Wegman Heartland update

John Mashey, in comments writes:

It has been a busy week or so, with more to come.

1) See Fakery, p.3 and p.12.
In ~2009, Heartland+SEPP+CSCDGC got ~$8M.
The other 9 on p.3 got ~$39M.The additional 36 501(c)(3) on p.12 added another $283M.

Now, only some of that is for climate disinformation, but some of it is for tobacco advocacy and other science disinformation, such as on environmental issues. In addition, these entities cross-support each other in various ways. One often finds them cross-quoting, cross-writing articles, signing petitions, together.

It is far cheaper to create confusion than to actually do science and improve understanding. Still, there’s a $330M in 2009 for these folks.

2) Wegman.
In addition to the prime site where this all started over 2 years ago Deep Climate, where there have been recent updates, and USA Today, where story broke, but as gotten updates, there is:

Retraction Watch,

Chronicle of Higher Education

Rabett

Stoat.

I can assure you that this story … is only starting again.
It only took 709 days to reach this conclusion, and people might ponder this passage from Strange Inquiries at GMU (SIGMU), p.21, from GMU’s policy:

‘In conducting the investigation, the committee -
(a) Uses diligent efforts to ensure that the investigation is thorough and sufficiently documented and includes examination of all research records and evidence relevant to reaching a decision on the merits of the allegations;

(b) Interviews each respondent, complainant, and any other available person who has been reasonably identified as having information regarding any relevant aspects of the investigation, including witnesses identified by the respondent; and

(c) Pursues diligently all significant issues and leads discovered that are determined relevant to the investigation, including any evidence of additional instances of possible research misconduct, and continues the investigation to completion.’

Now, inquiring minds might want to know:

1) Was there any other information that a diligent committee might have found? Like Strange Scholarship?
Wegman certainly knew about it. Maybe the diligent commiteee somehow didn’t notice it?

2) Did the committee ever check Deep Climate to see if anything else came up? Guess not.

3) Did the committee ever get anything like this graph of the various alleged plagiarisms with Wegman and students?

4) Are Roger Stough (VP Research), Peter Stearns (provost) and Alan Merton (GMU PResident) involved?

Anyway, main conversation is at Deep Climate for the latest news, but others should know.

Here’s a theme.

Comments

#1 Billy Bob Hall
February 26, 2012

It’s all ‘out of context’ Tim. The context is that dangerous global warming – caused by anthropogenic CO2 is nonsense.
All that follows is therefore the same.
#2 Karen
February 26, 2012

Yes… being sloppy about the referencing,it was such a crime !

Now you know how the skeptic side feels with regard to the “whitewashes” after the climategate emails.

Such a shame for John Mashey, all those hours of research and documentation, then Gleick confesses to his crimes and steals the limelight.
#3 Deep Climate
February 27, 2012

GMU contradictory decisions on Wegman: Plagiarism in CSDA, but not in 2006 congressional report

The short version:
According to GMU, this is plagiarism, but only when it occurs in the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, not when it occurs in the Wegman Report.
#4 Richard Simons
February 27, 2012

Karen – he wasn’t sloppy with references. He stole someone else’s work.
#5 Bernard J.
February 27, 2012

Once again [XKCD has something to say](http://xkcd.com/1019/).

Tim, can we dump the trolls? They add nothing to the conversation.
#6 Karen
February 27, 2012

Richard Simons,

“In a statement to GMU faculty, provost Peter Stearns said that one investigation committee unanimously found that “no misconduct was involved” in the 2006 Congressional report. “Extensive paraphrasing of another work did occur, in a background section, but the work was repeatedly referenced and the committee found that the paraphrasing did not constitute misconduct,” he said, in the statement.

A second university committee found unanimously, “that plagiarism occurred in contextual sections of the (CSDA) article, as a result of poor judgment for which Professor Wegman, as team leader, must bear responsibility.” Wegman will receive an “official letter of reprimand”, Stearns said, as sanction for the plagiarism.”

( http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/2/24/wegman-slapped-on-wrist.html )

Bernard J, stop your bloody whining !!
#7 Bernard J.
February 27, 2012

[The trollop](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/02/wegman_heartland_update.php#comment-6234694) proves [my point](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/02/wegman_heartland_update.php#comment-6234686).
#8 Eli Rabett
February 27, 2012

To paraphrase, we have the three monkeys and Peter Stearns, hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil, evil. (tip of the ears to Bob Dole)
#9 Bernard J.
February 27, 2012

Karen = sunspot.
#10 Ezzthetic
February 27, 2012

Karen = sunspot.

