institutional ethics

Am I asking too little of the First Amendment?

jstemwedel — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:51:41 +0000

Am I asking too little of the First Amendment?

I noticed a short item today at Inside Higher Education about Mike Adams, an associate professor of of criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington , who is suing the university on the grounds that his promotion to full professor was denied due to his conservative Christian views. (Apparently, this legal action has been underway since 2007.)

I know very few details of the case, so I'm in no position to opine about whether Adams should or should not have been promoted. But there's one element of the case that seems to be legally interesting:

But part of the judge's ruling also rejected the idea that Adams has First Amendment protection for the columns he wrote for various publications (columns known for a mocking tone along with hard line views) because he submitted them as part of his promotion dossier. And the reason that the columns have no protection, the judge ruled, is the Garcetti decision. Because Adams is receiving strong support from conservative groups for his suit, the ruling is drawing their attention to Garcetti's impact on the academy.
The Alliance Defense Fund, which has been backing Adams, issued a statement Monday in which Jordan Lorence, one of its lawyers, said: "We disagree with the court's assessment that Dr. Adams's speech is somehow not protected by the Constitution. Opinion columns are classic examples of free speech protected by the First Amendment, and mentioning them on a promotion application does not change this fact."

Garcetti v. Ceballos was filed by a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was demoted after he criticized a local sheriff's conduct to his supervisors. The ruling in the case found that First Amendment protections do not extend to public employees when they speak in capacities related to their jobs. A footnote said that the ruling did not necessarily apply to higher education. But to the dismay of faculty groups, several federal judges have applied it in the higher education context.

Several of those cases have involved faculty members who criticized their administrations. The Adams case is one that might seem quite close to the First Amendment, as it involves controversial stands on political issues.

The ruling in the case said, however, that even if the columns played some role in his treatment, they lacked First Amendment protection. The judge ruled that as soon as Adams submitted them in his tenure dossier, they became part of his work as a professor. And once they became part of his work as a professor, he lost First Amendment protection for them, the judge ruled, citing Garcetti.

A few things have me scratching my head here.

One is the practical question of why a professor going up for promotion would include in the dossier of materials to support that promotion case a series of newspaper opinion columns. If these columns bore directly on the professor's academic work (either in the realm of research or teaching) and stood as shining examples of his or her clear thinking and writing, maybe including them would make sense (and I say this as someone who included some non-traditional items in my own tenure dossier). But if they presented "hard line views" (with which, conceivably, at least some members of one's promotion committees might disagree) advanced primarily by "a mocking tone" rather than cogent arguments, including them, especially if they were written outside the bounds of the job that is being evaluated, seems foolhardy. Indeed, knowing academics as I do, it might be a good bet that some committee members would view unfavorably columns expressing opinions they shared if the columns relied on sloppy argumentation (or on rhetoric in place of argumentation).

Whoever was giving Mike Adams advice on how to compile that promotion dossier may owe him an apology.

Another question I have is from what exactly is the First Amendment supposed to protect me when I include a piece of my writing in a dossier on the basis of which my job performance is to be evaluated?

The freedom to express my view does not come with a guarantee that others will agree with it, or keep their disagreements with it to themselves, or express those disagreements in civil terms. Indeed, in a context where I am presenting the expression of my view for evaluation, I expect that that expression of my view will be evaluated -- perhaps unfavorably. And I expect this for my peer reviewed articles as much as for any other writings I may offer for evaluation. Do you think that, just because the peer reviewers for a journal in your field judged your thinking original and your arguments well supported, your colleagues will refrain from critiquing them? Attend a journal club meeting and your eyes will be opened.

However, the fact that my expression of my view has been evaluated unfavorably does not mean that the person so evaluating it has infringed my right to free speech.

Maybe the worry here is the power of one's employer to stifle one's free speech. Perhaps the problem is that Adams's promotion committees were evaluating the wrong element of his opinion pieces, focusing on his views rather than on the logic and evidence he deployed to defend them. Practically, establishing such illegitimate evaluative focus might be really difficult (although I suppose asking for the detailed critique of one's logic and evidence would be a sensible way to gauge the extent to which these "legitimate" elements for evaluation were judged lacking).

But this strikes me as just another reason to be wary of including writings where academic standards of argumentation are not clearly on display if those writings could be left out of the dossier altogether.

I guess the question here is one of balance. We enjoy the right to speak our minds, but we're not always thrilled by the blowback from having spoken them (even though this blowback is generally a matter of other people exercising their right to speak their minds). We want work in the academic milieu to somehow count our activities in the public sphere as part of the important intellectual work we do, but then we get upset when those activities in the public sphere are subjected to evaluation.

I know some will argue that academics already have much more freedom to exercise their First Amendment rights than do people in other employment settings. (Since almost all of my employment has been in academia, I'm not the right person to ask about whether this is a plausible argument.) Honestly, I like being in a situation where I'm not evaluated on what I think but on how I think (as well as how many students I can get to meet specified student learning objectives per semester). But I reckon my employer has some interests in this relationship, too, and that some of those might play a role in decisions about whether to promote me.

If my activities off the clock might lead my employer to judge that I don't exemplify the qualities of mind the organization values, it only makes sense to keep those extracurricular activities out of the case I make that the organization should promote me. On the other hand, if I orchestrate a situation where worlds collide, I can't count on the aftermath of the collision playing out in my favor.

jstemwedel Tue, 07/06/2010 - 07:51

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Academia

communication

Current Events

institutional ethics

Politics

academic freedom

first amendment

Garcetti versus Ceballos

Eh, I think he tried the "secret handshake trick" and it backfired, now he's being a sore loser.

I once had an interviewer detect my (literal) secret handshake and judge me very negatively for it. I accepted the rebuke.

On the other hand, if I orchestrate a situation where worlds collide, I can't count on the aftermath of the collision playing out in my favor.

My cynical nature leads me to think that Adams might have deliberately set up a 'when worlds collide' scenario on purpose and counted on it playing out in his favor.

Suppose I knew I would not get tenure in any legitimate way. Further suppose I then purposely added some sort of ancillary, antagonistic document that I thought should be protected by the 1st amendment. Then, when I was denied tenure for valid reasons, I could claim instead that the decision was based on the irrelevant, but protected documents. Lots of conservative groups would jump to my aid. Either I would get tenure through a successful or I would get rich from a book deal or a job on a faux news channel.

I am thoroughly confused. My understanding of the free speech portion of first amendment is that you cannot be prevented from expressing yourself (within certain bounds) or arrested for having an unpopular opinion. Although there are certain non-discrimination exceptions, in general you can be fired, let alone not promoted, for expressing yourself. Your employer cannot prevent you from expressing yourself but is under no obligation to continue employing you. Have I been in the private sector too long?

Provocation is the applicable word.

The legal argument is that, rather than a permissible exercise of professional judgment by his government employer based on his speech, he was unconstitutionally punished by his government employer based on his speech. Given that the speech in question was affirmatively placed at the center of the professional judgment process by the plaintiff himself, this is a pretty piss-poor argument. It is also important to point out that the only reason a first amendment claim could be made at all is that the employer is the government.

I haven't read the court's decision, and the description you quote is very vague, but it would seem to me that a better legal basis for ruling against this plaintiff would be that--regardless of whether any first amendment rights pertain to his speech--any such rights have not been violated.

I do not know much of the case either... but I suspect these opinion pieces actually made the bulk of the dossier and thus the denial for promotion. I doubt that the inclusion of a handful of opinion pieces among other, peer-reviewed, academic research material would matter one way or another. Of course, I presume like in the UC, promotion to full professor also required external letters which might not have been favorable.

Shrinking budgets + skyrocketing subscription fees = UC boycott of NPG.

jstemwedel — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:42:52 +0000

Shrinking budgets + skyrocketing subscription fees = UC boycott of NPG.

Economic recovery has not yet made its presence felt at public universities in California. (Indeed, at least in the California State University system, all things budgetary are going to be significantly worse in the next academic year, not better.)

This means it's not a great time for purveyors of electronic journals to present academic libraries in public university systems with big increases in subscription prices. Yet Nature Publishing Group has, apparently, done just that by some 400%. And, as noted by Christina Pikas and Dorothea Salo and Jennifer Howard in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the University of California system has decided that what NPG is offering is not worth the asking price.

Which means a system-wide boycott of NPG journals is being organized, as outlined in this letter (PDF) from the executive director of the California Digital Library, the chair of the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, and the convener of the University Librarians Council.

Interestingly, the boycott goes further than just encouraging UC libraries to drop their costly subscriptions to NPG journals. From the letter:

[U]nless NPG is willing to maintain our current licensing agreement, UC Faculty would ask the UC Libraries to suspend their online subscriptions entirely, and all UC Faculty would be strongly encouraged to:

Decline to peer review manuscripts for journals from the Nature Publishing Group.

Resign from Nature Publishing Group editorial and advisory boards.

Cease to submit papers to the Nature Publishing Group.

Refrain from advertising any open or new UC positions in Nature Publishing Group journals.

Talk widely about Nature Publishing Group pricing tactics and business strategies with colleagues outside UC, and encourage sympathy actions such as those listed above.

One of the benefits of a big university system is supposed to be increased bargaining power. If UC faculty take the boycott seriously, NPG is going to feel it.

One bullet point that I think ought to be included above -- something that I hope UC faculty and administrators will consider seriously -- is that hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion decisions within the UC system should not unfairly penalize those who have opted to publish their scholarly work elsewhere, including in peer-reviewed journals that may not currently have the impact factor (or whatever other metric that evaluators lean on so as not to have to evaluate the quality of scholarly output themselves) that the NPG journals do. Otherwise, there's a serious career incentive for faculty to knuckle under to NPG rather than honoring the boycott.

There is some gesture in this direction in the letter:

We clearly recognize that the consequences of such a boycott would be complex and present hardships for individual UC researchers. But we believe that in the end, we will all benefit if UC can achieve a sustainable and mutually rewarding relationship with NPG. In the meantime, UC scholars can help break the monopoly that commercial and for-profit entities like NPG hold over the work that we create through positive actions such as:

Complying with open access policies from Federal funding agencies such as the NIH (http://publicaccess.nih.gov).

Utilizing eScholarship, an open access repository service from CDL (http://www.escholarship.org/publish_postprints.html).

Considering other high-quality research publishing outlets, including open access journals such as those published by PLoS and others.

Insisting on language in publication agreements that allows UC authors to retain their copyright (http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/manage/retain_copyrights.html).

This is all encouraging. But an explicit impact factor moratorium for at least the duration of the NPG boycott would be even better. (Who knows, maybe it would convince hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion committees that they could make reasonable decisions even without leaning on such metrics, even in the event that NPG comes back with a reasonable price for online subscriptions.)

Indeed, from the Chronicle of Higher Education article, it sounds like at least one of the organizers of the boycott recognizes that this might be the right direction for the UC to move:

Keith Yamamoto is a professor of molecular biology and executive vice dean of the School of Medicine at UC-San Francisco. He stands ready to help organize a boycott, if necessary, a tactic he and other researchers used successfully in 2003 when another big commercial publisher, Elsevier, bought Cell Press and tried to raise its journal prices.

After the letter went out on Tuesday, Mr. Yamamoto received an "overwhelmingly positive" response from other university researchers. He said he's confident that there will be broad support for a boycott among the faculty if the Nature Group doesn't negotiate, even if it means some hardships for individual researchers.

"There's a strong feeling that this is an irresponsible action on the part of NPG," he told The Chronicle. That feeling is fueled by what he called "a broad awareness in the scientific community that the world is changing rather rapidly with respect to scholarly publication."

Although researchers still have "a very strong tie to traditional journals" like Nature, he said, scientific publishing has evolved in the seven years since the Elsevier boycott. "In many ways it doesn't matter where the work's published, because scientists will be able to find it," Mr. Yamamoto said.

(Bold emphasis added.)

Scientific publication, after all, isn't just about keeping score. It's also about communicating findings, ideas, techniques, and conclusions. And NPG surely has no monopoly on the technologies by which that communication can -- and will -- take place.

jstemwedel Wed, 06/09/2010 - 08:42

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Activities compatible with one's academic job.

jstemwedel — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:58:23 +0000

Activities compatible with one's academic job.

I really don't know what to say about this news item, except that it had better mean that the California State University presumptively* views blogging on one's own time and bandwidth as fully compatible with a professorial appointment, regardless of the subject matter on which the blog is focused or the views expressed by the academic doing the blogging.

Otherwise, there is a pretty messed up double-standard in place.

______
*Obviously, violating FERPA, HIPAA, or other laws or regulations would count against that presumption.

jstemwedel Thu, 04/22/2010 - 10:58

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The dude is a shit - just another ass who gives tenure a bad name.

But the more interesting question is: what policies should universities adopt regarding faculty blogging on university time, using university computers, via university servers? How might this differ between private vs public schools? What has been your experience?

Yoiks, that's very yucky.

I have to admit, though, that I strongly do think that the University shouldn't have any say as to whether or not a professor is running a very creepy site like this, if he's doing it on his own time. To say otherwise is to start down a scary path towards feudalism. Too many (most?) companies have at least official policies that restrict the behavior of their employees on their own time, in a way that I think shouldn't be legal. I worked at Linden Lab for a couple of years, where we had no problems with the fact that one of the devs was also a guy who did hobby work on "teledildonics" (it cracks me up that that's even a word). But, a year or so in, the PR people started making noise about how people were going to have to start thinking about making choices about their personal life based on whether or not it hurts the company.....

HOWEVER, in this specific case, there's more at work. "Sex tourism" would all be fine and well if the "sex workers" who were servicing the tourists were adults who made, with open eyes, the choices to go into their profession willingly. I think that US laws saying you're not allowed to encourage people to go overseas to (say) smoke pot in Amsterdam are not laws that we should have, even though smoking pot is illegal here... and likewise for prostitution (in most states). But, in the real world, "sex tourism" is code for an industry that does a lot of really, really, awful, terrible, evil things in the world. I'm talking the slave trade that still goes on, young girls who are sold into slavery by destitute parents and are sent to places that exploit them so that rich western businessmen and sexist bastard professors can fly over and abuse minors in ways that are highly illegal in the USA. Given *that*, this guy is beyond creepy. And if he's just doing what it looks like he's doing, it's legal, and freedom of speech allows you to say things I think are creepy, that's one thing. But if he's getting kickbacks from parts of the slavery industry, then the FBI needs to get on this guy and find out if he really ought to be incarcerated.

I have lots of mixed feelings. Fear of child porn has led lots of governments to enact really terrible, freedom-killing laws in lots of places. But the reality of the sex slave trade is something we can't deny, and the fact that a small fraction of the pillars of our community (i.e. the rich businessmen) are enabling this is something that we should feel deeply ashamed of.

I really can't see any issue here. As long as he's not breaking any laws, and he's not using university time or resources, what's the problem. I may not agree with what he is doing, but what the hell does that have to do with anything.

In university, I took several courses taught by RC priests. I sure didn't agree with their non-professorial activities, but it didn't interfere with their ability to teach the subject material.

Over the years, I have worked with christians, and as long as kept their proselytizing outside of work, it was a non issue. Since I am a pretty rabid atheist, it could have led to serious conflict, but we all knew enough to keep work and religion separate.

He's an economics professor at an American university. That sort of behavior is in his job description.

ClimateGate, the Michael Mann inquiry, and accepted scientific practices.

jstemwedel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:37:51 +0000

ClimateGate, the Michael Mann inquiry, and accepted scientific practices.

In my earlier post about the findings of the Penn State inquiry committee looking into allegations of research misconduct against Michael Mann, I mentioned that the one allegation that was found to merit further investigation may have broad implications for how the public understands what good scientific work looks like, and for how scientists themselves understand what good scientific work looks like.

Some of the commenters on that post seemed interested in discussing those implications. Others, not so much. As commenter Evan Harper notes:

It is clear that there are two discussions in parallel here; one is serious, thoughtful, and focused on the very real and very difficult questions at hand. The other is utterly inane, comprising vague ideological broadsides against nebulous AGW conspirators, many of which evince elementary misunderstandings about the underlying science.

If I wanted to read the second kind of conversation, there are a million blogs out there with which I could torture myself. But I want to read - and perhaps participate in - the first kind of conversation. Here and now, I cannot do that, because the second conversation is drowning out the first.

Were that comment moderators could crack down on these poisonous nonsense-peddlers. Their right to swing their (ham)fists ends where our noses begin

Ask and you shall receive.

Commenters on this post are invited to discuss the question of what counts (or should count) as accepted scientific practices, either in meteorology, or climate science more broadly, or across scientific fields.

It is fair game to look at specific kinds of behaviors displayed by scientists in the purloined CRU emails and consider whether these behaviors fit within accepted practices or do not. As always, laying out your reasoning on these matters will enrich the discussion.

It is also fair game to consider hypothetically other kinds of behaviors scientists might display when interacting with their scientific colleagues and competitors and whether these behaviors might or might not fall within accepted scientific practices.

It is even fair game to broach the question of whether some of the practices that are, as a matter of fact, accepted by scientific practitioners and communities might not undermine the goals of those scientific practitioners and communities (whether knowledge-building goals or goals about communicating with and cooperating with non-scientists).

What is out of bounds in the comments on this post: arguments about what the balance of the data show or do not show about climate trends, or claims that the Penn State inquiry committee was engaged in a whitewash or cover-up of Dr. Mann's wrongdoing, or other commentary on whether climate change is a religion or a green conspiracy or what have you.

As Evan points out, there is ample opportunity to consider those arguments and claims elsewhere on the internets. If you decide to bring them to the comments on this post, where they are officially off topic, I shall moderate them out of existence.

jstemwedel Fri, 02/05/2010 - 07:37

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Scientist/layperson relations

tribe of science

ClimateGate

michael mann

scientific methodology

>>>Commenters on this post are invited to discuss the question of what counts (or should count) as accepted scientific practices, either in meteorology, or climate science more broadly, or across scientific fields.<<<

Maggie, I think the standard varies with the importance of the issue. This issue of AGW is a question of enormous importance to the world. Perhaps, it is the most important question we will ever ask. If the AGW theorists are right, the world in in jeopardy and we need to work toward fixing the problems. IF the AGW theorists are wrong, trillions of dollars will be wasted in a senseless effort to halt the production of a harmless gas. The cost of this will be a terribly regressive tax which will punish the poorest people in the world. Here I could make a lengthy argument about how regressive this tax of any carbon taxing scheme would be, but to simplify the point just consider this brief fact. 70% of the cost vegetables is energy created. The plowing, harvesting, spaying, watering, trucking, refrigerating etc. required to put carrots and potatoes on our tables all require energy. A carbon tax will show up in everything that everyone in the world uses everyday to make life livable. The wealthy can afford it, but the poorest of the poor will suffer dearly. The enormity of the question of AGW demands the highest standard of scientific integrity. When science demands the support and commitment of an entire nations, everyone becomes a stakeholder in the process and all of the science should be available to every stake holder.

