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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."
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.
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
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
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.
Just remember what Neil Degrasse Tyson said in Cosmos, "Question Everything".
Why should we?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
What seems to be missing from this article: Mark Steyn, a conservative talk show host, called Mann a fraud. So, Mann is suing Steyn for defamation. As his defense, Steyn is trying to prove that the data was manipulated and cherry picked. Therefore, proving that Steyn's comments were justified. So, Steyn requested the data under the FIOA, since Mann's work was publicly funded.
But Mann - the scientist who warns us that global warming is real and dangerous based on a computer model - refuses to give out the computer code and data that he used to form his assertions. To me, this doesn't sound very scientific or very honest.
The key details for models are not published
Citation Needed
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.
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.
It's not papers. Papers are available in scientific journals. This is an attempt to root in the trash looking for something to misrepresent.
Another question is about the scientific integrity here. If the data is true and supportive of his assertions, he should WANT to publish it.
What wasn't published? His work WAS published.
Show the papers and the data, unless of course you have something to hide.
Ah yes. The age old excuse of the surveillance state. Please post the web site where your own work emails are published, HighOrbit. Unless of course you have something to hide.
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.
Asking for vacation, sending in sick leave requests etc.pp. is all business, and none of them belongs to the public.
This is slightly inaccurate: the case is not directly connected with Steyn. True, Steyn's case might be helped (or hurt) by some of the undisclosed data and documents, but this is an earlier FOIA case that has been dragging on for a long time.
I do find it troubling that publicly funded research now seems to have giant carve-outs rendering it substantially not subject to FOIA. Increasing the power and secrecy around already-powerful politicians and bureaucrats, even those in a state-funded university, is troubling.
This will likely go to the Supreme Court. Were I a betting man, I'd bet that four of the conservative wing would overrule, the liberal wing would vote to uphold, and the deciding vote would be the Chief Justice who might surprise everyone and side with the liberals, as he did in the Affordable Care Act decision. But who knows.
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.
The tradition is you make an accusation after you have evidence, not before so you get sued and can go hunting through someones correspondences looking for muck to rake. If there is evidence that the emails not being released here are relevant to some ongoing legal action then you might have a point, but there is precisely no evidence Mann has done anything other than do a PCA in a way which might have introduced some ambiguity. This was corrected in numerous later publications which validated his findings. If you suggest I'm a murderer with no evidence then you may find yourself with a lawsuit and you can be sure I'm not going to let someone who throws around frivilous accusations have access to my correspondences without a court mandate.
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.)
So why hasn't Steyn demanded the data under ordinary discovery rules? FOIA is an odd way to go about getting data you're supposedly entitled to in order to defend yourself in court.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
My understanding of the idea and purpose of an academic research paper is to lay out a hypothesis, method to collect data to test the hypothesis, data (results), statistical analysis of data, and conclusions. A properly written research paper will not be published in a peer reviewed journal unless the method of data collection is clear. This makes the research reproducible. The publication of reproducible research is a crux of the scientific process.
What the proponents of the FOIA request are doing is trying to cheat. If you want to disprove research, you may:
- Show that the method of data collection produces biased data
- Show that using the same method of data collection produces different data than that shown in the original research
- Show that statistical analysis was not done properly
- Etc.
All of this is done by hiring experts to analyze the methodology and statistical analysis and by commissioning a study to reproduce the original research. If the research is not reproducable, then there is something wrong.
That is how science works--you make reproducible research and then other people reproduce it. When they can't, the scientific community tries to figure out what went wrong. Maybe the underlying scientist made an error, maybe s/he made up data, maybe there is no explanation.
But this idea that you can cheat by looking at the researcher's emails? That's new. And not useful. If the study was not done properly, then reproducing it will catch that. If the research was done properly, then it needs to be reproduced anyway in order to determine the strength of the conclusions. So, don't try to cheat the system, just do this the old fashioned way--reproduce the research.
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.
"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.
So if your daughter works at a student job at the university, can I request access to all of her university email? How about any records of her internet activity, like the websites she visited using university networks? After all, she is a public employee using government resources and as a creepy stalker, I certainly have a right to know what classes she is taking, where she hangs out, what websites she visits, and any other information I might be able to learn through a FOIA request.