Come come, Jesus still wants her for a sunbeam, Bernard.
#11 Richard Simons
February 27, 2012

Karen = sunspot.

‘Nuff said.
#12 _Arthur
February 27, 2012

The perfect defense against plagiarism accusations:
“C’mon, prof, I didn’t even copy that work word-for-word, I merely ‘extensively paraphrased’ it without attribution…”

To extensively paraphrase meself: BS.
#13 chek
February 27, 2012

There’s an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote that says: “The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.”

But then again he didn’t live long enough to be aware of cognitive dissonance, Orwell’s doublethink, or GMU investigations.
#14 Bernard J.
February 27, 2012
>Wrong again Bernard !

Sheesh you’re stupid Foulspot.

In your very denial you leave one of your signatures as evidence. I pinged you on it once before – you have a habit of leaving a space before your exclamation marks – marks which often occur as pairs.

I tender as a very small sample the following:
1. < http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/12/sunspot_thread.php#comment-3943118>
2. < http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/12/sunspot_thread.php#comment-3020132>
#15 adelady
February 28, 2012

I’m not so sure. It’s quite easy to think of spotty in a spotted dress teetering on a pair of [these](http://www.newyorkgirlstyle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/outrageous-fun-high-heel-polka-dotted-peep-toe-mary-janes.jpg).

Could explain the lurching from one insecure pozzie to another.
#16 ianam
February 28, 2012

You’re as stupid here in a dress, as you were when you originally made a hash of the subject.

“sunspot” isn’t a gendered name, so there’s no particular reason to think that the troll donned a dress by switching to “Karen”. And I really don’t think it’s a good idea to use gender insults, even if they’re commonly used as generic insults in your part of the English-speaking world — the source of their pejorative connotation is rooted in misogynist attitudes.
#17 Bernard J.
February 28, 2012

Ianam.

Sunspot’s history on Deltoid reflects a male personality. In addition he has been referred to as “he” countless times and has never denied it, and quite frankly it would be unusualy to encounter a female who would parade personal stupidity as willingly as many males are wont to do, and as sunspot does.

The reference to sunspot wearing a dress has nothing to do with mysogyny, and simply refers to his clumsy attempt to disguise himself as something that he is not. Parse my sentence carefully and you will note that I am not saying that he is stupid because he is ‘wearing a dress’… The implication was simply that however he attempts to disguise himself, sunspot’s stupidity remains ingrained and evident.

As someone with sisters and daughters for every day of the week, I am not ignorant matters of gender equity and I am careful to respect such matters. However there comes a point in adhering to political correctness when one can stretch things a little too fine…
#18 Bernard J.
February 28, 2012

…unsusual…
#19 Bernard J.
February 28, 2012

Shouldn’t play games!

…unusual…
#20 Wow
February 28, 2012

Women wear trousers. Men wear skirts.

Where is the stigma? Only in the minds of those whose sexuality is jealously guarded, therefore insecure.
#21 Lionel A
February 28, 2012

Women wear trousers. Men wear skirts.

Where is the stigma? Only in the minds of those whose sexuality is jealously guarded, therefore insecure.

Balderdash! Ain’t that right Colonel Duff?

Good catch Bernard. Time to put sock puppets back into their drawers.
#22 Trent1492
February 29, 2012

I just sent this off to the student newspaper at GMU:

Hello,

I have been following the Wegman scandal since it first broke about two years ago. Considering that Dr. Wegman has been found guilty of committing extensive plagiarism in an article published in a peer reviewed journal and received nothing more than a reprimand and instructions to withdraw an article already withdrawn by the journal itself. I was wondering why the student newspaper has been covering this story with such a light touch?

I would have thought the double standard of how the Professor was treated as compared to what would have been the result if a undergraduate or graduated student had been found guilty of the same behavior would have induced indignation from a student newspaper.

Further the University in violation of its own stated policy of dealing with complaints of academic misconduct. I encourage you to consider why the investigation, findings and verdict that should have been completed in 90 days, has taken 708 days instead.

We also have the contradictory findings that the taxpayer funded report that Professor Wegman submitted to Congress and contained much of the same plagiarized materials was found to be in compliance.

What is also worrying is the other examples of misconduct that the inquiry never touched upon. If you had read John Mashey’s “Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report” you would have discovered that Dr. Wegman may have manipulated data to come to a predetermined conclusions and demonstratively ignored other peer reviewed articles in the scientific literature that reconfirmed Dr. Mann’s findings.
#23 ianam
February 29, 2012

Sunspot’s history on Deltoid reflects a male personality.