All of the data AND the techniques that are used to model and predict Climate Related issues must be available for review by the entire scientific community. I find it hard to believe that ethical scientists would object to this. The tree-ring proxies of Mann, Briffa, Jones et al are of enormous importance because this is the proxy data which has most influenced the historic temp. graph used by the IPCC.
The use of these tree ring data sets tell us whether or not the current temperature of the earth is in or out of an abnormal range of natural variation. We need to know the answer to this as well as it can be known.

When the tree ring sets are are compared to 27 non tree ring data sets the picture of the historic temperature of the world for the past 1,000 years provides a completely different view of the MWP and LIA. This is not an either or choice. Only one picture can be right. Which is it?

If is also apparent from the hacked emails that briffa, jones, mann, crowley were communicating on a weekly basis. It is natural for scientists who engage in similar scientific endeavors to do this, but was an artificial influence introduced to their processes as a result of the close liaison between these four scientists? This use of tree ring proxy data is one of only a half dozen bedrock issues which would ultimately determine whether AGW is or isn't real. Therefore, I contend, that it is of the utmost importance that we understand how the tree ring data points were selected (which trees were in and which were out). We also must understand the math used in the computer models that were used to convert this tree ring proxy data into a 1000 year temperature model.

If AGW is a real threat to mankind, I will pay my share to help. However, if AGW turns out to be but a political scam and a swindle, I will resist foolish political actions with every fiber of my being. Truth is the foundation on which freedom depends. We must know the truth!

http://www.zabetakis.net/?p=1942

I have trouble taking vanderleun's link too seriously since it's at a glance a litanny of gotchas and thought crimes with few genuine transgressions.

Then there's his phrase "erstwhile scientists". Does he mean "ersatz scientists"?

Precision with words is accepted scientific practice.

Dr. Stemwedel,

On another blog sometime ago, Hank Roberts called our attention to the observations of Peter Watts on science as done by scientists. It's worth linking to here. A pithy excerpt:

Science doesnât work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process.

My own exposure to scientific practice was limited to two years in a doctoral program, but what I saw then accords very well with Watts's description. Yes, it's often unseemly, but it's the way our store of knowledge about the universe grows.

I would point out that we are not likely to know "accepted scientific practices" any better than the administrators on the inquiry panel. For accepted practices specifically in meteorology we are likely to know even less.
We do know that models are used and that sometimes, not always, the models contradict each other, not with opposite predictions but varying predictions. Now what does the weatherman do, does he say, 'I can't predict the weather' or does he get to say, 'based on the observations I say this.' I don't know, I would have to ask "scientific weathermen."

And then the question may rise, what scientist is qualified to say that such and such action is outside accepted practice? Well, someone who knows the practice, obviously, in a same or like position.

Then, further again, finding them may not be so easy. The law in the US has solved this problem, so to speak, by requiring this qualified scientist, when if it is a medical doctor, to practice from the same geographical area in the same type of medicine in dispute, otherwise they don't know what the accepted practice is.

This requirement recognizes that there are going to be regional differences and university differences. As much as we might wish not to bring up differences in universities, they are there, and finding the same standards among them is not so quick and easy as one might suppose.

So the scientists on the inquiry panel should be meteorologists, from his own university or others similar and of like size to his, and further, they should be doing the same type of work as he is. If those persons can be gotten to serve, a just and knowledgeable inquiry could be held.

Assuming we were to get an inquiry panel of qualified scientists, what report would be expected? There are several possibilities. Would it be like a panel of judges with the majority to rule by vote, and the minority or minorities to file a minority report? Or would they try to reach a consensus like a jury, which would leave the door open for them to report that they could not reach a consensus. A consensus report would be of the type made by the administrators. And there could be types of reports in between, confirming some things, finding others not proven.

And, having written my share, I will leave it to others to speculate on actions that might be taken after various findings.

I'm very interested in this issue, in a very general way (as is so often this case with philosophers): How do we decide what people and what points of view do we allow in our community, and what people and what points of view do we not? Or, in some political philosophy jargon, what are the bounds of tolerance, and when should we tolerate the intolerant? For example, should a small-l-liberal, small-d-democratic country allow people to express Neo-Nazi views within its borders? What about the sort of left-wing views that `democracy' is a bourgeois farce, and we should live under a Leninist dictatorship? Still more problematically, what about people who think same-sex marriage should be illegal?

In the Mann case, we want to be more specific, and there are various degrees of specificity at which we can pose the question: What are the bounds of tolerance within the scientific community? What are the bounds of tolerance within the meteorological community? And how about within the community of experts on climate change? In trying to keep criticisms of his work published, has Mann done anything that gives us (or, really, scientists of the appropriate sort) reason to exclude him from some or all of these communities? What about Stephen McIntyre?

One way of answering these questions -- quite popular among critics of Mann and the IPCC consensus, I've noticed -- is to say that the scientific community should be as open as possible, and pretty much any attempt to exclude any point of view is an egregious wrong. But this won't work; surely we shouldn't include, say, some poor guy who genuinely thinks the ghost of Abraham Lincoln told him that global warming is caused by an Evil Hedgehog Conspiracy. We need some way to exclude the reasonable views.

This leads to an alternative way of answering these questions, one more popular among defenders of Mann and the IPCC consensus. In order to protect scientists from the distraction of having to reply endlessly to the likes of the Evil Hedgehog Conspiracy theorists (and, often included here, Stephen McIntyre), this view suggests that only an elite group of experts -- say, those who accept the primary conclusions of the IPCC consensus -- should be allowed in. But this won't work either. If the only people allowed in the scientific community are those who accept the dominant views, those dominant views are unlikely to ever be seriously challenged. The organized skepticism of science (as Robert Merton called it) is supposed to be one of its key features, a vital part of its monumental success at producing knowledge. (Cue the montage of Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, &c.)

The problem, then, as I see it, is to figure out the golden mean between complete scientific anarchy and the scientific equivalent of the expulsion of heretics. Unfortunately, after thinking about this semi-regularly for two years, stating the problem is as far as I've gotten.

Eric Raymond has a compelling discussion of many of these points in "Error cascade: a definition and examples"

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1642

He defines error cascade as: "Iâve used the term âerror cascadeâ on this blog several times, notably in referring to AGW hysteria. A commenter has asked me to explain it, and I think thatâs a good idea as (a) the web sources on the concept are a bit confusing, and (b) Iâll probably use the term again â error cascades are all too common where science meets public policy.

"In medical jargon, an âerror cascadeâ is something very specific: a series of escalating errors iin diagnosis or treatment, each one amplifying the effect of the previous one. This is a well established term in the medical literature: this abstract is quite revealing about the context of use.

Thereâs a slightly different term, information cascade, which is used to describe the propagation of beliefs and attitudes through crowd psychology. Information cascades occur because humans are social animals and tend to follow the behavior of those around them. When the social incentives are right, humans will substitute the judgment of others for their own."

Two excerpts that go to the heart of the matter:

"In extreme cases, entire fields of inquiry can go down a rathole for years because almost everyone has preference-falsified almost everyone else into submission to a âscientific consensusâ theory that is (a) widely but privately disbelieved, and (b) doesnât predict or retrodict observed facts at all well. In the worst case, the field will become pathologized â scientific fraud will spread like dry rot among workers overinvested in the âconsensusâ view and scrambling to prop it up. Yes, anthropogenic global warming, Iâm looking at you!"

"Actually, my very favorite example of an error cascade revealed by consilience failure isnât from climatology: itâs the the oceans of bogus theory and wilful misinterpretations of primary data generated by anthropology and sociology to protect the âtabula rasaâ premise advanced by Franz Boas and other founders of the field in the early 20th century. Eventually this cascade collided with increasing evidence from biology and cognitive psychology that the human mind is not in fact a âblank slateâ or completely general cognitive machine passively accepting acculturation. Steven Pinkerâs book The Blank Slate is eloquent about the causes and the huge consequences of this error."

I think part of this debate (the real one) rests on who can be considered an expert.

I think most scientists, with their years of expertise and long hours in lab or beating a computer code to death, have a certain air about them that challenges the notion that someone who did not go through that process could possibly properly critique their work. While this may be the case with many people's work, I include my own primarily, climate science has gotten many a layperson off their butts and onto Excel trying to plot and manipulate and interpret a great deal of data that is readily available to the public. Does that fact mean anyone should have a say?

No, it doesn't. But being published should be a good enough reason to allow someone to have his/her concerns heard. If they (the climate science community) wanted to settle this thing once and for all (the manipulation and conspiracy thing) they would just have a conference where people like McIntyre, who is published, could present their grievances and Mann and whoever else could answer the questions where possible and whatever else. The public could be invited for a nominal charge of $20 and the proceeds could go to the charity of choice of the keynote speakers.

I think that much of this debate (the real one) has to do with the inclusion of particular individuals who have, to their credit, worked very hard at trying to understand some of the limitations of current methodologies for the sake of scientific knowledge. One might say 'well then these individuals can use the literature to make their points' and this is true to some extent. But, as is the case in all sciences, the process of literature review and finding proper avenues for publication suitable for the gravity of the material can be a trying business. Many times good papers are overlooked because they could find print in the more revered journals. I think a public debate or conference of interested individuals might be just the 'trick'.

"In extreme cases, entire fields of inquiry can go down a rathole for years because almost everyone has preference-falsified almost everyone else into submission to a âscientific consensusâ theory that is (a) widely but privately disbelieved, and (b) doesnât predict or retrodict observed facts at all well. In the worst case, the field will become pathologized â scientific fraud will spread like dry rot among workers overinvested in the âconsensusâ view and scrambling to prop it up. Yes, anthropogenic global warming, Iâm looking at you!"

I would assume this kind of rhetoric - stating, in essence, that climate science is some sort of fraud - is out-of-bounds according to the original posts's constraints.

But if we must have it, it's probably worth knowing that Eric Raymond says the same about research linking HIV to AIDS.

A good bit of this is coming out because of the publication [1] of communications among colleagues and (perhaps) friends. This brings us to two principles in tension:

1) Character is what you do when you think nobody will ever know.
2) If we insist that scientists live as though they were always on-camera, we won't have many scientists.

As many have pointed out, it would be "interesting" to see Antony Watts' correspondence (all of it) from the same time published. No, I don't think it's a good idea except as a thought experiment. I do think that asking the question of any of us brings up important points.

I know that a lot gets said over drinks among colleagues that we would never want made public, a great deal of it absolutely legitimate -- but we can't live our lives watching every word to avoid misunderstanding of them out of context by strangers.

And yet, and yet. Famously, electronic mail has been compared for at least 20 years to correspondence by postcard. I know that $COMPANY puts us through annual reminder sessions to the effect that whatever we write, however offhand, should be written as though it might someday become public.

We don't want scientists to start imitating Microsoft employees and avoiding any kind of "paper trail," where an absolute minimum is committed to fixed form (paper, electronic mail, etc.) We want to encourage the open and uninhibited exchange of information. We want to encourage the personal relationships that are too often overlooked but play such a large part in our ability to work productively (and enjoy it!)

But it's still all postcards and we can't ignore that. How do we strike a livable balance?

[1] As in, "making public"

The scientists at CERN publish their methods, data and results contemporaneously on the CERN website. In doing so they are merely perpetuating, by modern means, a tradition of openness in scientific research which has served it well, and which flows naturally and ineluctably from the Scientific Method itself. The same modern means was available to Mann, Jones et al, but not only did they disdain its use, they sought to conceal their work, and their anguish at its inadequacies, from any kind of proper peer review (cf "...even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is...", inter alia).

Had they followed CERNâs example, none of this would be happening.

Their failure to do so invites the adverse inference that their work was defective, and certainly not capable of justifying a massive impost on the global economy.

And another thing - whether or not Mann complied with Jones' request to delete any emails, he did not immediately reply to Jones upbraiding him for making the request. This failure alone deserves censure. Had he done so, his position on the fourth count would look rather better than it does.

Oh boy, do we get service here! :-)

I think there is no serious doubt that that the CRU researchers believed they were footsoldiers in an ideological war. It is clear that this "battlefield" mentality led them to unacceptable actions. What is not clear is how consequential these actions actually were in contributing to the scientific consensus. My suspicion is that they were largely irrelevant.

At one point, Phil Jones pledged, "Kevin and I will keep [two papers] out [of the IPCC AR] somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !" Both papers were ultimately referenced in the IPCC report, and their conclusions incorporated. If this was a fraud (I would not make such a claim,) it was one of the least effective frauds in history.

Now, I'd love to rap the CRU scientists for thinking of themselves as troops on a battlefield instead of objective ivory-tower sages. But the thing is, I can't actually disagree with them. They are involved in an ideological war; this is true regardless of whether they choose to behave as detached philosophers or to fight back.

Quite possibly, these guys acted unethically. What can't be denied, I think, is that if they did act unethically, it was largely because they were under enormous pressure from a politically motivated denialist movement and they didn't know how to handle it properly. If there is a "properly" here.

If you doubt that there exists a climate denial movement, I would simply point out that the most (in)famous of the e-mails, the "Hide the Decline" missive, is still touted as smoking-gun evidence of a coverup even after it was conclusively shown to be best scientific practice in action.

If it is necessary to come up with a moral-of-the-story here, I would submit the following: Every science PhD should be required to demonstrate a serious understanding of science communication in addition to science itself. If as Sagan says, "our future depends, powerfully, on how well we understand this Cosmos," then it is equally true that our future depends powerfully on how well we communicate our understanding of this Cosmos. Even to people who may not want to hear it.

@ Evan 11

These are all good points. I would join you on all of them except I have some questions. How would you think science communication differs from just good communication? And what leads you to believe that these science PhD's you refer to could have or obtain a 'serious understanding' as you call it, of this thing? For some reason they are slow learners in that area. (I generalize, I jab.) I can't tell them anything and it does not surprise me one bit, it's expected. There are reasons for that and not all good. Another day maybe. Sorry for an unpleasant wall there, let us pass on.

Let us take a scientist-philosopher who has shown a fine talent for analysis and clear explication, but is that person ready, willing, and able to give advocacy speeches that work, and put what is spoken down in writing where Joe Blow can catch it? We don't know, do we, and she or he may not know herself, but that is not an ethically spotless business, that advocacy, as you touch on, and scientists who can do it with effect and with high ethics, like T.H. Huxley for example, are rather rare. There are some moderns. But of what you wish for, 'a serious understanding of science communication,' well, each may decide for him or herself what the situation is. I think, with a feeling of about 90% certainty that I am right, that your wish is not doable in practice in the cold cruel world. Time to think think some more. I know I will. It's fun to think what others should do.

So far we have not had much mention of Mann as victim, though you graze it. There are further procedures to be followed. I'm guessing he's in the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) and will have a certain amount of process support from fellow members. So suppose for a moment he is in the wrong. What is to be done? Handspank, career loss, guillotine? What does it depend on? Does the faculty senate decide or the president of the U? We will see.

And then suppose that you are him. You would need your friends and university to come to your aid more than ever to the full extent they could, especially if you were in the wrong in some way. And does he have children in school who will be affected, does he have a child with hare lip or crooked teeth to be repaired, is his wife very ill, is he supporting his aged mother in assisted living which insurance does not cover? Have they adopted a child? Ho, we are talking about more than one person when we say Mann? These too are ethical questions.

And in all the questions and answers should we not recognize occasionally as reminder that Mann is not accused of any societally recognized crime, not federal, not state, not Hague. Seems worth remembering.

And also, in all the questions and answers should we not recognize occasionally as reminder that Mann is not accused of anything that caused money-damages to a single person in any way, anywhere, so no one can step forward and say, "He owes me and this amount in damages." Seems worth remembering.

Now, your apparent main thrust, analysis of why they did what they did sounds as if accurate in the scheme of things (no serious doubt you say.) I like it. Thank you for that. But, since they deny, in a sense, that they did what they did, as defined by others, we will not be able to reach the question of why with them, except as one commenter pointed out, over a cup of coffee perhaps.

As a PhD student working at CERN I'd like to respond to the statement in #10 about how methods, data, and results are shared at CERN. In general CERN is a very open environment, however, there are some qualifications to that.

First some background on CERN. Most scientists who work at CERN are members of one of several large scientific collaborations; these collaborations can have hundreds or even thousands of members. These collaborations are usually based around a large experiment that was designed and built by the collaborators.

As a rule, the data obtained from an experiment like this is tightly controlled by the collaboration and can only be used by its members. This is to prevent misuse of the data as well as to allow the members to benefit from the work they have contributed to the experiment. This doesn't mean that any collaborator can do whatever they want with the data. All publications based on data from the experiment must go through a thorough internal review process before it is shown outside the collaboration. Methods and results are scrutinized and only after approval can they be submitted to a journal for publication (where it will receive further external review). As far was I know, raw data is rarely shared outside the collaboration.

Within collaborations all data is shared. Methods and source code are shared to a large extent, though there is definitely intra-collaboration competition and people can be secretive until they have results they are confident in. There can be a lot of politics involved, and the process isn't always perfect but good science does get done.

Once something has been published it is essentially like any other physics publication and can be discussed and criticized by anyone.

This is my perspective as a relative newcomer to one CERN collaboration (I've been involved with the ATLAS experiment for about 3 years).

The public is artificially selective in its concerns over scientific misconduct. The comments on this post are mostly inaccessible or incomprehensible to the non-scientific public. For them, some education and trust offer better comprehension of episodes of misconduct than the typical commentary in general reporting.

I think there is no serious doubt that that the CRU researchers believed they were footsoldiers in an ideological war.

This seems a much stronger claim then that supported by the emails.

In 13 years of emails, of these guy's innermost thoughts, and much of that time under constant political attack... like, literally, about half the population think their life's work is a sham... they get upset and say things that are inappropriate sometimes?

HUH?

That makes them believe that they are footsoldiers? I think it's more parsimonious to think they were scientists, trying to pursue a hard life of understanding the world and getting frustrated on occasion. Being a footsoldier in a war implies that their goal was something other then just doing their science and being somewhat respected.

"""Commenters on this post are invited to discuss the question of what counts (or should count) as accepted scientific practices, either in meteorology, or climate science more broadly, or across scientific fields."""

This cleaves me in twain as the Feyerabend in me wars with...er...the Lakatos?

So, do we need answers to the broad question of what counts as scientific practice (good, bad, acceptable) as well as specific questions of what counts as (good or bad) psychology? And are we looking at every aspect of the behavior of people claiming the title of "Scientist"? E.g., do we distinguish between the scientific practices of "doing science" (i.e., generating "scientific results"), "curating journals with peer review", "providing expert testimony", "training new scientists", and "educating the public"? Because these are all quite different if often tightly inter-related activities.

So, I think, Evan, that requiring *every* science PhD to demonstrate a "serious" understanding of science communication (is it sufficient if they know it's hard and they aren't very good at it?! do they have to be able to communicate their science to first graders? to people who hate them?) is, interpreted as I suspect you meant it, way too much. Most of us aren't Sagan and yet lots of not-Sagan's can do a lot of great science.

Now, *supporting* science communicators among us is a good thing. (Done right!) In my departments duty allocation there is provision for writing about our research for the mass media (well, for a person to do this...it'd be nice if you could get a few hours for doing that systematically for your own, e.g., by maintaining a blog).

