald W. Lemons, the court ruled that “the higher education research exemption’s desired effect is to avoid competitive harm not limited to financial matters.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
His private emails were not private. They were public. Just like a governor's text messages are public record - another ruling from today. If you are on a project the public paid for, writing an email with time the public paid for, IT'S PUBLIC. Judge is wrong. Case law supporting this ruling is wrong.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Whoosh
Indeed.
Compare and contrast the achievement of today's congress over the last few months with the achievement of the disparate representatives that drafted the US Constitution in 4 months at the Philadelphia convention.
The difference? With the lack of daily scrutiny from the news media and the resulting posturing from representatives, they could be more honest with each other about those things on which they stood firm, and those things on which they were negotiable.
The US constitution stands on it's own merits. The daily tos and fros of negotiating the thing over those 4 months are irrelevant.
Professionals need time to work collaboratively. To explore what might be wrong, as well as what's right before finally publishing the results of their labours. Intrusion into the process by the media, and even more so by those with malicious intent, to misrepresent things that never became part of the publication is only detrimental.
Hold the phone. You're assuming all of this is public work. There are 12k somethings that haven't been released. What are they? Papers? Emails? Datasets? TFA doesn't say, and you don't know what they are either.
If they're his emails, then they are not public work and should not be released. Full Stop.
If they're papers, then a case can be made that they should be released. That said, all researches have work that isn't for public consumption. I'm a researcher at a public university. Do I have to publish my notebooks? How about every little piece of test code I write? What about works in progress? Some of the "papers" mentioned probably fall into these categories.
Without more information on what hasn't been released, we can't yet draw conclusions .
Nobody bothers to RTFA
UVA is not withholding any data for papers that have been published. The ruling applies to research that is unpublished. Mann's emails and any unpublished data are of course none of the public's business until they are released for publication. Do you really want academic researchers to have the entire work be privy to their data and work before it's finalized? That's the exact opposite of "independent research".
"Police offers present their completed incident and arrest reports in court. There is no genuine reason for publicly releasing recordings of what the officers do whilst the incident and arrests were still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons."
Just saying. Seems to me if you're going to have public employees, you need to hold them all to the same standards of transparency.
Set a precedent of publishing emails between colleagues and the result is they just move any such incriminating conversations to other media, or to face to face meetings.
You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway.
There is lots of administrative stuff, human resources details, meeting arrangements and much more in daily mails, which all belong to your work, and none of them belongs into the public.
Yes, you've said that before, and your example is why there are HR exemptions to FOIA. That's why open meetings laws also exempt some kinds of meetings. But discussing the interpretation and use of data is not an HR issue and does not merit an exemption, and the fact still remains that his private email is not the issue at all. (And "meeting arrangements" don't merit HR exemptions, either. Nor do the nebulous "much more" which is part of your argument.)
They are not sciencists, either.
You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway. It's not very likely that anyone would offer a senate seat vacancy appointment to someone as a payback, so why bother looking?
Here's the definition of "proprietary" the VA Supreme Court upheld:
"a right customarily associated with ownership, title, and possession. It is an interest or a right of one who exercises dominion over a thing or property, of one who manages and controls."
That seems incredibly broad for a situation like this -- in fact, it's hard to imagine a whole lot of meaningful exceptions (likely the reason UVA ultimately produced the 7% of the emails they did was because those emails failed one of the other six factors of the exclusion test). But for better or for worse, the court essentially had to reach that result because there was a precedent on the books defining "proprietary" that broadly, and the statute in question didn't provide its own definition.
The concurring opinion at the end is interesting -- it practically begs the VA Legislature to provide more guidance (e.g., add their own definition for "proprietary" to make their intent clear, particularly for the sake of other parallel statutes where the context strongly suggests that "proprietary" doesn't have nearly as expansive of a meaning as the one the court used here). We'll see.
Set a precedent of publishing emails between legislators and the result is they just move any such incriminating conversations to other media, or to face to face meetings.
You ruin the use of a valuable communications medium fishing for something that's unlikely to be there anyway.
Yes, I agree. Just as I did with your last attempt at sarcasm. It's a pointless waste of time rooting through the detritus of the preparation of a project. Even when it's politicians.
Your point is correct if and only if all emails are used for the project only. However, I doubt that they create multiple email addresses for him to use in different project! In other words, there would be other emails that are used for other projects and other stuff as well. Even though 1/13 is not that much, it is still a possible number of emails used for the project communication. Just my two cents...
The thought processes behind the research can often give insight to new data that arises later. Many of Einstein's theories would not be as well understood if not for his correspondence with other notable scientists of his day.
Funny you should mention that. Einstein's theory of relativity was also subject to these dirty tricks by right wingers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The right wing propagandists were just as wrong and just as dirty back then as they are now.
His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research"
They also wouldn't have anything to do with "competitive harm not limited to financial matters", so that's not what the court is protecting here.
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, “This is a victory for science...
No, it's not! Our high schools really need to do a better job teacher students what science is and not just memorizing the first 6 steps in the first week of class and then memorizing facts that were found using science (biology, chemistry etc). Just because in this case the other side who is trying to get your data has even less understanding of what science is (and will no doubt intentionally misconstrue your data) does not mean this is a victory for science. There is no concept of proprietary knowledge in science, quite the opposite in fact.
This. Thank you. Only cargo cult science finds victory in hiding its underlying thought processes and justifications from public view. Not saying that Mann's beliefs about AGW are wrong, but that his behavior at various points has demonstrated a profound lack of and disregard for scientific openness.
Even if you use your email only for work, there's still a lot of stuff in there which needs to be kept confidential for one reason or another. Payroll matters, student grades, personnel issues for example.
If the public pays for it, the public should receive it in its entirety.
Does that include e-mails about planning the department Christmas party? How about Sally-in-Accounting's baby shower?
There's a lot of e-mail that's generated between humans that has no bearing to climate change research that is probably in the guy's e-mail account. The rule (AFAICT) is about the superfluous stuff.
If an FOIA deals with official functions and budgeting, I agree. But every, single, e-mail, is a bit much.
People have an expectation of privacy in email. It is as simple as that. In addition, they have some duty to not release certain information to the public, for instance, anything involving students' work or the work of others (who also have an expectation of privacy), anything regarding privileged information (such as medical) or of a purely personal nature.
Does the public have a right to email that directly involves publicly-funded research? Possibly. They certainly do not have a right to ask an individual to turn over all his personal corresponance anymore than they have a right to tap the phone in his office.
But, this was 'freedom of information act' request, and that act refers only to
the records of government civil agencies.
The researcher had a teaching job, and acted as an independent
contractor in pursuing a research topic.
The researcher's phone calls, e-mails, piles of scratchings and musings,
aren't the proper product of his funded research at all. Only the finished report,
and/or any publishable papers (in peer-reviewed, edited journals) are
the concern of the research funding agency (probably National Science
Foundation). The NSF isn't a party to the request, they and the researcher
are presumably satisfied that the research findings WERE published.
Neither the editors of peer-reviewed journals, nor the authors, want undue
attention paid to unclear, misspelled, poorly-supported or otherwise unpublishable
debris from the research process. The researcher (and the University of Virginia)
acted properly in not handing over every tatter of e-mail that could be found. The
supreme court of the state just agreed with that.
I hope the pressure continues.
Schnare said he wants to dig into Mann’s research. “You want to know what are the assumptions? What are the records? We have ‘Climategate’ e-mails to show he can’t even find the data.” He said U-Va. had already spent more than $750,000 in legal costs to keep the e-mails secret.
No one spends three quarters of a million dollars unless there's something very very interesting they don't want seen. The more they fight FOI, the more I want to see what they're hiding.
So do I have a right to access the university email records of good looking undergraduates at public universities?
You have a weird definition of "private life". This was his work, it's what he was paid public money to do. Why do you consider that his "private life"? Do you really think these are emails about [grand]childcare, restaurant reservations, and romantic interests, or are you just trolling?
"Police offers present their completed incident and arrest reports in court. There is no genuine reason for publicly releasing recordings of what the officers do whilst the incident and arrests were still in progress. Only in-genuine and dishonest reasons."
