Wegman
tlambert | February 26, 2012John 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…
tlambert | December 21, 2011The Wegman scandal has made The Scientist's list of the top 5 science scandals of 2011:
A controversial climate change paper was retracted when it was found to contain passages lifted from other sources, including Wikipedia. The paper, published by climate change skeptic Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis in 2008, showed that climatology is an inbred field where most researchers collaborate with and review each otherâs work. But a resourceful blogger uncovered evidence of plagiarism, and the journal retracted the paper, which was cited 8…
tlambert | October 6, 2011Said and Wegman 2009 does contain original and accurate material. Alas, the original material is not accurate and the accurate material is plagiarised, mostly from Wikipedia. Deep Climate has the details:
This paper is the fifth major work that I have analyzed from Wegman and Said. From the 2006 Wegman report to Congress, up to this year's "Colour Theory and Design", so much of Wegman and Said's recent work demonstrates extreme reliance on unattributed antecedents, as well as numerous errors and incompetent analysis.
Wegman did not reply to USA Today's Dan Vergano request for a comment.…
tlambert | September 21, 2011Andrew Gelman details yet another case of apparent plagiarism by Edward Wegman. This one is a copy and paste from Wikipedia that manages to introduce an obvious error, claiming that a d-dimensional cube has only 2d vertices instead of 2^d. Gelman gets all sarcastic:
[Note to Drs. Wegman and Said: You can replace "2^n" by "2n" only if n=1 or 2. I checked by following the principles of statistical computation and making a graph in R: curve (2^x-2x, from=-2, to=5). I know it's a pain to do superscripts in Word, but next time you should really put in the effort to do it right.]
Hat tip: John…
tlambert | May 24, 2011John Mashey analyses emails from Wegman and Azen and yes, Wegman's defence against plagiarism charges is to say that he and his students plagiarized from Denise Reeves. Multiple times.
Andrew Gelman says it best:
The major conclusions [of the plagiarised paper] are that there are different styles of research collaboration; the methodological flaws are that the entire data analysis is based on four snippets of the collaboration network. There's no evidence or even argument that you can generalize from these four graphs to the general population, nor is there any evidence or justification of…
tlambert | May 15, 2011Dan Vergano reports that Social networks of author-coauthor relationships by Said, Wegman, Sharabati and Rigsby has been retracted by Computational Statistics and Data Analysis.
Deep Climate has more details, but I want to highlight one particular thing:
"Neither Dr. Wegman nor Dr. Said has ever engaged in plagiarism," says their attorney, Milton Johns, by e-mail. In a March 16 e-mail to the journal, Wegman blamed a student who "had basically copied and pasted" from others' work into the 2006 congressional report, and said the text was lifted without acknowledgment and used in the journal…
tlambert | January 8, 2011John Mashey has updated his report on the investigation into Wegman's misconduct. Deep Climate has some comments.
tlambert | December 23, 2010Deep Climate details how GMU has failed to follow its own policies in its investigation of Wegman:
Perhaps, then, it's time to take the obvious next step - a formal complaint to the Office of Research Integrity. And not against Wegman and Said, but against George Mason University itself. In fact, it is high time to recognize the obvious: GMU is simply not up to administering their own misconduct policy. Isn't it time to hand the job over to an organization that can?
tlambert | November 21, 2010Dan Vergano, USA Today reports:
The plagiarism experts queried by USA TODAY disagree [with Wegman's denial] after viewing the Wegman report:
⢠"Actually fairly shocking," says Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg by e-mail. "My own preliminary appraisal would be 'guilty as charged.' "
â¢"If I was a peer reviewer of this report and I was to observe the paragraphs they have taken, then I would be obligated to report them," says Garner of Virginia Tech, who heads a copying detection effort. "There are a lot of things in the report that rise to the level of inappropriate."
â¢"The plagiarism is…
tlambert | November 16, 2010Deep Climate continues his examination of the Wegman report. It would seem that Wegman's "reproduction" of McIntyre's results amounted to nothing more than running McIntyre's code without understanding what it did. And while Mann's "short centring" method does tend to produce a hockey-stick McIntyre greatly exaggerated the extent that it does so.
illconsidered | October 9, 2010It seems that substantial evidence compiled by John Mashey has helped lead to an investigation into Edward Wegman's possible academic misconduct in the production of his very prominent report to Congress [PDF] on the Hockeystick.
See DesmogBlog for background, USA Today for the story, and Deep Climate for the details.
I will only add a couple of brief comments. Firstly, although the media buzz will be largely about the plagarism charges (and the apologists will focus there as well - copied doesn't mean wrong), there is much more to John's detailed evidence than this. Citations were not just…
tlambert | October 9, 2010Dan Vergano in USA Today reports:
Officials at George Mason University confirmed Thursday that they are investigating plagiarism and misconduct charges made against a noted climate science critic.
"I'm very well aware of the report, but I have been asked by the university not to comment until all the issues have been settled," Wegman says, by phone. "Some litigation is underway." Walsch confirms that the university has asked Wegman not to comment.
"Clearly, text was just lifted verbatim from my book and placed in the (Wegman) report," says Bradley, who is also one of the authors of the 1999…
tlambert | September 27, 2010... is not just plagiarism. John Mashey has written a 250 page report on the Wegman scandal.
tlambert | September 19, 2010Not only was the Wegman report plagiarised, three of Wegman's PhD students committed plagiarism in their theses. Deep Climate has the report.
stoat | May 2, 2010It seems shame to root thorugh the trash, but people do, and JM points out the following weird ref in t' Wegman report:
Valentine, Tom (1987) "Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems," Magnets,
2(1) 18-26.
The odd thing is that is doesn't appear to be a ref for anything. What is it doing there? And what is this odd paper? Or is Wegman one of those people that wear magnetic bangles to cure rheumatism?
* Is this the same Tom V?
* Of course, you should read Deep Climate
tlambert | December 13, 2007Bob Carter has managed to get a whole bunch of people to sign a letter touting his warming ended in in 1998 claim. Here's what they signed:
there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.
I bet that they didn't include a graph of global temperatures:
You know, even the CEI admits that this "warming ended in 1998" claim is disingenuous, but look at all the people who signed Carter's disingenuous letter.
And look…
tlambert | July 17, 2006Chris Mooney on the report Joe Barton commissioned on the hockey stick:
I am beyond bored with the whole thing. I'm reaching the point of despair. Listen, people: This is an argument over a study that is now some eight years old. Eight years! You would think there is nothing new under the sun in climate science.
So let us recite, once again, for those who still don't get it: *One study never definitively proves anything in science. Any single study can be attacked and criticized. Any individual piece of work will have its gaps, shortcomings, and associated uncertainties.* As for those who…
tlambert | July 15, 2006
John Quiggin is underwhelmed by Wegman et al's Social Network Analysis of Mann's co-authorship graph.
On the other hand, the Climate Audit folks are really excited. I'm not sure if the Social Network stuff is good for them. (See graph on right.)
tlambert | July 14, 2006Joe Barton's Committee has released a report they commissioned on the hockey stick by Wegman, Scott and Said (WSS). The focus of the report is much narrower than the NRC report and the results are basically a subset of the NRC report. In particular, both reports find that "off-centre" method used in Mann Bradley and Hughes' 1998 paper (MBH98) tended to produce hockey stick shapes in the first principal component (PC1). Unfortunately, WSS stop there and do not address the question of what difference this makes to the reconstruction (which is not the same as PC1). The NRC panel did address…