Virginia AG Probing Michael Mann For Fraud 617
eldavojohn writes "Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has requested receipts and research documents relating to nearly half a million dollars in state taxpayer money used to conduct climate change research at the University of Virginia while under direction of Michael Mann, originator of the famous 2001 IPCC Hockey Stick graph depicting rapid climate change. Mann appears to be a prime target for Cuccinelli — who has also requested hearings with the EPA to contest the grounds of their carbon dioxide studies. Mann's expenditures of taxpayer money may become problematic if Cuccinelli finds violations of Virginia's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act. Cuccinelli has been active in pushing conservative views in the past, including an effort to remove the titillating mammary from the beloved Great Seal of Virginia. No end in sight for the politicizing of the science and research surrounding climate change."
Re:Ken Cuccinelli (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fraud? It's looking him in the mirror (Score:5, Interesting)
Mann did invite a lot of criticism by not opening his data when people asked him for it. I'm referring of course to the issues with the bristlecone pine and his convolution of several sets of temperature proxies. I haven't heard of any evidence that Mann is involved in any fraud though, but witch hunts by their very nature never come up empty-handed. This one won't either.
consider this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case, but it seems that any call for an investigation would end up being impugned as "politicizing science" regardless of the investigation's merits.
Re:Ken Cuccinelli (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, allocation and use of public funds - taxes - is by definition political, and I'm happy someone is checking they are wisely spent.
But, I'm not sure there enough suspicion to specifically investigate that guy, nor that other investigation may prove more wirth it, if less politically rewarding.
You Commit Three Felonies a Day (Score:5, Interesting)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842.html [wsj.com]
Re:You Commit Three Felonies a Day (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless Mann is a saint, even if he is not truly fraudulent with his funds, he will be hard pressed to defend every last research dollar spent under his program. He could be found guilty for nothing more than what is an accepted practice among researchers because the alternative is a non-workable research program.
Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:3, Interesting)
Being gay is probably genetic.There's physical differences in the brains of gays.
I've pointed this out before but was moderated into oblivion. What you're saying is true. These differences clearly show up in MRIs. They have different brain chemistry - just as normal males and females also differ; whereby gays match neither.
What's not commonly known and likely the reason I've always been moderated negatively is that many "gays" do not have different brain chemistry from other males which likely means for many "gays" it absolutely is a choice.
What I have done a poor job of explaining is, of those who call themselves gay, there is very likely those who are born gay, having different brain chemistry, and those who choose to act gay. And so it seems the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. For some its a choice. For others, not so much. At least, that's what science seems to be saying on the subject once you get past the political correctness BS.
Another tidbit is also likely explains why I get moderated to hell is that many mental illnesses also show up on MRIs. Which suggests diseases such as sociopaths and psychopaths, among many others, are not actually diseases. You can't have it both ways. If you follow the logical conclusion, either these are not diseases or they are. And if male and female is not a disease then it suggests that sociopaths, psychopaths, and homosexuality are also not a disease. But it also suggests that sociopaths and psychopaths are not wrongly persecuted and even worse, testing may be to the greater benefit of society. Sadly this means most CEOs would wind up the pariahs of society rather than the overly paid, valued members they current are.
Not Appointed (Score:4, Interesting)
With any luck U VA will resist the subpoena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:3, Interesting)
"U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement that Cuccinelli's advice would "damage the Commonwealth's reputation for academic excellence and diversity."
""What he's saying is reprehensible," said Vincent F. Callahan Jr., a former Republican member of the House of Delegates who serves on George Mason's board of visitors. "I don't know what he's doing, opening up this can of worms."
Total prick. He might as well of put out a press release that simply said "I hate fags." As a Virginia resident, and a friend to some of the few homosexual persons whom have managed to, and are somehow willing to stick it out in the state: We hate Ken Cuccinelli.
Re:One of many shenanigans (Score:2, Interesting)
News = entertainment (Score:4, Interesting)
> The point is, I would highly doubt that a news periodical like Time would
> just pull a story out of their arses without any actual basis to them.
You do understand that even in their greatest era of actual news reporting, all news-providing entities are in the fundamental business of providing entertainment for their customers? And that newness, controversy, and oh-my-gawd-doom stories have been entertaining to the masses since, oh 30,000 BC? The idea that anything that appears in Time Magazine has a factual basis, or even a strong factual basis, can be easily refuted by scanning through a few issues from the 1930s.
sPh
Re:It is very serious (Score:2, Interesting)
(Wikipedia's summary: "A survey of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1979 found 7 articles predicting cooling and 44 predicting warming, with the warming articles also being cited much more often in subsequent scientific literature.")
It doesn't really make a difference as far as the facts around global warming are concerned, but that study is wrong in its conclusion. Scientists were thinking about global cooling. I had a textbook growing up from the 50s talking about how eventually the earth would have another ice age, and some of the challenges we would have dealing with it.