You know, I'm not even a scientist, but the amount of BS I see the "skeptical" crowd posting I would go insane if I had to work the field in which I don't just have to spend significant time and effort to do my science, and then have to spend many times more time addressing bunch of denialists on not just my own research, but also educating them on the earlier research by other scientists, simply because they are so lazy and thick headed that they cannot or won't crack open the journals and actually try to understand what they are reading.

In reply to Evan Harper - it seems clear that the war you are reffering to is the one between people interested in climate science and actually doing the science, and those uninterested in the science except as it turns out to impinge upon their political beliefs.

Also, I think it silly to demand that science PhD's demonstrate an understanding of science communication. They don't all have the time or the ability to do so. Thats what university PR departments are for, is it not?
Certainly one can demand that PhD's who go out into the public arena demonstrate some competence in communciation, but for many more who don't, why waste their time? For example, MBH comprised 3 people, only one of whom many people seem to think exists, i.e. Mann, because he speaks out.

HHmm, I think I might be getting a little off topic.

What I think there certainly is is a gap between the understanding of day to day science operations and what the public and many decision makers (let alone the media) know about how it all works. Scientific discussions and arenas are subject to the same constraints in terms of personality, influence, money and time which bedevil every organisation in existence. However, because its an ongoing discussion with actual evidence involved and an ethos for taking account of the data, things do progress, unlike say in politics. Any attempt to get people to agree upon things which they disagree about, to co-ordinate the results of thousands of scientists research, will end up with little political spats about who said something nasty about whom, what influence so and so has with the committee because he knows them, whether X is worth listening to or not and so on.

The IPCC needs a bit of bringing up to date, but the problem is how to do that without letting Inhofe and others gut it to irrelevancy. People have to remember that most of climatology has been run on a shoestring for years, and the IPCC is mostly staffed by volunteers. They don't get paid, merely a few expenses, and anyway its an appendage to an organisation, the UN, which many countries want to warp to their own agenda. So to expect it to be up to date in all things and super efficient is lunacy. It'll need more money to improve, and also run the risk of bureacracy.

Just a couple of comments on conduct, this is general

1) Don't delete your source/raw data
2) Don't try to hide information if it is requested under an FOI order.

The source/raw data should be fairly obvious, it allows others to see if tampering has happened and/or to develop better predictive/retrodictive models.
Trying to avoid giving out data when an FOI order has been placed on you is illegal.

Both acts create the appearance of deception.

Deleting raw/source data is also an act of theft.
The data has in most cases been paid for by a company or government and they own it, not the person using it.
An example would be CERN and the LHC, the data they will collect has been, mostly, paid for by the taxpayers of Europe as have the wages of most, if not all, of the people working there; it doesn't belong to the scientists.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should publish their data before they've had a chance to make use of it for their own advantage/advancement; but the data should be released after it is used as a matter of course without a need for coercion.

Chris

How about
3) Don't lie.

You should try it sometime.

A few thoughts on Eric Raymond:

His status as a commercially-minded promoter of free/open source software might tend to obscure a few points. The first is that he's not half as good a programmer as he wants people to think -- he end-of-lifed Fetchmail for no really good reason except to prove a somewhat dubious point about product lifecycles, and the people who took over the codebase inherited a program suffering from not only a lot of neglected bugs, but a rather poorly thought out design that made it somewhat the opposite of a category killer.

The second is that Raymond's critical thinking skills are really bad. Since 9/11 he's gone from right-libertarian to firebreathing wingnut, as well as openly racist and homophobic (if not quite to a Stormfront degree, at least Bell Curve territory). (And given his somewhat bitter and self-serving attitude towards school bullying ("I had to tough it out so why shouldn't everyone else") I wouldn't be surprised if he had sociopath tendencies on top of it.)

All that taken together, I'm not sure I'd put any credibility in anything he says outside the narrow cathedral/bazaar paradigm, and even there he's a hypocrite (when was the last time the Jargon File was updated?).

On the matter of climate scientists hiding their data, it reminds me of an old comment (I want to say from de Tocqueville, but I'm probably wrong) about US race relations: "The white man makes the black man shine his shoes, then denigrates him for being a bootblack." The same people crying fraud in this case are the ones that created the paranoid, politically-charged conditions climate scientists work under. Whether they want to admit it or not, they've created something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, except the "fulfillment" is entirely an illusion.

Some of these comments are coming very close to crossing the line for the conversation for which this particular comment thread has been designated.

Talking about how the background political climate may be a constraint on how scientists interact and communicate (whether amongst themselves or with non-scientists) is fair game. But let's not, for this one thread, get bogged down in the separable issue of who or what may be responsible for creating the background political climate, or or which quotable authors you think may have been duped by political interests (possibly in combination with a weakness in his own cognitive skills), or even in the appealing opportunity to take snarky swipes at each other.

For this one thread, let's see if we can keep the discussion focused on the big question: what does real scientific practice (not just the version of it in the "scientific method" box in the middle school science textbook) look like?

How about this
1) No code.
If there is a computer program in question then the author should provide a description of the algorithm sufficient that an expert in the field can follow it.

Putting the code online makes it unlikely that anyone will code in the algorithm for himself or herself, and as debugging is not theoretically possible (see âhalting problemâ) independent code is the only check that is possible.

The point being that the possibility of two independent pieces of code arriving at the same wrong answer is vanishingly small.

2) Donât ask someone for something that isnât his or hers to give.

If a researcher is using (with permission) somebody elseâs data, that doesnât mean that they are allowed to give it to YOU. It is ok to ask where the original data is at, and the researcher should tell you, but it is up to you to get the data from the owner.

3) Donât ask for something you ALREADY HAVE.
Scientists work for a living. If you already have the thing in question, donât ask for it. That isnât science, that is stalking.

4) CRACK A BLOODY BOOK
If you arenât up to speed in a field then that is your problem. Donât pretend that something is wrong just because you havenât done the homework necessary to understand it.

5) Donât lie your ass off. (Ok, I said this in a previous post, but given some of the comments, I obviously need to say it again)

I would say the fundamental requirement of accepted scientific practice, in any field, is documentation.

We are always told, from school to PhD, that the Methods section should contain enough information for another (competent) person to replicate the work. And we all know it never does. There is always something we have to figure out ourselves, or email the original author about.

It's not possible to describe everything one has done in a journal article (the editors want your conclusion, and the evidence and logic that supports it), but the details should be available somewhere (even if it's just a handwritten note on a printout in a file "this data not used as it doesn't look right"). I think probably everyone who has done a PhD involving experimental work has had pages of data that "did not look right", and which were not included in the analysis. I also think most people have the data filed somewhere, so it could be included in an analysis (if anybody thought to ask for it and was able to find it).

The conventional scientific paper follows IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. The idea is that the Introduction (subjective) sets up the question, the Methods (objective) describes what was done, the Results (objective) describes what was observed, and the Discussion (subjective) develops the implications of the results and seeks to persuade readers to accept the author's interpretation.

I think accepted scientific practice must involve absolute integrity in the 2 objective sections -- which is where documentation comes in as the main requirement.

The discussion is supposed to be based on the results. Somebody may take some results and interpret them completely opposite to the current paradigm. That is not fraudulent science (and if the logical arguments are good it may not be bad science).

I haven't read the "purloined emails". If their writers were trying to suppress results or methods, or criticism of results or methods, then they were not following "accepted scientific practice" (even if it is accepted in their field; that just means their field is not scientific).

If they were trying to suppress interpretation, then they were acting as human scientists.

------

The basic Arts were grammar, logic and rhetoric.

Grammar may be important here, but I don't know enough to comment.

Logic is the domain in which scientists are trained. They learn grammar only when forced. Some learn rhetoric, but most have the foolish belief that Results require no rhetoric.
Rhetoric is persuading people of your cause.

There was a time when every person described as educated knew grammar and logic and rhetoric.

In our world, some people learn logic without learning rhetoric; others learn rhetoric without learning logic.
Thus those who understand the world cannot lead; and those who lead do not understand the world.

#10 TomFP said

"The scientists at CERN publish their methods, data and results contemporaneously on the CERN website. In doing so they are merely perpetuating, by modern means, a tradition of openness in scientific research which has served it well, and which flows naturally and ineluctably from the Scientific Method itself. "

Matthew has already mentioned some caveats about CERN, but even TomFP an accurate statement about CERN, what happens there does not reflect scientific practise elsewhere.

Chemists and biologists in general don't do this (I'm sure someone somewhere might be interested in the readouts form the plate reader for every experiment I've done, but we're not going to waste time and effort mounting the blessed things). There is NO expectation in science that anyone anywhere should be able to download *original* data (as opposed to analysed data) wholesale (some astronomer do this, but in general whole slather access to raw, original data is very rare).

And very few people keep original data forever. In Australia, according to the National Health and Medical Research council, Clinical trials data is retained for a minimum 15 years, but for other data need only be kept for 5 years. So the whole "they should have kept their original data forever and a day" expectation is nonsense.

4) CRACK A BLOODY BOOK
If you arenât up to speed in a field then that is your problem. Donât pretend that something is wrong just because you havenât done the homework necessary to understand it.

Well said, Elspi. It's especially important when dealing with phenomena like AGW, because they are much more complex than what's covered in, say, a typical undergraduate physics curriculum. If you're going to challenge the AGW consensus, you need to put the time in, and not leave out any part of the process.

That means starting with introductory material and working your way up. That's how you get the theoretical framework needed to interpret the massive amount of empirical data, from multiple independent sources, that the AGW consensus draws on. To even know of the existence of the data requires reading all the historic and current peer-reviewed literature. Interpreting it requires a thorough knowledge of statistics, and you'll want to conduct your own experiments, and develop and test your own models.

Very few people can do all that on their own. For most of us, the only practical route is an extended apprenticeship: obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees, and doing original research under an established advisor. By the time you get that far, you'll be interacting regularly with the community of professional peers that have been working on this for decades: discussing it informally, in person, by phone and by email (perhaps more cautiously than Phil Jones did); and formally, by presenting your ideas at the same conferences and publishing articles in the same journals they do, which unavoidably entails exposing yourself to their unsparing criticism 8^(!

That's "real scientific practice." There are easier ways to make a living.

I work in a related field (geology - Mann and I both go to American Geophysical Union meetings). Many of the criticisms of Mann's work could apply to the kind of things I do, so I'm watching the Penn State discussions with interest.

Some of the criticism has to do with access to the code behind some published results - the critics want access to the raw code (if I'm understanding the complaints correctly), and argue that it's bad scientific practice to leave the code out of the methods sections of papers.

My corner of geology (metamorphic petrology/structural geology) also uses various sorts of modeling to try to understand what we're seeing in rocks. Some of the models are based on well-established physics (like heat flow), and are used to test whether our explanations for past processes are plausible. Some models are attempts to understand physical processes in the first place - I'm thinking of the work of people who do physical modeling of faults to try to understand why some become inactive and others become active.

I read a lot of papers in which the results are, at least in part, based on the output of some kind of computer modeling. The methods sections usually include general statements about the model used and the reasons for choosing the parameters, but they don't generally include the code itself. Some of the programs are freely available to other scientists (usually through the author's web page). In other cases, the software is a work in progress, and one has to collaborate with the author in order to use it. Whether the programs are publicly available or not, they are often difficult to use without advice from someone with more experience with them.

From what I've seen, Mann and colleagues follow similar practices when dealing with modeling in their work.

It seems to me from the little bit of exposure I've had to the CRU debacle, that there are problems with the whole FOI process. It was assumed that FOI requests would be relatively infrequent and not present a major distraction to research. But from what I read, the rules required at least 18 hours of work per request, and many many requests were being made. I can only conclude that in practice the FOI was being used in a manner analogous to a Denial of Service attack, i.e. overwhelm a site/organization that you wish to harm with a slew of requests. So clearly we have to construct some sort of system that allows reasonable requests to be honoured, but doesn't allow DOS attacks.

As we've seen, once scientific results are seen as dangerous to a groups ideology or commercial agenda, the motivation for bad faith attacks exists. Scientists have a tough enough job as it is, to add public communications, and compliance with various laws (such as FOI) seems way to onerous to me.

I do have one thing that came to mind to me concerning communications of science. I remember having to take time out to demonstrate a certain degree of competance in a foreign language. I don't begrude that time, but in the modern context perhaps science communications could be substituted.

Just a general observation -- the "best practice" standards of open information and professional behaviour at all times are designed to work amongst peers, where there is generally a genuine research purpose to requests for data and methods. Yes, of course there is a great deal of professional sniping and using data and methods precisely to see if someone's conclusions are replicable and robust, or if that someone CAN be shot down. However, the ground assumption there is that the ultimate goal is not just to make a name, but also provide a better approximation of reality and more robust knowledge of the world.

In the case of the highly politicised climate issues, requests for data and methods have for years been used as political and media-manipulation tools by political special interests rather than other researchers in the field. While professional disagreements shouldn't present a problem to anyone with confidence in what they're doing, for over a decade now many researchers have found their work torn apart not in professional peer-review settings, but in general media opinion pieces, with themselves as targets of deliberate smears along the way.

With the best will in the world, I honestly don't see how the "best practices" model could stay in play without a few knocks and dents as researchers get resentful and defensive. Omega Centauri's point about FOI requests being used as DOS attacks is spot-on, and has precedent in Sen. Inhofe's activities. Add to that the fact that many researchers have become aware that even when they try their best to clearly communicate what they are doing and what data they have to the general media, they will often be deliberately misquoted and misused -- for one example, the deliberate conflation of GLOBAL sea ice with ARCTIC sea ice in the Michael Asher Daily Tech article of January 1, 2009, which misused an interview given in good faith by Bill Chapman at UIUC's Arctic Center in order to disseminate a (deliberately?) false meme about the climate. After researchers have been burned, or seen their colleagues burned, by this kind of behaviour on a consistent basis, it's almost inevitable that there should be a closing of ranks and resentment against further demands for information and openness and communication. How can that be prevented? To what degree should researchers be open political targets, too?

The problem is that Mann et al are trying to do science, and the AGW deniers are fighting a war. Politics being a war by other means. We know that âall is fair in love and warâ. Lying, cheating, stealing, killing your enemies, shock and awe, terrorism, genocide and scorched Earth policies are not âaccepted scientific practicesâ, they are war fighting practices that have been used in the past and that are still used today.

To the extent that Mann's detractors use tactics, they legitimize the use of those tactics by Mann in retaliation. Responding in kind is a legitimate response under the rules of war. First use of nuclear weapons is considered to be (now) against the rules of war and a war crime. So is first use of chemical weapons. Retaliatory use of nuclear weapons and even chemical weapons is not considered a war crime, but a legitimate act of self-defense. Retaliatory use is considered acceptable because it deters first use which is not acceptable.

Adhering to âaccepted scientific practicesâ is not a suicide pact.

The only âscienceâ that counts is what is published in peer reviewed journals. Violating accepted scientific practices to publish or to bar from publishing any manuscript is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to all scientists. Scientists who do violate acceptable scientific practices open themselves up to criticism that can exceed accepted scientific practices.

Climate researchers as scientists are stakeholders in the science of AGW. As residents of Earth, they are also stakeholders in the Earth's climate. Stakeholders with a greater understanding of the long term consequences of AGW. Adhering to accepted scientific practices as scientists does not reduce their right to act as stakeholders of the Earth's climate. As I said before, adhering to accepted scientific practices is not a suicide pact.

The only science that counts is the science published in peer review journals. When material is published in peer reviewed journals that deviates from acceptable scientific practices, the stakeholders in that scientific enterprise have an expectation that the unacceptable practices will be corrected, and they also have an obligation to the other stakeholders to make that correction happen. Those stakeholders include the authors, other scientists in the field, readers of the journal, editors of the journal, peer reviewers of the journal, colleagues of stakeholders, funding agencies, policy makers who would use that published material as the basis for policy, and also individuals affected by those policies. In the context of AGW, everyone is a stakeholder.

In the context of the stolen emails, stealing emails is not an accepted scientific practice. Behaviors as described in the email only rise to the level of not accepted scientific practices if they affect the publishing or non-publishing of material in peer reviewed journals.

A FOI request is not a scientific process, it is a legal/political process. A request by a colleague for original data to be used for purposes laid out by the colleague to check results in a peer reviewed paper is a scientific process. A FOI used as a DOS attack is an example of a not accepted scientific process.

If scientists and stakeholders are going to work together on a common scientific enterprise, they need to have a common set of rules and a common set of acceptable scientific practices. If one party finds it acceptable to use FOI as a DOS, then all stakeholders should have the implicit reciprocal right to use not accepted scientific practices against that party. The problem is that once the conflict escalates out of a scientific dispute, then non-scientific practices become acceptable and the winner will be the one who goes nuclear first, or the one with the most lawyers, guns and money.

The problem isn't the use of non-scientific practices, the issue is who used them first. In the case of Mann et al, the AGW deniers went non-scientific first. Acceptable scientific practices are not a suicide pact. People attacked non-scientifically have every right to respond in kind. That doesn't change the science.

Some of the criticism has to do with access to the code behind some published results - the critics want access to the raw code (if I'm understanding the complaints correctly), and argue that it's bad scientific practice to leave the code out of the methods sections of papers.

Except, of course, that Mann's code is freely available. People are still asking 'Why won't Mann release his code", when it is, and has been for some time sitting in plain public view. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ for this and other data and code that climate scientists are "hiding" in plain view on publicly accessible web sites.

This is the main problem, that there has grown up a series of memes around climate science which refuse to be budged by mere facts.

To see a linear exegesis of how CRU and associates wrecked Climate Science and dented real science for years to come you might want to go through John Costella's Climategate analysis

http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/

Where he takes the emails in chronological order and links directly to the email in question for every criticism. His conclusion:

"Climategate has shattered that myth. It gives us a peephole into the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to face mankind. Instead of seeing large collaborations of meticulous, careful, critical scientists, we instead see a small team of incompetent cowboys, abusing almost every aspect of the framework of science to build a fortress around their âold boysâ clubâ, to prevent real scientists from seeing the shambles of their âresearchâ. Most people are aghast that this could have happened; and it is only because âclimate scienceâ exploded from a relatively tiny corner of academia into a hugely funded industry in a matter of mere years that the perpetrators were able to get away with it for so long."

It's amazing at this late date to see all these erstwhile scientists coming forward to defend what was done here in terms of the ethics alone. Leaving aside the truth or falsehood of climate science, it's quite evident to even the most casual observer that all of science is tarred and besmirched by these actions *regardless of intentions.*

It's a matter or trust and belief in the non-partisan nature of science. The CRU folks have reduced that in a serious way that touches all sciences.

@ Kim, who uses modeling similar to Mann

There are always people talking about real science just as there are about real religion, and it just so happens that theirs is the one that is real. They want to expand their own view to "all science" when they have no basis for doing so. The Feyerabend, the Lakatos arguments of scientific method and results are interesting and have their incarnations in James Watson and E. O. Wilson when both were at Harvard. The clash is described by Wilson in his autobiographical book Naturalist (there's probably another side). But the situation of Mann is a practical one at this time. Hindsight analysis will be just that.