This reminds me of when Robert Silverberg wrote in his foreword to a collection of stories by the mysterious and reclusive James Tiptree Jr. that those who had speculated that Tiptree might be a woman were foolish because the writing was “ineluctably male”. But Silverberg turned out to be the fool.

quite frankly it would be unusualy to encounter a female who would parade personal stupidity as willingly as many males are wont to do

Yet it does happen and sunspot/Karen is just one person, so rarity isn’t much of an argument.

The reference to sunspot wearing a dress has nothing to do with mysogyny

You’re being a bit thick here. By “gender insults” I meant words like “trollop” and any other word that is disparaging of “loose” women, as well as words I’ve seen here that are references to female anatomy used to apply to unpleasant people … Brits and Aussies often defend such language by noting how common they are, but common usage doesn’t change the misogynist basis of the connotation.

However there comes a point in adhering to political correctness when one can stretch things a little too fine…

This is such a very common dodge of legitimate criticism of bigoted language and concepts … methinks thou doth protest too much.
#24 ianam
February 29, 2012

Ah, I found this citation for the Silverberg/Tiptree incident. It’s a good read, and a caution for those who imagine that they know the bounds of women’s personalities.
#25 ianam
February 29, 2012

You’re being a bit thick here.

Sorry, I take that back. Rereading my `#15`, I did not make it at all clear what I was talking about, and your inference was perfectly reasonable.
#26 Bernard J.
February 29, 2012

Ianam.

My use of ‘trollop’ is a hat tip to the use of the term for the evil female troll in Henson production – for children – of “The True Bride”.

Perhaps it’s a bit lateral for some, but the context should give a clue to its intended meaning.
#27 Bernard J.
February 29, 2012

Now, can we please stay on topic and keep attention on Wegman, and on CMU’s kid-gloving thereof.
#28 ianam
February 29, 2012

It’s easy to stay on topic: just write something on topic. You can hardly blame anyone else for your own excursion into the fine details of stylistic analysis of Karen/sunspot’s posts.
#29 ianam
March 1, 2012

P.S. I’m not familiar with “The True Bride” and so of course did not recognize your use of that word as being a reference, context or no … and what context? When I google “The trollop proves my point”, the only hit I get is your own post here. Maybe the Henson troll’s name is Karen, or sunspot, or that troll is a global warming denier? Just being evil doesn’t seem quite enough of a “clue”. Being American, I’m more inclined to associate the word with the balding John McCain (who is also an evil troll, but is not a denier — rare in his party).
#30 Fran Barlow
March 1, 2012

Oh dear …

Was there any other information that a diligent committee might of {have} found?

Tidiness and all that,Tim.

*[OK, fixed]*
#31 John Brookes
March 3, 2012

Oddly enough, there was a poster of female name at a skeptic blog, and I couldn’t believe that it really was female. Sure enough, they eventually outed themselves as male.
#32 ianam
March 3, 2012

Sure enough

Anecdotes aren’t proof, and it wasn’t sure, as Tiptree/Sheldon demonstrates (among many other women who have successfully passed as men over the ages, with men swearing up and down that they’re sure they must be men).
#33 Dave
March 10, 2012

Perhaps I’m a lurker, but not a troll. I keep trying to find out whether this Wegman plagiarism business bears on the theory and facts of global climate change. I mean, if Wegman was actually guilty of plagiarism, or entirely acquitted of it, would that change the findings, conclusions, etc., of the works involved, whether or not plagiarized?
#34 Marco
March 10, 2012

Dave, plagiarism of an introduction/background is often a result of people being insufficiently proficient in the field to come with a description of their own. The fact that Wegman et al had to copy so much from textbooks (with minor changes, sometimes resulting in outright errors) shows they do not really know what they are doing.

It does not change the validity of the plagiarised work, but should make one extra skeptical about the work that contains the plagiarised text. Do a little bit of digging, and you indeed find the whole Wegman report to be a shoddy business, including the supposed critical evaluation of MBH98/99. What this shows is that the self-styled “skeptics” who point to the Wegman report as evidence of bad science by Mann, in reality are putting their support on a report that is itself bad science. They are not “skeptical” in the scientific science, but in the ideological sense.
#35 John Mashey
March 10, 2012

re: 32
Very little of the Wegman Report was even correct, much less useful. If you think otherwise, read the PDF herehere and learn how bad it was. I’ll happily listen to informed arguments or real errors.