And indeed there is no such reason, even for police officers. Certainly having video surveillance of police officers is a welcome step forward. But these never will and never should be published on the internet in their entirety. Suppose the police come and arrest you and your wife early one morning whilst you were still in bed and they then do a search of your house. For a crime you didn't commit. Clearly that shouldn't be published on the internet for all to see. It would only add the injury of public viewing of private aspects of your life to the injury of being wrongly arrested and searched.
We can do these analogies all day if you like. If it's a true analogy, the result is the same.
If you read the article, it what was denied was unpublished research. The research the plaintiff's are challenging is available to them. He doesn't have to defend arguments that he hasn't made.
That makes perfect sense to you, because you're looking at it in terms of the AGW denier versus alarmist debate. But that really has nothing to do with the question of whether the FOIA should apply to unpublished research performed using public funds.
But of course the AGW debate is a fun way to look at it, too, and it cuts both ways. "Hide the decline" and all that. That email dump was a convenient (if unwilling) compliance with a bunch of unfulfilled FOIA requests.
In my government place of business we have a warning before login that we are required to accept which states that all our activities are subject to monitoring. Business email is for business use. Personal email is for personal use. It's not difficult for me to understand that and I'm a mere Computer Engineer. Certainly a respectable climate scientist of doctoral status should be able to understand such a social limitation.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Does your daughter work an on-campus job? Does she ever use a university email account? Does she use university networks?
These all are public resources, and as a creepy stalker, I demand to be allowed full access to the email and browsing history of all attractive undergraduate students. I want to know who their professors are, which websites they visit using university networks, and any other private information that I can find out.
I demand full access! The government should not be able to hide the information from me. We don't want to be forced to go back to the dark days of rooting through trash and peeking through windows!
Your exemplary use of the English language astounds, and it most certainly elevates your point to the level of attention gathering.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Im so there
You and thousands of other Pell Grantees and government loan financed students. UVA is a public university which gets a large portion of its funding from the public.
If Mann or any other publicly funded climatologist so much as sends a work related text message on the public's dime it should be public information. Ordinarily there is no difficulty understanding this concept around here, but let a warmist hide his work and suddenly "proprietary" has lots of friends.
Depends on what you consider "hiding the research". A fishing expedition through a scientist's personal correspondence is an invitation to judge his work on *political* grounds.
In science your personal beliefs, relationships, and biography are irrelevant. There are evangelical Christian climate scientists who believe climate won't change because that would contradict God's will as expressed in the Bible. These scientists may be regarded as religious crackpots by their peers, but that hasn't prevented them from publishing in the same peer-reviewed journals as everyone else. Since their papers invariably are climate-change skeptic, clearly they are publishing work which supports their religious beliefs. But their motivations don't matter. What matters is in their scientific publications.
In 1988, Gary Hart's presidential bid and political career were ruined when he was photographed cavorting on a yacht named "Monkey Business" with a woman that wasn't his wife. Now I didn't care how many bimbos he was boinking, but a lot of people *did*, which made it a political issue (albeit a stupid one in my opinion). Do we really want to use the coercive power of the state to dig through the private lives of controversial scientists?
It's a pretense that that would serve any scientific purpose. Maybe Mann is intent on overthrowing capitalism and creating a socialist utopia. That would be relevant if he were running for dogcatcher, but it's irrelevant to what's in his scientific papers. Scientists publish papers all the time with ulterior motives, not the least of which is that they're being paid to do research that makes corporate sponsors happy. As long as what's in the paper passes muster, it's still science.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
If your a public servant sending and receiving Emails via a publicly owned servers, while on publicly paid for time, you had better be prepared for the eventuality that everything will be made public. Sooner or later these Emails will be leaked, all it takes is one FOIA, Manning or Snowden and all your secrets are public!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Some of his email accounts are publicly funded. Those email accounts should be available to the public. He should keep his private communications on private accounts.
The US constitution stands on it's own merits. The daily tos and fros of negotiating the thing over those 4 months are irrelevant.
And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
Dismissing the process for the results is like missing the trees for the forest. Just as in politics, in the scientific method, the ends do not always justify the means, and pretending otherwise can lead to atrocities like eugenics. Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but it does sufficiently demonstrate the point.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
If your point is so proved and plain, why hide as AC?
Not the A/C, but this is why, on top of the point that you've utterly failed to disprove his point.
Do you want all your email and documents published to the public? If not, what do you have to hide?
Point of order: No one is asking Mann to lay out his entire life - just the portion of it that we the taxpayers paid for, and the portion that actual science (at least should) demand. ...got any other arguments?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If you are on a project the public paid for, writing an email with time the public paid for, IT'S PUBLIC.
Which time was paid for by the public though? If I work after hours, and take various breaks, that 8-12 hours a day might not be in a contiguous blocks of time. My funding comes from multiple sources too, so I have to divide that time up between which funding is which, not to mention volunteer outreach work. Figuring out what time and tasks were paid for at the granulation of individual emails isn't necessarily straightforward.
Odd to see someone arguing on Slashdot in favor of publicly funded academic research being kept from the public.
Nobody is arguing for that. His private emails are not "publicly funded academic research".
...then perhaps he shouldn't use them for such a purpose? Odds are very near-perfect that he did use private email to at least promote his public research (via certain blog sites), and it is a valid and legitimate target for litigation discovery.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm pretty sure it was written by different people than it claims.
Also, two creation myths? Seriously, how does that hold up?
And this whole Noah and the Ark thing sounds kind of fishy to me. Let alone that guy who survived inside a whale.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I demand that i see poop videos and what he ate on thursday!
I have nothing to hide in my data, most of which is in publicly accessible databases, except for some that was assumed to not be worth the time and effort to reformat. That said, a request for emails would be beyond annoying, not because of what it might show, but because of the effort it would take to separate things, the majority of which would be useless (meeting times) and making sure to exclude things legally required to when probably neither party of the communication actually cares. I could pull out most important emails with a few key search terms (e.g. emails about a specific paper, or piece of equipment, or data campaign), but sorting through the other thousands of emails would be a huge time sink. I would have a vested interest in not sharing that even if I didn't have anything to hide and didn't even care if people saw my personal emails.
People have an expectation of privacy in email.
In Europe, yes. In the US, not so much. Nearly every IT department has standard boilerplate that includes the fact that whatever you send in company/school email is company/school property, and can be searched and seized at any time for any legitimate reason.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The wingnut is alleging nefarious manipulation of data and a cover-up of the global warming conspiracy.
The researcher's suing for defamation, and insisting on covering up a lot of stuff "to avoid competitive harm".
This scientist is clueless about public relations.
those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
The Federalist papers were specifically written for publication, every bit as much as the constitution itself was. They too are parallel to the papers published in scientific journals. They are not an analogy for the forced publishing of work in progress that was never intended for public consumption.
The expectation of privacy is a legal concept that exists regardless of any boilerplate click-through agreement.
The courts have generally ruled that there exists no expectation of privacy on certain parts of email, like the routing information (recipient for instance), total traffic volume, and other such information.
On the other hand, they have generally upheld that there exists an expectation of privacy on the actual contents of emails (i.e. message and subject line), the same way that telephone users expect that their conversations, but not their dialing information, be kept private.
See the case of US v. Maxwell.
Asking for vacation, sending in sick leave requests etc.pp. is all business, and none of them belongs to the public.
On the contrary - it's all publicly-funded business.
The public has a right to know if their money is going to someone who is never at the office doing the job they're supposed to be doing. They don't need to know if he's got the flu or if he's in Maui, but that's what redaction is for, and it's why courts use 3rd parties to verify and sanitize shit during discovery.
So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?
If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?
Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.
The Supreme Court has ruled that American citizens have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their email will be kept private, just like their phone conversations.
Most universities have a very specific email privacy policy that guarantees the privacy of employees except in very specific situations.
Scientific transparency does not require laying your entire online life open to muckrakers.
It does if the medium used for that ":ife" is funded with tax dollars.
There are many reasons that you're not supposed to use university faculty/government/corporate email systems for personal activity. He's not being asked to provide his personal home email account, nor his personal home computer. The University is being asked to provide access to his tax-funded work email and research data. If he's discussing how he likes to dress up as Little Bo Peep or something in those datasets, then he's misappropriating work assets for personal use, and he's not ensured privacy in that medium. If they really wanted to protect anything but the data itself they could put a gag on those who view the data/emails and disallow them to discuss or share anything not directly related to the court case.