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!
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.
Just remember what Neil Degrasse Tyson said in Cosmos, "Question Everything".
Why should we?
I see what you did there, but your punny play aside we really should. Some people might miss the humor of your remark.
Probably not. My thinking is that this is a precedent that states that any information that is used to guide public policy (read: laws that affect you and me) can be hidden from the public, skirting the intent of FOIA laws, by having that data be produced and/or curated by a private entity or person. This has further implications than just global warming squabbles; this could give groups like the NSA incentive to privatize spying, among other things.
An easy fix for this IMO is that nothing can be used to guide public policy or legislative actions unless the information used to glean them is already public. That would allow people like Michael Mann to keep their data private if they want, but stuff they produce can't be used to guide government decisions and/or actions unless he publishes it into the public domain before that process even begins. That would also satisfy climate skeptics IMO.
And really, why shouldn't it be this way? I mean I really don't like the idea that some derp could in theory dictate laws by claiming the world is about to end if we don't do it his way, meanwhile being able to hide his source of information and claim we just have to trust his work.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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 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.
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.
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!
it's called precedent. once you set the precedent that all records are subject to public scrutiny if you take a dollar of public money... i think you'll have effectively crippled any kind of public funding for... well anything.
Excuse me, but.. why again is public scrutiny a bad thing?
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.
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.
Public scrutiny is a big reason we have a lot of laws protecting the environment and the public from irresponsible companies, currently. Public is and should be interested in what companies are doing behind closed doors, and those aren't even examples of a publically funded project.
Now we shift to a public entity and they want to keep things hidden because.. it might be used to do harm to someone? Puhleeeze, that is a pretty feeble argument. It's a good thing that public scrutiny has harmed a lot of people, it's been for the greater good!
I know I got tagged flamebait, but I still fail to see why public scrutiny is a bad thing. Of course it might interfere with your work, but how are we to know if your work SHOULD be interfered with if you're hiding it?
Science. Truth.
Correct. They are distinct. Science doesn't deal in truth. It wouldn't be useful otherwise.
Truth is squarely the domain of logic and philosophy.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
Sigh. The Fuck'in hockey stick is accurate, and you can see the data he used with a simple search on Wolfram Alpha. It doesn't even take that much effort to look for yourself.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...
You can see what is projection and what is actual data. You can see the names of all the different data sets. You can do research on them to figure out if they're accurate or not. It's not even hard. But... You keep believ'in that it's all a hoax by scientists for that big flush grant money.....
http://imgur.com/n4XNJ
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.
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.
But Mann - the scientist who warns us that global warming is real and dangerous based on a computer model - refuses to give out the computer code and data that he used to form his assertions. To me, this doesn't sound very scientific or very honest.
Exactly. But...well...I think he needs to work on hiding stuff. Because...I mean, whenever I try to hide something I don't make a website about what I'm trying to hide and post it on the internet: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann...
Do you know how to use a search engine?
~X~
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?
You might actually want to look up that McCain claim as you are wrong on it.
Of course if you did that, you might appear as if you know what you are talking about. But then your racism argument falls apart until you invent something else.
Here is a hint, McCain's eligability was challenged at the same time Obama's was by a hillary supporter. McCain put it all on the table and it was dropped quickly. Obama resisted and created useful idiots. And yes, i'm lumping you into the same group of manipulated tools as the birthers
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
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
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
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
We have no right to the information.
This is merely an attempt to attack the messenger. An honest critic would do their own scientific work to discredit it and get peer review. The only purpose of anal probing him is to find something scandalous (even personal) like that cooked up email scandal years back which they dragged out for years into some global super conspiracy.
He might be fooling around with an intern and that is in the emails or the HINT of it is in there... So then he must be made an example so others fear them.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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
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
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.
What's wrong with judging scientists on their published science instead of some quote mining expedition? The papers are an expression of their understanding of an objective reality. Anyone can research that objective reality and come up with their own answers. Anything else is just secondary.