In a year and half, none of Wegman, Scott, Said, Reeves, or Rigsby has refuted any of this, much less Deep Climate’s discoveries on Replication and due diligence, Wegman-style.

All Wegman has been able to do was found in this and this, but make sure to read my comments on the latter.

In preparation for forthcoming evens, people might want to review:

Strange Inquiries at GMU

Strange Tales and Emails

and, perhaps, to get some hint of misrepresentation/falsification atop plagiarism.

Strange Falsifications in teh Wegman Report.
#36 Bernard J.
March 11, 2012

[John Mashey](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2012/02/wegman_heartland_update.php#comment-6240520).

I’m very pleased to see that you’ve focussed scrutiny on the factual errors and misrepresentations in Wegman’s et al material. It always bothered me that these hadn’t been addressed, especially so as they form a part of an argument orchestrated to sway the US Congress away from acceptance of the fact of human-caused global warming, and of the urgency to act on the same.

It seems to me that the George Mason University adminstration made a tactical blunder in the kid-glove treatment meted to Wegman in their investigation of his plagiarism. The bureaucrats have shown themselves to be far more interested in institutional commerce than intellectual truth: any credible scrutiny of Wegman would not only have come down much more vigorously on his plagiarism, but it would have detected the poor factual scholarship therein.

Hindsight will not be kind to GMU. There will come a time when questions are asked about why the industrial nations of the world were so slow to act, and who was complicit in organised delay.

Kochroaches will be scuttling to all corners in order to avoid the light…
#37 Lionel A
March 11, 2012

Dave @ 32

If you have not as yet read a copy of Mike Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines then find a copy and read Mann’s easily understandable outline of Wegman’s outrageous conduct, conduct exposed by his own ignorance.

My paper copy arrived only two days ago and I am now on my second read, this time taking in Notes and following up on URLs. Mann has produced an excellent primer for those confused by the manufactured, with utter dishonesty, hockey stick furore.

PS Bernard J ‘Kochroaches’ – love it, even more than Kochheads.
#38 Dave
March 11, 2012

Thanks Marco, John, and Lionel. You’ve given me a lot of references to wade through. I will hope to do so and get back to you. Doubt that this conversation will have ended even by then.
#39 John Mashey
March 16, 2012

See See No Evil At George Mason University, now finally out. Appendices A.4 and A.5 show interesting mesh of funders, lawyers and thinktanks (including Heartland).

Also, keep an eye on Deep Climate for something even more amazing tomorrow.
#40 Wow
March 16, 2012

“I keep trying to find out whether this Wegman plagiarism business bears on the theory and facts of global climate change”

Nothing.

Neither does Wegman’s work even if it were scholarly.

This, however, doesn’t stop the denialist trolls from trumpeting it from the parapet as yet another “final nail”.

Therefore the craptitude of the work done and the contortions to retain it (especially compared to the witchhunts against Mann) is absolutely necessary to show to everyone who isn’t partisan that the work is complete garbage and the fact that this is so highly touted displays the paucity of the denialist arguments.

You are very likely to be a denialist, Dave. You’re at least partisan if you can post what you did and not just “Wegman’s work was crap, why are the DENIALISTS using it?”
#41 John Mashey
March 16, 2012

Wegman & Said wrote 2 massively-plagiarized and error-filled articles for the Wiley journal they edit.
We reported it to Wiley. The response was to quietly revise the articles.
See Deep Climate just this AM.
#42 Darren Butt
April 4, 2012

Hello i am Darren Butt

I enjoy reading your articles

I am looking forward to read more..
#43 Martin Vermeer
April 7, 2012

> He stole someone else’s work.

Actually not even that, Richard. He tried to steal, with limited success, the impression of having done his homework on decades-old textbook science.
#44 ianam
April 7, 2012

I keep trying to find out whether this Wegman plagiarism business bears on the theory and facts of global climate change. I mean, if Wegman was actually guilty of plagiarism, or entirely acquitted of it, would that change the findings, conclusions, etc., of the works involved, whether or not plagiarized?

These are fundamentally wrongheaded questions. The existence of the entire denialsphere has no bearing on the theory and facts of global climate change, but that certainly doesn’t mean it is irrelevant. One might just as well ask what bearing Galileo’s trial had on the theory and facts of heliocentrism.
#45 ianam
April 7, 2012

P.S. There’s a confusion between your first sentence, which refers to the theory and facts of global climate change, and your second sentence, which refers to “the works involved”, which were not about the theory and facts of global climate change.