All that being said, I'd love to know how protecting proprietary data or processes in an attempt to "avoid competitive harm" demonstrates the altruism that climate change proponents use as a blugeon against skeptics. If you're so convinced that man-made climate change is a direct threat to humankind and the global ecosystem, is [financial / research / international] competition really a defense for hiding data? Either this is the most dire situation our generation has faced and anything necessary must be done to avoid it, or its not. Apparently, it's not actually dire enough to risk losing research funding to a more "competitive" university.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
And can you imagine what would have been lost had the public reacted in knee jerk fashion by keeping those letters private because of some short sighted political pundits?
So tell me again why we're okay with this today?
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Well, apply it to any other area where FOIA applies and see if we can't get rid of the pesky FOIA altogether. But wait, we immediately find an application where we do NOT want to get rid of FOIA, so maybe the goal isn't worthy after all.
His private emails were not private. They were public. Just like a governor's text messages are public record - another ruling from today. If you are on a project the public paid for, writing an email with time the public paid for, IT'S PUBLIC. Judge is wrong. Case law supporting this ruling is wrong.
Absolutely. What's more is that "case law" isn't an actual thing. There is law, and we interpret it to decide cases. Those decisions are not law. ALL cases are to be judged individually. Referencing past decisions can be helpful in balancing expediency and thoroughness, but past decisions are not to be used as law, even if coming from a higher court.
When laws are unclear and interpretations are split, the higher courts hear appeals and decide. When a very high court hears a case the legislators pay attention and work to change the laws and make them more clear to prevent the contentious interpretations in the first place.
Of course, that only works if our government follows its own rules and does its own job.
Whales speak French at the bottom of the sea.
The horses of Arabia have silver wings.
Pygmies mate with elephants in darkest Africa.
I have sold all those propositions.
-- Allardyce Meriweather, Little Big Man (1970)
On the contrary - it's all publicly-funded business.
By that argument, so is everyone's tax affairs.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
That's a valid point, but it doesn't apply in the case of a university email address (as opposed to a personal email address), especially when the data can be significant to future discussion of the process used today. Historical correspondence between scientists is more often harolded for its benefits to the scientific community than for any fear of political backlash.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
That was his point, don't you think? ... and many, many more.
Wasting 30 seconds searching would have given you http://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/s..., or http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model... or http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/S...
Funny thing, the code, the data, the explanations, everything has been avalable for years, and yet so many of the public believe they're not. I wonder why that is?
It's like there was this massive political campaign against science. Of which you just became part of. Congratulations!
No I don't. I live in Europe and there's expectation of privacy here.
I suppose I could see grounds for such an unusual privacy policy. It protects controversial scientific theories from dooming a person's political or academic aspirations, though not from the ridicule of colleagues who receive the emails.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Vacation time and health insurance for public servants is also paid for by the public, so their vacation photos and medical records must be publicly available too... Or we could consider that providing a centralized communication point for employees is part benefit and part increased productivity. You still should avoid stuff from work email that you wouldn't want coworkers to see by accident or if accused of wasting time. But for other purposes, such emails are pretty irrelevant and there is no need to release them.
What if they were planning a rape room for the office Christmas party? Emails on public accounts should be public. Keep private stuff on private accounts.
Historical correspondance between scientists was replaced by publishing in scientific journals. If you want to complain about something that matter, complain about the paywalls. If you want the data, go to the noaa website.
I believe lgw is one of Slashdot's resident denialist shills. No doubt he'll come back with lame excuses about how that data isn't the real data, that code isn't the real code, and so on. Anything to avoid admitting the truth.
That would be true for a lot of countries, but the USA isn't one of them.
You are an idiot. There is a huge difference between science dealing with facts and politics which deals with policies. If you can't grasp that difference, it's entirely your problem, but I do suggest you keep your mouth shut in public to avoid looking like a total donkey.
However, the fact that you are obviously a donkey doesn't make your argument valid. HAND.
Actually it looks like someone wanted access to personal information, or information that can be taken out of context. The goal here was to destroy the reputation of a scientist that came to conclusions that someone did not like.
No, no one is asking you to supply missing models, just supply a source that says the models are missing. You would bolster your argument by doing that not refute it.
You are an idiot. There is a huge difference between science dealing with facts and politics which deals with policies. If you can't grasp that difference, it's entirely your problem, but I do suggest you keep your mouth shut in public to avoid looking like a total donkey.
However, the fact that you are obviously a donkey doesn't make your argument valid. HAND.
Yes. Why can nobody see the difference between science dealing with facts and politics that deal with policies when a political organization is using policy to retrieve scientific facts from a huge public institution...
Did I miss anything?
No doubt within less than two weeks, he'll be complaining about "intransparency and lack of reproducibility" again, as if he never saw GP.
The goal here was to destroy the reputation of a scientist that came to conclusions that someone did not like.
The goal here is to allow someone to defend themselves against a lawsuit filed because someone who has made himself a public figure didn't like what some other public figure said about him in public. In this case, the person who filed the lawsuit is a scientist. The person who didn't like what was being said was the scientist.
Now, if you admit that releasing the scientist's email would destroy his reputation, that's a pretty damning statement about that scientist, I would say.
But as has been pointed out by another, the fact that this deals with AGW makes it interesting reading but has no relevance to the legal issues involved.
So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?
If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?
Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.
The Supreme Court has ruled that American citizens have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their email will be kept private, just like their phone conversations.
But he didn't make that argument -- the argument that some of the emails should be withheld because they have private information. He made the argument that emails discussing the data relating to climate models should be withheld because they contain proprietary information that could cause the university to be less competitive with other universities in obtaining funding. That's completely different. And if he made the argument you made I might agree with him, but he made a different argument that I disagree with.
And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.
This. It is called "original intent", and it is often the crux of cases before SCOTUS. What did the legislators intend? The only way to get that is to look at the work product and not just the final published result. The Federalist Papers are one bit of the puzzle, but not the only part, and limiting the determination of original intent to that one document is limiting oneself to one man's opinion of what was intended. And, of course, the FP cover only the founders and the Constitution, ignoring completely the legislation created over the last 240 years.
What were the arguments about the law in question? What were the compromises? What was never considered?
This has nothing to do with oversight or the public needing to know. It's a heavily funded attack to lynch everybody involved.
A public official should lose all privacy; however, this is a researcher who got some public money and who has scientific work that is public enough for others to test it (aka do science) additional information on ALL his work and ALL his email over that span is not necessary. The published science can be checked which is what he was paid to do. If something is wrong with it, it should be found by others.
Emails of other work and most likely comments using the email account can be gone over by propagandists and used to ruin his life - even if there is nothing actually objectionable. If he has emails that are not work related in the account, they'll jump on those too. Who would want public funding to do science if they were going to be scrutinized 10x as much as politician?? It's their scientific work that we want and that has to be open in order to be science and not preaching.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
So, the VA Supreme Court will allow Michael Mann to "hide the decline."
People have an expectation of privacy in email..
Hark at the comedian..
I'm an ex-sysadmin, ex-postmaster@somewhere. People may have a misguided expectation of privacy in email, alas, that's about as far as it goes, an expectation. They never had it in reality when I was in the game (over a decade and a half ago now), and as for today...
In my current job, we've a nice wee footer to our .sigs added by the company email server to the effect all your emails belong to us!, we'll read them if we need to/like (delete as applicable), and, I point out, this is before the frigging spook squads and ISP dataminers get their greedy wee mitts on them.
(And, btw, I'm in Europe (peripherally so) , so don't believe any of that 'we don't do that in Europe BS..').
For what it's worth, when I was postmaster@somewhere, even though I was in charge of the servers and would have resisted any attempts at giving anyone access to someone's email, I still told everyone not to use the company email for 'private' business (there was an incident in another section of the place I worked where TPTB gave the Police access to a users deleted emails from the backups without a court order ..at that point I personally started divorcing personal and business email and pointed the personal stuff to multiple different non-work accounts.
Maybe I should also add the story about the place where all emails inbound were printed out, vetted then placed in the recipient's pigeonhole (assuming they passed the vetting), all outbound replies etc, typed, vetted, then passed on to the relevant clerks for transmission in the name of the sender...Thankfully I never worked there, but knew a man who did..