The old novel by Britisher C. P. Snow (also author of Science and Government, etc.) called The Affair, no, not about men and women but about a sticky business at Cambridge, would make a good leisure read about a similar situation. The ultimate danger to be avoided would be the loss of close relations and confidences with colleagues, to be never trusted again. Mann could avoid that, but his press statement claiming victory is of questionable effect on that, since a proceeding was left open.

In any case, if you were to find yourself in some intimidating situation (what would it be, the against earthquakers? :), the wisest thing to do, and early, would be consult an articulate lawyer who would help you sort out and recognize the issues and possible answers involved, and on occasion have her or him speak for you if necessary. Not only wisest, but not to do so would be foolish. That's my opinion on that and I'm sticking to it!

Cheers to you Kim

vanderleun's response above (which doesn't fit the topic of the post, but is actually a good example of what is not accepted scientific practices). There is no science at all in the post, or in the blog that is linked to. It is simply a rehash of the emails that were stolen.

The only accepted scientific practice to refute an argument is with data and analysis which directly bear on the subject in dispute. Does John Costella do that? No, he doesn't. He simply analyzes the stolen emails. The stolen emails are not data about climate or climate change. They are personal communications between scientists. They are easy to take out of context, but in any case they provide zero probative value on the issue of climate change.

Are there any temperature measurements in the emails? Any models? Any radiative forcing calculations? No, there are none of these. So what use is there in analyzing the emails? None as far as determining if there is AGW or if there will be adverse climate change.

If Mann et al were completely wrong in every single bit of data and analysis that they did, that does not make the opposite of what they have been saying correct, it simply makes the issue of climate change unknown. To find that AGW will not happen, and that there will be no adverse climate change, it is insufficient to find that Mann et al are wrong, it is necessary to positively show, with data and analysis that AGW will not happen, and that rising CO2 levels will have no adverse effect on the climate.

The AGW deniers have not done this. They have not shown with data and analysis that AGW will not happen, they have simply thrown up smoke to try and discredit Mann et als data and analysis with hype and even lies of their own.

I am quite sure that they have not done this because they can't do it. That there are no facts and analysis that are compatible with no AGW and no adverse climate change.

I might be straying too close to the forbidden zone with this reply, so before I get canned I'll say it's a great thread with some enlightening comments. Cheers to all concerned.

I have trouble taking vanderleun's link too seriously since it's at a glance a litanny of gotchas and thought crimes with few genuine transgressions. And even with the email for reference it's still out of context.
He even makes a big song and dance about the 'hide the decline' thing. I don't know why people like this one so much. I am a casual observer and I'd been reading about the questionable status of tree ring proxies for a year before the CRU hack. It's hard to take someone seriously who holds up a lack of perfect consensus on complex matters as a negative (or the desire to talk it out and put up a united front publicly. This goes on all the time in every organisation comprising more than one person. Geez, parents do it). But I haven't read it all.

There's a limited amount of time, of money and page space. to be allocated in science. Competition for it causing the odd less-than-ideal behaviour should come as no surprise. The world is not short on habit, cliques, insularity, prejudice and arrogance. Competition makes for dogged, stubborn and combative people as well. I really don't know why so many climate skeptics (as I call folks who aren't outright deniers but are fairly easy to tip to the negative side by bad PR like this) are shocked.

The page also suggests that Mann and Jones exert too much influence over what gets published in the field. That's as may be in principle, but I suspect experts in a given field advising, even vigorously, journal editors isn't that uncommon in any science. But I don't know. Perhaps some of the scientists around could chime in.

If this has damaged all science its because the public never really understood it in the first place, still having some image of avuncular guys in lab coats with brylcreme'd hair and pipes who 'make everything alright' from '50s car ads.

Regardless, I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is so damn important we need everything perfectly above board and seen to be above board at all times. But here I think the skeptics are setting the terms more than they actually deserve to. All the calls for greater transparency and openness (much of which is groundless, as mentioned) in the name of scientific principles. What many of them want, in essence, is all the data laid out for them so they can check it independantly.

But that's not science either, and we've seen repeatedly over the last few years skeptics can pick on statistical methods, the inclusion of this or that factor, and make quite sensible seeming arguments to the lay reader. But these arguments are false and ignorant of the scientific practice.

I may be being too charitable, but I read those emails and I see people mostly trying very hard to express in clear and simple terms something that is not clear and simple and isn't going to be. Half of the major gotchas in the public are over the creation of a graph or two and the supposed manipulations therein merely desires to remove distractions from the overall thrust of the argument. An ultimately poor practice maybe, but a dedicated quibbler can (and does) make noodle soup out of all the proxies, anomaly calculations, polynomial fits etc and make it say whatever they like.

As much as I support openness and backyard science in principle, the call for complete transparency and the inclusion of blogs as a valid source of criticism is like the witch's dunking chair of public discourse. If the skeptics are right and credibility is all but gone (and I don't think it is, but that's by the by) they'll accept nothing less than an ordeal climate science is unlikely to survive in order to "restore" it.

Perhaps my cynicism is over the top, but I get very worried about complex science in public policy when thinking about this. I can't see the media, the populace and politicians/interested parties doing right by something this complicated.
But, I guess, when have they ever? My understanding of the practices isn't very detailed. Maybe any "proper science practice" review is just blanket liquid bans on aircraft and it will restore confidence and calm down after a while.

(hmm, too many words, not enough said. Oh well)

I have trouble taking vanderleun's link too seriously since it's at a glance a litanny of gotchas and thought crimes with few genuine transgressions.

Then there's his phrase "erstwhile scientists". Does he mean "ersatz scientists"?

Precision with words is accepted scientific practice.

To see a linear exegesis of how CRU and associates wrecked Climate Science and dented real science for years to come you might want to go through John Costella's Climategate analysis

http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/

Rather, to see that Climategate actually reflects the unceasing attempts by climate change deniers to undermine real science, see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/

To quote from another commentary

"Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ârobustâ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking."

There is one point about using computer models that I rarely see addressed: they tend to encapsulate a lot of assumptions -- necessarily so. You can't simulate climate on the quantum level. But such assumptions aren't always carefully elucidated, especially when some large model is being shared among different researchers. The obvious solution to this is to publish the model source code, subject it to review and testing of some sort, but I'd suggest that this is often the wrong approach.

Being able to say researcher X can duplicate researcher Y's results -- reproducibility -- is one of the most important criteria for good science. Yet if X uses Y's computer model any support for a claim of reproducibility is severely damaged. There may be erroneous assumptions, embedded data -- and software bugs -- in a model. What needs to happen is for researcher Y to publish the design of the model and the various premisses underlying that design. These are much easier for domain experts who may not be software engineers to evaluate. Then X needs to reproduce the model. If the design and premises of the model are acceptable and results can be reproduced with this new model, a much stronger case can be made for actual replication. Yet models and significant chunks of model code (which are likely to be the trickiest bits and thus the most likely to have errors) are often shared. That's a problem; X must very careful to recreate the model and not just copy all or part of it. If the code is published, X must avoid relying on it and instead rely on the published description of what the model does.

I'm not attacking climate models in particular, here, though they often are of a type that is harder to validate independently through simplified tests the way models of simpler physical processes are. I've worked on computer models myself. They have enormous power to aid analysis in ways that are impossible otherwise. The manner in which they are built -- often piecewise and incrementally, with experimentation along the way informing further development -- makes them as much a representation of results as a tool for achieving it. This tends to argue for their publication but the implications of any reuse must be well understood. This includes the understanding that a model encapsulates results -- potentially erroneous results -- and not just methodology, and so the same model is to be considered largely unusable as a tool in credible attempts to validate those results. Of course, any time a model's results have been properly reproduced its use in producing further results gains support, though once again independent reproduction of those further results should be required.

In the wake of ClimateGate: findings of the misconduct inquiry against Michael Mann.

jstemwedel — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:53:55 +0000

In the wake of ClimateGate: findings of the misconduct inquiry against Michael Mann.

Remember "ClimateGate", that well-publicized storm of controversy that erupted when numerous email messages from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) webserver at the University of East Anglia were stolen by hackers and widely distributed? One of the events set in motion by ClimateGate was a formal inquiry concerning allegations of research conduct against Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor in the Department of Meteorology at The Pennsylvania State University.

The report (PDF) from that inquiry has been released, so we're going to have a look at it here.

This report contains a lot of discussion of how the committee pursuing the inquiry was constituted, and of which university policies govern how the committee is constituted, and of how membership of the committee was updated when members left the university for other positions, etc. I'm going to gloss over those details, but they're all there in the ten page report if you're interested in that kind of thing.

My focus here will be on what set the inquiry in motion to begin with, on the specific allegations they considered against Dr. Mann, on how the committee gathered information relevant to the allegations, and on the findings and decisions at which they arrived. Let me state up front that committee decided that one allegation merited further consideration in an "investigation" (which is the stage of the process that follows upon an "inquiry"), and that to my eye, that investigation may end up having broader implications for the practice of science in academia.

But let's start at the beginning. From the inquiry report:

Beginning on and about November 22, 2009, The Pennsylvania State University began to receive numerous communications (emails, phone calls and letters) accusing Dr. Michael E. Mann of having engaged in acts that included manipulating data, destroying records and colluding to hamper the progress of scientific discourse around the issue of anthropogenic global warming from approximately 1998. These accusations were based on perceptions of the content of the widely reported theft of emails from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain.

It sounds an awful lot like these "numerous communications" came not from other climate scientists but from members of the general public. (The report notes that the sources of the communications included federal and state politicians, University alumni, and people with no connection to Penn State.)

There is nothing prima facie wrong with members of the general public communicating their concerns. There may be questions about how well grounded these concerns are in facts, but that's the sort of thing an inquiry committee can investigate. And, to the extent that a university like Penn State places importance on the public's trust, responding to these complaints was clearly something the university saw as being in its best interests.

The complaints raised in these communications, if true, could potentially amount to research misconduct, so the wheels were put in motion to mount an inquiry:

Under The Pennsylvania State University's policy, Research Administration Policy No. 10, (hereafter referred to as RA-10), Research Misconduct is defined as:

fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other practices that seriously deviate from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities;

callous disregard for requirements that ensure the protection of researchers, human participants, or the public; or for ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals;

failure to disclose significant financial and business interest as defined by Penn State Policy RA20, Individual Conflict of Interest;

failure to comply with other applicable legal requirements governing research or other scholarly activities.

RA-10 further provides that "research misconduct does not include disputes regarding honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data, and is not intended to resolve bona fide scientific disagreement or debate."

However, from the sounds of things, most of the complaints the university received about Dr. Mann in the wake of ClimateGate were not couched in the official language of the policy on research misconduct. (This is no surprise. Not too many people from outside academia wallow in official policy language.) Thus, to address the substance of the complaints in the context of academic research and the relevant university policies governing it, the members of the inquiry committee had to do some work to extract the allegations the numerous communications, taken together, were making against Dr. Mann:

At the time of initiation of the inquiry, and in the ensuing days during the inquiry, no formal allegations accusing Dr. Mann of research misconduct were submitted to any University official. As a result, the emails and other communications were reviewed by Dr. Pell and from these she synthesized the following four formal allegations. To be clear, these were not allegations that Dr. Pell put forth, or leveled against Dr. Mann, but rather were her best effort to reduce to allegation form the many different accusations that were received from parties outside of the University. The four synthesized allegations were as follows:

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?

Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

If I were on the inquiry committee, I'd be inclined to point out that these are actually questions rather than allegations -- allegations, I'd think, would be the statements that assume an affirmative answer corresponding to each of these questions. As I was not on the inquiry committee, its members were spared my nit-pick.

You'll note that each of these allegations falls squarely under point (1) of RA-10 (quoted above). Also, you'll note that allegation #4, the question about deviating "from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities," is a broader question than the other three.

What sort of information did the inquiry committee consider as they examined these allegations? They started with a set of more than 1000 emails "purloined from a server at the University of East Anglia". (Side note: I love the inquiry report's consistent use of the term "purloined" to describe these emails.) From these, they identified all the messages of which Dr. Mann was a sender or a recipient (or even a participant at some point in the "chain" of the email discussion), plus all the messages that mentioned Dr Mann or his research or publications (even the ones that he neither sent nor received).

From among these 377 emails, the inquiry committee focused on 47 emails that were deemed relevant. On December 17, 2009, the inquiry committee (Pell, Scaroni, Yekel), Dr. Brune [Head of the Department of Meteorology, whose role was to provide consultation to the rest of the members of the inquiry, but not to make decisions at the inquiry phase] and Dr. Foley [Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School] met to review the emails, discuss the RA-10 inquiry process and go over what their respective activities would be. It was agreed that these individuals would meet again in early January and that they would use the time until that meeting to review the relevant information, including the above mentioned e-mails, journal articles, OP-ED columns, newspaper and magazine articles, the National Academy of Sciences report entitled "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years," ISBN: 0-309-66144-7 and various blogs on the internet.

Please take a moment here to absorb the description of the sources of relevant information (in addition to the ClimateGate emails) the inquiry committee decided to dig into over the December break: journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, op-ed pieces, and various blogs on the internet.

I think this has to be empirical data in support of the claim that even people who do not blog are now paying attention to blogs. I suppose this also means that bloggers may want to write with the understanding that what they post may be used in a university inquiry at some future date.

Anyway, the members of the inquiry committee drew on these sources to compile a document that included specific questions in addition to the four formal allegations. They used this document to interview Dr. Mann, asking follow up questions in response to his answers to the questions in the document:

On January 12, 2010, the inquiry committee (Foley, Yekel, Scaroni) and Dr. Brune met with Dr. Mann to interview him. Dr. Mann was asked to address the four allegations leveled against him and to provide answers to the fifteen additional questions that the committee had compiled. In an interview lasting nearly two hours, Dr. Mann addressed each of the questions and follow up questions. A recording was made of the meeting, and this recording was transcribed. The committee members asked occasional follow-up questions. Throughout the interview, Dr. Mann answered each question carefully:

He explained the content and meaning of the emails about which we inquired;

He explained that he had never falsified any data, nor had he had ever manipulated data to serve a given predetermined outcome;

He explained that he never used inappropriate influence in reviewing papers by other scientists who disagreed with the conclusions of his science;

He explained that he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; and

He explained that he never engaged in activities or behaviors that were inconsistent with accepted academic practices.

I imagine at this point that someone might raise the objection that it doesn't matter what Dr. Mann says, since clearly a scientist who has falsified or suppressed data, or destroyed data or communications, or misused privileged information is going to lie about having done so. Remember, however, that the inquiry committee was not only relying on Dr. Mann's testimony. They were also drawing on the purloined CRU emails. This means that if Dr. Mann's claims seemed to be in conflict with the evidence of the email messages, it would undermine his testimony.

Indeed, on the second formal allegation, the inquiry committee sought more than Dr. Mann's testimony:

On January 15, 2010, and on behalf of the inquiry committee, Dr. Foley conveyed via email an additional request of Dr. Mann, who was asked to produce all emails related to the fourth IPCC report ("AR4"), the same emails that Dr. Phil Jones had suggested that he delete.

On January 18, 2010, Dr. Mann provided a zip-archive of these emails and an explanation of their content. In addition, Dr. Mann provided a ten page supplemental written response to the matters discussed during his interview.

The fact that Dr. Mann produced the emails that it was alleged he had improperly deleted looks like convincing proof that he did not delete them.

With the testimony from Dr. Mann (both from his interview with the inquiry committee and from the supplementary written response he provide) and the information from other sources (including the purloined emails) in hand, the inquiry committee sat down to deliberate. After their deliberation, they issued a finding and a decision for each of the four formal allegations against Dr. Mann:

Allegation 1: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?

Finding 1. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had or has ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with an intent to suppress or to falsify data. While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU emails were made public that Dr. Mann has engaged in the suppression or falsification of data, there is no credible evidence that he ever did so, and certainly not while at Penn State. In fact to the contrary, in instances that have been focused upon by some as indicating falsification of data, for example in the use of a "trick" to manipulate the data, this is explained as a discussion among Dr. Jones and others including Dr. Mann about how best to put together a graph for a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report. They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called "trick" was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.

Decision 1. As there is no substance to this allegation, there is no basis for further examination of this allegation in the context of an investigation in the second phase of RA-10.

None of the evidence the inquiry committee considered was anything like a smoking gun to support the charge or suppression or falsification of data.

Allegation 2: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

Finding 2. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones. Dr. Mann has stated that he did not delete emails in response to Dr. Jones' request. Further, Dr. Mann produced upon request a full archive of his emails in and around the time of the preparation of AR4. The archive contained e-mails related to AR4.

Decision 2. As there is no substance to this allegation, there is no basis for further examination of this allegation in the context of an investigation in the second phase of RA-10.

Dr. Mann produced the allegedly deleted emails, strongly suggesting (by their existence) that they had not been deleted, either properly or improperly.

Allegation 3: Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?

Finding 3. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee finding is that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to him in his capacity as an academic scholar. In media reports and blogs about Dr. Mann and other paleoclimatologists, those who are named in the CRU email files are purported to have been engaged in conspiratorial discussions indicative of a misuse of privileged or confidential information. Although it is not clear where the exact accusation lies in this with respect to Dr. Mann, it is inferred that the emails prove the case. Those who have formed this view feel that, in their capacity as reviewers, Dr. Mann and his colleagues had early access to manuscripts from other authors with whom they disagreed, and that they could somehow act on those to reject them for publication. Actually, when one does due diligence on this matter, and asks about what papers were involved, one finds that enormous confusion has been caused by interpretations of the emails and their content. In some cases, the discussion and related debate centered on papers that were about to emerge which members of the purported conspiracy had written, but which were simply under embargo. In other cases, the discussion and related debate centered on papers that have emerged in otherwise notable scientific journals, which they deemed to have been published with a lower standard of scholarly and scientific scrutiny. The committee found no research misconduct in this. Science often involves different groups who have very different points of view, arguing for the intellectual dominance of their viewpoint, so that that viewpoint becomes the canonical one. We point to Kuhn as an authority on how science is done, before it is accepted as "settled."

Decision 3. As there is no substance to this allegation, there is no basis for further examination of this allegation in the context of an investigation in the second phase of RA-10.

The findings on the third allegation are interesting, as they point to the fact that scientists in a field may have access to information well before that information is public (say, because it is in a paper which is under embargo but has been distributed to them). Discussing these papers does not mean that the scientists discussing them have any control at all over whether the papers are accepted for publication by reputable journals. (Indeed, "under embargo" suggests that the papers have already been accepted for publication but have not yet been published.)

Others of the papers involved in the complaints the university received were apparently already published. This means that even if the purloined CRU emails included discussions about how these papers should not have been accepted for publication (because the people discussing them in these emails didn't think the quality of the data they reported, or the scientific argumentation they presented, was high enough), the discussants could not have suppressed the publication of these papers without being in possession of a time machine.

In other words, the content of the emails revealed disagreements (about results and standards for evaluating reports of scientific findings) within the scientific community, but they did not reveal that Dr. Mann acted to suppress results or reports of scientific findings with which he disagreed.

For those keeping score, that's three allegations which the inquiry committee determined to be without substance.