The thing is, it was settled science by the 70s, so it's not surprising that you wouldn't find many articles about the topic (you don't find many articles predicting the rate of apples falling). Even now, the basic science is considered sound, there is still predicted cooling, but the predicted shift into an ice age is much farther away than the predicted global warming, so people don't worry about it as much. If people are still alive when the next ice age hits, its a very real problem they will have to deal with.
This is not about "punishing" science (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is this has little to do with Michael Mann or the University of Virginia. This has everything to do with the AG's petition to put the EPA's threatened regulation of carbon dioxide under review [vaag.com]. The AG is seeking to undermine the EPA's grounds for action by showing that it is based on weak, missing, or faulty scientific evidence.
The law the AG is using is the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act [taf.org], a relatively new "whistleblower" law. The kinds of fraud this law attempts to cover are:
* Submitting false service records or samples in order to show better-than-actual performance.
* Falsifying natural resource production records -- Pumping, mining or harvesting more natural resources from public lands that is actually reported to the government.
* Billing for research that was never conducted; falsifying research data that was paid for by the U.S. government.
Arguably, if the AG can show that the climate science was cooked, he could have a case. If he wins it, he may have established a legal precedent for throwing out the climate data in the EPA case.
This sounds like a pretty smart legal move, if you are a Republican and you control the governorship of Virginia.
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:1, Interesting)
So if being gay is genetic then how has that trait stayed in a gene pool where darwin says survival of the fittest? Is it a case like sickle cell where one pair of genes helps you fight off malaria where as 2 sets of the gene gives you sickle cell? That benefit is why it stays in the gene pool.
Not tying to be a smart ass just curious.
Not surpising given this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It is very serious (Score:3, Interesting)
"How soon do we forget that 30 years ago scientists were predicting a second ice age."
Bullshit. Here's an example of what was being popularly discussed back in the 80's: By way of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (3rd one down): http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/political-economy-of-calvin-and-hobbes-3.html [cooperativ...ualism.org]
Hey Mom, what's this I hear about the greenhouse effect? They say the pollutants we dump in the air are trapping the sun's heat and it's going to melt the polar ice caps! Sure, you'll be gone when it happens, but I won't! Nice planet you're leaving me!
If a newspaper cartoon could get this basically right 20+ years ago, what's your fucking excuse? (Note: Watterson cartoon was erroneous in not expecting global changes soon enough.)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Science should be defended by peer review and by thesis defence, not by challenging it in a court of law, with the possibility of a legal punishment for being wrong, or for producing a politically inconvenient result.
Though this is becoming a bit of a Godwin by itself, I'll mention Galileo here...
Re:It is very serious (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:4, Interesting)
Another tidbit is also likely explains why I get moderated to hell is that many mental illnesses also show up on MRIs. Which suggests diseases such as sociopaths and psychopaths, among many others, are not actually diseases.
Yes, that *is* probably why you get moderated to hell, because you're *plainly wrong*. Sorry, but the idea of mind-body separation [wikipedia.org], originally championed by René Descartes [wikipedia.org] in the first half of the *17th century*, was proven to be bullshit, along with most of Freudian psychoanalysis, a long time ago. And good riddance since these bodies of ideas have plagued the understanding and treatment of mental illness ever since.
Your *brain is an organ* and as such is subject to affliction by many and various disorders and *diseases* that interfere with its normal functioning.
And if you're wondering, yes I have a mental illness ( OCD [wikipedia.org] ) and I know many others that do as well ( and have known, as some have taken their own lives ) as my family is heavily involved in NAMI [nami.org]. You're comment, which comes only a day after the Nami Metropolitan Houston [namimetrohouston.org] Walk [nami.org], is a testament to how far we still have to go as a society in ridding ourselves of destructive ignorance such as you possess. Welcome to the 21st century.
jdb2
Re:Not the only conservative views he's pushed (Score:3, Interesting)
This means that things in people's lives - choices they made or things that happened to them and how they reacted to those things - are mainly responsible for homosexuality.
Weird that you choose to completely ignore things like the environment in the womb (hormone balance in utero is known to play a part in gender differentiation, so it follows that those and possibly other affects would come into play during the development of gender identity).
But yeah, you're right, I'm sure the only two factors involved in gender identity are genetics and personal choice...
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Science should be defended by peer review and by thesis defence, not by challenging it in a court of law, with the possibility of a legal punishment for being wrong, or for producing a politically inconvenient result.
I agree. I am a scientist myself. However, i am also an employee. Instead of letting idiotic morons who believe the earth is 6000years old and relativity is bullshit because its to complicated for them (see Andrew Schlafly) throw mud on me in public, i would rather prefer that they go to court. Because then there is a good chances it hurts them.
Re:His Official Policy on Homosexuality Is No Secr (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just silly. Anthropogenic global warming was politically opposed from the very start by pro-oil think tanks, and they kept the scientific concerns unnoticed for twenty years. There's no way such a major issue could not "become politicized", it was already. And while Al Gore was a politician, and talked about the threat of global warming comparatively early, the same could be said of Margaret Thatcher.