Medical research? The public should be able to see medical records for all the participants in the research?
So the goal is to allow a guy who made baseless claims to go hunting for a base?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
There is one thing that, above anything else, determines a scientist's career: getting original research published. Where "original" implies "before your competitors". Which means letting your competitors look into what you're doing before it's published is career suicide. If you're gonna attach strings to your funding stipulating that every small tidbit you find should immediately be publicly available, then the only scientists who will want to work for you are the ones who publish dull uninnovative research.
Not to mention all the unnecessary animosity surrounding the many results that later turn out to be untrue but were thrown before the public before the person producing them got the chance to double-check (which often takes months). This is enough of a problem as it is already; given the breakneck competition, people often tend to publish too soon rather than too late.
Pretty much ANY research he is doing is proprietary unless the university is funding it or has specific rules about research while on the faculty, in which case, it is proprietary research subject to the rules of the university.
A professor's primary job is to teach. Research is an opportunity he is afforded to pursue as it makes him a better instructor and brings prestige and funding to the university. So, the State equivalent of the FOIA is not going to necessarily apply to faculty research in the first place, only to their job as instructors.
Now, if he is receiving government funding for his research, there may be some FOIA expectation, but the public certainly does not have a right to demand all email. For one, the person making the FOIA needs to be specific about what they want and it has to relate directly and substantially to a specific facet of government funded research. Secondly, it does not cover any communication where the sender or receiver has an expectation of privacy. If he is emailing someone who is not being paid to work on that particular project, such as a graduate student or another person in his field or department, that information is not going to be covered by the FOIA as it violates the expectation of privacy of the person outside the project sending or receiving the email, unless the person is specifically informed that their email may be subject to public disclosure.
Now, does email to other people on the project, to the agency that is funding it, and to others who have no expectation of privacy fall under a FOIA? It is possible, but only if it specifically relates to published data. Anything that is a work in progress is not subject to the FOIA because it is being actively managed by whoever is funding the project.
Taxes go TO the government. Payroll comes FROM the Taxpayers.
Besides, the NSA already read all the emails anyone.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
" There are evangelical Christian climate scientists who believe climate won't change because that would contradict God's will as expressed in the Bible.
Please provide details, and don't hold out some Billy-Bob Nobody as an example .... there are a number of evangelical Christians who are also scientists (I know several) but I know of none in the climate research field who have taken such a non-Biblical stance. The Bible never says anything about the climate being constant, or God willing it to be so, or man being unable to change the climate (for better or worse) etc. and serious evangelicals tend to take the Bible seriously (and seriousle reject anybody adding-in stuff that's not there) so your claim is dubious. Your generic drive-by attack was an easy one to make, but if you have a name and a specific statement you should provide them so that we can know who these particular idiots are. Absent those sepcifics, you appear to be just making-up stuff about people you do not like.
The guy was a reckless idiot who was trying to become President. There were accusations about his private life, which he publicly denied (right to the faces of some of the journalists who'd seen evidence he was lying) and he then publicly challenged them to follow him around and catch him.......... which they DID! The kicker that shot this onto the front of all the tabloids was that they caught him on a boat called the "Monkey Business".
This was important because it outed the man as incredibly dishonest, foolish, reckless, un-trustworthy, and (did I say it enough?) lacking any degree of judgement.
I would be in favor of releasing all his email if Fox News and every right wing media outlet released their email. They all make statements on a daily basis regarding AGW and a segment of the population considers their "research" and reporting scientific.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I was just browsing my own business mail, and I found that 90% of them don't belong in public, because they are talking about customer installations (information which belongs to the customer, not us) or about internal administration and HR (like courses, oncall schedules, sick leaves, vacations). Only 1% are directly about what I am doing, like solution concepts, scripts or possible configurations. I can imagine that this is not so much different from most other people's business email.
That would make a hilarious book!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
So the goal is to allow a guy who made baseless claims to go hunting for a base?
No. The goal, as I said, is to allow the person being sued to defend himself. You want to take a public squabble to court and have a judge rule on it, you have to accept the side effects. You don't want those issues raised, let the character of the person making the statements you don't like speak for itself. Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone in the climate science field would put much weight behind anything Mark Levin says, so it would be hard to prove there is much damage from it. I also find it hard to imagine that anyone will change their mind about Mann whether he wins or loses.
You're worried that whatever is discovered might be taken "out of context" or twisted somehow? Well, you're already going to court over the matter, it's not like you have to find a lawyer and file suit over that. It will be part of the proceedings THAT YOU STARTED.
Whether the claims that were made by the defendant are baseless or not is not entirely clear, and are a matter for the courts at this point. But also as I said, the fact that this is about AGW makes it a fascinating story but is really irrelevant to this issue.
Here's a bit of information that might shed light on the baselessness of the claims. I recall an email from a handful of years ago, after the initial appearance of the hockey stick, from NCAR scientists who were quite giddy with glee that they had been able to modify some of the parameters of the model to obtain a much more significant upturn in the rate of change. It was pretty clear from that email that the goal was not to accurately represent the physical processes involved but to get a scarier result. No, I don't have that email anymore so I can't quote it, but I do remember the message it conveyed. It wasn't "we understand the physics better and here's the new results", it was "we changed the parameters and got a higher rate of increase."
Now, I assume that Mann was on the NCAR mailing list that came out on, and I'd say that were I him, I'd really not want that email showing up in a trial.
Take that as you will.
There was an article in the New Yorker a few months ago about a scientist that was being harassed:
"A Valuable Reputation
After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him"
"In 2005, [Sherry Ford, the communications manager, at Syngenta] made a long list of methods for discrediting [Hayes]: "have his work audited by 3rd party," "ask journals to retract," "set trap to entice him to sue," "investigate funding," "investigate wife.""
Link to the story
They couldn't refute Hayes "inconvenient" research so they had to silence him with a smear campaign.
The point is that I'm pretty sure there is a "Sherry Ford" who works for the Fossil Fuel industry. I'm sure that the F.F.'s "Sherry Ford" is licking his (or her) lips at the prospect of unlimited access to Mr. Mann's unpublished emails & documents. Unfortunately the F. F. industry has nearly unlimited resources and could afford to buy themselves an Attorney General (Ken Cuccinelli).
The enemies of science are gunning for Mr. Mann just as Syngenta is/was gunning for Hayes.
Tax returns are a matter of public finances. The public has a right.
Legislators in general sense are in a very different position legally practically everywhere in this planet. Some public universities might even have an autonomy from the state in certain rare circumstances.. :) The letters sent by researchers have been published in collections previously in many areas, so extending this to the emails related to the subject eventually is a useful thing for the society.
OK with which part? Trying to repress work of scientists for political ends or trying to preserve their work for future study?
One is the despicable work of slimeballs trying to supress scientific inquiry or just simply punish people who have ideas they don't like, and the other is the work of archivists and libraries.
Clearly we have the former going right now. Fortunately the courts came to the right conclusion.
Universities usually operate under some concept of academic freedom. Total access by the public to every part of your existence is clearly incompatible with this.
IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not so. For example here is the privacy statement from a well-known university:
Privacy of Information
Information stored on a computer system or sent electronically over a network is the property of the individual who created it. Examination, collection, or dissemination of that information without authorization from the owner is a violation of the ownerâ(TM)s rights to control his or her own property. Systems administrators, however, may gain access to usersâ(TM) data or programs when it is necessary to maintain or prevent damage to systems or to ensure compliance with other University rules.
when it involved Sarah Palin? People on the political left were nearly giddy when a Democrat hacked her personal E-Mail account and released it to the public; a major Democrat-leaning newspaper (the New York Times, IIRC) even encouraged its readers to help go through her personal e-mails looking for ANYTHING that could harm her politically. When her defenders complained about all this, the response from many Palin-haters was essentially: "she's getting taxpayer money, so she has no right to private communication".
You responded to somebody's:
"Public employees working for hire on public research paid for by the public should have no "proprietary" exemption to FOIA for papers related to the public work for hire."
with:
"It's not papers. Papers are available in scientific journals. This is an attempt to root in the trash looking for something to misrepresent."
Which is the equivalent to:
"It's not bills she signed into law, executive orders she signed, or appointments she made. This is an attempt to root in the trash looking for something to misrepresent."