Finally, we get to the fourth allegation:

Allegation 4. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

Finding 4. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee could not make a definitive finding whether there exists any evidence to substantiate that Dr. Mann did engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities. It is the case that there has been a public outcry from some quarters that Dr. Mann and his colleagues did deviate from what some observers claim to be standard academic practice. All disciplines and scientific fields work within broad bounds of "accepted scientific" practice that apply to all researchers. However, within different disciplines of science there are additional elements of accepted practice that may be specific to those disciplines and therefore are different from those of other disciplines and fields. ...

Policy RA-10 speaks not just of research misconduct but also of research conduct and is explicit regarding the responsibility that we have as scientists to maintain the public trust. The preamble is as follows:

"Public trust in the integrity and ethical behavior of scholars is essential if research and other scholarly activities are to play their proper role in the University and in society. The maintenance of high ethical standards is a central and critical responsibility of faculty and administrators of academic institutions. Policy AD-47 sets forth statements of general standards of professional ethics within the academic community."

Furthermore, the preamble speaks to the high ethical expectations that Penn State has for its faculty and administrators. These expectations are embodied in another document, Policy AD-47 General Standards of Professional Ethics. The purpose of AD-47 is stated as follows:

"To set forth statements of general standards of professional ethics to serve as a reminder of the variety of obligations assumed by all members of the academic community."

Here, the inquiry committee is pointing out that researchers at the university has a duty not to commit fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, but also a positive duty to behave in such a way that they maintain the public's trust. The inquiry committee goes on to highlight specific sections of policy AD-47 that speak to cultivating intellectual honesty, being scrupulous in presentation of one's data (and careful not to read those data as being more robust than they really are), showing due respect for their colleagues in the community of scholars even when they disagree with their findings or judgments, and being clear in their communications with the public about when they are speaking in their capacity as researchers and when they are speaking as private citizens.

The inquiry report continues:

It is clear to those who have followed the media and blogs over the last two months that there are two distinct and deeply polarized points of view that have emerged on this matter. One side views the emails as evidence of a clear cut violation of the public trust and seeks severe penalties for Dr. Mann and his colleagues. The other side sees these as nothing more than the private discussions of scientists engaged in a hotly debated topic of enormous social impact.

In other words, we're not just looking at scientific conduct here. Rather, we're looking at scientific conduct in an area about which the public cares a lot.

What this means is that the public here is paying rather more attention to how climate scientists are interacting with each other, and to the question of whether these interactions are compatible with the objective, knowledge-building project science is supposed to be.

This public interest is not a completely new development:

The allegation inquires about whether Dr. Mann seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities. In 2006, similar questions were asked about Dr. Mann and these questions motivated the National Academy of Sciences to undertake an in depth investigation of his research. The committee that wrote the report on surface temperature reconstructions found that Dr. Mann's science did fall well within the bounds of accepted practice. What has changed since that time is that private emails have come to our attention and that of the public at large, and these give us a glimpse into the behind the scenes workings of Dr. Mann and many of his colleagues in the conduct of their science.

In other words, the purloined emails introduce new data relevant to the question of whether Dr. Mann's research activities and interactions with other scientists -- both those with whose conclusions he agrees and those with whose conclusions he does not agree -- are consistent with or deviate from accepted scientific practices.

Evaluating the data gleaned from the emails, in turns, raises the question of what the community of scholars and the community of research scientists agree counts as accepted scientific practices.

Decision 4. Given that information emerged in the form of the emails purloined from CRU in November 2009, which have raised questions in the public's mind about Dr. Mann's conduct of his research activity, given that this may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist, and given that it may be undermining public trust in science in general and climate science specifically, the inquiry committee believes an investigatory committee of faculty peers from diverse fields should be constituted under RA-10 to further consider this allegation.

In sum, the overriding sentiment of this committee, which is composed of University administrators, is that allegation #4 revolves around the question of accepted faculty conduct surrounding scientific discourse and thus merits a review by a committee of faculty scientists. Only with such a review will the academic community and other interested parties likely feel that Penn State has discharged it responsibility on this matter.

What this means is that the investigation of allegation #4 that will follow upon this inquiry will necessarily take up the broad issue of what counts as accepted scientific practices. This discussion, and the findings of the investigation committee that may flow from it, may have far reaching consequences for how the public understands what good scientific work looks like, and for how scientists themselves understand what good scientific work looks like.

Regardless of the specific findings of that investigation committee with respect to the fourth allegation against Dr. Mann, this could be big.

* * * * *

For the record, here's Dr. Mann's statement about the inquiry report:

"I am very pleased that, after a thorough review, the independent Penn State committee found no evidence to support any of the allegations against me.

Three of the four allegations have been dismissed completely. Even though no evidence to substantiate the fourth allegation was found, the University administrators thought it best to convene a separate committee of distinguished scientists to resolve any remaining questions about academic procedures.

This is very much the vindication I expected since I am confident I have done nothing wrong.

I fully support the additional inquiry which may be the best way to remove any lingering doubts. I intend to cooperate fully in this matter - as I have since the beginning of the process."

jstemwedel Thu, 02/04/2010 - 11:53

Tags

Scientist/layperson relations

Ask Dr. Free-Ride: The university and the pirate.

jstemwedel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:31:15 +0000

Ask Dr. Free-Ride: The university and the pirate.

Recently in my inbox, I found a request for advice unlike any I'd received before. Given the detail in the request, I don't trust myself to paraphrase it. As you'll see, I've redacted the names of the people, university, and government agency involved. I have, however, kept the rest of the query (including the original punctuation) intact.

In 2004 I denounced a music piracy case caused by a [U.S. government agency] contractor and [Research University X] computer scientist: Dr. [let's call him "Jolly Roger"]. This man used peer to peer technology to create CDs for third party distribution to his friends; the home computer lab he was using for his peer to peer activities contained a [U.S. government agency] computer keyboard and he was using his [U.S. government agency] based E-mail account to communicate with third parties about his amateur counterfeit CDs/pirate CDs. [U.S. government agency] and the FBI did not take the case seriously and no legal action was taken against Dr. [Jolly Roger] to my knowledge.
-the agents from [U.S. government agency] who investigated the case told me Dr. [Jolly Roger] confirmed my allegations but that they could not be verified, the US attorney declined to prosecute the case because it had not been substantiated. In fact the [U.S. government agency] agents were purely and simply not qualified for the investigation.

- [Two guys] from IFPI in London, UK insured me they believed my allegations against Dr. [Jolly Roger] (over lunch at a restaurant together).

- I met [Jolly Roger] in 2003 precisely and some of my friends and I were invited to his home together.

- [Jolly Roger] stole an automobile in [a U.S. state] and ended in jail for it... Â ... ...

- I lost a national discrimination matter because I could not afford a lawyer at the time of the case (no judgement).

- [Jolly Roger] recently filed a defamation case against me in [the country both Roger and my correspondent are from].

- the RIAA stopped filing against similar cases caused by individuals in december 2008 because it could never bring evidence for these cases (the RIAA is looking for ISP deals).

My complaint is that [Research University X] is mismanaged for employing a scientist with a computer degree like [Jolly Roger] who teaches and steals music like stupid students do online.

What is your position on my complaint please?

I'll admit it, after the laundry list of sins committed by Dr. Jolly Roger, I expected that my correspondent's question was going to concern how best to pursue the piracy complaint against him, or how his lack of respect for the law might fundamentally undercut his ability to perform adequately as a computer science researcher or teacher. I did not expect that the big question was going to concern Research University X and its management (or mismanagement).

But since it is, let's take this opportunity to set aside all those issues that may have tempted us were we dissecting Dr. Jolly Roger's alleged conduct here -- the RIAA's strategies in dealing with peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted works, the relevant distinctions (if any) between bootlegging whole albums and putting together the digital equivalent of mix-tapes, selling versus sharing, whether it is only stupid students or also smart ones who obtain music through peer-to-peer and so forth. Let's also set aside what looks to be significant personal animus for Dr. Jolly Roger on the part of my correspondent.

Instead, consider the question: what oversight should a research university exercise in hiring, and continuing to employ, a scientist? I take it my correspondent is most concerned with issues of the following sort:

making sure the scientist does not use equipment, resources, or time for unauthorized (or illegal) activities
making sure the scientist does not endanger the university's relationship with government agencies or other sources of research funding for its faculty and students
making sure the scientist does not sully the reputation of the university
making sure the scientist does not draw the university's students (or staff) into illegal or unethical activities

Now, I'll agree that a university has an interest in each of these. The big question is how hands-on a university should be (or even can be, practically speaking) in pursuing each of these interests.

Let me turn the questions over to you, dear readers.

What kind of steps ought a university to take to make sure faculty aren't misusing resources? What kind of oversight would cross the line from due diligence to draconian?

Do universities have a presumptive interest in closely monitoring their faculty? Do they have an obligation to undertake such monitoring in the face of an outside complaint? (Does it matter how credible the complainant seems?)

And, is there the potential for a total-surveillance approach to faculty management to head off illegal activities (or goofing off) but undermine research and teaching activities?

What is your position on this complaint please?

jstemwedel Wed, 02/03/2010 - 10:31

Tags

Academia

Doing science for the government

on the general position of monitoring their faculty, I don't know how many resources employers ought to expend. If something comes to their attention, they might be concerned.

however, i have to say that this email absolutely reeks of a personal obsession. why exactly does this person care? I note that there were defamation lawsuits involved. Someone really wants to punish Jolly Roger badly. My suggestion is to not get entangled with crazy people.
I doubt very much that this is just about a citizen wanting to see justice done in a music etc. piracy case.

I am posting on this blog from the computer I use at work, where work is a company that is owned by the city in which it is located. However posting on a blog is not illegal (or even borderline illegal). I am using company resources for it though. But it is during my lunch break, and I am not presenting my views as though they are the views of my company. The more time and resources you spend monitoring your employees, the more likely they will expend more resources getting round your monitoring, and the more likely it is that they will up and leave. That said, if an employee is engaging in illegal behaviour, and that behaviour is brought to the attention of the employer, they should do something about it (even if that something is to hand it over to the relevant enforcement agency). There is usually a company policy on ceasing to employ people that commit crimes using company equipment, isn't there?

If you want to talk music piracy, then one state government office I worked (Actually both state office I worked in) had rampant piracy going on.

Please cure cancer, ALS, or AIDS.

No one cares about the (non) issues you relate.

What Trey said. In fact it's so true that I'm gonna post it on every blog on the Internet. (Except, of course, those actively involved in curing cancer, ALS or AIDs). Does anyone have a list?

In the research university where I work, and employees are required yearly to take an ethics exam - never mind that our last elected governor wouldn't have passed it, and was removed from office by the state legislature last year - one can be guilty of stealing time from the university/state for doing other than one's job.

I used to work and consult in the corporate world rather broadly. I well recall one meeting I attended where the question was abuse of phone privileges by the working people on what was essentially the factory floor. This was in the era before cheap cell phones. One woman was going through a divorce, and had taken several calls from her attorney at the phone, mostly on emergency child custody actions. One fellow had a discussion with physicians for his father over unplugging the life support machines. One of the key gripes from management was over employees calling their union and calling their investment advisors on the issues of converting pensions to 401K plans, as the company favored.

One of my consulting colleagues bravely asked what the purpose of the phone on the shop floor was, and it quickly became apparent that had not been thought out. "Emergencies" and "orders to the employees" were quickly posed, and accepted by management. This would leave out discussions with divorce lawyers, physicians, unions and pension advisors -- not to be done on company phones.

A resolution on a rule for the company manual was quickly written and was steaming to passing when one manager asked whether a ban on use of company phones for such discussions wouldn't also outlaw managers' calls home -- no problem, many said -- managers' calls to lawyers -- not a serious problem, most agreed -- and managers' calls to their stockbrokers.

The motion for a new rule was sent to a committee for much further study. To the best of my knowledge it never emerged.

At another meeting with a large airline, a cost-cutting frenzy had produced a rule making it a firable offense to "steal" a company pen. The rule died when someone asked whose high-school aged children were not, at that moment, taking notes in class with a pen that had the company's name on it.

In my profession of teaching, I have many colleagues who carry their own laptops specifically to prevent any appearance of appropriation of "company" property, should they respond to e-mail or write a paper for a class they are taking at the local community college. They are considered outlaws, and held suspect by administrators and other teachers. There is danger in even working hard to comply with rules against unauthorized use of computers.

We might agree that what Dr. Jolly Roger is doing is not seemly, and perhaps not completely legal. It is a wrong with no legal resolution available at the moment, within the bounds of practicality, and maybe within the bounds of common sense.

#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web".

jstemwedel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:04:25 +0000

#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web".

Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)

The panelists made a point of stepping away from the scientists vs. bloggers frame (as well as the question of whether bloggers are or are not properly considered journalists). They said some interesting things about what defines a journalist -- perhaps a set of distinctive values (like a commitment to truth and accuracy, possibly also to the importance of telling an engaging story). This, rather than having a particular paying gig as a journalist, marked the people who were "doing journalism", whatever the medium.

Does the centrality of such values mean that "being a journalist" is as much a matter of who you are as of what you do? (My hunch: yes.) And given that "being a scientist" is also supposed to be defined by a serious attachment to truth and accuracy (among other values), this suggests there might be some interesting stuff going on under the surface when scientists and journalists interact -- when they're cooperating and when they're taking each other to task.

As the blogging journalists on the panel described their reasons for blogging, an interesting balancing problem emerged. On the one hand, blogging could provide an outlet (as Ed Yong described) to write stories it was hard to persuade mainstream media outlets to tell -- in other words, letting the journalists pursue science stories they wanted to write. David Dobbs shared three reactions that help him identify the stories he wants to write: "Wow! This is intriguing," "Something smells funny here," (e.g., in stories about pharma's shenanigans) and "How does science embody or entrench deep cultural beliefs (& vice versa)?" A story that didn't raise some interested response in the journalist along these lines probably wouldn't be much fun to work on (or, I reckon, to read).

On the other hand, all of the journalists on the panel conveyed a clear sense that successful science writing is writing for an audience -- sometimes an audience that knows it's interested in science stories (and is willing to seek those stories out), sometimes an audience that was reading a non-science story in the adjacent space that gets sucked in to your science story. It sounds like there's a delicate balance here, thinking about the needs of the readers while still writing stories that interest you (the journalist). Maybe this is where the blend of specialist knowledge and generalist experience (mentioned by Ed Yong) comes in.

Given the generally awful news one hears about the state of the newspaper business (and mass media in general), I was surprised at how positive this panel of journalists was. The image that stuck with me was Carl Zimmer's description of a journalistic ecosystem (which I guess you can view in terms of the landscape for journalists or the landscape for media outlets, depending on which sort of critter you are). What I like about this image is the suggestion that diversity of the ecosystem is a good thing. Given the economic challenges big newspapers are experiencing, it should be clear that not every newspaper should try to be a big newspaper. (And maybe the big newspapers need to rethink their own survival strategies.) Fighting over a single niche (even if it seems to be the one at the top of the food chain) may be a suboptimal strategy. This suggests that blogging, too, can exist in the ecosystem, filling a niche that it's suited to, without killing off everything else.

If you're a journalist trying to survive in this ecosystem, there is the small problem of finding paying gigs -- you've got to eat, after all. The panelists suggested that a certain amount of flexibility (about the venue for which you'll write, not the centrality of your journalistic values) was key. Some publications won't give you the 5000 to 8000 words to tell the story you want to tell, but others will. If the publication that's happy to run your story about sexual dimorphism in ducks is unprepared to host the duck sex video you got from the researchers, you can post it on your own site and interested folks will find it. There was discussion of changing strategies for making a living out of science writing, including fellowships as well as story fees. The panel was short on doom and gloom, long on enthusiasm and apparent resiliency.

But arguably, maybe this had to do with the panel being stacked with successful science writers. There is still the question of how to reconcile the fact of the massive influx of journalist talent (noted by Yong) with the observation that editors are always looking for more interesting science stories and writers. As with any ecosystem, some critters are going to succeed and a lot of critters will get munched. (Actually, I think the panelists in the "Pitches that Pay" session spoke to that -- I'll try to connect the strands when I write my post about that session.)

Another thing that struck me in this session: there seemed to be something approaching confidence (although maybe it was something slightly more fragile than that) that even without force-feeding science to the public (you know, because it's good for them) people are getting drawn in to interesting and important science stories. Ars Technica readers may turn up for the gadget news, but they get sucked into the science stories -- including some that challenge their reflexive skepticism about climate change. Readers of tattoo magazines may absorb some science content in that interview with Carl Zimmer. Video game discussion forums and art projects on paleontology websites have people enthusiastic about scientific content, and duck fetishists are learning about sexual selection in the evolution of avian genitalia.

Arguably, this is a pretty positive thing.

That's not to say that there aren't issues to worry about. One that came up near the end of the session was the problem of press releases masquerading as journalism (including websites that look like they're presenting science "news from major universities"). Journalists and scientists may be able to recognize the difference between a press release on a new research finding and an article written on that same research finding (by a journalist, rather than someone whose job is to bring fame and glory to the university where the research occurred), but can a layperson be expected to recognize the difference? Journalists may be wedded to transparency and accuracy, but it's easy to see the kind of temptation press releases represent for editors who might not have the same critical filters as good science writers. Moreover, they may appear enough like objective science reporting to the casual consumer of information to fool that consumer and cause trouble.

I guess the press releases are the mimetic organisms in the ecosystem.

Anyway, the take home message was that good science journalism is not dead, but is adapting to a whole new set of niches. If the science, the journalists, and the general public consuming science writing (among other kinds of news) can figure out how to coevolve together, some really cool things may be on the horizon.

jstemwedel Wed, 02/03/2010 - 08:04

Tags

Science Blogging Conference

I liked Carl's "ecosystem" analogy, as well. Rather than blogger-journalist variants simply filling old niches (as if we could only fill particular slots that existed out there but nothing in-between) I think many writers are creating new niches. As in the wake of a mass extinction, generalists who already have "adaptive" traits will probably do will as things are hashed out, with specialization coming after things get a bit crowded. Over the next few years there could very well be an adaptive radiation of sci writers as new technologies and approaches meet traditional media outlets.

This has suddenly made me remember that this whole evolutionary metaphor that we used in the panel came from David Dobbs and I've thus far spectacularly failed to credit him for the idea.

I should preface this with the fact that I thought this was an extremely interesting and productive session, and the following in no way applies to the extremely talented and conscientious people who chaired it. But I did have a slight problem with the criticism of Futurity - not that I'm a great fan of "press releases masquerading as journalism", but when a large chunk of science "reporting" on the MSM side also consists of press releases churnalism, it seems a little hypocritical to criticise Universities for deciding to remove the middleman. In fact, arguably it is even worse when a slightly trimmed press release is published under a journalist's byline - which is a far, far cry from the obvious value added when people like Carl, David, and Ed write up a story.

Anyone who re-arranges a press release and by-lines the result is not a journalist. He's a plagarist.

#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web".

jstemwedel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:08:42 +0000

#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web".