The question is not who made it a political issue. The question is who succeeded in making it a partisan political issue, and that was not Al Gore.
Re:His Official Policy on Homosexuality Is No Secr (Score:2, Interesting)
Take a look at the numbers, all over the areas you describe, the "Third World", population growth parallels that of industrialized nations [google.com] while the use of consumables, pollution and carbon emissions rises at a much faster rate [mongabay.com] than that of the 'developed' world for at least the next 20 years. Only Russia has had a negative growth in population, and they have apparently overcome that recently. Check the first link, you might find it eye-opening and educational, because population growth pretty much everywhere is on the + side, and the second link will show you that the western nations have stabilized their pollution and carbon emissions, by and large, while the very areas you claim don't show relatively large increases of said.
Note source of article/graphs for the second link and following info is Mongabay.com:
Mongabay.com is considered a leading source of information on tropical forests by some of the world's top ecologists and conservationists.
I doubt they are a 'right wing tool', & they are using DOE EIA numbers. Accordingly:
According to the Energy Information Administration, after China and the United States, among major polluters only India is expected to have significant growth of emissions over the next 20 years.
According to the Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Information Administration (EIA), after China and the United States, among major polluters only India is expected to have significant growth of emissions over the next 20 years.
In fact, 50% suggests a strong genetic link.. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a good summary of separated homosexual twin studies here [tim-taylor.com]. The conclusion is that, if one twin is gay, then the probability of the other being gay is around 55%. Many people misunderstand genetics and statistics, and think that this implies being gay is not genetic, since they expect there to be a 100% probability "because it's genetic and twins have the same genes". This is a incorrect view. Quote from a more detailed explanation of why [religioustolerance.org]:
"Assume that 5% of males have a homosexual orientation as adults. Consider two identical newborn twin boys who were separated at birth and raised in different homes without any contact with each other. If homosexuality were caused by something in the environment, then, if twin #1 turned out to be gay, the chances of the other twin becoming a gay adults would only be about 5%. That is because the second twin would have been exposed to a totally different environment during his upbringing. So his chances of being gay would be the same as for any other male -- about 5%. But, studies have reliably shown that if one twin is gay, there is about a 55% chance that the other twin will be gay."
and about 50% of studies find that genetics is a significant factor in homosexuality and 50% do not
If one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has "only" a 48% chance of also developing the disorder. This does not mean that genetics is not a significant factor.
Re:Non-peer Review (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll bite:
Cherry picking is how Mann created his second try at the hockey stick (the spaghetti version), after the first was falsified.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/25/a-red-noise-spaghetti-diagram/ [climateaudit.org]
Re:His Official Policy on Homosexuality Is No Secr (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Great Seal of Virginia (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, forgot my tag. I don't really have a problem with nudity (cartoon or otherwise). I was just commenting on the fact that our right-leaning AG is so opposed to nudity but doesn't see any problem with that phrase on the seal. "Death to tyrants" is fine, except that "tyrant" has been a bit overused (Cuccinelli previously believed that Obama was born in Kenya).
It's also useful to consider the phrase in context, and given that VA was the capital of the rebellion and still celebrates Lee-Jackson Day, it's a pretty insensitive in this context. Maybe not as insensitive as Maryland's state song which explicitly praises Lincoln's assassination, but y'know, still a bit insensitive.
Re:Non-peer Review (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know - can you point me to one of them?
Mann hockeystick #1: falsified (severe errors, this is the one Al Gore and IPCC referenced so happily)
Mann hockeystick #2: falsified (spaghetti cherry picking - although those without statistical knowledge still claim it's valid)
Briffa hockeystick: One tree in Siberia no science makes.
I know of no other tree ring hockeysticks. Basically, tree rings aren't good temperature proxies and most dendrologists know this.
However, the lead scientist involved, Michael Bailee, said that the oak ring data requested was not relevant to temperature reconstruction records.
Although ancient oaks could give an indication of one-off dramatic climatic events, such as droughts, they were not useful as a temperature proxy because they were highly sensitive to water availability as well as past temperatures, he added.
“It’s been dressed up as though we are suppressing climate data, but we have never produced climate records from our tree rings,” Professor Bailee said.
“In my view it would be dangerous to try and make interpretations about the temperature from this data.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7102743.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
Guess who used lots and lots of oaks to make a spaghetti hockeystick.
If we disregard the falsified tree ring hockeysticks, science is suddenly back in the game - and with that comes the Medieval Warm Period (global as it was), the Roman warm period and a lot of other warm periods _warmer than today_. ... and all that, while we at the same time have huge UHI problems with our temperature record and never, ever, should graft those temperatures onto proxies (and guess who made THAT ... ).
Mann should never be allowed to publish anywhere again. He doesn't do science.