People Against Hockey Stick Graphs...seriously, in whose best interest is this lawsuit being filed? If his research was false, then other researchers will come forth to put another more valid model. That is how science works. The hockey stick graph was a model. Are models now illegal?
Society use your Sciences
Is this the dude who made that cover of "Blinded by the Light" back in the 1970s? // Ha! That song is playing in your head now!
The biggest problem I have with this is not that Mann's science might be wrong, but that the methods being used to discredit the science are anything but scientific. We have entered a scary, new era in Western thought where conformity of thought is valued above all else, and anyone who dares advocate a position which could be considered controversial or offensive is railroaded into silence by whatever means necessary.
The "Speak No Evil" crowd is destroying a great Western tradition of open and honest debate. These folks are committing offenses against truth itself, destroying civilization in the process.
I was under the impression that the ClimateGate affair was old news and Mann had been discredited already; why would they bother pursuing this more than half a decade later? It seems their objective is not merely to win the debate, or merely suppress an unpopular opinion, but to prevent any debate, research, or independent inquiry from taking place from this point on.
It's called making an example of someone. It's objective is to so thoroughly exasperate the target that their response becomes so extreme as to become unbelievable by the public at large. If they can't keep you from speaking, they can make others believe that either:
Michael Mann's ordeal serves the interest of the fossil fuel companies regardless of the outcome of the case.
It does not, however, serve the greater public interest. Even though I believe Mann to be mistaken, I'm quite certain that we the public cannot be adequately informed in an environment such as this.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
What country are you from, or are you from Roman Code Louisiana? Because us other states have the English Common Law system in which case law is in fact law when it comes from a higher court in that jurisdiction.
Except the exact opposite argument is used for vaccine deniers. In that case, the guy was getting money from the parents of the sick kids to find out why they got sick, and to determine if the vaccines caused the illness so they could sue. His research was supposedly influenced becuase of his personal affairs. So why should it apply there and not here?
No they are not. Tax returns are not available to the public in the US.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You want Mann's data? - Here, chew on this.
Mann's unpublished work has nothing to do with government policy making. As for abusing the intent of FOIA, Mann and others have received thousands of them in an organised campaign to bury them in paperwork. At the height of the "climategate" beat up they were receiving ~25 FOI requests a day (mostly for stuff that was already published). There have been dozens of high level political inquisitions of Mann and co since the hockey stick paper was published, not to mention constant death threats. Everyone from the VA attorney general to the US senate have had a go at him, none of them found a scrap of evidence showing impropriety on Mann's part.
All they have done is waste millions in taxpayer funds trying to prove he's a witch on behalf of their corporate sponsors. That US politicians are willing to do the bidding of FF corporations by character assassinating a world renowned scientist is sad, but somewhat expected these days. For so called "educated" citizens to cheer them on is fucking disgraceful.
That would also satisfy climate skeptics IMO.
The American Tradition Institute who filed the suit are not skeptics, they are "for hire" lobbyists masquerading as a charitable institution. The only way they will be satisfied is if Mann is shut down permanently and his work expunged from the collective knowledge of mankind. Mann is the skeptic in this story by virtue of the fact that all scientists are skeptics. Lobbyists don't believe in anything but a pay check, they are paid liars, the very definition of "propagandists". If you want to be a real patriot there's no better place to start than by learning to spot political propaganda when you see it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He made the argument that emails discussing the data relating to climate models should be withheld because they contain proprietary information that could cause the university to be less competitive with other universities in obtaining funding.
the reason behind all the global climate change hype in the first place. Since the early 1990s, Federal research installations have told their researchers to tie their projects to global climate change in any way they can in order to secure funding. After working in those places for a few years, it turned me off from even thinking about getting a PhD. It was kinda depressing to see scientists spending 1/2 their time chasing down money and at best 1/4 of their time doing actual science.
If the public pays for it, the public should receive it in its entirety.
Personal/Internal emails are not published research and has nothing to do with anything. The published research is available, along with data and source code.
~X~
Documents of a proprietary nature could include documents that disagree with the published findings.
Irrelevant. Let us say that I privately compile useful data and sell it to recoup the costs incurred in collecting it plus a little profit for my trouble - that is, I own data of proprietary nature. Now if I sell (or give because I believe in the value of the research) a copy to a public scientist that does not mean they get to put my data on the public record the first time they get a FOIA - effectively dropping the value of my data to zero.
So, if you want to force public scientists to release proprietary material you can choose between:
(a) public scientists not being able to gain access to private data sets which will stifle their research
(b) public scientists being sued into oblivion which will really stifle their research
Climate science IS about questioning what is going on. Denial is about having a fixed idea and trying to prevent the climate scientists from doing observations that challenge the "the world has never changed since creation" propaganda from the Merchants in Temples.
Funny how those same merchants call science a "religion" - probably because they can't tell the difference between a Church and Amway themselves.
An revealing comment from someone who even posts anonymously on Slashdot.
First off, you might know that there was a big flap over the NSA hoovering people's personal communications (content plus metadata), and people generally weren't quite satisfied by the argument that if they had nothing to hide they had no reason to object against having their lives laid bare.
And here *you* are, posting anonymously, suggesting that if an academic has nothing to "hide", his entire email exchange is fair game for people abusing the courts to turn what should be a scientific debate into a politically motivated witch-hunt. Something you top off by turning the issue on its head and suggesting bad faith on part of someone unwilling to turn over his entire email database.
Actions of this kind are known as "fishing expeditions' and uniformly considered unreasonable and objectionable as they are aimed only at discovering something (anything really no matter how unrelated to the issue under debate), that conspiracy-theorists might be able to use to villify the defending party.
For your information, proper scientific debates are held on basis of examination of evidence and reasoning, for which scientific publications together with the underlying data are a necessary and sufficient basis. The way this works is: if someone can't (or won't) produce the underlying data, his articles and conclusions suffer a reduction in credibility and hence lose weight in the debate. Besides which, other data sources than his are brought to bear with which to test his conclusions. And both mechanisms have been in action in this case.
Examination of email correspondence is not relevant for scientific debate, and is the exclusive domain of witch-hunts and lynch mobs.
Rethorical questions such as yours (especially when posted anonymously) are used by conspiracy theorists and people who wish to use the instruments of harassment to intimidate scientists that voice politically inconvenient conclusions.
Can they order him to do a reboot of Miami Vice?
On the other hand, what If I compile data using public funds that does not agree with my hypothesis and call it "proprietary" and keep it from the public. There needs to be a balance between stifling research and transparency.
Europe didn't expect Spanish Inquisition either.
Expectation of privacy and five bucks might get you a coffee.
It wasn't the "critics" or the political commentator who brought this to court. It was Mann who sued them, opening the way for discovery subpoenas against him, not FOIA requests. This blocks the defendant from getting to a public employee's communications that may possibly be used to defend one's self against a suit by that employee. This could be a very bad precedent. And don't confuse this with the FOIA stuff, nor with critics/skeptics using it to harass Mann: Bottom line is that if Mann had not sued in order to silence a political columnist, none of this would ever have been necessary.
That is what worries me more than anything else - if a public employee sues you in a matter of free speech (to silence you from criticizing him, via use of libel laws), this precedent gives that government employee a huge shield to hide behind and resist your attempts to discover information to defend yourself with against his lawsuit. This is a terrible precedent because it will provide for government coverups and denials of FOIA requests in the long run. Imagine this being used by a public employee you do not like politically, for a libel suit for your criticism of him - whether justifiable or not, it limits your ability to defend yourself. These folks are public employees, and their correspondence should as a general rule be available (excluding classified information, or personal privacy redacted info). A blanket limit on discovery when defending against a lawsuit from a public employee is a bad thing
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Fact: all of that belongs to the public. I, and many others, have requested these very bits of information from universities and have received them very quickly. I have been inside a college when FOIA (Sunshine) requests have been made, and although they were extremely pissed off (the reason we need Sunshine laws) they had to cough up the data. I have requested an received administrative "stuff" and meeting arrangements from a major university here in Ohio and I have received them--it is all sitting on a CD in my bookshelf. Found some juicy stuff in that data.