Session description: Our panel of journalist-blogger hybrids - Carl Zimmer, John Timmer, Ed ~~Yimmer~~ Yong, and David Dobbs- will discuss and debate the future of science journalism in the online world. Are blogs and mainstream media the bitter rivals that stereotypes would have us believe, or do the two sides have common threads and complementary strengths? How will the tools of the Internet change the art of reporting? How will the ongoing changes strengthen writing about science? How might these changes compromise or threaten writing about science? In a world where it's possible for anyone to write about science, where does that leave professional science journalists? And who actually are these science journalists anyway?

The session was led by Ed Yong (@edyong209), Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer), John Timmer (@j_timmer), and David Dobbs (@David_Dobbs).

Here's the session wiki page

"Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web" about to get started. If bomb goes off in this room, sci journ is scrod. #scio10

*Not* going to talk about bloggers as journalist. (B/c really, that disc is so 2008.) #scio10

Who counts as a science journalist nowadays anyway? (Some direct-to-public communication is taking the form of journalism) #scio10

Values that are shared (truth, accuracy, etc.) as what defines journalism, not a particular employment situation. #scio10

Ed Yong started blogging because std. pitches weren't working; doing journalism himself opened doors. #scio10

Getting good science out to people that's interesting and understandable. #scio10

Yong wants to see mainstream news outlets take advantage of massive influx of talent (people "doing journalism" themselves online) #scio10

Blend of specialist knowledge and generalist experience important in where science journalism is going. #scio10

Timmer: What to preserve from the existing system that's working well? Reach ppl who don't know they're interested in science. #scio10

Ars technica uses interest in tech as the hook to get IT folks, gadget enthusiasts, gamers, exposed to science stories. #scio10

Timmer on Ars Technica freelancers:"I give them ideas; they ignore me ..." #scio10

Ars Technica gives grad students, postdocs, the experience of writing, working worth an editor. #scio10

Ars Technica gives engineers stories that make them grapple with their climate skepticism. #scio10

David Dobbs: What I like abt writing abt science: 1. Wow! This is intriguing. #scio10

David Dobbs: What I like abt writing abt science: 2. Something smells funny here. (e.g., stories abt. pharma's shenanigans) #scio10

David Dobbs: What I like to write abt science: 3.How does science embody/entrench deep cultural beliefs (& vice versa)? #scio10

Horror: Stories that didn't get published b/c publication they were written for folded first. #scio10

Need to maintain existence of outlets that will publish 5k-8k word science stories. (People will read them.) #scio10

Need to watch sources of $ - make sure no more problemtic than what exists now #scio10

Need to keep writers transparent and skeptical (even in the face of "Wow!) #scio10

Carl Zimmer: Lessons for sci journalism from duck genitals. #scio10

Building silicon duck vaginas to test hyptheses about sex selection. Ducks split them, had to go to glass ones. #scio10

Zimmer: This requires follow-up! Asks researchers for videos of duck sex research. #scio10

Editor replies to duck sex videos in ALL CAPS! Takes a pass. (That's NYT's loss. Zimmer posts videos himself.) #scio10

Sex videos may reach potential general audience science fans even without reach of NYT. Duck fetishists learn abt sex selection! #scio10

Journalistic ecosystem of large and small organizations interacting with each other (even online). OK if big org editor says no #scio10

Journos were arguing about who had to be doom & gloom, who got to be ray of hope in session. #scio10

Q: "How can bloggers in audience behave more like professional journalists?" A: "Why do you want to do that?" #scio10

Learn how to write in diff tones, structure a story, master form of informational storytelling. Study people whose work you enjoy #scio10

Tell enough ppl you're a journalist and they'll start treating you that way. #scio10

Reading a lot of people can help you write better (thru osmosis?) #scio10

Fellowships, story fees, etc. -- mix of modes to fund the writing of longer stories. #scio10

Bloggers who work for particular orgs might not get access to stories owing to potential conflicts of interest #scio10

Grad students/postdocs perceived as special risk when given access to embargoed research. (Like 2 weeks headstart makes diff?) #scio10

Zimmer: We love to put labels on things (journalism, blogging, etc.) - don't get hung up on defns. It's good sci writing or not. #scio10

Is signing over your space to interesting ideas (cf. Andrew Sullivan) the way to foster more/better science writing? #scio10

Blogging in journo ecosystem: spreads but doesn't wipe everything out. Large media outlets hanging in. #scio10

Michael Spector: don't read Wired to learn how to write well. Read Anna Karenina. #scio10

M. Spector: Can't reach all the pple we need to in lots of splintered outlets. Zimmer: How to do that (given editorial pressures)? #scio10

M. Spector: Need more broad outreach to general pop, or we end up just talking to each other in hotel rooms. #scio10

Linking smaller outlets as a way to break down need for general interst outlets. #scio10

Yong: Not everyone is online or tech savvy. Don't want to lose them. (Might reinforce existing info disparities) #scio10

Focusing on hits (like duck sex) vs. depth. #scio10

"Generalizing" science in diff ways (paleontology art site project that drew in comics illustrators) #scio10

Cool science stories turning up in video game disc forums; Zimmer talks science in interviews w/tattoo mags. #scio10

Charlotte Observer just started some science pages! (How is this possible in current climate?) #scio10

How do editors find good freelances? National Society of Science Writers. (Plus there might be some folks at #scio10)

Writers trying to squeeze thru thin door w/lots of other ppl, yet editors always looking for more interesting sci stories & writers #scio10

Talking abt science in very local contexts as a way the army of bloggers can have sig impact on reach to gen public #scio10

Taking note of local industries, local environmental issues, etc. (making sci relevant) #scio10

Publishing press releases as news bad for transparency and accuracy (not checked by scientists) #scio10

Futurity flags its content as press-releases (and researchers sign off on it) even tho headlines, ledes rewritten #scio10

"News from major research universities" ... is that like White House "News" conferences? (What does "news" promise abt accuracy?) #scio10

Is the disclaimer on press releases *sufficient* for general audience looking for sci news they can count on #scio10

What do universities have to gain by misleading here? We're not drug companies! (Uh ...) #scio10

Read the paper, not just the press release; that's where they data is. (Include the damn DOI) #scio10

Need journos to translate the science so gen public can understand it. (Public not nec ready to decode orig sci papers themselves.) #scio10

Push strategy vs. pull strategy (those already interested vs. those who can't escape your reach). #scio10

T-shirts as strategy for engaging gen public in cool science stories. Massive exposure can work, even if frenzy is overblown #scio10

RT@TomLevenson @docfreeride: read the paper is a spurious demand for connecting public to science. This is tantamount to abandoning the field. #scio10.

@ivanoransky At the least, the claim that univ=/=pharma required an arg. & evidence to back it up. Hard to recognize own conflicts #scio10

@ivanoransky Some purveyors of journalistic disinfectant think they have an interest in controlling the disinfectant market. #scio10

jstemwedel Mon, 01/18/2010 - 13:08

Tags

Science Blogging Conference

Legal and scientific burdens of proof, and scientific discourse as public controversy: more thoughts on Chandok v. Klessig.

jstemwedel — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:44:24 +0000

Legal and scientific burdens of proof, and scientific discourse as public controversy: more thoughts on Chandok v. Klessig.

As promised, I've been thinking about the details of Chandok v. Klessig. To recap, we have a case where a postdoc (Meena Chandok) generated some exciting scientific findings. She and her supervisor (Daniel F. Klessig), along with some coworkers, published those findings. Then, in the fullness of time, after others working with Klessig tried to reproduce those findings on the way to extending the work, Klessig decided that the results were not sufficiently reproducible.

At that point, Klessig decided that the published papers reported those findings needed to be retracted. Retracting a paper, as we've had occasion to discuss before, communicates something about the results (namely that the authors cannot stand behind them anymore). By extension, a retraction can also communicate something to the scientific community about the researcher responsible for generating those results -- perhaps that she was too quick to decide a result was robust and rush it into print, or that she made an honest mistake that was not discovered until after the paper was published, or that her coauthors no longer trust that her scientific reports are reliable.

The issue is complicated, I think, by the fact that there were coauthors on the papers in question. Coauthors share the labor of doing the scientific work, and they share the credit for the findings described in their paper. You might expect, therefore, that they would share responsibility for quality control on the scientific work, and for making sure that the findings are robust before the manuscript goes off to the journal. (In my first post on this case, I noted that "before the work was submitted to Cell, Klessig had one of his doctoral students try to verify it, and this attempt was at least good enough not to put the brakes on the manuscript submission." However, given that further efforts to reproduce the findings seem not to have succeeded, I suspect opinions will vary on whether this pre-submission replication was enough quality control on the authors' parts.) And, you might expect that it would be the rare case where a problem with a published manuscript would come to rest on the shoulders of a single author in the group.

If credit is shared, why isn't blame?

Whatever you think ought to be the standard assumptions when a collaborative piece of scientific work does not hold up, in this particular case the blame seemed to fall on Chandok. She took issue with the implication of the retractions (among other communications) that she was unreliable as a scientific researcher. Probably she considered the importance of trust and accountability in the scientific community, recognizing that if she were not trusted by her fellow scientists and if her work were viewed as presumptively unreliable, she would not have much of a scientific career ahead of her. So, she sought legal remedy for this harm to her scientific reputation and career prospects by pursuing a defamation claim against Klessig.

There are separable issues at play here. One is the question of what is required in the eyes of the law to prove a claim of defamation. Another is what would constitute "best practices" for scientific work, both in terms of dealing with data and conclusions, and in terms of dealing with the scientists who generate the data and conclusions (and who are the main audience for the findings reported by other scientists). Here, I think "dealing with" encompasses more than simply classifying fellow scientists by whether or not you can trust their scientific output. It includes interactions with collaborators (and competitors) , not to mention interactions in scientific training relationships.

We might quibble about where a postdoc falls in the process of scientific training and development. Nevertheless, if the PI supervising a postdoc is supposed to be teaching her something (rather than just using her as another pair of hands, however well trained, in the lab), he may have specific responsibilities to mentor her and help her get established as a PI herself. Sorting out what those responsibilities are -- and what other responsibilities could trump them -- might be useful in preventing this kind of acrimonious outcome in other cases.

We'll return to considering the broader lessons we might draw from this situation, but first let's continue laying out the facts of Chandok v. Klessig, 5:05-cv-01076. (Again, I'm indebted to the reader who helpfully sent me the PDF of District Judge Joseph M. Hood's ruling in this case, which is what I'm quoting below.)

When Klessig and his coworkers at Boyce Thompson Institute for plant research (BTI) ran into trouble trying to reproduce Chandok's work, he sent a request to Chandok (who had by that time moved on to another position in a different state) that she return to help them with their attempts. As I read it, though, this request for help was paired with a threat:

After Dr. Chandok left BTI, Dr. Klessig and Lucy Pola, Human Resources director at BTI, sent a letter to Dr. Chandok stating that her results still had not been duplicated. The letter requested that Dr. Chandok return to BTI to assist in verifying her results and indicated that, should she fail to return, Dr. Klessig would begin a scientific misconduct investigation and withdraw support for her visa application. [Ex. 35.] Dr. Chandok did not return to assist in the research. Dr. Klessig initiated the investigation by reporting the possibility of scientific misconduct to Dr. Stern, then President of BTI, and Lucy Pola. (3)

Arguably, Chandok had a responsibility to assist Klessig and coworkers in their efforts. After all, she was claiming that the results she reported (and that she reported with Klessig, putting his name and reputation behind them as well as her own) were legitimate. In the scientific arena, asserting that your results are legitimate amounts to asserting that they are reproducible -- in other times, in other places, by other researchers. Reproducibility is how you establish that your results are legitimate, that what you've found is a robust effect rather than a fluke.

But, should the first request from a frustrated coauthor struggling to reproduce a reported finding contain an explicit threat? One wonders if there were other requests that didn't come up in the legal proceedings (although if there were, I can't imagine why Klessig wouldn't want that fact on record). I also can't help wondering whether there was something in Klessig's history with Chandok that made him feel that including the threat with this request for assistance was a good idea (either from the point of view of making it more likely that Chandok would actually provide assistance, or from the point of view of covering Klessig's own scientific butt).

The description of events in the judge's ruling continues:

After reviewing the data, Dr. Stern concluded that the investigation should go forward and formed a committee. Dr. Klessig sent an email agreeing with Dr. Stern. Then, Dr. Klessig submitted several suggested phrasings of an allegation of scientific misconduct to the BTI investigation committee. Dr. Susan Ridley from the National Science Foundation and Dr. James Anderson from the National Institute of Health, the relevant federal agencies to whom scientific misconduct should be reported, were next notified by Dr. Klessig. Dr. Klessig then began discussing the phrasing of the retraction letter that would be sent to Cell magazine and PNAS. Several drafts were suggested to Pres. Stern, Ms. Pola, Dr. Ekengren, and Dr. Martin. Once a final form was agreed upon, it was sent to the editors of Cell and PNAS as the formal retraction. (4)

Here, remember the two separate but connected issues that were on the table: whether the results that had been reported by Chandok could be trusted, and whether Chandok herself could be trusted. Retracting results because they are judged unreliable does not necessitate deciding that the results you're retracting have been fabricated or falsified -- and it seems like the burden of proof for the first of these judgments (at least scientifically speaking) is lower than that for the second.

We've already had a look at the allegedly defamatory claims Klessig made. Many of these claims seem to convey Klessig's personal conviction that misconduct was the source of the problems with Chandok's results -- and, as far as I can tell from the timeline in the judge's ruling, to communicate this conviction to the journals and other scientists before the BTI investigation had reached a conclusion on the matter. The gap between what Klessig believed and what he could prove seems like it might be important both in the scientific arena and in a court of law.

The ruling next lays out the relevant legal standard:

To establish a claim of defamation under New York law, a Plaintiff must establish 1) that the statement averred was defamatory; 2) that the statement was published by the defendant; 3) that the statement was communicated to a party who was not the plaintiff; and 4) the resultant injury to the plaintiff. (13)

Points 2 and 3 seem not to be in dispute. Point 4 seems arguably true from the point of view of the good reputation one needs to function successfully within a scientific community. Point 1 is the question I asked you to ponder in the earlier post with the 23 claims.

The judge's take on these claims is pretty shrewd:

Each of the twenty-three statements is reasonably susceptible to a defamatory meaning. Defendant argues that Statements 2 and 9-19 do not concern Plaintiff, but simply the "results" or "data" obtained through Plaintiff's research. The Court disagrees. Statements 2 and 9-19 are centered around the results of Plaintiff's research, and that fact that, despite numerous attempts, no other scientist was unable to replicate Plaintiff's results. The individuals to whom Defendant published Statements 2 and 9-18 were members of the scientific community, many of whom collaborated with Plaintiff on the NOS research and attempted to replicate the results. While a member of the general population may not understand Statements 2 and 9-19 to refer to a particular individual's work, the individuals to whom these Statements were published certainly might.

Among the allegedly defamatory statements are Defendant's comments that "there MUST be an investigation . . . given the evidence of falsification," [Statement 1], that there were "difficulties in reproducing the data," [Statement 11], that other scientists "have been unable to repeat the results," [Statement 13], and that the data was "shaky" and "unreliable." [Statement 19]. The scientifically sophisticated individuals to whom these Statements were communicated could very well understand the references to falsification, difficulty reproducing data, and an investigation to be a statement that someone, i.e., Plaintiff, falsified or fabricated her research. Upon reading these communications in full and giving consideration to the context in which they were sent, the Court finds that Statements 2 and 9-19 could reasonably be considered to be susceptible to a defamatory meaning. (14-15)

The judge, in other words, recognized that the reliability of the findings and the reliability of the researcher who produced them are entangled. As such, he didn't buy Klessig's claim that assertions impugning the goodness of the data didn't also impugn Chandok.

Of course, if Klessig had solid evidence that Chandok committed misconduct, that would be a reasonable defense -- remember that an element of defamation is that the defamatory statements are factually false.

Did Klessig have enough evidence of misconduct to support the statements about Chandok and her work that he made to others? For that matter, did the people with whom he was communicating have access to the facts needed to evaluate his claims -- those that supported a judgment of misconduct and those that supported an alternative conclusions (either that the attempts to reproduce the original findings might themselves be flawed, or that the problems with the original results were due to honest mistakes)?

As it happens, the judge sidesteps that question:

A statement is a pure opinion if, inter alia, it is accompanied by a recitation of the facts upon which the statement is based and does not imply or assert the existence of any undisclosed facts unknown to the audience. ... However, if the statement is accompanied by assertions that it was based on facts that are not disclosed and unknown to the audience, then the statement is actionable as a mixed opinion. ... If the recitation purports to be all the facts on which the decision was based, then it affords the audience an opportunity to evaluate the opinion, including whether the recited facts were sufficient to warrant it.

Defendant argues that the Statements are protected as opinion. While he concedes that each of the Statements did not fully recite the facts upon he based his opinion, he argues that because they were published to an audience already familiar with the relevant facts, republication to the entirety of the facts was not required. The Court notes Defendant's argument, but finds it unnecessary to decide this Motion on those grounds, as the Court will grant summary judgment in favor of defendant because Plaintiff, a public figure, has failed to meet the heightened burden of proof required of a public figure. (16-17)

What is it that makes a postdoc in plant biology a public figure? As laid out in the ruling:

The first and foremost consideration in determining whether Plaintiff is a limited issue public figure, is Plaintiff's degree of voluntarily involvement in the public controversy. ... There is no question that Dr. Chandok has met this requirement. Scientific articles are inherently subject to robust criticism, and for good reason. Dr. Chandok has chosen and worked diligently in furtherance of a career where, through publication, entry into controversy and debate is expected and even required as a matter of course. She cannot be said to have entered the public arena haphazardly or otherwise in the absence of her own volition. Furthermore, Dr. Chandok published the scholarly papers at the core of this lawsuit and is credited as the lead author thereof, a designation that she has defended vehemently. In her own deposition, Dr. Chandok admits that she is well known within the plant biology community. ... controversy, with regard to a published article, extends not only to its direct subject matter and conclusion, but necessarily to the competence and integrity of the author. The real issue in the instant case falls to whether the plant biology community is sufficiently "public." This court finds that it is. (18-19)

(Bold emphases added.)

Since scientific discourse is expected to involve organized skepticism that extends to findings reported in the literature, practicing science is stepping into a public sphere where controversies will arise and be thrashed out. Scientists will have opinions about the findings others in this arena present (and on the methods used to generate those findings, and on whether the conclusions drawn were the most reasonable ones to draw in light of the data, etc., etc.) -- and the collective scientific discourse works better if scientists feel free to voice these opinions. Of course, it's good if their opinions have factual support, but if they don't, that's the sort of thing that other scientists in the discourse are likely to notice and point out.

While those training to be scientists have a pretty good idea that they will need to be able to receive criticism of their work and respond to it effectively, it's not clear that they understand that they will be embarking on a career that makes them public figures. Just what that entails may be fodder for a fruitful lab group discussion.

By the way, notice that as the judge is recognizing the link between how we judge a scientific result and how we judge the scientist who produced it, he is also acknowledging that competence, as much as integrity, may explain findings that don't hold up. (Being judged a less than competent scientist is not a good thing for one's scientific career, of course, but it's a different thing from being judged a cheater.)

As a public figure, the plaintiff here has to meet a higher burden of proof to establish the defamation claim:

Dr. Chandok has willfully interjected herself into a public controversy by way of creating the very subject of the controversy, and the controversy and community are sufficiently public to invoke the constitutional protection of free speech. In few other spheres is the need for a free marketplace of ideas as indispensable to the very operation of the endeavor as it is to scientific research. The public good would be ill-served by the interjection of such a murky field of law. This Court finds that Dr. Chandok is a limited issue public figure and that Plaintiff must establish the additional elements of 1) falsity with convincing clarity, 2) actual malice with convincing clarity, and, beyond a preponderance of the evidence, 3) some degree of fault. (19-20)

In other words, since the law recognizes scientists as public figures here, the question shifts from whether Klessig can prove that his claims about Chandok's findings and her integrity are true, to whether Chandok can prove that they are false. Moreover, regardless of the harm these statements might actually have caused for Chandok, to establish defamation here she would need to establish that Klessig made them with malice.

Of course, "malice" has a technical meaning in this legal context:

Actual malice is defined as knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. ... Plaintiff failed to establish with convincing clarity that Defendant was aware of the falsity of any Statement, or that he recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of any Statement.¹⁸ Each of the twenty-three Statements somehow references the inability of numerous scientists to duplicate Plaintiff's result and the implications thereof. As evidence that Defendant knew the Statements were false and acted with actual malice in publishing them, Plaintiff cites a letter from Defendant to the INS, in which Defendant admitted that the postdoctoral students assigned to attempt to replicate Plaintiff's results were inexperienced and initially did not follow the correct protocol. A conclusion that Defendant had actual malice is not warranted. (20)

Given this definition of malice, Chandok would have to go further than arguing that Klessig's claims assert misconduct without proving misconduct. Rather, to demonstrate malice she would have to prove that Klessig knew that Chandok had not committed misconduct (or, perhaps, that he was willfully ignoring evidence that would clear her of misconduct).

That's a pretty high bar.

Indeed, here the judge seems to make much of the opportunities Chandok had (but did not use) to present positive evidence that her original findings were reliable. For example, in Footnote 18 of the ruling, Judge Hood writes:

In fact, Plaintiff never contends that Defendant's comments that numerous other scientists were unable to duplicate Plaintiff's results are false. Plaintiff does not appear to take issue with the factual portions of the Statements, only with the veracity of Defendant's conclusions as to the implications of those facts - that if numerous other scientists could not replicate the results, the original results must have been fabricated or falsified. (20)

Once again, we see that the questions of the reliability of the results and the reliability of the researcher who produced them are separable but connected. Chandok's legal claim apparently did not dispute that the efforts to reproduce her results failed. If we stipulate that these efforts failed, what can we conclude? Either that Chandok's original results were flawed (whether due to her competence or her integrity), or that the attempts at replication were flawed (whether due to the competence or the integrity of the researchers mounting these attempts), or that some unforeseen obstacle to replication (like a poorly controlled parameter in the experimental system) has reared its head. While concluding from the failed attempts at replication that Chandok fabricated or falsified her results is not the only conclusion one could draw, it is a conclusion that fits with the available facts. Moreover, if Chandok were confident that her results were reproducible, it would be at least a little puzzling that she did not offer her assistance in the efforts to reproduce them.

In this scientific controversy in a public arena, Klessig offered his opinions on the basis of the facts he had -- including the fact that three separate researchers in his lab who attempted to reproduce Chandok's work could not. If Chandok disputes the reliability of the data offered by those researchers (whether because she believes that they were not competent to conduct the work or because she doubts their integrity), by her own lights would saying so amount to defamation?

Whatever Chandok might say, the judge felt evidence for malice was lacking:

The Statements were based on data provided by three recent doctoral graduates, and made after investigation by three senior researchers following a standardized protocol. Plaintiff argues, in a somewhat conclusory manner, that Defendant's ill-will prompted him to make statements with knowing falsity. However, Plaintiff has not alleged any such motive for the list of individuals who agreed with Defendant's assessment. It is not a reasonable inference that the existence of data was substantially false or that Dr. Klessig knew that it was false, or certainly that the references to such data were made with reckless disregard for the truth. (21)

Given that Chandok did not provide the requested help as far as reproducing her results, her basis for questioning the veracity of the failed attempts to reproduce them is shaky. And, it stretches credulity that the other researchers would blow the experiments in an attempt to help Klessig smear Chandok -- especially given that, conceivably, researchers in other labs might also attempt to reproduce these results and, if successful, end up doubting the competence or integrity of Klessig and his associates.

[W]hile Plaintiff attempts to paint Defendant's actions in reporting the failure of the replication studies and going about the business of retracting the Cell paper as evidencing Defendant's actual malice toward Plaintiff, those actions do not provide clearly convincing evidence of actual malice. Defendant reported the discrepancies and the failure to reproduce the results, as he was required to do. He invited Plaintiff back to BTI to attempt to replicate the results herself or to more thoroughly explain how she arrived at her results, something her sparse lab notebooks failed to do. Defendant gave Plaintiff every opportunity to help explain the inability of other scientists to duplicate her work, efforts that are far from a clearly convincing showing of actual malice. (21-22)

I think there is still room to disagree about what degree of data-supported confidence one ought to achieve before reporting a result in the scientific literature, or before retracting a result you've published, or before asserting that your coauthor probably committed misconduct in generating the finding you reported. In science, the link between assertions and evidence is supposed to be very strong. However, what the ruling in Chandok v. Klessig makes clear is that scientific discourse is rife with public disagreements about what the facts are and about what conclusions they support. Those who participate in scientific discourse cannot count on being shielded from disagreement, nor can they assert a right to remove their results, their competence in generating those results, or their integrity as scientists from the topics about which other scientists might dispute.

Drawing conclusions from too little evidence -- including conclusions about a fellow scientist's integrity -- is not an especially good thing to do. However, it seems possible that this is something better addressed through more speech, not less. And in any event, Judge Hood's ruling here suggests that legal actions to restrict scientists' speech in this sort of controversy ought not, and will not, be successful.

jstemwedel Wed, 09/16/2009 - 11:44

Tags

Nothing to add, I just wanted to say I appreciated this analysis.

Fascinating.

Thank you for your highly informational dissection of this case. It is a very positive step to see someone with obvious expertise in research ethics pay attention to specific cases of scientific misconduct. Especially since you have paid such careful attention to the gray areas of unknown intention and experimental variance.

Thanks for the posts on this...

I'm quite impressed with this judge. Those are pretty much the right issues and the ruling is downright reasonable.

I'd like to note one thing though:
Chandok had one obvious recourse which would flip the tables completely... just help any lab (Klessig's included) replicate the results. If she had a compelling reason why she couldn't return to BTI, she could have at least clarified the protocols.

On that note, even if the original results were not falsified, her work was obviously incompetent to an extent. Part of publishing a paper is providing sufficient details of the methods that they are reproducable! (I'm assuming writing up those methods was her job since she did the experiment and was first author after all.) At the very least, supplemental material or a correction to clarify the methods was in order.

Finally, we have a pretty well established culture regarding authorship of papers. The first author is responsible for the overall paper... it is *their* paper. Other authors may write sections, contribute results, and of course review/edit. They have responsibility too of course, but it isn't the same as the first author. Fields differ in how much contribution/responsibility is associated with being an 'et al' and what the order should be, but first author is pretty conserved.

I'm with MRW; thanks for all your work on this. My ex-wife worked in a research lab while we were married, and similar issues of 'professional communications' being less than professionally accomplished came up. It made me realize how much soap-opera drama was involved not simply in the gossip at work, but the actual work at work. So I suspected all along that this was a matter of "I'll sue him for pointing out how incompetent I am," but I was also concerned this could be just another PI screwing over a post-doc to cover his own ass. Gratifying to see the Judge saw it essentially the same way, and was able to sort out the facts and laws involved.

Great write-up. This case has been an eye-opener regarding the way that science is conducted, but I think the judge got the key issues right.

One question: you say

While those training to be scientists have a pretty good idea that they will need to be able to receive criticism of their work and respond to it effectively, it's not clear that they understand that they will be embarking on a career that makes them public figures.

Does 'public' in this context have the common-usage meaning, or does it mean that Chandok was a public figure in the limited sphere where her reputation would be damaged by this business? I can see the logic in an argument that she had made herself a public figure in the only sphere where anyone would be likely to hear of it, so condition (3) of the defamation definition would apply in that area only. But someone who actually knows something about US law would have to enlighten me.

One very important topic that I haven't really seen in your discussion of this case so far is whether or not these claims of unreproducibility, unreliability, and falsification of experiments and data should be decided by the legal system at all. The judge seems to have made the right call here, but why was a judge involved in the first place? Shouldn't scientists, of all people, be able to sort out these claims without getting lawyers involved? On a related topic, I'm curious about why Chandok filed this lawsuit, and when. How long did she try to settle these claims through scientific institutions and procedures before turning to the law? Did she feel like she had absolutely no recourse left within science, and only reluctant filed suit, or (on the other extreme) did she feel that going to court is just what people do when they have disagreements?

None of which is to say that your discussion hasn't been insightful. :-)

One wonders if there were other requests that didn't come up in the legal proceedings (although if there were, I can't imagine why Klessig wouldn't want that fact on record).

Maybe the other communications weren't recorded, and therefore were difficult to introduce?

Additionally, without the original communication, the level of "threat" is difficult to ascertain. There's a world of difference between the formal description by the judge, and say an email where Klessig says something along the lines of "We're in trouble here -- if I can't find some way to reproduce your data, I won't be able to stop an investigation or give you that reference letter for the visa. My ass will be on the line as well."

Hard to know -- particularly without all the other data that doesn't go into a court case, and especially make it into the judges ruling.

Just because the summary of the facts presented in the court's ruling omits certain things, does not mean they were not put into evidence by the parties to the suit.

Can you post the pdf of the judge's decision?

Do these claims look defamatory to you?

jstemwedel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:20:44 +0000

Do these claims look defamatory to you?

You may remember my post from last week involving a case where a postdoc sued her former boss for defamation when he retracted a couple of papers they coauthored together. After that post went up, a reader helpfully hooked me up with a PDF of District Judge Joseph M. Hood's ruling on the case (Chandok v. Klessig, 5:05-cv-01076). There is a lot of interesting stuff here, and I'm working on a longer examination of the judge's reasoning in the ruling. But, in the interim, I thought you might be interested in the statements made by the defendant in the case, Dr. Daniel F. Klessig, that the plaintiff in the case, Dr. Meena Chandok, alleged were defamatory.

In the longer post I'm working on, I'll dig in to Judge Hood's arguments with respect to what elements a plaintiff must establish to prove defamation, and what particular features of the scientific arena were germane to his ruling in this case. For the time being, however, I'm interested to hear what you all think about whether the 23 allegedly defamatory claims quoted below tend "to expose the plaintiff to public hatred, contempt, ridicule, or disgrace." (13) As well, given that one element of defamation is that the defamatory statements are factually false, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the evidentiary standard a scientist should have to meet before making claims like these to other scientists.

Here, quoted from the ruling, are the 23 allegedly defamatory statements:

Statement 1: To Brian Crane [a researcher who Klessig had asked to attempt to confirm Chandok's results], via e-mail
"Unfortunately, the evidence still argues that she falsified at least some of the data on the recombinant varP." Ex. 84 at 3; Ex. 85.
Statement 2: To Lucy Pola [Human Resources Director at Boyce Thompson Institute for plant research (BTI)], Dr. Martin, and possibly Pres. Stern [of BTI], via e-mail
"I absolutely agree that there MUST be an investigation regardless of whether varP has NOS activity or not, given the evidence of falsification." Ex. 55.

Statement 3: To Pres. Stern and Lucy Pola, via interoffice memorandum
"The conclusion we draw from these results is that most or all of the data that Meena presented to us and in the Cell paper concerning the recombinant varP has been falsified." Ex. 51.

Statement 4: To Pres. Stern and Lucy Pola, via interoffice memorandum
"The conclusion I draw from these results is that most or all of the data that Meena presented to us and in the Cell paper concerning recombinant varP may have been falsified." Ex. 88.

Statement 5: To Pres. Stern and Lucy Pola, via interoffice memorandum
"The conclusion I draw from these results is that most or all of the data that Dr. Chandok presented to us and in the Cell paper concerning recombinant varP is likely to have been falsified." Ex. 53.

Statement 6: To Pres. Stern, Lucy Pola, Dr. Blissard, Dr. Granados, and Dr. Winans, via memorandum
"The conclusion I draw from these results is that most or all of the data that Dr. Chandok presented to us and in the Cell paper concerning the recombinant varP is likely to have been falsified." Ex. 54.

Statement 7: To Dr. James J. Anderson [of the National Institutes of Health], via letter
"Evidence recently emerged that strongly suggests that she falsified most or all of the data on recombinant varP.... In contrast, the evidence that Dr. Chandok falsified most or all of the recombinant varP data is much clearer and therefore, warrants investigation." Ex. 58.

Statement 8: To Dr. Susan Ridley [of the National Science Foundation], via letter
"Evidence recently emerged that strongly suggests that she falsified some of the data showing that the recombinant variant P gene of Arabidopsis encodes a nitric oxide synthesizing enzyme (NOS)." Ex. 59.

Statement 9: To Pres. Stern, Lucy Pola, Dr. Ekengren [who had collaborated with Chandok and coauthored a paper with her that was published in PNAS], and Dr. Martin, via written document
"Further experiments by other members of the Klessig laboratory revealed difficulties in reproducing the results with recombinant variant P and, in addition, suggest that the data on the recombinant variant P presented in the Cell paper is being retracted....For this reason and the fact much of the data in this paper are now suspect.... The experiments that produced this data were performed by M. Chandok." Ex. 96.

Statement 10: To Pres. Stern, Lucy Pola, Dr. Ytterberg, and Dr. Van Wijk, via written document
"Further experiments by other members of the Klessig laboratory reveal difficulties in reproducing the data with recombinant variant P and in addition suggest that the data on recombinant variant P presented in Tables I and 2 and Figures 5B and C of this paper are unreliable. An investigation is underway to determine whether these data were fabricated by the lead author." Ex. 97.

Statement 11: To Pres. Stern, Lucy Pola, Dr. Ytterberg, Dr. Van Wijk, and Dr. Marcus, via written document
"Further experiments by other members of the Klessig laboratory reveal difficulties in reproducing the data with recombinant variant P and in addition suggest that the data on recombinant variant P presented in Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 5B and C of this paper are unreliable. An investigation is underway to determine whether these data were fabricated by the lead author." Ex. 98.

Statement 12: To Dr. Ekengren and Dr. Martin, via written document
"Further experiments by other members of the Klessig laboratory reveal difficulties in reproducing the results with recombinant variant P and, in addition, suggest that
the data on the recombinant variant P and in addition suggest that the data on recombinant variant P presented in the Cell paper may have been fabricated by the lead author - hence the Cell paper is being retracted.... For this reason and the fact we are no longer confident in much of the data in this paper..... The experiments that produced this data were performed by M.R. Chandok and are now suspect." Ex. 99.

Statement 13: To Dr. Ekengren, and Dr. Martin, via written document
"Since the publication of this paper, other members of the Klessig laboratory have been unable to repeat the results with recombinant variant P. In addition, other discrepancies have come to light that suggest data on the recombinant variant P presented in the Cell paper may have been fabricated by M.R. Chandok - hence the Cell paper is being retracted.... For this reason and the fact that we are no longer confident in much of the data in this paper.... The experiments that produced this data were performed M.R. Chandok are now suspect." Ex. 100.

Statement 14: To Ian T. Baldwin, via e-mail
"Over the past 6-8 months several new postdocs have ben following up on the NOS work started by Meena Chandok. The have had difficulties reproducing the results with
recombinant variant P and, in addition, have obtained evidence suggesting that the data on recombinant variant P presented in the Cell paper may have been fabricated -
hence the Cell paper is being retracted. The follow-up PNAS paper is also suspect and will very likely be retracted." Ex. 102.

Statement 15: To audience at Juan March Conference on October 6, 2004, via spoken statement
"Since publication of this work in Cell in 2003, several new postdocs have joined our group to study varP or the pathogen-inducible NOS. To date, they have not been able to repeat the results with the recombinant variant P that were reported. In addition, other discrepancies have very recently come to light that strongly suggest that the data on the recombinant variant P is unreliable." Ex. 103.

Statement 16: To Jyoti Shah, via e-mail
"Over the past several months several new postdoc [sic] in our group have attempted to reproduce Meena Chandok's results with recombinant varP to study its NO
synthesizing activity. They have been unable to demonstrate this activity. In addition, several other discrepancies have come to light in the past several weeks which strongly suggest that the data on the recombinant varP reported in our 2003 Cell paper are unreliable. Therefore, we are retracting the Cell paper. The follow-up PNAS paper is also being retracted because we are no long [sic] confident in much of the enzymological data in this paper." Ex. 104.

Statement 17: To Nigel Crawford and Priti Krishna, via email
"Over the past several months several new postdoc [sic] in our group have attempted to reproduce Meena Chandok's results with recombinant varP to study its NO synthesizing activity. They have been unable to demonstrate this activity. In addition, several other discrepancies have come to light in the past several weeks which strongly suggest that the data on the recombinant varP reported in our 2003 Cell paper are unreliable. Therefore, we are retracting the Cell paper. The follow-up PNAS paper is also being retracted because we are no long [sic] confident in much of the enzymological data in this paper." Ex. 105.

Statement 18: To Allen Collmer and "Rose," via e-mail
"Over the past several months several new postdoc [sic] in our group have attempted to reproduce Meena Chandok's results with recombinant varP to study its NO synthesizing activity. They have been unable to demonstrate this activity. In addition, several other discrepancies have come to light in the past several weeks which strongly suggest that the data on the recombinant varP reported in our 2003 Cell paper are unreliable. Therefore, we are retracting the Cell paper. The follow-up PNAS paper is also being retracted because we are no long [sic] confident in much of the enzymological data in this paper." Ex. 106.

Statement 19: To John Travis, reporter for Science magazine
Quoted in article as having informed reporter for Science magazine that the data was "shaky" and "unreliable." Ex. 107.

Statement 20: To BTI, Dr. Blissard, and Dr. Wang, via email
"With this additional data it is very hard to avoid the conclusion that she falsified at least some of her results with recombinant varP." Ex. 108.

Statement 21: To Dr. Blissard and Dr. Wang, via e-mail
"Therefore, her results with recombinant AtvarP protein made in baculovirus expression system had to be falsified because she could not have made the protein." Ex. 109.

Statement 22: Bridget Coughlin to Nick Cozzarelli, via email
"Dr. Klessig has contacted me about retracting his paper (attached). It appears that the first author, a former post doc in his lab, fabricated the data and spiked the samples to indicate iNOS activity." Ex. 110.

Statement 23: To Dr. Crane, via e-mail
"varP is unreliable. Because I don't believe she ever had the recombinant version." Ex. 111.