Even though colleges, and any government entity for that matter, are all extremely secretive (with the attitude that their business is their business) they are now bound by a specific law requiring them to expose all data when it is requested. When I worked at the college the Attorney General trained us on the FOIA. I asked the AG what we should do if someone requested the email addresses of every student--he said, "give it to them."
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
And now here's the part that really bugs me:
Mann said after the ruling, âoeThis is a victory for science...
No, it's not!
Yes it most certainly is. The thing about science is it's done by scientists who also happen to be people. They have basically blocked a stupid attempt at wasting vast amounts of a scientists time and possibly cause a great deal of personal emarrassment for non scientific things.
In other words, one avenue for these idiots for wasting a scientists time and stopping them doing actual science has been closed down.
That's good for scientists and good for science.
Science is more than hypothesis-experiment-conclusion.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You can request any and all pay information by the way. I remember a request from the local newspaper for all of the people and pay rates for those over $60k--it was all published in the paper. Talk about a stir--most of those people were "stomping" mad. It was a good thing though.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It does if the medium used for that ":ife" is funded with tax dollars.
No it doesn't, you're making stuff up.
There are many reasons that you're not supposed to use university faculty/government/corporate email systems for personal activity.
And there are many reasons why it's fine too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.
His lawyers cannot quote the part of the law dealing with a particular category of material that is allowed to be suppressed and use it to suppress a different category altogether that is not exempted from disclosure. The phrasing has nothing to do with it if they are ignoring the statutory language of the law to begin with.
Secondly, it does not cover any communication where the sender or receiver has an expectation of privacy. If he is emailing someone who is not being paid to work on that particular project, such as a graduate student or another person in his field or department, that information is not going to be covered by the FOIA as it violates the expectation of privacy of the person outside the project sending or receiving the email, unless the person is specifically informed that their email may be subject to public disclosure.
His lawyers did not make a privacy argument. The made a "proprietary information" argument.
Computer Engineer
What exactly does this job entail? I mean, do you actually design and build computers, i.e. engineer them? Or is it more of a technician job?
I ask because I see this job title advertised occasionally and the salaries are well below what I would consider engineer level, which is a shame because it could be interesting.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes.
Slashdot: Where privacy only matters as long as it's your privacy.
The publicly funded research *is* available, including all non-proprietary data-sets, and some proprietary data sets. It is very easy to prove me wrong. Just find a single instance of publicly funded research by Mann, where said was not made available. What is at issue in the court case is the notion of a fishing expedition, which is *not* legal, and the judge agreed.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Haha, and I think we should see all emails and have recorded communications for all agreements and deals made *everywhere* in the government and between governments!
Yes it would be great to be a fly on the wall for some conversations.
Yes it would be impossible to negotiate anything if everything was made public 100% of the time. Sure they'd just do what BushW did, which is use unofficial email addresses to conduct the business of government.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
As someone who does research for a living, I can say we already do outline exactly the thought process behind the research. It is called a publication. That is what it is. You try hundreds of things, and when you get something working, you go back through your work, and try to explain it in the clearest possible way.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Historical correspondence between scientists is more often harolded for its benefits to the scientific community than for any fear of political backlash.
When someone is ready to write the memoirs of Michael Mann, then I'm sure his emails will be of interest. But that is not what is going on here. There is a lot of motivated reasoning bent on a smear campaign. This isn't about what is good for posterity at all. If "skeptics" are so sure of themselves, then they should publish their arguments. But that hasn't worked out so well for them, and hence this court case.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Everything the tax payer paid for is available. Mann is under no obligation to hand over proprietary documents, and the judge agreed. Think you know better than the judge? Of course you do.
But the kicker is that you don't seem to understand that this is just a fishing expedition, to find something, *anything*, to take out of context and shit-coat Mann's career. It is the recourse of people who cannot make an intellectual argument against AGW, but think they are correct anyway. The cognitive dissonance is resolved by asserting the Mann et al. are really corrupt, and then set out to prove it.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Mann has every right to do his research without being exposed to the kindergarten-level mudracking we see from "skeptics". I get that you think you are moral and all, but alas, that is the tragedy of the human condition. You think he's wrong on the science, then show it. With science.
The cooch was looking for some email saying something like "I can't explain this result", so that he can shit-coat Mann's career a little bit more. You can bet your bottom dollar -- as the history of the "debate" clearly shows -- skeptics will not bother to understand what Mann couldn't explain at that particular point of time. That's why we don't allow fishing expeditions, and the judge was savvy to it.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I find it bizarre that under all of this motivated reasoning is the notion that AGW must be wrong because it would be immoral for the government to regulate carbon. So of course Mann has to hand over his emails. It's really a distraction from the core issue. If you can make a scientific argument against Mann's science, then do it. Cooch is obviously engaged in a fishing expedition to shit-coat Mann with kindergarten level attacks, and the judge was savvy to it. Cry me a river.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Mann has better things to do than being beaten over the head by the kindergarten level thinking behind the "Hide the decline" incident. If there was an honest debate, then that would be fine. But this is really the case of the absurdly stupid wasting everyone's time and money.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Hide what decline, precisely
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Cooch isn't on a fishing expedition. Mann is suing Mark Steyn for libel. Mark Steyn needs access to the information necessary to defend himself. When you sue someone you open yourself to discovery, and while this isn't specifically the discovery phase, the information should be open for review. If the research is strong, let it stand on it's own merits.
I'm not going to watch your 17 minute propaganda piece. The fact remains, scientists should not be trying to hide anything, whether it's original data used in modeled projections, emails involved in a libel case, or a decline in the size of tree rings in northern latitudes which would coincide with cooler temperatures in the same zones.
I'm not going to watch your 17 minute propaganda piece.
aka, protecting one's ignorance. Everyone does it.
The fact remains, scientists should not be trying to hide anything
Nothing was hidden in the sense that publications, data, methods, or computer programs were hidden. What was "hidden" was a signal that was already demonstrated to be false. The "hide the decline" incident is a perfect example of brohaha over precisely *nothing*. There is a lot of shame there, if you are a believer, which makes a huge obstacle for actually discovering the truth of the situation. But if you actually care if your beliefs are right or wrong, then that will be stronger still.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You're confused. The anti-vaxers were discredited because vaccines don't cause autism. The climate science is not discredited because it's accurate. We don't really give a shit about anyone's personal life, it's not reproducible empirical evidence, or terribly explanatory. It's funny though, if you weren't a complete moron, you'd be able to read enough about atmospheric science to understand it. Instead you're the prey of smarter people. Oooh, maybe you even think you're one of the smart ones!
If anyone working for the government can now release only what they want you to see, FOIA means nothing. They can hide literally everything they produce, no matter what it is, and get away with it. Mann does not want anyone to see over 12,000 documents. What is hidden in those docs? This means all kinds of waste, fraud, and abuse can prosper and the taxpayer cannot see what the "researcher" did to come up with their findings. A government "scientist" can buy stocks in Alcoa, come out with a finding that aluminum is much safer for drinking containers than anything else, and become instantly rich from a con. And this judge will let them do it!
I guess the court placed "scientist's" in the same class as "witch doctor" and "snake oil salesman" and "politician". If i cannot get the information to verify the research, was it real or imagined research. Fraud statutes would seen then to apply. but, How fast they have fallen, gotta get out the ju-ju beads and start praying to invisable gods in the air and trees to heal the earth!.
What you said doesn't contradict what I said. What you're actually asking is that Manning provide the evidence that Levin *should have had* when he was running off his mouth. This is punishing Manning for trying to defend himself through the only legal means available to him.
I say - if you're running off your mouth about lies for which you have no evidence then you're just as guilty of libel whether or not what you say is true. Or at least should be discouraged. Otherwise that gives me the ability to go running around slandering others as a way of forcing disclosure of whatever I want (transactions, proprietary data, sex tapes, etc.).
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
I lost the encryption keys. Ooops sorry.
FOIA is supposed to be valid for anyone, not just for ones that would never question it. According to what you just said here, there are mounds of papers he produced that would literally impeach everything he has been pushing for years and therefore needs to be hidden.
That's not what they are asking for, nor the webcams in the womens or the mens showers. Maybe you are, but I want to know how they modified the data, and changed the research to make their claim. The e-mails that they wanted showed a concerted effort to modify the past records to match what they wanted. Preconcieved notion, guess, matching an output. that output calls for limiting 1st world countries. "And pay a "tithe" to 3rd world countries. Taking the jobs from 1st and moving to 3rd world changes the pollution they put out from well regulated to no regulation output. That spews the poisions to someone elses body. Is that fair? Maybe to you, but i don't like pollution. So these "scientist's" accepted public money to modify data, mann in his intercepted e-maiols said to several researchers, modify the data, make it look like X not Y, thats truth, go read, he makes a lie of the data.That changes public record, of what should be truth, So now we cannot trust Mann, or the researchers that modified data for money, what good reports are there? That whole science field is because of a few charlatans bullies invalid. So what can we trust, the man in white robes? Black 'Robes? what? And I was thinking of going back to college to further my interest in decreasing pollution! But now can I trust the instructors to teach me truth?
http://eric.worrall.name/Climategate/FOIA/1106338806.txt
this is for everyone who can't google or has not been part of the debate because you are not a denier.
grow the fuck up please, this is not a game.
http://eric.worrall.name/Climategate/FOIA/1106338806.txt
I produced a paper, called the "The Last 6 months", in which I proved, via National Weather Service Data, that the last 6 months were the coldest 6 months since 1912. No magical mystery climate research hidden from the public at any time. But just keep repeating to yourself that "the globe is hotter than its ever been before".
There is a big difference between asking for the email address of a student, and asking for their grades and financial information, which have legal issues even when parents try to request it without proper permission.
So did Phill Jones at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of E. Anglica but that expectation of privacy didn't stop the character calling him/herself FOIA from releasing all the Emails that were required to be released by GB's Freedom of Information Act.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Everything the tax payer paid for is available.
...unless either you or Mann (prolly not both) are lying, which is more than possible given that no one can actually use that data to reproduce the results he originally presented.
But the kicker is that you don't seem to understand that this is just a fishing expedition, to find something, *anything*, to take out of context and shit-coat Mann's career.
You mean like Mann did when he sued Tim Ball, then watched as the case collapsed because he wouldn't, you know, hand over the research documents that would prove Ball was somehow committing libel?
Oh, wait... ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
no one can actually use that data to reproduce the results he originally presented.
At this link you can find references to about 10 different independent reconstructions that find the same result as Mann.
Regarding Sullivan's assertions about the ongoing lawsuit, Michael Mann's lawyer basically said the guy is serially wrong, and doesn't know what he is talking about, and I quote:
Response from my lawyer in response to latest claims by #TimBall (more info on him here: http://www.desmogblog.com/timo...) & #JohnOSullivan (more inf on him here: http://www.desmogblog.com/affi... ): The review of Tim Ball’s new book by Hans Schreuder and John O’Sullivan makes preposterous statements concerning Dr. Michael Mann’s lawsuit in the British Columbia Supreme Court against Tim Ball and other defendants. The Mann lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, with further examinations for discovery (depositions) of the defendants to be scheduled shortly, following which I will either set the action for trial by jury in the usual manner, or bring a summary trial application on behalf of Dr. Mann for damages and injunctive relief. Dr. Ball has not set the matter for trial and there is no motion by Ball currently before the Court. The allegation by Schreuder and O’Sullivan that Dr. Mann has refused to show his metadata and calculations in open court is not true. Their assertion that Dr. Mann faces possible bankruptcy is nonsense. Dr. Mann’s lawsuit against Dr. Ball and other defendants is proceeding through the normal stages prescribed by the BC Supreme Court Civil Rules and Dr. Mann looks forward to judicial vindication at the conclusion of this process. February 22, 2014 Roger D. McConchie Barrister and Solicitor Legal Counsel to Dr. Michael Mann
You live in a world of made-up "facts". Presumably you *think* you are if your beliefs are wrong or right. Presumably.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Pretty lousy move from a university, fighting a FOIA request.
Not so. For example here is the privacy statement from a well-known university:
Privacy of Information
Information stored on a computer system or sent electronically over a network is the property of the individual who created it. Examination, collection, or dissemination of that information without authorization from the owner is a violation of the ownerâ(TM)s rights to control his or her own property. Systems administrators, however, may gain access to usersâ(TM) data or programs when it is necessary to maintain or prevent damage to systems or to ensure compliance with other University rules.
Which Uni is that? I understand that they cannot claim copyright, but legally the Uni can do whatever else it wants to with it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
US v. Maxwell is a different story - it described a user/subscriber relationship with an ISP.
Otherwise as a general rule, corporations and similar entities (like publicly-funded universities) which provide email POP3 and IMAP service says far, far different:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-ency...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"Albert Einstein's step-daughter Margot had stipulated in an agreement with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dating from 1984 that letters in her possession, inherited from her step-father after his death in 1955 would be given to the Hebrew University but should be kept sealed and away from the public's eye for 20 years after her death. By the beginning of 1986 the material had arrived in Jerusalem. Margot had passed away a short time later, in July 1986. By July 8th, 2006 the 20-year period since her death had lapsed. Now the time had come to make the letters available to the public.
Since then, all of the material, spanning from 1914 to 1955, is available at the Albert Einstein Archives in Jerusalem for the interested public."
There was no forced publication of Einstein's letters during his life. His family chose when to publish and it was long after his death.
Your analogy is falling so far off the mark it's funny.
http://www.albert-einstein.org...
You know, you're right. And the one that frantically pleaded with the respondent to "delete all emails" was perfectly innocent, too. Thanks for putting our minds at ease, buddy.
http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/mcintyre-heartland_2010.pdf
Well, apply it to any other area where FOIA applies and see if we can't get rid of the pesky FOIA altogether. But wait, we immediately find an application where we do NOT want to get rid of FOIA, so maybe the goal isn't worthy after all.
But you haven't. Your attempts at analogy have failed. It's just as true in those other areas that rooting through the trash is not only pointless but counter-productive.
There's nothing wrong with FOIA requests for data, and other things that FOIA covers. But this has been to court and those things that are covered by FOIA have been released and not those that don't. So you have no FOIA argument either.
And the one that frantically pleaded with the respondent to "delete all emails" was perfectly innocent, too.
(1) What are you talking about?
(2) Did you ever bother to get both sides?
(3) Smear campaigns are the fall back for those who cannot make an academic argument.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Read the PDF I linked to.
(1) Where any emails deleted?
(2) Did you ever get the other side of the story
(3) Smears the the fallback for not being able to make an academic argument.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
(1) Where any emails deleted?
The place where they were deleted was from the inbox.
(2) Did you ever get the other side of the story
Yes.
(3) Smears the the fallback for not being able to make an academic argument.
Not sure what you're talking about here. Are you talking about your own smears you made earlier, when you used the phrases "kindergarten level thinking" and "absurdly stupid"? I can't see a good reason to smear the likes of Richard Lindzen and Steve McIntyre with such words. So why are you engaging in such smearing tactics, microbox?
A university is an ISP for students and faculty and university email accounts are little different than for-profit ISP email accounts.
Most universities have a privacy policy that protects the contents of the email of students and faculty and only allows viewing of contents for reasons similar to why an ISP would be allowed to view customers' email, like in compliance with a court order. Students, professors, and people who send them email have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And, in this case, it is irrelevant. If something is subject to the FOIA or the State equivalent, it is going to be subject to disclosure regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government email account. Likewise, if something is not subject to the FOIA, then it will not be subject regardless of whether it was sent from a personal or government account.
Privileged information is privileged information and public information is public information. The email account used is irrelevant. Most universities hold their faculty and students responsible for policing their own email.
The most damning thing found was Phil Jones inciting people to deleted emails in a private email. An investigation was done, and no emails were ever deleted. The so called "deleted" emails appeared in the climategate leak.
I don't have time for your motivated reasoning. I think you are plainly stupid, and so is Lindzen and McIntrye.
goes down the flusher.
Face it deniers, add energy, increase the density of the blanket, things get hotter.
The exact details may vary, but the effect is inevitable.
Stop fighting physics and start fighting greed or we are certainly the last generation of economic growth worldwide
I weep for you, O Anonymous Coward, at being forced to spend your limited time in conversation with people you regard as stupid. By all means, go away and stop posting on this thread, if that's the way you feel.
Sideslash, if you gave any indication that you were interested in an honest conversation then I'd go for it. You claim to have looked into the other side of the story, and also claim that emails were deleted, but multiple investigations found this to be false.