(6-11)

How, dear readers, would you rule?

jstemwedel Thu, 09/10/2009 - 10:20

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Interesting to consider a different way of saying this that keeps you out of trouble. "The data cannot have been produced as described by Chandok"?

I mean, sure, "falsified" is a conclusion. It implies an intention to deceive and nobody can ever know with absolute assurance what the intent was. so depending on what the standard is....

within science, I think the decision as to whether one should claim falsification over error depends on whether it could have been a mistake. in some cases (detailed on these pages if I am not mistaken) there is a pretty clear case to be made that a result is very unlikely to be a mistake. in some cases it is not so clear cut, even if the data are clearly bad.

I think if there are reasonable data supporting the conclusion, regardless of whether they represent a circumstantial case, the statements cannot be defamatory. If the conclusions were based on faulty reasoning, I think they could be considered defamatory.

I donât think that any of them rise to the level of defamation but my reasoning derives from how a scientist should behave and not on the legal definition of defamation.

If you work with another scientist as a collaborator, you have an obligation to ensure that the data you generate together and publish together is correct and reproducible. If the data is not reproducible, then you have an obligation to either work until you do reproduce it, uncover the errors that made it non-reproducible, or admit that it is not reproducible and withdraw the data and conclusions from the literature as unreliable. To me, if you donât do those things, then you have committed some kind of scientific misconduct.

I think that if one decides to not cooperate with attempts to reproduce the data and the data is not reproduced, then you have forfeited the right to author the explanation that the scientific community is owed as to why the data was not reproduced. If those who did attempt to reproduce the data without input from you decide that you faked it that is a legitimate scientific conclusion. Your only recourse then is to reproduce the data and show that it wasnât faked, but no one has the obligation to work with you to do so, you forfeited that by not cooperating in the first place. You could also come up with a lame excuse that you remembered that you made a mistake, but that doesn't erase the scientific misconduct you did by not cooperating with the attempt to replicate the data.

Just so CPP doesnât flip out; this is the thought process I was using on the other thread which I left out because it was so obvious.

I think this is pretty clear, much more so than I expected from the previous post: if false, the statements would in my opinion clearly be sufficient to constitute defamation. So the only question is what level of evidence would allow for a 'truth' defense.

[I don't think that (as daedalus suggests) there's any *obligation* to cooperate with attempts to reproduce your work, although I agree that failing to do so is incompatible with scientific inquiry; so I don't see that as providing a basis for defense. I agree that it looks fishy, that it's not what one would want from a colleague or fellow scientist - but still not enough to be evidence of fakery.]

Level of evidence? Enough to go to whatever process the journal or institution has in place. And yeah, I'd be careful to say 'the conclusion drawn by panel [X] was that the data appear to be falsified' instead of making statements that claim such falsification to be a fact. Failure to reproduce is **not** enough to justify any allegation of malpractice; discovery that the claimed results from 108 rats came during a period when only 6 rats were ordered and used would likely be such: that is, clear evidence that something was impossible to be true, rather than a difference in experimental result that could have come from chance, however unlikely.

I don't think that just saying that you think that data is "shaky" and "unreliable" - which seems to be the terms used to people outside the institute - could reasonably be called defamation. It's not going to help your reputation much at all, but that's a judgment call about work quality.

"Misconduct" and "fabrication" are a bit more serious, especially when they're used in the scientific community. Those are accusations that can, if made publicly, wreck careers. I could see circumstances where using those terms carelessly could be considered defamation - if and only if the person making the claim knows that there is in fact no evidence of misconduct/fabrication.

IANAL

"The conclusion we draw from these results is that most or all of the data that Meena presented to us and in the Cell paper concerning the recombinant varP has been falsified."

but this seems pretty defamatory to me, no ifs, buts or maybes, he's saying pretty clearly that she falsified data and for an academic that's pretty much the 'kiss of death' in your career.

Assuming of course that she didn't falsify the data.

he's saying pretty clearly that she falsified data and for an academic that's pretty much the 'kiss of death' in your career

I want to live in your world.

IANAL, and have never played one on TV. But I have seen some guidelines for English (& Welsh) defamation. Going on that, it is not clear that the public statements (15 and 19) even start to be defamatory: nobody is mentioned. Things might be a bit different if some of the audience would have known who had carried out the experiment.

Assuming that Chandok could be identified from the public statements, they could be interpreted as "Chandok carried out some experiments, and the results were unreliable". Assuming the methods are robust, this implies that Chandok is at fault, and hence is defamatory (according to the guidelines I'm looking at).

I assume Klessig's defence would be the justification defence - i.e. that was was said was true. The first part of statement 15 is easy to verify, the second would need the additional data to be presented in court: but here Klessig would just have to demonstrate unreliability (not fraud). This would then cover statement 19. I guess then that the public pronouncements would be fine.

I was under the impression that defamation covered public statements, and none of the other statements are. OTOH, does FoI make them de facto public? Dunno.

Anyway, as with the public statements, the other statements would make one think worse of Chandok, and hence would be defamatory. The defence would be the same (i.e. truth), but I'm not sure if he would have to demonstrate that the evidence indicated that some of the data were falsified (that would cover statements 1-8), or that the data were falsified. I think statements 12-14 might have to be justified by showing that the data were fabricated, it may not be enough to show that there is good evidence (but IANAL, and I don't have any experience).

Statements 21 to 23 are clear: Klessig (and Coughlin in 22) would have to provide the evidence of fabrication.

Overall, it's clear to me that the statements are defamatory, according to the guidelines I've seen. But he can only be successfully sued if he can't show evidence of fabrication he's fine.

To demonstrate his claims, I'd be expecting Klessig to show his evidence, firstly that the results were extremely unlikely, but then either direct evidence of fraud (e.g. notes in Excel sheets say "hahaha this will show them"), or strong evidence that they could not have been produced by accident, e.g. through mis-reading a machine's output.

In addition to being factually false, don't you have to prove they were stated when known to be false (that is with maliciousness)?

Some of the statements are definitely defamatory if untrue, given the legal definitions in use.You can't just accuse people of faking data without evidence.

I do not know what evidence he had for his statements. I would allow a margin of appreciation for him however. As long as he had some evidence, even circumstancial I would also have dismissed the charges. It seems to me the judge got it right, good for him.

By the way, can you post the ruling? There is no copyright in federal court opinions.

Most of them you can't really tell, as they're outside their context. For example, #1 "Unfortunately, the evidence still argues that she falsified at least some of the data on the recombinant varP."

That's not an entire email. The evidence referenced isn't presented as part of the quote, but I would be surprised if there wasn't some in that email. If he emailed Brian Crane and laid out a bunch of evidence... and then ended with that sentence, that's not defamation even if Brian (or anyone else reading that email) would disagree with the conclusion based upon the evidence: Klessig's conclusion can be wrong and not defamatory if he's including that evidence in his correspondence (Klessig's summarization is an his opinion), as it gives Crane the opportunity to evaluate the evidence himself.

It's perfectly okay (at least under the legal terms of defamation) to accuse someone of something with pretty flimsy evidence.

Usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

It seems to me that the case will hinge on this one:

Statement 21: To Dr. Blissard and Dr. Wang, via e-mail
"Therefore, her results with recombinant AtvarP protein made in baculovirus expression system had to be falsified because she could not have made the protein." Ex. 109.

That's a pretty simple summary of the reasoning behind his belief that the results were falsified. In order to show defamation, the plaintiff would have to show that Klessig is *wrong* (that the protein can be made) and that Klessig knew that he was wrong.

I don't think there's much of a leg here, personally.

One of the elements of a successful defamation claim is the following:

If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher

Since the reliability of scientific data is absolutely a matter of public concern, Klessig could have been absolutely wrong in his falsification assertions, yet so long as he was not negligent in making those assertions, there is no defamation. Since the plaintiff presented no evidence that Klessig was negligent as to the truth of his falsification assertions, the judge correctly entered summary judgment for the defendant.

This was an open-and-shut case.

In order to show defamation, the plaintiff would have to show that Klessig is *wrong* (that the protein can be made) and that Klessig knew that he was wrong.

This is not quite right. Because the plaintiff would only have to show that Klessig was negligent as to the truth of his false assertion, it would not be necessary to show that Klessig knew he was wrong; a showing that Klessig reasonably should have known would be sufficient.

The legal issue at play here is not whether these statements are defamatory (i.e., harm her reputation); at least enough of them are that it's not a legal question that determines the outcome of the case. The issue is whether her supervisor (and/or other co-defendants) can be forced to pay her damages. Truth is a defense: it doesn't change a defamatory statement into a non-defamatory statement; it just lets you avoid having to pay the plaintiff. It may seem like a nit-picky point, but it's hard to follow a legal opinion in a defamation case unless you understand it.

IIRC, there are 3 types of plaintiff in a defamation case: a private person, a public figure, and a "limited public figure", and your status as a plaintiff determines what level of mal-conduct you have to prove the defendant engaged in to win damages.

For a private person, the threshold is pretty low: even a good-faith belief the statement was true doesn't save the defendant; the plaintiff just has to prove you knew they are "defamatory", and that you "published" them. And it doesn't matter what the topic was.

For a public person, the plaintiff generally has to prove the defendant knew the statement was false, or was so reckless about his/her knowledge that it was grossly reckless for them not to have known they were false (that is essentially what is meant by the legal term "actual malice"; it's not a question of whether the defendant intended to harm the plaintiff). And it doesn't matter what the topic is about. Bill Clinton is a public figure (as are most all politicians, celebrities, etc), and for the most part you can probably get away with just about any claim about him. (And again, it's not that you can't make defamatory statements about him, he just has an enormous burden of proof to get you to have to pay him).

Finally, there is the "limited public figure", which roughly means that they are a private figure with respect to most issues/matters, but because of their involvement in a "matter of public concern" becomes a public figure for matters relating to this issue. In litigating these types of cases, the key plaintiff goal is to be declared a private person, and the key defense goal is to have the plaintiff declared a limited public figure. (because whether you win or not usually hinges on their status). Usually in matters where you are not the topic, you can't (in theory!) become a limited public figure involuntarily; a will court look for evidence that you "interjected" yourself into the controversy. For example, if you are pro-choice, you would ordinarily be a private person with respect to defamation involving that issue, but if you attended a pro choice rally and had a big sign and yelled loudly to the cameras, then you probably became a limited public figure for that topic (but not, for example, on the issue of whether you are burglar).

I'm not an expert on this area of law, and didn't read the opinion. But looks to me like the court declared the plaintiff to be a limited public figure merely because she "interjected" herself into the controversy by doing the experiments and co-authoring the paper. I not sure I'm comfortable about that, because it seems to me the issue at play is whether she falsified the data, not whether the data and the findings are true or not. But these types of cases are always very tricky, and people have been found to have "interjected" themselves into a controversy by doing much less.

@ Comrade PhysioProf

> It would not be necessary to show that Klessig
> knew he was wrong; a showing that Klessig
> reasonably should have known would be sufficient.

Yes, that's a valid point. My misstatement.

I'm not an expert on this area of law, and didn't read the opinion.

Don't let that stop you from blithering idiotically!

One must assume that Klessig had the benefit of examining the raw data and protocols of Chandok's experiments. His assertion of possible falcification is probably based, at least in part, on examining the protocols and the raw data. Ms. Chandok's refusal to engage in attempts to reproduce the data indicates, at least in my mind, that she knew what would be the outcome of such attempts. Her lawsuit claiming defamation is a typical reaction by cheaters who caught cheating. Her best chance to rehabilitate her name was to cooperate with Klessig on reproducing the data. Her refusal is an admission of guilt.

Me: "I'm not an expert on this area of law, and didn't read the opinion."

What I meant by saying I'm "not an expert in this area" is that it is not an area I practice in, so don't steep myself in the subtle nuances of these types of cases on a regular basis. I was basing my comments on my recollection of basic tort law and additional courses in con law and first amendment law. And I didn't read the opinion because I could not find it in a (admittedly non exhaustive) search, so was relying on the excerpts posted in the preceding thread.

PhysioProf: "Don't let that stop you from blithering idiotically!"

Well, since I gather that, by saying that, you are an expert in this area of law and did read the opinion, perhaps you can post a link to it for me. It might help me make sense of what you said, particularly that this is an open and shut case. I am curious about the source for your clear claim that the mere fact that it is a matter of public concern alone determines the criteria by which the defendants actions will be judged, regardless of any facts about the plaintiff. This is a new (and radical) development in the law in this area, overturning a reasonably well settled principle. Since (I gather) that is now the law, I can see where what I wrote would be irrelevant to the discussion of this issue.

Thanks in advance to the reference to the opinion in this case and to the SCOTUS opinion that changed the law in this area.

Divalent,

Eventually, you are new to this sphere of science blogs and aren't familiar with our resident expert in everything. ;)

BTW, do not hold your breath, waiting for an upcoming source on which CPP's claim is based.

Thanks for the heads up, S. Rivlin. I'll take that into account in the future.

But to the extent maybe others find my post a bit blathering, I'll be a bit more succinct here to summarize:
- with respect to the question posed in the title of this thread, the answer is (for most of the statements) a clear "yes": he did defame her. (truth or falsity only affects whether the plaintiff or defendant can prevail)
- the state of the evidence is probably that, on the one hand, the defendant can't prove absolutely that the allegations are true (so would prefer to avoid litigating the issue), but OTOH the plaintiff can't prove he knew, or should have known, that they were false.
- Thus, plaintiff has a chance of winning if she is a "private figure" but clearly loses if she is a limited public figure. Thus (further), although I don't have a copy of the opinion, I'll bet a lot that the key inquiry (and the legally interesting one) is: what was her status, and why?

BTW, the other question posed in above is "What can scientists say to each other about such matters?" is also interesting. It might not be wise to take the result of this case (if it survives appeal) as generally applicable to all situations. It may be a different outcome if the papers were not published and retracted: but rather was a series of incidents at a much earlier stage of the research. Like: suppose the PI suspected, on the basis of the same evidence, that falsification occurred, but the evidence surfaced well before a paper is even written (i.e., when it was just an "internal matter", and was being handled as such). Would that have been a "matter of public concern" and would a post doc have "interjected" themselves into the controversy in a way that made them a limited public figure? (That's why it would be interesting to read the court's analysis of her status.)

And what if the evidence was less conclusive on whether someone falsified data, but was strong enough to convince the PI that the person could not be trusted and so was no longer wanted as an employee? What could you say to others then? In other words, when is the person you are speaking about a private person and when do they become a limited public figure? Because that distinction determines what statements you can be held liable for.

I'm not sure that the distinction between private and limited public persons is that complicated here -- the person in question was a co-author on several published papers. Given that the validity of those papers is the matter in question, the fact that she put her name on it and published it should make it clear that she belongs in the second class.

By the way, Divalent, what country do you practice in? I ask because we've heard in several places on these blogs about the difference between English and American law on these sort of cases.

"the person in question was a co-author on several published papers. Given that the validity of those papers is the matter in question, the fact that she put her name on it and published it should make it clear that she belongs in the second class."

That is one way to isolate the issue. Another way (and IMO, the correct way) is that the matter in question is whether the plaintiff committed scientific misconduct. Remember, the comments are not defamatory because they merely question the validity of the results, they are defamatory because they clearly imply she fabricated the data.

(BTW, all my comments refer to US law.) In any event, I don't think it really makes a difference. The standard for what makes a limited public person out of a private person *requires* that the private person take *voluntary* actions that change their status *after* the controversy arises. (Calling a press conference to dispute the claims will do it, but merely saying "I didn't do it" to a reporter who asks her won't do it.) That's why I am uncomfortable with the idea (which the court apparently applied here) that merely being a coauthor of a scientific paper is sufficient.

Even for the innocent, it's pretty hard to escape unscathed from a charge of fabricating data. I'm not so sure the mere fact that you publish a paper should be sufficient to allow anyone to, with impunity, accuse you of what is arguably the worst crime in science with as little as a few unreliable bits of evidence and a cockamamie hypothesis to tie them together.

Divalent, I gather you are not a scientist either. You are really distorting the facts of the case and extrapolating it into regions that make no sense.

It wasnât just âanyoneâ who raised these issues, it was a co-author. He didnât do it on the basis of a âfew unreliable bits of informationâ, he did it following a conserted effort to replicate the results, an effort to which the plaintiff did not cooperate or contribute. It was not a âcockamamieâ hypothesis that she fabricateed the data, it was a reasonable hypothesis which explained both the lack of replication of the data and why she was unable and unwilling to cooperate in its replication.

The âcontraversyâ arises when the paper is submitted to a journal. If you donât want to be considered a public figure with respect to data you publish in a scientific journal, donât publish it in a scientific journal. If you do, expect to be held to the same standards as every other scientist and if your data isnât replicable, and if you donât have records, and donât cooperate with trying to replicate or understand why it isnât replicable, donât go crying to the court that your co-authors are defaming you when they communicate with other scientists about what could have gone wrong and why your data is unreliable.

The incremental damage to her scientific reputation because her co-author raised the possiblity of data fabrication is tiny, de minimus. The big damage comes from her not cooperating in trying to replicate the results and then suing for defamation instead of behaving as a scientist. In contrast, if her co-author did not raise the possibility of data fabrication when he considered it a possibility would have damaged his scientific reputation. As co-author, he is in the best position to evaluate the reasons why the data was not replicable. If he has reasonable suspicions that the data was fabricated, then the scientific community wants and expects him to voice those suspicions, and will fault him if he doesn't. Non-experts in the field donât have the background to evaluate the data, they rely on experts in the field to do so. Inhibiting the free exchange of scientific ideas by threats of legal action would greatly damage the scientific enterprise.

Divalent, I agree that someone shouldn't be allowed to throw a charge of data falsification around without being able to back it up. This has happened too many times in the past, actually. On the other hand, as daedalus2u pointed out, the person who is making the claim was also a co-author. Thus, he had an ethical obligation to retract the paper if he felt that it wasn't reliable. In order to do that, he had to explain why.
I also find it hard to understand why an attorney thinks it's appropriate to conclude, without hearing any testimony, what level of evidence there was. Assuming that the statements in question accurately depict the situation regarding further testing, we have unspecified "discrepancies" to deal with -- the sort of thing that will surely come out in court. It is true that simple failure to replicate the data is not sufficient to indicate that she falsified the data -- but it seems that all of the early statements (assuming that they're in chronological order) state that the failure to replicate instigated a further investigation -- not a definite conclusion. That appears to have come later.

psweet and daedalus2u, I was doing what the court did regarding the evidence when ruling on a motion for summary judgment (that is, before there is even a trial). In that situation the court *has* to assume that the plaintiff will be able to support her claims at trial (since the motion he is ruling on would deny her the right to a trial). Essentially, the judge said it makes no difference: even if the facts are as the plaintiff claims, SHE STILL LOSES! That is, even if she didn't falsify the data, and can prove that at trial, she cannot win her suit against the defendant(s). Because she is a limited public figure.

My postings on this are not related to the question of whether or not she falsified the data in the papers. It is about the legally interesting issue of whether or not merely doing research and being an author on a paper (even a "minor" author, I wonder?) makes you a limited public figure.