From Lewandowsky: conspiracist ideation is typically immune to falsification, “because contradictory evidence (e.g., climate scientists being exonerated of accusations) can be accommodated by broadening the scope of the conspiracy (exonerations are a whitewash), often with considerable creativity.”
As a further refinement, I noted that conspiracist ideation thrives on creating specific malicious others as a particuarly powerful form of meaning-making. “Yes, absolutely,” Lewandowsky responded. “There is this tension between ‘victim’ and ‘hero’ within the conspiracist worldview that leads to those contradictory positions. On the one hand (the ‘hero’ frame) it is permissible to accuse scientists of fraud and harass them, but by the same token (‘victim’ frame) scientists must do nothing to cast aspersions on the accusers or to defend themselves. Arthur Koestler has referred to those people as ‘mimophants.’ It is crucial for the public to understand this.”
It takes guts to move from evidence to conclusions, and if you have what it takes, then you would certainly know how to respond.
Maybe I just don't know how to work this stuff, but I wasn't aware you were replying since you're doing it as AC. I get notifications when a replier is logged in, so you might consider logging in if you want to continue the exchange.
Sorry, which investigations found that no emails were deleted? Please provide the reference, along with the convincing evidence that no emails were deleted. It was my understanding that there was no way to know the answer to that, and that in at least one investigation the investigators deliberately avoided asking if emails were deleted because they didn't want anybody to admit to a potential crime. (To anybody paying attention, the investigations were for the most part an exercise in "friends helping friends out," and not particularly interested in stirring any pot that might turn up scandal and academic disgrace.)
I'm guessing the evidence that no emails were deleted consists of... what... not finding any deleted emails? LOL! Stick around and I'll explain the concept of "deleting" to you.
OK, think I found the option... should get email notices now...
No scientist could ever fudge anything, so it is a waste of time looking.
If you want to show a scientist is fudging something then disprove their published results. There is an objective reality that the science is studying and fudged results won't match with that reality. Quote mining emails for comments that can be twisted into sounding like something shady like the "Hide the decline."* comment (which to be clear wasn't made by Mann) is a political argument that is not addressing the science. If they are fudging the science do the scientific work and prove them wrong.
*The "decline" was hidden in plain sight as you would know if you ever bothered to read the relevant scientific papers.
This decision had nothing to do with Mann's lawsuit against the National Review and Mark Steyn. They are two completely separate cases.
A publication stands or falls on its own merits. Anybody at all familiar with publication knows that more often than not there were a hell of a lot of failed attempts, wrong headed hypotheses, blunders, technical mistakes, etc before our during the process of reaching the goal. These are typically not included in the final publication, for much the same reason recipes in magazines don't include things like "don't accidentally substitute salt for the sugar, and don't try to bake it at 500 rather than 350 because you're in a hurry" There isn't any scientific value to be gained in the snipe hunt through personal emails, but there's always hope they'll stumble upon something like "I'm beginning to believe this is all a wild goose chase" or "maybe I'm completely wrong about this" which they'll trot out to the usual "experts" on the WSJ op-ed page, for perpetual parroting by the usual crew so enamored of their ability to see through the conspiracy of scientists.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Just as there is a push for greater transparency in research (Google, "transparency in academia"), this ruling comes along.
Just so we're clear: if your research is pretty benign, fine, keep your work secret. If however, your research promises great change to your field OR WORSE motivates changes to public policy and the spending of public money, then it is your duty to practice transparency until it hurts.
Fame (esp. academic fame) has a price, scrutiny. It is a measure of the character of Mann that law is being used to defend against proper scrutiny of his work. A prideful man, but a poor academic.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Is someone playing fool? A knot of meaning, no one has paid attention to my (informally delivered) Weather Model based on Massacres. In short: shaman like groups have a lot of control over weather triggering changes by murdering people ritually, so they can fake miracles and get believers, and such is one of the reasons (both ways) why weather forecast is so popular. Mann _does_ refer to a common **onomatopeia** where Man are men with particula physical characteristics in mass, size and shape, and would be considered **superior** to other physiognomies. Unhindered, such shamanic techniques would have the weather system so primed they can effect changes with a lot of control. BUt of course it is not politically correct to tout such theory and my emails unanswered. Can I be sure some of those undisclosed documents are NOT my own emails? I managed to successfully anticipate the weather for a few years informally running my model as thought experiment, and it still works. For instance, last week s cold weather in NYC was the consequence of another murder streak, so that forecasts missed the point when today it is sunny and it was not a full week in shadows... It is a very disgusting matter, indeed. Danilo J Bonsignore
Yes, there IS: those emails are ALL the researcher-under-threat can output, heroically, but another researcher does not have to make it evident once it gets the paper and it produces MONEY for him!! Which was not shared, at least... If it is not an original case, it is a mirroring. No more interest in History of Science, eh?
Because scientists deserve better than constant harrassment from lunatics.
Also grammar point;- There is no scare-quotes around science.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Yes they are. Often with sourcecode , data and all.
Oftentimes commercial software and datasets can't be published publically but outside of that, climate science is something done out in the open for the most part.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Theres simply no evidence of this at all, and these ridiculously, and continuously disproven smears should show exactly why he's not particularly interested in people prying over his words hoping to find something, anything, they can misrepresent.
The way we are treating scientists such as mann whos research upsets the economic hegemony in 2014 really is borderline medieval.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Read this paper:
http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/mcintyre-heartland_2010.pdf
Ask yourself: is there anything wrong with Mann's "my way or the highway" attitude toward publishing in his niche area of research in Science Magazine? How can you possibly describe this as anything other than "cargo cult science"? To quote Mann's supervisor at the University of Virginia, to a Science Magazine editor, "Excuse me while I puke".
Actually, if you dig in to the case, they are unable (or unwilling) to release the original research that lead to the conclusions. This is why it is impossible to run the data and get the same outputs as him. To a lot of government hawks, it comes down to if the public should have access to data required to duplicate an experiment if it is funded by the people. Saying that the data was refined in emails, then saying that the emails are off limits should mean that we do not develop policy based on that in my opinion.
What you said doesn't contradict what I said.
Yes, it actually does. The issue at this point is not allowing someone who made what you claim are baseless claims to go hunting for one, it is to allow him to defend himself against a lawsuit. The lawsuit is the cause of the FOIA request. Had Levin wanted to go fishing against Mann, he could have filed the request long ago.
This is punishing Manning for trying to defend himself through the only legal means available to him.
Manning has nothing to do with this. Mann is trying to "defend himself" in a court of law instead of allowing Levin's character and actions speak for themselves. In other words, Mann has another, excellent means of defending himself outside of bringing the squabble into a court of law. By bringing it into court, he needs to accept that the matter has moved into a that venue and operates under those rules. As I've already pointed out, nobody in the "serious climate science field" (i.e., those who believe and accept Mann's data without seeing the underlying raw data) care what Levin says. Nobody who agrees with Levin is going to change their mind if Mann wins. There is little damage that Mann is going to fix by filing this suit, and in fact he's Streisanding himself pretty well by giving Levin a pulpit.
You say he's defending himself. It is just as easy to claim that he's trying to squelch someone who disagrees with him. It's now up to the courts to work out which is which, and not because of Levin, because Mann wants it that way.
I say - if you're running off your mouth about lies for which you have no evidence then you're just as guilty of libel whether or not what you say is true.
So you'd claim that the truth is not a defense against a charge of libel? That because you didn't have the evidence in hand at the moment you made a statement but could get it after the fact, you're still guilty? Hmmm. An interesting philosophy. Not legally accurate, but interesting.
Otherwise that gives me the ability to go running around slandering others as a way of forcing disclosure of whatever I want (transactions, proprietary data, sex tapes, etc.
If you made sex tapes as a public employee of a public institution covered by open access laws and subject to FOIA requests, then you are the fool and yes, you should be forced to turn those sex tapes over when a valid request for them under FOIA is made. You shouldn't be allowed to hide behind "proprietary" or "secret" claims. "It will embarass the hell out of me" isn't a sufficient exclusion for such material, nor is "it will prove that I am guilty of what the other guy said".
And, I'll point out again since you missed it twice already, the FOIA request is being made because of the lawsuit, not because someone wants to go fishing.